Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire
While the media spotlight continues to shine on the small town of Roseburg, Oregon following a heavily dramatized and ‘politicized’ mass-shooting at Umpqua Community College on October 1st, there are many important revelations to consider.
‘SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING’ – Police follow emergency protocols at UCC campus in the aftermath of another questionable mass-shooting event. The well-known phrase “see something, say something” was originally crafted by the advertising firm Korey Kay & Partners and was not picked up by DHS at first – as it was only a “creative exercise,” according to the ad firm. (Photo BendBulletin)
Roseburg In The Spotlight
One week after an apparent mass-shooting at Umpqua Community College, President Barack Obama headed to Roseburg, Oregon, to meet with survivors and families of victims in private. In a bizarre coincidence, there were two other shootings flooding news reports just before the president’s controversial visit.
Also prior to the president’s arrival, many locals in Roseburg were not so happy about what appeared to be a politically transparent trip. And before the ‘Commander in Chief’ could make his way off the tarmac, many were already accusing the leader of ‘grandstanding’ in the wake of a tragedy, while attempting to further his own political agenda concerning new gun control laws.
Here’s a passage from an article published at the The Oregonian describing the views of some local residents:
“My family, my friends, everybody down here is not happy about him coming,” says Michelle Finn, a Roseburg resident who attended Umpqua Community College. “He already says he’s going to politicize this – he’s already going to push his agenda. And if he knew Roseburg and Douglas County, he’d know these are the wrong people to be doing that with.”
‘NOT WELCOME’ – Some local residents contend President Obama is exploiting the recent tragedy in Roseburg, Oregon – for political gain. (Photo Katu)
Nudging Tragedy Into Politics
Friday saw residents of Roseburg, Oregon and families apparently connected to the UCC shooting object to the high-profile visit by the president, revealing a larger political aspect to one of the most polarizing mass-shootings in recent memory, and especially since the Sandy Hook School Shooting in 2012.
Last week, while speaking from the highly symbolic ‘James S. Brady’ Press Briefing Room, President Obama wasted no time (roughly 4 hours after the actual shooting) “politicizing” the UCC campus shooting, as he invoked other mass-shooting events, by discussing his agenda to push gun reform forward in America.
While many gathered in Roseburg in opposition to the president’s visit, there appears to be some overlapping elements of this story, as media reports may likely use the presidential visit as a way to shore-up the official narrative of the UCC shooting – even though there is still so much to question regarding the highly suspicious and anomaly-ridden incident.
As pointed out in 21WIRE‘s first report about the Oregon shooting, the primary focus for mass media concerning the UCC shooting, will now be all of the hot button socio-political issues including ‘gun control-reform’ and those concerned over ‘mental illness’ background checks, along with those who constitutionally oppose such restrictive legislation.
It should be obvious by now that events like Oregon, along with other ‘mass-shootings’, have become a sharp catalyst to usher in calls for endless new ‘mass shooting’ protocols, inter-agency ‘fusion’, ‘first-responder’ emergency medical protocols, and also for injecting more and more military terminology into civilian life – with the media playing a critical role in steering the public away from questioning any of the dubious elements surrounding any shooting event.
In a sense, the media is helping to nudge these shooting events out of the forensic sphere and into the political arena as quickly as possible, effectively closing the feedback loop of concerned citizens and those who may have been affected by an event.
The Washington Post reveals that in the days leading up the UCC shooting, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her astronaut husband Mark Kelly, were lobbying for gun control at the White House:
“Nine days before a shooter opened fire on the Umpqua Community College campus, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly, were at the White House to reiterate a long-standing request that those private dealers who sell a sizable number of guns conduct background checks on buyers. The proposed rule change would clarify what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
In a meeting with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Giffords and Kelly, who became gun-control activists after Giffords was seriously wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, were pushing for a regulatory change that administration officials considered — but then shelved — nearly two years ago.
The proposed executive action aims to impose background checks on individuals who buy from dealers who sell a significant number of guns each year.”
The report goes on to state, that in 2013, DOJ Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured above), felt the new gun regulations regarding the amount of guns sold by law abiding citizens annually, was “legally defensible.” However, it seemed the stakes were much to high for an administration that was embroiled in a large gunrunning scandal the year before – with Attorney General Holder being accused of playing a bigger role in the covert ‘gun-walking’ program that intentionally sent thousands of illegal guns into Mexico under Operation Fast & Furious.
