Owen Parsons

i tend to agree with Piper's general theory on the landscape of how Israel has progressed militarily and in the United States policies since 1963.Bottom line,they call the shots...look no further than the United States waging and threatening war today on Israel's worst blood enemies....the whole 9 yards from the USS Liberty to Jack Abramoff and everything in between.

More anti-Israeli nonsense. Israel as a state can certainly be subjected to criticism, but much of it is ridiculous and borderline, yes, "anti-Semitic." I really fail to see how the attack on the USS Liberty can be seen as anything other than a case of mistaken identity. First of all, I have never seen any plausible motive whatsoever put forward for why Israel would deliberately attack the ship. Second, Israel did not sink the Liberty. These two factors pretty much "sink" the theory. Its just another smear to paint the Jewish nation as totally malevolent and evil.

This little piece by Dr. Dore Gold (former Israeli ambassador to the U.N.) shows that the U.S.'s recent Iraqi adventure has not been at Israel's behest, nor is it even necessarily in Israel's best interest.

Also, this lengthy analysis by Dr. Francisco Gil-White shows that U.S. foreign policy has been pro-PLO, not pro-Israeli. How interesting that the United States should get the PLO out of Lebanon on the brink of their destruction by Israel, or that the PLO provided security for U.S. diplomats in the same conflict. This is just one example among many. In addition, another long series of articles by the same author details the attacks on Israel in the media by "former" CIA officials Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, including linking Israel to 9-11 (for which there is still no evidence that hasn't been "cooked," so to speak).

Hi,Owen..i agree with you,there are plenty of "woe is Israel" articles out there.We're so far apart on how we see things in regards to the role Israel plays in American foreign policy and the media there's no need to even comment further....i will add that you've embellished Ray McGovern's influence in the media.His best moments have been on CSpan,which is not the mainstream media. Ray McGovern's work since 9/11 has been very admirable in my opinion..

Gil-White documents how Raymond McGovern's work is disingenuous, dishonest, and malicious, particularly about things he should be aware of as a "former" CIA man. McGovern's main point linking Israel to 9/11, which appears to be the ZIM shipping company allegations, have been debunked (note: there is much on this particular site I do not support, but this is solidly documented). As for McGovern in the mainstream media, I'll quote Gil-White here: "If you do a search in the Lexis-Nexis archive, limiting yourself just to the major papers, McGovern has appeared a total of 80 times since 1999. This gives a yearly average of about 13 appearances, which is already impressive and yet deceptive because McGovern's exposure has been growing over time: in the last year alone (August 2004-August 2005) he has appeared 30 times, which is more than twice a month. Remember, this is just in the major papers that are archived by Lexis-Nexis; his total exposure is more impressive still, for he appears also in papers not archived by Lexis-Nexis, and in radio and television. (And none of this counts appearances of McGovern's VIPS that do not mention McGovern specifically.)"

It is indeed obvious that our views on American foreign policy towards Israel diverge significantly, but I would like to know how you can reconcile America's rescue of the P.L.O. from extinction in Lebanon with your views (for starters).

i tend to agree with Piper's general theory on the landscape of how Israel has progressed militarily and in the United States policies since 1963.Bottom line,they call the shots...look no further than the United States waging and threatening war today on Israel's worst blood enemies....the whole 9 yards from the USS Liberty to Jack Abramoff and everything in between.

More anti-Israeli nonsense. Israel as a state can certainly be subjected to criticism, but much of it is ridiculous and borderline, yes, "anti-Semitic." I really fail to see how the attack on the USS Liberty can be seen as anything other than a case of mistaken identity. First of all, I have never seen any plausible motive whatsoever put forward for why Israel would deliberately attack the ship. Second, Israel did not sink the Liberty. These two factors pretty much "sink" the theory. Its just another smear to paint the Jewish nation as totally malevolent and evil.

This little piece by Dr. Dore Gold (former Israeli ambassador to the U.N.) shows that the U.S.'s recent Iraqi adventure has not been at Israel's behest, nor is it even necessarily in Israel's best interest.

