Anthony Thorne
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Posts posted by Anthony Thorne
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Not just Rolling Stone. Reviews have been near ecstatic across the board.
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-irishman
I’d already anticipated the JFK material in the film would be disappointing and misguided, so if/when I watch it I’ll try and concentrate on other stuff.
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Fantagraphics included a smattering of JFK assassination stuff in their comic softcover THE BUSH JUNTA a decade or so ago, in a piece covering George HW Bush’s saga from Skull and Bones and dad Prescott’s profiteering up to the present day. A version like that depicted above would be useful though.
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To be honest I’d enjoy a decent new JFK assassination book - or a reprint of a very good one like DB - that was heavily illustrated and had photos for a majority of the names mentioned. It somehow makes things less abstract and would save me having to surf around the web to see what various supporting participants looked like.
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There’s an interesting moment in Oliver Stone’s DVD commentary for JFK where - during a discussion of David Ferrie’s involvement with medical research labs - Stone mentions that AIDS is related to the venue, but he wont elaborate further on the commentary track.
I’ve only tentatively looked at that subject, but a decent JFK researcher did write a couple of books on the connection. Donald Scott - who appeared on BlackOpRadio years ago - wrote THE EXTREMELY UNFORTUNATE SKULL VALLEY INCIDENT, and AIDS: THE CRIME BEYOND BELIEF. Both examine the emergence of AIDS in the light of exstensive biological research programs that mil/intel groups had been running through the decade prior, and Gibson digs up a congressional discussion from 1969 or thereabouts where a scientist with his hand out for funding notes that they’re working on, and on the verge of creating, a transmissible biological weapon that would attack the immune system in the same way that AIDS later did. The subject is a real can of worms. Even more grim - Michael Meier’s second book on Jonestown notes that the presence of a segregated test camp out in the jungle run by a CIA-affiliated figure with involvement in medical research was the perfect place to test and document the AIDS virus in an isolated fashion prior to the elimination of all the subjects. In Alan Cantwell’s book on AIDS, he reprints flyers showing that a free Hepatitis-shot-for-gay-men program started in San Francisco and a couple of cities in November 1978, right after Jonestown destructed. According to the book, many of the men - or possibly all - who participated and took the shot all later became ill with symptoms of the virus. Scott ties the saga back to a Kissinger proposal on reducing the global population for NatSec reasons - some similar free vacinnation programs were started in Africa, in places that later became AIDS hotspots - and Cantwell observes events domestically in the light of angry public reactions in late 1978 by the right-wing against the gay movement. The whole saga is somewhat mind boggling. Back to MK Ultra, Harvey Milk’s assassination later the same month in San Francisco was carried out by Dan White, a robotically stiff and headstrong cop who some have suspected was an MK Ultra subject carrying out an order. At Jonestown, the murder of Senator Leo Ryan helped begin the destruction of the Hughes-Ryan amendment that was threatening to curtail the activities of the CIA. Dianne Feinstein - in the building when Milk was shot, and who reportedly saw White strolling down the hall - later chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee - allowing her to offer some likely non-existent ‘oversight’ in place of what Ryan, years earlier, had attempted to oversee and control for real. I suspect all the above is just scratching the surface of what the MK-Ultra scientists and intelligence officials were up to through that period. And I’ve barely read enough on the AIDS connection to hold an opinion, other than to wince a little at what I have read.
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Walter Bowart’s OPERATION MIND CONTROL is a major book on MK Ultra, and was originally published around the early 80’s. It fell out of print, then Bowart self-printed a very expanded edition that he circulated privately, which just a few years ago turned up again in scanned PDF form. Someone used that PDF for an unauthorised Amazon edition with a terrible cover, and now the book has reappeared as a pricy Lulu edition. All that noted a PDF of the self-printed version can be found here. It’s worth a look.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/114341667/Operation-Mind-Control-Researcher-s-Edition
The other big book on MK Ultra is John Marks’ THE SEARCH FOR THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and a PDF of that is here.
https://www.wanttoknow.info/mk/search-manchurian-candidate.pdf
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I was reading Michael Meier’s semi-recent book on Jonestown, THE SECOND HOLOCAUST, which is appalling, horrible, and sometimes actually just darkly funny, as Meiers has a sardonic way of nodding towards the most horrible elements of the story, and then elbowing you to point out that there was something even darker that you’d missed.
