Mark Stapleton

Ron, I don't know how they programmed Sirhan, but the 'official' explanation for Sirhan's 'action', keenly promoted by the media, is so transparently absurd, satirical really, that one wonders whether the entire US population was hypnotically programmed to accept whatever the media told them. I agree with you about the ongoing tragedy of the Kennedy's. It's fear. Whoever killed Jack and Bobby have the morality of drug barons and the families of enemies are fair game.

What are you clinging to, Tim? Both LHO and SS were patsies. The media has lied its head off for forty years. The mainstream media controlled everything the public saw or heard in the 60's.

Scott Ritter's latest piece about an attack on Iran. Compulsive reading as usual: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/14/10337/

Nice post, Jan. Bridgewater should know. The Anglo economies, and the US in particular, are about to be hit by an anvil like Wile-e-Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. Unlike all previous economic downturns in the modern era, this one contains an additional sting in the tail--there's no cheap energy left. i.e. the economy can't be resuscitated (barring a breakthrough discovery). Realism shouldn't be confused with pessimism. There's massive social dislocation imminent. Survivalists will have their day in the sun.

Well, there are those, like Kuchnick and John Judge, who would like Conyers to bring the Impeachment Articles out of Committee and onto the floor of the House immediately. If Conyers is going to wait until Bush invades Iran, then it might not ever happen. If Bush wants to invade Iran during the last hours of his watch, he won't care about being impeached. The way impeachment works, if I remember correctly, the Judiciary Committee must vote first, then the House of Reps, and if the measures pass both, then it goes to the Senate for the proceedings. If Conyers isn't going to let it out of Committee, like he sat on the Cheney impeachment, then it won't ever happen. BK Bill, What do the articles say about impeachment if Israel attacks Iran, while America stands watch?

The biggest danger in electing McCain is the certainty that America's military Keynesianism will continue to accelerate, with all its resultant economic inequities. It's now running at over half a trillion per annum. If it weren't for America's addiction to oil, there would be no need for this egregious largesse granted to the MIC---surely adequate maintenance of eight thousand odd nukes and the capacity to deliver them anywhere would be ample deterrent to any attacker. McCain has pre-emptively attacked Obama, claiming he would typify the big taxing, big spending Democrat template. This is gross hypocrisy coming from such an avid supporter of military spending which exceeds that of all other nations combined. To Republicans, any spending on social programs is waste. They hate social welfare but fully embrace corporate welfare. Corporate bailouts sometimes sound like telephone numbers. Tax breaks for billionaires are also just another form of corporate welfare. Obama has stated he intends to force wealthy Americans to share the burden. Since a severe recession appears certain and a depression is possible, average Americans would be crazy not to give him a chance to implement this promise. What does McCain offer? Zilch.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=9243 Nice article, Jan. AIPAC, Bilderbergs--how many masters does a President have to serve? I hope Obama was just paying lip service to both of them but realisation of a nightmare scenario might soon occur anyway, courtesy of Israel (who else?).

I'll bet he is, Pat---and the fear would be mutual, I suspect. I saw snippets of that AIPAC rally, too. I couldn't help notice HRC's speech was almost apologetic in tone and concluded with 'Barack Obama will be a great friend to Israel'. We'll see. Perhaps Obama will tolerate an elephant in the living room or perhaps he won't. p.s. the AIPAC symbol is interesting---an intriguing blend of the Israeli and US flags.

I agree with Mosely regarding Mossad's involvement in the deaths of JFK and RFK, although I think the era of wholesale US political assassinations is in the past. For political assassinations to succeed in the present day era, it would require present day equivalents of LBJ and JEH to be prominent in American public life. These two, along with the US media, were the main architects of the coverup and suppression of evidence, imo, and without high level domestic co-ordination of the all important coverup, then no assassination plan can proceed. Of course, should Obama prove to be the real deal---and all indications are that he is---then present day equivalents of these two characters may be found and positioned accordingly. It would need to be a plot of fiendish cleverness because in Obama's case, unlike that of JFK and RFK, a highly skeptical and well informed section of the public are in nervous anticipation of just such an event. The plotters would not have the element of surprise on their side this time.