Also, this lengthy analysis by Dr. Francisco Gil-White shows that U.S. foreign policy has been pro-PLO, not pro-Israeli. How interesting that the United States should get the PLO out of Lebanon on the brink of their destruction by Israel, or that the PLO provided security for U.S. diplomats in the same conflict. This is just one example among many. In addition, another long series of articles by the same author details the attacks on Israel in the media by "former" CIA officials Raymond McGovern and Vincent Cannistraro, including linking Israel to 9-11 (for which there is still no evidence that hasn't been "cooked," so to speak).

I think the anecdotal evidence about voter fraud and the Outfit's supposed role is rather insignificant next to the statistical analysis. The entire paper (which I linked) is more detailed and thorough than the article.

Good article. It pretty much confirms what I had already suspected via pattern recognition of the attacks on Kennedy.

Edit: Binder's full paper can be downloaded here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=888638

So far I haven't found your views to be overtly racist. Forthright, but not racist.

I don't think Piper dislikes the Jewish race as such, he just dislikes Jewish religion and culture. Indeed, he is very fond of reminding us of his friendship with Mark Lane and enjoys citing Jewish writers that in some way or another lend support to any of his numerous theories.

FWIW I agree with you about Sharon. I remember when he was that pig that allowed the slaughter of all those civilians in Lebanon. But now, not unlike the career trajectory of Arafat, everyone around him has drifted right and he has become a moderate. Yes, I agree. That's pretty scary. An ex-girlfriend who lived in Israel for years returned two years ago and told me that we needed to nuke Iran asap before they got the bomb. Because as soon as they got the bomb they planned on using it even if it meant the U.S. and/or Israel would wipe them off the face of the Earth. Because they hated the Jews that much.. Because (in the minds of Israelis) Iranians go to sleep at night not praying for the protection of their families but praying for the death of Israel. This is how Israelis feel... that everyone is out to get them... Maybe you should become an Israeli; you already think like one.

There is really no evidence that Sharon had knowledge of the massacre (which was, I think the unfamiliar reader should know, carried out by the Phalangists, not the Israelis, something that is usually not brought up in the soundbites) until too late, and the intelligence received was not sufficient*, but certainly he deserves criticism for his lack of foresight in this situation, if nothing else. It should also be noted that the IDF rejected requests from the Phalangists, before they entered the refugee camps, for artillery and tanks. Why? So as to prevent injury to civillians.

Also, I don't think it serves the interests of truth to use the opinions of an ex-girlfriend as representative of all Israelis, as you do ("...in the minds of Israelis" "This is how Israelis feel" etc. etc.). But even if such sweeping statements were true, who can blame them for being paranoid? Just take a look at the history of modern Israel.

* From the Kahan Commission: "We do not believe that responsibility is to be imputed to the Defense Minister for not ordering the removal of the Phalangists from the camps when the first reports reached him about the acts of killing being committed there. As was detailed above, such reports initially reached the Defense Minister on Friday evening; but at the same time, he had heard from the Chief of Staff that the Phalangists' operation had been halted, that they had been ordered to leave the camps and that their departure would be effected by 5:00 a.m. Saturday. These preventive steps might well have seemed sufficient to the Defense Minister at that time, and it was not his duty to order additional steps to be taken, or to have the departure time moved up, a step which was of doubtful feasibility."

Andy Walker endorses the work of Deborah Lipstadt, a squalid racist who says that Jews should not marry non-Jews.

I call upon all of the good anti-racists on this forum to denounce Deborah Lipstadt for her foul racist position that Jews should not marry non-Jews.

Then when Deborah Lipstadt finally rejects this hate-filled supremacist point of view (something spawned from the old lie that God places one group of people above another, that "Chosen People" nonsense), maybe we can start believing EVERYTHING she says about "the Holocaust Deniers."

Andy Walker: do you endorse Deborah Lipstadt's racist view that Jews should not marry non-Jews.

Give us your answer.

You do realize that the prohibition against intermarriage has to to do with religion and not race, right? Anyone of any ethnicity can become a Jew. Ditto for the concept of "chosen people."

The fact that most religious Jews are also of the Jewish ethnicity is beside the point.

