Oliver Stone, be wary

@the OliverStone: A dirty story & in the aftermath the West maintains the dominant narrative of “Russia in Crimea” – the true narrative is “USA in Ukraine.”

@shaymultimedia: @TheOliverStone Shame on you Stone! How much is the Kremlim paying you? You are what Lenin used to refer to as a “useful idiot.”

@AlexandrNevskij: @The OliverStone I know my history, and Putin is a thieving murderous war-mongering thug, pure KGB filth!

@mpthct: @shaymultimedia @AlexandreNevskij @TheOliverStone Odd that people who claim to know their history are the ones that don’t know their history.

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stoneI listened to NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me podcast over the weekend. It is called the “NPR News Quiz” and I listen because they have some really funny people on their panels. But it can be annoying too. It is, after all, NPR, and so the “news” it quizzes panelists about is mostly lies. Host Peter Sagal made jokes and references to our official and given truth in this last show, that Vladimir Putin is an evil man, that the Russians invaded Crimea, and that the Ukrainian coup d’état earlier this year was a triumph for democracy in which the US played only a small part, if any. That is the official and dominant narrative, and Sagal, of course, is too … NPRish … to know any better.

Oliver Stone is now making a documentary about the Ukrainian coup d’état and Maidan massacre, and it will be out soon enough and opening at a theater anywhere but near you. Here’s a part of his description:

“Details to follow in the documentary, but it seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 police men, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside third party agitators,” he said. “Many witnesses, including Yanukovych and police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions – with CIA fingerprints on it.”

My only question, and why I reprinted the Tweets above, is … how can anyone not know this? How?

The massacre during demonstrations is a CIA specialty repeated elsewhere, for instance in Venezuela in 2002, and of course in countless coups d’état wherein any government that demonstrates any left-leaning sympathy or, more importantly, charts a course independent of US dominance, is targeted for regime change. Of course, the @AlexandrNevskij’s of this world who know their history so well don’t know this, and neither do most Americans.
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This may seem a disjointed post, but all of this came full circle this morning for me as I reviewed a murder in Washington DC in 1964, that of Mary Pinchot Meyer, one of JFK’s lovers, but oddly, one with whom he was truly in love and with whom he shared deep secrets. Her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, was high up in the CIA and so had to sit in silence as CIA murdered her. The murder took 6-8 people to carry out, not counting those who planned it. It included

  • surveillance for weeks to choose the murder spot;
  • a planted broken-down car so that a tow truck was called, to make sure witnesses were on hand;
  • a patsy selected that very morning, a young black man who was sleeping off a drunk after having had a tryst;
  • a wardrobe department at CIA that supplied the clothing for a a man looking like the patsy to be seen near the body by witnesses;
  • two people, a man and woman strolling through the park – actually doing surveillance;
  • a “witness,” a young army officer who appeared and offered incriminating testimony against the patsy and then disappeared into the shadows;
  • and of course, the shooter himself, a mere mechanic, a paid killer, who performed his job with cold calculated efficiency, even eliciting a scream from his victim before dispatching her. (He could have killed her silently but wanted attention drawn to the event so that the man imitating the patsy could be seen walking away from the scene.)

It’s just one more murder. CIA has done thousands of them. But look at the attention to detail in the staging, the thoughtful setup for the sake of investigators. They are professional murderers, and their art is to make murders look like something else – accidents, random acts of inexplicable violence, car accidents, plane crashes large and small, suicides, drownings, lone nuts in windows overlooking motorcades … there is always the act itself, but then something else too, some distraction to draw our attention away from the real murderers and motives.

James Jesus Angleton was one of the early henchmen in the organization as it found its wings in the post-war era. Like most psychopaths, he found little joy in life beyond the game, and spent his closing days drinking himself into oblivion, perhaps even demonstrating elements of a conscience in these words spoken close to the end of his life.

Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. Intelligence were liars. The better you lied, the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and I loved being in it. … Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.