Anti-Israel or just honest? It's a fine line. IMO it has a dishonest name. If a "news" website is going to be anti-Israel or "just honest" about Israel, it should be up front about it instead of using what sounds like an establishment name. It had me fooled initially. As I was reading the article, I was wondering why an article that is so blase or accepting of the Mossad going around assassinating whomever it pleases would appear on an "establishment" website. Then I looked around and saw that it is not "establishment" at all. The Jerusalem Post, for example, might view the Mossad quite differently (whether honestly or not). Splitting hairs, Ron. Israel e-news is an apt description of what lies within the site, although maybe it should be called 'the Israel e-news that Rupert and friends don't want you to read'. There are plenty of articles on the web that are blase and accepting of the CIA assassinating whomever they please, and this barely raises an eyebrow.

One thing we can say is that Obama appears to be more left-wing that JFK was in 1960. JFK changed, maybe Obama will also. If he does, he really will be in danger of being assassinated. Yes, let's hope Obama develops into a JFK clone when in office. There's nothing else to hang your hat on anyway. He'll inherit a poisoned chalice of problems which will threaten America's social cohesion. Whether this will make it more difficult for Obama than it was for JFK remains to be seen. The timing's just about right. He can potentially put himself up there with Lincoln and Kennedy, before he shares their fate.

Anti-Israel or just honest? It's a fine line.

Right on the money, imo. Re Bobby, blaming a Palestinian for this was always too cute to be true. So Sirhan believed RFK might have 'turned' US foreign policy into pro-Israel? Very funny. A very successful mind control assassination it was. Not that hard if you control the western media, I guess. The western media itself is just a giant mind control exercise. Judging by the millions who would laugh at this suggestion, they have been highly successful.

I just returned from Savannah Georgia where the word is that Hillary recently went to see a psychiatrist. He asked her what the problem is and she said "Doc, you've got to help me; everyone ignores me," and the psychiatrist said "next patient please." http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/21/america/tube.php Sounds like Hillary and her followers expected the nomination and Presidency to be handed to her because she is a woman. Strange reasoning indeed. Apparently, the fact that she is a phony is irrelevent to her followers. I expect Obama will win in November, no matter who he picks for the ticket. America will turn a new page but it might be too late to salvage much of its former living standards. I know its a grim forecast but America's such a basket case of social and economic problems that it could take decades to sort it all out, imo. In the meantime, Russia, China and the EU will be running things.

Don't tell me she's going to hang around like a putrid odour, spouting that vacuous sexism crap. After all the diplomatic and gracious comments recently made about her by Obama--she deserved nothing so polite--she's now treating the world to a display of brattish tantrums and denial. I can't remember seeing such an indecent display of unscrupulous egotism and ambition. She needs help, not the Presidency.

Are you serious? Mark, Yes, quite. He is not saying he wants it to happen, but he is saying that it takes something like that to wake people up again to the threat. He basically says that in the quote Peter posted: ......of massive profits.

Interesting article on the subject by Debra Saunders, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...=005&sc=190 In another article, Saunders writes: Barack Obama is like a shot of Botox. Support him, and you take 10 years off your face. You join the cool crowd. You become one with idealistic kids and Hollywood glitterati. Clinton Democrats can't compete. They're on the outside looking in. They used to be hip. They were the bad boys, who scoffed at finger-wagging conservatives. Now, they have traded in their saxophones for a pantsuit. The glamour is gone. Once, their very politics, the simple fact that they registered as Democrats instead of Republicans, made them better than meat-and-potatoes America. They cared more. They were smarter. They knew how to play the system. They were destined to run things. Now they are trailing behind an upstart junior senator..... Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../INN110LINM.DTL Nice piece from Saunders on the cannabis issue--thanks Mike. And Obama's position on this is intentionally hazy. It has to be. He's got no choice. And the Clintons are just so twentieth century it's pathetic.

Are you serious?