Yeah, I agree with Owen Parsons and Ken Colby . . . I'm a really, realllllllllllllly scary guy. Just thinking about myself gets me kind of dizzy . . . I feel panic attacks coming on . . . I mean, My God, I actually don't believe the Bible! (Speaking of which, Thomas L. Thompson has written some fantastic works showing that archeology and history refute the old legends about ancient Israel --- all made up. A Jewish writer, Daniel Lazare, wrote a great piece for Harper's magazine a few years ago (and I believe it's accessible online) demonstrating that the Zionist claim to Palestine is based on a tissue of ancient lies. So much for that vicious racist "Chosen People" nonsense. In any event, the Old Testament is quite demented.

I've actually done some reading in the area of Old Testament history, and I can confidently say that Thomas L. Thompson's work is bunk (motivated by his own "theological" needs). This man is not an archaelogist and you will look long and hard to find one that agrees with him. The closest is Israel Finkelstein, and that ain't all that close. See Kenneth Kitchen's (who is not a fundamentalist) latest work ("On the Reliability of the Old Testament") for a pretty thorough trouncing of Thompson, or even Dever's books. There is nothing inherently racist about the concept of "Chosen People," this is just garbage and shows your own hostilty to Judaism as a religious practice (which was why I raised the issue of it being in the Old Testament). And some modern readers may find parts of the Old Testament offensive (myself being one of them, btw), but it needs to be appreciated in the context of the time frame in which it was written.

NOTE TO OWEN PARSONS: If you check out A. J. Weberman's website---I mean, he's no evil Holocaust denier like me---you'll find that he claims (and I have no reason to doubt his word) that Jim Garrison was circulating a manuscript for an unpublished novel in which Garrison fingered Israel's Mossad as the force behind the JFK assassination.

I didn't learn that until about the time I was putting together either the fourth or fifth edition of FINAL JUDGMENT.

I wonder why in the world Jim Garrison would have ever thought the Mossad might have been behind the JFK assassination?

If you believe Garrison was on the right track in going after Clay Shaw, it is IMPOSSIBLE to dispute that Clay Shaw was in the thick of Mossad operations via his involvement with Permindex.

In some respects, I tend to think, Shaw was actually more "Mossad" than CIA and Shaw wasn't even Jewish.

I saw that. Weberman uses that to smear Garrison, if I remember correctly, but it may be true. Regardless of whether it is or not, Garrison was certainly not infallible, and, if you noticed, he spends most of his published writings hammering the CIA, not the Mossad. Shaw's links with the CIA are clear and well documented (through the CIA's own documents), his Mossad ones less so (but perhaps not insubstantial). Ditto with Permindex, which is now shown to be even more CIA linked with Mellen's revelations about Ferenc Naggy's CIA ties, among other things.

If you're a Holocaust Enthusiast and want an interesting book on the topic, check out Jewish American professor Peter Novick's book, THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE (not not not a Holocaust Denial book, folks) and you'll actually learn something. I found it very interesting that, according to Novick, a top leader of the American Jewish Committee said at the end of World War Two that most Holocaust survivors were, in his words, "largely the lowest Jewish elements." Pretty amazing. Novick also reports that the whole concept of America having a "Judeo-Christian heritage" was cooked up by a World War II era Office of War Information propagandist , Leo Rosten, trying to convince Americans that Hitler was also more or less anti-Christian. The OWI realized that a lot of Americans—like the Kennedy brothers, Joe and Jack—supported Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee's opposition to U.S. involvement in a war against Germany and they needed every bit of clever gimmickry to get Americans to rally round the flag against Hitler. Thus the invention of the "Judeo-Christian" terminology. Remember: Evil Anti-Semite Mike Piper didn't make this up. He's just quoting Jewish American professor David Novick, of, I believe, the University of Chicago, not known as a center of Holocaust Denial.

I'm not a holocaust enthusiast, but I found your little dishonest article quite reprehensible. Up until that point, I had enjoyed reading your posts in alt.assassination.jfk and was even interested in buying your book (even then, when I was anti-Israel, I didn't totally believe your thesis, but found it interesting). Novick's book (which I have come across before) does look interesting and I may come around to reading it some day.

