Autism - search results
17 children from one UK school, majority with autism, in ‘process of changing their...
School officer forces 10yo with autism to ground, handcuffs him (VIDEOS) — RT US...
Mercury-Autism Connection Confirmed
‘Game-changer for autism’: 100-year-old drug reverses symptoms, study finds
Video: ‘I don’t like to be touched’: 10yo with autism handcuffed, arrested at Florida...
‘Treated like a criminal’: Florida mother of arrested 10yo with autism demands answers (VIDEO)
Brain scans may hold key to identifying autism early – study
10yo girl with autism found locked in cage at Tennessee home
Autism symptoms show improvement from donor viruses in fecal transplants – study
Autism and Human Evolutionary Success
Video: UK hacker diagnosed with autism to be extradited to US, faces up to...
Probiotics can ‘potentially’ cure autism-like disorders — study
'Free hugs' man who punched tourist trolled even though he suffers from autism
FDA DOCUMENTS ADMITS VACCINES LINKED TO AUTISM
Autism sufferers face ‘mortality crisis’ – experts
Video: Embracing Autism: Journalist Ron Suskind on Supporting His Son’s Strengths, Advice for Other...
Video: Richie debates Fiona O’Leary on MMS, GcMaf and Vaccine Links To Autism
Vaccines and autism: Epidemic accelerates as cases in young vaccinated children explode unabated
Vaccines Cause Cancer, Autism & Other Deadly Diseases
MIT Scientist Discover Monsanto’s RoundUp Causes Autism
CNN Denies Link Between Vaccine And Autism
Autism risk higher near pesticide-treated fields, study says
A Major Development In The Vaccine Autism Link Exposes The CDC’s Cover Up
Schizophrenia And Autism Are The Effects Of Vaccine Stimulation In Unborn Children
FDA Vaccine Insert Lists Autism As Adverse Reaction
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Beats Conventional Therapy for Autism
Vaccines-aluminum-autism: but don’t worry, go back to sleep
Do vaccines cause autism?
Breaking: Courts discreetly confirm MMR vaccine causes autism
Autism-Birth Induction Link: Correlation or Causation?
Autism manifests in boy, girl differently
The Vaccine-Autism Connection – Here's What They Know…
New Study Confirms Wheat-Autism Link
New Study Confirms Wheat-Autism Link
A subset of children with autism displays increased immune reactivity to gluten, the mechanism...
Connecting the Dots Between Autism and Your Health
Vaccines and Autism – The science and the politics
Autism Risk Linked to Distance From Power Plants
Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case
Life Expectancy Falters in the UK: Slow Death but Fast Profits for the Agrochemical...
NYC officials shut Orthodox Jewish daycare over measles data access — RT USA News
New York City declares health emergency over measles outbreak in Williamsburg — RT USA...
Cross-sex hormone therapy age down to 8 in US govt-funded study, doctor finds —...
New York county bars unvaccinated minors from public places amid measles outbreak — RT...
The Homeless 8-Year-Old Chess Champion and Other Horrific ‘Uplifting’ Stories
Books the Feds Hate
Fired School Employee Sues Over Israel Loyalty Oath – Consortiumnews
Don’t Read These Books
‘Transgender’ Texas child caught in custody battle — RT US News
It’s That Time of Year
Students union bans clapping at events – use ‘jazz hands’ instead — RT UK...
Joke about a safe space lands Talkradio host in hot water — RT UK...
‘Unsettled’ child caused horrific smash by driving ambulance into motorcyclist (VIDEOS) — RT US...
India Mortgaged? Forced-Fed Illness and the Neoliberal Food Regime
Tech Industry’s Push to Hire Autistic Workers Could Lead to Hyper-Exploitation
Brits becoming increasingly relaxed about cannabis … man — RT UK News
Extremists working on London Underground, security minister reveals — RT UK News
MPs to debate law that’s seen hundreds of Brits jailed for murders they didn’t...
Pesticides Linked to Declining Bee Populations Also Threaten Birds and Small Mammals
Phone addiction can mess up brain chemistry, study finds — RT US News
Full of Light and Love | Further Column
The American Virtues
Professor conducted back-alley herpes vaccine trial at Illinois hotels – report — RT US...
Don’t Call the Cops If You’re Autistic, Deaf, Mentally Ill, Disabled or Old
‘UK teen almost hacking US officials a serious concern for American security’
Don’t Mess With the Disability Community
American Child Care Is In Crisis
Severed head of famous philosopher to go on public display
Necrophiliac murder of autistic teenager was preventable, case review finds
Finding a Common Language on Climate
US Air Force sprays Harvey-stricken Texas with controversial chemicals
‘Gigantic mob’ of bees attack in California, six people hospitalized
Betsy DeVos’s Back-To-School Message At Odds with What Parents Want
The Stomach-churning Violence of Monsanto, Bayer and the Agrochemical Oligopoly
Autistic man serving life for murder despite never touching weapon has appeal rejected
Teachers drag 7 yo autistic boy through school in shocking video (VIDEO)
Schoolgirl jailed for attacking love rival with acid hidden in viola case
Farmworkers Protest EPA’s Pesticide Ruling
Pills not pints: UK set to conduct first-ever trial for treating alcohol addiction with...
Minnesota measles outbreak bigger than all cases in 2016… for entire US
For Every Action, There Is an Equal and Opposite Reaction
Scientists discover intelligence linked to 52 ‘smart genes’
Measles outbreak prompts Minnesota officials to request $5mn
Britain Must Break Free from the Agrochemical Cartel: Rosemary Mason Calls on ECP to...
US-Israeli man indicted in Israel for threatening Jewish centers, airlines & politician
Fla. cop charged with attempted manslaughter after shooting unarmed therapist
New evidence: Fla. cop knew Charles Kinsey had no gun when he shot him
My Autistic Child Isn’t ‘Diseased’
In OtherWords: March 29, 2017
‘He’s Going to Find a Way to Rule With the Corporations’ – CounterSpin interview...
‘We decided not to go forward with additional patients’: Stem cell clinic blinds 3...
The Kennedy – De Niro $100K Vaccine Challenge
Message to John Beddington and the Oxford Martin Commission: A System of Food and...
England World Cup winner donates brain to medical science
Trump’s Supreme Court nominee set to bring conservative vote back to SCOTUS cases
Vaccine Hero
Cop killers & killer cops: Lives lost in US officer-involved shootings in 2016
Editing Human Genome to Prevent Diseases Could Result in Less Geniuses
Aluminum, Fertilizer, Steel, Nuclear Waste
Rather Than Exposing Propaganda, WaPo Shows How It’s Done
Teenager ‘enamored with ISIS’ in court over ‘viable device’ found on London Underground
Kansas police officer dodges charges after fatally shooting mentally ill man
Rabbi who believes Jews brought Holocaust on themselves to visit UK
Mother jailed for forcing healthy children into surgery to claim benefits
Father & 7yo daughter held at gunpoint by ‘insane & violent’ police officer
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Charles Kinsey shooting exposes troubled department, police union
Miami police shoot unarmed caregiver as he lies on ground beside autistic patient (VIDEOS)
At least 570 stem cell clinics operate unregulated by FDA — study
British would-be Trump shooter was a ‘Robot Wars’ obsessive
Man attempts to steal gun and kill Donald Trump at Las Vegas rally
Vaccinations That Sicken and Worse
Half of antidepressant prescriptions given to people who don’t have depression – study
Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe
GMO crops not harming human health, but not boosting yields – report
Monsanto and the Poisoning of Europe: An Open letter to the EFSA Chief Attorney...
Mind-controlled drone race: U. of Florida holds unique UAV competition
‘Not anti-vaccine’ said filmmakers about “Vaxxed” despite criticism (VIDEO)
“We are being silently poisoned by thousands of untested and unmonitored chemicals” The case...
The Globalisation of Bad Food and Poor Health: Sustainable Development or Sustainable Profits?
Air pollution linked to 16,000 premature births, costs US over $4.3 billion – study
Robert De Niro pulls controversial anti-vaxxer film from Tribeca Film Festival
Oregon occupiers talked about using explosives and drones – testimony
Boston Public Schools students walk out over proposed budget cuts
Video: Part 2: Life, Animated: How a Family Reached Their Autistic Son Through Disney...
Video: Part 1: Life, Animated: How a Family Reached Their Autistic Son Through Disney...
From Copenhagen to India, Restoring the Link Between Farmer and Consumer and Challenging the...
Taiwan bans GMOs from school lunches… mandates GMO labeling nationwide… throws down gauntlet on...
Detroit auto parts worker endures homelessness, surrenders custody of children
Poisoned Food, Poisoned Agriculture: Getting off the Chemical Treadmill
They Profit, We Die: Toxic Agriculture and the Poisoning of Soils, Human Health and...
‘Disability rights in UK could be violated’ by welfare reforms, UN to investigate
Too big to Investigate: Vaccine industry now enjoying total immunity from all laws due...
Video: Corporate Meds: Debate rages over MMR vaccine
Antidepressants Don’t Work as Advertised
Mega-merger: Monsanto still seeks takeover of Syngenta, world’s largest crop chemical company
Stupidity and Intelligence: Science, GMOs and Our Food
Mandatory Vaccination Bill Introduced in Congress
Bob Livingston
Personal Liberty
Government is force. When it finds that soft force doesn’t work, it becomes more aggressive.
Having found itself unable to scare and/or coerce all Americans into “voluntary” vaccination compliance, now Congress has before it a bill titled the “Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015.” Of course this requirement is being done “in the public interest” and “for the greater good.”
It would accomplish the task of vaccinating all children by withholding federal funds from public elementary and secondary schools that enroll students who are not vaccinated according to recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Of course, children are required by law to attend school, and most children attend public schools. And people are forced to fund those schools whether they have children attending them or not. Opting out of the public indoctrination camps passing as public schools requires jumping through special hoops and/or forking over large sums of cash to a private school.
And who sits on the Advisory Committee that sets the recommendations? Why, it’s health professionals who benefit — either directly or indirectly – from vaccination programs. And some get thousands of dollars from drug makers like Pfizer, Merk and GlaxoSmithKline for “consulting” and “speaking” fees. One member, Marietta Vazquez, M.D., pocketed more than $20,000 for three speeches.
