Charles Drago

It seems to me that there's a simple way to approach this problem.

Is Mr. DellaRosa being truthful -- to himself and to us? Or is he a victim of creative memory. Or a xxxx?

From what I know of the man, I am persuaded to take him at his word.

So ... With what are we left?

Mr. DellaRosa's memories, plus those of others. I'm thinking of the exquisite, troubling Milicent Cranor, who also claims to have seen a motion picture of the assassination from a Z-like perspective but not the historic Z-film (Millie says she viewed the material at the Time-Life HQ, if I'm not mistaken; check with her).

The issue of the "phantom" camerman is beside the point. Does the alternate film exist?

Charles

Robert,

Thanks for your valuable thoughts on what we all can agree is a rather perplexing subject.

I'm not sure that I follow you. Let's imagine that the Dallas hit is aborted (and JFK dodges at least six bullets). What have the conspirators lost? One opportunity. At worst, they've added another false alarm to the load that is being dumped into the system. The result: No need to worry about the open motorcade scheduled for next year in X city, Mr. President. The Secret Service is on top of it, although it's probably just another false alarm like Illinois and Florida and Texas ...

As for Bolden: We have no reason to believe that his warning would have reached the president in a form sufficient to change history. And his incarceration helped make the Chicago plot credible to those who were intended to be reassured by its foiling.

All of this, of course, is speculation. NONE OF IT has any impact whatsoever on the historical truth that is conspiracy.

This is the most critical of distinctions and must not be lost as we move from "how" to "who" and "why".

Charles

See The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome.

Parenti has much to say about the death of John Kennedy.

Charles

friends close, enemies closer.

That would make Tim ... Turk Salozzo? Johnny Ola?

Nah. Insufficient gravitas.

I've got him as one of the Rosato brothers.

Or later, maybe Joey Zaza.

A simple construction that Bush the Unelected's role model might appreciate:

Until the life of the terrorist is valued as highly as the life of the terrorized, the terror will continue.

Charles

Thank you, James.

Wes Montgomery on Youtube -- in particular his performances taped for the BBC's Jazz 625.

Here and others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmhcp2EmHfE...ted&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQRc959Sx1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZI3VPVv2VI...ted&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf1RizFZsTE...ted&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdXIFHBF1ec...ted&search=

Hemming frequently references Arturo Espaillat in the role of what I term a "facilitator" of the assassination.

Charles

As expected, Charles, you answered not a single ONE of my questions so here we go again:

1. Is it your position that every member of the Parkland staff was part of the conspiracy?

2. Or is it simply your position that within hours after the assassination, every member of the Parkland staff somehow knew that the "cops" were the "bad guys"?

3. Do you mean every SINGLE member of the DPD was in on the conspiracy?

4. By the way, who DID Tomlinson give the bullet to, after all?

Let me tell you, sir, with respect, it's not horsepower we are lacking here. Nor intelligence since you are obviously an intelligent man.

It's common sense.

Obviously when Tomlinson found the bullet he did not think that every LE officer in Parkland was part of the conspiracy.

People have scoffed (rightfully) at the VB sentence to the effect that conspiracy theories started even before the bullets stopped flying. But that seems periously close to the position you seem to be taking. "If you saw a bullet being planted, what were your options? You couldn't call the cops. The bad guys were the cops."

As expected, Tim, you missed my comprehensive answer.

James,

You write, "I submit that this is where some of the secrets we all seek are located. To clarify, I am not referring to the Regicide publication but to Cass specifically."

I agree, and I would expand the basic premise.

When we identify the facilitators and mechanics, we will be confronting everyone but the usual suspects.

Your interest in Major Lopez is a case in point, I'd say.

So too my own curiosity about Napoleon Valeriano.

Charles

Charles wrote:

The problem with the problems with CE 399 is lack of context.

Dallas that day was as controlled an environment as conspirators possibly could have wished for. Including Parkland.

Think about it. If you saw a bullet being planted, what were your options?

You couldn't call the cops. The bad guys were the cops.

In terms of its value as evidence, the planted bullet was as good as it needed to be.

It still is.

It's official.

How does one respond to this?

If I recall right. Tomlinson found the bullet within an hour after the accident.

Is it your position that every member of the Parkland staff was part of the conspiracy?

Or is it simply your position that within hours after the assassination, every member of the Parkland staff somehow knew that the "cops" were the "bad guys"?

