I have long since dismissed any serious consequences or fallout from the JFK assassination. The poor schmuck was a victim of circumstances, and would probably had continued to lead a charmed life had he not been popped that day. The one person who mostly caused his demise knew that he had done so, and from afar it appears that he went through a consciousness-altering experience with the death – enormous guilt, a new perspective on the world, and a death wish. That was Bobby. Though we’ll never know, it could be that his anti-war stance was genuine.
Normally in American politics, false leaders appear on the scene to collect discontent and misdirect it to a futile end. In 1968, that appears to have been Eugene McCarthy’s role. There was no need for a another false leader, so that Bobby’s anti-war stance could well have been real. There was also the matter of his determination to solve the mystery of his brother’s death. These two things made him unqualified to be president.
The circumstances of Bobby’s death are much more mysterious than JFK’s, in large part because the physical evidence was destroyed by the LAPD. It took up too much space. But there was also what appeared to be a pre-planned effort to intimidate witnesses with harsh and threatening interrogation. Those who saw events that differed from the official story disappeared into blackness, never again believing anything in our “news” but having real reason to shut up about it. Even court testimony from the certified forensic scientist who did the autopsy, Dr. Thomas Naguchi, was ignored in the official conclusions about the death. Just another lone nut popped RFK. Very unlucky family, these Kennedy’s!
Now a witness has come forth, an expatriate living in Canada, and a Canadian newspaper is reporting her story. She, as others have testified, said that there were three initial shots from a man standing on a table, a period of shock and silence and an onrush to tackle Sirhan, and then more gunfire, almost like a package of ifirecrackers going off, perhaps as many as twelve fourteen shots. Since Sirhan Sirhan’s was in no position to put a bullet behind RFK’s ear (leaving powder burns), and since his gun contained only eight bullets, additional shots had to disappear. He also had to have made a supernatural vampire-like space passage to move to Bobby, inflict the wound, and move back to his perch. [Sorry for the rash of corrections, but that is one luxury of blogging versus print – to correct errors.]
Nina Rhodes-Hughes was in the Ambassador hotel kitchen that night and testified to FBI agents of her experience, the number of shots she heard, and never heard another word. She was never called to testify.
Decades later, due to the determined efforts of lawyer William Francis Pepper, her FBI statement has been unearthed. The official version, she says, is nothing like what she told them that day. Every important detail has been altered, and her memory restored so that she counted (in a state of panic) eight shots. No more, no less.
This is an area, like 9/11, where speculation is fun but will never be satisfying, as power neither investigates itself nor allows itself to be investigated. Ideally disinterested parties should investigate these crimes, but that would require a UN team, or perhaps some Libyans. Interesting details concerning events 44 years ago will continue to emerge, especially now that the perpetrators are most likely dead. But Americans will never see these details in American news. Stay tuned, but go elsewhere with your curiosity, as it is not shared by American journalists, trained in the art of credulity.
Read Rhodes-Hughes story here, in a Vancouver newspaper.
Piece of Mindful 
I’ve always been more curious about the Why v. the How of the three most blatent assassinations of my generation. What common elements are shared by Bobby, Jack and Martin? What did these three do or say? This was a very active time for our national political police (FBI). Lots of evidence, no real proof. That is how the system works. Today, under Commander Obama, the tactical emphasis seems to have shifted more toward militarization of local police, robitics and massive electronic surveillance.
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There was another Kennedy death, RFK Jr.s ex-wife, just a few days ago. It appears to be a suicide, but you never know with this family and all they know.
I do not think JFK’s death involved national police, but the other two are in that shadow, in my view.
