Newtown shooting theory-the government did it.

[displacedinMN]

This was in the St. Paul paper this morning. I don't know how much press it will get.
This will make everyone throw up. This guy must be completely nuts.


Retired UMD professor theorizes that government behind Newtown massacre
By Jana Hollingsworth
Duluth News Tribune
Posted: 01/04/2013 12:01:00 AM CST
Updated: 01/04/2013 06:19:15 PM CST

A retired University of Minnesota-Duluth professor known for his conspiracy theories on John F. Kennedy's assassination, the 9/11 attacks and the Paul Wellstone plane crash has found himself in the news again -- this time for claiming the U.S. government was involved in the Newtown, Conn., school shootings.

In his online writings, James Fetzer cites chief among his credentials his ties to UMD, a fact lamented by at least one professor at another university.

Fetzer, also an author and former Marine Corps officer, claims in an online journal that Israeli Mossad death squads and the U.S. government might have been behind the school shootings in Connecticut. At the end of his piece, Fetzer describes himself as an emeritus professor at UMD, and he uses his UMD e-mail address as his contact.

UMD officials say Fetzer has the right to express his views -- but he also has the responsibility to make clear he's not speaking for the university.

Other retired UMD faculty members have been identified as emeriti when writing opinion pieces in the pages of the News Tribune, including physician Robert Goldish and American Indian studies professor Robert Powless.

Fetzer's Newtown conspiracy theory earned him a mention by writer Michael Moynihan in the online magazine "Daily Beast," an article titled: "Newtown Conspiracy Theories: Obama, Iran, and Other Culprits." Beneath that, a secondary headline reads: "The government was behind the school massacre. Wait, it was Obama,
in a ruse to take our guns away. No, it was Iran! Israel! Batman! Michael Moynihan on the paranoid wing's 'real truth' about Sandy Hook."

Fetzer writes in his online column, published on "Press TV and "Veterans Today": "The Sandy Hook massacre appears to have been a psy op intended to strike fear in the hearts of Americans by the sheer brutality of the massacre, where the killing of children is a signature of terror ops conducted by agents of Israel."

The act, Fetzer said in an interview with the News Tribune, "is part of an escalating series of covert operations intended to create hysteria in the American people in order to support gun control legislation that completely subverts the Second Amendment."

Fetzer lists his UMD e-mail address as the way for readers to contact him, which was granted to him as part of his retirement package. He says he doesn't speak for UMD and that UMD hasn't suggested he refrain from connecting himself to the university.

"There is something called freedom of research, freedom of inquiry," he said, "which the University of Minnesota has respected. I can't imagine why any university would want to discourage its faculty from exercising their independent thought and critical reasoning ability."

Faculty, including faculty emeriti, are protected by the Regents Policy on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, according to Andrea Schokker, executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at UMD. The policy protects the freedom of creative expression and to speak or write on matters of public interest without institutional discipline or restraint. That comes with the responsibility to make it clear that one isn't speaking for the institution, she said.

But to the average person who reads the Fetzer piece, it appears Fetzer represents UMD, said Donna Halper, an associate professor of communication at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. Fetzer identifies himself as a UMD professor emeritus and notes his faculty page on UMD's website.

"For a professor to be spreading stereotypes under the guise of academic freedom is profoundly disappointing," said Halper, whose earlier career in radio led her to Duluth several times. She found Duluth to be tolerant and compassionate, she said, and she was surprised to read Fetzer's work, which she classified as a "fringe view."

"I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to speak, but ... when it comes from a professor, it makes me wonder: What did he teach his students?" asked Halper, who teaches courses on philosophy and communication ethics. "Here you have someone who is allegedly an educated person spreading such uneducated opinions in the name of Duluth. That's outrageous."

Fetzer, of Oregon, Wis., and a professor of philosophy, spent 35 years teaching at universities, 19 of those years at UMD. He was awarded a McKnight Professorship from the University of Minnesota in 1996, which included a $100,000 research grant. He retired from UMD in 2006.

He has an Internet radio show, has written more than two dozen books and has become a well-known voice among those who claim that Kennedy was assassinated by his own government. He also theorizes that the U.S. government was involved in the Wellstone plane crash and the 9/11 attacks.

As a philosopher, Fetzer said, he cares about the truth, and his scientific research has revealed that "the government lies to us."

[KChiefer]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Just to humor us, why not also mention your opinion on that floating shit. Otherwise, it's reasonable to believe that if you are helping to spread it, that you are inclinded to believe it.

Cosmo, you'd make a good sharpshooter.

[Jerm]

I will say this, like 9/11 it's the absolute perfect cover for any sort of agenda or black op simply because if children are involved, a majority of the people won't question it. Just like with a "terrorist attack" esp. on our soil, it touches a nerve with people and their emotions and feelings take over. You take a slaughtering of children and just about everyone is going to go with what is put out there, even if you say aliens did it.

