Douglas Caddy

Regarding the venue for the Sheehan talk linked on the first page of this thread:

"Daniel Sheehan was asked at the last minute to speak at the 2007 International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada. He used this opportunity to address the issue of conspiracy theory and its relationship to the UFO phenomenon. He discusses his involvement with Dr. John Mack and the circumstances of John's death. He also devotes much of his talk to revealing all of the details behind the JFK assassination, many of which have never been disclosed to the public prior to this presentation. He reveals this also to show the complexities of a true conspiracy versus many of the conspiracy theories that circulate. After this he discusses the eight worldviews that operate within the human family, and how they conflict with each other, and how we need to communicate a new paradigm to the world to help with many of the problems we face."

His whole talk is interesting, but I was particularly impressed with the lengthy section on the JFK assassination, Operation 40, and the involvement of figures like Trafficante and others. Sheehan implies that the decision for the hit was cooked up amongst the disgrunted S-Team / Operation 40 members, and then the second conspiracy / cover-up kicked in thereafter as all the witting parties did what they needed to do to keep the secrets. I'm assuming most here would go further and argue that the hit was as much guided and overseen by higher-up figures who wanted to see it succeed for many, many reasons. The question comes to mind - did the S-Team/Op. 40 group make their plans known, then receive a tacit green light and assistance as folks far higher up the National Security chain got wind of it, or was word sent down to them at some point that, if they proceeded, they would be given the comprehensive assistance they were never given during their Bay of Pigs and Mongoose activities? It would be instructive to match the timeline given by Sheehan through late '62/early '63 to the various moves of Oswald in and out of Mexico, and see whether there's a particular date when the wind started blowing away from Cuba, and towards Dallas.

Thanks for that explanation Anthony, it puts the talk in its proper perspective.

And your question as to the relationship between the street ops and the higher ups is on target and such a correlation should be instructive.

Does anyone know where Dan Sheehan is today and what he is doing?

BK

The most recent information that I can find is that Mr. Sheehan can be located at:

CHRISTIC INSTITUTE

PO BOX 6850

SANTA BARBARA, CA 93160

United States

(805) 882-2077

In this interview Nick Begich talks about the strange circumstances surrounding the deaths of his father, the Congressman from Alaska, and of Representative Hale Boggs in October 1972. He shows how the Watergate scandal might have elevated Boggs to become President and how just prior to his death Boggs was advocating the reopening of the Warren Commission of which he was a member. (Could it be that Boggs had connected the dots between the JFK assassination and Watergate and was determined to expose these?)

Begich also discloses that while the wreckage of the plane that carried Boggs and his father was never found, documents obtained under FOIA by a publication reveal that the U.S. government was aware at the time of the incident that two of the plane’s occupants were alive at the crash site.

The above observations by Begich are made in the fifth and final video. However, the preceding four videos contain vital information by him on a number of important subjects and viewing them is time well spent.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/dr-nick-begich-haarp-secret-sciences-high-tech-mind-control.html

In this new interview Nick Begich talks about the strange circumstances surrounding the deaths of his father, the Congressman from Alaska, and of Representative Hale Boggs in October 1972. He shows how the Watergate scandal might have elevated Boggs to become President and how just prior to his death Boggs was advocating the reopening of the Warren Commission of which he was a member. (Could it be that Boggs had connected the dots between the JFK assassination and Watergate and was determined to expose these?)

Begich also discloses that while the wreckage of the plane that carried Boggs and his father was never found, documents obtained under FOIA by a publication reveal that the U.S. government was aware at the time of the incident that two of the plane’s occupants were alive at the crash site.

The above observations by Begich are made in the fifth and final video. However, the preceding four videos contain vital information by him on a number of important subjects and viewing them is time well spent.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/dr-nick-begich-haarp-secret-sciences-high-tech-mind-control.html

James Murdoch faces his moment of truth

Daily Telegraph

By Katherine Rushton

8:57PM GMT 26 Nov 2011

When BSkyB gets involved with drama, it likes to be wrestling for the rights to Glee or launching its channel of US imports, Sky Atlantic.

But on Tuesday the pay-TV giant will be involved in some theatrics of its own – and they promise to be every bit as compelling.

The company’s annual general meeting at Queen Elizabeth II conference centre may sound like an unlikely setting for a tense corporate battle, but it is on this stage that investors’ worries over the future of BSkyB’s chairman, James Murdoch, will be played out.

Murdoch, whose name has become synonymous with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, will face a fight to convince shareholders in the broadcaster that his position at News Corporation and at the very heart of the hacking row doesn’t compromise their investment.

The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee inquiry has already exposed what some say are serious holes in Mr Murdoch’s tenure as chairman of News International. Under questioning by MPs, Mr Murdoch was cool, but his argument – that he didn’t know the extent of what was going on – could be seen by some as raising questions about his ability as chairman.

“He never bothered to ask the questions that a 12 year-old would have asked,” Chris Bryant, the Labour MP, said after Mr Murdoch gave evidence for the second time. Mr Bryant has since taken it upon himself to write to 40 major investors in BSkyB, urging them to vote Mr Murdoch out because he stands to “do serious damage to the overall reputation of the UK’s standards of corporate governance”.

Reputation and probity are not the only matters in question, of course. There is also the long-standing issue of how Murdoch manages to balance the interests of BSkyB with those of News Corp, the company of which he is deputy chief operating officer and which holds a 39pc stake in the broadcaster.

The conflict has been a matter of investor concern for years – Pirc, the shareholder group, lobbied against Murdoch’s 2007 election as BSkyB chairman for that reason – but News Corp’s attempted £8bn takeover of BSkyB earlier this year turned the dial up. While the bid was on, investors were worried it would be pushed through for the wrong reasons. When News Corp pulled it in July under enormous political pressure, they watched their shares crash and took a £16m hit on the balance sheet.

Crispin Odey, a 2.7pc shareholder in BSkyB and one of Mr Murdoch’s most staunch supporters, has also raised concerns that shareholder anger and Mr Murdoch’s long- awaited move to New York after Christmas will make him too “hands off”. “If he’s a bit too non-executive, we’ll see about that,” he told The Sunday Telegraph last month.

Pirc has reiterated its view that he should go before then, while another powerful shareholder group, the Association of British Insurers, has issued an “amber” alert to highlight potentially serious failures of corporate governance. Any disgruntled shareholders will this weekend be sharpening their tongues ahead of one of the rare occasions when Mr Murdoch is forced to answer to them.

It is likely he will survive the vote. News Corp controls 39pc of the vote, and BSkyB’s non-executive directors have been doing an effective job of lobbying shareholders – although close observers of the company speculate that he will step down of his own accord within the next year.

Earlier this month, BSkyB’s deputy chairman, Nicholas Ferguson, took the unusual step of writing to shareholders to remind them of the board’s backing for Mr Murdoch: “We have seen no effect on sales, customers or suppliers over the past five months. The recent results substantiate that,” he wrote, in an apparent effort to refocus attention on the bottom line.

It was a shrewd move. BSkyB’s impressive financial performance is the greatest weapon in Mr Murdoch’s artillery. Under nearly a decade of his stewardship, as chief executive then chairman, the business has gone from having 7m customers paying an average of £366 a year to 10.4m paying an average of £535. “If you leave morality out of it and look at BSkyB through the lens of hard numbers, where is the justification for James Murdoch leaving his position?” says Alex De Groote, an analyst at Panmure.

“The fever-pitch concerns of the summer have dissipated and the balance sheet and risks are as good as they have ever been.”

At its last full-year results, BSkyB revealed it had £921m of cash and notched up more than £1bn in profits on £6.6bn of revenues. What’s more, it appears to be weathering the recession. Revenue for the three months to September 30 grew 9pc, while churn – the percentage of customers who left BSkyB – was flat at 11.1pc, despite fears it would rise as customers cut luxuries.

Jeremy Darroch, chief executive, is upbeat about the potential left to exploit. “[While] 55pc of people pay for TV in the UK, 45pc don’t, so the envelope for growth is considerable,” he said. BSkyB’s broadband and telephony services also present major potential. “We have more levers than we’ve ever had to grow through a tough environment – 70pc of our cus­tomers don’t take all three services.”

BSkyB’s evolution from broadcaster to something akin to services company is significant and builds on a history of technology investments which Murdoch has been central to delivering. Investments in a mobile version of Sky four years ago led to the launch of Sky Go this year, allowing users to watch content on their mobiles and tablets.

Mr Darroch is also keen to keep increasing investment in content, commissioning more comedy and drama made in the UK, and launching dedicated channels for Formula One and programming targeted at women.

“If content is the tennis ball, innovation is the top spin. It brings it all to life and is a great way of saying to customers that we will keep putting more value in their subscriptions,” he said.

The task for Mr Darroch is to keep his eyes on that ball while so much drama is spinning around him. Even Murdoch’s most loyal supporters will want to know that he can do the same

Legal and General set to vote against James Murdoch

Top 10 investor Legal and General is to vote against James Murdoch remaining as chairman of BSkyB after the multi-billion pound fund raised concerns over his independence from News Corporation.

Daily Telegraph

8:45PM GMT 26 Nov 2011

A vote of between 10pc and 20pc against James Murdoch is expected on Tuesday.