I guess I will see them there soon.

I bring this up because Oliver Stone, in being openly hostile to CIA and having power in his filming skills and reputation, is putting his life in danger. Discussions are likely going on as we speak about the wisdom and possible means of dispatching him. If he knows this, and I assume he does, then he is a man of honor and rare courage. We all gotta go sometime, and his body of work, especially the movie JFK, is an enormous and important contribution to the preservation of truth, that thing that American historians* are so very bad at.
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* As Senator Frank Church discovered during his investigation into CIA activities in the late 1970’s, CIA has paid writers on staff whose job it is to rewrite history in the making so that researchers looking for source material in college libraries and other archives will find only official history, and not the real stuff. Thus are the bookshelves of Barnes and Nobel, history and current events section, littered with bullshit.

Martin Luther King assassination … hidden in plain sight

I am busy today transcribing a one-hour interview by Len Osamic of William Pepper, currently serving as defense attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, but before that the attorney for James Earl Ray. And I have to chuckle a little bit because commenter Fred has said to me on occasion that the government cannot keep secrets and that secrets get out, and that’s why he doesn’t believe these fantastic stories of conspiracies and cover-ups, Martin Luther King being a big one.

Well, information did get out there. In 1999 the family of Martin Luther King sued Lloyd Jowers and “other unknown conspirators” in the death of Dr. King, forcing a public trial in Memphis. It was the trial of the century, and no one showed up. To this day if you ask any newspaper reporter or journalist in this country about that trial, you’ll get a blank stare. But for a week Three weeks in 1999 seventy witnesses were called and testified about the events surrounding King’s death. The verdict was that Lloyd Jowers, a minor player, was found guilty, as were the FBI, Memphis Police, and U.S. Army.

The trial is public record, and I intend somehow to get hold of the transcript. William Pepper and company have done a remarkable job of uncovering witnesses and evidence. It seems they know everything now except the name of the actual shooter. Lloyd Jowers, who had ulterior motives for approaching the King family to confess his guilt, was not a shooter, but took care of the rifle after King was gunned down from the bushes below the rooming house where the shot “officially” was fired. He knows who fired the killing shot, but refused to give up a name because, as Pepper says, he feared for his life. The actual murderer of King, a hired gun, a mechanic, was a very dangerous man, and was still alive in 1999.

It gets even more interesting. There were levels of organization in the shooting, with the U.S. Army providing backup snipers in case King survived. (Andrew Young was also to be killed that day but was not.) The Army also provided a photographic team, two still photographers who were atop the fire station nearby taking pictures of everything. From them we heard testimony that James Earl Ray was not present at the time of the shooting. But is that not weird, that the Army took the trouble to photograph the event? Would we not want to see those photos now? Were they produced at trial? Subpoenaed?

Here’s part of the Pepper interview, as it relates to Colonel John Downie, who was in charge of the military side of the shooting:

That entire Army unit, those soldiers, the ones from Psychological Operations and the other Special Ops came out of Camp Shelby, Mississippi early that morning, was designated, authorized under the control of Colonel John Downie. John Downie was the head of the 902nd Military Intelligence Group that was based in the Pentagon reporting directly to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence of the United States Army. And that’s the only MIG, Military Intelligence Group, that is based in the Pentagon. John Downie controlled it, he was brought back to take it over and run it in June of 1967, and he was given his marching orders to begin to organize the military side of that operation as opposed to the civilian side, which was handled separately.

Downie was organizing the military side in ’67. He’s an interesting character, and was a man, strangely enough, that one had to have some respect for as a patriot who believed what he was doing was right. Because, he was Lyndon Johnson’s briefer. He was also CIA. He was Lyndon Johnson’s briefer on the Vietnam War. And he would come back into Washington on a regular basis and meet with the President to give him a briefing on the war and continually question the president as to what we were doing there, saying this was a ridiculous waste of blood and treasure, and that we had no business being there. And why are we there? And he kept pounding out this fact to Johnson and finally one day Johnson pounded the table and said to him “John, I can’t get out of this war. My friends are making too much money.”