Even if they worked and were without risk, vaccines only stimulate temporary immunity. By trading lifelong immunity for temporary vaccine-induced immunity, people become vaccine dependent. The winners of repeated mandatory vaccinations are the pharmaceutical companies. The losers are the people, who are first put at risk as children for vaccine adverse events and then put at risk as adults for repeated vaccinations that have already failed. The pharmaceuticals have discovered a money machine in mass vaccinations. But they need and have to have your body for the pretense.
The development of asthma, diabetes and autism in children has increased substantially in the last four decades, coinciding with the significant increase in childhood immunizations. People are finally recognizing the link and questioning Big Pharma, and more and more are beginning to “opt out.”
Public awareness has been manipulated. Why does no one question the authority of injecting agents of unknown toxicity into their body? Unbelievably, the general public is satisfied with the disinformation provided by the government. Unfortunately, now is the wrong time for apathy. We are on the verge of a vaccine mania and by the time our wakeup call comes, it just may be too late.
The worldwide market for human vaccine is now over $24 billion – and expected by the World Health Organization to rise to $100 billion in 2025 — with the underlying purpose cloaked by the guise of protecting public health.
The act of forcing people through intimidation and deception into dangerous medications is terrorism of the most malicious sort. This act by public authority constitutes assault, violating civil and human rights under national and international law.
There can be no “greater good” in this act of war against the American people.
© Personal Liberty Media Group
Guess What Else is Put In Vaccines?
Big Pharma’s Mass Vaccination Agenda: Propaganda Assault on Informed Consent
Food Fascists: GMO and Pesticide Manufacturers Down and Dirty
New Study: Monsanto’s #1 Herbicide Directly Linked to Chronic Disease Spike
Unsafe: The Truth Behind Everyday Chemicals
How The 24/7 Ebola Scare Serves The Control System To Perfection
What Whistleblowers Tell Us About Vaccine Safety and Effectiveness
H1N1 Flu Vaccine: 14-Fold Increased Risk For Incurable Brain Condition
30 Million Americans On Antidepressants And 21 Other Facts About America’s Endless Pharmaceutical Nightmare
CDC whistleblower confesses to MMR vaccine research fraud in historic public statement
Mainstream Media Caught Censoring CDC Whistleblower Story
The Day I Was Nearly Arrested for Having an Autistic Son
Monsanto’s “Insidious” GM0 Food and its Dark Connections to the Military Industrial Complex
Violent and Legal: The Shocking Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, Isolated Against...
Groups Launch New International Effort to Protect Children From “Terrible Twenty” Pesticides
Psycho Politics in an Age of Imperial Decline
Dallas Ends Five Decades Of Water Fluoridation, Saves $1 Million A Year
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Explosive: what really happened to Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News?
Video: HPV Vaccine Insert Lists Death As Adverse Event
10 Health Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be Real
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Do you believe in any “health conspiracy theories”? Do you believe that there are “natural cures” for diseases that the medical establishment is not telling you about? Do you believe that vaccines, cell phones or the fluoride in the water can have a harmful impact on the health of your family? If you answered [...]
Do You Believe in “Medical Conspiracy Theories”?
Killing The World By Feeding the World: The Onslaught Of Pro-GM Propaganda By Officialdom...
Climate disruption and population growth are increasing the pressures on food supply. The challenge is to get more from existing land in a sustainable way, or people will go unfed.”
“We should have confidence in the scientific evidence which concludes that, when properly controlled, GM products are as safe as their conventional counterparts.”
Genetic scientist Jonathan Jones has weighed in by claiming:
“How anyone could think this is a bad thing boggles the mind. We need to better explain that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the GM method.”
"By no stretch of the imagination can these people be described as independent scientists. Their views should be treated with the same scepticism we would apply to any sales pitch."
"A group of scientists with financial interests in the success of GM wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in November, but waited four months to tell the press about it: just in time for EU discussions about regulation. Something certainly smells a bit fishy."
"This extraordinary report, published very conveniently to coincide with Owen Paterson’s attempts within the EU to dismantle GM regulations and to repatriate powers to the, is in turns naive, biased, disingenuous, cynical, and downright dangerous. We find it incredible that five senior scientists can have been so dismissive of the work of scores of independent scientists who have discovered that GM organisms are directly and indirectly harmful to mammals and to the environment. In the world of science there should be respect for those whose findings are 'inconvenient." UK
"They are not employed by government or industry, and each works for different publicly funded universities and research institutes. For better or worse, it’s not unusual any more for universities and institutions to get bits and pieces of funding from government, charities and industry – indeed many can only access public money on condition that they raise a proportion of their funds from commercial or private sources. This does not automatically undermine their independence."
"It’s really just not good enough for a group of scientists who have a strong interest, it seems, through their funding sources, in persuading a reluctant public to accept the growing of GM crops in the UK, to be the ones who attempt to write the rule book on how that should happen."
“Reality star” doesn’t vaccinate her kids: the world ends
The toll of rape and the lack of conviction
UN — “Education For All”; The Elite Mono-Minding Global Plans for All Children
Contamination, Bio-pollution And Duplicity: GM Sector Criminality
There is currently a battle waging across the planet over genetically modified (GM) crops. It seems like not a month goes by when a new report is released on the health, environmental or productivity aspects of GM organisms. The GM biotech industry tries to assure governments and the public about the safety and efficacy of their products, while study after study calls into question its claims.
Monsanto’s Roundup Found in 75% of Air and Rain Samples
Dr. Breggin rides again: the dangers of psychiatric drugs
Email from author of study on Roundup/gluten intolerance
10 Stories From The Cold, Hard Streets Of America That Will Break Your Heart
If the economy is really "getting better", then why have millions upon millions of formerly middle class Americans been pushed to the point of utter despair? The stories that you are about to read are absolutely heartbreaking. I don't know how anyone can read them without getting chills. In America today, if you lose a [...]
Gluten Intolerance: Is It Just a Fad or Is Today’s Wheat Really Toxic?
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Toxic Chemicals Linked to ‘Global, Silent Pandemic’ Striking Children Worldwide
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Health Dangers Of Glyphosate And Implications For India
The proportion of positive samples varied between countries, with
Tom Sanders, head of the nutritional sciences research division at King's College London, said the levels found are unlikely to be of any significance to health. However, FoE believes that there is sufficient evidence to suggest environmental and health impacts from glyphosate warrant concern. It wants to know how the glyphosate found in human urine samples has entered the body, what the impacts of persistent exposure to low levels of glyphosate might be and what happens to the glyphosate that remains in the body.
Using official
The authors conclude that many of the health problems that appear to be associated with a Western (petro-chemical-based) diet could be explained by biological disruptions that have already been attributed to glyphosate. These include digestive issues, obesity, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, Parkinson’s disease, liver diseases, and cancer, among others. While many other environmental toxins obviously also contribute to these diseases and conditions, Seneff and Samsel believe that glyphosate may be the most significant environmental toxin.
In 2010, the provincial government of
There are major implications for
Consciousness, art, and psychiatry
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NYC Approves Flu Vaccine Mandate, Despite Opposition
NYC Approves Flu Vaccine Mandate, Despite Opposition
Bloomberg to Force Flu Vaccines for All NYC Children
Activists Make a Last Ditch Effort to Block Bloomberg’s Forcible Flu Shot for Kids
Media Launches Coordinated Attack on Katie Couric for Highlighting Gardasil Deaths
The Future of Feces: Dispatches from the World of Fecal Transplants
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Wireless Technology: A Looming Health Crisis
By James F. Tracy
This story originally appeared here and at Global Research in July 2012. It was recently selected by an international panel of evaluators as Story Number 14 in Project Censored’s Top 25 Most Under-Reported Stories for 2012-2013. The article is featured in the new volume Censored 2014: Fearless Speech in Fateful Times (Seven Stories Press, 2013).
Electromagnetic pollution is one of the greatest threats to human health today. Over the past several years this public health menace has only intensified with the rollout of “smart meters” that replace standard analog meters on residences and businesses throughout the nation and world.
Wireless Technology and the Accelerated Toxification of America
As a multitude of hazardous wireless technologies are deployed in homes, schools and workplaces, government officials and industry representatives continue to insist on their safety despite growing evidence to the contrary. A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology.
In October 2009 at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) solar energy station President Barack Obama announced that $3.4 billion of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act would be devoted to the country’s “smart energy grid” transition. Matching funds from the energy industry brought the total national Smart Grid investment to $8 billion. FPL was given $200 million of federal money to install 2.5 million “smart meters” on homes and businesses throughout the state.[1]
By now many residents in the United States and Canada have the smart meters installed on their dwellings. Each of these meters is equipped with an electronic cellular transmitter that uses powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiofrequency (RF) radiation to communicate with nearby meters that together form an interlocking network transferring detailed information on residents’ electrical usage back to the utility every few minutes or less. Such information can easily be used to determine individual patterns of behavior based on power consumption.
The smart grid technology is being sold to the public as a way to “empower” individual energy consumers by allowing them to access information on their energy usage so that they may eventually save money by programming “smart” (i.e, wireless enabled) home appliances and equipment that will coordinate their operability with the smart meter to run when electrical rates are lowest. In other words, a broader plan behind smart grid technology involves a tiered rate system for electricity consumption that will be set by the utility to which customers will have no choice but to conform.
