David Andrews

We could do a commercial spoofing the OAS attempted hit on De Gaulle, but then both countries would go WTF!?

Thanks, Doug.

That Davy Crockett remake is looking better and better to me.

Interesting. One wonders if the first three-quarters of the text of parts 1 and 2 are a set-up ("I used to believe there was no conspiracy...but now, folks...") for the big bang of the fourth-quarter round-up of sources implicating Israel in the assassination. The tip-off for me was the review of the book on the USS Liberty, an incident that Unz - or his ghostwriter - relates to the assassination only through the dim suggestion that LBJ's culpability gave the Israelis leverage to blackmail the US into a standdown and a hush job. Just sayin'... A dressed-up goose is a propa' ganda'.

watching that POS Altered States with about three people in the audience The older and wiser one becomes, the smarter Altered States reveals itself to be.

I think Spielberg should go out with a remake of Davy Crockett, using CGI to reanimate Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen, so they could play against quality modern actors such as Shia LaBeouf and Alden Ehrenreich. Throw in Tom Hanks as Col. Travis and Harrison Ford as Jim Bowie, and you've got box office gold! P. S. - John Goodman as Mike Fink, King of the River!

So, nu? Create a narcostate from La Paz to Tegucigalpa to Ciudad Juarez, and then put Mr. Populist Trump in to seal up the border and send the innocent back, Like St. Michael at the threshold of Hell in Paradise Lost. So, nu? we used to say in Manhattan, before gentrification, when soup was cheap or reasonably priced on Second Ave.

If you look through the back threads, Paz, you'll find that the membership has paid a great deal of attention to, and written a lot of discussion of, French, German, British, Canadian, and Russian primary sources and historical research, just to name the origins I remember. A lot of attention has been given to Michele Metta's work, thanks in no small part to yourself. I think members are just anxiously awaiting the work's completion and translation.

Not to get paranoid, but Smedley Butler died at only 58, his condition "incurable": "Upon his retirement, Butler bought a home in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where he lived with his wife.[73] In June 1940, he checked himself into the hospital after becoming sick a few weeks earlier. His doctor described his illness as an incurable condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract that was probably cancer. His family remained by his side, even bringing his new car so he could see it from the window. He never had a chance to drive it. On June 21, 1940, Smedley Butler died in the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia.[72]" (wiki)

I dunno - those motorcycle cops in the McIntyre picture may just be squinting and grimacing. A photo captures only a millisecond of facial movement, and we may be seeing a fraction of their reactions to negotiating a turn in formation, under bright sunlight. See posts on this EF page:

Did a "silent majority" of these foilks then give their votes to Nixon?

The closest one got was the political conspiracy thriller bandwagon that the studios reluctantly jumped on in the 1970s. Some of these were non-specific and offbeat in the worst sense (Twilight's Last Gleaming, anyone?), but the trend kept a simmering undercurrent of dissent going during the decade and after, and directed attention to conspiracy revelations in books and magazines. The best was perhaps The Parallax View, which not-so-obliquely addressed the RFK shooting. I think we can thank Executive Action - and Dick Nixon - for starting that trend, though the seeds were planted as early as Blow-Up (1966), which caught the idea of assassination evidence hidden in photographs. I seem to remember that Executive Action was available on VHS tape for rental.

Over the past several presidential administrations (Democrat and Republican) and through the many congressional sessions since the Reagan years, American workers have lost rights that they fought for since the 1870s and into the Depression, and lost privileges afforded them in the optimistic remaking of the working world after WW II. And no one is rebelling against this or demanding any restorative measures. Couple that with the immense powers given to the corporate world, especially to banking, insurance and mortgage lenders (down to Trump's relaxation of banking regulations last week), and the individual worker is now powerless in our society. No one will mount any effective protests. No persons will engage in collective action, such as general strikes, to ensure the rights and empowerment of all. Common beat cops take their cues from militarized police forces and quash all dissent, down to misdemeanor level, with brute force,* and answer for it later, if at all. All this public passivity came out of failure to oppose the culture of assassination, or to even acknowledge it. The same psychology operated over the decades, and the failure to rise then is the same as the failure to rise now. It is no longer worth being a working person in America - and we are all workers. It is no longer worth being an investor, nor the owner of a retirement account or a mortgage. Below a certain level of financial security, it is no longer worth being a citizen. Our rights, duties and privileges can be cut off at any time, by fiat. If we had any sense, our retirement accounts and mortgages would, by established law, be put under control and protection of the federal government, and not in the hands of private entities licensed to steal and cheat. (*) http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2-nj-police-officers-reassigned-investigation-launched-in-case-of-woman-punched-on-beach-by-police/ar-AAxVkxV?li=BBnb7Kz

A worthy subordinate enterprise might be to discover exactly how much of that "six figures" Marina Oswald and her daughters collected, and whom the rest was divvied up among. Cherchez l'argent! as they say.

