John Simkin
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Posts posted by John Simkin
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I have to chime in with Jim on this folks. Let's display some critical skills one this one. There are so many inconsistencies its almost laughable. I mean do we really think JFK took time off during the missile crisis to visit an intern? Is that better dead than red thing reflected anywhere else in JFK's verbiage? So much of this appears totally derivative - plus why right now?
Didn't we just get blasted with the "anonymous" book abut the college kid being recruited to kill JFK...the detailed story of a CIA plot that he won't support in public but just let his lawyer submit to the publisher and film industry for him, the fiction story that's supposed to be really true and has already been optioned for a movie. As no doubt this will be.
-- OK, I'm done.. Larry
I remember when Gunilla von Post claimed in 1997 that she had been JFK's mistress, his supporters claimed it was part of a disinformation campaign. They then ignored the case when she provided his love letters.
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I think it's going a bit far to say that he was "a lousy human being" based entirely on his sexual activities, John.
A better description, for my money, would be a "lousy husband".
I mean, Adolph Hitler was a lousy human being. J. Edgar Hoover was a lousy human being. Robert Mugabe is a lousy human being.
JFK does not belong in the same category as these men.
The evidence suggests that he used the power of office to seduce, young innocent women. That is more than just being a "lousy husband".
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In the New York Times G. Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel and staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations has supported the work of Davis: I think John Davis wrote one of the best books on this theory. And I dont just say that because I happen to agree with his theory.... His reputation among some writers and assassination investigators as a dilettante was ill-deserved."
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I doubt President would confide that sort of thing to someone he was apparently using just for physical sex, without enough emotional intimacy to kiss.
But there was also distance. There was always a layer of reserve between us, which may explain why we never kissed, she writes. The wide gulf between us the age, the power, the experience guaranteed that our affair wouldnt evolve into anything more serious.
It is this passage that makes me believe the story. All the evidence suggests that he had a very unhealthy attitude towards sex. This is reflected in his unwillingness to become emotionally involved with his girlfriends. Why would she make up the fact that he did not kiss her? I once heard a prostitute say that she never kissed her clients because she did not want to become emotionally involved with them. It is the same attitude that JFK had. He probably told himself that he was not being unfaithful as long as he did not kiss the women. He might have been an above average president but he was a lousy human being.
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John H. Davies died from advanced Alzheimers last Sunday. He was the author of several books on John F. Kennedy and the Mafia. This includes Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster (1983), Mafia Kingfish (1989), The Kennedy Contract: The Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President (1993), Mafia Dynasty: Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family (1994), The Mafia Family (1994) and The Bouviers: From Waterloo to the Kennedys and Beyond (1995).
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John H. Davies died from advanced Alzheimers last Sunday. Davis' mother, Maude R. Bouvier Davis, was the sister of John Vernou Bouvier, the father of Jacqueline Bouvier. Davies returned to the United States after the marriage of Jacqueline to John F. Kennedy. Davies decided to become a writer and in 1969, published The Bouviers: Portrait of An American Family. In the book he revealed that Jackie's grandfather, John Vernou Bouvier, Jr. (1865–1948) had fabricated the family's ancestry in a vanity book called Our Forebears. He also argued that John Vernou Bouvier was too drunk to give her away when she married on 12th September 1953.
Davis was the author of several books on John F. Kennedy and the Mafia. This includes Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster (1983), Mafia Kingfish (1989), The Kennedy Contract: The Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President (1993), Mafia Dynasty: Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family (1994), The Mafia Family (1994) and The Bouviers: From Waterloo to the Kennedys and Beyond (1995).
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I don't know why everyone calls Luis a terrorist, I've met him, he's down to earth, truthful and honest, there is a big difference between a terrorist and a Patriot when you are fighting for the freedom of your people.
Of course, this is the same argument put forward by terrorists in Afghanistan. I am afraid everybodies "terrorist" is always someone's "freedom fighter". The fact that he is "down to earth, truthful and honest" is completely irrelevant. Even Hitler was kind to dogs.