Because of power companies’ stealth rollout of smart meters a large majority of the public still remains unaware of the dangers they pose to human health. This remains the case even though states such as Maine have adopted an “opt out” provision for their citizens. The devices have not been safety-tested by Underwriters Laboratory and thus lack the UL approval customary for most electronics.[2] Further, power customers are typically told by their utilities that the smart meter only communicates with the power company “a few times per day” to transmit information on individual household energy usage. However, when individuals obtained the necessary equipment to do their own testing they found the meters were emitting bursts of RF radiation throughout the home far more intense than a cell phone call every minute or less.[3]
America’s Telecom-friendly Policy for RF Exposure
A growing body of medical studies is now linking cumulative RF exposure to DNA disruption, cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and autoimmune diseases. Smart meters significantly contribute to an environment already polluted by RF radiation through the pervasive stationing of cellular telephone towers in or around public spaces and consumers’ habitual use of wireless technologies. In the 2000 Salzburg Resolution European scientists recommended the maximum RF exposure for humans to be no more than one tenth of a microwatt per square centimeter. In the United States RF exposure limits are 1,000 microwatts per centimeter, with no limits for long term exposure.[4] Such lax standards have been determined by outdated science and the legal and regulatory maneuvering of the powerful telecommunications and wireless industries.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ceased studying the health effects of radiofrequency radiation when the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the department’s funding and forbade it from further research into the area.[5] Thereafter RF limits were codified as mere “guidelines” based on the EPA’s tentative findings and are to this day administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
These weakly enforced standards are predicated on the alleged “thermal effect” of RF. In other words, if the energy emitted from a wireless antenna or device is not powerful enough to heat the skin or flesh then no danger is posed to human health.[6] This reasoning is routinely put forward by utilities installing smart meters on residences, telecom companies locating cellular transmission towers in populated areas, and now school districts across the US allowing the installation of cell towers on school campuses.[7]
The FCC’s authority to impose this standard was further reinforced with the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that included a provision lobbied for by the telecom industry preventing state and local governments from evaluating potential environmental and health effects when locating cell towers “so long as ‘such facilities comply with the FCC’s regulations concerning such emissions.’”[8]
In 2001 an alliance of scientists and engineers with the backing of the Communications Workers of America filed a federal lawsuit hoping the Supreme Court would reconsider the FCC’s obsolete exposure guidelines and the Telecom Act’s overreach into state and local jurisdiction. The high court refused to hear the case. When the same group asked the FCC to reexamine its guidelines in light of current scientific studies the request was rebuffed.[9] Today in all probability millions are suffering from a variety of immediate and long-term health effects from relentless EMF and RF exposure that under the thermal effect rationale remain unrecognized or discounted by the telecom industry and regulatory authorities alike.
Take Back Your Power, an important new documentary on the relationship between electro-pollution and its health and privacy-related consequences, was released in September 2013. The film constitutes must-see viewing for those concerned over the immediate and long term dangers posed to human health and freedom by “smart meters” and similar silent weapons.-JFT
Growing Evidence of Health Risks From RF Exposure
The main health concern with electromagnetic radiation emitted by smart meters and other wireless technologies is that EMF and RF cause a breakdown in the communication between cells in the body, interrupting DNA repair and weakening tissue and organ function. These are the findings of Dr. George Carlo, who oversaw a comprehensive research group commissioned by the cell phone industry in the mid-1990s.
When Carlo’s research began to reveal how there were indeed serious health concerns with wireless technology, the industry sought to bury the results and discredit Carlo. Yet Carlo’s research has since been upheld in a wealth of subsequent studies and has continuing relevance given the ubiquity of wireless apparatuses and the even more powerful smart meters. “One thing all these conditions have in common is a disruption, to varying degrees, of intercellular communication,” Carlo observes. “When we were growing up, TV antennas were on top of our houses and such waves were up in the sky. Cell phones and Wi-Fi have brought those things down to the street, integrated them into the environment, and that’s absolutely new.”[10]
In 2007 the BioInitiative Working Group, a worldwide body of scientists and public health experts, released a 650-page document with over 2000 studies linking RF and EMF exposure to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, DNA damage, immune system dysfunction, cellular damage and tissue reduction.[11]
In May 2011 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized “radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless cellphone use.”[12]
In November 2011 the Board of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM), a national organization of medical and osteopathic physicians, called on California’s Public Utilities Commission to issue a moratorium on the continued installation of smart meters in residences and schools “based on a scientific assessment of the current available literature.” “[E]xisting FCC guidelines for RF safety that have been used to justify installations of smart meters,” the panel wrote,
only look at thermal tissue damage and are obsolete, since many modern studies show metabolic and genomic damage from RF and ELF exposure below the level of intensity which heats tissues … More modern literature shows medically and biologically significant effects of RF and ELF at lower energy densities. These effects accumulate over time, which is an important consideration given the chronic nature of exposure from “smart meters.”[13]
In April 2012 the AAEM issued a formal position paper on the health effects of RF and EMF exposure based on a literature review of the most recent research. The organization pointed to how government and industry arguments alleging the doubtful nature of the science on non-thermal effects of RF were not defensible in light of the newest studies. “Genetic damage, reproductive defects, cancer, neurological degeneration and nervous system dysfunction, immune system dysfunction, cognitive effects, protein and peptide damage, kidney damage, and developmental effects have all been reported in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature,” AAEM concluded.[14]
Radiating Children
The rollout of smart meters proceeds alongside increased installation of wireless technology and cell phone towers in and around schools in the US. In 2010 Professor Magda Havas conducted a study of schools in 50 US state capitols and Washington DC to determine students’ potential exposure to nearby cell towers. A total 6,140 schools serving 2.3 million students were surveyed using the antennasearch.com database. Of these, 13% of the schools serving 299,000 students have a cell tower within a quarter mile of school grounds, and another 50% of the schools where 1,145,000 attend have a tower within a 0.6 mile radius. The installation of wireless networks and now smart meters on and around school properties further increases students’ RF exposure.[15]
Many school districts that are strapped for cash in the face of state budget cuts are willing to ignore the abundance of scientific research on RF dangers and sign on with telecom companies to situate cell towers directly on school premises. Again, the FCC’s thermal effect rule is invoked to justify tower placement together with a disregard of the available studies.
The School District of Palm Beach County, the eleventh largest school district in the US, provides one such example. Ten of its campuses already have cell towers on their grounds while the district ponders lifting a ban established in 1997 that would allow for the positioning of even more towers. When concerned parents contacted the school district for an explanation of its wireless policies,the administration assembled a document, “Health Organization Information and Academic Research Studies Regarding the Health Effects of Cell Tower Signals.” The report carefully selected pronouncements from telecom industry funded organizations such as the American Cancer Society and out-of-date scientific studies supporting the FCC’s stance on wireless while excluding the long list of studies and literature reviews pointing to the dangers of RF and EMF radiation emitted by wireless networks and cell towers. [16]
The Precautionary Principle / Conclusion
Surrounded by the sizable and growing body of scientific literature pointing to the obvious dangers of wireless technology, utility companies installing smart meters on millions of homes across the US and school officials who accommodate cell towers on their grounds are performing an extreme disservice to their often vulnerable constituencies. Indeed, such actions constitute the reckless long term endangerment of public health for short term gain, sharply contrasting with more judicious decision making.
The 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment & Development adopted the precautionary principle as a rule to follow in the situations utilities and school districts find themselves in today. “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”[17] In exercising the precautionary principle, public governance and regulatory bodies should “take preventive action in the face of scientific uncertainty to prevent harm. The focus is no longer on measuring or managing harm, but preventing harm.”[18]
Along these lines, the European Union and the Los Angeles School District have prohibited cell phone towers on school grounds until the scientific research on the human health effects of RF are conclusive. The International Association of Fire Fighters also interdicted cell towers on fire stations pending “’a study with the highest scientific merit and integrity on health effects of exposure to low-intensity [radio frequency/microwave] radiation is conducted and it is proven that such sitings are not hazardous to the health of our members.’”[19]
Unwitting families with smart meters on their homes and children with cell towers humming outside their classrooms suggest the extent to which the energy, telecom and wireless industries have manipulated the regulatory process to greatly privilege profits over public health. Moreover, it reveals how the population suffers for want of meaningful and conclusive information on the very real dangers of RF while the telecom and wireless interests successfully cajole the media into considering one scientific study at a time.
“When you put the science together, we come to the irrefutable conclusion that there’s a major health crisis coming, probably already underway,” George Carlo cautions. “Not just cancer, but also learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and psychological and behavioral problems—all mediated by the same mechanism. That’s why we’re so worried. Time is running out.”[20]
[1] Energy.gov, “President Obama Announces $3.4 Billion Investment to Spur Transition to Smart Energy Grid,” October 27, 2009, http://energy.gov/articles/president-obama-announces-34-billion-investment-spur-transition-smart-energy-grid
[2] Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, “Radiofrequency Radiation: The Invisible Hazards of Smart Meters,” August 19, 2011, GlobalReserach.ca, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26082
[3] Dr. Bill Deagle, “Smart Meters: A Call for Public Outrage,” Rense.com, August 30, 2011, http://www.rense.com/general94/smartt.htm. Some meters installed in California by Pacific Gas and Electric carry a “’switching mode power-supply’ that ‘emit sharp spikes of millisecond bursts’ around the clock and is a chief cause of ‘dirty electricity.’” See Perlingieri, “Radiofrequency Radiation: The Invisible Hazards of Smart Meters.” This author similarly measured bursts of radiation in excess of 2,000 microwatts per meter every 30 to 90 seconds during the day, and once every two-to-three minutes at night.
[4] Magda Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 2010, http://electromagnetichealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/BRAG_Schools.pdf
[5] Susan Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams,” San Diego Reader, May 18, 2011, http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/may/18/citylights2-cell-phone-tower/?page=1&
[6] FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, http://www.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety
[7] Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams”; Marc Freeman, “Cell Towers Could Be Coming to More Schools,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, January 5, 2012, http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-01-05/news/fl-cell-towers-schools-palm-20120105_1_cell-towers-cellular-phone-towers-stealth-towers
[8] Amy Worthington, “The Radiation Poisoning of America,” GlobalResearch.ca, October 9, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7025
[9] Worthington, “The Radiation Poisoning of America.”
[10] Sue Kovach, “The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation,” Life Extension Magazine, August 2007, http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007/aug2007_report_cellphone_radiation_01.htm
[11] Susan Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams”; Bioinitiative Report: A Rationale For a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard For Electromagnetic Fields, http://www.bioinitiative.org/freeaccess/report/index.htm.
