John Simkin
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Brazil will finnish top of its first table. They'll go through to the semis and dep on others probably any way go into the final and there do what they do best. (I'm going to buy an edible hat so I feel fully confident I can''t lose even if I lose). Privately I predicted 4 - 1 to Germany against OZ, So I must admit to feeling a mite cocky. No idea where Holland is these days.
Brazil struggled to beat North Korea last night. A group of very talented players but not a great team. I think Spain will win the cup.
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Angelica Balabanoff is one of the more interesting Bolsheviks. In 1919 Balabanoff was appointed secretary of the Comintern. The following year she was the main translator at the the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow. According to the author of Strange Communists I Have Known (1966): "The order of business for the Second Congress had been determined by Lenin. Having concluded that the great push for world revolution had failed, and with it the attempt to smash the old socialist parties and trade unions, Lenin set it as the task of all revolutionaries to return to or infiltrate the old trade unions. As always, Lenin took it for granted that whatever conclusion he had come to in evaluation and in strategy and tactics was infallibly right. In the Comintern, as in his own party, his word was law."
John Reed and other members of the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of Great Britain disagreed with this policy and tried to start a debate on the subject. To do so, they needed to add English to the already adopted German, French and Russian, as an official language of debate. This idea was rejected. Reed became disillusioned with the way Lenin had become a virtual dictator of Russia. Balabanoff later recalled: "When he came to see me after the Congress, he was in a terrible state of depression. He looked old and exhausted. The experience had been a terrible blow."
Balabanoff found working with Lenin very difficult. According to Bertram D. Wolfe: "He (Lenin) tried in vain to accustom her to his single moral, or amoral, principle, that the means justifies the end, the end for the moment being the seizing, holding, and extension of power in width and depth. She watched with horror old socialists who had given their lives for "the cause" slandered, put back into the same jails the tsar had used, censored more ruthlessly and efficiently, silenced, destroyed."
Balabanoff was especially upset by the way the rebelling sailors were dealt with at Kronstadt. In 1922 she left the Communist International.
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Today, the British government admitted to what most of us knew at the time. However, it has taken 38 years to get to the truth. The Widgery Report was what the Warren Report was to the assassination of JFK. Maybe there is still hope that the truth about the assassination will eventually come out.
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BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/10320609.stm
All those killed on Bloody Sunday were innocent, the Saville Report has ruled.
Thirteen marchers were shot dead on 30 January 1972 in Londonderry when British paratroopers opened fire on crowds at a civil rights demonstration.
Fourteen others were wounded, one of whom later died.
A huge cheer erupted in Guildhall Square in Derry as Prime Minister David Cameron delivered the findings which unequivocally blamed the Army.
The report said that the Army fired the first shot of the day in one of the most controversial state killings in the Northern Ireland conflict.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Cameron said what happened on Bloody Sunday was unjustifiable and wrong. He said his government and the country were "deeply sorry" and the findings were "shocking".
Mr Cameron said:
* No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire.
* None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
* Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
* None of the casualties was posing a threat .... or doing anything that would justify their shooting
* There was no point in trying to soften or equivocate - the events of Bloody Sunday were not justified
* Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
* What happened should never, ever have happened
* Some members of the British armed forces acted wrongly
* On behalf of the government and the country, he said he was "deeply sorry"
* The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated.
The report was commissioned in 1998 by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair under the auspices of former High Court judge, Lord Saville of Newdigate.
The Saville Inquiry took witness statements from hundreds of people and has become the longest-running and most expensive in British history.
It closed in 2004 with the report initially due for publication the following year.
It cost £195m and took 12 years to complete.
The Saville Report was made available to the families and their lawyers in closed sessions in Derry's Guildhall earlier on Tuesday.
Thousands of people are gathered outside the Guildhall to watch Prime Minister David Cameron deliver the report to Parliament on a huge screen.
Earlier, crowds retraced the steps of the original marchers from the Bloody Sunday memorial in the city's Bogside close to the spot where many of the victims died.
According to BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport, while it may not have been the bloodiest day in the history of the Troubles, "the significance of that day in shaping the course of the conflict cannot be overstated".
"The actions of the Parachute Regiment in shooting dead 13 unarmed civil rights protesters immeasurably strengthened Irish republicans' arguments within their own community and provided the Provisional IRA with a flood of fresh recruits for its long war," he said.
Our correspondent also said Bloody Sunday set in train the suspension of the Northern Ireland government in March 1972, which led to the decades of direct rule from London.
The full process of restoring devolution was only completed in 2010.
An inquiry chaired by Lord Widgery was held in the immediate aftermath of the killings but it failed to satisfy families of the victims.
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“The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum”
No he rightly blamed BP all he did was call the company by its historic name. I’ve seen no evidence he or other American politicians are trying to blame the British people can you point to any?
How can he be right to call it by his “historic” name? He called it “British Petroleum” because he was trying to shift the blame to some foreign power. His attempts to play on America’s xenophobia is despicable. So much for the “new politics”.
