COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
I can't bear to post anything about Las Vegas other than I have grave doubts that we know the whats and hows this atrocity to humanity occurred.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to post this -
ReplyDelete“You’re All Going To Die Tonight”: Who Was The Strange Woman At The Vegas Concert Before The Shooting Started?
ALLAHPUNDITPosted at 5:21 pm on October 2, 2017
Has there been any update on this exceedingly odd clip since it started making the rounds online last night? I can’t find any police statements about it even though it seems like an astounding coincidence that some woman was warning concertgoers they were all going to die less than an hour before the worst mass shooting in American history.
The first, presumptive explanation in a case like this is “hoax,” but I don’t get a hoax vibe from the clip. The eyewitness’s full name is out there; she doesn’t seem drunk, and at one point momentarily appears to be on the verge of tears. She was apparently at the concert with her mom, not with a group of friends whom she might have been inclined to “impress” by making something up to get on TV.
The mystery woman who was supposedly telling people they were about to die wasn’t Marilou Danley, Stephen Paddock’s “companion,” though. That was the assumption when this clip went viral, that Danley was in on the whole thing and couldn’t resist taunting the concertgoers beforehand that they were marked for death. But Danley’s been cleared by Las Vegas police. She wasn’t even in the country. And when you watch the clip, you’ll see that the eyewitness claims that there was a man with the mystery woman — Hispanic, not white, as Paddock was. Were there really three people involved in this murder plot? C’mon.
The Daily Mail appears to have interviewed the eyewitness, as the quote here doesn’t precisely match what she says in the clip below. It also gives you a better sense of exactly what went on with the mystery woman who was threatening people:
Brianna Hendricks, who is in Vegas celebrating her 21st birthday, said: ‘There was a lady who came running up behind us in the concert and she started to play with people’s hair acting crazy and she told us that we’re all going to f***ing die.
‘She said they’re all around us and we were going to die.
‘She was Hispanic, probably about 5ft 5, brown hair. It felt like she had knowledge of what was about to happen, her and her boyfriend who was also Hispanic.
‘The woman was saying her boyfriend couldn’t breath so they could get through the crowd. It seemed she was telling us to either warn us or she was part of it and she was telling us because she knew we were going to die, it was so scary.’
Hendricks never mentions the detail about the woman acting crazy and playing with people’s hair or babbling about “them” being “all around us” in the interview with the reporter below. That makes it sound like the mystery woman was off her nut, possibly high on God knows what drug (it’s Vegas, after all), and paranoid. If she was annoying people by harassing them and they started yelling for security to kick her out, she might have gotten angry and threatened them. It really might have been nothing more than an amazing coincidence.
According to Hendricks, security officers did come and escort the woman out. Assuming they’ve already been interviewed by police, which is a safe assumption, what are we to make of the fact that Las Vegas police hasn’t issued a BOLO for a Hispanic couple matching Hendricks’s description? They must have concluded it was a coincidence too.
VIDEO
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/02/youre-going-die-tonight-strange-woman-vegas-concert-shooting-started/
The shooter seems to have had some big gambling debts.
Bob Massi says everything's gonna be all right..Vegas is resilient....good time to buy....
DeleteI hope we don't have another Spanish Civil War. I don't think that will happen, thankfully.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'm buying this -
ReplyDeleteWAS LAS VEGAS A JIHAD ATTACK?
There is scant reason to doubt ISIS’ claim of responsibility.
October 3, 2017 Robert Spencer
Memphis imam Yasir Qadhi said that the Las Vegas massacre was a manifestation of “white privilege.” Texas imam Omar Suleiman tweeted ridicule of ISIS’ claim of responsibility for the attack: “Breaking: ISIS claims responsibility for hurricane Harvey saying he became Muslim days before hitting Houston.”
They didn’t ridicule the ISIS claim, but unnamed U.S. officials did decisively dismiss it: Reuters reported that “two senior US officials said on Monday that there was no evidence that the shooter who killed at least 50 people in Las Vegas was tied to any international militant group….One of the two US officials discounted Islamic State’s claim of responsibility and said there was reason to believe that the shooter, whom police identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, had a history of psychological problems.”
The only one insisting that the Islamic State was responsible was the Islamic State itself. Its Amaq news agency initially announced: “The Las Vegas attack was carried out by a soldier of the Islamic State and he carried it out in response to calls to target states of the coalition. The Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago.”