The move will stoke fears at the top of the broadcaster that there could be a significant revolt against Mr Murdoch at the company’s annual general meeting on Tuesday. It is believed that a vote against the chairman of under 20pc would be survivable for Mr Murdoch, but a vote above that would “unsettle the board”, according to one person with knowledge of the situation.

A vote of between 10pc and 20pc against is thought to be most likely, with Mr Murdoch remaining as chairman.

Including abstentions, Tuesday’s vote could reveal a significant lack of backing for the BSkyB chairman who is also deputy chief operating officer at News Corporation and chairman of News International Newspapers.

Those close to Mr Murdoch say that he is determined to stay on as chairman and will remind investors of his record at BSkyB as chief executive and chairman on Tuesday. BSkyB has out-performed the FTSE 100 and investors say that Mr Murdoch has been integral to its success.

Leading investors such as Scottish Widows and Capital Research Global are thought to back Mr Murdoch. He also retains the full backing of the board, which wrote to investors earlier in the month.

Other investors who are against Mr Murdoch remaining as chairman are believed to include Franklin Templeton.

Legal and General is not thought to be against Mr Murdoch because of any issues around his handling of the News of the World phone hacking inquiry and have raised no ethical issues about the way he has operated.

It is believed that the concerns relate to Mr Murdoch’s ability to retain independence following the collapse of News Corporation’s attempt to buy the 60pc of the broadcaster it does not already own.

The investors body, the Association of British Insurers, has put an “amber top” warning on the vote, suggesting that institutional investors have legitimate questions to ask.

Jeremy Darroch, chief executive of BSkyB, is upbeat about the potential left to exploit for the broadcaster.

“[While] 55pc of people pay for TV in the UK, 45pc don’t, so the envelope for growth is considerable,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. BSkyB’s broadband and telephony services also present major potential, he said. “We have more levers than we’ve ever had to grow through a tough environment – 70pc of our cus­tomers don’t take all three services.”

Mr Darroch is also keen to keep increasing investment in content, commissioning more comedy and drama made in the UK, and launching dedicated channels for Formula 1 and programming targeted at women. “If content is the tennis ball, innovation is the top spin,” he said

James Murdoch and BSkyB face shareholder protest vote

US-based investors vote against BSkyB's chairman, James Murdoch, remaining in his role ahead of annual meeting

By Jill Treanor

guardian.co.uk,

Friday 25 November 2011 15.12 EST

Protest votes against James Murdoch remaining as chairman of BSkyB have been cast by three US-based investors ahead of next week's annual meeting of the satellite broadcaster.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System (Calstrs), the Florida State Board of Administration, and the Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS) have lodged votes against Murdoch remaining on the board. Calstrs, the largest teachers' retirement service in the US, with $146bn (£94bn) of assets, has voted against all the directors on the board ahead of the annual meeting on 29 November.

Calstrs was among the investors to vote against the re-election of Murdoch to the board of News Corporation at last month's annual meeting, while the CBIS led an unsuccessful campaign for Rupert Murdoch to be stripped of his roles as chairman and chief executive of News Corp, which owns almost 40% of BSkyB.

Even before the opposition of the three US funds was disclosed, James Murdoch was under pressure about his role as chairman of BSkyB, following the phone-hacking scandal. The Labour MP Chris Bryant intends to attend next week's annual meeting to express his concerns about the corporate governance at the company after he wrote to 40 major shareholders urging them to vote against James Murdoch's re-election to the board.

Shareholder advisory groups are concerned at the prospect of Murdoch's re-election to the board as chairman as some of them believe an independent director should hold the crucial role at the boardroom table following the phone-hacking scandal, which has raised concerns about the management of the company. Among the investor bodies to have expressed concern are UK-based Pirc, the US corporate governance expert Glass Lewis and the Association of British Insurers.

BSkyB has mounted a robust defence of its chairman, saying he has "always acted with integrity" during his time at the company. Murdoch was chief executive for four years before moving to the role of chairman in 2007, and has also won the endorsement from other investors, such as Odey Asset Management,

In a letter to shareholders this month, Nicholas Ferguson, who is the deputy chairman and main contact point for shareholders, said: "We have known James for some eight years, and during that time he has always acted with integrity in the eyes of both the board and the senior management. If this was to change, clearly the independent directors would re-evaluate the position."

News Corp had mounted an £8bn bid for the stake it did not own in BSkyB but was forced to abandon its offer after the Guardian published stories showing that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked by an investigator working for the News of the World while her disappearance was being investigated by police

Leveson inquiry unveils new set of villains

Photographers, who it seems at one time or another besieged almost everybody giving evidence, come under fierce criticism

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 16.23 EST

The Leveson inquiry heard Sheryl Gascogine describe how she had to crawl on her 'hands and knees' to avoid snappers.

It has been easy to be distracted as witnesses have paraded through Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry. Hugh Grant denied that anything had happened when he rode in the back of the car with a 21-year-old woman in Germany. Max Mosley raised questions about Paul Dacre's sex life, in a bizarre exchange about personal carnal morality. And Elle Macpherson's adviser told us she was ordered to go to rehab so she could keep her job. But then, nothing was ever going to be normal when victims of press intrusion came to turn the tables in court 73.

Yet, for those who have sat through it all, there are clear patterns emerging. There are repeated targets of criticism. JK Rowling picked out the newspaper industry's supposed regulator, describing it, damningly, as "toothless". She had discovered that a Press Complaints Commission (PCC) judgment – aimed at protecting her children's privacy after a photograph of her daughter in a swimsuit appeared in OK! in 2001 – seemed to have little or no effect on the paparazzi that regularly swarmed around her. Gerry McCann, who, with his wife, were traduced by the media, admitted that he had little idea what the PCC was, preferring, reluctantly, to go to law to get redress.

The PCC, though, was already in the dock for its inadequate response to the phone-hacking crisis. But the Leveson inquiry is straying far wider than that. A new set of villains have emerged: the photographers who at one time or another have besieged almost everybody else giving evidence. Sienna Miller thought about moving to Paris to get away from the mob that followed her around. Sheryl Gascoigne had to crawl on her "hands and knees" around her new home in Gleneagles to avoid the snappers because she hadn't yet bought any curtains. Grant complained he had to seek an injunction to get the paparazzi away from Ting Lan Hong's home this year because a complaint to the PCC had failed to stop them lying in wait for the mother of his newborn child. And in a neat little twist, the photographers showed how little they cared by chasing Rowling's car as it left the precincts of the high court.

Some celebrities wanted to protect their privacy; more, though, cared about accuracy. It was Leveson who asked Gascoigne, who appeared on I'm a Celebrity, wrote a biography, and whose wedding pictures were sold to Hello!, which mattered to her more. On privacy, she admitted she had put herself in the public eye – "asking for it" were her words – but she didn't care for all the inaccurate information circulating about her. Rowling brought up a piece written by Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror years ago that wrongly suggested her husband had quit his job as an anaesthetist when he hadn't.

Mistakes, of course, are a staple of journalism, as any honest reporter will admit. But what really upsets subjects is the failure to correct promptly and with a similar prominence. Grant remembered a long battle with the Mirror in 1996, after news that he had visited Charing Cross hospital had leaked to the paper; a battle only resolved with an apology "deep in the paper". The parents of the murdered 16-year-old girl Diane Watson recalled vividly their battles to be heard by the Glasgow Herald and Marie Claire after both titles published items that contained inaccuracies about the circumstances surrounding her death. And as Rowling reminded us, once an intrusive picture is published it can "spread around the world like a virus". That, on its own, is hardly an easy problem for Leveson to tackle: but it is only a small part of the prosecution case that has built up, public figure by public figure, over this remarkable week.

Sienna Miller: News of the World stories left me paranoid

Actor tells Leveson inquiry of provocation by paparazzi, adding she accused friends and family of leaking stories to papers

By James Robinson, Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 08.14 EST

[Link to video]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/24/sienna-miller-news-world-paranoid

Sienna Miller said she was abused by photographers and became 'paranoid' when stories about her personal life appeared in the News of the World.

Sienna Miller has told the Leveson inquiry that she was "spat on" and "verbally abused" by photographers.

The actor told Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry at the high court on Thursday that photographers would go to almost any lengths "to provoke a reaction" at a time when she was the subject of intense press scrutiny.

She said she was followed every day by 10 to 15 men. Recalling that she had been chased down streets on dark nights by photographers, the actor said: "It's very intimidating [but] because they have cameras it's legal."

Miller described how a picture of her playing with a young boy at a charity event was sold to the Daily Mirror and doctored to make it appear that she was drunk. She had been photographed pretending to be shot, she said. "The Mirror cut the boy out of the photograph and said that I was drunk."

She added: "I sued, I won, they printed an apology that was minuscule … but by that point the damage is done. The fact that [newspapers] knew that they would be sued and have to pay damages was really not enough of a deterrent in certain situations within the media."

Miller said it was "frightening" being chased by paparazzi by car and said one of them had come close to hitting a pregnant woman when they pursued her by road.

She also told the inquiry into press standards, which has been hearing evidence from victims of alleged press intrusion all week, that she had become "paranoid" and "anxious" when stories about her personal life were published by the News of the World.

Miller said she accused friends and family of leaking stories to the paper. It subsequently emerged that many of them had been obtained by hacking her mobile phone. The actor sued the paper successfully and won damages of £100,000 plus costs earlier this year.