Now that is one of the most outrageous and revealing statements about war and the waging of war that any head of state in the history of this republic has ever made. And he made it to John Downie, and I learned about that subsequently with an interview of John Downie’s daughter, who remembers him coming home that day very upset and saying to his wife “Pack your bags. We’re going to Canada.” And he had himself transferred up to the embassy in Canada and wanted nothing more to do with being a facilitator for the war in Vietnam.

So that taught me something about the character of this man who originally was from Pennsylvania, and in terms of his perceived actions in terms of patriotism. And I believe – this is the quandary one gets into – I believe that he had no doubt that Martin King was an enemy of the state and that what he was doing was correct. Of course, however, it was wrong and illegal and criminal and immoral. With that assessment, one has to put the whole story out there so that it’s clear where this guy was coming from. He ran the military side of things. He ran the military side.

I find that intriguing, that the assassination of Martin Luther King can be traced to within shouting distance of Lyndon Johnson. Of course, we have no evidence that Johnson ordered it or even knew about it. But his military briefer sure did.

Pepper will put out a book that summarizes all of this, to be coordinated with a movie, in the near future. He has written two previous books on this subject, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King (1995), and An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (2003, revised 2008). These will be folded into the final book, which also includes “devastating information that I have been able to acquire in the fifteen years following the civil trial.”

So there ya go, Fred. Information got out, it’s hidden in plain sight, and still no one knows about it! That’s thought control in our democratic society, at its finest.

A bad year for Malaysian Airlines

One has to be very careful with information such as this … a former Ukrainian soldier has taken refuge in Russia and claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down the Malaysian Airlines aircraft on July 17, killing all 298 on board. While Voltaire reporters are doing their best to vet the soldier and cross-reference and verify his statements, it should be noted that Western intelligence agencies are experts in the disinformation game, and he could be a plant who will later be discredited by Western sources. That’s an old intelligence/propaganda game.

Nonetheless, read for yourself, judge for yourself.

There were actually two Malaysian jets lost last year, and the first, Flight 370, disappeared over the Pacific on March 8th of this year. News media reports that it simply vanished, that technology did not exist to track it to its final destination did not exist, are simply not believable. A French former airline director, Marc Dugain, has claimed that the US military may have shot down that airliner and covered it up. The aircraft was last seen in the vicinity of Diego Garcia, a US/British base in the Indian Ocean that is equipped with very sophisticated weaponry and tracking equipment.

Again, you’re on your own. Here’s the link.

Coming to grips with ignorance … loose screws

Veracity: “Not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.” (Locke)

U.S. variation: If something is on TV and called “news” it is true. No proof need be offered.

Bertrand Russell:

“[Locke’s] definition is admirable in regard to all those matters as to which proof may reasonably be demanded. But since proofs need premise, it is impossible to prove anything unless some things are accepted without proof. We must therefore ask ourselves: What sort of thing is it reasonable to believe without proof?

I should reply: The facts of sense experience and the principles of mathematics and logic – including the inductive logic employed in science. These are things which we can hardly bring ourselves to doubt, and as to which there is a large measure of agreement among mankind.

But in matters as to which men disagree, or as to which our own convictions are wavering, we should look for proofs, or, if proofs cannot be found, we should be content to confess ignorance.” (The Listener, 1947)

The major event of our time for most Americans, 9/11, is surrounded by so-called evidence with little or no science behind it.

