Paul Rigby

Opinion US elections 2024 To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about Trump Dustin Guastella Our polling shows that the best way to defeat Trump is offer a compelling economic platform that puts working families first Tue 22 Oct 2024 11.00 BST https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/22/harris-working-class-voters-poll-election The 2024 campaign has entered the final stretch and, as polls tighten, it seems Kamala Harris plans to lean into attacking Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. Over the past week the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times and even the conservative National Review have all reported or commented on the messaging pivot. In a newly unveiled official campaign ad, a disembodied voice warns gravely that a second Trump term “would be worse. There would be no one to stop his worst instincts. No guard rails.” At a recent rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Harris reminded her supporters of Project 2025, the “detailed and dangerous plan” that she believes an “increasingly unstable and unhinged” Trump will follow to cement “unchecked power”. She sounded the alarm about the dire threat Trump poses to “your fundamental freedoms” and how in his second term he would be “essentially immune” from oversight. This is hair-raising stuff. And the campaign thinks that menacing warnings like these will motivate some urgency to march to the polls for Harris. The only problem is that voters, especially working-class voters, seem uniquely uninspired by the appeal. The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) recently tested a variety of political messages on voters in Pennsylvania, a key battleground for both campaigns, to determine what kind of rhetoric is working to nudge blue-collar voters toward Harris. In collaboration with the polling firm YouGov, we polled a representative sample of 1,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania between 24 September and 2 October 2024. We asked respondents to evaluate different political messages that they might hear from Harris and Trump, and to score them on a scale of favorability. In line with our past research, we found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested. Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the “democratic threat” message. Much like Harris’s recent rhetoric, this message called on voters to “defend our freedom and our democracy” against a would-be dictator in the form of Trump. It named Trump as “a criminal” and “a convicted felon” and warned of his plans to punish his political enemies. Of the seven messages we tested, each relating to a major theme of the Harris campaign, the “democratic threat” message polled dead last. It was the least popular message relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And it was the least popular message among the working-class constituencies Harris and the Democrats need most. Among blue-collar voters, a group that leans Republican, the democratic threat message was a whopping 14.4 points underwater relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And among more liberal-leaning service and clerical workers, it was also the least popular message, finishing only 1.6 percentage points ahead of the Trump average. Even among professionals, the most liberal of the bunch and the group that liked the message the best, the message barely outperformed Trump’s messages. The exact opposite is true for the “strong populist” message we tested. This message, which combined progressive economic policy suggestions with a strong condemnation of “billionaires”, “big corporations” and the “politicians in Washington who serve them”, tested best with blue-collar workers, service and clerical workers, and professionals. If we break down the results by party we find much the same story. Republicans – who didn’t prefer any of Harris’s messages over Trump’s messages – preferred the strong populist message the most. And they overwhelmingly rejected the democratic threat message, on average preferring Trump’s messages over this by over 75 points. Among independents – an imperfect proxy for nonpartisan voters – the strong populist message was best received, while the democratic threat message was least favored. Only Democrats strongly preferred the democratic threat message, and even then it was among their least favorite. All of this suggests that the messaging pivot is a big mistake. Why voters aren’t responding to messages like these is anyone’s guess, though the fable of the boy who cried wolf comes to mind. Trump was already president. And while Democrats warned about the danger he posed to democracy, we did actually have an election to get rid of him. Remember, the moral of the fable isn’t that, in the end, there wasn’t a wolf. It’s that no one believed the boy. Moreover, the distaste for the democratic threat message among working people, and the total obliviousness to that distaste among campaign officials, is evidence itself of the huge disconnect between Harris and the working-class voters she desperately needs to win. Worse, every ad or speech spent hectoring about the Trumpian threat is one less opportunity for Harris to focus on her popular economic policies; one less opportunity to lean into a populist “people v plutocrats” narrative that actually does resonate with the working class. If Harris loses, it’ll be because the campaign and the candidate represent a party that is now fundamentally alien to many working people – a party that has given up on mobilizing working people around shared class frustrations and aspirations. A party incapable of communicating a simple, direct, progressive economic policy agenda. A party so beholden to a contradictory mix of interests that, in the effort to appease everyone and offend no one, top strategists have rolled out a vague, unpopular and uninspiring pitch seemingly designed to help them replay the results of the 2016 election. Ironically, if Democrats are keen to defend democracy they would do well to stop talking about it. Instead, they should try to persuade voters on an economic vision that seeks to end offshoring and mass layoffs, revitalize manufacturing, cap prescription drug prices and put working families first. In other words, they should sound less like Democrats and more like populists. Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working-Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623

Dorcas Speer Interviews Dr David Smith, Haight Ashbury Medical Clinic (WOI News Clip 391)

Mark Lane’s publishers in UK & US US publisher: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Penn Jones, Jr., Someone Must Have Cut The String? (The Continuing Inquiry, V3 N5, 22 December 1978, 1-3) At the 1975 conference staged in Boston, Mass. by the Boston-based Assassination Information Bureau, I revealed in my lecture that the publishing house of Holt, Rinehart, and Winston was owned by the Murchison interests of Dallas at the time Lane’s book, Rush To Judgment, was approved for printing and distribution. Full piece: https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/someone-must-have-cut-the-string-by-penn-jones-vol.-3-no.-5/675986 British publisher: Bodley Head 1) Herbert Harold Tucker, born 04/12/1925 (OBE 1965) British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, interview with H H Tucker, 19 April 1996 (15pp) Tucker joined the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD) in 1951. He later served as Counsellor (Information), Canberra, 1974-79; then Consul-General, Vancouver, 1979-83. For a fuller account of his career, follow either of the links below: https://archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Tucker.pdf Reference Code: DOHP 11 https://oa.churchillarchives.libnova.com/view/1801 Tucker interview, 6: We encouraged the production of commercial books by “see-safe arrangements”…This is an old publishing arrangement whereby provided there is a decent idea or decent manuscript, publishers are often prepared to publish and quite happy to publish if you take the risk out of their doing so. Basically it works like this - if you have an author who has a book in him, a publishing house will often agree to publish if someone takes the risk out of it for them by, for example, agreeing to buy, say, 15,000 copies of the book. The publisher is quite happy because that covers their costs and distribution and everything and anything above that is sheer profit for them. And so we had an arrangement - this was some time later - but we had an arrangement with (I don't think I'm giving any secrets away) with the Bodley Head under Max Reinhardt which published a series of what turned out to be a very popular, very widely-read series of books called 'background books' which dealt with subjects in which the IRD were interested. Our role, primarily, was to suggest authors, suggest themes and to buy the end product. We were not looking for 100% support or anything like that and quite a lot of well-known people wrote for the series, often not fully realising that, behind the scenes, there was this see-safe arrangement. 