It’s worth noting again, that specific Justice Department documents related to the ‘Fast & Furious’ program were withheld from a Congressional inquiry and Holder became the first sitting member of the Cabinet of the United States to be held in contempt of Congress on June 28, 2012. Holder was protected by executive privilege in a bold and controversial move by the White House just minutes before the attorney general was held in contempt. Incidentally, 64,280 redacted pages of Operation Fast & Furious were released in 2014 – with many documents still pending.
The real irony here of course, is that you have an administration attempting to implement restrictive gun reform and threatening the use of executive order to do so following the events in Oregon and other more recent shooting events – just two years removed from an extremely controversial gunrunning program operated by the Department of Justice.
Naturally, this has prompted many critics to question the credibility of this latest political move to challenge gun laws in America.
‘FROM GUNWALKING TO GUN REFORM’ – Weapons connected to ‘Operation Fast & Furious’ recovered by the Mexican military in 2009. One suspect, Uriel Patino, bought 723 guns during the operation. (Photo Wiki)
Machinations Of A Gun Bill Signed Into Law
While observing the tides of tragedy shift into a political spectrum so soon after a major mass casualty event, we have to consider the very real possibility that these are agenda-driven events – with numerous ‘coincidences’ involved in Oregon, in addition to other mass-shootings that may indeed be a larger agenda to restrict gun rights, as well as access to legally obtained firearms in the United States.
At the very least, even if you accept these highly theatrical shootings at face value, a case could be made that there are high-ranking political officials exploiting those said to have fallen – in favor of their own political beliefs.
Has a political debate superseded a proper forensic investigation into this most recent shooting tragedy in Oregon?
POLITICAL DEBATE’ – Oregon Senator Merkley, is actively pushing new gun reform legislation days after a tragedy in Oregon. (Photo OregonLive)
Excluding President Obama’s obvious intentions, the public has witnessed Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley waste no time discussing gun reform after revealing that he was related to one of the victims from the UCC shooting, as recently pointed out by 21WIRE. Not only was Merkley’s relation to a victim a startling coincidence, but it also displays the depths at which those in politics will sink to in order to push a particular agenda – even in the face of personal loss.
One week after the UCC shooting, Merkley along with fellow Democratic US Senator Ron Wyden, and Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown unveiled seemingly ‘ready-made’ gun reform legislation.
Here’s a passage from The Register-Guard:
“Sen. Ron Wyden said ending “the carnage” will take more than words.
“Ending these massacres is going to be about compromise” between gun rights advocates and those who want stricter gun control, Wyden said. “And Oregon is exactly the place to lead this conversation.”
Below we see Merkley’s shocking disclosure regarding his family’s connection to the shooting in Oregon:
“One of the dead is the great-granddaughter of his first cousin, Merkley said.”
“No one could have envisioned that here in this wonderful place of Roseburg that this could happen,” he said, adding that it was the 45th mass shooting in America so far in 2015. “This is a small community. It’s a community where everyone knows someone who was hurt or killed yesterday.”
Other local media reports stated that Senator Merkley, praised the emergency response at UCC as they worked in conjunction with local government officials – in the Senator’s hometown in Douglas County Roseburg, Oregon.
Back in May, The Oregonian reported that new gun measures were already signed into law by State Governor Kate Brown:
“Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Monday signed a bill requiring background checks on private gun sales, marking the first time in more than 14 years that the state has significantly tightened its firearms laws.”
“We have an obligation to protect Oregonians from gun violence,” Brown said before signing Senate Bill 941. “If we want to keep our kids, schools and communities safe, we must make it harder for dangerous people to get guns.”
Again, it’s important to reiterate, that a sweeping background check was already signed into law in the state of Oregon prior to the UCC shooting taking place. And that Harper Mercer, purchased his guns legally – prompting many pundits and citizens alike, to assert that harsher gun laws would not have prevented the shooting from happening.
Incidentally, one of authors of Senate Bill 941, Democratic Senator Floyd Prozanski, was the subject of a recall petition, as were three other legislators this year – following disapproval over the bill’s contents. And according to Patricia Michaelson-Duffy, a Republican precinct committee person in Lane County, Senate bill 941 would have turned “law abiding citizens into criminals” because of inevitable violations associated with gun storage stipulated in the bill’s language.
While all of the political drama concerning the UCC shooting is still unfolding, it’s important to continue to seek answers with regard to the seemingly orchestrated event on display last week as there was evidence of numerous multi-agency drills held prior the event, as well as a number of other bizarre coincidences and anomalies attached to the incident – that just don’t add up.
