Giffords shooting

[Nordic]

Is there even ONE video interview of any of the witnesses?

Well I watch almost zero news tv and I've already seen an interview of the gay male nurse who saved the victim, and an interview with a guy named Bill Badger, who is a retired Army Colonel, who I now see was one of the wounded.

So I'd say there must be a ton of interviews since I've seen two.

[Canadian_watcher]

Is there even ONE video interview of any of the witnesses?

Well I watch almost zero news tv and I've already seen an interview of the gay male nurse who saved the victim, and an interview with a guy named Bill Badger, who is a retired Army Colonel, who I now see was one of the wounded.

So I'd say there must be a ton of interviews since I've seen two.

lol, okay sorry. I don't watch news either and clearly I did a terrible job of my internet search for the coverage. thanks.

[Nordic]

No worries, just telling you what I saw, which isn't much. And you are in Canada, after all! So lucky for you, you probably don't get the dreck TV coverage we get here.

[Canadian_watcher]

I got sucked in to the ATS posts Erad3 (jared) made. I've not seen this particular post discussed anywhere yet, but it he writes it in response to a 'debate' of sorts about his theories on creating your own currency. Dated late December:

reply posted on 15-7-2010 @ 02:28 PM by Erad3
Originally posted by CoachSlamYou
If there was infinite currency then how would the government keep us down here?


ERAD3: I have to notice the past tense in the post.

This is a great question.

These might be topics that include riot motivation.

It's funny to think of riot motivation.

Hm! This is a interesting question you asked.

[edit on 15-7-2010 by Erad3]

link

EDIT: changed it so it was clear that Erad3 wrote the reply to coachslamyou
.

[8bitagent]

How can you separate out cognitive distortion from stupidity based on what you've read that he's posted? And what makes you think that he meant to say conscious rather than conscience?

When the conscience dreams, it manifests distorted and grotesque visions of its own morality transformed into the awful shape of abject guilt and remorse.

Loughner's malaprop reveals a fractured state of mind: divided against himself, he murdered his own conscience then turned the violence outward into the lucid dreamscape that is the schizophrenic's waking reality.

I am interested to see how the evolving entanglement of this man's diabolic imaginings with Ms. Gifford's pre-shooting life (cf. the YouTube thread) will transform and shape the narrative into something resembling an archetypal encounter of angels and demons struggling for supremacy behind the alter of the Secret Religion.

Already the atmosphere feels highly charged and potentiated for the unconscious to deliver new predicaments and misery for the audience, which is becoming deeply transfixed and distracted by the morphine needle of popular and elitist analysis. Meanwhile, real occult mischief is underway, assisted by the Ahrimanic deceivers who demand these regular sacrifices as cruel inducements for perpetual tithes--we are prisoners in the pews of progress, and the stations of our collective cross are the places where our conscience dreams of death while hoping for salvation.

You give me chills, both you and Canadian Watcher. I could only imagine what great food for thought a book or even documentary from you would be

of course he was able to fire 33 rounds before reloading.

33 always seems to wiggle its way into death and carnage, be it of terrorist explosions, bombs from the sky or mass shootings

“We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair.”

If Giffords makes a full recovery, she would have a great chance at the presidency. Assuming she wants any more to do with politics, which is a big assumption.

The doctors are saying how amazed they are from the recovery or situation; I always assumed if someone is shot in the head the way she was, they die on the spot. It makes me sad to read how they removed half her skull, I cant imagine how someone can function with just a steel plate. You're right, if she survives she'll have a lot of clout. I know some leftists were upset about her stance on the border issue(tho given how out control the Zetas cartel armies have become, I do agree with a fortified border as much as I am for illegal immigrant rights), but from the word of all her colleagues and everything else she seemed like one of the few good people on the hill. From Wellstone and Gravel to Kucinich and Ron Paul, its often congress people and not senators who seem more apt to speak out on the system or stand for good principal.

[Luther Blissett]

I sort of doubt that she will be able to speak if she does make a good recovery; the shot supposedly destroyed the speech center of her brain.

[8bitagent]

If this truly is the intended interpretational message of Loughner's videos: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread649059/pg1 , I wonder how in his mind he can reconcile that with what he did. Because in the analysis given here, some think in his odd gibberish or broken thought process way Loughner may have been saying people stifle their individuality and creaitivty, and are not awake. Something I always think, how people go through the motions and are not as creative or awake as they might want to be. They stifle their potential.

However, it's being highlighted in the msm that he had a long seeded fixation with Giffords for some reason. NBC World News tried to paint a kid "obsessed with anti government conspiracy movies like Zeitgeist and Loose Change", who "also smoked marijuana".