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On Saturday morning, the police arrested four journalists who have worked for Rupert Murdoch. For a while, it looked as though these were yet more arrests of people related to the News of the World but then it became clear that this was something much more significant.
This may be the moment when the scandal that closed the NoW finally started to pose a potential threat to at least one of Murdoch's three other UK newspaper titles: the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times.
The four men arrested on Saturday are not linked to the NoW. They come from the Sun, from the top of the tree – the current head of news and his crime editor, the former managing editor and deputy editor.
Nothing is certain. No one has been convicted of anything. The four who were arrested on Saturday – like the 25 others before them – have not even been charged with any offence. But behind the scenes, something very significant has changed at News International.
Under enormous legal and political pressure, Murdoch has ordered that the police be given everything they need. Whereas Scotland Yard began their inquiry a year ago with nothing much more than the heap of scruffy paperwork seized from the NoW's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, Murdoch's Management and Standards Committee has now handed them what may be the largest cache of evidence ever gathered by a police operation in this country, including the material that led to Saturday's arrests.
They have access to a mass of internal paperwork – invoices, reporters' expense claims, accounts, bank records, phone records. And technicians have retrieved an enormous reservoir of material from News International's central computer servers, including one particularly vast collection that may yet prove to be the stick that breaks the media mogul's back. It is known as Data Pool 3.
It contains several hundred million emails sent and received over the years by employees of the News of the World – and of the three other Murdoch titles. Data Pool 3 is so big that the police are not even attempting to read every message. Instead, there are two teams searching it for key words: a detective sergeant with five detective constables from Scotland Yard working secretly on criminal leads; and 32 civilians working for the Management and Standards Committee, providing information for the civil actions brought by public figures and for the Leveson inquiry and passing relevant material to police.
For News International, Data Pool 3 is a nightmare. Firstly, no one know what is in there. All they can do is wait and see how bad it gets.
Second, the police clearly believe it may yield new evidence of the crimes they set out to investigate – the "blagging" of confidential data from phone companies, banks, tax offices etc; the interception of voicemails and emails; the payment of bribes to police officers.
Third – and most nightmarish – Data Pool 3 could yield evidence of attempts to destroy evidence the high court and police were seeking. Data Pool 3 itself was apparently deliberately deleted from News International's servers.
If proved, such conduct would be serious because it could see the courts imposing long prison sentences; and because it could have been sanctioned by senior employees and directors.
The Guardian last July revealed police suspicions that a huge number of emails had been deliberately destroyed. Since then, high court hearings have disclosed more detail. Late in 2009, News International decided to delete old email from their servers. This appears to have been a simple piece of electronic housekeeping. However, the plan was not executed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/29/data-pool-3-sun-arrests-murdoch
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Mitt Romney's personal wealth is double that of the last eight presidents combined. Does that make him a good person to run the United States? Is it possible for him to understand the economic problems of the American people?
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There are 250 millionaires in Congress. Their median net worth is $891,506, nine times the typical US household. Around 11% are in the nation's top 1%, including 34 Republicans and 23 Democrats.
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David, I am impressed that you have promoted something that goes against your core beliefs.
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The latest example of the BBC's campaign against conspiracy theorists. On any other subject, the BBC would insist on a balanced debate. However, here we have three people all rubbishing conspiracy theories.
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This is the same writer who wrote the single most vicious piece of garbage I have ever read in my life, which is this article that appeared in Counterpunch last June---
Joe McCarthy's Boy Wonder
Bobby Kennedy Was No Hero
By DAVID MACARAY
June 27, 2011
www.counterpunch.org
http://www.counterpu...ay06272011.html
It’s a mystery why John F. Kennedy is still regarded as the family moderate—cautious, pragmatic, shrewd and calculating—while brother Bobby gets to be portrayed as the impetuous, left-leaning, idealistic humanitarian. It’s a mystery because even a cursory examination of history reveals that that wasn’t Bobby.