2) How the FO waged secret propaganda war in Britain By Richard Fletcher, George Brock & Phil Kelly Observer, Sunday, 29 January 1978, page 2 http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/fo_deceit_unit_obs_29jan1978.html A SECRET Foreign Office department set up after World War Two to distribute anti-Communist propaganda abroad also covertly planted material in Britain. Over a period of 30 years material and money from the Information Research Department (IRD) went into books published under highly respectable imprints. Some of them are still available in public, school and university libraries. Anti-Stalinist material was also infiltrated into trade union literature. After 30 years, the IRD finally became an embarrassment to Ministers, who feared its approach to propaganda was out of date and a threat to detente relations. Its activities were first curtailed by the late Anthony Crosland, and last May it was closed down by his successor as Foreign Secretary, Dr David Owen. Documents in the hands of The Observer reveal that within a year of its foundation in 1948 the department was paying a hidden subsidy to an anti-Communist magazine, Freedom First, which was circulated to trade unionists. It was negotiated secretly between the editor and Mr. Christopher Mayhew, then a Foreign Office junior minister and the man who created IRD. The department used a small publishing company, Ampersand Ltd, which published IRD-inspired material for 20 years and bought thousands of books for distribution by IRD. A director of Ampersand since 1953, Mr. Stephen Watts, confirmed to us that IRD paid his firm's costs, including office bills and authors' fees, and he 'always understood' that the money was from the secret vote, the Parliamentary allocation of money for the intelligence services. The IRD began life in January 1948 after the Attlee Cabinet approved a plan put up by Mr. Mayhew for a vigorous information offensive against the Iron Curtain countries which, according to his memo, were winning the ideological cold war. Mr. Mayhew had asked his officials to draw up plans for a 'team of two or three "devillers",' who were to prepare and assemble material under a 'specialist in ideological warfare.' In a 'Top Secret' memo to the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest Bevin, in December 1947 he said : ' The material would be concocted and devised by the Communist Information Department' (IRD's provisional title). He proposed a book extolling the merits of British social democracy, suggesting as a title 'The Straight Answer.' He added: 'It would probably. be inadvisable to issue an English edition for public circulation at home, since this could be attacked as expenditure of taxpayers' money for internal political purposes; but the private circulation to key people in this country of a limited number of the English language edition would be practicable and extremely helpful.' Mr. Mayhew, his officials and his confidants at Labour Party headquarters were well aware of the risks they were running. Mr. Mayhew, now a member of the Liberal Party, said last week that IRD dealt in 'true facts' and commented: 'It's difficult to make out that there's anything sinister about this. We were ahead of our time in fighting Stalinism. In the post-war years there were many illusions about Stalinism, not least inside the Labour Party. We were certainly taking great political risks, and quite right too.' In May 1948 Mr. Mayhew told Bevin that he had made arrangements with Herbert Tracey (an official in the Labour Party's international section) for the dissemination in the Labour movement at home of anti-Communist propaganda. Mr. Tracey ran an anti-Communist committee called 'Freedom First.' Mr. Mayhew noted a month later that the committee's material should be supplied by IRD on a 'strictly confidential basis.' The note went on : 'Mr. Tracey would work out a financial estimate on the basis of 5,000 copies covering three or four languages. We would then see what we could do in the way of a hidden subsidy - e.g. by purchase of copies for use and distribution by our information officers.' An idea of IRD's information-collecting methods, as opposed to dissemination, can be gathered from a note from Mr. Mayhew to one of his officials in January 1949. It suggests 'grey' propaganda - carefully selected material energetically reproduced and distributed - rather than 'black' propaganda of lies and fiction. Mr. Mayhew recommends using the Press monitoring section at the Moscow Embassy to gather suitable material. In addition to sponsoring anti-Communist books IRD also distributed British news-paper articles to developing countries. Newspapers in those countries were carrying material supplied by Russian and Chinese news agencies because it was all they could afford. So IRD, wishing to counter that influence, made arrangements with some British news organisations (including, in 1968, The Observer Foreign News Service), which gave IRD the right to distribute articles cheaply, or even free of charge to the media of selected countries. In the case of THE OBSERVER Foreign News Service, which syndicates articles by Observer writers, it was a condition that the articles could not be altered. The arrangement between IRD and Ampersand for subsidising and publishing anti-Communist books began in the 1950s. Mr. Stephen Watts, the head of Ampersand, said last week that he would discuss possible book titles with the heads of IRD. Those books would be commissioned and edited by Mr. Watts, who would arrange for sales of copies to IRD for distribution overseas. That discreet arrangement was merged with conventional current affairs publishing. Mr. Watts, as a freelance publisher's editor, created and edited a series of more than 100 volumes called Background Books, which was published by two small firms between 1950 and 1960, when Bodley Head took over. IRD paid for the books in two ways: by buying up to several hundred copes of a title they wanted and by meeting production costs for titles published by Ampersand under their own imprint. Ampersand also acted as a purchasing agent for IRD, buying Bodley Head books and other publishers' books through Bodley Head's credit facilities. Ampersand's accounts for the years 1967-76 list total payments to Bodley Head of £55,991 but Bodley Head were not able to confirm this. They also show 'reimbursement' of publishing expenses and overheads over the same period of £89,670. Mr. Watts said that this had been paid by IRD. The accounts were audited each year and a copy of them was sent to the Foreign Office, which then paid reimbursements to Ampersand. Mr. Max Reinhardt, managing director of Bodley Head, said : 'Ours was an orthodox publishing arrangement with Stephen Watts. I naturally had no ides of Ampersand's connection with IRD or the Foreign Office.' Mr. Watts told us that the arrangement between IRD and Ampersand had been suggested by the late Mr. Leslie Sheridan, a wartime intelligence man. He was deputy head of IRD in 1961 and the founder of Ampersand. Although the British public didn't know about IRD's activities, ironically the Russians were handed details of what was happening on a plate. When Mr. Mayhew was assembling his staff a colleague approached him and recommended a young diplomat as a 'man deeply versed in communism.' That man was Guy Burgess, one of Britain's most famous post-war defectors, who was on the staff of IRD for several months until sacked by Mr. Mayhew for being 'dirty, drunk and idle.' (Additional research by Paul Lashmar, Tony Smart and Richard Oliver.)