  • Jet aircraft cannot behave in that manner, cannot fly at 500+ mph in dense atmosphere;
  • The odds of 19 supposed hijackers all having success with minimal tools at their disposal are phenomenal …
  • … and then to fly the aircraft (which cannot fly at that speed anyway) unerringly to their targets … unlikely.
  • Large jet aircraft cannot fly through small holes without meeting resistance and leaving debris.
  • Light posts would not have been severed by aircraft wings – quite the opposite, the wings would have been severed by a denser metal.
  • Cell phone calls from aircraft were impossible then, as now.
  • The notion that an aircraft sunk in an abandoned mine and that no effort was made to recover it is … indescribably ludicrous.
  • That a group of people ascertained the plans of supposed hijackers and then voluntarily committed suicide to save others … Disneyesque, vain, patronizing and stupid.
  • That national defense responders all at once screwed up is so … highly unlikely …
  • … that fighter aircraft needed for national defense conveniently were out of position – highly coincidental.
  • The large number of military drills going on, easily ‘flipped live” to avail plotters of vast government resources, was too coincidental to be taken without serious skepticism.
  • The presence of an unreported large hurricane off the shore of Long Island that day … hmmmm.

These are the facts of sense experience, but also principles of mathematics and logic. Those of us who look at the events of that day with high skepticism are the ones who employ the skills of reason and logic, and are also the ones not so susceptible to TV truth. We are the sane ones. The rest of you … you seem to have some screws loose.

I do not understand the power in place that causes ordinarily sensible people to believe such monstrous lies. It’s really weird that all of the above, easily seen to be false, even ludicrous, are accepted without proof.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

Arrogant jerkism

“I have come to realize that men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men.” (Napoleon Bonaparte)

As a young man of 36 in 1986 (April 1st) I had broken free of the business world, and was self-employed. I was worried about making a living, of course, but slowly over time began to notice that I had time to do things I wanted to do rather than dancing like a monkey for some organ grinder. I did not know it, but that freedom made me unemployable, that is, no boss would ever again subdue my thoughts or demand all my time save those two precious weeks a year I was allowed before.

The question is, then: What is our natural state? In bondage? Or as free human beings? If Napoleon above is right, it is both – that most of us are born to be soldiers and waitresses, while a few rise above it all.

If that is the case, I must then sound like an arrogant jerk. Maybe I am.

Lately I’ve been listening to podcasts while I do other stuff, as always, but the topic has been education. Driving to and from Montana last week we passed countless truck drivers, and I tried to look at them, to see the eyes, to see what a man’s face looks like as he is engaged in the most boring possible activity. Of course, the face tells me nothing. But I had to think that our eduction system, with our countless hours of boredom am mindless repetition and regurgitation, prepares them well for that occupation – or to be soldiers, clerks, drivers, insurance agents, sales people, teachers … but not free human beings.

And I wonder about the chicken and the egg – does our education system produce zombies, or merely nurture them?

I do no know.

In praise of rock throwers

9781610915588There is a new book out, Keeping the Wild, a compilation of essays and articles edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. I have not read it but will, and wanted to promote it here as it was recommended to me by a rock thrower over the weekend.

I used to be a volunteer for Montana Wilderness Association. This was the period from perhaps 1992 to 2000 or so – I am not clear. I sat through endless meetings, but it was a learning process more than a time when I was doing effective work. It was like being dropped in the middle of the Keebler Elf cookie factory, a buzz of activity and left to me to figure out who’s doing what and who is in charge. I joined because I like the product.

I do remember a trip to Great Falls in the early 1990’s with the Eastern Montana organizer, Tammy, to meet with people from the Pew Charitable Trusts and try to get some financial support. I was determined at that time to try to understand Max Baucus, and so took with me a yellow legal pad so that I could jot down thoughts as we traveled. I remember that. That was just a beginning, of course, and a long period of self-education followed, still going on. But I did ask a question.

In the aftermath, and memories are not clear, I do know that we were turned down by Pew, and that Tammy was disappointed. A young fellow from back east, John Adams, the successor organizer for the Eastern office, would later tell me that he was of the impression Pew was trying to take over the program for MWA, and offered grants only if the organization conformed to its objectives, abandoning its own.