For openers, Bobby Kennedy was about as “leftist” as Douglas MacArthur. In truth, he, like his brother John, was a shrieking anti-Communist. The Kennedys were not only Cold Warriors, they were fairly paranoid about it—confusing progressivism with Bolshevism—which is why they believed, ludicrously, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist, and is why they (John as president and Bobby as Attorney General) had King’s telephone tapped.
This is of course true until the Cuban Missile Crisis. The problem of people like David Macaray is that they never consider the way that this event changed the way the Kennedys saw the world.
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Martin, I feel your pain. So I've uploaded "Bloody Treason" as well.
Thanks Barry.
A word of warning though: It might not be strictly legal to make and share digital copies of copyrighted material. In most cases I'm sure you'll have no problems but, as Robert pointed out, Bloody Treason is available in Kindle format and Noel Twyman might not be best pleased to find you are giving it away. The same might be true about Bob Groden's book which I'm pretty sure he's still selling himself.
Just don't wanna see you get in trouble for being nice!
Copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the author. Even if the author is dead, you are likely to be in trouble with their relatives.
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Daniel Marvin died on 19th January, 2012. He is the author of the book, Expendable Elite (2003). He was working on a book about William Pitzer entitled The Smoking Gun: The Conspiracy to Kill LCDR William Bruce Pitzer when he died.
It seems that this book has been published as an e-book by Kent Heiner: Without Smoking Gun: Was the Death of Lt. Cmdr. William Pitzer Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up Conspiracy?
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpitzerW.htm
Here is a review by Daniel Marvin's old adversery, Allan Eaglesham:
In essence, this book is about three men. The main character is-as the title suggests-William B. Pitzer, who died of a gunshot wound to the head on October 29, 1966, at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland. The second character-again as suggested by the title-is John F. Kennedy who died of a gunshot wound to the head on November 22, 1963, in downtown Dallas, Texas. The third character is Daniel Marvin, who is alive in his seventies despite (frequent claims of) having his life threatened. Pitzer is said by one witness to have had, within a few days of the JFK assassination, possession of a movie film of the Kennedy autopsy that showed a bullet entry in the right forehead, hence not inflicted by Lee Oswald. Marvin is said by one witness (himself) to have been solicited by the CIA to murder William Pitzer; it is thought by some that Pitzer had kept possession of a copy of that movie film and was about to spill the beans by making the movie public.
In the preface, Mr. Heiner states, "This book is in large part a result of Marvin's ten-year effort to close a dark chapter in his past by fighting for truth and justice in the Pitzer case." This is an odd statement since, beyond the contribution of obtaining in 1997 FBI documents on the investigation of Pitzer's death then writing an article in the Fourth Decade shortly thereafter, Marvin has contributed little to efforts to understand how William Pitzer died. Hounding local politicians with demands for action and talking in grand terms of congressional investigations is just so much hot air. The fundamental question, "Was William Pitzer murdered?" has not figured in Marvin's vocabulary. Having claimed that he was asked to assassinate Pitzer in August of 1965, he has made up his mind that the lieutenant commander was murdered in October of 1966.
Kent Heiner covers a lot of territory in this short book (120 pages of text). And with a clear and concise writing style, he does it well. Scanning the index turns up the following names, inter alia: Fidel Castro, Edward Cutolo, Edward Jay Epstein, David Ferrie, Pierre Finck, Gaeton Fonzi, Sam Giancana, Bo Gritz, Daniel Hopsicker, James Jenkins, Lyndon Johnson, Khun Sa, Ed Lansdale, David Lifton, John McCarthy, Charles Nicoletti, Thomas Noguchi, Nugan Hand Bank, Paul O'Connor, William Pepper, Fletcher Prouty, Johnny Roselli, Michael Ruppert, Richard Secord, Ted Shackley, Sirhan Sirhan, John Stockwell, Frank Terpil, Bill Tyree and Edwin Wilson. It's an easy and absorbing read, and with one caveat (see below) I recommend it.