"I wanted to understand the extent of the information they had," she said. "I wanted to get to the bottom of it."

Despite the settlement, Miller said she is still waiting for "full disclosure" of documentation about the surveillance operation carried out on the publisher's behalf.

However, told the inquiry that notes seized by the police from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who formerly worked for the News of the World, included all the mobile numbers she had changed over three months, pin numbers for her voicemail access, and the password for her email, which was later used to hack her computer in 2008. There was also "about 10 numbers" of friends and family.

"There was one particular very private piece of information that only four people knew about. A journalist phoned up saying they knew about it so I accused my family … of selling the story," Miller said.

"It made me really angry and I felt terrible that I would even accuse people of betraying me like that … but it seemed so intensely paranoid that your house is being bugged. It's really upsetting for them and myself that I accused them."

Miller said that it was "outrageous, unfathomable" for people to behave in that way. "The effect it had in my life was really damaging for me and for friends. It made it very difficult to leave the house … I felt constantly very scared and intensely paranoid," she added.

In her written statement submitted to the Leveson inquiry, Miller said: "It's hard to quantify in words, it's more the state of mind you are in as a result of that level of intrusion and surveillance which is just complete anxiety and paranoia. I realise there are far more serious cases than me, the Dowlers and the McCanns.

"I had to fight tooth and nail to get the freedom I have now. It was this breeding of mistrust … nobody could understand how this information was coming out. It was impossible to leave any sort of normal life at that time."

Miller's lawyer Mark Thomson, a partner at Atkins Thomson, also gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Thursday. He said he had been told his client "you've got two choices ignore, fight or move to Paris" when she "couldn't take living in England any more" because of the level of press interest. He added that the current system of press regulation is "not effective".

Thomson, who also represents Hugh Grant and Lily Allen, claimed: "In private, most newspapers don't think the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] are effective. And that's how they want it … As long as the PCC exists their current activity will continue."

He added that freelance photographers were a problem because the PCC cannot and does not regulate them. Thomson also argued that many papers stopped notifying his clients about stories deliberately to avoid injunctions that would prevent them from publishing, after the UK adopted the Human Rights Act in 2000.

"The bigger the story and perhaps the more intrusive the photographs the less likelihood there is [of notification prior to publication]," he said. "They want to sell newspapers, they don't want to be injuncted … and that's a calculation."

He claimed there was evidence that phone hacking went beyond the News of the World to other newspapers but conceded it was "inferential".

It also emerged at the hearing that former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan will be giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

Wall Street Unoccupied With 200,000 Job Cuts

By Max Abelson and Ambereen Choudhury - Nov 21, 2011

Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-11-22/wall-street-unoccupied-with-200-000-job-cuts.html

John Brady, co-head of MF Global Inc.’s Chicago office, was having a vodka cocktail at the Ritz- Carlton in Naples, Florida, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, on the day his company reported its largest-ever quarterly loss.

“Wow, the sun just set,” Brady said to his wife and two colleagues attending a conference with him, he recalled in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t set on MF Global.”

A week later, on Oct. 31, the firm led by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) co-Chief Executive Officer Jon Corzine collapsed. Brady and 1,065 colleagues joined a wave of firings that has washed away more than 200,000 jobs in the global financial-services industry this year, eclipsing 174,000 in 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. BNP Paribas (BNP) SA and UniCredit SpA (UCG) announced cuts last week, and the carnage likely will worsen as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis roils markets.

“This is something very different,” said Huw Jenkins, a former head of investment banking at UBS AG (UBSN) who’s now a London- based managing partner at Brazil’s Banco BTG Pactual SA. “This is a structural change. The industry is shrinking.”

Wall Street rebounded from the financial crisis of 2008 with the help of unprecedented government support, including loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Goldman Sachs posted record profit the following year, and bonuses paid to securities-firm employees in New York City rose 17 percent to $20.3 billion, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

‘Nothing There’

Now, faced with higher capital requirements, the failure of exotic financial products and diminished proprietary trading, the industry is undergoing what Steven Eckhaus, chairman of the executive-employment practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, called “a paradigm shift.” The New York attorney, whose clients have included former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chief Financial Officer Erin Callan, said he has stopped giving his “spiel” about inherent talent leading to new work.

In interviews, a dozen people who have lost jobs at firms including Societe Generale SA, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Jefferies Group Inc. (JEF) described a grim banking landscape that also includes Occupy Wall Street protests against unemployment stuck above 9 percent and income inequality.

“These are by far my darkest days,” said Scott Schubert, 49, who was dismissed in late 2008 as a mergers-and-acquisitions banker at Jefferies, a New York-based securities firm, and has been unemployed since. “It’s harder and harder to look for a job and feel that there’s nothing there.”

HSBC, BNP Paribas

Banks, insurers and asset managers in Western Europe have been hardest hit, announcing about 105,000 dismissals this year, 66 percent more than the region’s losses in 2008 at the depths of the financial crisis, Bloomberg data show. The 50,000 job cuts in North America this year are more than twice last year’s and fewer than the 175,000 in 2008.

Almost every week since August has brought news of firings by the world’s biggest banks. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s biggest lender, announced that month it would slash 30,000 jobs by the end of 2013. In September, Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the second-largest U.S. lender, said it would cut the same number of jobs. Both banks are trimming about 10 percent of their employees. Last week, BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, said it will cut about 1,400 jobs at its corporate and investment- banking unit, and UniCredit, Italy’s biggest, said it plans to eliminate 6,150 positions by 2015.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation challenge,” said John Purcell, founder of London-based executive search firm Purcell & Co. “Everyone who has worked in the City since 1985 will have no idea of how to cope with this level of dislocation.”

Panic Attacks

Neil Brener, a psychiatrist whose patients work in London’s City and Canary Wharf financial districts said the stress is contributing to panic attacks, binge drinking and chest pains.

“Because there are fewer jobs, people are unhappy about being stuck,” Brener said. “They don’t have options about moving, and there is a sense of feeling trapped.”

London hiring could be frozen next year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research Ltd. Headcount in the City and Canary Wharf may fall to 288,225 by the end of the year, 27,000 fewer than in 2010 and the lowest since at least 1998, when there were 289,666 jobs, according to the London- based research firm.

Wall Street won’t regain its lost jobs “until about 2023,” Marisa Di Natale, an economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said in an e-mail.

Second Time

That’s not encouraging for Michael Reiner, 44, who lost his job in June as a credit strategist in New York for Societe Generale (GLE), France’s second-largest bank, whose shares are down 60 percent this year. When he called his wife to tell her the news, she was home watching “The Company Men,” a film about corporate downsizing, he said.

It wasn’t the first time Reiner had lost a job on Wall Street. He worked at Bear Stearns Cos. for 14 years until the firm collapsed in March 2008 and was taken over in a fire sale by JPMorgan Chase & Co. He said he was happy to have some time off with his family and go to Little League baseball games.

When he began looking for a job, he “wanted to find a place for the next 14 years,” he said. A recruiter brought him to Paris-based Societe Generale. It didn’t last that long.

It’s harder to talk about losing a job the second time, Reiner said. “There are a lot of people I haven’t told.”

Opportunities for employment “evaporated” as the European debt crisis escalated, he said. Now he spends his time going to his daughter’s field hockey games and managing his investments. He’s planning to make maple syrup from the trees in the backyard of his home in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

‘Fruitless’ Search

For Schubert, the former Jefferies banker in his third year looking for work, the longer he’s out of a job, the harder it is for him to tell his 10-year-old son to do his homework, he said.

“It might seem outwardly to him that I’ve given up,” he said in an interview this month from his four-bedroom home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. “I can’t come to the table and say, ‘Well, when you were five, I worked nonstop.’”

Schubert, who received a master’s degree in business administration from New York University in 1989 and was a managing director specializing in middle-market M&A deals at Jefferies, said he wasn’t surprised when he lost his job in 2008 during the financial crisis. He thought unemployment would last 12 months at most.

“The first year out was fruitless,” he said. “There wasn’t much hiring going on at all.”

By the middle of 2010, more potential employers seemed interested, and he felt “something was imminent,” he said. Nothing happened.

This year, he has become increasingly disheartened by bad news on Wall Street, and it’s more difficult to stay in touch with former colleagues as time goes by, he said.

Hurricane Irene

On the August weekend of Hurricane Irene, training to coach his son’s soccer team alongside younger fathers, being “overly competitive for a man of my age,” Schubert twisted his right knee, he said. He aggravated the injury doing yard work and worries how much his health insurance will help, he said.

While his investment choices haven’t been “too terrible,” he will consider selling his house if he doesn’t find a job. “God, I hope it’s in the next six months,” he said.

Hetal Patel, 44, a foreign-exchange trader who worked at London-based Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) for more than 20 years until last month, said he doesn’t plan to look for work until early next year, “when budgets become clearer and perhaps conditions improve.”

Shares of his former company, controlled by the British government since a bailout in 2008, have fallen 64 percent this year, and the bank has posted a pretax loss of 3.86 billion pounds ($6 billion) in the first nine months. It announced 15,000 job cuts in June.

