Swede mentioned down below that

You guys keep digging up the non-consequential past and we’ll do the heavy lifting on the present.

This raises the legitimate question, why does JFK matter in 2014? There are several reasons:

• To understand the present, it helps to understand the past.
• It’s a portal. It’s a “never enough understanding” incident that leads one far away from the event itself and into the whole of postwar American history.
• Since the cover-up is ongoing, it’s apparent that those who seized power that day still hold it.

Lee Harvey Oswald is an interesting character, as was Jack Ruby. Oswald apparently had ties to both CIA and FBI. Ruby was a local mobster with New Orleans connections, and knew Oswald well. That’s all interesting, but years after, of no real importance. Similarly, all of the evidence that has emerged over the decades about peripheral characters, the number of shooters, the fake autopsy, X-rays and autopsy photos, missing brain blah blah blah – from a Hound of the Baskervilles perspective, it’s a fascinating mystery, fun to read and connect the dots.

But as to the crime itself, it is easily solved, has been for decades. The was orchestrated by powers high enough in government that they could employ the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, military, and even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to serve its ends. These people are so powerful that fifty years later their legacies are still engaged in the ongoing cover-up, and still lying, and our news media is still afraid to speak up.

No member of JFK’s administration resigned in protest. No member of congress either. No judge anywhere. No district attorney anywhere, aside from Jim Garrison, ever attempted to investigate. No subsequent president has ever voiced qualms – in fact, one of them served on the body that covered up the crime, the Warren Commission. So the crime, open, obvious, easily solved, was ignored by the American establishment. Conclusion: That is how the United States is structured, and how it functions. Everything else – voting, fighting our issues, reading, writing, discussing everything till blue, is for naught. The crime was committed in the open and covered up, and no one of status anywhere ever spoke up.

That means that the office of the president was taken down that day, and has not functioned since. Every occupant has a gun at his head, and knows it. Watergate was a coup as well, but Nixon knew enough not to speak up about JFK other than by veiled references like “It all goes back to the Bay of Pigs,” code for the assassination (according to his aide Bob Haldeman).

Control of the past is control of the present. JFK matters, if only to teach us that.

I often challenge people who doubt my sanity and beliefs about such events as the JFK murder or 9/11 to examine the evidence. Few do, but those few always walk away deeply troubled. Doing so can lead to a transformative experience. That, to me, is the only remaining importance of such inquiry, as the people who did these crimes will never be formally accused, apprehended, or confess. No punishment awaits. In fact, so long after JFK’s death, it is probably safe to say that most of those involved at that time are now dead.
Continue reading “Tramps shining” →

Over the holidays a relative of ours appeared wearing a wrist bracelet. It was high-tech. With it he was keeping track of calories ingested and calories burned. He was amazed at the results. On some days he took in maybe a thousand more calories than he burned. It is so hard for me to stay quiet during such exhibitions of ignorance, but I do. I’ve learned this over the years. I must STFU.

But I’m also aware of another feature of life in America, perhaps everywhere. Our minds are like river backwaters – without effort they easily fill up with brackish refuse. The easiest information to come by is the most commonly believed. Our relative’s notion is that body weight is a simply matter of counting calories. Without effort on his part, that information will stay resident in his mind. And there will be no effort to unseat the information as every dietary expert, every gym, every diet book emphasizes counting calories, burning calories, as the only solution to our obesity epidemic.
Continue reading “Something ain’t right” →

During the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq there was a controversy swirling about the head of Judith Miller, then employed by the New York Times. She apparently was acting as a conduit for government propaganda and disinformation. But anyone who follows American news coverage in-depth was not troubled by supposed “controversy” in such matters. It was easy to see that Miller was a CIA mole. Easy, that is, if one has any inkling at all of how American news is fashioned, filtered, even created for our consumption.

Woodward and Bernstein are famous for supposedly uncovering the Watergate story in the 1970’s, a Piltdown-like hoax where evidence planted in advance was waiting to be discovered by the intrepid American news media. Bernstein went on to explore CIA infiltration of American news media, and lives now on the margins. His colleague, Bob Woodward, has enjoyed enormous success. Oddly, a man who undermined an administration and forced the resignation of a president enjoys easy access to power.

Shorthand: Woodward is a CIA mole. Bernstein not. Or maybe not. Who ever knows who to trust?
Continue reading “Everything you know is … suspect” →

Al-Qaeda (also al-Qaida or al-Qa’ida or al-Qa’idah) (Arabic: القاعدة‎ al-qāʕida, translation: The Base)

I don’t follow enough mainstream American news to know this, but assume there has been some coverage of ongoing scandals in Turkey threatening to bring down the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Much of it can be traced back not only to US acquaintances, but US roots going back to the 1980’s.