[IanEye]

33 always seems to wiggle its way into death and carnage, be it of terrorist explosions, bombs from the sky or mass shootings

33 can even wiggle its way through the legs of Jack Sikma, aiding and abetting the mystical number 00...

[Crow]

More details about Loughner, via the Associated Press.

[Fresno_Layshaft]

I'm surprised no video of the actual shooting has surfaced yet. Its almost inconceivable that no one had a cell phone on or little camera. I was sure footage would have surfaced by now.

[Nordic]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159555.html

'US govt. intimidating Americans'
Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:8PM

Following an attempt on the life of a congresswoman, a former US lawmaker says the United States government use of intimidation has resulted in such extreme actions.

Former Atlanta Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney made the comments in an exclusive interview with Press TV a day after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tucson, in a shooting spree that left six people dead.

Among the dead were a nine-year-old child and a senior US district judge. Eighteen others were injured in the incident.

The motivations behind the shooting of Giffords has not been uncovered, yet a tremendous focus has turned to the subject of violent political rhetoric in the US and whether or not this can motivate members of the public to act out violently against opponents of their political favorites, McKinney said.

“People want to be heard and they're not being heard… in fact people are being intimidated; people are being threatened; people are being subpoenaed [by the government],” she told Press TV.

“Certainly as a former member of congress who received many death threats and who received bomb threats, [I believe] this is something that has gone to an extreme,” McKinney said.

“This act [Giffords shooting] was certainly extremist and it was definitely considered as terrorism” she said.

[American Dream]

Real Fascists in Our Midst

What if the Tucson shooter had been a Muslim?

January 12, 2011

By Zoltan Grossman


When the Tucson shooter Jared Loughner was publicly identified on Saturday afternoon, I immediately googled his name and found his now infamous video on YouTube. I was Hit # 304 at the time, and by Monday at least 1.3 million people had viewed his video. Perhaps attracting the world to his message was a central reason for his terrorist attack, and his message was not as irrational as it first appeared.

The first part of Loughner’s video consisted of text about dreaming and consciousness, easily dismissed as rantings of a mentally disturbed individual. But the last part focused on currency, federal conspiracies, government brainwashing, and other tenets of the far-right populist movements and armed anti-government militias. Loughner mixed these conspiracy theories with millenarian prophecies that the world is ending in 2012, for a extra-toxic brew of paranoia and chaos.

Like many others who have worked against fascist movements, I quickly recognized Loughner as a constitutionalist fascist, cut from the cloth of the Posse Comitatus (“Power of the County”), a Wisconsin-based survivalist militia founded in the 1970s. The Posse threatened judges, killed a number of people, and outgunned police SWAT teams at the time. It has since spun off into a variety of “plenipotentiary judges” (affiliated with the Sovereign Citizens Movement and other “common-law” groups) that issue their own liens, and refuse to pay taxes or apply for identification. Like Loughner, they deny the worth of U.S. currency as not backed by gold or silver, which they claim the Constitution requires.

The motivations of constitutionalist fascist movements are quite different than the current Tea Party conservative populists. They tended not to follow Christian fundamentalism, but promoted their own brand of “Christian Identity,” heavily racialized and driven by global conspiracy theories dominated by Jews (or euphemisms thereof, such as bankers or the Federal Reserve System). They may be mentally unbalanced, but somewhat rational in how they emulate and follow the example of earlier far-right militants such as Tim McVeigh

Much like McVeigh or the followers of Lyndon LaRouche, they do not defend the capitalist status quo, but pose themselves as a right-wing revolutionary alternative to it. They often oppose the same things as leftists--such as military interventions, trade deals, corporate power, and government surveillance--but for entirely different reasons. Their goals are to “protect U.S. sovereignty,” cut off contact with foreign peoples and the United Nations, and attack the global financial conspiracy.

Sarah Palin’s rhetoric, including her gunsights on Gabrielle Giffords’ district, certainly helps to legitimize violence and set the stage for the attack. But that does not mean that she would necessarily be the ideological inspiration for the likes of Jared Loughner. A far-right revolutionary would no more respect a Republican Party vice-presidential nominee than a left-wing revolutionary respects a Democratic Party vice president. (Glenn Beck, on the other hand, has served as a key ideological connection between conservative populists and the far-right conspiracists, a role once played by Pat Buchanan).

Loughner repeated another hallmark of most fascists, by declaring in his video that the government is practicing “mind control” and brainwashing citizens through the educational system--even through the structure of English grammar itself. Some of these views are promoted in American Renaissance, a magazine that describes itself as “America’s premiere publication of racial-realist thought.”