RBS Cuts

Another lender backed by the U.K., Edinburgh-based RBS, has announced about 30,000 job cuts, including 2,000 this year, since receiving the world’s biggest government bailout in 2008. Its shares are down 50 percent in 2011, and CEO Stephen Hester said Nov. 4 the investment bank “will have to shrink further.”

Tim Leary, 29, a director in high-yield and distressed trading, lost his job there on Nov. 7. After he got the news, he called his wife to say he’d see her and their 4-month-old son for breakfast.

He drove back to Manhattan from his office in Stamford, Connecticut, and put together a resume for the first time in years. He said he plans to spend “a fair amount of time figuring out what the landscape is” before starting his search.

Falling Bonuses

“Unfortunately, the industry always seems to get it wrong and they over-hire,” said Philip Keevil, 65, a former head of investment banking at S.G. Warburg & Co. and now a partner at New York-based advisory firm Compass Advisers LLP. “They are over-optimistic and then periodically throw large numbers out.”

Morale on Wall Street and London is “probably as bad, if not worse” than it has been in decades, said Keevil.

Wall Street bonuses are expected to fall in 2011 from the $128,530 average last year, DiNapoli, the state comptroller, said in October. Even so, when Goldman Sachs set aside 24 percent less to pay employees in the first nine months than in the same period last year, the amount, $10 billion, was equal to $292,836 for each of its 34,200 workers as of Sept. 30. That’s nearly six times the median household income in the U.S., where 49.1 million live in poverty, according to Census Bureau data.

Quitting for Quito

Wyatt Laikind, 26, made three times as much in his first year out of college working at Citigroup Inc. © as his single mother earned when he was growing up in western Massachusetts.

“It was like winning the lottery to get that job,” said Laikind, who worked as an associate on the New York-based bank’s high-yield credit-trading desk.

He got a job on Wall Street because he “was under the impression that it was a more meritocratic environment,” and “my hard work and intelligence would be paid off,” he said.

At first, he liked the excitement, he said. Then, after financial regulations curtailed proprietary trading, the job became “less appealing.” He said he didn’t like smiling at clients while having to figure out how to profit from them.

In July, after a vacation, he called his boss to quit, he said in an interview from Quito, Ecuador, where he is now working for Equitable Origin LLC, a start-up that offers a certification system for oil exploration. His salary is less than 5 percent of what he made at Citigroup, he lives with intermittent hot water, and he was robbed at knifepoint last month, he said.

“I feel happier on a daily basis,” Laikind said.

Sagging Mattress

His tone was different in a later e-mail.

“I wasn’t brought up in luxury, so I like to think I can tough it out,” he wrote, describing the sagging mattress he slept on in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt to stay warm. “But I may have to give it up and try going back to finance soon.”

If he does, it won’t be easy.

“Until now, at many firms, a lot of investment bankers have been convinced that we are living now in a limited period where things are a bit more difficult and afterwards the old world will come back,” Kaspar Villiger, 70, chairman of Zurich- based UBS said in an interview this month. “This illusion has now vanished.”

Increased capital requirements agreed to by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision will limit banks’ use of borrowed funds to boost profit, lower their return on equity and likely reduce executive compensation, analysts say. High leverage “was the juice in the system,” said Ilana Weinstein, CEO of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “It’s gone.”

Boxer Shorts

For Brady, 42, the vanishing point at MF Global arrived after he returned to Chicago from Florida. He thought the New York-based futures brokerage would “weather the storm,” even as Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating and shares plunged, he said. He got word that another company would buy the firm while at a Talking Heads cover-band concert and celebrated with a friend by drinking Anchor Steam beer and shots of Jameson.

He woke on Oct. 31 at 4:40 a.m. and searched for deal reports on his phone while standing in his boxer shorts with an electric toothbrush in the other hand. He didn’t find any.

The acquiring firm, Interactive Brokers Group Inc., pulled out of the deal after a discrepancy in client accounts surfaced, and MF Global filed for bankruptcy later that day.

At first, Brady thought his company would survive, he said. His wife thought he was in denial. His mood changed when he was sitting in the home office adjoining his bedroom, looking at the value of his holdings.

“My Fidelity account looks like my bar tab from just a week ago,” Brady said.

All Fired

On Nov. 11, a human resources executive asked colleagues on Brady’s floor to gather by his desk, which looks out on the Willis Tower, the tallest building in the U.S. They were all fired. She told them to show receipts for large personal belongings to the plainclothes security guards by the elevators, and that checks would be sent in the mail, Brady said. Someone asked if the checks would bounce. She said she didn’t know.

Brady, who said he wasn’t aware of the size of the bets MF Global made on European sovereign debt, wrote to clients this month saying he’s looking to join a firm that believes “integrity and honesty are the single most important ingredients to success.” He said last week he is optimistic.

To contact the reporters on this story: Max Abelson in New York at mabelson@bloomberg.net; Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net; Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

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Gutted Careers: 200,000 Job Cuts on Wall Street in 2011

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• The Tea Party Economist

• November 23, 2011

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• http://teapartyeconomist.com/2011/11/23/gutted-careers-200000-job-cuts-on-wall-street-in-2011/

It did not take a bunch of chanting unemployed college graduates to stick it to Wall Street. All it took was Wall Street. The losers: 200,000 unemployed hot shots.

They were on the fast track in 2007. It was a fast track to oblivion. The bubble burst, and it is not coming back.

I don’t know where they went. I don’t much care. But I do know that all the chatter in the financial media about “buy stocks now; they are a bargain” is belied by the gutted careers of these people.

Business Week ran a long article on the devastation, with lots of human interest stories. Their world came crashing down on them. They never saw it coming. That is the crucial fact. These people were telling Americans where to invest their money, but they did not see it coming. They were blind-sided. Even after three years, they did not see it coming. It was the blind leading the blind into the ditch.

In 2009, over 100,00suffered the same experience.

Like I care.

But it’s nice to see that the free market extracts justice, at least to some degree. If it were not for the Federal Reserve and the bailouts, it would have imposed even more justice.

Wall Street rebounded from the financial crisis of 2008 with the help of unprecedented government support, including loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Goldman Sachs posted record profit the following year, and bonuses paid to securities-firm employees in New York City rose 17 percent to $20.3 billion, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Now, faced with higher capital requirements, the failure of exotic financial products and diminished proprietary trading, the industry is undergoing what Steven Eckhaus, chairman of the executive-employment practice at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, called “a paradigm shift.”

It’s about time.

The Gucci shoe boys are slowly waking up to smell the coffee — and it’s not $7 a cup at Starbucks. It’s at home, where they wait for a return call that does not come.

Banks, insurers and asset managers in Western Europe have been hardest hit, announcing about 105,000 dismissals this year, 66 percent more than the region’s losses in 2008 at the depths of the financial crisis, Bloomberg data show. The 50,000 job cuts in North America this year are more than twice last year’s and fewer than the 175,000 in 2008.

It’s payback time — from the free market. There is lots more payback coming. Lots more.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation challenge,” said John Purcell, founder of London-based executive search firm Purcell & Co. “Everyone who has worked in the City since 1985 will have no idea of how to cope with this level of dislocation.”

So, it’s not just in the USA. It’s all over the West.

Bonuses have been cut.

Wall Street bonuses are expected to fall in 2011 from the $128,530 average last year, DiNapoli, the state comptroller, said in October. Even so, when Goldman Sachs set aside 24 percent less to pay employees in the first nine months than in the same period last year, the amount, $10 billion, was equal to $292,836 for each of its 34,200 workers as of Sept. 30. That’s nearly six times the median household income in the U.S., where 49.1 million live in poverty, according to Census Bureau data.

It’s enough to break your heart, isn’t it?

The bubble popped in 2008. It will not be coming back anytime soon. Neither are these careers. It was fun while it lasted. It’s gone.

Tom Wicker, Journalist and Observer, Dies at 85

The New York Times

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

November25, 2011

Tom Wicker, one of postwar America’s most distinguished journalists, who covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the paper’s Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years, died on Friday at his home near Rochester, Vt. He was 85 and also the author of 20 books.

The cause was apparently a heart attack, his wife, Pamela Wicker, said.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Wicker, a brilliant but relatively unknown White House correspondent who had worked at four smaller papers, written several novels under a pen name and, at 37, had established himself as a workhorse of the Times’s Washington bureau, was riding in the presidential motorcade as it wound through downtown Dallas, the lone Times reporter on a routine political trip to Texas.

The searing images of that day — the rifleman’s shots cracking across Dealey Plaza, the wounded president lurching forward in the open limousine, the blur of speed to Parkland Memorial Hospital and the nation’s anguish as the doctors gave way to the priests and a new era — were dictated by Mr. Wicker from a phone booth in stark, detailed prose drawn from notes scribbled on a White House itinerary sheet. It filled two front-page columns and the entire second page, and vaulted the writer to journalistic prominence overnight.

Nine months later, Mr. Wicker, the son of a small-town North Carolina railroad conductor, succeeded the legendary James B. Reston as chief of The Times’s 48-member Washington bureau, and two years later he inherited the column — although hardly the mantle — of the retiring Arthur Krock, the dean of Washington pundits, who had covered every president since Calvin Coolidge.

In contrast to the conservative pontificating of Mr. Krock and the genteel journalism of Mr. Reston, Mr. Wicker brought a hard-hitting Southern liberal/civil libertarian’s perspective to his column, “In the Nation,” which appeared on the editorial page and then on the Op-Ed Page two or three times a week from 1966 until his retirement in 1991. It was also syndicated to scores of newspapers.