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It’s Bobby’s death that left much of my generation cynical hedonists. Nixon and Humphrey and Wallace instead of Robert Kennedy? Fuck it, let’s smoke some weed. It’s not an excuse for our self absorption later. But you can’t discount the lesson of the time; you’re going to Viet Nam when you get out of high school and don’t think you’re going to vote your way out of it. I always thought I understood Lowell George’s lyric in “Kiss it Off” (and yeah, that’s the sentiment) as calling Nixon “milquetoast Hitler”, and I like my lyric better, but:
You were the child of some electric nightmare
And you could move mountains, the swords of fire
They keep you around to watch their house of gold
Keep the hungry away from the sacred grove
Many of us have come back to some activism, over time, and we don’t like your mocking it, by the way. But you do punch a purple place once in a while, and this is a bruise that doesn’t heal. The 1960s are to the 21st century what the Civil War was to the 20th, the dividing line between the old country and the new country. And the Kennedy assassinations’ impact was significant. What lesson do we teach 20 yr olds today? Fuck it, let’s go to Sasquatch.
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I mock Democrats, not activists. I wish that Democrats could be like the Tea Party, only possessing brains.
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you don’t need to teach youngsters anything–the police state response to occupy is teaching many of them what your generation experienced regarding state-sponsored brutality at the hands of a militarized police force.
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The longest propaganda campaign remains the “it’s all about me,” “greed is good” message of our mass (pop) commercial/commodity culture. Institutionalized (consumerism) by Reagan et al.; it’s one big barrier keeping us from helping each other out of the octopus’s grasp. Occupy, to it’s credit, has begun the long slog out of our self-inflicted addiction to industrial-strength intravenous feeding of dopamine and seratonin. Citizen or consumer, we all must choose or the elites will continue to choose for us — Coke or Pepsi?
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“The longest propaganda campaign remains the “it’s all about me,” “greed is good” message of our mass (pop) commercial/commodity culture. ”
Full agreement. I’m not Occupying Wall Street, but I think that a reduction of our dependence on corporations is needed before we can begin to talk about getting them out of the political sphere. It ought to start with kids – they have no families, they are mobile, generally healthy, and generally poor, so they are naturals to be the first to try to beat consumerism. But no, they are largely indoctrinated by the media, especially the supposedly counter-cultural elements thereof, that they need to live fast, die you, and spend all your money on the way. Mainstream hip-hop is the corporate parry to what could be a powerful thrust of youth anti-consumerism, and it’s brilliant – “don’t trust police, don’t trust the government, but do buy cars, champagne, and shoes.” As long as anti-establishment sentiment is linked emotionally with conspicuous consumption, our youth are going to have a hard time breaking free of the trap.
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Ditto, and I see threats coming from other sources, as the end of Five minutes of TV and five minutes of show. That business model is threatened from within by ppv, Apple TV, Netflix and ow Dish, which is offering their customers an ad scrubber. CBS’s Moonved was livid, saying he could not pay for CSI without ad support. Oh my oh my.
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Mary Richardson Kennedy knew too much Mark.
They faked her suicide by hanging her in her barn.
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And Oswald shot JFK. With this family, things are not always as they appear. But you’re probably right on this one..
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Off topic Mark, but consider this a gift.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/mailbag/republicans-should-explain-their-love-of-ayn-rand/article_cb996054-c3b0-591d-b2a0-d0d340713798.html
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Since you dropped the nugget, tell me: Can you explain your love of Ayn Rand? As far as I can see, it’s not economics, as that part of her philosophy doesn’t work, even leads to disaster. It’s not betterment of the human condition, as she hated people. It’s not independence from others, as she took both Social Security and Medicare during her final illness.
As far as I can see, she merely feeds narcissism in wrong-headed
imaginarydelusional lone wolves.LikeLike
Thirst for freedom, perhaps? Casting off the chains of slavery?
How ’bout the satisfaction that comes with economic validation?
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I know what it is to be free, perhaps more than you. As Ike said, “freedom is nothing more than the opportunity to exercise self-discipline.” Part of discipline to to humbly take our place in our social setting, acknowledging our debt to others for our good fortune, and accepting our responsibility to help others as well. Without other people, you have nothing.