The New York Times noted on January 10 that Loughner’s views on grammar closely reflect those of David Wynn Miller, a Milwaukee-based far-right activist, and founder of the Sovereign Citizens Movement. Miller himself admitted that Loughner’s “argument sounded familiar,” and “He’s probably been on my Web site, which has been up for about 11 years. The government does control the schools, and the schools determine the grammar and language we use. And then it is all reinforced by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and everything we do in society.”

Unlike earlier incarnations of the Klan or Nazis, the far-right militia movement no longer relies on centralized organizations or personality cults, but on the concept of “leaderless resistance.” Based the 1970s Nazi classic The Turner Diaries, ideologues such as Miller (like William Pierce and Tom Metzger before him) inspire others to commit acts of violence through media or the Internet. This same concept of “leaderless resistance” has been taken up by other militant groups around the world, such as the loose Islamist network sometimes called Al Qaeda.

The U.S. government accuses a U.S.-born cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, of inspiring young Islamist militants to commit acts of terror around the world. The homeland security state has accused al-Awlaki’s websites of ideological responsibility for acts from the Fort Hood shooting to the so-called “underwear bomber” and the FedEx package plot. The Obama Administration has targeted him for assassination, and worked with the Yemeni military to bomb and launch missiles at Islamist insurgents that may or may not sympathize with Al Qaeda.

It speaks volumes to see how the U.S. government has treated the threat of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen differently that the threat of David Wynn Miller in Wisconsin. Although the young Islamist militants may themselves be psychologically unstable and have done poorly in school, they are presented as ideologically influenced by al-Awlaki’s websites. Jared Loughner, on the other hand, is depicted as a mentally ill loner, even though David Wynn Miller actually admits that Loughner’s far-right perspectives closely match his website.

If the Tucson shooter had been a Muslim, the media would have demonized the local Muslim community and mosque, launched an investigation of his ties to global groups, and probably launched commando raids, missiles or bombs in some Muslim country. But President Obama is not going to order the assassination of David Wynn Miller, not is he going to bomb Wisconsin in retaliation for the Tucson attack. Tim McVeigh’s hometown of Lockport, New York, was not raided or bombed after the Oklahoma City bombing. But if the culprit had come from Yemen, Pakistan or Somalia, we can be sure that military action would have followed against the terrorist’s home community.

This double standard shows the skewed priorities in the so-called “Global War on Terror.” Why is it so easy to accept that a website in Yemen can influence someone in Texas to commit violence, but not that a website in Wisconsin can inspire someone in Arizona? By defining Islamist militants as committed “terrorists,” but white Christianist militants as merely “lone wolves,” we are ignoring the underlying political motivations for violence in our country. In scouring the world for so-called “Islamofascists,” the government is ignoring the real fascists in our midst.


Dr. Zoltan Grossman is a professor of geography at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. His website is at http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz and can be reached at grossmaz@evergreen.edu He is a civilian Member of the Board of G.I. Voice, an antiwar veterans group that runs the Coffee Strong resource center for soldiers outside Fort Lewis: http://www.coffeestrong.org


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/real-fas ... n-grossman

[Luther Blissett]

Does anyone have access to the ATS posts of user "savvys84"? This was Erad3's previous (and banned) username.

[beeline]

Link


Giffords has "a long, difficult road" ahead, Philly-area experts say
By Stacey Burling

Inquirer Staff Writer

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords likely will survive the gunshot that sent a bullet through the left side of her brain, but she faces months of difficult rehabilitation and probably will always have mental and physical impairments, local neurosurgeons and rehabilitation specialists say.

It's impossible to predict how severe her disabilities may be. The precise path of the bullet has not been made public. But even that information would not be enough. Each brain is different, and each person has a different capacity to heal that is affected by age, genetics, and other physical problems.

"I've had patients with very severe gunshot wounds who've done well," said Thomas Watanabe, clinical director of the Drucker Brain Injury Center at MossRehab, "and I have to say there are some who did not.

"I have to remind myself that every recovery path will be somewhat different."

Don McMullin, a former Philadelphia police officer who now works as a physical therapist for ManorCare in West Deptford, is living proof that people can thrive after a shot to the brain. He was 23 when he was shot during a traffic stop. The bullet went through his right eye socket and lodged in the back of his brain.

Two days later, a doctor told his twin brother, Brian, who had been on patrol with him, that it was time to say goodbye.

Since then, though, McMullin has changed careers, married a nurse, and fathered three children. Now 43, he is blind in his right eye and has limited peripheral vision with his left, but has no other physical problems. His short-term memory isn't great and he has trouble organizing things, especially when tired.

At Magee Rehabilitation, he learned how to compensate for his disabilities. He has to turn his head and eyes constantly, for example, to see around him. Eventually, that became second nature.