“Al Qaeda,” for instance, is not a name given to Muslim terrorists by their own hand. “The Base” can be roughly interpreted to be the “database” that the CIA had of Mujaheddin terrorists it had employed in Afghanistan in the Reagan Wars of the 1980’s. The CIA trained them, armed them, built their housing and facilities. When they were show-bombed during the later Clinton years, targets were easy to fix – since the CIA built the bases, it also knew the locations.

In fact, “Al Qaeda” is a western paramilitary force, and has been since its beginning. It wasn’t until the years up to and after 9/11 that the American agitprop system converted them into the dreadful pack of freaks that supposedly hijack airliners and blow up embassies.

Thierry Meyssan has an interesting piece up at Voltaire, Al-Qaeda, NATO’s Timeless Tool. One always has to wonder if these guys like Meyssan, who seem to have inside information are in fact insiders and their writing a “limited hangout*.” I tend to want to trust Meyssan since in the days right after 9/11 when he challenged the world to find the Boeing at Ground Zero, Pentagon. He knew right away what was up and jumped over everyone to point it out. And then again … he knew right away what was up … hmmmmm

As revealed by Turkish police,

We are learning that the Al-Qaeda banker, Yasin al-Qadi, who was designated as such and pursued by the United States since the attacks against embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), was a personal friend of both former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and current Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We discover that this ” terrorist” led a lavish lifestyle, traveling by private plane and mocking UN sanctions against him. Thus, at least four times, he visited Erdoğan in 2012, arriving by the second Istanbul airport where, after disconnecting the cameras, he was welcomed by the head of the Prime Minister’s guard without going through customs.

This is no surprise – the real terrorists of our world travel freely, surrounded by security and immune from justice. Look up sometime the name “Orlando Bosch**” to see what the US does with real terrorists (harbors them). In Turkey, as with other “scandals” what we are seeing is an ongoing collaboration of intelligence agencies throughout the world. This one has links going back to Reagan years as well, when

…NATO already had accomplices in Tehran during the “Iran-Contra” operation in former President Rafsandaji’s inner circles, such as Sheikh Rohani, who has become the current president.

We are not seeing one more scandal in Turkey, but rather one more chapter in a very thick book, each linked to the other in some fashion, common names throughout. It is complicated, and we never know good guys or bad guys (or wonder sometimes if there are in fact any good guys left standing). It is good to see a rogue terrorist government like Erdoğan’s going down, but then one must wonder who is behind the exposure of his activities, and if in fact another force is behind the scenes making way for a new set of actors on the same stage.

The New York Times, itself loaded with CIA moles, knows just a thing or two about state-controlled news. It reports that In Scandal, Turkey’s Leaders May Be Losing Their Tight Grip on News Media. As bad as things might appear at times, there is always humor.
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*A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details.
**Bosch, according to the US Justice Department, participated in at least 30 terrorists acts, including the bombing of a Cuban airliner with 73 civilians aboard. He was freed from justice abroad with the help of Jeb Bush and allowed to live out his live in peace and comfort in the US. He died in 2011.

I recently attended a tax preparers’ gathering, and part of the advice we received as Colorado licensees regarding marijuana businesses was this: don’t advise them in any way or prepare tax returns for them. Don’t touch them.

The reason: at the federal level, pot is still illegal. Our licenses could be in jeopardy if there is a crackdown. We could be subject to prosecution for aiding a criminal enterprise.

A commenter down below left this morsel, which was superb, the reason why blogging is more than fun – even worth the effort. If he put it in a letter to the editor of the Missoulian, would be it published? I don’t know, but doubt that it would. It’s the kind of information that scares the gatekeepers of conventional wisdom. Newspaper editors don’t receive phone calls from advertisers or the publisher telling them what they can and cannot print. They intuitively understand what is acceptable and not. It is a shared consensus of silent power within a community, state and nation.

There I go again. Here is the comment:

Former Missoula resident Dan Baum, author of “Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure” got the money quote from Nixon Aide [Bob] Haldeman on why they chose to make a war on cannabis. Haldeman said that although they were fully aware that cannabis didn’t present any significant public health threat that you couldn’t outlaw rock music, black people or long hair so they just outlawed the common denominator. In other words they did it because it aided oppression of the young and the black. It allowed a culture war and a culture war victory for the side of repression.