Then, after its initial claim was dismissed everywhere, the Islamic State doubled down, issuing an official communiqué identifying Paddock as “Abu Abd Abdulbar al-Ameriki.” Even after their claim was dismissed everywhere, they didn’t back away from it. They don’t seem to be afraid that Stephen Paddock will turn out to be a white supremacist neo-Nazi or some such. They don’t seem to be worried about being exposed as grandiose liars.
And historically, they haven’t been liars, at least when they claimed responsibility for jihad attacks. Islamic State expert Graeme Wood notes in The Atlantic that “the idea that the Islamic State simply scans the news in search of mass killings, then sends out press releases in hope of stealing glory, is false,” and that those who claim that ISIS is in the habit of taking credit for attacks it had nothing to do with “do not have a preponderance of prior examples on their side.” Contradicting Suleiman’s ridicule, Wood notes: “The Islamic State does not claim natural disasters. Its supporters rejoice in them, but they reserve their official media for intentional acts.”
This doesn’t mean that Wood accepts everything ISIS says at face value. He reports one false ISIS claim: “In June, a gambling addict shot up and torched the Resorts World casino in Manila, Philippines. The Islamic State claimed credit, with a dubious follow-up alleging that Jessie Javier Carlos, 42, converted to Islam some months before, without telling anyone. That explanation appears to be a total lie.”
Others, however, disagree. Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said: “It’s very likely that the Resorts World was a terrorist operation.” Veryan Khan, editorial director and founder of Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), added that the attack was not just a terror attack, but specifically an ISIS one, “at the very minimum sanctioned – if not directed – by the Islamic State.”
DeleteWhat’s more, Jones added: “It isn’t true that ISIS has a history of claiming others’ attacks as their own.” And Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda and head of the International Centre for Political Violence & Terrorism Research, likewise vouched for the general veracity of ISIS’ claims of responsibility: “The propaganda organs of ISIS such as Amaq exaggerate but do not falsely take credit for attacks mounted by other entities.”
While social media is abuzz with charges that only racist, bigoted “Islamophobes” are taking the Islamic State’s claim seriously, it should be noted that neither Jones nor Gunaratna have ever been accused of “Islamophobia,” and that both stated that the Islamic State was generally trustworthy in its claims of responsibility not in response to the Las Vegas attack, but back in July.
In light of all this, it looks as if the Las Vegas massacre was likely a jihad attack. But since that doesn’t fit the establishment media narrative, or the agenda of all too many in law enforcement, don’t expect it to be announced forthrightly by any authorities anytime soon, if ever.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268037/was-las-vegas-jihad-attack-robert-spencer
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DeleteHey, who you gonna trust if not Robert Spencer?
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I don't think he was a jihadi.
Delete.
DeleteRobert Spencer?
I don't know he seems to put a lot of faith in the words of ISIS. And if it could happen to Paddock, it could happen to Spencer.
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You be the judge -
ReplyDeleteISIS issues official communique on Las Vegas, identifying Paddock as “Abu Abd Abdulbar al-Ameriki”
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 03:10 pm
ISIS issues official communique on Las Vegas, identifying Paddock as “Abu Abd Abdulbar al-Ameriki”
The Islamic State is not backing off from its claim of responsibility for the Las Vegas massacre. They don’t seem to be afraid that Stephen Paddock will turn out to be a white supremacist neo-Nazi or some such. They don’t seem to be worried about being exposed as grandiose liars. They’re doubling down.
