David Andrews

It's a scandal, and in Paris and Santiago people have been rioting over less this year. In the US, we're lucky if some boomer plays "Street Fighting Man" on YouTube and stands up to sing into his Heineken bottle. Not that I haven't done that.

You killed it. As surely as if you'd shot it with a gun.

I've seen ZP twice also, hoping I was wrong the first time, and I respectfully disagree. Antonioni is like a lost tourist in that film, as he is in The Passenger, a film co-written by one of my teachers, Peter Wollen, and which ought to have been directed by someone more familiar with the existential suspense genre, maybe John Schlesinger or Fred Zinneman. I really don't see how Rod Taylor's character can be described as "well-drawn and complex"; the performance is a series of walk-ons in which the character is alternately paternalistic, vaguely lecherous, or coercive. Perhaps if they'd lured Cary Grant out of retirement, he could have put a bit of iconic meat on the bones. As far as political representations go, the Angela Davis scene smacks of the inchoate, extra-diegetic trendiness that punctuates Godard's One Plus One. Antonioni should never have become an internationalist, never fallen for the lure of American studio money. He was best as a resolute European, working the mysteries one could create among actors like Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. In fact, I just downloaded Red Desert to try and find some of the old Michelangelo magic in the fog and the mist of red hair. ZP is the film where Antonioni began to disappear up his own behind as a filmmaker. They ought to put that on the DVD box liner. They can credit the line to Marlon Brando, who at the time was loudly suffering through The Night of the Following Day. I wonder if ZP would be on DVD at all if it weren't for the Pink Floyd soundtrack selling point.

Sandy, you realize that the majority of Americans who fear Socialism can't define it in a simple sentence, right? They get their fear of it from Fox News, evangelical pastors, and other mongerers. I honestly suspect that you could have gotten better explanations of the term out of Americans before the Cold War. Most Americans have no knowledge of how well limited Socialist programs have worked in Europe. That's the blinding power of green money dreams and class hatred, remarkable in a country that has never seen at first hand the excesses of either monarchical Imperialism or Communism. Europe, where they've had to set their teeth against both, has been willing to make the Socialist experiment, and nobody's died except at the hands of Gladio. Speaking of usage, I don't recall a single GOP presidential candidate in recent memory railing against Socialism. They don't seem to want to touch it, and leave it to senators and congressmen, lesser politicians, administration supporters and media pundits to shake that witch-doctor's rattle in our faces. Let me know if I'm wrong here. If you really want to see bastions of anti-Socialism in the US, pay close attention when you have to visit a doctor who has had to join a medical syndicate to stay competitive, or visit a for-profit hospital struggling to keep out of the red. I'm thinking that the US medical establishment is one of the bulwarks against the advance of social programs that could open the door to limited Socialism or socialized medicine in America. Thanks to organized medicine, we won't even get socialized death services in this country, unless we die broke and the county has to bury us.

And that's why they killed him. Socialism! The AMA's worst nightmare.

Opening weekend grosses per IMDB: Midway - $17,500,000 The Irishman - Not posted +++ Zabriskie Point is Antonioni reaching out for Manson and missing him by inches.

I saw part of El Topo at a college screening in the 1980s, and used the fact that I had missed the beginning as an excuse to leave after 20 minutes. I have, however, sat through Zabriskie Point, which is similarly painful.

Anthony...you mean...I'll actually have to watch it?!

I call for an end to world cinema immediately. The actors are all pedos and yachters and dope fiends, instead of the raging alcoholics we used to adore. CGI has replaced honest human trompe l'oeil, nobody has any talent (except the underused Luke Evans), and all the insane, ahistorical story perversions we loved in yesteryear have been ground into the mire by the insane, ahistorical story perversions we despise today. All the crappy realizations of great or competent novels have been immolated by crappy realizations of comic books, or worse, of graphic novels, which are comic books for community college graduates. Let Luke Evans fend for himself! Put an end to world cinema for at least a generation. Let us return to and cherish the masterpieces of the pre-GHW Bush era. At least then I'll finally get to see Diary of a Country Priest and Montenegro. Maybe even El Topo.

