Orlando, Fla. (home of giant theme parks) has 2 high profile murders in under 24 hours

[Michael Barwell]

You're right Pete. More facts are required.

God knows I hate to be glib, but it's a fact that this is a great tune

[David Guyatt]

Where have I heard a similar thing before?

From Alternet

Before Omar Mateen Committed Mass Murder, The FBI Tried To 'Lure' Him Into A Terror Plot

New revelations raise questions about the FBI's role in shaping Mateen's lethal mindset.



By Max Blumenthal, Sarah Lazare / AlterNet
June 19, 2016

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia



Before Omar Mateen gunned down 49 patrons at the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the FBI attempted to induce his participation in a terror plot. Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida's St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that after Mateen threatened a courthouse deputy in 2013 by claiming he could order Al Qaeda operatives to kill his family, the FBI dispatched an informant to "lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite."
While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in pushing Mateen towards an act of lethal violence.
Since 9/11, the FBI has relied heavily on informants to entrap scores of young, often mentally troubled Muslim men and send them to prison for as long as 25 years. As Aviva Stahl reported for AlterNet's Grayzone Project, the FBI recently encouraged an apparently mentally disturbed recent convert to Islam named James Medina to bomb a South Florida synagogue and pledge allegiance to ISIS, a militant group with which he had no prior affiliation. On trial for planning to commit an act of terror with a weapon of mass destruction, Medina has insisted through his lawyer that he is mentally ill.
Trevor Aaronson, a journalist and author of "Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terror," revealed that nearly half of terror cases between 9/11/01 and 2010 involved informants, including some with criminal backgrounds raking in as much as $100,000 from the FBI. The FBI's assets have often preyed on mentally ill men with little capacity to resist their provocations. "Is it possible that the FBI is creating the very enemy we fear?" Aaronson wondered.
The revelations of FBI manipulation have cast Mateen's case in a uniquely troubling light. Though he refused to "bite" when an FBI asset attempted to push him into a manufactured plot, he wound up carrying out a real act of spectacular brutality years and, and allegedly swore loyalty to ISIS in the midst of it.
"It looks like it's pretty much standard operating procedure for preliminary inquiries to interview the subject or pitch the person to become an informant and/or plant an undercover or informant close by to see if the person bites on the suggestion," Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, told AlterNet. "In the case of Mateen, since he already worked for a security contractor [G4S], he was either too savvy to bite on the pitch or he may have even become indignant that he was targeted in that fashion. These pitches and use of people can backfire."
To highlight the problematic nature of informants, Rowley pointed to the case of Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician whom the CIA used to gather intelligence on Al Qaeda,. The CIA ignored obvious warning signs like Balawi's extremist online manifestos and never subjected him to a vetting process. While Balawi claimed to have penetrated Al Qaeda's inner circle, he was actually exploiting his CIA security clearance to plan a major attack. On December 30, 2009, Balawi strode into Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, and detonated an explosive vest that killed seven CIA agents and wounded six more -- the deadliest attack on CIA personnel in 25 years.
Mateen, for his part, displayed many of the psychological characteristics that typify both FBI informants and those they attempt to ensnare in bogus terror plots. Raised in a troubled home by an abusive mother and an apparently eccentric father, Mateen exhibited signs of erratic, violent behavior throughout his life. His ex-wife told reporters that he physically abused her and was "unstable and mentally ill." He transformed from a chubby adolescent to a burly young man with the help of steroids, yearning all along for a career in law enforcement.
Seven months into a job as a prison guard in 2007, Mateen was fired for threatening to bring a gun to class. He settled on a career as a low level security guard for G4S Security Solutions, a global security firm that employed him for nine years. Though Mateen's applications to two police departments were rejected, he was able to pass a G4S background check and receive several guard assignments. (The world's third largest private employer, G4S has accumulated a staggering record of human rights abuses, including accusations of child torture.)
While the full extent of Mateen's contact with the FBI is unknown, the fact that an informant encouraged Mateen to agree to carry out a terror attack should provoke serious questions and further investigation. Whether or not manipulation by a FBI informant had any impact on Mateen's deadly decision, there is no denying that the attempt to entrap him did nothing to protect the public.
"The FBI should scrutinize the operating procedure where they use undercovers and informants and pitch people to become informants," said Rowley. "They must recognize that, in this case [with Mateen], it had horrible consequences if it did, in fact, backfire."

[Lauren Johnson]

I think all the talk and footage of 'crisis actors' is largely BS. I'm not sold that what I'm seeing on those videos is unexplainable in other ways.

I'm open to hearing how the same person, i.e. "Munoz" can turn up and be interviewed in four different crises across the country. How about listing some of those other ways. You can't say it's not the same person.