Read in browser »
ISIS issues official communique on Las Vegas, identifying Paddock as “Abu Abd Abdulbar al-Ameriki” on Facebook Google
“It isn’t true that ISIS has a history of claiming others’ attacks as their own”
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 02:25 pm
“It isn’t true that ISIS has a history of claiming others’ attacks as their own”
This is very interesting: Graeme Wood notes here that “the idea that the Islamic State simply scans the news in search of mass killings, then sends out press releases in hope of stealing glory, is false,” and that those who claim that ISIS is in the habit of taking credit for attacks it had nothing […]
Read in browser »
“It isn’t true that ISIS has a history of claiming others’ attacks as their own”
Las Vegas: US officials discount ISIS’s claim of responsibility, say shooter had psychological problems
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 11:16 am
Las Vegas: US officials discount ISIS’s claim of responsibility, say shooter had psychological problems
More of the global outbreak of mental illness? In any case, this would be easier to take seriously were it not for the fact that officials so often ascribe what are obviously jihad attacks to mental illness. This man planned his attack carefully over a long period of time. If he was mentally ill, he […]
Read in browser »
Las Vegas: US officials discount ISIS’s claim of responsibility, say shooter had psychological problems
“Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago”: Islamic State claims responsibility for attack
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 10:26 am
“Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago”: Islamic State claims responsibility for attack
“The Las Vegas attack was carried out by a soldier of the Islamic State and he carried it out in response to calls to target states of the coalition. The Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago.” “Las Vegas Shootout Live: 50 Killed, ISIS Claims Responsibility,” The Quint, October 2, 2017 (thanks […]
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Like “Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago”: Islamic State claims responsibility for attack
The Islamic State called for lone wolf attack on Las Vegas Strip in May video
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 09:52 am
The Islamic State called for lone wolf attack on Las Vegas Strip in May video
The fact that the Islamic State called for such an attack doesn’t mean that the attack last night was a jihad massacre. But no doubt Islamic State jihadis are celebrating. “ISIS called for a lone wolf attack on the Las Vegas Strip in a chilling ‘call to arms’ video released in May,” MailOnline, October 2, […]
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The Islamic State called for lone wolf attack on Las Vegas Strip in May video on Facebook
Initial reports: Las Vegas shooter “recent convert to Islam.” Now: “We have no idea what his belief system was.”
By Robert Spencer on Oct 02, 2017 09:08 am
Initial reports: Las Vegas shooter “recent convert to Islam.” Now: “We have no idea what his belief system was.”
Whence the initial reports? Why the change? No information yet. “Las Vegas gunman identified as 64-year-old Mesquite, NV man,” by David Rosenberg, Arutz Sheva, October 2, 2017: Police take shooter’s female companion into custody after attack which left more than 50 dead, 100 wounded. 2 Police officers among dead. The gunman responsible for a deadly […]
Read in browser »
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?e=ed5f5d431b&u=12857896c3097382b25b80a09&id=5be4ae59d2
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DeleteYou be the judge?
You're kidding, right?
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I can't think of anyone with a more judicious turn of mind than yourself, Quirk, so I leave it in your thoughtful hands.
Deletein your thoughtful brain lobes
Delete.
DeleteA wise choice.
My thoughtful brain lopes (backed up by the Magic 8-Ball by the way) say Spencer is the illegitimate daughter of Pam (aka Hellen) Geller and David Duke. He is either a nitwit or a flaming bigot who will say anything no matter how ridiculous to stir up his low intelligence minions.
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ReplyDeleteFrom Tom's Dispatch,
The Global War of 2030
A sobering analysis of a war not too far into the future, a war that given current trends the US could lose from Alfred W. McCoy's new book In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power.
The strength of the US economy and our strength in science and technology were what won the Cold War. Right now, the trends are all moving in the wrong direction.
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Hope I'm not around to witness it.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like happier news -
DeleteOctober 2, 2017
China openly discussing collapse of North Korea
By Thomas Lifson
China has sent an unmistakable signal that Kim Jong-un had better not rely on the historic alliance between China and North Korea to resist President Trump's demands. In fact, as he dallies with his troop of teen sex slaves, he had better keep in mind that Beijing is wondering what it might be like with the Kim dynasty out of the way.
The Chinese way of delivering such a harsh message is to use a third party – preferably one without a policy role, but who clearly speaks for the ruling elite. Someone, for instance, like the dean of international studies at Beijing University (the Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford of China)....
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/10/china_openly_discussing_collapse_of_north_korea.html#ixzz4uTVnVWvM
WRT your question:
DeleteThe bear in the chair was posted before I knew about Las Vegas.
People thought it was cute that he posed like a human out in the dumps.
ReplyDeleteRichard Clarke's book Against All Enemies has not just pushed the Bush administration deep on to the defensive over its approach to terrorism. It also pokes a stick into another hornet's nest by asking whether the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was not in some way linked to al-Qa'ida.
Nobody, least of all Mr Clarke, is suggesting that al-Qa'ida carried out the bombing, which was pinned primarily on Timothy McVeigh, with help from his old army buddy Terry Nichols. But his book stirs up some troubling unanswered questions about Mr Nichols' many trips to the Philippines in the years preceding the bombing and raises the possibility that he received explosives training from Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993.
...