We saw several clips on BBC News including Nancy Pelosi using the name British Petroleum. .
“…where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998, it changed its name to BP.”
It seem to have been more of takeover than a merger. The name remained BP, the HQ remained in London, the HQ of BP America was moved to a city over 1000 miles from the HQ of Amoco the chairmen continued to be British as did most of the upper management.
The point is that its name changed when the two companies joined forces. At that point it became a multinational rather than a British company. To portray it as a British company is ridiculous. The only reason for this is that it is an attempt to shift blame from himself. This is in itself an irrational idea but I suppose he has concluded he has an irrational electorate.
“ In fact, BP, in terms of its investors… is more an American company than a British company.”
Only 40% of the shares are held by Americans, presumably most of the rest, or close to 60 % are held by Brits.
“BP, in terms of its …employees, is more an American company than a British company.”
Perhaps true if you count the people who work the oilrigs and pump gas but the upper management and board are predominantly British. The top level American executives tend to head secondary departments like marketing and HR
My original statement is correct. I did not say anything about the different types of job they did.
According to the European financial database Amadeus, J.P. Morgan Chase is the No. 1 holder of stock in BP. It owns 28.34% of BP. Next, at 7.99%, is Legal and General Group, a British-based financial services company with assets of more than $350 billion. Another U.S. investment firm, BlackRock Inc., owns 7.1% of BP. Other owners include the governments of Kuwait, Norway, Singapore and China.
Anyway, according to some financial experts, BP is about to be takeover by PetroChina Ltd. I am sure the US public will be happier that the Chinese will be in charge.
“The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record.”
Actually it is a Swiss company with a better than average record. But if you claimed were true it would be another sign of BP’s irresponsibility because they’re the ones who hired them. BP is the company with the poor saftey record.
It might have its headquarters in Geneva but that is the only Swiss thing about the company.
BP does indeed have a terrible safety record. My intention is not to defend BP. In my opinion it is a typical multinational company.
“I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis.”
He lost a lot of support in the US as well, he has been too laidback, Brits who are upset by him calling the company by its historic name should refocus their anger against the company whose irresponsible actions led to disastrous consequences in the Gulf and potentially serious economic setbacks in Britain. I imagine the problem is that many Brits are worried about losing dividends and equity
Maybe Obama should address the problem of Union Carbide that killed an estimated 15,000 Indians at Bhopal in 1984. Why is Obama not interested in bringing the Chairman and CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, to justice? Maybe, it is because only Indians died.
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Unfortunately John got most of his facts wrong.
Could you list the facts that I got wrong and I will then address them.
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Hugo Gellert caused a political storm when Elöre published his cartoon, Out of the War, in February 1916, that showed an armless veteran being spoon-fed. His anti-war cartoons were also published in other left-wing journals. James Wechsler has pointed out: "Hugo Gellert... is perhaps more infamous for his passionate commitment to leftist political agitation than for his contribution to American art, but Gellert strongly disavowed any distinction between the two. He professed that, for him, political agitation and art were the same thing."
In 1917 Hugo's brother, Ernest Gellert, also a socialist, was drafted into the military but refused to serve on the grounds that he was a conscientious objector. He died of a gunshot wound while imprisoned at Fort Hancock, New Jersey. The army claims his death was a suicide but the circumstances are suspicious. Gellert fled to Mexico to avoid conscription but still continued to provide ant-war cartoons for left-wing newspapers and magazines.
Gellert returned to the USA after the war. He joined the American Communist Party and unfortunately, after that, he sacrificed his art for party propaganda. However, his early work is well worth searching out:
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Henry J. Glintenkamp, the son of Hendrik and Sophie Dietz Glintenkamp, was born in Augusta, New Jersey, 1887. Glintenkamp received his elementary art training at the National Academy of Design (1903-1906) under Robert Henri and for a time shared the studio of Stuart Davis. He exhibited at the Armory Show in 1913.
Glintenkamp was a cartoonist who regularly contributed to the radical journal, The Masses. Glintenkamp believed that the First World War had been caused by the imperialist competitive system. After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, the journal came under government pressure to change its policy. When it refused to do this, the journal lost its mailing privileges. In July, 1917, it was claimed by the authorities that articles by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman and cartoons by Glintenkamp, Art Young and Boardman Robinson had violated the Espionage Act. Under this act it was an offence to publish material that undermined the war effort.
Glintenkamp fled the country but the others stood trial in April, 1918. Floyd Dell argued in court: "There are some laws that the individual feels he cannot obey, and he will suffer any punishment, even that of death, rather than recognize them as having authority over him. This fundamental stubbornness of the free soul, against which all the powers of the state are helpless, constitutes a conscious objection, whatever its sources may be in political or social opinion." The legal action that followed forced The Masses to cease publication. After three days of deliberation, the jury failed to agree on the guilt of Dell and his fellow defendants.