Makes sense. Obama is being run by the international business oriented Trilats, whereas Richardson got a masters in international affairs from the "universalist" Tufts Fetcher School, was a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was a former Kissinger State Dept guy, and a former lecturer at Armand Hammer's United World College of the American West and a US Ambassador to the UN (amongst other appointments). Just the sort of all round regular guy the US working-classes would choose for their champion, eh. The words, "fixed", "casino", "wheel" and "roulette" spring to mind. Maybe, David. But if he is willing to defy big pharma, the media and the DEA by signing a bill legalising medical cannabis, then he would get my vote.

Very interesting, Terry. Thanks to you (and your brother) for posting this. As the video suggests, America is in denial. Some on the Forum are in denial-- or in fear of retribution. The image of America and its branches of power being enslaved by a distant, tiny ally and its vocal diaspora would be highly amusing if it wasn't laced with potentially disastrous consequences for America and the rest of the world. How many Americans on the Forum will dare to comment on this increasingly apparent truth? Probably not many.

Point well made, imo. Better for all concerned they stay inside the tent, and avoid participating in MSM's smearing of CT's. MSM's treatment of official dissenters has all the paranoia of the Inquisition. p.s. I'm seeing '9-11 was an inside job' bumper stickers everywhere lately.

This is now the big issue, as I think HRC's campaign is over. Maybe she's clinging on like a rabid bulldog to get herself onto a joint ticket. I agree this would be a terrible option, Chris. It delivers the dreaded Dealey Plaza option to the elites and, coincidentally, HRC has already glowingly invoked the memory of Lyin' Lyndon during the nomination campaign.