[R.K. Locke]

I agree with your assessment of Haskel's conclusions. I have one question, though, if the response to this event was stage-managed with crisis actors and the like, how come the plotters didn't provide competent cameramen? If the cameramen accidentally filmed something they weren't supposed to film, how come their "editors"/superiors permitted the accidental footage to reach the internet? Or are the folks that staged a "false flag attack" just not very smart?

There is a third alternative, at least for that particular footage: Some not very bright reporter, or other fame-seeking wannabe, got bored looking at the blinking lights and hired some nearby spectators to enact a heroic "rescue the wounded" scene.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwe'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

[R.K. Locke]

Transcript released:

https://willyloman.wordpress.com/2016/06...eg-format/

[Lauren Johnson]

I agree with your assessment of Haskel's conclusions. I have one question, though, if the response to this event was stage-managed with crisis actors and the like, how come the plotters didn't provide competent cameramen? If the cameramen accidentally filmed something they weren't supposed to film, how come their "editors"/superiors permitted the accidental footage to reach the internet? Or are the folks that staged a "false flag attack" just not very smart?

There is a third alternative, at least for that particular footage: Some not very bright reporter, or other fame-seeking wannabe, got bored looking at the blinking lights and hired some nearby spectators to enact a heroic "rescue the wounded" scene.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that realityjudiciously, as you willwe'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The "aide" was none other than Karl Rove!

9/11 took us into the brave new world of synthetic reality, a subset of full spectrum dominance.

[Ken Garretson]

I think all the talk and footage of 'crisis actors' is largely BS. I'm not sold that what I'm seeing on those videos is unexplainable in other ways.

I'm open to hearing how the same person, i.e. "Munoz" can turn up and be interviewed in four different crises across the country. How about listing some of those other ways. You can't say it's not the same person.

I appreciate you telling me what I can't say :-)

Let me ask this if I may. Do you find this video to be convincing?

https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/201...-5-events/

[Drew Phipps]

My opinion: It was shortsighted and foolish not to release the full transcript, and the recordings, of the 911 calls.

A) We already know he pledged allegiance to Daesh.
B) You have now provided Daesh with propaganda ammunition "They are afraid to tell the world what was said.."
C) You have given Daesh the opportunity to fake a leak with whatever words they want the shooter to say.
D) You have built-in-distrust from the public for censoring the release, and given those conspiracy theorists room to speculate.
E) He's dead so you can't mess up his trial. If the aim is to make this seem to be "Daesh-inspired" act, why not let us hear the words right out of his mouth? What do you really have to lose?

Whoever is making these decisions blundered badly here.

[Drew Phipps]

Hah! Minutes after my last post, I get this:

Full Orlando 911 transcript released, gunman pledges allegiance to Islamic State
Barbara Liston
Jun 20th 2016 3:46PM

http://www.aol.com/article/2016/06/20/fu.../21398777/

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Monday released what they said was the complete transcript of the phone conversation between the Orlando, Florida, shooter and 911 police operators as he threatened to strap explosives to his hostages. The release of the full transcript came a few hours after the FBI had issued an edited transcript of the calls.


In the full transcript, the gunman, Omar Mateen, is quoted pledging allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Mateen, 29, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida on June 12, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. He threatened to detonate a car rigged with bombs and to strap hostages into explosive vests, according to transcripts of the 911 calls he made while police tried to rescue people trapped in the club. The FBI and Justice Department said they had released a redacted transcript of the conversations because of sensitivity to the interests of survivors and victims' families, and the integrity of the investigation.


But the first transcript led U.S. House of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan and other politicians to call for the release of a full transcript after a political battle over gun violence brewed in the U.S. Congress. Mateen's conversations with a dispatcher and crisis negotiators were made public as police sought to fend off criticism that they may have acted too slowly to end a three-hour standoff at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. "You people are gonna get it and I'm gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid," Mateen said during one of the calls, according to the FBI transcript.


(Additional reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Frank McGurty in New York, and Eric Beech, Mohammad Zargham and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Fiona Ortiz and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Bill Trott)

*****
So you can see that expediency caused by the political battle in Congress over gun rights outweighs "sensitivity" and "integrity." The pecking order of our national values is quite clear. Of course, if there was any chance they read my last post and agreed with me, I'd have nothing but good things to say.

[Lauren Johnson]

I think all the talk and footage of 'crisis actors' is largely BS. I'm not sold that what I'm seeing on those videos is unexplainable in other ways.

I'm open to hearing how the same person, i.e. "Munoz" can turn up and be interviewed in four different crises across the country. How about listing some of those other ways. You can't say it's not the same person.

I appreciate you telling me what I can't say :-)

Let me ask this if I may. Do you find this video to be convincing?

https://verumetinventa.wordpress.com/201...-5-events/

Yup. Same person and unexplainable in other ways AFAIK. So, where is the BS?