The congressional report on Jonestown and the death of Senator Ryan, which I was looking at this week, is a couple of hundred pages long, but 80% is reprints of news stories from elsewhere. The actual report which the investigative committee put together is at the front of the document, and is around thirty pages long. Two of those thirty pages are a long sequential list of all the people they interviewed, and that part is longer than the section on Jim Jones, which - under a heading reading BACKGROUND - runs twelve sentences. So that tells you how much, or how little background info they wanted to put out about a guy who had been on the fringes of MK Ultra and the CIA’s Latin American activities before he assembled those families in the Guyana jungle. Is there a recent Jonestown thread here at the Ed Forum? I might post further thoughts there if there is, or start a thread if there isn’t.
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John has posted additional comments in the FB thread. He also noted that the next book in the series was originally scheduled for 2021 due to the amount of new material he feels he’s dug up, but might get out earlier as progress on the book is ahead of schedule.
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Thanks Larry, that's good to hear.
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The original story with links is here.
And I just emailed DMN with a query as to whether they still have the files or not.
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Are those particular files physically accessible to researchers?
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Stone just posted on Facebook, they’ve shot more than 20 interviews for it already, and hope to shoot more. They apparently hope to finish production by March/April next year. Articles suggest it’s a full series like his UNTOLD HISTORY show, which is great news, as it will be longer and have more of an impact.
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I think we already know how the mainstream U.S. media is going to respond to it.
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Fifty Reasons was really good. It was the sort of thing a lot of people talk about doing, but never actually do, make an accessible and well-researched and up-to-date introduction to most of the main elements of the case. I wish I'd been able to talk more people into watching it, as I mentioned it to a few total newcomers every so often.
But a new solid series from Stone, Richardson and all the folks he's gathered is big news and means that we'll see a lot more shrill counter-propaganda over the coming year or two. But the cool thing is, all people will have to do is watch the series, and a dumb counter-article from Shenon or Gerald Posner or whichever dumb CIA guy gets invited onto the Joe Rogan to debunk things for Youtube viewers will have their work cut out for them countering it.
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Great news Jim and should be a must watch.
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Very sad to hear about the passing of Robert McClelland, which I see was late last month.
I’d never heard of the Belfer Center, mentioned above, until about a year ago, when I noticed it kept coming up in the biographies of a particular group of neocon personnel and their cohorts who were all pushing the War on Terror. In some cases, the Belfer Center guys pushing it had started pushing it a few years before the War on Terror actually started. For example, Phillip Zelikow is a member, and his infamous Catastrophic Terrorism Foreign Affairs article from 1997 written with former CIA head John Deutch and future Sec Def Ashton Carter - who are also members - has the Belfer Center logo on the top page, and Carter is now director of the Center.
Robert Belfer, the former director of Enron, awarded the Center a multimillion grant in 1997, hence the name, and in the thank you’s within the book reprinted version of the Foreign Affairs article, Zelikow and co thanked Herbert Winokur, who worked with them for months as part of their study group and who helped fund the group’s work. Catherine Austin Fitts and Linda Minor have both written articles about Winokur, as he’s another Enron board member. So no one here needs to be told how to prepare for a tell-all JFK talk by a multi-decade CIA intelligence officer, but having Rolf Mowatt-Larssen be a WMD and terrorism expert for the oil exec funded Center that was pushing a 1997 Pearl Harbor thesis co-written by the former head of the CIA will make it double the fun.
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Dave, I heard a funny story from VIDEO WATCHDOG and Tarantino/New Beverly promo guy Tim Lucas years ago - he was on the VIDEODROME set - that Cronenberg had been initially inspired to write VIDEODROME after being given a walk around tour of the Ontario censorship board. Cronenberg and the guy showing him around had been discussing stuff being cut out of movies, and the guy said to Cronenberg, have a look at this, and screened him clips from Joe D'Amato's 1977 film EMANUELLE IN AMERICA. That's the notorious movie where actress Laura Gemser, as Emanuelle, goes undercover in the European fashion industry as a photojournalist, and uncovers a snuff pornography ring, with D'Amato recreating the snuff films in scratched 16mm and bringing in make-up effects guru Giannetto De Rossi to depict what happens to the unfortunate actresses. Lucas hung around during the VIDEODROME shoot and saw them change the ending and revise the story of the film multiple times.