Riding waves of change as the divisive war in Vietnam and America’s civil rights struggle changed the country, Mr. Wicker applauded President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Congress for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but took the president to task for deepening American involvement in Southeast Asia.

He denounced President Richard M. Nixon for covertly bombing Cambodia, and in the Watergate scandal accused him of creating the “beginnings of a police state.” Nixon put Mr. Wicker on his “enemies list,” but resigned in disgrace over the Watergate cover-up. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew upbraided Mr. Wicker for “irresponsibility and thoughtlessness,” but he, too, resigned after pleading guilty to evading taxes on bribes he had taken in office.

The Wicker judgments fell like a hard rain upon all the presidents: Gerald R. Ford, for continuing the war in Vietnam; Jimmy Carter, for “temporizing” in the face of soaring inflation and the Iranian hostage crisis; Ronald Reagan, for dozing through the Iran-Contra scandal, and George H. W. Bush, for letting the Persian Gulf war outweigh educational and health care needs at home. Mr. Wicker’s targets also included members of Congress, government secrecy, big business, corrupt labor leaders, racial bigots, prison conditions, television and the news media.

In the 1970s, Mr. Wicker, whose status as a columnist put him outside the customary journalistic restrictions on advocacy, became a fixture on current-events television shows and addressed gatherings on college campuses and in other forums. Speaking at a 1971 “teach-in” at Harvard, he urged students to “engage in civil disobedience” in protesting the war in Vietnam. “We got one president out,” he told the cheering crowd, “and perhaps we can do it again.”

Mr. Wicker had many detractors. He was attacked by conservatives and liberals, by politicians high and low, by business interests, labor leaders and others, and for a time his activism — crossing the line from observer to participant in news events — put him in disfavor with many mainstream journalists. But his speeches and columns continued unabated.

His most notable involvement arose during the uprising by 1,300 inmates who seized 38 guards and workers at the Attica Correctional Facility in Upstate New York in September 1971. Having written a sympathetic column on the death of the black militant George Jackson at San Quentin, Mr. Wicker was asked by Attica’s rebels to join a group of outsiders to inspect prison conditions and monitor negotiations between inmates and officials. The radical lawyer William M. Kunstler and Bobby Seale, chairman of the Black Panther Party, also went in, and the observers took on the role of mediators.

Mr. Wicker, in a column, described a night in the yard with the rebels: flickering oil-drum fires, bull-necked convicts armed with bats and iron pipes, faceless men in hoods or football helmets huddled on mattresses behind wooden barricades. He wrote: “This is another world — terrifying to the outsider, yet imposing in its strangeness — behind those massive walls, in this murmurous darkness, within the temporary but real power of desperate men.”

Talks broke down over inmate demands for amnesty and the ouster of Russell G. Oswald, the State Corrections Commissioner. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller rejected appeals by the observers to go to Attica, and after a four-day standoff, troopers and guards stormed the prison. Ten hostages and 32 inmates were killed by the authorities’ gunfire in what witnesses called a turkey shoot, and one hostage, a guard, was beaten to death by inmates. Afterward, many prisoners were beaten and abused in reprisals.

Mr. Wicker wrote a book about the uprising, “A Time to Die” (1975). Most critics hailed it as his best book, although some chided him for sympathizing with the inmates. “Attica,” a television movie starring Morgan Freeman as a jailhouse lawyer and George Grizzard as Mr. Wicker, was made by ABC in 1980.

Mr. Wicker produced a shelf of books: 10 novels, ranging from potboilers under the pen name Paul Connolly to murder mysteries and political thrillers, and 10 nonfiction books that re-examined the legacies of ex-presidents, race relations in America, the press and other subjects.

Mr. Wicker’s first nonfiction book was “Kennedy Without Tears: The Man Beneath the Myth” (1964), a 61-page look back that, some critics said, recapitulated popular notions of an orator of charm and wit but did not penetrate the armor of sentiment growing over the dead president.

“JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality Upon Politics,” (1968), was better received. It analyzed the character of the two presidents to explain why Kennedy was unable to push many programs through Congress and why Johnson’s credibility was a casualty of the Vietnam conflict.

Mr. Wicker’s “On Press” (1978) enlarged on complaints he had made for years: the myth of objectivity, reliance on official and anonymous sources. Far from being robust and uninhibited, he wrote, the press was often a toady to government and business.

Published shortly before he retired, “One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream” (1991) offered a surprising reassessment of the president he had scorned 20 years earlier. Nixon, credited with high marks in foreign policy, mainly for opening doors to China, actually deserved more notice for domestic achievements, Mr. Wicker argued, especially in desegregating Southern schools.

Mr. Wicker later wrote “Tragic Failure: Racial Integration in America,” (1996), arguing that black Americans should abandon the Democratic Party and forge a new liberal movement. And he produced “On the Record: An Insider’s Guide to Journalism” (2001), “Dwight D. Eisenhower” (2002), “George Herbert Walker Bush” (2004) and “Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy” (2006).

His political novel, “Facing the Lions” (1973) was on The Times best-seller list for 18 weeks. His later novels were “Unto This Hour” ( 1984), a Civil War story on the best-seller list for 15 weeks; “Donovan’s Wife” (1992), a satire on sleazy politics, and “Easter Lilly” (1998), about a black woman tried for the murder of a white jail guard in the South.

Mr. Wicker was a hefty man, 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a ruddy face, jowls, petulant lips and a lock of unruly hair that dangled boyishly on a high forehead. He toiled in tweeds in pinstriped Washington, but seemed more suited to a hammock and a straw hat on a lazy summer day. The casual gait, the easygoing manner, the down-home drawl set a tone for audiences, but masked a fiery temperament, a ferocious work ethic, a tigerish competitiveness and a stubborn idealism, qualities that made him a perceptive observer of the American scene for more than a half century.

Thomas Grey Wicker was born on June 18, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C., the son of Delancey David, a railroad freight conductor, and Esta Cameron Wicker. He worked on his high school newspaper and decided to make journalism his career.

After Navy service in World War II, he studied journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1948. Over the next decade, he was an editor and reporter at several newspapers in North Carolina, including The Winston-Salem Journal, eventually becoming its Washington correspondent.

Mr. Wicker married the former Neva Jewett McLean in 1949. The couple had two children and divorced in 1973. In 1974, he married Pamela Hill, a producer of television documentaries. Besides his wife, he is survived by the children of his first marriage, a daughter, Cameron Wicker, and a son, Thomas Grey Wicker Jr.; two stepdaughters, Kayce Freed Jennings and Lisa Freed , and a stepson, Christopher Hill.

In 1957-58, Mr. Wicker was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and in 1959 became associate editor of The Nashville Tennessean. In 1960, Mr. Reston hired him for The Times’s Washington bureau, one of “Scotty’s boys,” a cadre of protégés that included Max Frankel, Anthony Lewis and Russell Baker.

Mr. Wicker covered Congress and the Kennedy White House, the 1960 political campaigns and presidential trips abroad. His output was prodigious — 700 articles in his first few years, many of them on the front page, others in the form of news analysis in The Times Magazine or the Week in Review.

His work was often entertaining as well as informative. “The most familiar voice in Ameriker lahst yeeah warz that of a Boston Irishman with Harvard overtones who sounded vaguely like an old recording of Franklin D. Roosevelt speeded up to 90 r.p.m.’s,” Mr. Wicker wrote for the magazine, summing up 241 Kennedy speeches in his first year in the presidency. “Nor will the Beacon Street ‘a’ and the Bunker Hill ‘r’ fall any less frequently on the American eeah in the coming yeeah.”

Mr. Wicker was named chief of the Washington bureau on Sept. 1, 1964, at the insistence of his mentor, Mr. Reston, who had asked to be relieved. While the job involved managerial duties, Mr. Wicker was an indifferent administrator. He continued to cover Washington and national news, and to write news analyses and magazine articles. In 1966, he took on Mr. Krock’s column, adding to his workload.

In 1968, after complaints by Times editors in New York that Mr. Wicker was devoting too much attention to his writing, The Times announced that James Greenfield, a former Time magazine reporter and State Department official, would replace him as bureau chief.

Mr. Wicker and some colleagues, who saw the move as an effort to rein in the relative independence the bureau had enjoyed under Mr. Reston, vehemently opposed the appointment. The publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, withdrew Mr. Greenfield’s name and named Mr. Frankel as bureau chief. Mr. Wicker became associate editor, a title he retained until his retirement, and after 1972 wrote his column from New York.

Besides columns and books, Mr. Wicker wrote short stories and freelance articles that appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, Harper’s, Life, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Vogue and other magazines. He received many awards and honorary degrees from a dozen universities.

In the video that can be viewed in the above Huffingtonpost article, a Dallas police officer is shown holding up Oswald's alleged rifle for the mob of press to see. He uses both of his bare hands to hold the weapon high, thus assuring that his fingerprints would appear on it. This was done within hours of the assassination and the arrest of Oswald. Has crucial evidence in such a major case of murder/assassination ever before been so carelessly handled and tainted?