‘GUN CONTROL AGENDA?’ – Ian Mercer, the man stated to be the father of Chris Harper Mercer, took to the airwaves to advocate gun control – less than 48 hours after the apparent UCC shooting. (Photo dawgonnit)
‘Daily Shooter’ Rabbit Hole: Wyden and the TPP
Some critics contend that the latest mass-shooting in Oregon could have provided convenient cover for the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) during some of its crucial final steps, as it has been slated for ratification over the next two years according to the countries involved.
Although this ‘conspiracy theory’ is impossible to prove, it’s still worth pointing out – as we noted in our article about the Charleston church shooting – how the US House of Representatives pushed through a ‘fast-track’ Trade Promotion Authority, enabling large-scale trade deals such as the highly unpopular and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to move ahead with little to no obstruction from US leaders in the aftermath of the shooting tragedy said to have taken place.
Interestingly, Senator Wyden, sits on the Chair of the Congressional Committee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, and has apparently been denied the ability to review certain text during the drafting of the trade deal while in its final stages. However, it was revealed that Senator Wyden was actively working to negotiate the ‘fast-track’ TPP authority that effectively paves the way for the TPP and other such deals.
It’s important to note that Wyden along with several other congressional holdouts concerning the recently approved TPP fast-track – all received large donations to their campaign fund leading up to fast-track provision passing.
The public will most likely never know if the Oregon shooting played a crucial role in obscuring scrutiny over some of the final steps of the TPP – but many researchers will always wonder.
In addition to grumblings over the TPP and a possible connection to what happened in Oregon, there other anomalies regarding the UCC shooting not mentioned in our previous report.
Daily Shooter Fundraising Machine
Lightening fast fundraising campaigns are now part and parcel of every Daily Shooter event. Oregon was no exception, with the Chris Mintz campaign leading the way, gathering nearly $1,000,000 in just over a week.
In another more revealing element in the YouTube video analysis below, was the creation of a United Way relief fund within hours of the UCC shooting. Prompting many to question how would it be possible to coordinate such an effort so quickly with a local bank branch.
Watch the video below from the YouTube user Professor Doom, as he discusses some relevant aspects regarding the seemingly orchestrated Oregon shooting at UCC…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9NV5QOgHUs
Here’s a link to the United Way and Umpqua Bank fund, mentioned in the YouTube clip above.
Similarly, only 48 hours after the dramatic made-for-TV shooting in Roanoke, Virginia back in August, a scholarship endowment fund was set up for the victim, TV news reporter Alison Parker, set up for her alma mater James Madison University. The victim’s alleged ‘secret boyfriend’, Chris Hurst, a fellow personality at CBS Affiliate WDBJ7, could be seen directing viewers where to donate funds on national TV – less than 48 hrs after the shooting event.
VIRGINIA TV SHOOTING: Chris Hurst clutches America’s most famous photo album.
Additionally, the informative YouTube clip from Professor Doom also discusses the ICS Expanding Incidents training from April 28th-30th and May 27th-28th.
Dovetailing what is described in that video, 21WIRE was able to locate a document outlining a number of scheduled ARES Emergency Communications for Incident Command Centers within Douglas County. The communications are setup for various emergency response exercises held over the entire calendar year.
In our first report shortly after the UCC shooting took place, we noted how Douglas County and other parts of Oregon have become a hot-bed for emergency related federally-funded ‘fusion’ drills.
AMERICA’S OBSESSION WITH THE ‘ACTIVE SHOOTER’ – Since the Sandy Hook School shooting, active-shooter drills other inter-agency drills have cascaded across the nation. (Photo stltoday)
When Did a ‘Shooter’ Become an Active-Shooter?
Few have stopped to even consider the language that has been thrust upon society in recent years. It might seem trivial, but it’s actually crucial. Since when did a mere ‘shooter’ become an Active Shooter?
Just as ‘cars’ quietly became vehicles, the ‘Active Shooter’ phenomenon is a good example of the state and its media partners implementing basic neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) which acts a central component to the mass psychological operation. More specifically, this is technical, militarized language that is being deployed into the civilian sphere. You might call it the new ‘Police State Speak.’ Naturally this gives the impression of a cold, mechanized threat, and this ‘threat’ has somehow been normalized by its repeated use throughout all levels of the society and state agencies.
Soon, we may find ourselves living in a perpetual security drill.