A pretty comprehensive description of the historical context of the assassination of President Kennedy and its aftermath is provided. And there is good coverage of the salient aspects of the FBI FOIA-released information on the investigation of William Pitzer's death with the notable exception of the autopsy report, the only reference to which is: "In fact the complete autopsy report shows nothing which would contradict the conclusion that Pitzer had taken his own life with a single pistol shot." Actually the autopsy report describes three defects in the skull-on the face of it rather odd from a "single pistol shot." (And only a passing reference is made to the autopsy photographs on Pitzer's body, released under FOIA in 2002.)
This book's weakness lies in its kid-gloves treatment of Dan Marvin and his claims. Although to some extent Heiner keeps the controversial assertions at arm's length with phrases like "Marvin says," "evidently," "what he saw as," "according to Marvin," etc., any benefit of any doubt is given to Marvin. On the other hand, to be fair, if the author had not treated Marvin as favorably as possible there may have been no reason to write this book, or at least it would have been a different book. Not that it did not evolve during writing; it started out as a Heiner-Marvin jointly authored project titled Smoking Gun: The Conspiracy to Kill LCDR William Bruce Pitzer. Obviously, as shown by the final title, some fundamental rethinking occurred in the mind of Mr. Heiner. It must have troubled him to admit, "Marvin has only been caught in-and has admitted to-only one untruth, that being the number of officers who had volunteered for the assassination training course." (Marvin changed the number from half a dozen to over thirty. Heiner misses the reason for this change. It occurred after "Captain Vance" denied recognizing Marvin, hence Marvin had to bump up the number who took the course to rationalize this lack of recognition.) The operative words in the quote are "and has admitted to," because Marvin has been caught in other "untruths." But that is outside the scope of this review.
I have to take issue also with this sentence: "The grievances Eaglesham has publicly aired regarding Marvin seem less a matter of Marvin's exact truth or falsehood than a failure on Marvin's part to function within Eaglesham's expectations of how a truthful Dan Marvin ought to behave." The word "seem" may be operative here, but I reject the notion that my standards are somehow more stringent than those of others when it comes to judging truthfulness. For example, the back cover of Without Smoking Gun describes Marvin is a "veteran of two wars." Vietnam and Korea presumably. Lieutenant Colonel Marvin served with honor in Vietnam, but in fact he arrived in Korea six months after the armistice was signed. Is it nitpicking on my part to cry foul?
My criticism of Dan Marvin since mid-1997 is characterized by Heiner as a continuation of long-standing difficulties: "The relationship between Dan and Allan Eaglesham had been strained by discord and mutual suspicion from the beginning" and "Always citing the demands of principle, Eaglesham had often found himself at odds with Marvin." Perhaps the implication here is that I was out to get Marvin from the beginning, which would not be true. In early 1995 I withdrew my name from the Fourth Decade version of Marvin's article "Bits and Pieces" because he insisted on discussing his telephone conversations with Mrs. Pitzer although she had made it clear to him that she wanted no association with any reappraisal of the case. The editor of Unclassified agreed with me and deleted that passage from "Bits and Pieces," therefore my name is on the byline of that version of the article. It was an ethical issue, dealt with openly without discord. Later in 1995 I withdrew my support from his efforts to get the case reopened because-having learned of William Pitzer's extramarital affair-I was afraid that we might prove only that he had committed suicide, with sad consequences for Mrs. Pitzer. If Marvin interprets this as undermining his credibility-as is claimed in Without Smoking Gun-he isn't thinking clearly. At that time I wrote letters exhorting him to concentrate on the generic issue of the CIA contracts on US citizens and to leave the specifics of the Pitzer case in abeyance until Mrs. Pitzer's death. Thus, claims of "discord and mutual suspicion" constitute revisionist history, albeit in a tiny teacup. When, as a result of a face-to-face meeting in my kitchen in February 1997, it seemed that Marvin's story was flawed, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and invited a written explanation, to which he provided fudge words; therefore, I terminated our working relationship. Eighteen months later in a public apology to Robin Palmer and me he claimed that his family had been threatened. Funny, he mentioned no threat in February 1997.
I could go on, but enough said for current purposes. This is a worthy primer on the deaths of William Pitzer and John Kennedy.