I’ll let the extracts do the talking – it’s only too clear who was telling the truth and when the truth became inconvenient - save for observing that rumours concerning Paul McCartney’s alleged “death” began circulating in early September 1966, not long after his meetings with Lane in London (1). Did Sonnenberg's chums misidentify his wife's lover? Mark Lane, Rush To Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F Kennedy, Officer J D Tippitt, and Lee Harvey Oswald (London: Bodley Head, 1966) Acknowledgments, 25: "I am deeply indebted to Benjamin Sonnenberg, Jr, whose numerous and invaluable suggestions found their way into this volume." Mark Lane, A Citizen’s Dissent (New York: Fawcett Crest, April 1969): 54-55: The Bodley Head became engaged in two tasks. It sought to secure publication of the book in the United States and in other countries, and it subjected the manuscript to the most minute examination of a leading firm of libel solicitors in London. Plaintiffs in defamation actions in England enjoy far more advantages than their counterparts would in an American court. Nevertheless only a few trifling changes were made regarding the substance, while the style was considerably improved due to the careful editing of Benjamin Sonnenberg, Jr., an American then residing in England. 70: In London, just before returning to the United States for the film, my wife and I met Paul McCartney at a cocktail party given by Benjamin Sonnenberg, Jr., who had edited my book, and his wife, Wendy. McCartney became deeply interested in the subject and asked if he could read the manuscript. A copy was sent to him, and several days later a chauffeur returned it. Later that day, McCartney called to say, “Well, he could not have done it, could he?” We met for dinner twice during the next few nights, and McCartney agreed to write the musical score for the film after I had raised that possibility. I warned him that the subject was highly controversial and might have an adverse effect upon his career. He said that he was aware of that but unconcerned by it. I asked him why he might be willing to jeopardize his future, and he replied, “One day my children are going to ask me what I did with my life, and I cannot just answer that I was a Beatle.” Eventually we decided that the film should be stark and didactic, and therefore without music. Benjamin Sonnenberg, Jr., Lost Property: Memoirs & Confessions of a Bad Boy (Washington: Counterpoint, 1991): 163: I was asked to edit a book about the assassination of President Kennedy. I felt I knew something about this because on the day Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby I was in New York, watching it on TV with my father and Abe Fortas. My father said, "Whoever shot Kennedy, you can be sure it wasn't Oswald." And Abe Fortas agreed. About the assassination itself, my feelings were mixed. Detestation of the Kennedy administration was uppermost. Also, when it occurred, I was with Maria at the Bronx Zoo and we heard about it in the cab going back to Manhattan. She was upset. I thought only, "There goes the evening. "* * Compare "Thank goodness it happened on a Friday," i.e., when the Market could close for the weekend, which I heard from a banker friend of my father's. Compare also Malcolm X's remark, "It's a case of the chickens coming home to roost.' I'm not sure how much I knew then of the Kennedy policy of "selective assassination/' but Merle Dankbloom had shown satisfaction over the death of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. He went about as though he'd caused the awful event himself, as is said about Natasha and the town fire in Act Three of Three Sisters. 164: I took a tiny office in Albemarle Street to work on the assassination book. 1 tacked my calling card to the door. One morning I found that someone had drawn a swastika under my name… 165: The CIA was not involved in the book I was editing. When I told Merle Dankbloom about it, he said, "My god! Can't they leave that poor man alone?" Kennedy? Oswald? Earl Warren? It turned out that the poor man' was an obscure White Russian emigre who lived on Cape Cod (where, as it happened, I once met him). He was at the very fringe of the Warren Commission investigation… A second bad thing was Alice's friends. One was living with Paul McCartney. When the four of us went out, the talk was of nothing I cared about… 183: Alice and I went to New Orleans to stay with the author of the book about the Kennedy assassination which I had edited. He and his wife had taken an apartment in the French Quarter. He was working on some new lead. There it was that Alice told me that she had had an affair with him in London at the time I was working on his book. It had continued for some weeks in New York, and now it was over. "It's over now," Alice said. And here we were staying with him and his wife. Alice felt bad about that, she said. Mark Lane, Citizen Lane: Defending Our Rights In The Courts, The Capitol, And The Streets (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2012): 163-164: While living in London during that time I attended a small party of about a dozen people. One of them was Paul McCartney. He walked up to me, offered his hand, and told me his name. The introduction was hardly necessary as he was one of the most famous people in the world. He seemed very young and remarkably modest. That was because he was twenty-two years old, and he was not impressed with his accomplishments. He said, “I understand you have written a book about Kennedy’s assassination. I would like to read it.” I told him that it was still in manuscript form and that there were only two mimeographed copies, one at the publisher’s office and one at the flat where I was staying. Paul said, “If I could just borrow your copy I would keep it safe and get it back to you in a few days.” I agreed. The next day a man in a chauffeur’s outfit arrived and asked if I had a package for Mr. McCartney. He took it. Several days later he returned with the manuscript, neatly wrapped. I took it to my desk, opened it quickly, and began to search for the note that would be my first review. There was no note; I was very disappointed and thought that evidently he had not been impressed or perhaps, I hoped, he had just been too busy to read it. Early that evening while I was in the throes of editing, the telephone rang. The caller said, “Well he could’na done it, could he?” I was irritated by the interruption, the obscure message, and the failure of the caller to identify himself. I said, probably in a less-than-generous tone, “Who is this? And who could not have done what?” He replied, “Sorry. Paul, Paul McCartney, we met the other night. And I meant that Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy.” I may have been one of the very few people on the planet who would have failed to recognize that most famous voice. Paul seemed not at all put out. He said, “Could we have dinner together to talk about it? Maybe tomorrow?” A few days later he invited me to his home, suggesting that I drop in at about noon. He opened the door and showed me to a parlor, asking if I minded waiting a few minutes as he walked into another room where John Lennon was seated at a piano. Paul called out, “Mark, this is John. John, this is Mark.” We each said hello, and the two of them continued working on a song. They hummed, they sang, and they played the piano and Paul played the guitar. When they were satisfied, they agreed to call their associate who was going to write it down. Neither Paul nor John could write music. Then we had lunch prepared by a woman who worked there. It was sliced white bread toasted and covered with baked beans, apparently a Liverpool favorite. Paul’s very large English sheepdog stayed outside, guarding the house. Paul, of course, had a very busy schedule and said he would call when he could. He did a few days later and suggested a late dinner at a place I might recommend. I told him about a Polish restaurant where the food was excellent, and since all the diners and staff were ancient and spoke primarily Polish, he might not be recognized. The owner seated us near a window and then returned in a few minutes and nodded toward a table where an obviously wealthy woman in her nineties was seated. “Madame Slovenskia wondered, Mr. McCartney, if you could sign her menu, which she would like to present to her granddaughter.” Paul smiled and wrote, “Happy dinner, Paul McCartney, friend of Mark Lane.” The owner was bemused, and his customer was bewildered. Paul smiled and said, “I guess they heard of the Beatles in Poland.” As our dinner continued past the closing hour it was fortunate the door was locked. Paul had been spotted. Before long, the crowd grew to more than two hundred. The owner showed us a seldom used back door, and we ran to Paul’s car. He drove me to my apartment in a rather deserted section near World’s End. No one was on the street. Paul brought out a guitar, and we walked just a few steps before a young couple appeared. She screamed, ran up to Paul, and ripped a handkerchief from his pocket as we ran to the building. We settled into the den and caught our breath. During a meeting at my London publishers, James Michie mentioned that there was an American named Ben Sonnenberg who was eager to assist me as a volunteer quasi-editor. I met Benjamin Sonnenberg Jr. and Wendy, his charming wife. Ben appeared to have neither a job nor a profession but was accustomed to a very rich lifestyle because of the largesse of his father, a multimillionaire who had practically invented the profession of modern public relations. His suggestions for the book were uniformly without value, and some were counterproductive. I ended our professional relationship, and my publisher agreed when I stated that I was accepting none of Ben’s concepts or language. I considered Ben to be well meaning but not competent, and my parting gift to him was words of appreciation for his efforts, since I did not want to do him harm, either to his ego or his future prospects. I likely would have been less gracious if he had not waited so many years to write his autobiography.4 In his memoirs Sonnenberg admitted, really boasted, that he was working for the CIA when he attempted to edit Rush to Judgment, all the while reporting back to his CIA contact about its contents and how to alter them to protect the agency. While I was working with and against Sonnenberg, Bodley Head was engaged in finding an American publisher. They were finding it a struggle until Arthur A. Cohen, editor in chief of Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, requested a copy of the manuscript. 175: I met with Paul McCartney at my flat. He asked about the film, and I described it. He asked if there was going to be music, and I said that the director and I had not even thought about that yet. “Well,” he said, “I would like to write a musical score for the film, as a present for you.” I was astonished by that generous offer and speechless for a moment. I thanked him, but then I cautioned him that the subject matter was very controversial in the United States and that he might be jeopardizing his future. He added, “One day my children are going to ask me what I did with my life, and I can’t just answer that I was a Beatle.” It became clear to me that he had not grasped the enormous contribution he had made to music and to the lives of young people everywhere. During that meeting, Paul said he had just finished composing a song and he wanted me to hear it. “You’ll be the first,” he added. I told him that I really enjoyed his music but that I was practically tone deaf and not the person who should give him the first review, that he should play it for someone else first. He laughed and took the guitar out of its case. He played the melody and sang bits of the lyrics he had composed. I didn’t really get it; it had a haunting and sad sound. I said, “I think this is a little complex for me the first time hearing it.” “You don’t like it?” he asked. I said I did, but I would have to give it more thought. He added as a joke, “I gave you your first review, and it was much more favorable.” The next morning Mike Lester, who was staying at the flat, asked what Paul was playing. I didn’t remember the name, but I recalled that it had a refrain about all the lonely people and that some father was darning his socks at night. I had apparently been the first person to hear “Eleanor Rigby.” When it became a huge hit, my friends made sarcastic remarks about my musical ear, suggesting that I might consider giving up the law for a new career as a music critic. Paul called and said, “What do I have to do to write the musical score for the film?” I arranged a meeting at the King’s Road flat for Paul and D and myself to discuss the subject. 176: D asked Paul, “What have you written for us?” Paul politely said that he wanted to see the film and then compose. D ruled that reasonable suggestion out. Paul then asked D how the film would begin, and D described a scene where the plane landed and the president and his wife walked to the tarmac. That had not been discussed as the opening scene and was not used in the film. D said, “So play your music for that scene.” Paul said, “You want me to audition now?” D said, “Yes, right now.” There was a long and awkward silence broken when Paul picked up his guitar and created a bit of music. D, even less musically talented than I was, immediately said, “No good. It’s boring.” Paul laughed and agreed by saying, “I tried to match the scene you had described.” I argued with D about the musical score to no avail. He insisted that a score by Paul McCartney would not increase the film’s popularity or reach and would prevent it from being “stark and didactic,” a phrase that I still did not comprehend and one D could never adequately explain. The film without a musical score was stark enough and was moderately successful. Its debut was on BBC in 1967… (1) Paul is Dead: Beginnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead Although rumours that Paul McCartney's health was deteriorating existed since early 1966,[1] reports that McCartney had died only started circulating in September of that year. The Beatles' press officer, Tony Barrow, recounted this in his book, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Me. Fleet Street reporters started phoning Barrow one day early that month, to confirm rumours regarding the Beatle's health and even a possible death, to which he replied that he had recently spoken with McCartney.[2] (1) "My Broken Tooth - by Paul McCartney". The Paul McCartney project. Retrieved 24 March 2024. (2) Barrow, Tony (2005). John, Paul, George, Ringo & me : the real Beatles story. Internet Archive. London : Andre Deutsch. ISBN 978-0-233-00140-1.