In an article published at The Oregonian from April of 2015, it was stated that Linda McLean, a teacher from Pine Eagle Charter School in Halfway, Oregon, was apparently subjected to psychological abuse due to an ‘active shooter’ drill that was organized by school staff and administrators. Here’s a description of the scene from the 2013 drill:
“A man dressed in a black hoodie and goggles suddenly burst through her classroom door. He leveled a pistol at McLean’s face and pulled the trigger. The terrified teacher heard gunfire, smelled smoke, felt her heart racing, she says. “You’re dead,” the gunman said, and stalked out of her room.”
The article then goes on suggest that due to the traumatic episode conducted without Mclean’s consent or knowledge a lawsuit was drafted implicating the planners of the drill:
“McLean was a casualty of what she now describes in a federal lawsuit as a harebrained drill in the middle of an in-service day – April 26, 2013 – that has left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.”
McLean’s suit names several members of the school board, along with Alpine Alarm Communications and Construction LLC as well as Shawn Thatcher, the school’s safety officer, the man who pointed the gun at her head during the mock-shooting event.
Continuing, The Oregonian stated the following:
“Those who organized the drill have shunned McLean and, from time to time, treated her with hostility, the suit says.”
“McLain’s complaint seeks economic damages for her involuntary separation from employment, her medical and psychological treatment, and the loss of retirement contributions and fringe benefits. She also seeks punitive damages and attorney fees.”
The article added that John Minarich, the vice chair of the district’s school board and owner of Alpine Alarms, helped carry out the active-shooter drill at Pine Eagle. The Pine Eagle drill was conducted just four months after the Sandy Hook incident.
Here we see footage of a staged drill, including interviews with young crisis actors…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkmlMGsst5c
Recently, 21WIRE, also highlighted an article entitled,”Where Have All the Crisis Actors Gone?“, written by Professor James Tracy. Within the article’s contents, we see a clear connection between social media, law enforcement and emergency protocols during a catastrophic event. Here’s a from Tracy’s informative piece below:
“Yet there may be much more to the Visionbox Crisis Actors project reverberating through the flurry of alleged shooting incidents taking place since the early 2010s. For example, Visionbox is proficient in using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to “broadcast” a catastrophic event to both participant “actors” and the public at large. In addition, the theatric entourage/ is also knowledgeable at “crowdsourcing,” or monitoring how an event is relayed and interpreted through the body politic via Facebook, Twitter, and so on.”
“In December 2012 Visionbox Crisis Actors produced a detailed 73-page syllabus, “Social Media in Emergency Management,” an instructional class foregrounding the central role of social media to coordinate and convey a catastrophic event.”
As ‘Visionbox Crisis Actors’ appears to have vanished, it seems that other private companies are now involved in facilitating these active-shooter scenarios. Many critics of these scenarios, suggest that since the activation of these training drills at schools and other locations, we’ve also seen a rise in apparent ‘real-life’ mass-shooting tragedies.
One day after the Lafayette shooting back in August, The Washington Post published an article listing the apparent number of mass shootings in America. According to the ‘Mass Shooting Tracker’ the definition of a mass-shooting event has changed to include a larger number of shootings. There is no doubt this new way of looking at the statistics, will invoke a more emotionally charged response for maximum effect:
“The Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced project of the anti-gun folks at the Guns Are Cool subreddit, lists 203 mass shooting events so far in 2015. Add in the shooting at a Louisiana movie theater last night and you get 204. Incidentally, yesterday was the 204th day of the year.”
Currently, ShootingTracker.com now lists 319 mass-shootings in 2015 so far and London’s Guardian, recently published an article claiming there have been 1,000 mass-shootings since Sandy Hook.
No matter how you slice it, even if the shooting statistics have been skewed, the rise in shootings also seems to correlate with the increase in active-shooter training drills.
Hashtag Campaigns
Additionally, one cannot ignore the overwhelming role social media now plays in each new mass-shooting event, as well as its timely coordination with inter-agency mass casualty drills.
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, we noted the burgeoning social marketing campaign attached to that apparent crisis. It followed other manufactured hashtags for the masses, such as the dreadful US State Department propaganda seen during #Kony2012 and the Bokoharam #BringBackOurGirls campaign. But nothing was more effective than #JeSuisCharlie, as it was trending worldwide a few short hours after the theatrical shooting seen in Paris.