[12] World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, “IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as Possibly Carcinogenic,” May 31, 2011, www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf; Joseph Mercola, “Be Aware: These Cell Phones Can Emit 28 Times More Radiation,” Mercola.com, June 18, 2011, http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/18/finally-experts-admit-cellphones-are-a-carcinogen.aspx.
[13] American Academy of Environmental Medicine, “A Proposed Decision of Commissioner Peevy [Mailed 11/22/2011] Before the Public Utilities Commission of the State of California,” (pdf) January 19, 2012. www.aaemonline.org. The list of references upon which the decision is based may be accessed at http://aaemonline.org/images/referencelistemf.pdf
[14] American Academy of Environmental Medicine, “American Academy of Environmental Medicine Calls for Immediate Caution regarding Smart Meter Installation,” (pdf) April 12, 2012, http://www.aaemonline.org/
[15] Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 31-38.
[16] Donna Goldstein, “Health Organization Information and Academic Research Studies Regarding the Health Effects of Cell Tower Signals,”Planning and Real Estate Development, Palm Beach County School District, January 30, 2012.
[17] Havas, BRAG Antenna Ranking of Schools, 17.
[18] Multinational Monitor, “Precautionary Precepts: The Power and Potential of the Precautionary Principle: An Interview with Carolyn Raffensperger,” September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04interviewraffen.html.
[19] Luzzaro, “Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams.”
[20] Kovach, “The Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation.”
See also Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, “Smart Meter Dangers: The Health Hazards of Wireless Electromagnetic Radiation Exposure,” GlobalResearchca, July 13, 2012.
Our Food In Their Hands: Whose Interests Does The European Food Safety Authority Serve?
“We were shocked by our findings. Even without checking for undeclared interests, the number of conflicts of interest in this agency is very worrying. Experts with conflicts of interest dominate all panels but one. We found that the bulk of conflicts are from research funding and private consultancy contracts, but certain crucial institutions for scientists (scientific societies, journals) are also targeted by industry lobbying, and EFSA seems to ignore this”.
“There are specific cases the agency was warned about years ago which remain a problem… We hope this report is an eye-opener on the necessity to defend public research integrity from the threats posed on public health by industry influence”.
“The fact that the European Commission shortlists a food industry lobbyist, once again, for EFSA's Management Board is an incomprehensible signal for all those concerned about the protection of consumers and the environment. Such a professional on EFSA's board would by definition be a permanent threat to the EU's food safety agency's independence”
Jan Mousing, re-applying for the position, is the CEO of the Danish Knowledge Centre for Agriculture, a private company describing itself as the “main supplier of professional knowledge for the agricultural professions” in; Denmark
Piet Vanthemsche, who is also re-applying for the position, holds a leading position in industrial farmers union COPA and also sits in MRBB holding, an agri investment fund which also has shares in companies selling GMOs.
Alan Reilly, Chief Executive of the Irish Food Safety Authority (Ireland's public food safety administration), is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Food Information Council (EUFIC), a Brussels-based food lobby group financed by the some of the largest private food and drink companies in Europe.
Milan Kovac, from the Slovak Ministry of Agriculture, was a board member of ILSI Europe until 2011. ILSI Europe, an industry research institute supported by all the biggest agrofood multinationals, is a central actor in the agrofood industry's scientific influence over EFSA.
Vaccine Woman
Monsanto, the TPP and Global Food Dominance
Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance
“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. “Control food and you control the people.”
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
Profits Before Populations
Genetic engineering has made proprietary control possible over the seeds on which the world’s food supply depends. “Terminator” genes enable the production of sterile seeds, using a synthetic chemical catalyst appropriately called “Traitor” to induce seed sterility. Farmers must therefore buy seeds from their patent owners year after year. To cover these costs, food prices are raised; but the harm is far greater than to our pocketbooks.
According to an Acres USA interview of plant pathologist Don Huber, Professor Emeritus at Purdue University, two modified traits account for practically all of the genetically modified crops grown in the world today. One involves insect resistance. The other, more disturbing modification involves insensitivity to glyphosate-based herbicides (plant-killing chemicals). Often known as Roundup after the best-selling Monsanto product of that name, glyphosate poisons everything in its path except plants genetically modified to resist it.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are now the most commonly used herbicides in the world. Glyphosate is an essential partner to the GMOs that are the principal business of the burgeoning biotech industry. Glyphosate is a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that destroys indiscriminately, not by killing unwanted plants directly but by tying up access to critical nutrients.
Because of the insidious way in which it works, it has been sold as a relatively benign replacement for the devastating earlier dioxin-based herbicides. But a barrage of experimental data has now shown glyphosate and the GMO foods incorporating it to pose serious dangers to health. Compounding the risk is the toxicity of “inert” ingredients used to make glyphosate more potent. Researchers have found, for example, that the surfactant POEA can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. But these risks have been conveniently ignored.
The widespread use of GMO foods and glyphosate herbicides helps explain the anomaly that the US spends over twice as much per capita on healthcare as the average developed country, yet it is rated far down the scale of the world’s healthiest populations. The World Health Organization has ranked the US LAST out of 17 developed nations for overall health.
Sixty to seventy percent of the foods in US supermarkets are now genetically modified. By contrast, in at least 26 other countries—including Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Mexico and Russia—GMOs are totally or partially banned; and significant restrictions on GMOs exist in about sixty other countries.
A ban on GMO and glyphosate use might go far toward improving the health of Americans. But the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade agreement for which the Obama Administration has sought Fast Track status, would block that sort of cause-focused approach to the healthcare crisis.
Roundup’s Insidious Effects
Roundup-resistant crops escape being killed by glyphosate, but they do not avoid absorbing it into their tissues. Herbicide-tolerant crops have substantially higher levels of herbicide residues than other crops. In fact, many countries have had to increase their legally allowable levels—by up to 50 times—in order to accommodate the introduction of GM crops. In the European Union, residues in food are set to rise 100-150 times if a new proposal by Monsanto is approved. Meanwhile, herbicide-tolerant “super-weeds” have adapted to the chemical, requiring even more toxic doses and new toxic chemicals to kill the plant.
Human enzymes are affected by glyphosate just as plant enzymes are: the chemical blocks the uptake of manganese and other essential minerals. Without those minerals, we cannot properly metabolize our food. That helps explain the rampant epidemic of obesity in the United States. People eat and eat in an attempt to acquire the nutrients that are simply not available in their food.
According to researchers Samsell and Seneff in Biosemiotic Entropy: Disorder, Disease, and Mortality (April 2013):
Glyphosate’s inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology . . . . Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
More than 40 diseases have been linked to glyphosate use, and more keep appearing. In September 2013, the National University of Rio Cuarto, Argentina, published research finding that glyphosate enhances the growth of fungi that produce aflatoxin B1, one of the most carcinogenic of substances. A doctor from Chaco, Argentina, told Associated Press, “We’ve gone from a pretty healthy population to one with a high rate of cancer, birth defects and illnesses seldom seen before.” Fungi growths have increased significantly in US corn crops.
Glyphosate has also done serious damage to the environment. According to an October 2012 report by the Institute of Science in Society:
Agribusiness claims that glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops will improve crop yields, increase farmers’ profits and benefit the environment by reducing pesticide use. Exactly the opposite is the case. . . . [T]he evidence indicates that glyphosate herbicides and glyphosate-tolerant crops have had wide-ranging detrimental effects, including glyphosate resistant super weeds, virulent plant (and new livestock) pathogens, reduced crop health and yield, harm to off-target species from insects to amphibians and livestock, as well as reduced soil fertility.
Politics Trumps Science
In light of these adverse findings, why have Washington and the European Commission continued to endorse glyphosate as safe? Critics point to lax regulations, heavy influence from corporate lobbyists, and a political agenda that has more to do with power and control than protecting the health of the people.
In the ground-breaking 2007 book Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, William Engdahl states that global food control and depopulation became US strategic policy under Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger. Along with oil geopolitics, they were to be the new “solution” to the threats to US global power and continued US access to cheap raw materials from the developing world. In line with that agenda, the government has shown extreme partisanship in favor of the biotech agribusiness industry, opting for a system in which the industry “voluntarily” polices itself. Bio-engineered foods are treated as “natural food additives,” not needing any special testing.
Jeffrey M. Smith, Executive Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, confirms that US Food and Drug Administration policy allows biotech companies to determine if their own foods are safe. Submission of data is completely voluntary. He concludes:
In the critical arena of food safety research, the biotech industry is without accountability, standards, or peer-review. They’ve got bad science down to a science.
Whether or not depopulation is an intentional part of the agenda, widespread use of GMO and glyphosate is having that result. The endocrine-disrupting properties of glyphosate have been linked to infertility, miscarriage, birth defects and arrested sexual development. In Russian experiments, animals fed GM soy were sterile by the third generation. Vast amounts of farmland soil are also being systematically ruined by the killing of beneficial microorganisms that allow plant roots to uptake soil nutrients.
In Gary Null’s eye-opening documentary Seeds of Death: Unveiling the Lies of GMOs, Dr. Bruce Lipton warns, “We are leading the world into the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. . . . Human behavior is undermining the web of life.”
The TPP and International Corporate Control
As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .
The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.
. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.
Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:
No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages, jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely affect it . . . .
If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued . . . .
Return to Nature: Not Too Late
There is a safer, saner, more earth-friendly way to feed nations. While Monsanto and US regulators are forcing GM crops on American families, Russian families are showing what can be done with permaculture methods on simple garden plots. In 2011, 40% of Russia’s food was grown on dachas (cottage gardens or allotments). Dacha gardens produced over 80% of the country’s fruit and berries, over 66% of the vegetables, almost 80% of the potatoes and nearly 50% of the nation’s milk, much of it consumed raw. According to Vladimir Megre, author of the best-selling Ringing Cedars Series:
Essentially, what Russian gardeners do is demonstrate that gardeners can feed the world – and you do not need any GMOs, industrial farms, or any other technological gimmicks to guarantee everybody’s got enough food to eat. Bear in mind that Russia only has 110 days of growing season per year – so in the US, for example, gardeners’ output could be substantially greater. Today, however, the area taken up by lawns in the US is two times greater than that of Russia’s gardens – and it produces nothing but a multi-billion-dollar lawn care industry.