Mr Clarke notes that both Yousef and Nichols were in Cebu City, a hotbed of activity by the radical Filipino group Abu Sayyaf, on the same days, and that Nichols continued to make phone calls to Cebu for some time afterwards.
"Could the al-Qa'ida explosives expert have been introduced to the angry American who proclaimed his hatred for the US government?" Mr Clarke writes. "We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."
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ReplyDeleteWe do know that Nichols's bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned."
Yousef to Nichols: "No. No. No. The green wire, dammit. Not the blue. How many times do I have to tell you?"
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Taught him to say
Delete"Allah is the greatest"
Ali is the greatest, not allah.
DeleteI don't want to be the only person without a gun, and I'm not.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I posted this:
ReplyDeleteDeuce ☂Mon Oct 02, 05:03:00 PM EDT
For all the assholes , taking smug satisfaction in Stephen Paddock's tribe;
Paddock was living with Marilou Danley. Marilou Danley had been married to Geary Danley.
Geary Danley was an Antifa supporter, a violent Trump hater, and a registered Democrat.
This information was available on his FB page until it was closed this morning. Did they share similar political views?
This was a Country Western event taking place, i.e white Christian conservatives and Republicans.
Was this political?
Paddock seems remarkably similar to the shooter, 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson, who wanted to kill a field load of Republicans. Hodgkinson also.died from injuries sustained when he was shot by police.
Is there a connection?
You better reserve some of that cheap glee that you are pouring.
ReplyDelete
This atrocious crime is getting curiouser and curiouser.The crowd was young, white, conservative, Christian and Republican. This shooter undoubtedly had a handler. This is no lone-wolf. The Left and Trump haters are coalescing to the same junction of making their usual political points. More to come.
Report: Vegas Shooter May Have Targeted A Different Concert In September First
ReplyDeleteALLAHPUNDITPosted at 4:01 pm on October 3, 2017
Some are suggesting on social media that he might have treated this as a “dry run” for the attack he eventually staged in the Mandalay Bay. I don’t know. What could he have learned from spending time in a completely different building overlooking a completely different part of the city? A proper “dry run,” I would think, would have involved renting a room days or weeks before the event you’re actually targeting and surveying the shooting angles from the windows.
SEE ALSO: Rep. Tim Murphy urged woman he had affair with to have abortion
If this is true, it seems more likely that Paddock was prepared to make this concert his target but then chose to back out for whatever reason.
Motive? Vegas shooter was gambling as much as $30,000 per day recently; Update: Wired $100,000 to Philippines
The gunman who murdered at least 59 people at a country-music concert on Sunday might have originally targeted another Las Vegas music festival held the previous weekend, according to a senior law enforcement source.
Stephen Paddock rented multiple condos overlooking the annual Life Is Beautiful Festival, which this year was headlined by Lorde and Chance the Rapper, said the source, who is not directly involved in the investigation but has been briefed on its progress.
The source suggested that Paddock may have lost his nerve or simply changed his plans and checked into the Mandalay Bay Hotel on September 28.
It’s hard to come up with an innocent explanation for why Paddock, who wasn’t known to have close friends apart from his girlfriend, would have needed multiple rooms. Chances are he wasn’t bringing the boys out to Vegas for a weekend of fun at the festival; he probably wanted multiple condos so he’d have multiple positions to fire from, just as he had at Mandalay Bay. So much as well for the theory floating around that Paddock targeted the Jason Aldean concert because he had a special grievance against country music fans, whether because they’re more likely to be right-wing or because Paddock himself was allegedly a country fan who wanted to kill like-minded people for whatever weird reason. The Life Is Beautiful Festival is geared towards pop and hip-hop fans.
One possibly important thing to note about the festival is that it’s spread out across a neighborhood in downtown Vegas. You can see a map of this year’s event here. All in all, it encompassed 18 city blocks and featured multiple stages for music. Maybe Paddock couldn’t find rooms to rent with a good view of any of the main stages and concluded that the festival grounds were so sprawling that it’d be hard to find concentrations of people penned in anywhere as sitting ducks otherwise. Once he started firing, victims could flee the area in all directions. The Aldean concert was much more concentrated, in one city block. Particularly if Paddock suspected his aim would be erratic using “bump fire,” he’d want a tightly packed crowd to maximize casualties.