At that time, I recall MWA having three paid staff in Helena, Bob Decker, Executive Director, John Gatchell, Conservation Director, and Susan, the administrative assistant. There were also paid field offices in Great Falls, Billings, and a couple of other places. It had a host of volunteers*, the old guard, the men and women who formed the organization and fought and won many of the wilderness areas that Montana still enjoys. These men, like Joe Gutkowski, Don Mazola, and two I never met, the Baldwins, and a host of others whose faces I know but names I’ve lost, formed a backbone of directed energy that accomplished goals over a long-term. I do hope that in writing this people come along and refresh my memory, as too much time has passed since my involvement. I would like that list of names, as I could not find it at the MWA website.

An important feature of MWA was poverty. Bob Decker, an engineer by trade, along with Gatchell and Susan, made very little money despite having good skills and talents. That’s a hard way to live, but is part of the deal in the environmental movement ethos – there isn’t a lot of money to be had. Poverty draws out the dedicated souls who are more concerned about mission than comfort. But that’s easy to say of other people. I always wanted to make enough money to be comfortable. So did they. So do we all.

Decker left. Susan probably retired. Gatchell is still there. Pew moved in. Pew won. Here’s a list of current staff of MWA:

  • Bryan Sybert, Executive Director
  • Carl Deitchman, Finance Director
  • Laura Parr, Business Manager
  • Amanda Hagertym, Administrative Assistant
  • Sarah Shepard, CFRE, Development Director
  • Kassia Randzio, Development Coordinator
  • Molly Severtson, Donor Relations Manager
  • Denny Lester, Communications Coordinator
  • Gabriel Furshong, State Program Director
  • Mark Good, Central Montana Field Director;
  • Casey Perkins, Rocky Mountain Front Field Director
  • Zack Porter, NEXGen Program Director
  • Amy Robinson, Northwest Montana Wilderness Field Director
  • Cameron Sapp, Eastern Montana Field Representative
  • John Todd, Southwest Montana Field Director
  • John Gatchell, Conservation Director
  • Shannon Freix, CDT Montana Program Director
  • Meg Killen, CDT Montana Field Crew Leader
  • Sonny Mazzulo, CDT Montana Field Coordinator
  • Cedron Jones, GIS Mapping Specialist

Good heavens! That’s not a dedicated group of volunteers – these are mostly degrees and salaries and the hubris that goes with that. Quite a few are dedicated to “development,” or keeping the engine going that pays the salaries. It’s become a self-feeding machine that needs a continual source of new food to keep going.

Wilderness has always been a tough fight, but the fighters left MWA as the Pew children moved in. The culture changed. These folks, one in particular, refer to the old guard as “rock throwers.” The new guard are well paid I assume, and comfortable with development of donors instead of wilderness. These are our “collaborators.” They throw rocks at outfits like Alliance for a Wild Rockies, the men and women who fight the fights that MWA used to help out with.

I once referred in a blog comment to a similar experience that Trout Unlimited experienced, an influx of foundation money, as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” These people talk like wilderness advocates, and they all attach their canoeing and hiking affectations to their resumes. Perhaps they’ve noticed, then, as I have, that the back country is virtually empty these days, as are parking lots at trail heads. That was our constituency, wilderness users. Without them, it will soon be rolled over by ATV’s and snowmobiles and loggers, the people whom MWA collaborates with.

MWA website is littered with pictures of cherished areas. Gone are any references to the founders, any history. If anyone criticizes them for selling out, as they surely have, they are likely to get that piercing and deeply disturbing scream that Donald Sutherland did so well in the 1978 movie about moving automatons into the bodies of real people.

These people, the current staff of MWA, and there are two that were there when I was there, will never know the thrill of a victory. They don’t try to win anything. But they also don’t know the other part of being alive, as essential as an occasional victory, the pain of defeat. Since they don’t try to win, by definition, they don’t know what it is to lose. So life is good for them.