In the US, only about 0.6 percent of the total agricultural area is devoted to organic farming. This area needs to be vastly expanded if we are to avoid “the sixth mass extinction.” But first, we need to urge our representatives to stop Fast Track, vote no on the TPP, and pursue a global phase-out of glyphosate-based herbicides and GMO foods. Our health, our finances and our environment are at stake.
____________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary
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Last year, the then British Agriculture Minister Jim Paice told the Cereals 2012 conference that the public is softening its views towards GM crops (1). He said more work needed to be done to communicate the ‘full facts’ about GM crops. He stated:
“Emphatically we should be looking at GM … I’m very clear it would be a good thing… The trouble is all this stuff about Frankenstein foods and putting poisons in foods. There are real benefits, and what you’ve got to do is sell the real environmental benefits. Those benefits include a reduction in the use of pesticides because some GM crops are pest-resistant.”
“There’s about 160 million hectares of GM being grown around the world. There isn’t a single piece of meat being served [in a typicalLondon restaurant] where a bullock hasn’t eaten some GM feed. So it’s a complete nonsense. But, the humbug! You know, large amounts of GM products are used acrossEurope .”
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Alabama hostage crisis enters second week of standstill
A Dale County Alabama helicopter flies over the scene of a shooting and hostage taking near Midland City, Alabama February 1, 2013. (Reuters / Philip Sears)
As the Alabama hostage crisis continues into its seventh day, police say they have discovered more details about the captor holding a 5-year-old boy in an underground bunker after taking him off a school bus.
Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran, fatally shot an Alabama school bus driver and took the 5-year-old boy from the bus, taking him to the bunker underneath his home. Holding the boy hostage, Dykes promised not to hurt him and kept an open line of communication with authorities.
Authorities delivered items including medicine, a Hot Wheels toy car, and food, including Cheez-Its, to the 5-year-old using a ventilation pipe. The boy suffers from a mild form of autism, but the captor has done his best “to make the environment as comfortable as possible for the child,” the FBI said.
The FBI has not discussed a motive for the kidnapping, but neighbors described the assailant as a loner with no children of his own. Dykes lives along a dirt road outside of Dothan, a small town in southeast Alabama. The 65-year-old is estranged from his family and told some of his family member “to go to hell”, said Mel Adams, a Midland City Council member who has known Dykes since they were ages 3 and 4, in an AP interview. The man has an adult daughter, but lost touch with her two years ago. He also has a brother and a sister that he has lost contact with.
The kidnapper’s neighbors told AP that Dykes once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for stepping onto his property, and guarded his property at night with a gun and a flashlight.
Jimmy Lee Dykes is shown in this undated handout photo. The man is suspected of shooting a school bus driver to death and taking a five-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker as the standoff with police continues in Midland City, Alabama. (Reuters)
The descriptions of the violent loner are contradicted by his leadership and success while in the Navy, for which he served from 1964 to 1969. While serving, Dykes won several awards, including the Vietnam Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.
But his conduct deteriorated thereafter. Dykes was arrested in 1995 for improper exhibition of a weapon and in 2000 for marijuana possession. Last week he killed 66-year-old Charles Albert Poland Jr., a bus driver who was buried Sunday, and is still keeping the 5-year-old boy in the 8 by 6 ft. bunker.
Neighbor Michael Creel said that Dykes originally built the underground bunker in his yard to provide protection from hurricanes. It contains a steel shipping container that stores tools and supplies.
“He said he lived in Florida and had hurricanes hit. He wanted someplace he could go down in and be safe,” the younger Creel said. Dykes’ neighbor also described the captor as a man who was very interested in politics and was an avid critic of the Obama administration.
“He was very into what’s going on with the nation and the politics and all the laws being made. The things he didn’t agree with, he would ventilate,” he said. “He’s against the government, starting with Obama on down."
Asked whether Dykes was trying to copy 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who shot 26 people at an Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Creel said he doubts that and that his neighbor most likely is just letting out his anger against the government and his neighbors by shooting the bus driver and kidnapping the boy.
“He had a whole bus load full of kids, and he could have walked up there and shot the whole crowd of them,” Creel said. “I think he’s just a really angry and bitter guy with some anger management issues. He is just against everything – the government and his neighbors.”
Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson thanked the captor for taking care of the child, but neighbors and psychologists continue to worry about the boy's mental well-being.
Jeffrey Gardere, a child psychologist, told NBC that the boy “is most likely terrified.”
“The overriding thought in his head is that he wants his mother, that he just wants to be out of that situation,” he said.
“I wish that I could just hug him and hid him and tell him it was going to be all right,” said neighbor Sherri Johnson Parker.
Authorities are continuing their negotiations with Dykes, using the ventilation pipe that they have also been using to send down supplies.
5-year-old boy held hostage for 6th day
Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson speaks on morning TV and thanks the hostage-taker for recent cooperation in negotiations involving a five-year-old boy, February 3, 2013.
The hostage situation of a five-year-old boy has entered its sixth day as police reveal information on the suspect and continue negotiations.
On Sunday, police said Jim Lee Dykes, a 65-year-old US war veteran, got on the school bus in southern Alabama’s Midland City around 3:40 p.m. local time (2040 GMT) on Tuesday, and demanded for two boys aged between 6 and 8 years old.
According to police, the bus driver, Charles Albert Poland, was driving 21 children home at the time and tried to stop the hostage-taker from abducting children. However, Dykes shot the 66-year-old four times who died in the process.
All but one child managed to escape through the bus’ back door. Dyke took a 5-year-old boy into captivity in an underground bunker in his residence, situated behind a church.
Police on the scene communicate with Dyke through a 60-foot connecting ventilation pipe.
The boy, called Ethan, whose mother says has Asperger's syndrome - a mild form of autism - and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), received some medical care given by police through the pipe.
Police stepped up negotiations with Dykes and managed to secure medicine, toys, coloring blocks, and potato chips to the kindergartener. Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said Dykes has told them they have an electric heater and blankets in the single-entrance bunker.
The motives and demands of Dyke, who fought for five years in the Vietnam War, remains unclear and police say they can only release a limited amount of information on the situation.
The shooting incident is yet another episode of the persisting gun violence across the US as the December 14 elementary school shooting massacre of 20 children and six school staff in the state of Connecticut has yet to result in any meaningful federal measures in terms of gun controls.
GVN/HN
Three Monopolies We Need to Keep an Eye on
Who doesn’t use Google? Shop on Amazon? Own, or covet, some Apple device? Who doesn’t give thanks to this triumvirate of technology companies for the ways in which they add to our lives?
But is it possible that these companies are well on their way to becoming too big for their, and our own, good?
1. Google: As dominant as ever when we’re searching the Internet
Last week, after a two-year investigation, the FTC absolved Goggle of violating anti-trust laws for favoring its own services in its lucrative search engine. At issue was how Google produces its search results via its top-secret algorithm which, the company maintains, it cannot disclose for competitive reasons.
In its ruling, the FTC said that it found that “Google’s primary purpose … [is] to improve the user experience.” Google itself contends that it is “unbiased and objective” and that its search results are “the best we know how to produce.” But given that its enormous revenue is derived from this very source, questions remain.
Google made an all-out offensive to lobby Washington, a lesson learned from studying the 1990s experience of Microsoft, which was charged with monopolization for tying its Internet Explorer browser to closely go with its Windows operating system. From this, some critics think the FTC let Google off too easy though, as Ars Technica points out, more than a few of those who have been expressing displeasure at the FTC’s ruling are precisely Google’s rivals including Microsoft.
The European Commission is to issue a ruling on Google soon and is expected to be less lenient. The reason is that “American antitrust regulators tend to focus on whether a company’s dominance harms consumers; the European system seeks to keep competitors in the market,” says the New York Times. Another factor is that Google holds an 83 percent share of the European search market, vs. 67 percent of the U.S.’s. It could be only a matter of time before the “antitrust rap” could catch up to Google — or maybe not.
2. Amazon: Poised to become the only store on earth
Holiday sales at Barnes and Noble were down 12 percent from last year’s. While there been reports of some independent bookstores thriving (hooray!), Amazon, for all that it does not make a profit (indeed, its profit was down by 96 percent in the second quarter of 2012) inexorably continues its domination as the world’s online purveyor of seemingly everything from clothes to food to books (real and electronic).
Amazon’s prices are always hard to beat and every time you turn around it seems Amazon’s added yet another business, be it streaming movies or its cloud service. Who hasn’t heard of an independent book or other store that closes its doors because it couldn’t compete with Amazon? Yet we still keep going back.
3. Apple: Does any tablet beside the iPad matter?
The iPad’s touchscreen and size made it the device I (and quite a few others) had been looking for. It was the first device my teenage autistic son could use on his own to hear music, watch videos, look at photos after years of deep frustration trying, unsuccessfully, to use a computer mouse. The iPad’s design was the answer.
The iPad’s marketshare has declined from an all-time high in August due to competition from Google’s Android and Amazon’s Kindle. Analysts are predicting that increased adoption by businesses will help Apple to reconquer the market; Germany could even be called “Appleland” due to the popularity of the company’s products there, says the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
Back in June, Microsoft’s Surface tablet was announced with much fanfare but has since been little heard from and sales of software for PCs have been in decline, as well as sales of PCs themselves. It’s certainly harder and harder not to think of the iPads and tablet computers as one in the same.
It took someone with a novel way of thinking to design the iPad and other Apple devices that have made a big difference. But we can’t expect one company to keep producing all the innovative ideas. Just at the end of last week, Pinterest announced that it was taking over recipe site Punchfork. This is probably not the greatest loss or saddest occasion in the history of either the Internet or of corporate mergers. But as Alex Hern writes in the New Statesman, the annexation (ok, swallowing up) of Punchfork by Pinterest means that another idea, another novel way of doing something, will no longer exist.
It’s a loss of diversity on the web perhaps comparable in some ways to the shrinking biodiversity of wildlife as more species of animals and plants face extinction. A world of only McDonalds, Starbucks and Walmart sounds hardly appealing — a world in which Google, Amazon and Apple are the only big players would be just as poor.