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Re Kilgallen, this was posted on the Crazy Days and Nights Hollywood gossip site in February, and I might have posted this before here. FWIW, that site is a mixture of sleazy tabloid party gossip, and accurate ‘blind items’ posted by an anonymous entertainment lawyer in LA. During the Weinstein ‘Me Too’ saga that led to the closure of Miramax, the site accurately posted a lot of stories about imminent legal activities the day before they happened. The text is from CDaN, and the decrypt at bottom from another site after CDaN posted it.
VARIETY story as precursor to the below.
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They were supposed to make a movie about the cause of her death. They didn't. Apparently the few surviving people who were going to speak to this A list writer/director/producer mostly horror team were warned off. Why warned off after so many years? I mean it has been decades since this A list celebrity/writer/game show fixture was killed. It is because of who did it and their connection to powers that be who are alive today and don't want to be exposed.
The A lister who was killed was very respected at her job. She wasn't a quack. She might have done gossip, but she dug deep and unearthed coverups. She was responsible for the release of a suspected murderer in one of the most famous cases of all time. When she got him out, she focused all of her attention on proving that an entire government commission had been bought off/paid off/blackmailed into saying one thing when it was an entirely different thing. Now, when she died, our A lister was not killed by a bunch of guys who stormed her apartment. Her husband and son were home, but in another room. The couple rarely slept together. Our A lister was known for drinking the same thing every night and filling her pill prescription the same day of each month at the same pharmacy. That is how it was done. They gave her the same pills as usual, but just jacked up in effectiveness. The day night she picked up her new altered prescription is the night she died.
Her death was so suspicious that the federal government and Congress investigated. The word was put out to let it go and so it was. I was really hoping the filmmakers were going to, with the help of their A+ list sometime partner/writer/director/producer the initialed one who just had an installment of his franchise released, but they all backed down.
A list celebrity/writer/game show: Dorothy Kilgallen
A list writer/director/producer mostly horror team: Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle
Release of suspected murderer in one of the most famous cases: Dr. Sam Sheppard
Government Commission: Warren Commission/John F. Kennedy assassination
A+ list sometime partner/writer/director/producer: M. Night Shyamalan -
Wouldn’t it have just been easier to slip one of them a few hundred and tell them to use it for their phone bill, rather than requesting an additional party to provide a number to an official, to give to Ferrie, to then give to Baker and Oswald? I mean, if the major concern was the call costs, why not slip them some money for the call costs, instead of dragging three additional people into it?
Nothing personal Rich but I think every single Baker story I’ve heard to date has either raised a guffaw or just stunk in general, and this new one feels of a similar standard.
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That’s funny.
An author could write a book exposing the plotters, the shooters, and the conspiracy. Those ‘guys in dark suits’ would then chuckle and go online to browse the hit pieces and sudden instant mass negative Amazon reviews from ‘debunkers’ that would appear under the book, while waiting for the tabloid news story appearing later that week on Maddow or Morning Joe revealing that the author was a serial abuser who had once beaten his ex-partners, and how could the publisher work with such a guy? Here’s what these three other editors, who are outraged, have to say about such a matter, etc etc.
’Guys in suits’ showing up at the door haven’t been required to bury inconvenient books and articles for a long while.
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Also, this, from Peter Dale Scott's THE ROAD TO 9/11
QuoteGuido Giannettini, one of the Italian authors of this strategy of tension (and of the Piazza Fontana bombing eight years later), came to America in 1961 to lecture at the Naval War College on "Techniques and Possibilities of a Coup d'état in Europe,". In March 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared their own documents developing Giannettini's strategy. This was Operation Northwoods.
When it got rolling, Gladio was essentially a massive, murderous conspiracy linking government and intelligence forces from multiple countries, so anything that sheds light on the perpetrators and their activities is bound to be interesting. A few weeks ago John Newman noted on Facebook that he was looking at links - for his forthcoming instalment of his JFK series, ARMAGEDDON - between Lyman Lemnitzer, Licio Gelli, P2 and Gladio. So I'm guessing next year we'll see where he's going with that.