Not saying Sandy Hook is a conspiracy because I haven't looked into it enough...having said that, with what I've looked at so far there's a shit ton of inconsistencies, odd "coincidences" (as there are more times than not), and things that look really, really fishy.

FEMA's running of a drill the day of shooting 20 miles away pertaining to children and crisis situations is EXTREMELY odd and quite questionable...just like the same situation with them and 9/11, the London Bombings, and Aurora.

[-King-]

“I don’t know what to do,” sighed Gene Rosen. “I’m getting hang-up calls, I’m getting some calls, I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor, ‘how much am I being paid?’” Someone posted a photo of his house online. There have been phony Google+ and YouTube accounts created in his name, messages on white supremacist message boards ridiculing the “emotional Jewish guy,” and dozens of blog posts and videos “exposing” him as a fraud. One email purporting to be a business inquiry taunted: “How are all those little students doing? You know, the ones that showed up at your house after the ‘shooting’. What is the going rate for getting involved in a gov’t sponsored hoax anyway?”

“The quantity of the material is overwhelming,” he said. So much so that a friend shields him from most of it by doing daily sweeps of the Web so Rosen doesn’t have to. His wife is worried for their safety. He’s logged every email and every call, and consulted with a retired state police officer, who took the complaint seriously but said police probably can’t do anything at the moment; he plans to do the same with the FBI.

What did Rosen do to deserve this? One month ago, he found six little children and a bus driver at the end of the driveway of his home in Newtown, Conn. “We can’t go back to school,” one little boy told Rosen. “Our teacher is dead.” He brought them inside and gave them food and juice and toys. He called their parents. He sat with them and listened to their shocked accounts of what had happened just down the street inside Sandy Hook Elementary, close enough that Rosen heard the gunshots.

In the hours and days that followed, Rosen did a lot of media interviews. “I wanted to speak about the bravery of the children, and it kind of helped me work through this,” he told Salon in an interview. “I guess I kind of opened myself up to this.”

The “this” in question is becoming a prime target of the burgeoning Sandy Hook truther movement, which — like its precursor that denied the veracity of the 9/11 terror attacks — alleges that the entire shooting was a hoax of some kind. There were conspiracy theories surrounding the shooting from Day One, but the movement has exploded into public view the past two weeks, and a Google Trends search suggests it’s just now picking up steam. It’s also beginning to earn the backing of presumably credible sources like a professor and a reporter.

Rosen, a 69-year-old retired psychologist who now runs a pet-sitting business and volunteers to read books to kids in schools, initially called me to ask if I thought he should reach out to the FBI about the harassment. I said it probably couldn’t hurt. When I asked if I could tell his story, he was reluctant at first. “Here’s my fear: If I start talking like this, will one of these truthers read this and will it embolden them? Will they say, screw that guy, how dare he impugn our credibility or question our intellect, I’m going to go one step farther? Am I being stupid?” he asked.

After thinking about it, Rosen decided that he had to speak out: “I talk to you about this because I feel that there has to be some moral push-back on this.” Rosen said he’s a staunch believer in free speech, and realizes there is little legal recourse possible unless he gets direct threats, so he had a different idea.

“There must be some way to morally shame these people, because there were 20 dead children lying an eighth of a mile from my window all night long,” he said, choking back tears. “And I sat there with my wife, because they couldn’t take the bodies out that night so the medical examiner could come. And I thought of an expression, that this ‘adds insult to injury,’ but that’s a stupid expression, because this is not an injury, this is an abomination.”

The harassment has turned Rosen’s life upside down, and made him feel things once foreign to him, like searing rage. “I was sitting in a restaurant the other night and these guys who were part of a car club came up to me and shook my hand and said, ‘You know, you’re a hero to me.’ He had seen me on TV. So I said thank you. Then I’m sitting there and I hear this other guy, ‘Oh yeah, it was a conspiracy.’ He was a big guy,” he said.

“I tell you what, I had evil thoughts. I wanted to go over to the first guy, and he had about 15 big guys with him, and say, ‘I’m going to go talk to this other guy — just watch my back.’ And then I wanted to go over to the other guy and get up in his face and say, ‘See those guys over there, just know they’re keeping an eye out for me.’ And then I wanted to say, ‘I want to see what you look like. I want to see what a person who generates this kind of evil shit looks like. I want to look at your face and tell you you’re an asshole,’” he said.

He didn’t do it, of course. “But it tells me how rageful I am. And I am rageful about it, both for the children and for the mother of the child who came to my house looking for her son, and I wanted to look at this guy and I wanted to just ****ing decimate him. That’s my rage.”