Do you mean every SINGLE member of the DPD was in on the conspiracy?

By the way, who DID Tomlinson give the bullet to, after all?

Nice try, Tim. But you just don't have the horsepower.

Charles

See In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada, by Anne Collins; Key Porter Books, Ltd. (Canada).

Also, Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: Book One: The Nine, by Peter Levenda; Foreword by Jim Hougan; TrineDay.

CAUTION: The latter's brief but chilling description of psychic driving may promote insomnia.

Or you could just forget about it.

Charles

James,

Do you know of any relationship to a Noble family who summered in Rhode Island and/or one of the founders of the Julliard School?

Charles

Very nice, Myra.

Thank you for the references.

Ms. Mellen,

Again I am taken by the intelligence and passion of your words.

This discussion indeed seems to have found its natural terminus. On some issues we must agree to disagree. I'll close my end of things with the briefest of meditations on your following comment:

"Please don't write that I am 'mean' to Bobby Kennedy. This is really a last resort of, I don't know what. Bobby Kennedy is as accountable to history and to the public as much as any other politician. I often quote that line by Brecht, and you compel me to echo it again: Pity the land that needs a hero."

We are in near-total agreement. It never was my intention to ask that you go easy on RFK or to imply that he should be granted blanket immunity from the judgment of history. No one escapes. This is only just.

As for Brecht ... The need for heroes is so deeply wired into our species that its disappearance perforce will mark our own final exit from this stage. Pity the human being who has no such need.

Let us agree on this much: When it comes to Robert Kennedy, your view is through a glass, darkly, and mine is through spectacles with a modest tint of rose.

Be well.

Charles

To which I responded:

Peter,

Beautiful.

If I may, the following are excerpts from my 1990s essay "In the Blossom of Our Sins":

"I define justice in the case of the assassination of President Kennedy as the utilization of the attainable absolute truth to cleanse or, if necessary, literally deconstruct and rebuild the corrupted system responsible for the assassination and related crimes."

and

"I am pleading for our reconsideration of the collective self, and for our unanimous adoption of a more contextually valid and at the same time emotion-driven self-image.

"Who are we?

"We are the Lakota—of AIM. We are the Jews—of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We are the Viet Cong—of Tet.

"Let us not fear to know our enemy with equal certainty, even if the enemy too closely resembles us. America is not the enemy. America is the enemy’s victim. Your patriotism is suspect only if you decline to do battle with the brute wrapped in your flag."

and

"The truth is on our side. The truth is the most powerful of weapons. Let us hold it, safety off and round in the chamber, to a few temples."

Charles

I think it appropriate that we share Peter's initial post:

ANYONE WHO WANTS TO COMBAT LIES AND IGNORANCE AND TO WRITE THE TRUTH MUST OVERCOME AT LEAST FIVE DIFFICULTIES - THEY MUST HAVE THE COURAGE TO WRITE THE TRUTH WHEN TRUTH IS EVERYWHERE OPPOSED; THE KEENNESS TO RECOGNIZE IT, ALTHOUGH IT IS EVERYWHERE CONCEALED; THE SKILL TO MANIPULATE IT AS A WEAPON; THE JUDGEMENT TO SELECT THOSE IN WHOSE HANDS IT WILL BE EFFECTIVE; AND THE CUNNING TO SPREAD THE TRUTH AMONG SUCH PERSONS. - BERTOLD BRECHT (GERMANY 1935)

Peter,

The Nazi saucer stories are legion, and I expect that they are grounded (sorry) in some fact.

And there are extant far funkier photos of the Fuhrer's flying foo fantasms than the one you intriguingly present. Not to mention legends (?) the likes of Operation High Jump.

For me, however, and as Professor Evica surely would say it, the correct answer to the question, "Are flying saucers of other than terrestrial origin, or are they man-made?" is "yes."

Charles

Dear Ms. Mellen,

I'm honored to have the opportunity to celebrate publicly your scholarship, courage, and perseverance -- qualities amply on display throughout A Farewell to Justice. Thanks in no small measure to your work, we likely are hastening the day when justice can find a new home in the United States of America.

With the utmost respect, however, I must take you to task for what I submit is your myopic perspective on Robert Kennedy and what that viewpoint seems to reveal about your deeper understanding of the human psyche.