Rand was a sociopath. She deeply admired a serial killer. She pretended to be an island. Her economics
struckStank(?) stunk (?) stinked (?), do not stand even the slightest test.LikeLike
“Freedom just another word for nothin’ left to lose” Janis Joplin.
Do I have to acknowledge my debt to the able bodied who choose assistance over jobs?
How bout supplying food stamps to recipients who use their disposable income on beer and cigs?
Do my 5 figure property taxes have to go to year round breakfast and lunch programs at my districts school cafeteria?
How come I’m the only one held responsible?
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Wow you are really oppressed swede. How dare hungry children get fed on your dime. Have you notified the tea party of this injustice?
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In case you are curious, Mr. Professional Victim, your statement above is Randian in the extreme.
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Yeah Mark, that “self reliance” thing never works.
If only we could be more like the Greeks.
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You are so dense! Maybe that is a true statement about virtually all Randians. It is not about self-reliance. We are all self-reliant most of the time, and we have all had (or will have) times when other people come to our aid. We are also called upon to aid other people in times of need.
There is a small minority of people of such low self-esteem that they allow themselves into a state of permanent reliance on others. But they are few, and their existence should not serve as an excuse to avoid our obligations to serve one another, which you seem to want to avoid. Are you, Swedey, like Alisa herself, in such a state of disharmony with people that you are looking for reasons to live apart, to imagine that you don’t belong in the greater scheme?
Maybe you, like her, will come to a point where you realize that you are not an island, and will accept help when you need it. She needed the community at the end, and accepted the help. Maybe at that time she realized that for her whole life, up until that moment, she was full of shit.
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I’m dense? You’re the one who champions the European economic model.
By the way didn’t Ayn’s parents flee collectivism? Wouldn’t you say our country was founded/existed on a Randian model?
Can a country survive by its govt. spending its entire GNP?
Does raising taxes really increase revenue in the long term?
Don’t answer Mark, keep throwing out insults.
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The European economic model works quite well. Current problems have to do with private debt (bankers and the 2008 crash), and not social problems. Further, as survey after survey shows, they have better health care, education, transportation, and are happier than Americans.
Ayn’s parents did not flee. She did. I don’t blame her for that. All that follows is not gold, however. Fleeing one bad system does not in any way justify her economics, never implemented here. No, Swede, the founding fathers were not Randians. Sheesh!
There is no difference between government spending and private spending in terms of economic impact. But that’s a bigger subject I’ll not deal with here.
Taxes can increase revenue by redirecting money to infrastructure from casinos and CDO’s, from high income to lower income (non-spenders to spenders). Your notion that taxes harm GDP is false.
You do appear to be a person in disharmony with society, suffering the lone wolf illusion, no offense intended to wolves.
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They’re happier because the sit on their asses and produce nothing.
Quote:”When governments pay people in money and benefits for doing nothing, it is essentially paying them not to develop and use their talents and abilities. That is a great example of the Fake Economy. Some wrongly argue that those people turn around and spend that money thus creating economic activity, but the net effect is that people who would otherwise be bringing value to society (as well as benefit to themselves) through their talents and abilities, don’t do so because they are being paid not to do so. (Keep in mind, money is not the economy either; it is simply the lubricant or the medium with which the economy transacts.) The ultimate effect of this type of government activity, all things considered, is negative to the economy. Pretty much all of our social entitlements fall into this category with the welfare entitlements being the most extremely negative in their effect in this regard.”
Europe’s is broke and it couldn’t happen at a better time, right before our election.
Don’t give me this BS about private debt when you’re spending your entire GNP. Get some balls and make people actually work 5 days a week 40 hrs a day until 65.
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They don’t sit on their asses and let others work. That statement hardly deserves refutation much lesa repeating.