For what its worth, I've looked at both sides of the debate and I'm convinced that Zapruder film alteration (or the "Zapruder hoax") is on par with moon hoax stuff (and I don't mean that as a compliment). It just diverts attention away from more fruitful areas of research.

A Canadian Jewish scholar, Professor Michael Neumann, has written a new book entitled THE CASE AGAINST ISRAEL, published by Counterpunch (which is the organ of progressive writer Alexander Cockburn --- he no anti-Semite or Holocaust denier either -- and in the book he advocates that the United States save Israel from itself by leading an international coalition to take out Israel's nuclear bomb. Not a bad idea. Those mad bombers in Israel's Likud are capable of anything.

Michael Neumann has damned himself with his own words. See here. I am somewhat surprised that the anti-Zionist movement still regards him as credible enough to do their cause good.

I do know that when I was a high school student I was taught that "of the six million Jews who died during World War II, four million of them died at Auschwitz." However, on July 17, 1990 the Washington Times reprinted an article from the London Sunday Times, saying that Polish authorities had just announced that four million people did not die at Auschwitz, that the figure was 1.1 million and that 900,000 of them were Jews. However, even doubting the figure of "Six Million" in general is called Holocaust Denial and you can get thrown in jail in "democratic" Germany for saying that less than Six Million Jews died in the Holocaust.

In case you missed the memo, the inflated Auschwitz figure was recognized to be inflated by just about all holocaust historians long before it was officially lowered and was not used to obtain the standard six million figure. Andy has already gone over this in this very thread and I posted a link a while ago. Are you willing to admit that you were wrong?

Don't complain if people focus on the Holocaust to the exclusion of your assassination theories. You brought this on your self by trotting out the Auschwitz red herring in an article. Also, although I was not yet ready to label you an anti-Semite (your holocaust denial could just be an outgrowth of your anti-Zionism, after all), I think I can do so now. The fact that you see Rothschild involvement in the Lincoln assassination, before modern Israel's founding, raises an eyebrow (the fact that you came across this in a book you claim was not written by an anti-Semite is hardly relevant). In addition, your classifying the Jews' claim to be God's chosen people as "rascist" (a thing reiterated, oh, I don't know, how many times in the Old Testament?) is also interesting.

Well let us start off with #1.

If Arbenz caused the murder of his main opponent, can you consider his election to be legitimate?

I would say no.

Does it make any difference in your analysis of the CIA actions in Guatemala whether in fact Arbenz came to power legitimately? Would you agree that the CIA's overthrowing a "legitimate" government has different implications than its actions in changing a government that had seized control through illegal means, i.e. an assassination?

WHY BY THE WAY IS A THREAD ON MY POLITICAL VIEWS OF ANY CONSEQUENCE TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION CASE?

"Why BY THE WAY IS A THREAD ON MY POLITICAL VIEWS OF ANY CONSEQUENCE TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION CASE" That's something I was wondering about myself. What is this, some kind of tribunal in which Tim Gratz is being grilled by John Simkin? I think this thread is TOTALLY out of line. It's simply harassment by a socialist intolerant of someone who disagrees with his views.

Disappointed,

Roy Bierma

Royce, read post #14. Steve.

[EDITED FOR LENGTH]

He often states that his knowledge of the law must prevail when berating those who disagree. Tim's dished out a ton of spiteful invective and also threatened legal recourse.

This thread's not out of line, you're wrong there. And Tim's no martyr.

Ditto to that, Rush. I think Tim should be prepared to take some of what he dishes out.

These last few exchanges demonstrate why Piper's book has been so controversial. People can write books all day long about the CIA killing Kennedy, but someone brings up the possibility of it being Mossad that killed Kennedy and everyone loses perspective.

I think the issue here is less Piper's advocacy of Mossad complicity in the assassination than it is his holocaust denial.

I greatly appreciate Andy's post #205. Great information and his observations are astute.

As Andy observed: Holocaust denial is simply the attempt to rehabilitate the ideas of National Socialism.

And Andy wrote:

I am somewhat disturbed that so many of you are willing to give the oxygen of publicity on this forum to someone who appears to be a spokesperson for the The American Free Press - an ultra-right-wing, Holocaust denial website..... I hope you know what you are doing

I agree with Andy's concern that to date only John D, Len and myself have expressed outrage at Piper's outrageous views. The reason I thought he should not be allowed on the Forum is that allowing him to do so lends legitimacy to his fascist, pro-Hitler views (and the corrolary, I think, is to discredit the Forum).