As for the great motive mystery — nope, still no leads as I write this:
Delete“All of the normal indicators that we would normally see, people two or three days later say, ‘A-ha, now I understand, I know what was going on in this guy’s life,'” Van Zandt said on “TODAY.” In Paddock’s case, “we don’t know.”…
Investigators said his residence in the desert community of Mesquite, northeast of Las Vegas, didn’t immediately turn up notes, emails or social media postings explaining his actions, but a computer from the home was found.
He did apparently gamble at least $160,000 in the weeks before the attack but whether that was unusual for him or whether he won more than he lost or vice versa is still unclear.
A creepy little curio that’s emerged online today are videos taken inside Paddock’s suite at Mandalay Bay — not by Paddock himself, and not after the shooting. These are videos taken by guests who, by chance, stayed in Room 32-135 in the past and recorded panoramas of the room on their phones, so impressed were they by the views it afforded of the Strip. CNN has posted one on its website although I can’t find an embeddable version. The clip below also purports to be of the same room. I believe that’s the concert ground visible briefly at 1:35.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/03/report-vegas-shooter-may-targeted-different-concert-september-first/
THE Las Vegas gunman originally planned to attack a music festival headlined by Lorde and Chance the Rapper in the city a week before the deadly shooting, according to reports.
ReplyDeleteStephen Paddock rented several apartments overlooking the annual Life Is Beautiful Festival, a source briefed on the investigation’s progress told the Daily Beast.
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Sheriff Joe Lombardo told media on Wednesday morning all but three of the 59 victims had been identified. The number of injured had dropped by about 20 due to double counting at a hospital.
He could not specify how many were still critical or what injuries they had, but they ranged from gunshot wounds to trampling injuries. There were about 520 injured people.
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He ended the media conference with a plea to the public to come forward with any information they had.
“See something, say something. Don’t be afraid to bother us”.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the new anti-terrorism law passed in the lower house of the French parliament with 415 of 577 total votes. Macron's administration immediately celebrated the result.
ReplyDelete...
Others were less sanguine. "Macron has officially discredited France as a country of human rights and [the] rule of law," Yasser Louati, a prominent French human rights activist, wrote in a statement.
"Now stop lecturing other countries."
SPAIN’S King Felipe VI has accused Catalan secessionist leaders of shattering democratic principles and dividing Catalan society, as thousands took to the streets to protest against a violent police crackdown against the banned independence referendum.
ReplyDelete...
Carlos Cardello, a 57-year-old engineer, vowed that this huge swell of peaceful protest would not die down.
“We will keep going until someone listens to us,” he said.
She previously was married to Arkansas resident Geary Danley, until the pair divorced in 2015.
ReplyDeleteA person listed as her witness in the divorce records insisted Danley isn’t connected with Paddock’s behaviour.
“She had nothing to do with this psycho,” the man, who was not identified, told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “The poor lady, she is in The Philippines visiting family.”
Paddock's brother Eric said he could not understand how he got to the point of shooting at the festival.
ReplyDelete...
"I hope to hell they find when they do the autopsy, that there's a tumour in his head or something, because if they don’t we’re all in trouble.
"This is a horror story in every possible way."
Shooter’s girlfriend arrives in US
ReplyDeletehttp://fox61.com/2017/10/04/official-shooters-girlfriend-arrives-in-us/
If I were her I think I'd stay in the Philippines.
DeleteThe shooter's father was crazy.
DeleteIt must run in that family.
President Donald Trump says the gunman behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas was 'a very, very sick individual' but declined to call it domestic terrorism.
ReplyDelete'We'll be talking about gun laws as times goes by,' Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
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Lombardo said a search of the suspect's car turned up a supply of ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser compound that can be formed into explosives and was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office building that killed 168 people.
I'm a little distressed Bob'Vegas'Massi didn't take a non lethal hit in the ass.
DeleteJust a scratch, mind you, so he'd be off of TV for a while.
We have this to celebrate -
ReplyDeletePhysicists Find We’re Not Living In A Computer Simulation
In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi show that constructing a computer simulation of a particular quantum phenomenon that occurs in metals is impossible – not just practically, but in principle.
The pair initially set out to see whether it was possible to use a technique known as quantum Monte Carlo to study the quantum Hall effect – a phenomenon in physical systems that exhibit strong magnetic fields and very low temperatures, and manifests as an energy current that runs across the temperature gradient. The phenomenon indicates an anomaly in the underlying space-time geometry.
https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2017/10/physicists-find-not-living-computer-simulation/
We are real.
I think.
Even Quirk.