It’s always been easy to call losing something else. But that’s what they do for living.
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*Do not confuse “volunteers” with “membership.” There were perhaps thirty hard-core volunteers even as MWA listed thousands of members. The requirement for members was a $35 annual contribution, and it had a four-fold effect, that is, if you sent them that, they would assume you had a spouse and two children, and add four people to their rolls. I assume that chicanery goes on throughout the not-for-profit world, as there’s very little active volunteer activity in this country outside churches.

Noises in the night

This is a most revealing conversation from two days ago at 4&20:

Commenter: Count me among the many who can’t process the thought that elites were behind 9/11.

Me: Totally understandable thought. I do hope, however, that it represents the beginning, rather than the end, of your search for truth.

Commenter: Actually, I’m not much of a seeker. Most of the time I’m willing to settle for appearances. They’re damning enough.

Me: Until scrutinized.

Imagine laying in bed at night and hearing noises in the house. Perhaps the hardest thing we all have to do in growing up is to summon the courage to go find out what is going on. It requires every ounce of steel we have accumulated to that point. (We could just grab a gun, a substitute for courage.)

Here’s another exchange, from this blog:

Commenter: I’m looking for a cause to which I can become a lackey and sycophant. I’m considering the conspiracy theory world. The problems I have with it are:

)there are multiple threads to follow. It would seem things would begin to converge after a while.

)there are as many holes in the proposed alternatives than in the official line.

)the personnel in the genre often have quirks that overshadow the scholarship

Me: As to your first point, it is true, you do have to use your brain.

As to your second point, utterly false. You’ve obviously never looked at any evidence.

As to your third point, such observations are generally made by people who have not used their brains or looked at the evidence.

You can solve this crime … millions of other have. It was essentially solved back in the 60’s. What scares you?

Commenter: Comes the hour, comes the man. Why don’t the millions rise up, empower some leaders, and prosecute the wrongdoers? Probably because there is less there than you think.

Me: Darting, dodging, weaving, ducking, refusing to look at the evidence. You’re scared of what you might find, I suppose. That’s why they got away with it. People are just like you. People don’t want to believe our country is just like every other country, run by thugs. America is exceptional, we are told. Look into this crime … and your eyes will be opened. That’s rare. Few have the balls to do that. Few transcend the barrier of fear.

That’s really all that is going on. People are afraid of facing their darkest fears. I am like everyone else except that, by chance, perhaps being blind and naive, I got up and stumbled around the house and came face to face with reality.

It made a difference. It changed me.

The intruder is American exceptionalism … that is, we need to come to grips with what is not there. We are just like every other country on earth, not different or better. Just suffering deeper delusion.

A November miracle

During our travels I am reading Joseph McBride’s self-published Into the Nightmare, an account of his lifetime pursuit of truth surrounding the murder of John F. Kennedy. We have some things in common – Catholic education, youthful naïveté, and yet an inability to accept the contradictions in our face even back in the 1960’s. But at this point I am merely looking to see if anything new has been uncovered. McBride has interviewed people heretofore not located or ignored, and has some surprising findings.

In addition, McBride has made me aware of yet another miracle.

Miracles are not unusual during important events. On 9/11 laws of physics were suspended, allowing aluminum aircraft to disappear unhindered into steel buildings. And of course we know that on 11/22/63 laws of motion regarding behavior of bullets were put on hold. Also on that day a German Mauser 7.65 rifle magically transformed into a 6.5 Mannlicher Carcano, a water-into-wine event often overlooked in our worship of official truth.

McBride has made me aware of yet another miracle back in 1963. His research focuses on the murder of officer JD Tippit. It is evident that event is a Rosetta Stone of sorts. Tippit, by indications and appearances, was involved in a manhunt, but not the official one. Rather, he was part of a team that was to hunt down and kill Lee Harvey Oswald. This was in motion even before the police knew to look for him, as Oswald (officially) did not come to police attention until he was (wrongly) suspected to be the man who murdered the “poor dumb cop*,” Tippit.