Sandy Hook School Massacre Timeline
The following timeline of the December 14 mass killing of 20 children and 8 adults in Newtown Connecticut attempts to demonstrate how the event was presented to the public by corporate news media. The chronological assemblage of coverage is not comprehensive of all reports published on the incident but rather seeks to verify how the storyline was to a substantial degree constructed by federal and to a lesser degree state law enforcement authorities and major media around the theory (prior to a complete and exhaustive police investigation) that 20-year-old Adam Lanza was the sole agent in the massacre.
From the outset, this scenario became an established reality through the news media’s pronounced repetition of the “lone gunman” narrative and meme. This proposed scenario significantly obscured the fact that police encountered and apprehended two additional shooting suspects on the school’s grounds within minutes of the crime. These suspects remain unaccounted for by authorities but the roles they may have played arguably correlate with the shifting information presented by authorities and major news media on injuries and weapons vis-à-vis the mass carnage meted out in the school. While the detainment of additional suspects was pointed to by alternative news media, in the days following the tragedy, the lone gunman narrative has become firmly established in the public psyche via an overwhelming chorus of corporate media reports and interpretations.
Note: Times of occurrences referenced are Eastern Standard Time and in some instances signify time of publication rather than the specific incident cited. Time of publication does not always correlate with exact time of incident. “n.t.” denotes “no time” of publication referenced.
2012
At the start of the 2012-13 academic year Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung announces in a public letter to families the Newtown School District’s new security system installed “in all elementary schools.” Under the newly-announced security regimen, “exterior doors will be locked during the day. Every visitor will be required to ring the doorbell at the front entrance and the office staff will use a visual monitoring system to allow entry. Visitors will still be required to report directly to the office and sign in. If our office staff does not recognize you, you will be required to show identification with a picture id. Please understand that with nearly 700 students and over 1,000 parents representing 500 SHS families, most parents will be asked to show identification. Doors will be locked at approximately 9:30 a.m.” “Principal Outlined New Security Procedures at Sandy Hook Elementary,” Hartford Courant, December 14, 2012, 8:25PM EST.
9:47AM
Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung Tweets photo of emergency drill held at Sandy Hook fire station with Sandy Hook Elementary faculty and students participating. Esther Zuckerman, “The Sandy Hook Principal’s Twitter Feed is Haunting,” The Atlantic Wire, December 14, 2012.
n.t.
Following Obama’s reelection Senator Diane Feinstein is believed to be meeting with relevant federal agencies to lay groundwork for reenacting assault weapons ban. “Senator Diane Feinstein Moves to Ban All Assault Rifles, High Capacity Magazines, and Pistol Grips,” Market Daily News, November 7, 2012.
10:14AM
Hartford Courant publishes online Google map of Sandy Hook Elementary School. “Map of Sandy Hook Elementary School,” Hartford Courant, December 14, 2012.
10:47AM
Connecticut State Police report assisting Newtown police in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. “The Hartford Courant [<-hyperlink is to a different story] reports there are multiple injures [sic] and unconfirmed reports that one of the shooters is dead while the other is still at large. The school superintendent’s office says the district has locked down schools to ensure the safety of students and staff. Crimeside Staff, “Connecticut School Shooting: Police Investigating Reports of a Shooting at Elementary School,” CBS News, December 14, 2012.
10:47AM
[Famous photo taken by Newtown Bee editor is distributed via CBS and other national media.]
Connecticut School Shooting: Police Investigating Reports of a Shooting at Elementary School,” CBS News, December 14, 2012, 1047AM EST.
11:30AM
A Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps dispatcher says a Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher was taken to hospital after being shot in the foot. “There are reports of multiple injuries,” CBS notes. The Newton Bee reports a student with apparently serious wounds was carried out of the facility by a police officer. The school superintendent’s office says all schools in the district remain in lockdown. Crimesider Staff, “Connecticut School Shooting Update: One Gunman Dead, One Teacher Injured at Elementary School,” CBS News, December 14, 2012.
11:34AM
Police say the shooter is dead and two weapons were recovered from him. “The source says one weapon recovered is a Glock and the other is a Sig Sauer.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
12:29PM
Hartford Courant mysteriously publishes online Googlemap of neighborhood of Lanza residence, which is 36 Yogananda St. “Map of 46 Yogananda St. Sandy Hook, CT,” Hartford Courant, December 14, 2012.
12:27PM
Anonymous witness and parent of student says that while attending a meeting with faculty regarding her child she heard “at least 100 rounds” being fired when the shooting began about 9:30 to 9:35AM. “There was a ‘pop pop pop’ in the hall outside the room. Three people went out of the room into the hall where the sounds had come from. ‘Only one person came back.’” The same witness says “she then called 911. She said she never saw the shooter but she later was escorted outside the room past two bodies lying in blood.” “Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
1:57PM
An anonymous federal law enforcement source informs news media the death toll is closer to 30 than 20, with most of those killed being children. The source, who says he is in contact with authorities on the scene, says the suspected gunman had a connection to the school but would not elaborate. Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
2:09PM
CNN is “told that 18 to 20 of the dead are children.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
2:11PM
An anonymous law enforcement official tells CNN that the suspect’s name is Ryan Lanza and he is in his 20s. Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
2:39PM
Anonymous federal law enforcement authorities say “the shooting happened quickly and happened in a concentrated area.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
2:52PM
Father of Sandy Hook Elementary School third grade student Stephen Delgiudice describes to CBS News what his daughter heard over the loudspeaker from the principal’s office. This prompted the teacher to lock the classroom door. “We have a pretty good program in Newtown,” Delgiudice says. “where basically a code red reverse 911 type of a call, and a, came through. [It said] there’s a shooting at the school and naturally I obeyed the speed limit and drove immediately to the school. And ah, y’know it was just mass-mass chaos. I finally got to my daughter—a friend of mine led me to my daughter. I wanted to see her face and hold her, which I did, and once I did that there was a sense of relief, but, uhm, it was just chaos.” Crimesider Staff, “Connecticut School Shooting: Father Says Student Heard Commotion Over Loudspeaker,” CBS News, December 14, 2012.
3:16PM
President Obama addresses nation. “As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago – these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
3:51PM
A federal law enforcement official informs CNN that “shooter arrived and headed directly toward and to his mother’s classroom. That and the other information now emerging – another family member killed, police interviews – lead them to believe his mother was the primary target. But they note he also came armed with clear intention of mass killing.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
3:45PM
There were a total of 27 people dead at the school, Lt. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police tells assembled reporters. “Eighteen students were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died at the hospital.” In addition, six adults were pronounced dead at the scene. Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
3:54PM
CNN now reports “three guns found at the scene … the third weapon found on the scene was a .223 Bushmaster. The other weapons, previously reported, are a Glock, and a Sig-Sauer. No word on the models of Glock or Sig-Sauer.” Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
6:34PM
Witnesses attest to seeing bloodied children, hearing as many as 100 shots, and “loud booms.” “It was horrendous,” parent Brenda Lebinski said, who rushed to the school where her daughter is a third grade student. “Everyone was in hysterics – parents, students. There were kids coming out of the school bloodied. I don’t know if they were shot, but they were bloodied.” Lebinski said another parent in the school “during the shooting told her a ‘masked man’ entered the principal’s office and may have shot the principal. Lebinski, who is friends with the mother who was at the school, said the principal was “’severely injured.’” Lebinski’s daughter’s teacher “immediately locked the door to the classroom and put all the kids in the corner of the room.” Nearby resident Melissa Murphy listened to events unfold on a police scanner. “’I kept hearing them call for the mass casualty kit and scream, “Send everybody! Send everybody!” Murphy said. ‘It doesn’t seem like it can be really happening. I feel like I’m in shock.’” A girl interviewed by an NBC Connecticut affiliate said she heard seven loud “booms” while in gym class. “A police officer came in and told us to run outside and so we did,” the unidentified girl said on camera. Dan Burns and Chris Kaufman, “Connecticut Gun Rampage: 28 Dead, Including 20 Children,” Reuters, December 14, 2012.
6:34PM
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg calls for greater gun control measures. “We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress,” Bloomberg said. “That must end today.” Dan Burns and Chris Kaufman, “Connecticut Gun Rampage: 28 Dead, Including 20 Children,” Reuters, December 14, 2012.
6:44PM
US officials representing three different lettered agencies separately identify the suspected shooter as Adam Lanza, in contrast to what investigators said earlier in the day. No explanation is given regarding what prompted confusion among investigators. Lanza’s older brother, Ryan, was taken into custody for general questioning in Hoboken, New Jersey but was not labeled a suspect. “Children and Adults Gunned Down in School Massacre,” CNN, December 14, 2012.
7:13PM
Fox News presents “newly released police dispatch audio” of exchange between 911 dispatcher and Newtown Police and Connecticut State Police encountering two shooting suspects on school grounds. “I have reports that the teacher saw two shadows running past the building, past the gym which would be rear [inaudible].” “Yeah, we got him. He’s coming at me, down [inaudible].” “911 Call Dispatch Audio Reveals Police Response to Sandy Hook School Shooting,” Fox News, December 14, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16AfZXH33eQ
[Night]
Police recover long gun from automobile in Sandy Hook parking lot. “Police Find Long Gun in Trunk of Car in Sandy Hook Parking Lot, Newtown Connecticut,” NBC News, December 14, 2012.
n.t.
CBS correspondent notes how police have a second shooting suspect in custody who they are interrogating. “Well, they have an individual in custody, who they’re talking to. I am told they’re looking into the person as possibly a second shooter. Now that changes the dynamics here a little bit which goes from—if in fact this turns out to be confirmed—it goes from a lone gunman scenario where somebody has this argument with society and wants to take revenge with the most defenseless people in society to a team of individuals who’ve gotten together and conspired to do something like this.” “School Shooting: Possible Second Gunman in Custody,” CBS News Online, December 14, 2012.
n.t.