But when he starts to feel that way, Rosen can think of the first man. And the countless others out there who see Rosen as a hero, and not a tool of some shadowy conspiracy. Because for every angry call or email, there any many, many more praising ones: “I get the most beautifully written cards, wonderful calls.” Let’s hope they continue to be the majority.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Jerm

I will say this, like 9/11 it's the absolute perfect cover for any sort of agenda or black op simply because if children are involved, a majority of the people won't question it. Just like with a "terrorist attack" esp. on our soil, it touches a nerve with people and their emotions and feelings take over. You take a slaughtering of children and just about everyone is going to go with what is put out there, even if you say aliens did it.

Not saying Sandy Hook is a conspiracy because I haven't looked into it enough...having said that, with what I've looked at so far there's a shit ton of inconsistencies, odd "coincidences" (as there are more times than not), and things that look really, really fishy.

FEMA's running of a drill the day of shooting 20 miles away pertaining to children and crisis situations is EXTREMELY odd and quite questionable...just like the same situation with them and 9/11, the London Bombings, and Aurora.

Another nutjob for the pile. Thanks for identifying yourself.

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Another nutjob for the pile. Thanks for identifying yourself.

LOL I'm a nutjob because I question things? Ok buddy.

If you would actually ****ING READ WHAT I POSTED I said I don't know what I believe...never made a definitive statement either way.

Nice try though.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Jerm

LOL I'm a nutjob because I question things? Ok buddy.

If you would actually ****ING READ WHAT I POSTED I said I don't know what I believe...never made a definitive statement either way.

Nice try though.

Because you question things? No.
Because you "don't know" if the govt is behind Sandy Hook, and apparently Aurora, 9/11, London. Yes.

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Because you question things? No.
Because you "don't know" if the govt is behind Sandy Hook, and apparently Aurora, 9/11, London. Yes.

I never said the gov't was behind Aurora or London...learn to ****ing read man.

And yeah I question things, that doesn't make me an idiot or a nutjob or anything...I could call you a mindless ****ing sheep for NOT questioning things but I don't.

And let's not even go in on 9/11...you don't want to man...

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by Jerm

I never said the gov't was behind Aurora or London...learn to ****ing read man.

And yeah I question things, that doesn't make me an idiot or a nutjob or anything...I could call you a mindless ****ing sheep for NOT questioning things but I don't.

And let's not even go in on 9/11...you don't want to man...

HEY 9/11 was committed by a bunch of cave people that defeated a billion dollar air-defense system !!!

[suzzer99]

Originally Posted by -King-

This people are just barely above the Westboro Baptist Church. A big hearty enthusiastic **** YOU to everyone spreading and consuming this bullshit. Seek help. Or better yet jump off a bridge.

[suzzer99]

How can you conspiratards even work the internet? You realize that if you really soak up Alex Jones - it means you have a paranoid personality and a neurosis that borders on mental illness right? I just thought someone should tell you at some point. Alex Jones is a false prophet and you are the starry-eyed Manson Family.

My buddy always thought the feds were after him. Incredibly smart guy - but paranoid as hell. Couldn't make the simplest logical leap that it really wouldn't be worth 1000s of man hours and countless dollars to tail his occasional dimebag-dealing ass around for years. I mean a 2nd grader could figure that out. But he couldn't because his brain wouldn't let him.

You need pure evil people to pull of something like that. Most people in power aren't that evil. They like to go home and think of themselves as a decent person when they tuck their kids in at night. There is absolutely nothing to gain that would be even one millionth as valuable as the risk and horror of mass-murdering kindergartners is bad.

It's an offense to human beings to even entertain the idea. Have you ever had a boss? If so do you think your boss is evil? At what level of hierarchy does the pure evil kick in? Do only pure evil rule the world or do they become pure evil somewhere around Cabinet-level? You have to believe people in power are some other kind of human made of completely different stuff. It doesn't work like that. There are no lizard people. Seek help.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Jerm

LOL I'm a nutjob because I question things? Ok buddy.

If you would actually ****ING READ WHAT I POSTED I said I don't know what I believe...never made a definitive statement either way.

Nice try though.

That's just it—he can't.

[suzzer99]

Jesus I just read page one of this thread and have to stop before I go on a shooting spree of my own. The level of stupidity (by obviously not that stupid people) is unfathomable. Alex Jones and his ilk are the lowest form of pond scum on this planet for exploiting this tragedy. You're all horrible people for giving it voice.

[Jerm]

Who on here is exactly "exploiting" this...?

Oh right...no one.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Jesus I just read page one of this thread and have to stop before I go on a shooting spree of my own.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Jerm

If you would actually ****ING READ WHAT I POSTED I said I don't know what I believe...never made a definitive statement either way.

I did read it. That you don't know what you believe about those things contributes to you being a nut.