JK Rowling 'felt invaded' at note put by press in daughter's schoolbag

Harry Potter author describes press intrusion to Leveson inquiry and says she felt 'under siege' from paparazzi

By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 12.56 EST

Link to video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/24/jk-rowling-invaded-press

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has spoken at the Leveson inquiry of her horror at discovering a letter from a journalist inside her five-year-old daughter's schoolbag.

In a two-hour appearance before Lord Justice Leveson at the high court on Thursday, Rowling told of how she frequently felt "under siege" from photographers and gave a string of examples of alleged press intrusion.

Rowling said the most "outrageous" intrusions were when journalists targeted her children at school. "In the first burst of publicity surrounding [Harry Potter] … I unzipped her schoolbag in the evening; among the debris I found an envelope addressed to me from a journalist," Rowling added.

"It's my recollection that the letter said that he intended to ask a mother at the school to put this in my daughter's bag … I don't know how this got in my daughter's schoolbag.

"I can only say that I felt such a sense of invasion that my daughter's bag … it's very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter's school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists."

Later Rowling recalled how a journalist from the Scottish Sun had contacted the headmaster of her daughter's school, claiming that there had been complaints about her daughter from other pupils and parents.

"My daughter was being accused of some kind of bullying," she said. "There was not one word of truth in it … To approach my daughter's school was outrageous."

Rowling told the inquiry how she had routinely felt "under seige" and "held hostage" by paparazzi photographers outside her house.

The author said that she had once hid her children with blankets inside their own home to protect them from the photographers outside.

"There's a twist in the stomach as you wonder what do they want, what have they got? It feels incredibly threatening to have people watching you," she said.

Following the birth of her son, Rowling said she was unable to leave the house for a week without being photographed and added that she once gave chase to a member of the paparazzi while with her children.

"The cumulative effect becomes quite draining," she said. "On a general note, the sense of being often unable to leave your house or move freely is obviously prejudicial to a normal family life."

Rowling also told how she was unsucessfully targeted by a journalist who claimed to be a Post Office employee in order to "blag" personal details about her. A journalist purporting to be a tax worker later sucessfully blagged personal details from her husband, she claimed.

"If you lock horns with certain sections of the British press you can expect retribution pretty quickly," she said, claiming that the attitude on tabloid newspapers was "utterly cavalier, indifference, what does it matter? You're famous; you're asking for it."

Earlier at the inquiry, the former Formula One boss Max Mosley told the inquiry how it felt like News International had been out to "destroy" him after he took the News of the World to court for breach of privacy.

It is said that everyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when they heard the news of JFK being assassinated.

I was enrolled in New York University Law School at night and worked during the day in the New York City office of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. I actually worked for Lt.-Gov. Malcolm Wilson, who had the fifth floor in Rockefeller's private townhouse at 22 West 55th St. that served as his NYC office. A law school friend who worked on Wall Street telephoned me with the news of the assassination that had just come over his teletype machine. I immediately alerted the people working in the townhouse after being told to do so by Lt.-Gov. Wilson. (Rockefeller was having tea in his office with Happy.) Of course, everyone in the office promptly began wondering how the turn of events would affect Rockefeller's chances of becoming president.

The next night I attended a political dinner that had been previously scheduled. I was seated next to a confidante of the Lt.-Gov., someone who would soon become a judge. We talked about the assassination and he said to me in a grave and worried voice, "Oswald will never live to tell what he knows. He knows too much. They will kill him."

At the time I lived in a co-op in Manhattan on East 72nd Street owned by Alice Widener, a newspaper columnist. When I returned home I told Alice of the prediction about Oswald that had made to me a few hours earlier at the political dinner by my seat mate. Alice responded, "If it were New York City, I believe he could be killed. But it would never happen in Dallas." The next day when we witnessed on live television Ruby killing Oswald, Alice began screaming, such was the shock.

One of the enduring questions about the tragedy is why the Dallas police failed to take adequate measures to safeguard Oswald after his arrest.

I Saw Lee Harvey Oswald Gunned Down

Posted: 11/22/11 01:00 AM ET

By Peter Worthington

Co-Founder, Toronto Sun

www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/peter-worthington/lee-harvey-oswald_b_1105191.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl6%7Csec1_lnk3%7C115185

[View video]

Every anniversary since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, I've been asked to comment or review what happened that sorry day.

I happened to be the only Canadian journalist in the underground garage of the Dallas police station that bright Sunday morning two days later, when JFK's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down by Jack Ruby.

Police had planned to move Oswald to the county jail at 5 p.m., but advanced the timing to Sunday morning.

In those days I was a reporter with the old Toronto Telegram, and as soon as the news came over the wire that the president had been shot, several of us were dispatched to Washington where the late Gordon Donaldson was bureau chief.

It was a Friday, and within the hour Ken McTaggart, Dorothy Howarth and I were on our way with news still breaking. Ken and Dorothy are dead now -- arguably, both the greatest reporters of their day.

We worked all that night, and on Saturday realized we had no one in Dallas to cover the accused assassin. The Toronto Star was there -- Rae Corelli, a street-wise, old-time reporter. One of us had to catch the 1 a.m. milk-run flight to Dallas. Me.

I remember the endless flight to Dallas, landing at various spots en route, and feeling a deep depression and sense of personal loss at Kennedy's death. The flight was the first chance I'd had to reflect, without having to cover some aspect of the tragedy.

In Dallas I checked into the hotel -- I forget which one. I was exhausted and intended to sleep until the 5 p.m. advertised time of Oswald's transfer.

It was around 9 a.m. on the Sunday, and I remember thinking of my army days and the admonition: "Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted." An agitated conscience persuaded me to check out the police station before bedding down. I wanted to know the lay of the land for the 5 p.m. move. I'd still catch a couple of hours sleep.

The police station was quiet, but stairs leading to the underground garage was alive with the babble of voices. I went down, prepared to show what credentials I had and to explain my dishevelled, unshaven presence if there was a security check.

There was none. I found myself on the police side of the garage, TV cameras and journalists packed and hollering across the driveway. I began chatting with a plainclothes cop, hoping to discourage others from questioning my presence.

I think local cops assumed I was FBI, while the FBI figured I was a local cop.

Soon, out of a doorway, came sheriffs, escorting Oswald who was wearing a sweater, had a bruise mark on his face, and was furtively darting glances side-to-side.

I began to shift down towards the car that would take him, when suddenly from the packed crowd of journalists, a hunched figure wearing a fedora lunged at Oswald and there was the sharp "pop" of a handgun being fired into his side.

Oswald crumbled, shrilly moaning "Oh... oh... oh." The gunman vanished under a pile of police bodies.

Pandemonium erupted. I thought I recognized the gunman as a Chicago Tribune reporter I'd met during the Saskatchewan Medicare crisis a year earlier, and was relieved when it wasn't him, and I wouldn't have to try and remember our conversation at the time, which I'd totally forgotten.

The plainclothes detective and I both felt the shock waves of the gun being fired. We nodded at each other and remarked that we were lucky the gunman was a good shot. Had he missed, we felt we were in the line of fire.

Oswald was dragged inside. The police were frantic. There was yelling and shouting. A TV crew was held at gun point to explain themselves. Individual reporters faced guns as police hunted for accomplices. It was a nervous time. Hysteria beckoned. Still, no one questioned my presence.

Oswald soon reappeared on a stretcher, being taken to an ambulance. The big question was whether he was alive, and would he live?

He was at my feet, the grey colour of cement. His eyes flickered. He was alive, but it was clear to me that he was already dead. Or soon would be. His sweater was rolled up and I could see the shape of the bullet beneath the unbroken skin, around his kidneys.

What I remember, that seems rarely to get mentioned, is the cheer from the crowd lining the street outside the police station when they heard that Oswald had been shot. This was Dallas -- no friend of Kennedy, but a city embarrassed that he'd been shot there.

In those days I'd spent more time covering wars, revolutions and crises abroad than stories at home, and was not used to on-the-spot TV reporting. I phoned the Telegram to reassure the Sunday editor that I had the story covered. I was mildly surprised and disappointed he wasn't more enthused. He said they knew I was there because I was on TV all morning. It was my first exposure to TV news coverage.

Unbeknownst to me, the rival Toronto Star was also looking at live TV coverage from Dallas and saw the Tely man, and wondered where their guy was. They phoned his hotel and woke him up. He still thought 5 p.m. was the moving time.

Better him than me, I thought when I heard the details. More evidence that time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. As punishment, the Star suspended Correlli without pay for a couple of weeks.

In Dallas, attention shifted to the gunman -- small time bar owner and criminal wannabe Jack Ruby, whose trial I covered three months later.

Over the years, and in innumerable interviews, I've been asked about the case. Was it a conspiracy? Maybe Ruby was a hitman for organized crime? How about Oswald's

Cuban connection? And/or the Soviet connection, where Oswald had defected as a Marine and then re-defected back home? Was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson involved? How about a gunman on the grassy knoll? How could Oswald have shot so accurately and so fast? What about so many skeptics of the assassination dying suddenly?

To all these and other theories, I simply don't know. I was just there.

What I do know is that over the past 48 years, no memoir, no diary, no deathbed confession has materialized that indicates a conspiracy. This absence in America,

which is a chatterbox nation that can't keep secrets, seems substantial evidence that Oswald acted alone.