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Daniel Marvin died on 19th January, 2012. He is the author of the book, Expendable Elite (2003). He was working on a book about William Pitzer entitled The Smoking Gun: The Conspiracy to Kill LCDR William Bruce Pitzer when he died.
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Daniel Marvin died on 19th January, 2012. He is the author of the book, Expendable Elite (2003). He was working on a book about William Pitzer entitled The Smoking Gun: The Conspiracy to Kill LCDR William Bruce Pitzer when he died.
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Sorry to hear about the death of Ernie Gregory. Jim O'Halloran tells an interesting story about Gregory and Ted Hufton: "When I was a kid in the fifties Ernie Gregory was my hero. I waited outside the stadium after a match to get Ernie's signature . He had an old man with him and he said "You don't want my autograph son, you want his." Who is he?" I asked. "Ted Hufton the greatest goalie ever" said Ernie. It meant nothing to me and I persisted after Ernie's signature but he refused. Having never seen Hufton, in my books Ernie was the bees knees."
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Totally agreed on the inevitable negative effect eReaders are going to have on bookstores and libraries, Kathleen. Bookstores are going to have to move to a new model, they're probably going to have to become extensions of public libraries, for browsing purposes only, and will probably have to have government funding, just like public libraries do, to stay in business. In the meanwhile, this book was never published in hard copy form, so for my particular book nothing is really lost.
I published a book on Adolf Hitler in 1986. It sold over 10,000 copies before it went out of print. I decided to provide the online version free of charge. It has been available since 1997 and is currently getting over 100,000 visitors a month. (Although it is free to access it more than pays for itself by the advertising that appears on the site. An e-book version of the book will be published later this year. The same goes for the other books that I wrote before 1997.
I know that most historians are suffering because their publishers are unwilling to bring out new editions of their books (the second-hand books section of Amazon have destroyed this market). They are also finding it difficult to find publishers of books. The main reason for this is that because so many books are sold via Amazon (who demand very high discounts from publishers), they need to sell around 15,000 copies of a new book to go into profit. This is now becoming much more difficult. I am afraid the economics of book publishing means that we are seeing the opening stages of the death of the book.
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You can watch the John Barbour film here:
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A great protest song about what is happening to industrial areas in Europe and the United States:
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Interesting interview. Hollywood has spent $95 million on lobbying for this act. Can that compete with the power of the online community?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/17/reddit-ohanian-sopa-fight-isnt-over/
Good article by Clay Shirky in the Guardian on the topic:
There are many reasons to dislike Sopa and Pipa, the pair of internet censorship bills working their way through the US Congress. They are (another) example of the influence of corporate money on American politics: US media firms have cumulatively donated tens of millions of dollars to the bills' authors. They are (another) example of representatives refusal to represent the public: they tried to rush the bills through at the end of last year, with no public consultation. And the proposed technical solution – censorship enforced through the domain name system – would not have the effect they want it to have, but its technical side-effects would break important parts of the internet.
But maybe you don't care about all of that. Maybe politics bores you, maybe technical details make your eyes glaze over. Here's why you should care anyway: the proposed law that would result from Sopa and Pipa will only work if you are put under 24-hour digital surveillance.
The old media firms in the US aren't out to get you personally, of course – they don't really care about you in particular. What they dislike about you is your willingness to share things with your friends, and with the world at large. Sopa/Pipa would allow private companies to assert that a foreign site is "dedicated to theft of US property". Once a US media firm had made such an accusation, they could then black out the domain name of the accused site, so that if a user typed ReallyEvil.co.uk into their browser, nothing would happen (all of this could be based on an accusation: Sopa and Pipa seem to regard the niceties of a trial as an undue burden).
The proposed blackout wouldn't remove the site itself from the internet, of course, it would just make the domain name inert. This is where Sopa and Pipa really get scary. They don't just propose making US media firms into judge, jury and executioner, they propose forcing every site on the internet to pitch in on the proposed censorship and, critically, they imagine punishing not just the original sites but anyone else who doesn't censor them well enough.