I note that Piper has to date failed to respond to my four simple questions each of which can be answered in a single word, "yes" or "no", and relate to whether he has a "hidden agenda" in formulating and promoting his thesis that Israel sponsored the assassination.

I think the anti-Israeli feelings of some of our members (Mark Stapleton wondered somewhere if you weren't just distributing Zionist propaganda) are allowing them to overlook some of Mr. Piper's glaring deficiencies.

There is nothing inherently wrong with proposing Mossad complicity, but the messenger here ought to be considered.

Consider the following quote: "I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."

—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to cabinet member Shimon Peres, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on Kol Y'Israel radio.

This quote is a fabrication. See here.

Here is another from Mr. Sharon: "We are Judeo-Nazis, and why not? If your nice, civilized parents, rather than writing books about their love for humanity had instead come to Israel and killed six million Arabs, what would have happened? Sure, two or three nasty pages would have been written in the history books, and we would have been called all sorts of names, but we would be here today as a people of 25 million! What you don't seem to understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it."

—Ariel Sharon, 1982

As is this one. See here. The quote debunked on this page is somewhat different, but it is given the same date and repeats key phrases and a sentence.

The only source I can find for the Fulbright quote is on neo-Nazi and militant Islamic sites. It looks just as phony as the two Sharon quotes.

Its this sort of stuff that lead me to take a second look at my original position on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Mark S wrote:

You seem to be outraged when others don't share your world view and moral indignation. Amazing.

Well I agree with you about the amazing part. It is amazing that someone can be indignant about the excesses of the CIA but not indignant about a gentleman who cavalierly dismisses the murder of a million and a half Jewishish men, women and children. Anyone who does not share my moral outrage at that is, in my opinion, totally devoid of morality.

I really hope you haven't been taken in by Piper's phony calculations, as you seem to keep granting him the numerical high-ground. The inflated Auschwitz figure of 4 million was not utilized in arriving at the standard 6 million toll of the holocaust.

Piper has stated that the movie "JFK" did not get into the Mossad involvement in the assassination because "JFK" was financed by a Jew.

I've seen that. It wasn't because the fellow was a jew, but because Piper says (and I have no way of verifying him) that he was an Israeli arms dealer. You certainly missed the subtlety of that argument.

Anyway, I think a more likely explanation that JFK didn't go into Mossad involvement (and, for my own part, I'm pretty sure there was none) is because Piper was the first person to really push this theory and make it coherent. It wouldn't have been something Stone could have drawn on from his reading of assassination literature.

In 2002 Michael Collins Piper attended a conference in Moscow organized by Willis Carto. David Duke was also an attendee. The conference focused on Holocaust denial and resolved that Zionism "aspires to establish world supremacy."

The ADL considers Michael Collins Piper an anti-Semite.

John, what say you re Piper? Is it fair to call him an anti-Semite?

The ADL also called Norman Finkelstein a "holocaust denier," which is pretty much total BS. The ADL is a joke organization at this point, and I say this as someone who supports Israel.

Irrespective of what the ADL says, however, I think Piper can be reasonably classed as a holocaust denier. See this little article he wrote. Then, lest any of you are taken in by this sort of argument, see here.

I'm really failing to see how Mr. Holland gets published in the Nation with all the McCarthyite redbaiting he does. Has he ever taken a single "progressive" stance anywhere?

As I typed on the other Holland thread, the CIA has a known history of targeting left liberal magazines like The Nation PRECISELY BECAUSE OF THIER STRATEGIC POSITION ON THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM. In many ways the CIA is more likely to directly intervene in a left-liberal magazine than in a right wing mag.

This function is sometimes refered to as "left gatekeeping"

The book to Read is The CIA and Culture by Francis Saunders. It was published by the New Press in 2000.

I know Im repeating myself here, but in view of latest Holland tripe published this week, this history of the CIA domestic political warfare has to be brought to the attention of as many people as possible.