Yet even now, theories keep emerging. A woman claiming to be Oswald's lover has recently written a book claiming inside knowledge that Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, but was trying to prevent his assassination. What nonsense!

There's recently been a claim that Oswald's shot didn't kill the president -- it was a Secret Service man's gun firing accidentally that hit the president's head, killing him. This lapse supposedly has been covered up.

And so it goes.

Perhaps the conspiracy theories rage because it's difficult to accept that this shining hope for America and the world was extinguished by a pathetic nonentity, unworthy of notoriety. We may never know. The crime of the century seems destined to provoke questions and theories, far into the 21st century -- just as the assassination of President Lincoln did in 1865.

The violent, untimely deaths of both these presidents has guaranteed them a form of immortality, which is more than can be said of most presidents.

Max Mosley: News of the World publisher tried to destroy me

Former F1 chief tells Leveson inquiry that after he challenged paper in court, it sent video of alleged orgy to motorsport bosses

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Thursday 24 November 2011 10.14 EST

Max Mosley, the former Formula One boss who was caught up in a News of the World video sex sting, has told the Leveson inquiry that the tabloid's publisher set out to "destroy him" for challenging what they had done.

He told Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into press standards on Thursday that after he challenged the Sunday tabloid in court, it responded by sending a film of him participating in an alleged sado-masochistic orgy to the governing body of world motorsport.

In Mosley's evidence to the inquiry, he said that News of the World publisher News International sent the "entire video" inviting the FIA to "show it to all members". It was "several hours long" and sent on behalf of the company by its lawyers, Farrers.

The News of the World video was sent to the FIA in the week after it had splashed on a story headlined "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with five hookers", which was originally published in March 2008. The tabloid released an edited version of the film on its website, without copy protection software "so the video was then copied all over the world".

Mosley subsequently launched a legal action against what he described as a "straightforward invasion of privacy" and eventually won £60,000 in damages in the high court, the largest sum ever awarded by a UK court in a privacy case.

"What they had done was so outrageous, I wanted to get these people into the witness box and prove they were liars," Mosley said, even though he knew that "by taking the matter to court, the entire private information I was complaining about would be rehearsed again in public".

The former head of the FIA repeated the circumstances of the publication of the article and the legal battle that followed it, noting initially that he had no forewarning and that the tabloid had chosen not to do so "to avoid any danger of me finding out about the article and ordering an injunction to stop it".

When the inquiry resumed after lunch Mosley found himself taking in a surreal exchange, during which he attacked Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, who had previously criticised him.

"Dacre said that I was guilty of unimaginable depravity," Mosley said. "Well first of all it reflects badly on his imagination."

He continued: "Well I have no idea what Mr Dacre's sex life is, all I know is that he has this sort of preoccupation with schoolboy smut in his website, Ms X in her bikini, Ms Y showing off her suntan … so maybe he has some sort of strange sex life but the point is it's not up to me to go into his bedroom, film him and then write about it."

J.K. Rowling chased from home by press, she says

By Richard Allen Greene,

CNN

updated 1:11 PM EST, Thu November 24, 2011

J.K. Rowling says she felt blackmailed by The Sun newspaper over a photo opportunity

The author tells British inquiry that press violated her child's privacy

CNN's Piers Morgan says he will testify before the Leveson Inquiry

London (CNN) -- Paparazzi hounded "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling so constantly after her children were born that she felt like a hostage in her own house, she told a government-backed inquiry into British press ethics and practices Thursday.

She could not go outside without being photographed for a week after the births of her second and third children, she told the Leveson Inquiry.

And it was "hard to say how I angry I was" at finding that a journalist had managed to slip a note into her 5-year-old daughter's school bag, she said.

"A child, no matter who their parents are, deserves privacy. ... It's a fairly black-and-white issue," she said, arguing that a child had no say in who their parents were or what they did.

She had to move out of an earlier house because of harassment by journalists, she said.

UK phone-hacking inquiry opens "I really was a sitting duck for anyone that wanted to find me," Rowling said of the home she bought just as her fictional boy wizard became a worldwide sensation in 1997.

Rowling then described how a manuscript of one of her books was stolen from the printers and came into the hands of The Sun newspaper after apparently being found by an unemployed man "in a field."

She had to take legal action to prevent the contents of the book being revealed pre-publication, she said, and felt The Sun was trying to turn the situation into a photo opportunity.

"I felt I was being blackmailed -- what they really wanted was a photo of me gratefully receiving back the stolen manuscript," she said.

Rowling said a "wholly untrue" Daily Express story, which claimed she had based an unpleasant character on her ex-husband, had meant she had to have a "horrible" conversation with their young daughter to explain that it was not the case.

"This episode caused real emotional hurt," she said, because her daughter had to cope with other children believing that about her father.

Rowling added: "It portrayed me as a vindictive person who would use a book to vilify anyone against whom I had a grudge."

Rowling also pointed to a story published in the Sunday Mirror, which claimed her husband had given up his job as a doctor "to be at the beck and call of his obscenely rich wife," she said.

This was "damaging misinformation" about her husband, who is not a celebrity, she said, because it led colleagues to believe he had abandoned his medical career. The paper subsequently apologized.

Defamatory articles spread like fire and are difficult to contain, she told the inquiry, but she had no "magical answer" to the problem of abuses by the press.

Actress Sienna Miller told the probe earlier Thursday it was "terrifying" to be hounded by press photographers as a young woman.

She described being a 21-year-old chased in the dark by packs of men, and she said press hounding had made her "intensely scared" and "paranoid."

"Every area of my life was under constant surveillance," the "G.I. Joe" actress said.

Miller got a £100,000 ($155,000) payout this year from the publisher of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World newspaper over phone hacking.

But she told the inquiry she had sued for information about who was hacking her, not for the money.

The parliamentary probe in which she testified was set up in response to outrage at revelations of the scale of illegal eavesdropping and police bribery on behalf of News of the World, which Murdoch's son James shut down in July over the scandal.

Police are investigating phone hacking and bribery in separate investigations, and Thursday announced their first arrest in a related probe.

London's Metropolitan Police arrested a 52-year-old man on suspicion of computer hacking early Thursday in Milton Keynes, outside of London, they told CNN.

Also on Thursday, the Leveson Inquiry announced that it would call former British newspaper editor Piers Morgan as a witness.

Morgan, who now hosts an interview program for CNN, "Piers Morgan Tonight," said he would appear.

Former Formula 1 motor racing boss Max Mosley took the stand at the Leveson Inquiry after Miller.

Mosley sued the News of the World after it ran a front-page article claiming he had organized a Nazi-themed orgy with multiple prostitutes. A court found in his favor, saying there was no Nazi element to the event.

Mosley said the source of the story was one of the women involved, who wore a hidden camera and was coached by a News of the World reporter to try to get Mosley to make a Nazi salute.

The Leveson Inquiry has been hearing from high-profile figures all week.

The mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann told the inquiry Wednesday that she felt "totally violated" when she saw her diary had been published in the News of the World newspaper.

"I'd written these words at a most desperate time of my life," Kate McCann said, adding that the newspaper had shown "no respect ... for me as a mother or human."

The publication of Kate McCann's diary came after the editor of the now-defunct newspaper, Colin Myler, verbally beat her and her husband, Gerry, "into submission" to make them do an interview with the newspaper, Gerry McCann said.

Tabloid newspapers published articles suggesting the parents were responsible for their daughter's death, Gerry McCann said, forcing them to sue to demand retractions.

"We could only assume they were acting for profit," he said of the newspapers, adding the articles had no basis in fact.

Madeleine McCann and her parents have been regular fodder for Britain's tabloid press since the 4-year-old disappeared more than four years ago from a resort in Portugal while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.

The girl has never been found.

Most of the inquiry's attention has focused on newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., but the McCanns described their troubles with other newspapers, including the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, which are not News Corp. titles.

News Corp. announced Wednesday that James Murdoch had stepped down in September from the boards of subsidiaries that publish The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

He remains chairman of News International, the News Corp. subsidiary that owns all three newspapers.

Police investigating phone hacking by journalists say that about 5,800 people, including celebrities, crime victims, politicians and members of the royal family, were targets of the practice by journalists in search of stories.

It involves illegally eavesdropping on voice mail by entering a PIN to access messages remotely.

Kate McCann felt 'violated' by newspaper

By Sam Marsden, Rosa Silverman, Catherine Wylie

The Independent

Wednesday 23 November 2011

[View video]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/editor-berated-madeleine-mccanns-parents-6266466.html#

Kate McCann told the Leveson Inquiry today that she felt like "climbing into a hole and not coming out" when the News of the World printed her intensely personal diary.

She described feeling "violated" by the paper's publication of the leaked journal, which she began after her daughter Madeleine disappeared on holiday in Portugal in 2007.

Mrs McCann, 43, said the diary - which was so private she did not even show it to her husband Gerry - was her only way of communicating with her missing daughter.

She had just returned from church on Sunday September 14 2008 when she received a text message from a friend which read "Saw your diary in the newspapers, heartbreaking. I hope you're all right", the press standards inquiry heard.

Mrs McCann recalled that this came "totally out of the blue" and left her with a "horribly panicky feeling".

The News of the World had apparently obtained a translation of her diary from the Portuguese police and published it without her permission, the inquiry was told.

Mrs McCann said: "I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine.

