A conspiracy theory peddling professor at Florida Atlantic University has been given notice by the college that he is in line to be fired in coming days after years of controversial statements according to the Sun Sentinel.
The professor, James Tracy is a leading denier of the Sandy Hook shooting and has claimed that the shooting and every other mass shooting in recent years were staged by governmental agencies.
Adam Lanza, a disturbed 20-year-old man shot and killed 26 people- including 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Tracy is a professor of media history and analysis and has been one of the most vocal deniers that Sandy Hook happened. He disseminates these controversial views on his website called Memory Hole and via a Facebook page called Sandy Hook Hoax.
In a recent blog post, Tracy explained how he came to think that Sandy Hook was faked.
“After several days of reflection, however, my instincts as a media analyst took charge,” Tracy wrote in a post. “In reviewing news coverage of the Sandy Hook School massacre I began to recognize very unusual features in the alleged forensics, the emergency response and the overall way the event was being reported.
“Commonplace emergency protocols were abandoned. There was no surge of EMTs into the building, no proper triage protocol employed or Med-Evac helicopters called. Parents were not even allowed to view and hold the bodies of their deceased children, and law enforcement oddly admonished those who questioned the official narrative online were subject to criminal prosecution.”
Tracy’s views have not been taken seriously by nearly anyone else in academia or media.
Last week, the Sun Sentinel published an opinion piece by Veronique and Lenny Pozner, the parents of a child who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
In the piece, the parents bashed Tracy for asking them to prove that their son actually existed and that they were his parents.
“Tracy is among those who have personally sought to cause our family pain and anguish by publicly demonizing our attempts to keep cherished photos of our slain son from falling into the hands of conspiracy theorists,” Veronique and Lenny Pozner wrote.
FAU made the following statement to the media:
December 16, 2015
Today, James Tracy, an associate professor in the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, was served a Notice of Proposed Discipline — Termination by the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Florida Atlantic University.
In accordance with the University’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with the United Faculty of Florida union, by which the University and James Tracy are bound, faculty who receive such notice are afforded a grievance process. James Tracy has 10 days to respond to the notice after which final action may be taken.
In accordance with university practice regarding personnel issues, the university will make no further comment for the time being.
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Cover Photo Credit: katiedidd_/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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New Book Claims That Miami Shores Floods With Poop During Every King Tide
Climate change is real.
Most people in South Florida understand that things are changing in the local environment as the king tides seem to be getting worse, and as Hurricane Irma showed, we are at serious threat for more dangerous storm surge due to sea level rise.
Again, most people in this town believe that climate change is real.
Sadly, a glaring falsehood about what happens to certain Miami neighborhoods during king tides will only muddy the waters and give climate change deniers more ammunition in their fight to ignore reality.
Rolling Stone excerpted a few thousand word section of a freshly released book by one of its writers, Jeff Goodell.
The book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World seems like an interesting and important read.
Full disclosure: I have not had the chance to read it.
Goodell seems to be a top notch reporter who has spent a great deal of time on the ground researching the book.
But, how can he explain this, from the excerpt?:
“In Miami Beach, streets are being elevated and LEED-certified condo towers are rising, but in low-income neighborhoods like Miami Shores, you have to walk through shit-filled water every time a big tide arrives.”
A few points here.
One: to anyone who has even spent a few hours traveling around South Florida would realize, Miami Shores is not a “low-income neighborhood”.
VIDEO: storm surge caused by Hurricane Irma in Miami Shores:
Miami Shores is geographically close to some of the poorest areas of Miami-Dade County, but the village itself is considered a wealthy one.
Census data shows that the median value of owner-occupied housing units in Miami Shores is $397,800.
The county average?
Just $203,300.
Miami Beach?
$383,800.
When looking at various Census data points, Miami Shores (on a per capita basis) could be considered wealthier than Miami Beach.
Look at median household income.
Miami Shores- $97,500.
Miami Beach- $44,342.
Miami-Dade County- $43,129.
Sorry to be a stickler, but when dealing with such an important crisis, all the facts matter.
Now, on to the second and far more important point.
Just to recap:
“…in low-income neighborhoods like Miami Shores, you have to walk through shit-filled water every time a big tide arrives.”
That is just not true.
I grew up in Miami Shores and my family has lived in the community for nearly 40 years.
None of us have ever heard of raw sewage flooding the streets during king tides.
A king tide just happened last week.
There were no reports of “shit filled water” flooding the area.
This is not to say that Miami Shores doesn’t have a shit problem.
It does.
In the village council election that took place in April, candidate Eddie Lewis made the potential for climate change induced septic issues, a centerpiece of his campaign. (The point was largely ignored by local voters.)
But he wasn’t talking about it as a current issue.
Lewis was projecting into the future and arguing for a proactive solution to tackle climate change issues before they arise.
Miami Shores, like many old South Florida neighborhoods, doesn’t have a municipal sewer system for the over 3,000 homes in the community.
Instead, it relies on an expensive and fragile septic tank and drain field systems.
This can be extremely problematic if the ground around the tank becomes overly saturated with water.
As Quartz explained in a poop primer piece published prior to the pummeling from Hurricane Irma:
“Backed up toilets are also becoming a more common occurrence. The waste produced by about a third of the people going to the bathroom any given day in Florida (that includes tourists) goes into a septic tank. In order for a tank to do its job, there needs to be room for the liquid portion of the waste to slowly filter down into the ground. When groundwater levels go up, though, they push the waste back up, sometimes resulting in a poop flood.”
Again, Miami Shores probably does have a real long-term problem here.
Florida had a raw sewage crisis unfold after Hurricane Irma.