The scary bit of legalese here is the idea that the law would apply not just to actual copyright violations (the nominal goal of the law) but to any site that was "facilitating the activities" of copyright infringement, a term nowhere defined but vague enough to include mentioning the existence of such sites, which is enough to make them findable. Like a fast-spreading virus, the proposed censorship moves outwards from the domain name system, to include any source of public web content in the US.
If the phrase "any source of public web content" seems like a dry detail, substitute the name of your favourite web publisher: you. The US is, for the moment at least, the world's premier host of sites that support user-generated material – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, Reddit, on and on. And under the proposed law, every one of those sites would have to take steps to prevent publishers, which is to say people, which is to say you, from helping anyone find out about the existence of sites the US media firms don't like. And since the law doesn't require a private company to provide any advance notice before the blacklisting, these sites will be forced to spy on their users, in advance and all the time, to make sure you are not talking about sites media firms in the US do not want you to talk about, even if you are not a US citizen.
Sopa and Pipa are, quite simply, an attempt to create a privatised form of international censorship, and because the censorship would have to be nearly total to be effective, they would have a profound and chilling effect on any form of public conversation among ordinary citizens. It would render the internet a place where the only content to be seen or heard or read is produced by professionals, with the rest of use relegated to the role of pure consumption.
As Congress continues to push the bills through, this side-effect of a "consumption-only" internet is starting to look like the goal of the bills in the first place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/18/sopa-pipa-consumption-only-internet
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What you are getting on Wikipedia pages today:
Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge
For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.
You can then go to another page:
Why is Wikipedia blacked-out?
Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. Readers who come to English Wikipedia during the blackout will not be able to read the encyclopedia: instead, you will see messages intended to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA, and encouraging you to share your views with your elected representatives, and via social media.
What are SOPA and PIPA?
SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA is an acronym for the "Protect IP Act." ("IP" stands for "intellectual property.") In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet. Detailed information about these bills can be found in the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act articles on Wikipedia, which are available during the blackout. GovTrack lets you follow both bills through the legislative process: SOPA on this page, and PIPA on this one. The EFF has summarized why these bills are simply unacceptable in a world that values an open, secure, and free Internet.
Why is this happening?
Wikipedians have chosen to black out the English Wikipedia for the first time ever, because we are concerned that SOPA and PIPA will severely inhibit people's access to online information. This is not a problem that will solely affect people in the United States: it will affect everyone around the world.
Why? SOPA and PIPA are badly drafted legislation that won't be effective in their main goal (to stop copyright infringement), and will cause serious damage to the free and open Internet. They put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines. And, SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.
Does this mean that Wikipedia itself is violating copyright laws, or hosting pirated content?
No, not at all. Some supporters of SOPA and PIPA characterize everyone who opposes them as cavalier about copyright, but that is not accurate. Wikipedians are knowledgeable about copyright and vigilant in protecting against violations: Wikipedians spend thousands of hours every week reviewing and removing infringing content from the site. We are careful about it because our mission is to share knowledge freely with people all over the world. To that end, all Wikipedians release their contributions under a free license, and all the material we offer is freely licensed. Free licenses are incompatible with copyright infringement, and so infringement is not tolerated.
Isn't SOPA dead? Wasn't the bill shelved, and didn't the White House declare that it won't sign anything that resembles the current bill?
No, neither SOPA nor PIPA are dead. On January 17th, SOPA's sponsor said the bill will be discussed in early February. There are signs PIPA may be debated on the Senate floor next week. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. We are already seeing big media calling us names. In many jurisdictions around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation that prioritizes overly-broad copyright enforcement laws, laws promoted by power players, over the preservation of individual civil liberties. We want the Internet to be free and open, everywhere, for everyone.
Aren’t SOPA/PIPA as they stand not even really a threat to Wikipedia? Won't the DNS provisions be removed?