When is second really first? When you’re Wikipedia, the subject is the history of Zapruder film showings on US television (1), and the first broadcast raises too many inconvenient questions (of which more in a subsequent posting). To follow, an extract from the current Wikipedia section entitled “Subsequent history.” Note two extraordinary features: the vagueness of the attribution with respect to the alleged first showing; and the preposterous language describing the purported second, which is instantly converted into the first: “Zapruder's film was aired as part of a Los Angeles area television newscast on February 14, 1969.[25] The first broadcast of the Zapruder film was on the late-night television show Underground News with Chuck Collins, originating on WSNS-TV, Ch 44, Chicago in 1970. It was given to director Howie Samuelsohn by Penn Jones and later aired in syndication to Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis.[26]” So which “Los Angeles area television” station was it? There were a dozen or more, among them network affiliates, in 1969. Why the reluctance to identify KTLA-TV as the station responsible? After all, note 25’s link used to take us to an archived chronology from the notorious Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, which was quite clear as to the identity of the LA station: 25 "Abraham Zapruder Film | The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza". www.jfk.org. Archived from the original on December 14, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2019. That link no longer works. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, here is the relevant extract: Feb 14, 1969 In an evening news program, Los Angeles station KTLA aired a copy of the Zapruder film, narrated by anchor Hal Fishman. The broadcast included reports of the day’s testimony in the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans. As we have previously seen in this thread, courtesy of Fred Newcomb and Pat Valentino, the Sixth Floor Museum’s summary, while an improvement on the Wikipedia’s, still lacked exactitude: The Z film was broadcast within both major evening newscasts, at 5pm and 10pm, by KTLA on Friday, 14 February 1969. It should be noted than an earlier iteration (2003) of the Sixth Floor Museum’s Zapruder timeline – I last downloaded it in January 2007 – contained no reference to KTLA-TV’s transmissions. The entirety of its pervious 1969 timeline entry read as follows: Zapruder testified for the prosecution in the Jim Garrison investigation into a possible Kennedy conspiracy in New Orleans. During the film’s first public showing, Zapruder confirmed its authenticity. Garrison showed the film to the jury ten times. Technical Animations employee Robert Groden copied a Weitzman print and stored it in a bank vault. Over the next six years, using an optical printer, he made multiple copies with special effects, such as close-ups and repositioning, to remove shakiness and improve clarity. Something happened between January 2007, the last time I downloaded the Sixth Floor Museum’s 2003 timeline, and September 2015, when the Wayback Machine recorded the first of its captures of the revised timeline (2), to induce the Museum to come partially clean on KTLA-TV’s 1969 broadcasts. Was it Pat Valentino’s April 2008 appearance (see above) on Black Op Radio? The vagueness of Wikipedia note 25 gives way to the rather greater precision of note 26. Who could possibly dissent from the verdict of Abraham Zapruder’s daughter, Alexandra? Zapruder, Alexandra (2016). Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film (E-book ed.). Grand Central Publishing. Wiki's choice of the ebook was presumably intended to prevent attention alighting upon the pagination of a physical copy of the book – in this instance, the large print edition from Grand Central’s imprint, Twelve – which leads us, somewhat unhappily, to page 322, no less. The relevant extract from this hard copy version of the work goes as follows: If we are being very exacting, it would be accurate to point out that the film had actually appeared on television before [ABC, March 1975 –PR]. One of these showings was on late-night television program Underground News with Chuck Collins, originating on WSNS-TV on Chicago in 1970 and later airing in syndication to Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis. A copy of the film had apparently been given to Underground News director Howie Samuelsohn by conspiracy theorist Penn Jones Jr., the editor of the Midlothian Mirror. There were probably other broadcasts, as well. But not unlike the showing of the film in the courtroom in New Orleans or the various viewings of bootleg versions, these were essentially limited to local audiences. So Wikipedia’s source for the erroneous claim that the “first broadcast of the Zapruder film was on the late-night television show Underground News with Chuck Collins, originating on WSNS-TV, Ch 44, Chicago in 1970” does not in fact claim that this was the first broadcast and omits the Chicago channel’s number. Plainly, at least one source of Wikipedia’s knowledge on this subject is omitted and hidden. One can only speculate as to its derivation. Wikipedia’s recourse to Alexandra Zapruder’s 2016 book does not extend to her version of the early history of the possession and dissemination of her father’s film. It was a prudent choice. Earlier in the book, she went to crass lengths to rubbish an interview her father gave to a Miami Herald reporter while en vacances ther in late December 1963. Trousering considerable amounts of money and lying about it had plainly left Zapruder pere exhausted. The headline reads, “He’s Sorry He Filmed Assassination.” It’s clear from the article that Abe resisted every aspect of the interview. “He doesn’t like to talk about it,” the reporter wrote, pressing on. “His conversation is hesitant, halting. He spoke reluctantly Friday in Room 704, at the Americana Hotel, his bare feet stuck under the bedspread.” According to the article, he refused to discuss the gift to Mrs. Tippit, and the reporter repeats the claim that his $25,000 donation was the full amount of his payment from LIFE. I can imagine that at this point, after those news clippings and broadcasts and the hundreds of letters, it was difficult, if not emotionally impossible, to correct the record. When asked about shooting the film, Abe said, “There was no reason, no logic, no plan. I was just there. An amateur. I wish I wasn’t.” (3) What great faux pas had her father committed in that brief interview that obliged Alexandra to single it out? What was she hiding? Here is the quote that could not be mentioned: “I understand the film was flown to Washington with the body of the President, Zapruder said. “The FBI looked at it over and over.” (4) (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film (2) Wayback Machine captures of 6th Floor Museum Zapruder film timeline cited by Wikipedia: 85 captures between 13 Sep 2015 & 26 Jan 2024 at 12:55:12hrs. Last date of capture of functioning page, 25 November 2021. Link was no longer working as of attempted capture dated 4 December 2021, timed at 13.17.01hrs https://web.archive.org/web/20200928113715/https://www.jfk.org/the-collections/abraham-zapruder-film/ (3) Zapruder, Alexandra (2016). Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film (Twelve, Large print edition, Endnotes, 172) (4) Alexandra Zapruder’s cited source: He’s Sorry He Filmed Assassination (Miami Herald, December 21, 1963). See: Zapruder, Alexandra (2016). Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film (Twelve, Large print edition, Endnotes, 605) My source: UPI (Miami), Assassination Film Like A Nightmare (The Sanford Herald, Florida, Saturday, V56 N88, 21 December 1963, 7).