The plan was to murder the president, have a manhunt, murder Oswald, have closure. But Oswald escaped the manhunt and made his way to a hastily arranged meeting at a movie theater, only then to be swarmed by police (who apparently were tipped off about the meeting). For reasons I do not understand, he was not murdered at the theater. (A minor miracle, I suppose, Oswald appears in transformed state, perhaps an apparition: Two Oswald’s were seen leaving the theater that day, one through the front door, one out the alley exit. Maybe that has something to do with it. Was Oswald meeting with his doppelgänger?)

But another miracle was in the works, and we would all witness it. It is this: Lee Harvey Oswald managed to survive for two more days while in custody of the Dallas Police (!) before being murdered in an obviously prearranged encounter with Jack Ruby.

Praised be Allah. Hal’lúkah. The Lord be with us, watch over all of us, forgive us our sins. Our God operates in mysterious ways.
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*According to one eyewitness to the shooting, those words were uttered by the shooter as he left the scene.
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PS: Joseph McBride is far more thorough than me, and meticulous too. My own impressions recorded above are not subject to such scrutiny as his by his peers, and so have a ring of certainty about them that is unwarranted. In truth, I am only certain that the official version of the incident is utterly without merit. Here’s McBride, page 457:

The best that we can come up with at this point late point is eliminating certain suspects and theories, and evaluating various other theories about how the murder might have taken place. Though that will stop short of certainty, it allows us a somewhat clearer picture of the Tippit murder, a key event that has remained obscure for too long. The list of problems preventing a solution is lengthy: failure to collect sufficient evidence at the scene; lost evidence; planted evidence and perhaps planted “witnesses”; failure to interview actual witnesses; intimidation and even murder of witnesses; systematic suppression of information by the police and the U.S. government; and perhaps the most offensive, a seeming official indifference to the importance of this aspect of the [JFK] case and the slain officer himself.

Is that all there is?

I spent three hours last Saturday at a meeting run by local labor to promote a single payer health system in Colorado. The speaker, brought in from Detroit, was smart, interesting and on top of his game. He understood concepts like “rent seeking'” quite rare. There were about thirty people in the audience. In this brain-dead country, that’s a lot.

In Q&A I mentioned how in Montana we were at the mercy of the Public Relations industry, always behind the eight ball, as they killed us with short and pithy slogans like “death panels” and “government run” and “tax increases,” all false but so damned effective. I suggested that we study this, that we needed some slogans of our own. The speaker agreed, said they knew this.

Here’s one they came up with, a poster on the wall:

Medicare Yes.
Insurance companies No.”

That’s about as bland as they could have made it*. Even substituting the word “cartel” for companies would help, but these people don’t seem to have much in the way of creative juices. They are bound to lose.

Here’s the kicker. The meeting lasted three hours, I met some folks, 29 to be precise. For all of our sitting and listening, they did not ask anything of us. No outreach, community contact, even little things like letters and phone calls. We just listened and went home.

Yeah. That’ll work. Way to go, labor.
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*The speaker said that there is a poster in the labor temple in Detroit that says “The bosses get two parties. Why can’t we have one?” That might be more effective if not kept in the basement. I suspect they are fearful of offending Democrats.

Torture Report: Classic Bullshit

All U.S. citizens, vigilant and regular, need to take some time now with the release of the 6,000 page Torture Report to ignore that report and review the following:

Limited hangout: 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.

If I understand the report correctly, and I am not going to waste my time reviewing the details (which are well-known around the world), the abuses of the Bush era are exposed in this report, and an executive order by Obama ended the practice.

Bullshit. The purpose of the report then would not be to expose wrongdoing (or punish anyone), but rather to provide a sense of closure. In effect they are saying that the era of torture is ended.

Bullshit. That is a classic limited hangout.