‘CRISIS HASHSTAG’ – The Ford Foundation has reportedly provided financial grants to certain programs targeting the restriction of gun ownership and gun rights in the United States. (Photo TFFF.org)
These days, this virtual conveyor-belt of social media campaigns seems to be automatically activated during ‘mass shooting’ media coverage, and persist for an average of 72 hours after the event, before subsiding and giving way to new subplots and new Daily Shooter events. #BostonStrong, #LayfayetteStrong, #CharlestonStrong, #ChattanoogaStrong, #NashvilleStrong, #GarlandStrong and #RoseburgStrong – are just a few of these.
Aside from giving crowds a place to show their support for the victims and victims families, these Hashtag campaigns allow the general public to become stakeholders in the event, as well as provide social media metrics used to calculate potential political capital, and with which campaigners and gun-reform advocates might also point to in order to socially validate the political ‘significance’ of the event.
‘The Mother Enabler’
Mirroring the Adam Lanza narrative, the Oregon shooting has a similar mysterious ‘Mother enabler’ character inserted into the drama. Lanza’s mother, Nancy Lanza (who was written out of the story before anyone could cross-examine her) was said to have purchased all of her son’s firearms for him (so the story goes).
According to vague media reports, we’re told the mother of the apparent UCC shooter, Laurel Margaret Harper, “stockpiled firearms because she feared stricter gun laws — and shopped around for a shooting range that would let her and her son fire away without supervision,” according to Shelly Steele who hired the 64 year-old nurse as she spoke to New York Daily News.
Continuing:
“Steele told the Daily News that Harper was a “wonderful nurse” and “detail oriented,” but was “always very edgy.” She said Harper once refused to take an ID photo.”
As a barrage of media reports continue to cloud the details surrounding the UCC shooting with a story line that seems improbable, it emerged that Mercer’s mother had allegedly written on a Yahoo Answers section under the avatar TweetyBird, some three years ago discussing the use of firearms.
There were other comments allegedly linked to Harper through her now deleted Facebook profile, fitting into the ‘trial by social media‘ formula we’ve outlined in other shooter related tales.
‘ESTRANGED’ – Laurel Margaret Harper seen on the right side of photo. She listed as being a licensed nurse who worked for an agency locally. (Photo nydailynews)
Is the sudden revelation of Laurel Harper’s apparent social media presence another strange red herring in this case?
Some researchers actively reviewing this case, including 21WIRE, have questioned the lack of Laurel Harper’s presence since the UCC shooting, digital or otherwise. And background information appears to have been drip fed to the public, as it appears she was divorced in 2006 and lived in an apartment in California prior to relocating to Oregon in 2013 with her son.
Those concerned about the case, have wondered why Laurel Harper has not spoken to media about this case. If nothing else, the public may be able to gain some insight on what might have transpired leading up to the UCC shooting.
Key Questions Remain
Heavy.com noted the following:
“According to the Los Angeles Times, Laurel Harper married her Ian Mercer in 1989, but they separated just 11 months later. They officially divorced in 2006, citing irreconcilable differences, and shared joint legal custody of Harper-Mercer until he turned 18.”
The article continues by stating the following:
“They moved to Winchester, Oregon, in 2013, where they lived together in an apartment. Harper, like her son, had Asperger syndrome.”
So much of this case appears to echo details seen in the aftermath of Sandy Hook.
Strangely, perhaps the most bizarre information about Harper to emerge to date, was that she allegedly read Donald Trump’s best selling book, Art of the Deal, aloud to her son while pregnant and that Mercer had been turning a profit on the investment market by learning through the gesture effect.
From a PR perspective, the comment below seems to serve two purposes – as we see a dark light cast upon the current GOP front-runner Trump (continuously maligned by the media and the political establishment) via a planted association with an apparently deranged individual, as the other purpose attempts to vaguely explain how Mercer was able to acquire such high-grade weaponry. The passage below is from Heavy.com:
“These two activities help develop language skills and may help develop other skills as well. Fact: Before my son was even born, I was reading out loud to him from Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal”. And as for the “gesture effect”, I was practically a mime. And now my son invests in the stock market along with me, turns a profit and is working on a degree in finance. His language and reading skills are phenomenal.”
Another troubling aspect surrounding the Oregon shooting was the strange observation of a next door neighbor mentioning that there was an ‘unknown man’ seen with Harper Mercer at his apartment prior to the UCC incident.
Here’s an interview from The Oregonian that briefly mentions the strange man seen with Harper-Mercer…
There are a number of anomalies associated with the Oregon Shooting, many of which will fade into the internet ether – as the media appears to have shut the door on this case by steering the public away from any forensic inquiry, and instead redirecting the public’s focus on calls for gun reform in America.
Until the next one…
READ MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter Files