Marijuana laws have long been enforced or ignored for various reasons. It is currently illegal because its use is widespread, thus allowing the state to use law enforcement selectively to punish groups that threaten its power. In this case, and going back to the successes of the Civil Rights movement, the targeted group is African Americans.

For this reason, the new and sensible laws passed in Colorado and Washington will not stand. The Feds may be tolerating us right now, but it is a mere tactical problem – how to crack down with the least amount of public outrage. So, and pure speculation of course, I venture that there will be late-night raids on dispensaries, and that our tooly local news outlets will remain silent when it happens.

It’s that shared consensus among the powerful I mentioned above.

Selective law enforcement and selective prosecution sound similar, and to me seem interchangeable. Both are hallmarks of tyranny. Examples:

Hate Crimes: This is a darling of the liberals because it speaks of moral superiority. Who is to say, for example, that the brutal murder of Mathew Shepard was not a hateful act? But the concept of a “hate crime” takes us beyond crime and punishment and into the realm of attitude. We already allow for mindset – premeditation, passion, inebriation, etc., but “hate” takes us into a subjective area that allows punishment of thought processes.
Continue reading “Law and tyranny” →

Two items on today’s agenda before I lapse into a comatose state doing a tax return that I’ve been pushing aside for days:

One, I put up a post yesterday called “Marijuana and tyrants” I think. It is a subject I want to address in-depth soon, but wrote that late in the day, and I am never pleased with my writing late in the day and deleted it. It will be back, as I think that the only reason why a basically harmless substance like marijuana is illegal is that its use is so widespread that it allows law enforcement the luxury of selective enforcement, and that this explains the huge disproportion of African-Americans in our prison system. This also tips into the War on Drugs, which I believe evidence shows to be a cover for counterinsurgency abroad and attacks on civil liberties and use of selective law enforcement at home. I’ll give it another shot later this week.

Second, I seriously considered banning a certain well-known person yesterday and this morning, as I don’t want this place to be anything like Cowgirl. But then I thought of a better way: If you use the expression “dude” or “you see” your comment will be queued for moderation. This, I thought, would allow us the opportunity to talk about him using his name, while he would think that he is banned because his comments don’t appear.
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PS: In updating the moderation section to include those phrases, I found the word “Kailey.” I was not aware it was still there, as neither of them are banned. Sorry boys.

I saw the movie Wolf of Wall Street yesterday. At three hours, it is too long. Scorsese could have made a better, shorter movie. But to the issue at hand, some relatives of ours, very nice and conservative in outlook, were troubled by both the sex scenes and the manner in which Wall Street is portrayed as a drug-infested psychopathic amusement park.

This is not a movie review. There are hundreds of them out there for you, and man do I miss Roger Ebert at times like this. I either sought his opinion out before deciding what to see, or after a movie just to see what I missed.

Scorsese bases the movie on the book of the same name. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are over-the-top throughout. Wall Street brokers are portrayed as boiler-room hucksters, and are all getting high not only on Quaaludes and cocaine, but also conquest. Every now and then someone in the movie has a legitimate moral qualm. But there is really only one rule: they do not rat on each other.

There is full frontal female nudity throughout, and Skinemax-like simulated copulation. That is a nice relief from the intense psychological violence of the boiler room scenes. For that reason alone I would put the movie on our TV screen as I play Angry Birds on the iPad. I have excellent side vision, and instantly know when those scenes are on.

And here is my backdrop, which I did not share with our relatives: The psychopathic personality is not satisfied with the ordinary joys of life – making things, working daily toward long-term goals, love and relationships or even caring about others in general. Consequently, life for them is pursuit of thrills, adrenalin rushes. They do not know fear, and so are found climbing mountains, sky diving, preaching from a high pulpit – anything that gives them a rush. They are drawn to the world of finance for the quick score, laughing when their victims realize they’ve been had. That’s conquest, the ultimate thrill.

I think Scorsese went for the jugular here, as he has probably seen it himself throughout his career. But there is very little physical violence, unlike his mobster films. Instead, he’s going after the real criminals in silk suits and Italian loafers.

No major Wall Street investment firms were harmed in the making of his movie. After the most recent bubble, no one went to jail. They are now busy re-inflating our next nightmare.

More fun below fold, right out of Scorsese’s world.
Continue reading “Dwarf tossing on Wall Street” →

No disrespect intended towards Liz at all. I just don’t do this sort of thing, but liked what I ran across this morning from the author of Red Badge of Courage. The man had unusual insight even in his twenties (he died at age 28):

The Wayfarer
Stephen Crane
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
“In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”