And the Biscayne Waterkeeper recently discovered a pipe in Biscayne Bay that is spewing raw sewage into the water at a potential rate of millions of gallons a day.
And its been spewing for over a year.
So we’ve got real problems down here man.
We know it.
If we don’t get the world to make serious changes, there is a good chance that the place that we love will become Atlantis.
But, that’s why we need to stick to facts and not get sucked into hyperbole.
I’m sure that Goodell just made a mistake, and we’ll give him the chance to clear it up.
But climate change deniers take every mistake and twist them to undermine the overall reality.
We can’t let that happen.
Otherwise, we’ll end up drowning in the shit.
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Welcome To The Florida Keys, Where The Chickens Sleep In Trees (That Rhymes)
After Hurricane Irma carved a large swath of destruction across the natural landscape of the Florida Keys, there are signs that life is starting to return to normal there.
On Sugarloaf Key for example, the chickens have returned to their perches in trees.
This may be a strange sight for many in South Florida, but according to Keys resident Rodney Richardson- this is pretty normal.
And that’s a good thing.
Take a look at the funny scene in a video Richardson sent to RISE NEWS:
Have you ever seen this type of thing in your neighborhood?
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An American In Paris: Her First Day In The City Of Light Came On November 13
By Taylor Neuman
When planning for a weekend excursion to Paris you expect nothing less but sight-seeing, eating delicious French cuisine, touring the finest art museums, going out and enjoying everything the City of Light has to offer; but this wasn’t the case for me.
On Friday, Nov. 13 I traveled to Paris for an amazing weekend with my study abroad program.
When we got there we immediately ate at this tiny little French café a little ways from our hotel, walked around a bit to get a feel of the area we were in and then came back to get ready for our tour of the Louvre.
We took a big bus to the Louvre. It was absolutely amazing just like everyone had told me, and I was incredibly excited to finally see the Mona Lisa in person.
After about an hour and a half tour, we were all ready to get dinner around the area. Some of us talked about what each other had planned for the night.
Some planned on going to the Germany vs. France game, some planned on seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up at night and some planned on going out and enjoying the nightlife.
A group of my friends and I decided to go to this really tasty crepe place pretty close to the Louvre for dinner, we had planned to meet some friends afterwards at the Eiffel Tower but instead we decided to head back to the hotel and see the Eiffel Tower the next day.
Since we were pretty far from our hotel we decided to take the metro back to our destination.
After waiting for sometime for everyone to get their metro passes we waited patiently for the train to come. Then we hopped on and sat around talking about how excited we were for the night ahead.
I never thought I would experience Paris this way, the weather was cold and gray and you could feel the sadness that swept throughout the city that day.
After one stop we realized that three police officers had jumped onto the metro.
Over the intercom they started saying something in French, none of us know French so we disregarded it and continued to enjoy ourselves as usual, agreeing that we would just get off the next stop open. When we got off we still had a 15 minute walk back to our hotel. We walked and walked and finally we started to notice police and ambulances flying by one by one, it seemed like it was never going to stop.
We just figured it had something to do with the soccer game, or maybe a bad car accident, we never thought anything more than that. We continued on our path with nothing more than our plans for the night in mind.
People walk in Paris during a winter night in 2012. Photo Credit: August Brill/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
We finally arrived to the hotel to find our lobby flooded with people on their phones, crying and watching television.
Immediately I knew something was wrong, I looked at the TV and it was all in French but the only word I could make out was “explosion.”
All of a sudden my heart felt like it was going to fall out of my chest; I didn’t even know how to react. I asked someone what had happened, and they said “terrorist attack,” and what was even worse was that it was only 5-10 minutes away from our hotel, and where we had walked around earlier that day.
The first thing I thought of was calling my parents to tell them what had happened because they didn’t know.
I told them I was safe and that everything was going to be ok, but they immediately panicked.
My friends and I felt so unsafe so we hid ourselves in our hotel room for the rest of the night watching TV and not knowing how to respond to the situation. We didn’t know if we were going to be the next victims, all we saw was the number of deaths and injuries keep rising and we knew it was getting really bad.
All we wanted to know is if all of our friends that went to the soccer game, out to eat, and to the Eiffel Tower were okay. We all fell asleep after finding out everyone from our program made it back to the hotel safe but the feeling of uncertainty still hung over our heads.
The next morning I woke up to the television on and all I could see was 129 dead. I almost threw up.
All of our organized trips were canceled and the president issued a state of emergency so it was almost impossible to go out and see the city. It hit 3 o’clock and all of us were in a state of shock, our group advisors had told us they only wanted us to go in small groups across the street to grab food.
We were eventually allowed to go around sight-seeing but we weren’t allowed to go on public transportation or in big groups so we went to the Eiffel Tower. Security was extremely tight everywhere and there was an overwhelming amount of military personnel and police guarding the streets.
I never thought I would experience Paris this way, the weather was cold and gray and you could feel the sadness that swept throughout the city that day.
We went to go visit the sites where the terrorist attacks occurred and it was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do.
Hundreds of people flooded the streets holding flowers in their hands, tears running down their faces, and lighting candles to remember the victims.
It was something I had never experienced before, a feeling I will never forget.
Taylor Neuman is a writer for Rise News. She is also a student at the University of Alabama who is studying abroad in Europe this semester.
Cover Photo Credit: Cristian Bortes/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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2 comments on This Professor Denies That Sandy Hook Happened And Is Finally Being Fired
Comments are closed.
I agree, the sandy hook massacre never happened, it was all staged by the government along with 9/11 and many other shootings to divert attention and in other cases, attract attention onto other places and shift the blame onto it.
^^^^ agree