The Associated Press interviews an unidentified Sandy Hook Elementary student who describes seeing a shooting suspect prone on the ground in the school’s parking lot. Unidentified student: “And then the police like were knocking on the door, and they’re like, ‘We’re evacuating people! We’re evacuating people!’ So we ran out. There’s police about at every door. They’re leading us, ‘Down this way. Down this way. Quick! Quick! Come on!’ Then we ran down to the firehouse. There’s a man pinned down to the ground with handcuffs on. And we thought that was the victim [sic]. We really didn’t get a good glance at him because there was a car blocking it. Plus we were running really quick.” “Raw: Student Describes Scene at School Shooting,” Associated Press, December 14, 2012.
7:05AM
State Police Lt. J. Paul Advance on ABC’s Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos.
Vance: This is something that’s going to take a significant amount of time. From the onset we’ve had teams looking into the background of [Adam Lanza], peeling back the layers of the onion, so to speak. We have many, many questions that we need to ask—that we need to explore.
Stephanopoulos: Three guns found on site?
Vance: We haven’t discussed that as of yet, but, uh, in excess of three guns.
Stephanopoulos: More than three guns. And we know also that the guns match those of his mother may have had. Have you been able to put that together yet?”
Vance: We’re—we’re—I don’t have that information specifically–
Stephanopoulos: Do you know if they were obtained legally?
Vance: Again, that’s something we would also have to explore during the investigation.
ABC News, “Tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School,” Good Morning America, December 15, 2012.
8:40AM
Sandy Hook resident Gene Rosen comes forth with story that he encountered six first grade children from Sandy Hook Elementary in his front lawn while feeding his cats. “I thought they were practicing for a play or Cub Scouts, and I went and approached them and it became clear that they were so distressed,” Rosen told CBS News. “And I took them into my house, and they were crying and talking, and I got them into my house, and they were crying and talking [sic], and I got them some stuffed animals.” “Neighbor Found Terrified Children on Front Lawn after School Massacre,” CBS New York, December 15, 2012.
3:45PM
MSNBC: “Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver provides an update to the media after he and his team examined the victims’ bodies at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown following Friday’s shootings.” In this exchange Carver and State Police drastically change the story on what weapons were used in the shooting, contending that the Bushmaster 223 was the sole weapon Lanza wielded. Carver exhibits an amazing degree of deferral to law enforcement and overall lack of knowledge about the postmortem operation he has just presided over. For example, a reporter asks, “Were [the students] sitting at their desks or were they running away when this happened?” Carver responds, “I’ll let the guys who—the scene guys talk—address that issue. I, uh, obviously I was at the scene. Obviously I’m very experienced in that. But there are people who are, uh, the number one professionals in that. I’ll let them—let that [voice trails off].” Shortly thereafter another reporter asks, “How many boys and how many girls [were killed]?” Carver shakes his head slowly, “I don’t know.” “Medical Examiner: Rifle Primary Weapon Used in Shootings,” MSNBC, December 15, 2012.
4:32PM
List of Sandy Hook Elementary victims is released. “Police Release Names of Newtown School Shooting Victims,” Hartford Courant, December 15, 2012,.
8:55PM
Federal authorities confirm there is no record of Adam Lanza using local Newtown shooting range. Michael Isikoff and Hannah Rappleye, “Mom of Suspected Shooter-First to Die—Was Avid Gun Enthusiast, Friend Says,” NBC News, December 15, 2012.
8:55PM
Federal officials claim Lanza took three weapons to Sandy Hook Elementary, a Glock and Sig Sauer, and a Bushmaster .223-caliber semiautomatic assault-style rifle. Authorities remain unclear on whether all guns were used in the attack. Michael Isikoff and Hannah Rappleye, “Mom of Suspected Shooter-First to Die—Was Avid Gun Enthusiast, Friend Says,” NBC News, December 15, 2012.
9:15PM
“An official with knowledge of the investigation” informs the Associated Press that three weapons were found inside Sandy Hook Elementary on or near Adam Lanza’s body—a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle, a Glock 10mm pistol, and a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol. “Three other guns have also been recovered, but it was not clear where they were found, the official told AP. They were a Henry repeating rifle, an Enfield rifle and a shotgun.” Matt Appuzo and Pete Yost, “Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza’s Guns Were Registered to Mother Nancy Lanza: Official,” Associated Press/Huffington Post, December 15, 2012.
11:31PM
Adam Lanza’s aunt Marsha Lanza describes Nancy Lanza as “meticulous” and “self-reliant,” pointing out that she kept three guns in the home “for self-defense.” “She would never leave the guns out,” Marsha Lanza asserts. Josh Kovner and Edmund H. Mahoney, “Adam Lanza: A ‘Quiet, Odd’ Loner Living on the Fringes,” Hartford Courant, December 15, 2012.
11:31PM
Law enforcement officials state the murder weapon was one of three guns owned by Nancy Lanza: a semiautomatic rifle or two semiautomatic pistols. Josh Kovner and Edmund H. Mahoney, “Adam Lanza: A ‘Quiet, Odd’ Loner Living on the Fringes,” Hartford Courant, December 15, 2012.
11:31PM
Investigators believe Adam Lanza’s behavior was consistent with Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder within “the autism spectrum … marked by difficulty with social interaction. Many with Asperger’s are otherwise high-functioning people. There is no pre-disposition toward violence, experts said.” Josh Kovner and Edmund H. Mahoney, “Adam Lanza: A ‘Quiet, Odd’ Loner Living on the Fringes,” Hartford Courant, December 15, 2012.
11:44PM
Law enforcement authorities provide press with detailed information on event which becomes bedrock “official” storyline that Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. After shooting his mother twice in the head while she lie in bed Lanza proceeded to Sandy Hook Elementary where he “fired a half-dozen thunderous rounds from a semiautomatic rifle to open a hole big enough to step through in one of the school’s glass doors.” He entered the school and shot Principal Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Scherlach who after hearing the “sounds of gunfire and shattering glass, bolted into a corridor from a conference room across the hall from the classrooms … The first classroom Lanza reached was teacher Kaitlin Roig’s. Alarmed by the gunfire, Roig hid her students in a bathroom and closed her classroom door. Lanza passed by Roig’s classroom in lieu of substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau’s, shooting all 14 children who investigators believe were huddled and clutching one another in fear, in addition to Rousseau and a special education teacher who happened to be in the room. Lanza next arrived at teacher Victoria Soto’s classroom, who is believed to have hidden her 6- and 7-year old students in a closet. When Lanza demanded to know where the children were, Soto tried to divert him to the other end of the school by saying that her students were in the auditorium. As six of Soto’s students attempted to flee Lanza shot them, Soto and another teacher in the room. Searching for survivors police found the remaining seven of Soto’s students still hiding in the closet. They told the police what had happened. The two teacher’s aides who were killed were Mary Anne Murphy and Rachel Davino. It was unclear which aide was in which room when they were killed. The first officer arriving at the school found Lanza’s body near the door of Soto’s classroom. The intense violence lasted about 10 minutes. Lanza fired at least three, 30-round magazines with deadly accuracy. Two of the people he shot survived. All of the victims were shot multiple times. ‘I did seven (autopsies) myself with three to 11 wounds apiece,’ Chief State Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver III said Saturday. ‘Only two were shot at close range. I believe everybody was hit (by bullets) more than once.’” Edward H. Mahoney and Dave Altimari, “A Methodical Massacre, Horror and Heroics,” Hartford Courant, December 15, 2012.
6:44AM
“We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired.”—Adam Lanza’s father Peter Lanza said in a statement. Jonathan Dienst, “Conn. Shooting Suspect Adam Lanza’s Father: ‘We Too Are Asking Why,’” NBC News, December 16, 2012.
10:30AM
On CBS’s Face the Nation Bob Orr remarked that at least two computers at the Lanza residence were “smashed to smithereens.” CBS correspondent and former FBI agent John Miller noted “that subpoenas have been issued for all of the shooter’s email accounts and his mother’s accounts, including all of the ‘sent’ mail and ‘received’ mail over a long period of time. Miller said that Lanza’s mother, Nancy, had battled with the school system and eventually took her son out of the schools and home-schooled him.” Christopher Keating, “Newtown Update: CBS Says Two Computers ‘Smashed to Smithereens’ In Lanza Home in Newtown; Subpoenas for All Emails of Mother and Shooter,” Capitol Watch, Courantblogs, December 16, 2012, n.t. [Such programs are typically taped the preceding Friday afternoon.-JT]
12:12PM
Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance states Adam Lanza possessed “an extraordinary amount of weaponry … In addition to an assault-style rifle and at least two handguns, he also had a shotgun in reserve in the car he drove to the school.” Lance claims that when Lanza’s body was found he “still had ‘hundreds of rounds’ of ammunition in multiple magazines, after having already fired hundreds of rounds inside the school.” M. Alex Johnson, “Very Heavily Armed Gunman Shot Mother Multiple Times Before Killing 26 at Connecticut School, Police Say,” NBC News, December 16, 2012.
12:12PM
Details emerge on Adam Lanza enrolling at Western Connecticut State University in 2008 at age 16. Lanza successfully completed six courses “including website production, data modeling, Philosophy 101 and ethical theory — and compiled a solid 3.26 grade-point average.” University officials claim Lanza presented no disciplinary concerns. M. Alex Johnson, “Very Heavily Armed Gunman Shot Mother Multiple Times Before Killing 26 at Connecticut School, Police Say,” NBC News, December 16, 2012.
[Afternoon]
President Obama travels to Newtown to address grieving community and repeatedly allude to gun control legislation in an 18 minute speech. “We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change. Since I’ve been president, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by mass shootings, [the] fourth time we’ve hugged survivors, the fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims … Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” Daniela Altimari, “We Must Change, President Tells Nation,” Hartford Courant, December 16, 2012, 11:16PM EST.
4:52PM
Alex Israel was in the same class at Newtown High School with Adam Lanza, who lived a few houses down from her. “You could definitely tell he was a genius,” Israel says. “He was really quiet, he kept to himself.” Lanza’s former bus driver regarded Lanza as “’a nice kid, very polite’ like his brother.” Another former classmate remarked that Lanza “was just a kid” — not a troublemaker, not antisocial, not suggesting in any way that he could erupt like this.” Michael Martinez and David Ariosto, “Adam Lanza’s Family: Mom Liked Parlor Games, Guns; Dad, a Tax Exec, Remarried,” CNN.com, December 16, 2012.