It's no secret that the current US Administration supports Israeli regional hegemony, by any and all means. In fact, the current US government would support anything Israel tells them to support. Public opinion is proving more difficult to mould however. A new generation of Jews and non-Jews alike know a brutal occupation when they see one and they know who controls the MSM. The hardline Zionist opinion shapers and spin merchants are getting a bit worried as they can see reason and logic emerging on the horizon. Watch for the increasingly shrill hysteria as they realise they've lost the debate to common sense. An individual named Melanie Phillips has revealed where she's coming from. She's got lots of shrill but no logic or compassion as she claims the Palestinians are an 'artificial' people who can be collectively punished because they are a 'terrorist population'. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/08/8810/ Published on Thursday, May 8, 2008 by The Independent/UK The Loathsome Smearing of Israel’s Critics by Johann Hari In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence — and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors. My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more. Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes. The response? There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile “pro-Israel” writers and media monitoring groups — including Honest Reporting and Camera — said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejadh, while Melanie Phillips even linked the stabbing of two Jewish people in North London to articles like mine. Vast numbers of e-mails came flooding in calling for me to be sacked. Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian land, “Honest Reporting” claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth of Jews “poisoning the wells.” If you interview a woman whose baby died in 2002 because she was detained — in labour — by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint within the West Bank, “Honest Reporting” will say you didn’t explain “the real cause”: the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on, and on. The former editor of Israel’s leading newspaper, Ha’aretz, David Landau, calls the behaviour of these groups “nascent McCarthyism”. Those responsible hold extreme positions of their own that place them way to the right of most Israelis. Alan Dershowitz and Melanie Phillips are two of the most prominent figures sent in to attack anyone who disagrees with the Israeli right. Dershowitz is a lawyer, Harvard professor and author of The Case For Israel. He sees ethnic cleansing as a trifling matter, writing: “Political solutions often require the movement of people, and such movement is not always voluntary … It is a fifth-rate issue analogous in many respects to some massive urban renewal.” If a prominent American figure takes a position on Israel to the left of this, Dershowitz often takes to the airwaves to call them anti-Semites and bigots. The journalist Melanie Phillips performs a similar role in Britain. Last year a group called Independent Jewish Voices was established with this mission statement: “Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peace and security.” Jews including Mike Leigh, Stephen Fry and Rabbi David Goldberg joined. Phillips swiftly dubbed them “Jews For Genocide”, and said they “encourage” the “killers” of Jews. Where does this come from? She says the Palestinians are an “artificial” people who can be collectively punished because they are “a terrorist population”. She believes that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project”. Honest Reporting quotes Phillips as a model of reliable reporting. These individuals spray accusations of anti-Semitism so liberally that by their standards, a majority of Jewish Israelis have anti-Semitic tendencies. Dershowitz said Jimmy Carter’s decision to speak to the elected Hamas government “border[ed] on anti-Semitism.” A Ha’aretz poll last month found that 64 per cent of Israelis want their government to do just that. As US President, Jimmy Carter showed his commitment to Israel by giving it more aid than anywhere else and brokering the only peace deal with an Arab regime the country has ever enjoyed. He also wants to see a safe and secure Palestine alongside it — so last year he wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. It is a bland and factual canter through the major human rights reports. There is nothing there you can’t read in the mainstream Israeli press every day. Carter’s comparison of life on the West Bank (not within Israel) to Apartheid South Africa is not new. The West Bank is ruled in the interests of a small Jewish minority; it is bisected by roads for the Jewish settlers from which Palestinians are banned. The Israeli human rights group B’tselem says this “bears striking similarities to the racist Apartheid regime”. Yet for repeating these facts in the US, Carter has widely called “a racist”. Several universities have even refused to let the ex-President speak to their students. These campus battles often succeed. Norman Finkelstein is a political scientist in the US whose parents were both Jewish survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. They lost every blood relative. He made his reputation exposing a hoax called From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters which claimed that Palestine was virtually empty when Zionist settlers arrived, and the people claiming to be Palestinians were mostly impostors who had come from local areas to cash in. Finkelstein showed it to be scarred by falsified figures and gross misreading of sources. From that moment on, he was smeared as an anti-Semite by those who had lauded the book. But it was when Finkelstein revealed two years ago that Alan Dershowitz had, without acknowledgement, drawn wholesale from Peters’ hoax for his book The Case For Israel, that the worst began. Dershowitz campaigned to make sure Finkelstein was denied tenure at his university. He even claimed that Finkelstein’s mother — who made it through Maidenek and two slave-labour camps — had collaborated with the Nazis. The campaign worked. Finkelstein was let go by De Paul University, simply for speaking the truth. Are the likes of Dershowitz and Phillips and Honest Reporting becoming more shrill because they can sense they are losing the argument? Liberal Jews — the majority — are now setting up rivals to the hard-right organisations they work with, because they believe this campaign of demonisation is damaging us all. It damages the Palestinians, because it prevents honest discussion of their plight. It damages the Israelis, because it pushes them further down an aggressive and futile path. And it damages diaspora Jews, because it makes real anti-Semitism harder to deal with. We need to look the witch-hunters in the eye and say, as Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy himself: “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” –Johann Hari ©independent.co.uk

Agreed. The same group planned both assassinations. This is almost a certainty. IMO, the reason for more focus on JFK is because the events panned out over three days--with two others being assassinated--and consequently the JFK case has more complexity and intrigue than the killing of Bobby (equally tragic that it was). Moreover, there is also the multitude of suspicious deaths which followed DP, a vast array of film and photo evidence and there were more official inquiries. Understandable because JFK was President. The conspirators learnt a valuable lesson from DP, imo. This time the patsy was carefully groomed to take the fall quietly. Killing LHO was a massive risk they had to take because the stakes were so high. They must have had disturbing memories of that Friday night through Sunday morning.

So Joe was intimately familiar with the layout of the Ambassador hotel. Hmm... And he worked for Seagram's, the distillery bought out by the Bronfman family in 1928. The same Bronfman family who were major shareholders in General Dynamics and were closely linked to Meyer Lansky's bootlegging activities and, like Lansky, generous and devoted supporters of Israel. Permindex, BCI, Tibor Rosenbaum, Clay Shaw, Bloomfield, Bronfman, Lansky, Sonneborn Institute and Montreal. Put them together and what do you get? Oh that's right---a crazed and devoted supporter of Palestine determined to prevent RFK from swinging towards Israel. After all, the Palestinians were getting such a great deal from America in 1968, weren't they. Sirhan just had to intervene to protect it.