Really? This is only the UK, and long before Covid and Ukraine. The US effort dwarfs Britain's. Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains-information-warfare-military/ A barbed-wire fence stretched off far to either side. A Union flag twisted in a gust of wind, and soldiers strode in and out of a squat guard’s hut in the middle of the road. Through the hut, and under a row of floodlights, I walked towards a long line of drab, low-rise brick buildings. It was the summer of 2017, and on this military base nestled among the hills of Berkshire, I was visiting a part of the British Army unlike any other. They call it the 77th Brigade. They are the troops fighting Britain’s information wars. “If everybody is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking,” was written in foot-high letters across a whiteboard in one of the main atriums of the base. Over to one side, there was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software. The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics. Some may have taken the army’s course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full time jobs in marketing or consumer research. From office to office, I found a different part of the Brigade busy at work. One room was focussed on understanding audiences: the makeup, demographics and habits of the people they wanted to reach. Another was more analytical, focussing on creating “attitude and sentiment awareness” from large sets of social media data. Another was full of officers producing video and audio content. Elsewhere, teams of intelligence specialists were closely analysing how messages were being received and discussing how to make them more resonant. Explaining their work, the soldiers used phrases I had heard countless times from digital marketers: “key influencers", “reach", “traction". You normally hear such words at viral advertising studios and digital research labs. But the skinny jeans and wax moustaches were here replaced by the crisply ironed shirts and light patterned camouflage of the British Army. Their surroundings were equally incongruous – the 77th’s headquarters were a mix of linoleum flooring, long corridors and swinging fire doors. More Grange Hill than Menlo Park. Next to a digital design studio, soldiers were having a tea break, a packet of digestives lying open on top of a green metallic ammo box. Another sign on the wall declared, “Behavioural change is our USP [unique selling point]”. What on Earth was happening? “If you track where UK manpower is deployed, you can take a good guess at where this kind of ‘influence’ activity happens,” an information warfare officer (not affiliated with the 77th) told me later, under condition of anonymity. “A document will come from the Ministry of Defence that will have broad guidance and themes to follow.” He explains that each military campaign now also has – or rather is – a marketing campaign too. Ever since Nato troops were deployed to the Baltics in 2017, Russian propaganda has been deployed too, alleging that Nato soldiers there are rapists, looters, little different from a hostile occupation. One of the goals of Nato information warfare was to counter this kind of threat: sharply rebutting damaging rumours, and producing videos of Nato troops happily working with Baltic hosts. Information campaigns such as these are “white”: openly, avowedly the voice of the British military. But to narrower audiences, in conflict situations, and when it was understood to be proportionate and necessary to do so, messaging campaigns could become, the officer said, “grey” and “black” too. “Counter-piracy, counter-insurgencies and counter-terrorism,” he explained. There, the messaging doesn't have to look like it came from the military and doesn't have to necessarily tell the truth. I saw no evidence that the 77th do these kinds of operations themselves, but this more aggressive use of information is nothing new. GCHQ, for instance, also has a unit dedicated to fighting wars with information. It is called the “Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group” – or JTRIG – an utterly unrevealing name, as it is common in the world of intelligence. Almost all we know about it comes from a series of slides leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Those documents give us a glimpse of what these kinds of covert information campaigns could look like.

KTLA-TV News used the second public version of Zapruder extensively not once but twice on 14 February 1969, first in its 5pm show, and again in its 10pm broadcast, as is clear from the bolded and underlined section of the following transcript excerpted from Pat Valentino's appearance on Len Osanic's Black Op Radio programme, 368, broadcast 3 April 2008: From Len Osanic’s Black Op Radio programme 368a, interview with Pat Valentino, broadcast April 3, 2008 Dick Garten: …John Kennedy today, the defense objected repeatedly that the film is irrelevant to the Shaw case. Then FBI photographic specialist Lyndal Shaneyfelt, who had been subpoenaed by New Orleans Attorney Jim Garrison, flatly contradicted Garrison's contention that Kennedy was shot from the front. Chief defense attorney F. Irvin Diamond asked Shaneyfelt, have you found any photographic evidence that the shots which hit the president came from anywhere except his right rear? The FBI man replied, I did not. Shaneyfelt did a detailed analysis of the home movie film taken by Abraham Zapruder of Dallas, showing the fatal shot in Dallas, November 22nd, 1963, which struck the president in the head. Shaw is accused of conspiring with Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferry to kill Kennedy. Shaw is not accused of involvement in the assassination itself, but Garrison has turned the trial of Shaw into a trial of the Warren report by going into the events at Dallas. Garrison contends that the fatal shot came from the front, that there was a conspiracy, that more than one person fired, and that Oswald did not fire the bullet which killed Kennedy. The Warren report concludes Oswald alone did the killing, firing three shots from the rear. Another witness for the prosecution today was former Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Dean [sic]. He told the court he saw Oswald leave the Texas School Book Repository and get into a station wagon and drive away. The Warren Commission had said Oswald after shooting the president, caught a cab, and then took a bus. Well, KTLA News has obtained an exclusive film of the assassination of John Kennedy, and Hal Fishman has that story. Hal Fishman: You are about to see a film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Now, this film may be considered as one and only one bit of evidence in determining the validity of conflicting claims. Much of the controversy revolves about the reaction of the president's body after being hit by the second shot. At this point in the news broadcast, we will show you the film twice, once at regular speed is photographed by an 8mm home movie camera, and the second time in slow motion. At the midway point in this news program, at about 10.30, we will more closely analyze each frame of the film, we'll move it forward and back and stop it, with three professors from the California State College at Los Angeles Department of Police Science. We will, later on, stop the film at the exact point where the president was hit. Here now is that film. Here comes the motorcade, followed by the presidential limousine. President Kennedy is in the rear seat with his wife, Jackie. He's been hit once at this point, and the second shot is about to hit him, right where you saw that kind of white pup. Now we'll show you that film once more at this point in slow motion. In the front seat of the car, on a jump seat, is the Texas Governor John Connally at the time. First the police escort, followed by the presidential limousine. Now by the time the car gets past the sign, which partially blocks the limousine, one shot has already been fired, and if you look closely, you can see the president, in the left of your screen in the back seat, clutch at his throat. In the controversy, it hinges about the fact that his body lurches backward after the second shot. The second shot takes place shortly after he passes two figures standing in the upper part of your picture. There are the two figures, and then the shot will come, you'll see a white puff around the president's head. That's when the bullet hit. The secret service agent jumps on to the rear of the limousine, as Jacqueline Kennedy reaches out