SOPA and PIPA are still alive, and they’re still a threat to the free and open web, which means they are a threat to Wikipedia. For example, in its current form, SOPA would require U.S. sites to take on the heavy burden of actively policing third-party links for infringing content. And even with the DNS provisions removed, the bill would give the U.S. government extraordinary, ambiguous, and loosely-defined powers to take control over content and information on the free web. Taking one bad provision out doesn't make the bills okay, and regardless, Internet experts agree they won't even be effective in their main goal: halting copyright infringement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a really great post about some of the more dangerous SOPA and PIPA provisions.
What can users outside of the U.S. do to support this effort?
Readers who don't live in the United States can contact their local State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or similar branch of government. Tell them that you oppose the draft U.S. SOPA and PIPA legislation, and all similar legislation. SOPA and PIPA will have a global effect - websites outside of the U.S. would be impacted by legislation that hurts the free and open web. And, other jurisdictions are grappling with similar issues, and may choose paths similar to SOPA and PIPA.
Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?
The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by completely disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page.
I keep hearing that this is a fight between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Is that true?
No. Some people are characterizing it that way, probably in an effort to imply all the participants are motivated by commercial self-interest. But you can know it's not that simple, because Wikipedia has no financial self-interest here: we are not trying to monetize your eyeballs or sell you products. We are protesting to raise awareness about SOPA and PIPA solely because we think they will hurt the Internet, and your ability to access information. We are doing this for you.
In carrying out this protest, is Wikipedia abandoning neutrality?
We hope you continue to trust Wikipedia to be a neutral informational resource. We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. For over a decade, Wikipedians have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia's existence depends on a free, open and uncensored Internet. We are shutting Wikipedia down for you, our readers. We support your right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe people should be able to share information without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA (and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States) don’t advance the interests of the general public. That's why we're doing this.
What can I read to get more information?
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Is it possible for someone like Mitt Romney to represent the American population? Yesterday he maintained he did not make "very much" from speaking fees, even though the $370,000 earned in a single year would be considered a fortune by many middle-class Americans.
At the press conference in Florence, he disclosed that he pays a tax rate of only 15% in spite of having an estimated wealth of $200m.
Norman Rockwell and John F. Kennedy
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
In her book, Norman Rockwell (2005), Karal Ann Marling argued: "Norman Rockwell is America's best loved artist... America's best-loved artist was an illustrator who, in a career that spanned some 60 years of the last century, almost never painted a picture that wasn't intended to be an ad, a cover, a calendar, a a gloss on a magazine story, or a Christmas card. Indeed, the for-profit context in which Norman Rockwell laboured so successfully may make him the most American of all artists in a period that both witnessed and celebrated the primacy of American commercial enterprise. By the mid-1930s, Rockwell was the most famous illustrator in America, a figure whose success prolonged the life of the "Golden Age" of commercial picture-making well into the 20th century. The economic Depression of the period hardly touched Rockwell; its effects were curiously absent from his work, for the most part, too, as if Norman consciously aimed to distract and reassure his vast following."
Rockwell has a reputation as being non-political. This is untrue. In fact, he was a left-wing supporter of the Democratic Party. In the 1930s he was a passionate supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His employer, the Saturday Evening Post, did not share his political views and refused to publish his political drawings. There were even cases of some of his art-work was repainted to remove the political comment from his work.
The same thing happened during the John F. Kennedy presidency. The assassination of Kennedy shocked Rockwell into action. His last illustration for the Saturday Evening Post was a portrait of Kennedy on 14th December, 1963 (see below). He now joined Look Magazine, as a commentator of current affairs. Rockwell's first double-page illustration for the magazine, The Problem We All Live With (14th January, 1964) was one of his most memorable paintings. It shows Ruby Bridges, who in 1960, when she was 6 years old, became involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaign to integrate the New Orleans School system. When she entered William Frantz Elementary School in 1960 she became the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.
Rockwell also painted Southern Justice, that dealt with the deaths of three Congress on Racial Equality field-workers in Meridian, Mississippi, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, on 21st June, 1964. The painting appeared in Look Magazine on 29th June, 1965. The magazine also published several of his paintings that reflected his opposition to the Vietnam War.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTrockwell.htm