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Tom’s comments mentioning Phoenix and Condor are on target. Anyone covering the Williams Gladio book in a review should maybe note though the odd journey Williams took from being a Fox News-style fear monger who wrote tabloid volumes such as OSAMA’S REVENGE and THE DAY OF ISLAM - the former of which argues that cliques of Al Qaeda terrorists with stolen nukes are hiding in wait within the US - to spinning 180 degrees with his Gladio book (which points more to the Mafia than the CIA) and his recent conspiratorial grab-bag THE KILLING OF UNCLE SAM. Quite a turnaround to be the guy who delivers a Gladio thesis several degrees different from Ganser’s.
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That was one of the strong themes of Talbot’s BROTHERS, which I liked a lot. The assassinations of the 60’s turned the US - and really the whole world - down a path it’s having great trouble steering away from, and we need to revisit those events to understand what happened so we can correct the course.
FWIW, every time I visit a public library here in Australia, I glance at the JFK assassination books on the shelf. The selection is near universally rotten and makes me suspect that someone managing a national library selection catalog somewhere is intentionally highlighting the worst books possible. Jim, out of your top ten, I’ve never seen any of those on a library shelf in Australia.
But Talbot’s BROTHERS and DEVIL’S CHESSBOARD were big hits in quality bookshops down here, and I saw a big stack of the latter - full price - prominent and selling on a display in a bookshop just metres down from our State parliament here in Melbourne, next to the cafe where most of the local politicians grab their lunches.
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In Tasmania in the late 70’s we had a school class where we practised lying in a gutter, duck and cover style, to avoid the effects of the nuclear flash. Good luck avoiding the blast that follows, of course.
Four decades later - just last year, from memory - a news story appeared about how Israel had conducted an illegal nuclear test overeseas and a deadly raincloud of fallout had drifted over Australia and NZ, poisoning sheep and so on. They had a map showing the weather pattern and the path the fallout took. The map showed the fallout drifting over the northern part of my state, and right over my school.
Kevin Ryan touches upon Gladio and Condor in his book ANOTHER 19, and one of the undercurrents in the book is the number of participants performing covert ops throughout both Bush administrations who had earlier been active in Vietnam, and - in some cases - circumstantially linked to Operation Phoenix. The ‘doing whatever it takes’ attitude is prevalent among those guys, as is a stated determination among many to kick Vietnam Syndrome and ‘win’ the bigger broader fight. So Oliver North dives in to running covert ops and preparing domestic terrorism responses during Iran Contra, Brian Jenkins has a busy career prognosticating about future terrorism in and out of the RAND corporation, and L Paul Bremer takes foreign posts in Gladio-afflicted countries - he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Norway from 1976 to 1979, and Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1983 to 1986. And then, as a collective, the group of them warning about forthcoming terrorism through the 90’s gets bigger and bigger.
FWIW, I read something I hadn’t noticed about Gerald Ford yesterday. Ford was a member of the Business Roundtable that formed in 1972, and that group made the strengthening of the American Enterprise Institute one of its top priorities. According to a Val Burris essay in the Harland Prechel book POLITICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, when Ford lost the 1976 election to Carter, Ford ‘became a fellow at the AEI, bringing with him a retinue of conservative advisors from the Nixon/Ford administration and committing himself to assist in the organisation’s fundraising. With the endorsement of former President Ford and support from business leaders associated with the Business Roundtable, the AEI launched a development campaign in 1978 to raise a $60 million endowment, mainly from large corporations. The campaign had the effect of dramatically increasing the AEI’s budget and scale of operations, as well as shifting the source of its funding from a handful of right-wing foundations to the broader corporate community.” This is what brought guys like David Packard into the AEI, and got the ball rolling for the eventual Project for a New American Century, which many of the same participants would ultimately found in the same building years later.
That comment about ‘another Jacqueline’ is really striking, I agree.
The Irishman: A Crushing Disappointment
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
I haven’t read the book so I’m not sure - before watching it - what The Irishman says about who did what, but I’m just going to accept that it’s fiction and hope for some well directed scenes.
David - Jodorowsky’s films, including EL TOPO, are apparently getting a big re-release next year. Arrow Video bought the rights and will be bringing them all out on Blu-Ray, and with some select festival screenings too.