This mediocracy's most celebrated pundits behave in just such a manner when they attempt to excoriate political figures by comparing their contemporary policy stands with conflicting positions stated years ago. These "gotcha" moments are by definition sophistic insofar as they are based on the false premise that evolution of the intellectual and spiritual varieties ceases sometime around the point of physiological adulthood.

(By no means am I suggesting that fabulists the likes of -- who comes immediately to mind? -- Mitt Romney are to be let off the hook. Rather, I argue for a rational approach to political analysis that is as open to the possiblity of evolving viewpoints as it is to the likelihood of opportunism.)

In the case of your evaluation of RFK, it seems that you perceive not the slightest meaningful distinctions between the man who sat arrogantly beside Joe McCarthy and the man who stood humbly before the children who resided in an Appalachian hovel.

I beg to differ.

I cannot quantify what I perceive to be RFK's spiritual evolution any more than you can offer proof of the absence of same.

Toward the end of his life, RFK said, "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

You write, "Bobby might also have transferred the ground war in Vietnam to a Laos-like solution, with death squads roaming the countryside to get rid of radicals."

How do I reconcile all that is great about the woman who wrote A Farewell to Justice with the hateful spirit that reached the latter conclusion?

To make gentle the life of this world ... with death squads.

Permit me to give the final word to Albert Einstein. "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."

Respectfully yet sadly,

Charles Drago

The problem with the problems with CE 399 is lack of context.

Dallas that day was as controlled an environment as conspirators possibly could have wished for. Including Parkland.

Think about it. If you saw a bullet being planted, what were your options?

You couldn't call the cops. The bad guys were the cops.

In terms of its value as evidence, the planted bullet was as good as it needed to be.

It still is.

It's official.

Our righteous, self-indulgent protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Charles

Re #2, as many may be aware, Gerry Hemming claims there was a gunman firing from the west window of the sixth floor of the TSND, aimining ONLY at Connally. He does not believe anyone was shooting at JFK from the east window.

Hemming spun this very yarn to me. He had a Skorzeny SS Rat Line sniper doing the deed with a weapon "on full automatic."

Why, Hemming claimed to have asked him, was Connally targeted?

[thick German accent] "He didn't bid high enough."

Eine kleine fruitcake, if you ask me.

Karl

And Mark,

I'd truly benefit from your review of Evica's book.

When you're ready.

CD

Myra,

The problem with nukes vis a vis population control is the weapons' indiscriminate nature.

"Affirmative radioactivity" might make a pithy term of art for the purposes of this discussion.

The devastation they unleash cannot be controlled within acceptable limits, methinks. What with prevailing winds and all. Plus there's the specter of retaliation in kind.

However, I would direct your attention to stories of advanced bioweaponry designed to target specific ethnic groups.

Now we're talking.

Read, and be terrified.

Olive Skinned Charles

This thread brings to mind the problematic "Georgia Rose," by Harry Rosenthal (music) and Alex Sullivan and Jimmy Flynn (words).

Tony Bennett amended and recorded the ambiguous lyric (minus the verse) in the '60s -- and took considerable flak for his efforts.

[Verse 1]

Mam-my is feel-ing sad to-day,

Her child is called Black Rose at play,

She says "come here and kiss me, my hon-ey dear,

Things are not as bad as they ap-pear."

[Chorus]

Geor-gia Rose, Geor-gia Rose

You're the most prec-ious rose Dix-ie grows;

'Tho it don't seem quite right,

'Cause your skin's dark as night

I know you've a heart li-ly white.

To the good Lord a-bove We all look just the same,

So don't hang your head in shame;

Geor-gia Rose, Geor-gia Rose,

Don't be blue 'cause you're black Geor-gia Rose.

I write "ambiguous" not because of the original lyric's clear condemnation of Rose's skin color, but rather for Bennet's subtle yet beautiful rewriting of the chorus's third, fourth, and fifth lines:

"Now some folks don't think it's right,

That your skin's dark as night,

But I know your heart's lily white."

The unfortunate black/white symbology remains, but the thought is clear and noble.

Charles

You might refer to Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights, by David Margolick, Foreword by Hilton Als, published in 2000 by Running Press of Philadelphia and London.

I read the book at the time of its initial appearance, and, thanks to John's prompting, I'll happily revisit this slim, eloquent volume with the hope of answering the question at hand.

Readers of this Forum may be interested to know that Mr. and Mrs. Meeropol adopted the sons (Michael and Robert) of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Charles