"There was absolutely no respect shown for me as a grieving mother or a human being or to my daughter.

"It made me feel very vulnerable and small, and I just couldn't believe it.

"It didn't stop there. It's not just a one-day thing. The whole week was incredibly traumatic and every time I thought about it, I just couldn't believe the injustice.

"I just recently read through my diary entries at that point in that week, and I talk about climbing into a hole and not coming out because I just felt so worthless that we had been treated like that."

Mr McCann, 43, said his wife felt "mentally raped" by the News of the World's publication of the journal under the headline: "Kate's diary: in her own words."

Poster's note: As a lawyer, I view this move by James Murdoch, orchestrated by his father, as part of a late in the game scheme to forestall/avoid criminal prosecution in the U.K. However, it appears to be increasingly likely that there will be some form of criminal charges ultimately filed in the U.S. against certain persons and segments of the Murdoch empire. Viewed as a whole, the Murdoch empire has been revealed publicly to have all the earmarks of an organized criminal conspiratorial enterprise. Unless there is criminal prosecution of some type against it, there is great fear that the Murdoch empire will at some time in the near future revert to its ancestral habits.

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James Murdoch resigns from Sun and Times boards

James Murdoch remains executive chairman of News International but leaves board of NGN, the firm subject to civil lawsuits over phone hacking

By Dan Sabbagh

guardian.co.uk,

Wednesday 23 November 2011 09.37 EST

James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of the immediate parent companies of the Sun and the Times, one of which is the business named as a defendant in all the phone-hacking civil lawsuits brought against the News of the World.

It emerged on Wednesday that the 38-year-old resigned in September as director of News Group Newspapers – owners of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World, and Times Newspapers Ltd, home to the Times and Sunday Times – as he relocates from London to New York.

News Group Newspapers is the company subject of a string of lawsuits for alleged breaches of privacy stemming from phone hacking, and it is the business unit that anybody wanting to sue either the Sun or News of the World would have to cite as a defendant in a legal case.

News Corporation, the ultimate parent company, said James Murdoch's departure from the boards was essentially a tidying up exercise. It added that the son of Rupert Murdoch remains as executive chairman of News International, which is the operation that runs the company's three British newspapers.

Insiders said that "nobody should read too much into the changes". They noted that James Murdoch remains on the board of a holding company NI Group Ltd and the Times editorial board whose function it is to approve the appointment of new editors of that newspaper.

James Murdoch took over as executive chairman of News International in late 2007, and has been called to give evidence to parliament twice to explain why the company did not find out that phone hacking at the News of the World was more widespread in the period running up to the arrest of Glenn Mulcaire in 2006. Mulcaire carried out hacking on behalf of the newspaper.

James Murdoch departures 'may herald his exit from papers'

Evening Standard (U.K.)

By Gideon Spanier

23 Nov 2011

James Murdoch has dramatically quit as director of the companies that publish the Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times and analysts said he could soon sever all ties with the troubled newspaper group.

The surprise move, which has seen Rupert Murdoch's son resign a string of directorships at News International, also raises questions about parent company News Corporation's commitment to its newspapers.

Companies House filings show James Murdoch has stepped down from the boards of both News Group Newspapers Limited - publisher of the Sun - and Times Newspapers Limited, which operates The Times and Sunday Times. NGN used to operate the News of the World and remains embroiled in legal action over phone hacking. NI insisted that James Murdoch was not walking away from the UK newspaper arm.

A spokesman said: "James Murdoch doesn't step back from NI. He remains chairman." He is also still a director of key holding company NI Group Limited and of Times Newspapers Holdings - the editorial board set up in 1981 to ensure the independence of the paper when Rupert Murdoch bought it.

However, those close to Murdoch say he now has a more hands-off role.

Claire Enders, analyst at Enders Analysis, said: "It may well be there's no further good from having James Murdoch as chairman of News International. "It's been clearly flagged up by John Whittingdale that the Culture, Media and Sport select committee is not satisfied by the explanations of James Murdoch even though they don't think he's been mendacious."

The departures come as James Murdoch faces calls to quit as chairman of BSkyB at next week's AGM. His decision means no member of the Murdoch family now sits on the boards of the flagship UK papers. Rupert Murdoch used to be a director of NGN and TNL but stepped down after his son took over as NI executive chairman in 2007. James Murdoch has also quit at least one other subsidiary, News International Holdings.

Tom Mockridge, former boss of Sky Italia who replaced Rebekah Brooks as NI chief executive in July, has taken over from him at NGN and TNL.

Enders said Murdoch still faces intense pressure as the police investigate hacking at the News of the World. "He can step down from all these positions but he won't stop any of the other issues surrounding his stewardship," she said.

Enders dismissed talk News Corp would sell the UK papers.

Leveson inquiry: Coogan claims Andy Coulson set him up in 'sting'

Actor says former News of the World editor published details about affair despite assurances from showbiz columnist

By Josh Halliday and Lisa O'Carroll

guardian.co.uk,

Tuesday 22 November 2011 11.40 EST

[Link to video]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/22/leveson-inquiry-coogan-coulson-sting

Steve Coogan has claimed at the Leveson inquiry that "lurid" details of his private life were revealed by the News of the World after he was set up in a "sociopathic sting" by former editor Andy Coulson and the paper's ex showbiz columnist.

The actor and comedian told Lord Justice Leveson at London's high court on Tuesday that Rav Singh, the former News of the World showbiz columnist, agreed not to publish explicit details about Coogan's extra-marital affair in April 2004 if he would confirm less salacious details.

"I begged him not to put in some of the more lurid details of the story, and he said if I confirmed certain aspects of the story in return he would guarantee that the more lurid details would be left out of the story," Coogan said.

"I confirmed certain details for him and he gave me his word that the more embarrassing part of the story which I knew would upset my then wife's family would be omitted."

However, Coogan then claimed that Coulson got in touch and said the NoW would publish all the details in the next Sunday's newspaper.

"After that my manager received a phone call from Coulson that they were going to put everything in the paper," Coogan said.

Coogan said that two years earlier he had received another phone call from Singh, who warned the actor he was about to be the subject of a NoW sting.

"[singh told Coogan that] I was about to receive a phone call which would come from Andy Coulson's office," Coogan said. "There was a girl in Andy Coulson's office who was going to speak to me on the phone, the phone call would be recorded and she would try to entice me into talking about intimate details of her and my life."

Coogan said that Singh told him to purposefully "obfuscate" on the phone, because he knew that Coulson would allegedly be listening, and no story was published.

In just under two hours of testimony, Coogan told how his life had been laid bare by the tabloid newspapers over the years.

"My closet is empty of skeletons as a result of the press, so unwittingly they have made me immune in some ways," he said

A LOOK BACK AT JFK: TAKING STOCK

November 22, 2011 By Joseph P. Farrell

http://gizadeathstar.com/2011/11/a-look-back-at-jfk-taking-stock/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GizaDeathStar+%28Giza+Death+Star%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Today is the 48th anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Friday, Nov 22, 1963, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. It is worth pausing and noting that this year saw the release by Caroline Kennedy of her mother’s tapes and diaries, in which the late Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis indicated her strong belief that Lyndon Johnson, and elements of the Texas “oil community” were involved in the assassination.

It came, for me, as a bit of sad and bittersweet confirmation of the opinions that I and other researchers such as Jim Marrs, Peter Dale Scott, Zirbel, had come to, namely, that these two elements were indeed involved in the assassination. It was, by anyone’s lights, a big conspiracy, one that was, according to Oswald’s murderer Jack Ruby, larger than anyone could possibly imagine, and one that, again according to Ruby, would usher in a “new form of government”, a government essentially broadly Fascist in its ideological outlook, a kind of “sublime” fusion of corporate and governmental power.

There were, I think, other elements involved in the plot, as I outline in LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy, Mafia, intelligence, military, big oil, banking and finance, and, yes, even the sinister shadow of the swastika cast over the whole affair, and at the pinnacle, at least as an accessory after the fact if not as an outright planner, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Most of us are now cynical of both political parties, and the unresponsiveness of our “leadership” to the public good and genuine national interest. We are, we know in our hearts, citizens of an out of control empire, projecting more and more political and military power, printing ever more monetized debt to the glee of the banksters, taking out American citizens without trial or due process by drones, and all of it, I suspect, is because the same coup-d’etat that brought this benign Fascism into the open in American culture has continued more or less apace since President Kennedy’s untimely death. Kennedy, like Eisenhower, saw the dangers of the military-industrial complex, but unlike Eisenhower, made a desperate attempt to undo at least some of it…and paid the price with his life.

The stupidity of the official “Warren Report” explanation of the crime, lest we forget, remains the de facto and de jure explanation of the murder by every American president since: the goofiness of the story serving as a reminder to the sock puppets in the White House that this “can happen to you”, and every now and then, they’re given reminders: the attempts on Gerald Ford’s life, the “lone nut” attempt on Ronald Reagan, the gate-crashers at a state dinner between India’s Prime Minister and President Obama.

But it isn’t a time for sadness, but rather, for reflection: most now no longer believe the Warren report nonsense; what we now need to understand, as Professor Peter Dale Scott has so ably demonstrated in his books on the assassination, is that Ruby’s statement on the vastness of the conspiracy is true, and that it is now a standard feature of the corruption in American politics.