And I admit that it would have been an audacious plan to use the repatriated (to the US) Bayo guerillas as a hit squad against JFK in either Tampa or Miami in early November 1963 - in an attack scenario that would not have resembled the hidden riflemen plan used in Dealey. It strikes up the memory of how Gerry Hemming and some Interpen commandos allegedly refused work guarding JFK on one of these appearances (I think it was Kennedy debarking AF-1 at a Florida airstrip) because of concerns that someone else would open fire, and he and his men would be left as patsies. But, as I detailed above, having all of Bayo's crew participate had logistical and psychological risks, and the whole enterprise of "turned" assassins could have been done from the bases in the Keys without so much expense, hardware and visibility for CIA and Pawley, not to mention the Luce press. Would the powers that be have had any notion that in a few months Kennedy would make an appearance where all or some of Bayo's men would make successful assassins and sheep-dipped patsies, and the survivors keep quiet about it forever? I'll have to reread the Bob Brown article to see the context in which Hall discussed the "phony cover story," and ponder how it ties into using all those ships, planes and men. Maybe it was an intentional boondoggle, with Pawley and Robertson or their underlings collecting from interested parties bags and briefcases of cash to support the mission (as in one of Hemming's fables), which would be diverted into other anti-Castro or anti-Kennedy efforts.

Draw the Paines with iron masks padlocked to their faces.

My thanks also for the Bayo files, Bart and Malcolm.

Thanks, S.T. and NS. Very much worth listening to, including the hour before the EF reader questions are answered. I wish I had asked about the Steven Parent killing, including the time it occurred, since NS alludes to Tom O'Neill's mysterious footnote in Chaos that there is more to the Parent death than has been revealed. NS tantalizingly mentions that Parent was killed because he "looked in the window" of the murder house. If that's literal and not a generalization, it raises questions as to when Parent was killed in relation to the others, and even whether Parent was in the guest house with Garretson during the other murders.

See what can happen in nations with black budgets for covert work and no legislative oversight? Our adoption of these scientists and their data is just an extension of what we did with the German missile and intelligence programs. I suspect that if there had been no Communism, the resurgence of Fascism in Europe and Asia might have been a suitable excuse for Congressional support.

Ever felt alone in a crowd?

What can NS tell us about Manson or any other visitor coming to the Cielo Drive house after the Tex Watson murder party left? What can NS tell us about the large amount of Tate's and Sebring's blood left on the front door sill, when their bodies were discovered in the living room? Had any members of the Tex Watson murder party been at the Cielo Drive house prior to the night of the murders? Is there any truth to the rumor that Patricia Krenwinkel lived for a time in the guest house with William Garretson? Why was William Garretson not harmed, nor the guest house entered, on the night of the murders? Did the Watson party or any other visitor assume Rudy Altobelli was inside?

Once CIA moved from under military authority to the kind of corporate-academic structure {the "Company") that Allen Dulles and James Angleton were used to, yet still with power to interpenetrate with the military, you can see how it would have been a systemic shock for Kennedy to order all covert military operations to be put under authority of JSOC.

I'm familiar with the mechanics of the Rafael Trujillo assassination - attempts at arms smuggling by CIA, approaches to the colonels, etc. Plus the various CIA demurrers from involvement you can read on wiki. But what do we know, or what is there documented, about the involvement and approval of JFK and RFK? I'm assuming this was an operation greenlighted under the Eisenhower administration, but what did the Kennedys know about it? The idea that Ramfis Trujillo, son of the dictator, contributed funds to the Kennedy assassination in order to embarrass the CIA is often floated - when actually the funding may have been one of the biggest favors done for the Agency and its organs (CMC-Permindex), and of no damage to it. Is there a book or other study where JFK vs Trujillo is discussed? Was Kennedy blamed for an operation he had little or no involvement in? What was Kennedy's reaction to the killing? Can we learn more about the Kennedy admin's decisions about Cuba from its attitude toward the Trujillo regime?

I'm hunting in vain for one on YouTube that offers all available frames of the fence.

You're dead on about the Roselli disinformation, which I'm sure came from higher circles. Who really knows? Maybe an ulterior mission to Bayo-Pawley was that any dead that Bayo left in Cuba could live in legend as uncaptured co-conspirators to a single dead Cuban patsy assassin said to have been a man once presumed killed in the Bayo raid. A kind of piggybacking? Time for bed....