8:06PM
Connecticut State Police Lieutenant J. Paul Vance tells the Huffington Post that Adam Lanza specifically used the Bushmaster .223 rifle to carry out all of the Sandy Hook murders. “Adam Lanza used a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle during his rampage through Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday,” the Huffington Post reports, “firing dozens of high-velocity rounds as he killed 20 children and six adults … Lanza, 20, carried ‘many high-capacity clips’ for the lightweight military-style rifle, Lt. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, told The Huffington Post in an email. Two handguns and a shotgun were also recovered at the scene. John Rudolf and Janet Ross, “School Shooter Adam Lanza Used Military-Style Bushmaster Rifle,” Huffington Post, December 16, 2012.
8:06PM
Senator Dianne Feinstein announces that she intends to introduce legislation reauthorizing a federal assault weapons ban originally passed in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration that was allowed to lapse in 2004. John Rudolf and Janet Ross, “School Shooter Adam Lanza Used Military-Style Bushmaster Rifle,” Huffington Post, December 16, 2012.
Health science and investigative writer Mike Adams observes that much like the Tucson Arizona, Aurora Colorado, and Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings, mass media are scrubbing their coverage and doctoring the storyline to obscure the fact that there were additional suspects and probable shooters at the crime scene. Mike Adams, “Newtown School Shooting Already Being Changed by the Media to Eliminate Eyewitness Reports of a Second Shooter,” Natural News, December 16, 2012, n.t.
12:51PM
Divorce records reveal the parents of Adam Lanza had joint custody of their son and that Lanza’s father paid yearly alimony totaling $240,000 in 2010, $265,000 in 2011 and $289,800 in 2012. Nancy and Peter Lanza’s divorce cited irreconcilable and was made final in September 2009. The divorce decree designated Adam Lanza’s primary residence with his mother in the Yogananda Street address which Peter Lanza quitclaimed to Nancy. Peter was designated as solely responsible for the cost of college for Adam and brother Ryan and for buying Adam a car. Nancy Lanza seldom discussed domestic affairs with friends. She was otherwise regarded as very open and generous. Allaine Griffith, “After Divorce, Lanzas Had Joint Custody of Adam,” Hartford Courant, December 17, 2012.
12:51PM
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is uncertain whether Nancy Lanza brought her son to the range or whether he ever fired a weapon there. Allaine Griffith, “After Divorce, Lanzas Had Joint Custody of Adam,” Hartford Courant, December 17, 2012.
1:09PM
Sandy Hook Elementary nurse Sally Cox tells ABC of her encounter with gunman on the morning of December 14 as she crouched underneath her desk. “I could see him from the knees down, 20 feet away, his boots were facing my desk,” Cox said in an interview on Good Morning America. “It was seconds… and then he turned and walked out and I heard the door close.” The 60-year-old staff member then heard “loud popping noises” outside the infirmary. Cox was joined by a school secretary and together they dialed 911 before hiding in a supply closet. Lauren Effron, “Sandy Hook School Nurse Hid From Shooter, ‘His Boots Were Facing My Desk,’” ABC News, December 17, 2012.
1:15PM
Funerals for massacre victims begin in Newtown, with first being for 6 year old Sandy Hook first-grader Jack Pinto. “There are many ways to measure what was lost Friday morning at Sandy Hook,” the Washington Post observes, “a school shooting that has spurred a national debate about public safety and a speech by the president. But no accounting of the damage was as searing as the one that began Monday, when parents stepped behind lecterns and spoke about the children they would miss.” Eli Saslow and Steve Vogel, “Funerals for Newtown Massacre Victims Begin,” Washington Post, December 17, 2012.
1:26PM
Two witnesses in Sandy Hook school shooting are unidentified adults. “There are two adults that were injured in the facility—in the school—and suffered gunshot wounds and are recovering,” Connecticut State Police Lieutenant J. Paul Vance stated. “Our investigators will in fact speak with them when it’s medically appropriate, and certainly they will shed a great deal of light on the facts and circumstances of this tragic investigation that we’re undertaking.” [Vance’s emphasis] “Key Witnesses in Connecticut School Shooting are Survivors,” Hartford Courant, December 17, 2012.
6:39PM
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveils “Demand a Plan” campaign, sponsored by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns bipartisan coalition that requests Congress and President Obama move immediately on gun control measures. Bloomberg calls Washington’s inability to act a “stain on our nation’s commitment to protect our children.” Carlo Delaverson, “NYC Mayor Launches Campaign Against Gun Violence,” NBC News, December 17, 2012.
6:00PM
Infowars reporter Rob Dew utilizes overlooked excerpts from CBS and Associated Press coverage of the massacre to explain how there were additional shooter suspects apprehended by law enforcement on the morning of December 14 that have been left unaccounted for and since dropped from public view. Rob Dew, “Sandy Hook 2nd Shooter Coverup,” Infowars Nightly News, December 18, 2012.
1:07PM
Connecticut Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II says he will work with a University of Connecticut geneticist to determine what prompted Adam Lanza to act. “I’m exploring with the department of genetics what might be possible, if anything is possible [sic],” Carver says. “Is there any identifiable disease associated with this behavior?” David Owens, “Obama Calls for New Proposals for Gun Control in Wake of Newtown Massacre,” Hartford Courant, December 19, 2012.
11:16PM
Hundreds attend wake of Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, US Senator Richard Blumenthal and US Senator-elect Chris Murphy. Matthew Kauffman, “Communities Say Farewell to Four More Victims of Newtown Shootings,” Hartford Courant, December 19, 2012.
1:42PM
US Attorney General Eric Holder makes unannounced visit to Newtown to meet with Sandy Hook first responders following a meeting in Washington with Vice President Joe Biden, presumably to discuss forthcoming gun control legislation. “Holder to Meet with First Responders in Newtown,” Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press/Hartford Courant, December 20, 2012.
n.t.
Further analysis by alternative news media points to additional Sandy Hook shooting suspects overlooked by corporate media. Niall Bradley, “Sandy Hook Massacre: Official Story Spins Out of Control,” Veterans Today, December 20, 2012; James F. Tracy, “The Newtown School Tragedy: More Than One Gunman?” Global Research, December 20, 2012.
7:20PM
Witness to shooting Becky Virgalla interviewed by Connecticut news media. [Video of interview at Hartford Courant website has since been taken down.] “Witness to the Sandy Hook Massacre,” Hartford Courant, December 26, 2012.
Attorney Irv Pinsky asks State of Connecticut Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. for permission to file $100 million dollar lawsuit on behalf of unnamed 6-year-old Sandy Hook student for negligence and trauma suffered after hearing screaming, cursing, and gunfire over school’s intercom system. As a result, the “child has sustained emotional and psychological trauma and injury, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined,” the proposed claim asserts. Pinsky’s claim also alleges “that the state Board of Education, Department of Education and Education Commissioner had failed to take appropriate steps to protect children from ‘foreseeable harm.’” Mary Ellen Godin, “Claim Seeks $100 Million for Child Survivor of Connecticut School Shooting,” Reuters, December 28, 2012.
Adam Lanza’s body reportedly turned over by Connecticut Medical Examiner to father Peter Lanza “sometime last week.” “Father Claims Adam Lanza’s Body,” Hartford Courant, December 31, 2012, 3:38PM.
3:12PM
Connecticut Attorney General says $100 million claim against state on behalf of 6 year old Sandy Hook student is “misguided,” and maintains that “a public policy response by the U.S. Congress and the Connecticut state legislature would be ‘more appropriate’ than legal action.” Edith Honan, “Connecticut Attorney General Says Newtown Legal Claim Misguided,” Reuters/Hartford Courant, December 31, 2012.
2013
11:49AM
State Attorney General George Jepsen says lawsuit brought against state lacks a “valid basis.” According to a report Jepsen said “the claims commissioner’s office was not the appropriate venue for a discussion about the shooting.” Amanda Falcone, Request to Sue State for Newtown Shooting Has No Basis, Attorney General Says,” Hartford Courant, January 1, 2013.
2:29PM
New Haven attorney Irving Pinsky withdraws claim on behalf of traumatized Sandy Hook student after receiving new evidence. “If the state were liable in this instance, where would the state’s liability ever end?” State Attorney General George Jepsen said. Brian Dowling and Hilda Munoz, “Attorney Withdrawing Request to Sue State in Sandy Hook Shootings,” Hartford Courant, January 1, 2013.
9:10PM
Jean Henry, a processing technician for the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is placed on a paid leave pending an investigation of an incident on December 16 where she permitted her husband, an unauthorized employee, to view the body of alleged mass killer Adam Lanza. Jon Lender and Dave Altimari, “State Worker Placed on Leave After Showing Husband Adam Lanza’s Body,” Hartford Courant, January 2, 2013.
[Morning]
Sandy Hook students return to classes 7 miles south of Newtown at Chalk Hill School in Monroe Connecticut. The school was closed about two years ago and recently cleaned and painted to accommodate students. Amanda Falcone, “Sandy Hook Students Back in Class,” Hartford Courant, 5:18PM EST, January 3, 2013.
6:18PM
Connecticut State Attorney’s Office and State Police refuse to give timeline for Sandy Hook shooting investigation. “It cannot be stated too often how invaluable and necessary the work of the United States Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other federal agencies was and is to this investigation,” State Attorney General Stephen J. Sedensky III said. Christine Dempsey, “No Timeline for Newtown Shooting Probe,” Hartford Courant, January 3, 2013.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg meets privately in his office with former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was almost fatally shot at a constituent meeting in Tucson in January 2011. The sit-down was not listed on Bloomberg’s public schedule and a Bloomberg aide refused to state what was discussed. Holly Bailey, “Bloomberg Meets with Gabrielle Giffords on Gun Control,” Yahoo News, January 3, 2013, n.t.
3:40AM
Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords visits Newtown families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shooting. John Christoffersen, “Wounded ex-Rep Giffords Meets with Conn. Families,” Associated Press/Yahoo News, January 5.
To be continued.