Yeah, but he's just so blatant. Its like they aren't even trying anymore.

I'm really failing to see how Mr. Holland gets published in the Nation with all the McCarthyite redbaiting he does. Has he ever taken a single "progressive" stance anywhere?

As with efforts I had attempted to make underscoring the bizarre coincidence of named or alleged homosexual suspects in the conspiracy - apparently a dangerous topic, politically. As opposed to crediting Garrison's allegations of a 'Homosexual thrill killing' I instead question his motives for coming up with such an absurd notion.

I'd just like to point out that Garrison probably never said this. It comes from a very dubious source (Jim Phelan) and is in contradiction of his policy of not mentioning Shaw and Ferrie's homosexuality.

And of course Gerry Hemming states she has misquoted him as well. The statement she attributes to Hemming (that Helms plotted the assassination) is so out-of-character that I called him as soon as I read it.

Mellen has stated she has Gerry on tape stating that. Now he has changed his tune, not necessarily denying it, but claiming that Mellen recorded him without his permission, or something like that.

Please see my post in the books section on the Helms' testimony. It is available on the Mary Ferrel site and accurately quoted (although the information comes from Helms' interviewers, not Helms himself. This isn't a problem, though, as she does not quote Helms as saying so, she just cites his testimony as the source in the footnotes). On Harvey, you have failed to provide any information to the contratry.

I don't see how she was "agenda-driven" on Murgado. She corrected her error and the corrected version is the one that is seen in her book and on her website.

Yes, exactly. It is explictly identified as non-historical and therefore has no bearing on the book's historicity. This isn't a hard thing to grasp.

The fact that the footnotes go one page off half-way through the book is the fault of the publisher and a red herring. The bottom line here is that the notes do correspond to actual passages in the text.

This raises numerous questions about the use and manner of use of the Hemming story, only to qualify it as a "metaphor" in the notes. A metaphor of what?

A metaphor for the Angel Murgado story, wherein the involvement of Bobby's associates with Oswald supposedly silenced him. Besides that, you are being dishonest here when you say it is only qualified as a "metaphor" in the notes.

I don't believe that I'm the one being dishonest. Taking my above quote in context, it had nothing to do with Murgado, and the explicit quote from the book immediately preceding the segment quoted by Owen plainly demonstrates that:

The source note reads: "Hemming spins what amounts to a metaphor of a face-to-face meeting between Bobby Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald." This raises numerous questions about the use and manner of use of the Hemming story, only to qualify it as a "metaphor" in the notes. A metaphor of what?

My point about the metaphor is that the problems with the historicity of the book run far deeper than the source notes problem.

Sorry if I didn't quote your statement in full, but I want to keep my posts short. The segment from your post that you quote only bears out what I was saying. "[O]nly to qualify it as a 'metaphor' in the notes..." would amount to you saying that it is not identified as such in the main body of the text.

How does Mellen's use of a story that she clearly identifies as fictitious have any bearing on the historicity of the book?

Also, I never said your post was about Murgado, I am saying that that is what Mellen's use of the Hemming tale is in relation to. She uses it as a "metaphor" in regards to Bobby's supposed proximity to Oswald, and how this would supposedly silence him, all implications that she draws from Murgado's story.

The fact that the footnotes go one page off half-way through the book is the fault of the publisher and a red herring. The bottom line here is that the notes do correspond to actual passages in the text.

This raises numerous questions about the use and manner of use of the Hemming story, only to qualify it as a "metaphor" in the notes. A metaphor of what?

A metaphor for the Angel Murgado story, wherein the involvement of Bobby's associates with Oswald supposedly silenced him. Besides that, you are being dishonest here when you say it is only qualified as a "metaphor" in the notes. This qualifier is included in the main body of the text in addition to many other qualifiers. You really aren't able to get off this one, are you? Mellen is explicit in what she thinks of this story and how she uses it. It isn't presented as factual in the main body of the text, and you know this.

No, it can't be that, since that's not a metaphor, it's what actually happened. Are we back to the disinfo accusation again; anyone who criticizes the book has "an agenda?"

For my own part, I'm pretty certain I've never accused you of this (though I have implied this of Gratz). If I have anywhere, I apologize in advance.