Jim - Thanks for the link to the Wilcott documents. I just caught up with them. I remember, just after it happened, reading about the man injured in the Contra protest with Wilcott.

Boot: "Lansdale’s yin-yang approach, of hunting down guerrillas and terrorists while trying to attract the support of the uncommitted, is the basis of modern 'population-centric' counterinsurgency doctrine as applied by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Britain in Northern Ireland, by Colombia against the FARC, by Israel in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, and by many other countries with varying degrees of success." Doug Valentine says the same things in his own books, but he has harsher opinions of the method.

I'm reading the Boot/Lansdale book now. The Introduction has JFK equivocally approving the weekend NSC/State cable that demanded Nhu's removal and forecast a Diem coup if Diem refused to act on Nhu. Once the Diem coup was in motion, Boot has Kennedy afraid to recall Ambassador Lodge because he was afraid of Lodge as a Republican candidate in 1964.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/richard-n-goodwin-adviser-to-democratic-presidents-dies-at-86/ar-AAxAMuq Joe Hagan's new biography of Jann Wenner, Sticky Fingers, describes how in the late 1970s Dick Goodwin milked Rolling Stone magazine for beaucoup bucks for an underwhelming political column, plus an intro to Jackie and Caroline for Wenner. Dovey Johnson Roundtree, the African-American attorney who got Ray Crump, Jr., acquitted for Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder, has also passed away: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dovey-johnson-roundtree-defense-lawyer-and-civil-rights-warrior-dies-at-104/ar-AAxBxY4

Didn't Trump just give CIA the director it had vetted for itself?

Congratulations, Steve - Executive Action is a courageous picture.

What was the genesis of Boot's book on Lansdale? Did he pick the subject, or was it commissioned by a publisher or agent? Does writing a neocon book on Lansdale as hero express someone's wish for another Lansdale to rise from the ranks? And - by extension - the wish for another Oliver North, who consulted with Lansdale on the Contra War? Is someone asking for another over-the-top, Lawrence of Arabia type figurehead to get a job done and endure the liberal brickbats hurled afterward? Maybe they should be giving a digital copy of Boot's book away with every e-reader purchased and every e-pub subscription. Maybe there ought to be a movie deal. Lansdale as a freewheeling loony out of Catch-22, the original Charlie Wilson, in Vietnam. Bombs exploding all around him - this big galoot don't care! He knows Vietnamese folklore and plays their reed pipes along with a good ol' American harmonica. That makes him invulnerable - until The Powers That Be tear him down. It's too bad Tom Hanks isn't young enough for the role.

How much of our aggression against Russia, North Korea and China is a put-on, a political show manufactured among the leadership of the four countries? Would this be even above the heads and pay grades of its televised advocates? The creation of chaos, conflict and even war for profit never goes away, of course - ask Saddam and Khaddafy. But is regime change in North Korea really on the table? Reformation of Syria by the US and Ukraine by Russia would seem the real prizes here, with US action against Iran perhaps unattainable on our wishlist. US bridgeheads - military or political - in Central Asia would seem desirable, but perhaps not in the present decade or under the current action plan. Perhaps that's a bridge too far, a hot-war issue not to be approached. I'm just wondering what Jim and the membership think is the end goal of the predominating bluster among the superpowers and North Korea. Do the players even have one?

I know, but as the poser of the question knows, and as you know, we are not talking about Tolstoy here.

Any dingus knows that there is no "straight," non-tendencied biography of Oswald, because the obvious prejudices of the publishing industry and of the general public. There is only propaganda of one stripe or another, or research works that support one of several conclusions about Oswald. So any posing of the question is disingenuous, and a kind of baiting of the Forum membership.

Is there any analog here between how we "want to" view Lenny Bruce and how we want to view the Kennedys? For true pedants, Bruce's co-edited transcript of his routines in book form, The Essential Lenny Bruce, may contain the version of the gag that Bruce preferred to put out for posterity. Albert Goldman and Lawrence Schiller's bio, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce may offer its own version. However, no account not audio-recorded or attested to by multiple witness can be called definitive. If we start picking the one that humanizes and ennobles Bruce to our taste, then we're headed for tendentiousness. And flattering ourselves.