toward him. Now later in this news report, as we said in about 25 minutes, we'll show you that film again in more detail, and the three professors from Cal State will join us for an analysis once again of that film. But now here's Dick Gartner. Dick Garten: This afternoon, a Washington judge ruled that a potential witness in the Shaw trial may examine the autopsy photographs and x-rays of John Kennedy now sealed in the National Archives. Judge Charles Halek of the District of Columbia, a court of general sessions, ordered that a Pittsburgh pathologist, Dr. Cyril Wecht, be allowed to see the autopsy material before 4 p.m. Monday. Wecht is expected to be called by Garrison as an expert medical witness to testify on the autopsy material and the assassination. Halek's ruling is a compromise between the requests of Garrison and the Justice Department. Garrison had asked that the 79 autopsy photographs and x-rays, as well as several articles from the assassination, be sent to New Orleans for the Shaw trial. U.S. Attorney's Office argued that the release of the material would not shed new light on Garrison's case against Shaw. And we'll repeat later in this hour Hal Fishman will have an analysis of that film of the assassination you saw just a few moments ago. Hal Fishman: On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. As a result of the investigation by the Warren Commission, it was their contention that one man acting alone shot President Kennedy twice from the schoolbook depository. Well, this was the contention of many for a while, and then there were others who disagreed with that. They said that there was another shot, that President Kennedy was actually struck once from the front, which of course would mean there was more than one assassin. We have film of the assassination of the President on that day in Dallas, Texas. And joining me from the Cal State Department of Police Science to discuss that film, to analyze it for you, are three professors from that department. On my left is Professor Alan Bristow and Professor Edgar Smith and Professor Harry Diamond. And we're going to run the film for you to give you a view of what happened. The film was taken by a resident of that area on an 8mm color camera. We'll run it for you twice at normal speed and then frame by frame so you can see what is happening. First, let's see what occurs as the motorcade turns the corner. Let's watch the film at regular speed. The police escort comes first. In the car containing President Kennedy, he'll be on the left and the back on your screen. This is White Jacqueline and Governor John Connally up front. Secret service agent moves on to the back of the car. And that's Jacqueline Kennedy in the back with her husband, John F Kennedy, the President. Now as the car comes by this time, gentlemen, I think we agree he has been hit once. As the car comes by the sign, in the second shot you'll see kind of a cloud around his head, which has been referred to as kind of the bursting when the bullet hits. There. Now it's the contention of those who say that let's go back and stop it just prior to the sign. Let's go back a little way or more. Right about there. Now stop it. Let's hold there for a moment. Now it's the contention of those who say that there was more than one assassin, gentlemen, that the cloud that erupted about President Kennedy's head shows that he was struck from the front because he is thrust backward. Now let's go very slowly, frame by frame. I'd like you all to look at it, then I'm going to ask you for your reactions, what you think. He's been struck once from the back. Grasps his throat, his hands go up. He's White Jacqueline looks at him and Governor Connally in the front turns around. Now let's keep going. The second shot is going to come up very shortly. It moves past the light post. There will be two figures coming into your picture. There will be two more, I believe, as I recall the film. There they are. Now shortly after he passes the two figures, you'll notice a white puff. I'd like to stop on that white puff as possible. He's coming up in just right there. Now if that's the time that the bullet hit the President, let's move up one or two more frames and notice the motion of the body. Alright, now let's roll back once again, just prior to that point there. Now stop. Let's stop the film. Move forward just one more time, very slowly. He's been hit once now from the back. Now the question is where does the second bullet come from? That's it. Move a few more frames. Now we can see the motion of the body. Alright, now gentlemen, I'd like your reactions to what you see on the basis of the film. And let's divorce ourselves from any concept of the Warren Commission or the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans at the present time. From what you see on that film, what conclusions would you draw? Professor Smith? Professor Smith: We stopped each time on a frame. The second frame I think after the puff occurred. The first puff seemed to be all in the front of President Kennedy. And a moment later we saw the second puff or the second frame where the puff was entirely around his head. It appears that the car moving forward allowed the puff to envelop his head, that the puff was entirely in front of his head, and then the puff enveloped it as the car moved forward slowly. The third or fourth frame then, as I see it, showed the President's body being forced abruptly toward the back of the seat. Hal Fishman: Now would you conclude then, now there's the point right there is what you're referring to. The puff seems to be, as you say, in front of his head. Let me ask you this though, could that be on the side of his head? Well, could we conclude that's directly in front? Of course we have relative motion here. The car is moving ahead at a fairly low rate of speed. But let's assume that what you say is the accurate point here. Your implication is that he was hit from behind, is that correct? Professor Smith: Yes… Hal Fishman: That would be your implication. And he moves into the puff at that time. Professor Diamond, would you go along with that? Would you say we said from the front? Professor Diamond: This would just be a mere inference. Hal Fishman: Right. Professor Diamond: Obviously if you want the most truth you can get concerning this, this is only, we'll say one piece of the evidence, this kind of inference, that he fell backward, which may have been due to sort of a lash effect after being hit in the back, or it could have been from the front. And obviously just to look at this piece of the context, without all the other evidence, the pathology, the entrance wounds, the exit wounds, this is just, well it's relevant, but it cannot be looked at by itself as only a single piece. It must be linked with the other evidence. Hal Fishman: Now let me ask Professor Bristow, would it be possible for a man to have been hit from the back, and his body lurch backward, the way that it does in the next few frames? Let's roll on a few frames. Once again, take a look at it, and you can see the violent motion backward. Let's go through that once again now at real speed. There. And maybe let's do it just one more time if we could, to see that motion backward after the hit. Professor Bristow, what do you think about that? Professor Bristow: Well, I think that if he were hit by a projectile at over 2,000 feet per second, that the motion of his body would have been in the same direction as a projectile. It would appear to me from watching just those few frames that the momentum of the President, as he is apparently struck, does not square with him having been struck directly from the back in the head by a projectile at a high velocity. Now the puffs, admittedly the quality of this film is not the best and the circumstances under which we're viewing it, but that could possibly be two things, among many others perhaps. One, it could be tissue from an exit wound from a bullet that penetrated the back, or entered the back of the head and blew its way out forward. Or also, it could be an explosion of moisture and tissue from the impact of a high velocity bullet on the front of the head. But from the quality of the film, it's almost impossible to arrive at a firm conclusion. Hal Fishman: Okay, I think we all agree that this is basically one piece of evidence concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Let's go back once more and look at it in slow motion, and of course, thank you for your opinions, and we'll let the viewer come up with his own conclusion.