Larry, I would suppose the idea of "hiding" the Bayo-Pawley guerilla team would be to spread the news that they disappeared in Cuba or were presumed lost at sea, when really they'd be picked up by the CIA monitor ship or the PBY and then hidden in America. But if you look at my post above, I doubt it happened on several points. It would have been a spectacular plan, but too much expense and visibility for too little certainty. I forgot that the podcasts (#159 and #161) speculate that the team would be said to have been turned by Castro and sent from Cuba against JFK (and not be declared "dead" but returned to the US under false pro-Cuban identities -- I have amended my post above.) But if masquerading as a "turned" team, some of them participating in the assassination would have to be killed to silence them and provide dead "enemy" for credibility. That's close to a suicide mission for all, so too much uncertainty among too many players. The whole business presses credulity - starting, before any speculation, with Bayo's doubtful plan. Unfortunately, all the players and witnesses are unreliable.

John, I listened to the podcast where it's speculated that the Bayo team were disappeared in order to play dead while being infiltrated back into the US to assassinate JFK. There are a lot of questions possible: Why mount such an expensive and photo-documented "fake" op for this purpose, when a smaller op launched from the Florida Keys would have done the job, if the Brigade guys were documented and photographed? Why drag in a PBY Catalina and a CIA monitor ship for all this? One could say, "It was so the men could be protected at sea and then picked up by the CIA ship or the seaplane after they 'disappeared,'" but this could have all been done on with many fewer witnesses from the Keys. As Larry points out above, the Luce press was knocking itself out to celebrate brave rebel boat raids on Cuba. Why mount a large mission that would later have to be exposed as an expensive failure, and perhaps expose the CIA? More than enough evidence connected with the JFKA was done on paper - why bring enough hardware for a mini-Bay of Pigs op? Were all the Bayo guerillas going to show up in Dealey Plaza, or another assassination site? Even contingency planning makes this seem overkill. How well would this plan have worked if any Bayo guerillas were captured during an assassination attempt, or "shot while escaping" to ensure silence andprovide "pro-Castro" patsies? It would be an audacious plan to put a small army of patsies at an assassination site (especially in Tampa or Miami in November 1963), but could the plan that this many guerillas had been "turned" to kill for Castro hold up? As someone once said, "SWHT." It's all intriguing, given reports that Eddie Bayo was sighted in Miami after his supposed disappearance in Cuba. But who knows? It's actually painful not to know. I'm not sure that any "fake" Bayo raid guerillas have to be connected to the better documented Black Nine exfiltration a week after the JFKA. that could be another bunch of conspirators, or operatives unconnected to the JFKA. Does it support the idea that the Bayo raid was faked that Gerry Hemming never said it was, but instead seemed to support the raid's failure by saying that the serial number on Oswald's Minox camera was one associated with a camera lost on the Bayo raid? (The camera is mentioned in Dallas Action podcast #159.) Still, one wonders why Hemming was refused admission to the Pawley yacht crew, and why Ted Shackley almost vetoed CIA participation on account of distrust for John Martino. Again - a set of rumors painful to sort out, impossible to verify. Other people may have better opinions and persuasive facts.

The TILT mission was certainly not faked, as a matter of fact it was photographed in extensive detail - in violation of all CIA security practices; in fact a great deal about the mission was in violation of standard practices. Larry - photographed to embarrass JFK in case it succeeded? Life Editor [to Robert Brown of Soldier of Fortune, c. 1975]: I made a deal not to publish those pictures if we didn't find those guys again, and those pictures don't belong to [the photographer]. Therefore, he doesn't have any right to give them to you. If he gave them to you, he can get his ass burned. They belong to Time, Inc., still, and somebody may get sued, so that's all I really want to tell you about it. I think that you're making a mistake. Please remind me (anybody): did the Luces run any contemporary coverage of the anti-Castro raft raiders they were sponsoring?

In directly quoting me, you're misrepresenting my simple point about Alex Jones, perhaps baiting me to "accuse" Ruth Paine of a role different from that she played in the JFKA, and introducing Fetzer where I did not. Please preserve distinctions; our legal system - an inspiration to the western world - is based on them.

Re: Kennedys and King -- apparently the newest upload of Firefox is preventing me, at least, from opening the site. the site opens fine in Chrome. I'm sure Firefox is by now deluged with complaints about other sites not opening, and will eventually upload a fix.