"The body, the spirit, tends to get used to the whole new way of doing things," he said.

Experts said Giffords (D., Ariz.) likely will face more severe challenges. Her injury traverses the left side of her brain, which, for those who are right handed, is the dominant side.

"It's in her dominant hemisphere. That's not good," said Christopher Loftus, chair of neurosurgery at Temple University School of Medicine. "It's going to be a long, difficult road."

The left side of the brain controls our ability to communicate - both to understand language and to generate it. It also controls movement in the right side of the body. Patients with this kind of injury could have right-side weakness or paralysis.

The purpose of surgery in a case like this is not to repair damage. The brain can't be repaired. The goal is to prevent complications such as infection and damage from swelling.

Surgeons clear away blood clots, dead tissue, and debris such as pieces of scalp and skull that could become infected. They repair the dura, the outer covering of the brain, so cerebrospinal fluid doesn't leak out, Loftus said.

Surgeons in Tucson removed a flap of skull to give Giffords' injured brain room to swell. The piece of skull typically would be kept in a freezer at minus-20 degrees Fahrenheit until the swelling subsides, usually six to eight weeks, said M. Sean Grady, chair and professor of neurosurgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Then surgeons fit it back into place. In the meantime, patients have a soft spot covered by scalp. People often wear a bicycle helmet for protection, he said.

His hospital treats 20 to 30 patients a year with gunshots to the head. About half live. They usually spend about a week in intensive care and a week to 10 days more on an acute-care floor, then go to a rehabilitation facility for one to two months.

Watanabe said therapists in Tucson probably were working to prevent problems in Giffords' right side by maintaining range of motion, and splinting her right hand and foot to keep them from curling awkwardly.

Doctors usually begin reducing sedation five to seven days after a gunshot. That's when they will get a better idea of how significant the damage is, Grady said.

Still, it will be months before the swelling is gone and pools of blood have been reabsorbed, the experts said.

Watanabe said brain damage usually extends well into tissue surrounding the bullet's path. There will be a highway of scar tissue through the left hemisphere, making it difficult for neurons on either side to communicate with one another.

Brain-injured patients like Giffords who have been on breathing machines often arrive at rehab unable to swallow, so that would be one of the first targets for therapists, said Todd Lewis, a neuropsychologist and brain-injury clinical specialist at Magee. "You don't just go from not eating to being able to eat steak and potatoes," he said.

Many also have bowel and bladder problems.

Some patients might be strong enough to start speech and physical therapy immediately. Others are so lethargic they need stimulants just to stay awake. Therapists start with sensory stimulation. Then it's on to very simple commands, such as "open your eyes."

Watanabe and Lewis said therapy begins by practicing simple movements and communication skills. If patients can't understand speech, therapists might combine pictures with words. At the same time, patients begin learning ways to circumvent their disabilities, such as doing more with the left hand if the right isn't working.

While patients with left-side damage might not be able to speak or understand speech, they can still think of things they want to do. That can be dangerous, Lewis said. Patients often are unaware of their impairments and might try to head for the bathroom with no idea that they might fall.

McMullin said he was aware of activity in his room while he was in a drug-induced coma. Later, he teased his mother, who had played one of his favorite Eric Clapton albums. He thought "I Shot the Sheriff" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" were amusing musical choices under the circumstances.

By the time he got to rehab, he felt fine - until he stood. Then he discovered that a brain injury coupled with complete immobility in a hospital can incapacitate even a young and fit man.

"The therapist and my brother, they dragged me down the hallway just to give me the feel of being able to walk," he said.

Later, he banged into people because he didn't realize he couldn't see. He had to learn how to organize his days and remember things.

His family's support was crucial to his recovery, he said. As a therapist, he said, he has seen that support drop off as patients spend more time in treatment. He urged Giffords' family to stick with it and "celebrate any kind of milestone that she makes."

As for Giffords, he said she needs to "be as strong as she can" during her therapy and accept that there will be good and bad days.

"Keep going strong, no matter how things in life turn out, because this new way of doing things . . . will get better," he said. "It will become a normal thing."

[Canadian_watcher]

More details about Loughner, via the Associated Press.

from that article:

Sheriff's deputies had been to the Loughner home at least once before the attack, spokesman Jason Ogan said. He didn't know why or when the visit occurred, and said department lawyers were reviewing the paperwork and expected to release it Wednesday.
The visits were for nonviolent incidents, including a report by Jared Loughner of identity theft, a noise complaint and Amy Loughner's claim that someone had stolen her license plate sticker, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

potentially interesting. let's face it, we do not know who really set up and ran that You Tube account, and he doesn't appear or even speak in any of the videos.