The Roots of the Trump Assassination Attempts It is only by luck that the former president is still alive. Peter Van Buren Sep 23, 2024 12:05 AM https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-roots-of-the-trump-assassination-attempts/ In many Third-World countries, falling out of power means being declared an enemy of the people who needs to be done away. In some situations that means trumped-up charges and made-up evidence—lawfare—to mislabel the fallen leader as evil and justify the life sentence he receives. In other situations, jail is not secure enough, such as when the fallen leader still has many supporters. That means he must be killed. The murder can be a well-planned assassination, an “accident” or true up-against-the-wall execution. It’s all necessary for the greater good, especially if the nation wants to claim higher goals at work—for example, saving itself from a worse fate, like loss of “democracy.” Dictators in power are democracy advocates, and dictators out of power are fascists, infidels, and enemies of the people. Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy itself, says the left in writing and from the debate stage. It is then not surprising when people, often mentally ill enough to accept the base argument that someone who served four years as president, who defeated multiple impeachment attempts without resorting to tanks on the Capitol lawn, and who has run via the electoral system for president three times, is not a believer in democracy. Would-be killers have seen lawfare fail. Of course it did; it was based on in one instance the manipulation of the justice system to transform a payoff to a porn star as part of a legal nondisclosure agreement from a simple misdemeanor (if that) into 34 separate felonies. In another instance, the lawfare was so weak an attempt on the candidate that a single woman’s vague testimony from decades earlier was enough to convict him and fine him enough to bring him near bankruptcy—all enabled by a Covid-era legal device revitalizing charges long past their statute of limitations. In other instances, the lawfare was too thin to even hurt. Trump once faced 91 charges in four jurisdictions. Now he faces 12. He’s been convicted on the 34 noted above and seen 45 charges dismissed. The remaining charges face their own challenges after the Supreme Court determined in July that Trump has broad immunity from prosecution for actions undertaken while in office. As in most Third-World countries, the lawfare was executed by clumsy but politically loyal amateurs, relying on home-turf advantage to overcome their weak cases. And speaking of democracy, lawfare to date has also been defeated (convictions alone don't matter when the goal is political destruction) by some judges still willing to uphold the ideals of a fair system and dismiss unfair charges. With lawfare essentially failing off the table, it is time to demonize Trump to create a manifesto for the mentally ill American who will carry out the grim final round. The New Republic has duly warned us that “Donald Trump is warning that 2024 could be America’s last election”—if Trump wins, American democracy is over. “If we don’t win on November 5, I think our country is going to cease to exist. It could be the last election we ever have,” Trump himself said, and he would never joke or exaggerate, right? In another number from the New Republic, a writer concluded, The election cycle either ends in chaos and violence, balkanization, or a descent into a modern theocratic fascist dystopia. Trump will... use every means available to achieve an America with no immigrants, no trans people, no Muslims, no abortion, no birth control, Russian-style “Don’t Say Gay laws,” license to discriminate based on religion, and all government education funding going to religious schools. Blue states will try to resist this and invoke the same states’ rights and “dual sovereignty” arguments, but it’s unlikely they will succeed due to conservative bias on the Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s willingness to blow off court rulings it doesn’t like. If Trump goes straight to a massacre via the Insurrection Act, civil war is on the table. “Putin does what [Trump] would like to do,” Hillary Clinton has said. “Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists into exile, rule without any check or balance. That’s what Trump really wants.” In short, says the Washington Post, “a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” And what politics of fear round-up would be complete without Trump’s misquoted out-of-context “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country”? Somewhere after that comes a mention from the left of how our system of bypassing the popular vote in favor of the Electoral College is undemocratic even if it has resulted in a democracy each and every time it has been used since the Founders created it. There are a lot of grievances, triggers, and dog-whistles to hit. An element of “Trump is Hitler” has always been missing, Trump’s own version of Mein Kampf. Hitler was famous for writing (from prison) exactly what he planned to do once he gained power. Now there is Project 2025, a document disavowed numerous times by Trump that pundits from the left (and the Democratic candidate herself) nevertheless claim is Trump’s nefarious blueprint for a second term. Trump’s team did not write Project 2025, and he has not cited it in his speeches, but it is stuck to him by the Left like tar. And as a call to arms, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, said that democracies, with their strong protections for civil liberties and the rule of law, don’t drop dead of a heart attack. Instead, they die slowly, incrementally, poisoned at the roots by the fear and anger instilled by demagogues—like Trump. Adam Kinzinger wrote on X, “MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power.” For those who need more intellectual backup to calling for murder, welcome Jonathan Chait, who wrote, “Donald Trump Is a Threat to Democracy, and Saying So Is Not Incitement.” It’s OK, they seem to say, because Trump asked for it. "He’s worth killing" is the broader message. “I believe that more Americans have to be willing to endure what frankly is discomforting and to some extent kind of painful, to take him at his word and to be outraged by what he represents,” said Hillary Clinton. “We can’t go back and give this very dangerous man another chance to do harm to our country and the world.” n many Third-World countries, falling out of power means being declared an enemy of the people who needs to be done away. In some situations that means trumped-up charges and made-up evidence—lawfare—to mislabel the fallen leader as evil and justify the life sentence he receives. In other situations, jail is not secure enough, such as when the fallen leader still has many supporters. That means he must be killed. The murder can be a well-planned assassination, an “accident” or true up-against-the-wall execution. It’s all necessary for the greater good, especially if the nation wants to claim higher goals at work—for example, saving itself from a worse fate, like loss of “democracy.” Dictators in power are democracy advocates, and dictators out of power are fascists, infidels, and enemies of the people. Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy itself, says the left in writing and from the debate stage. It is then not surprising when people, often mentally ill enough to accept the base argument that someone who served four years as president, who defeated multiple impeachment attempts without resorting to tanks on the Capitol lawn, and who has run via the electoral system for president three times, is not a believer in democracy. Would-be killers have seen lawfare fail. Of course it did; it was based on in one instance the manipulation of the justice system to transform a payoff to a porn star as part of a legal nondisclosure agreement from a simple misdemeanor (if that) into 34 separate felonies. In another instance, the lawfare was so weak an attempt on the candidate that a single woman’s vague testimony from decades earlier was enough to convict him and fine him enough to bring him near bankruptcy—all enabled by a Covid-era legal device revitalizing charges long past their statute of limitations. In other instances, the lawfare was too thin to even hurt. Trump once faced 91 charges in four jurisdictions. Now he faces 12. He’s been convicted on the 34 noted above and seen 45 charges dismissed. The remaining charges face their own challenges after the Supreme Court determined in July that Trump has broad immunity from prosecution for actions undertaken while in office. As in most Third-World countries, the lawfare was executed by clumsy but politically loyal amateurs, relying on home-turf advantage to overcome their weak cases. And speaking of democracy, lawfare to date has also been defeated (convictions alone don't matter when the goal is political destruction) by some judges still willing to uphold the ideals of a fair system and dismiss unfair charges. With lawfare essentially failing off the table, it is time to demonize Trump to create a manifesto for the mentally ill American who will carry out the grim final round. The New Republic has duly warned us that “Donald Trump is warning that 2024 could be America’s last election”—if Trump wins, American democracy is over. “If we don’t win on November 5, I think our country is going to cease to exist. It could be the last election we ever have,” Trump himself said, and he would never joke or exaggerate, right? In another number from the New Republic, a writer concluded, The election cycle either ends in chaos and violence, balkanization, or a descent into a modern theocratic fascist dystopia. Trump will... use every means available to achieve an America with no immigrants, no trans people, no Muslims, no abortion, no birth control, Russian-style “Don’t Say Gay laws,” license to discriminate based on religion, and all government education funding going to religious schools. Blue states will try to resist this and invoke the same states’ rights and “dual sovereignty” arguments, but it’s unlikely they will succeed due to conservative bias on the Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s willingness to blow off court rulings it doesn’t like. If Trump goes straight to a massacre via the Insurrection Act, civil war is on the table. “Putin does what [Trump] would like to do,” Hillary Clinton has said. “Kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive journalists into exile, rule without any check or balance. That’s what Trump really wants.” In short, says the Washington Post, “a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” And what politics of fear round-up would be complete without Trump’s misquoted out-of-context “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole—that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country”? Somewhere after that comes a mention from the left of how our system of bypassing the popular vote in favor of the Electoral College is undemocratic even if it has resulted in a democracy each and every time it has been used since the Founders created it. There are a lot of grievances, triggers, and dog-whistles to hit. An element of “Trump is Hitler” has always been missing, Trump’s own version of Mein Kampf. Hitler was famous for writing (from prison) exactly what he planned to do once he gained power. Now there is Project 2025, a document disavowed numerous times by Trump that pundits from the left (and the Democratic candidate herself) nevertheless claim is Trump’s nefarious blueprint for a second term. Trump’s team did not write Project 2025, and he has not cited it in his speeches, but it is stuck to him by the Left like tar. And as a call to arms, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, said that democracies, with their strong protections for civil liberties and the rule of law, don’t drop dead of a heart attack. Instead, they die slowly, incrementally, poisoned at the roots by the fear and anger instilled by demagogues—like Trump. Adam Kinzinger wrote on X, “MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power.” For those who need more intellectual backup to calling for murder, welcome Jonathan Chait, who wrote, “Donald Trump Is a Threat to Democracy, and Saying So Is Not Incitement.” It’s OK, they seem to say, because Trump asked for it. "He’s worth killing" is the broader message. “I believe that more Americans have to be willing to endure what frankly is discomforting and to some extent kind of painful, to take him at his word and to be outraged by what he represents,” said Hillary Clinton. “We can’t go back and give this very dangerous man another chance to do harm to our country and the world.” All of this to preserve Neo-Con control of US foreign policy: The Damage Victoria Nuland Has Done The State Department’s former top woman on Ukraine has been an invaluable source on Americans’ involvement in the war—particularly her own. Ted Snider Sep 21, 2024 12:01 AM https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-damage-victoria-nuland-has-done/ he Fifth Amendment, it seems, is something Victoria Nuland is unaware of. The former undersecretary of state for political affairs just keeps incriminating herself. But her statements—both intercepted and public—have done more than incriminate herself: They have incriminated the United States. Nuland’s statements have acted as some of the most important sources for U.S. involvement in Ukraine from the roots of the war, the growth of the war, and the decision not to cut down the war and stop it. The war in Ukraine is a tangled web woven from three separate, but related, conflicts: the conflict within Ukraine, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the conflict between NATO and Ukraine. Nuland has had a hand in all of them. The conflict within Ukraine goes back long before the war with Russia, but the proximate cause is the 2014 coup that removed Viktor Yanukovych from power and replaced him with the Western-leaning Petro Poroshenko. Nuland was a force in that coup, and her comments are among the most important sources of proof of U.S. involvement. The “Maidan Revolution” received American financial backing. The U.S.-government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded a staggering 65 pro-Maidan projects inside Ukraine. Nuland revealed that there was much more U.S. money flowing into Ukraine than the money provided by the NED. In December 2013, she told an audience at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation Conference that the U.S. had “invested over $5 billion” to secure a “democratic Ukraine.” But Nuland did more than disclose U.S.-financed meddling in Ukraine. Nuland, who ran the Obama State Department’s Ukraine policy, revealed the deep involvement of the U.S. in the coup itself. Nuland was caught plotting who the Americans wanted to be the winner of the regime change. She can be heard on an intercepted call telling the American ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Arseniy Yatsenyuk is America’s choice to replace Yanukovych. Most importantly, Pyatt refers to the West needing to “midwife this thing,” an admission of America’s role in the coup. At one point, Nuland even seems to say that then Vice President Joe Biden himself would be willing to do the midwifery. Along with Senator John McCain, Nuland, who at this time was assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, publicly endorsed and supported the anti-Yanukovych protesters. Nuland also applied pressure on security forces to stop guarding government buildings in Kiev and so to allow the protesters in. Once the coup was completed and the war was on, Nuland was one of the leading voices for escalation and a lack of caution over Russian redlines. On February 17, Nuland publicly called for the demilitarization of Crimea and said that Washington supports Ukrainian attacks on military targets in Crimea despite the U.S. belief that such actions would cross a Russian redline and dangerously escalate the war. Nuland’s comments have also been a source of incrimination of U.S. involvement in clandestine operations during the war, including in one of the most spectacular political and environmental acts of terrorism in history. On January 27, 2022, Nuland declared, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. On September 26, the Nord Stream pipeline exploded. Nuland’s comments have not only been invaluable sources on U.S. involvement in the events leading up to the war and in U.S. involvement in its escalation, but she has now also implied that the U.S. was actively involved in killing talks that might have ended the war. There is a large and growing body of evidence that peace talks that might have succeeded in the early days of the war were blocked by the West. Testimonials come from several individuals who played a role or were present, including Israel's former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Turkish officials, and Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team, as well as from reporting on the intervention of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The New York Times has recently reported that “American officials were alarmed at the terms” and patronizingly asked the Ukrainians, who had agreed to those terms, whether they “understand this is unilateral disarmament.” In confirming the reporting by the Times, Victoria Nuland may now have become the first American official to imply that the West played a role in blocking the peace talks. In a September 5 interview, Nuland said, Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that Putin's main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on. It was about restrictions on the exact number of weapons systems that would be available to Ukraine after the deal. It would basically be neutered as a military force. At the same time, there were no such restrictions for Russia. It was not required to retreat, or to create a buffer zone on the Ukrainian border, or to impose similar restrictions on its own forces opposing Ukraine. So, people inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart. Nuland also supported the idea that the talks were genuine, saying, “Russia had an interest at that time in at least seeing what it could get. Ukraine, obviously, had an interest if they could stop the war and get and get Russia out.” Nuland suggests that there was a possible deal, that the two sides appear to have been genuinely engaged in negotiations and that things fell apart when, rather than encouraging further negotiations, the West began to question the deal. Even now, two and a half years later, when the Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance outlines what a peace plan for the war in Ukraine could look like, it is the now retired Victoria Nuland who reemerges to shoot it down. From the causes of the war, to escalating U.S. involvement in the war, to the West’s role in continuing the war when peace talks seemed possible, Victoria Nuland has been both the source of a great deal of damage and the source of a great deal of information on the United States’ role in contributing to the war and to road blocks to ending it. About The Author Ted Snider Ted Snider is a columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft as well as other outlets.

Useful to establish a precedent for the Agency bumping off a journalist who had departed the Cold War reservation: The murder of CBS' George Polk, May 1948, and the In Fact connection: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/7697-the-murder-of-cbs-george-polk-may-1948-and-the-in-fact-connection/ Thayer Waldo, from memory, falls into a different category of awkward. Wasn't he involved, late 1950s-early 1960s, in the Agency's shenanigans in Cuba? If this recollection is correct, one likely explanation of the pressure applied to him would be as part of a desire to clamp down on further attempts to disturb the status quo on the island.

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6) WUFT-TV, Channel 5 (Cable 11?), Gainesville, Florida, 11pm on Thursday, 25 April 1974 (F). ‘Who Killed JFK?’ to be televised: If you missed it before, this is your second chance. The slide and film show “Who Killed JFK?” will be shown at 11 tonight on WUFT-TV (Channel 5). The TV showing of the Accent ’74 presentation features the famous Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination and slides documenting the tragedy. WUFT-TV in conjunction with Accent ’74 is repeating the program for those who failed to see it when it was on campus. F) Anon, ‘Who Killed JFK?’ to be televised (The Independent Florida Alligator, Gainesville, Thursday, 25 April 1974, V66 N121, 4. I assume Accent '74 was a student group, but beyond that, I won't speculate. Details of WUFT-TV to follow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WUFT_(TV) WUFT first signed on the air with instructional programming on November 10, 1958, becoming the third educational television station in Florida. The station was a major beneficiary of a quirk in the FCC's plan for allocating stations...This created a large "doughnut" in north-central Florida where there could only be one VHF license. WUFT was fortunate enough to gain that license, and as a result, Gainesville became unique in that a public television station was the market's oldest television station (Gainesville's first commercial television station, WCJB-TV, did not sign on until 1971)... WUFT-TV broadcasts local newscasts staffed and produced by students in the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.