You neglected to mention who you are quoting – Rand? Most conservatives like to quote long-dead white men, so it could be someone else. The fact that someone lived long ago, wrote shit, and then died does not make their words any more true.
Think back to the ancient Egyptians, one of the first societies (on record at least) to enjoy spare time and abundance due to agriculture. What did they do with excess labor capacity? They built pyramids, and now we are picking up hints that it was paid labor, and not slaves that built them.
These days we use our excess labor capacity to build bombs and military hardware. Nice thing about them is that they get blown up and have to be replaced. Tough part of it is that we are always searching for new enemies.
The point is that we have excess capacity and maldistribution of wealth to boot. Europeans know this, and so enjoy life more than we do. God bless them.
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“Growth” is the other myth that needs busting. Perpetual growth on a finite sphere is global suicide. To kill two dirty birds with one stone, why not cap the business advertising deduction. No company could simply buy market share with a bigger tax-deductible marketing budget. Less propaganda, better quality goods and services, and a more level playing field for promising newcomers.
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Why Ayn Rand? Because Friedman, Greenspan, Ruben, Paulson, Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, and their puppet presidents who implemented Randian philosophy and policy, more or less, failed in their jobs, failed in their ideas, and left a mess so large nobody knows how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Neoliberism and neoconservatism do not work, except for the 1%. That is the point, right? The rest is smoke and mirrors.
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p.s. These two-leggeds are an insult to wolves.
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This woman seems like a crackpot. Probably hoping to do a book deal.
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Wow, you know a whole lot about her on a glance! She did not bring this to the surface. She resigned, left the country and shut up. Pepper exposed it.
I don’t get “crackpot” listening to her, by the way.
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She may very well be telling the truth I was just messing with you. I’ve always been fascinated by the link between sir Han sir Han and the exposed experiments in mind control happening at that time. Something fishy was definitely happening.
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Fuel for the fire. Here’s Ayn in a Carter era interview with Tom Snyder. Interesting to note her saying we should get back to the basic ideals our country was founded on (around 2 min. mark) and the looming recession.
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Too funny! Interesting that you pick this snippet. She reeks of sociopathy. She’s complaining that our universities are teaching “sacrifice and altruism,” that not living for ourselves alone produced a “lower standard of living*,” that naked “savages” living elsewhere only want our money. The concept of another dimension is an odd twist with her, as she has said elsewhere that when she dies, “the world dies.” That sort of grandiosity is an element of sociopathy.
Her preaching against altruism truly sets her apart from 98% of us, but not in a way you would like.
The Founding Fathers are surely misunderstood, I have no doubt, but I have even more doubt that Rand had any a clue about them. My wife and I were just discussing this on the trail yesterday – I mentioned how we don’t even know the truth of the last sixty years of history, hell – the last ten, and yet we think we have a clear grasp of things three hundred years ago. What nonsense!
*Quite the opposite is true.
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And who do we hold responsible for an accurate account of our past history?
Academia.
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Things can never be made simple enough for you, can they. Do you know what’s responsible for war?
Tanks. I’m thinking Swedeythoughts.
Example of distortion of history: The Texas war of “liberation” was fought for the opposite reason. Mexico had outlawed slavery, and Texans needed slaves to pick cotton. So they declared independence.
Now, imagine that anyone in Texas tried to teach that factual history in one of their schools. Hello parents, hello state officials, hello administrators … good bye job.
That’s not “academia” distorting history. That’s a combination of factors – inability to be honest about ourselves, unwillingness to teach kids about how we really function. So we lie. To ourselves. Mexican schools teach the truth about those events.
Too complicated?
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The Texas slave theory.
Does it come from a non-agenda source?
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You don’t know things you’re not supposed to know, do you. You’d make a great journalist.
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Ha ha – I was going to look this up for you and offer some references, as slavery and cotton were a large part of the reason for separation. But then I remembered that it’s Swede – it would not penetrate the cranium.
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Yeah right.
Your silent non-response is deafening.
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