Wrong Kind of Spectacular

Stoking the culture wars; how terror supports policy

• New Orleans and Las Vegas incidents should be watched for policy initiatives

• If a spectacle is low complexity, then that is the cohort it seeks to influence

• Sub-text is you are not safe if you don’t support war on Iran in West Asia

• Agencies insert UFO, terrorist spectres - along with threat of further violence

• Perhaps timed to coincide with the certifying of Trump election

• The spives, cheaters and assassins are not a patch on those of old

Related:
Eurasia note #32 - Ukraine May Meet Its Gladio - Insurgents may drag Russia into a version of Italy's 'Years of Lead' or Greece's 'Z' (Mar 09, 2022)
Eurasia note #88: Moscow Theatre Attack; War Enters New Phase - Parallel with Chechnya terror of early 2000s is no accident (Mar 23, 2024)

(2,800 words or 13 minutes of your company.)

Jan 5, 2025

The New Orleans and Las Vegas incidents should be watched for the policy initiatives that follow on their heels.

The first emotional leap is to blame open borders, even though neither the alleged perpetrators, their locations, nor their identities had anything to do with migration through the south.

Add the flames and spectres of "BREAKING NEWS" on Twitter/X and you have a wildfire that could spread in any direction: UFOs or enemy drones, Iranian assassination plots, ISIS operatives, the Clash of Civilisations, electronic control of vehicles and invisible bombs.

The headline narrative is not, however, the lasting impression. It is a safe bet that this will come down to wars abroad and surveillance at home, with profitable new sidelines opening for some.

After this New Year's ramming to death of about a dozen people on Bourbon Street, New Orleans, a journalist was allowed to gesticulate her way around the apartment of the driver and Army veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

NY Post journalist Jennie Taer surveyed a “model terrorist house” with evidence apparently laid out for the camera - an electronics workshop and a copy of the Quran.

The San Bernardino attack in California in 2015 had barely ended when a CNN reporter was allowed full access to the apartment of Syed and Tashfeen Malik — inconsistent with it being a crime scene.

The same happened after the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, in Las Vegas in 2017. The FBI let reporters traipse through the apartment of alleged shooter Stephen Paddock.

Controlling the investigation into the killing of 58 people was Vegas police chief John Pelletier who would later oversee the suppression of how many died in the Maui, Hawaii, fires.

Narrative collapse

Neither the New Orleans nor Las Vegas incident convinced the public, hence the reinforcement of the narrative in tabloid media.

The Las Vegas car explosion, said to be the work of U.S. serviceman Matthew Livelsberger, had some familiar elements.

The official narrative is cognitively dissonant: a supporter of president-elect Donald Trump who attacked a Trump hotel, in a Cybertruck built by Trump ally Elon Musk.

The FBI claimed he shot himself before detonating butane, which destroyed only the car (latest images dispute this as a body is seen sitting upright, head intact, as the car explodes).

The explosion was largely contained within the vehicle. As a Green Beret he could have rigged real explosives. Incompetence or the latent threat of impending doom is built into the storyline.

Livelsberger's body was burned beyond recognition, identified by DNA which did not match his son’s. Rather than raise questions whether the body was Livelsberger, the media concluded that his wife must have cheated on him thus providing another motive.

Passports sprout like hardy perennials, most famously on September 11th 2001. Despite the raging fire in the car, Livelsberger's passport survived.

Subtext

The unspoken words: two soldiers committing atrocities on the same New Year's Eve.

The story is soon embellished with an alleged email in which Livelsberger was trying to highlight civilian casualties in Afghanistan, while referencing the recent UFO hysteria in the U.S., Chinese drones, anti-gravity vehicles, Iranians crossing the southern border with anti-aircraft man-pad rockets and a new generation of "invisible" bombs that Iran would smuggle aboard civilian aircraft.

Take this "manifesto" with a pinch of salt. It was sent to an associate of a prominent intel-related podcaster. Yet even he admits that an important security lever had switched on the sender's phone indicating it could have been compromised.

These emails were sent after December 29th when the shared verification on the encrypted messaging app Signal, also known as a safety number, was changed. This warns your counterparts if the phone or SIM card have been changed.

Stretching tentacles

Behind the oohing and aahing of tabloid media, we should be looking at the context of Syria and Ukraine, and following the sub-narrative.

These unspoken words support the wars in West Asia (Mid East) — otherwise you will get more attacks like this in your country.

From the New Orleans car ramming we have a murderous attack on citizens, the Clash of Civilisations, a now familiar narrative driving war in the Mid East.

From the Last Vegas explosion, we have not just a warning of war. In both cases, timely support for an attack on Iran.

The underlying, all-purpose boogeyman is ISIS, and yet none of the media influencers will acknowledge that al-Qaeda, like ISIS, serves American and Israeli interests, as seen in Syria where its latest rebranding HTS has just come to power with allied help.