The second trial was held in January 1919. John Reed, who had recently returned from Russia, was also arrested and charged with the original defendants. Dell wrote in his autobiography, Homecoming (1933): "While we waited, I began to ponder for myself the question which the jury had retired to decide. Were we innocent or guilty? We certainly hadn't conspired to do anything. But what had we tried to do? Defiantly tell the truth. For what purpose? To keep some truth alive in a world full of lies. And what was the good of that? I don't know. But I was glad I had taken part in that act of defiant truth-telling." This time eight of the twelve jurors voted for acquittal. As the First World War was now over, it was decided not to take them to court for a third time.
Henry J. Glintenkamp eventually returned to the USA where he concentrated on painting rather than producing cartoons.
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The Masses was founded in New York in 1911 by Piet Vlag, a Christian socialist. Another important financial backer was Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer who supported a wide variety of progressive causes. Early members of the team included Art Young, Louis Untermeyer and John Sloan. Organised like a co-operative, artists and writers who contributed to the journal shared in its management.
Art Young later recalled: "I think we have the true religion. If only the crusade would take on more converts. But faith, like the faith they talk about in the churches, is ours and the goal is not unlike theirs, in that we want the same objectives but want it here on earth and not in the sky when we die."
Over the next few years The Masses published articles and poems written by people such as John Reed, Sherwood Anderson, Crystal Eastman, Hubert Harrison, Inez Milholland, Mary Heaton Vorse, Louis Untermeyer, Randolf Bourne, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, William Walling, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Amy Lowell, Mabel Dodge, Floyd Dell and Louise Bryant.
The Masses also published the work of important artists including John Sloan, Robert Henri, Alice Beach Winter, Mary Ellen Sigsbee, Cornelia Barns, Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent, Art Young, Boardman Robinson, Robert Minor, Lydia Gibson, K. R. Chamberlain, Stuart Davis, Hugo Gellert, George Bellows and Maurice Becker.
Members of the Masses cooperative believed that the First World War had been caused by the imperialist competitive system. The editor, Max Eastman and journalists such as John Reed who reported the conflict for The Masses, argued that the USA should remain neutral.
After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, The Masses came under government pressure to change its policy. When it refused to do this, the journal lost its mailing privileges. In July, 1917, it was claimed by the authorities that articles by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman and cartoons by Art Young, Boardman Robinson and Henry J. Glintenkamp had violated the Espionage Act. Under this act it was an offence to publish material that undermined the war effort.
Henry J. Glintenkamp fled the country for Mexico but the others stood trial in April, 1918. Floyd Dell argued in court: "There are some laws that the individual feels he cannot obey, and he will suffer any punishment, even that of death, rather than recognize them as having authority over him. This fundamental stubbornness of the free soul, against which all the powers of the state are helpless, constitutes a conscious objection, whatever its sources may be in political or social opinion." The legal action that followed forced The Masses to cease publication. After three days of deliberation, the jury failed to agree on the guilt of Dell and his fellow defendants.
The second trial was held in January 1919. John Reed, who had recently returned from Russia, was also arrested and charged with the original defendants. Dell wrote in his autobiography, Homecoming (1933): "While we waited, I began to ponder for myself the question which the jury had retired to decide. Were we innocent or guilty? We certainly hadn't conspired to do anything. But what had we tried to do? Defiantly tell the truth. For what purpose? To keep some truth alive in a world full of lies. And what was the good of that? I don't know. But I was glad I had taken part in that act of defiant truth-telling." This time eight of the twelve jurors voted for acquittal. As the First World War was now over, it was decided not to take them to court for a third time. However, this act of censorship had frightened off investors and the Masses was never to appear again.
You can see a collection of cartoons and front-page covers here:
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Hammers academy chief Tony Carr was awarded an MBE yesterday for services to football.
The club chairman, David Gold, commented: "I can't tell you how thrilled I am. It is so rare that people working quietly in the background get honoured in football. Here is a proper gentleman of football who has done an amazing job over nearly 40 years and rightly he has been honoured. It is richly deserved. The mere fact that we could win the World Cup with a third of the squad having come through the Academy under him says everything about the work he has done for football in this country."
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Hugo Gellert argued that political agitation and art were the same thing. This cartoon, Out of the War, in February 1916, that showed an armless veteran being spoon-fed, caused a real stir during the First World War.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTgellert.htm
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This cartoon by William Gropper of Emperor Hirohito that appeared in Vanity Fair in August 1935 caused a diplomatic incident with the Japanese government demanding an official apology.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTgropper.htm
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The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis.
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And as for your "deal", if it was the best option, why didn't you Americans take it when the British captured your land in the 1770s?
If it was so good, why did you fight back and establish an independent state?
In the same context, why did the Native Americans refuse to "take the deal" and revolt against the US Army?
Cigdem, did you not know that international rules do not apply to the United States. That is part of being a super-power. What amazes me is that Israel is treated the same way as the United States. How did they manage that?
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Isn't there a World Cup on?
BK
Yes, and today England plays the USA. The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and are hoping for a big victory tonight. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis.
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"Expropriate BP! Take over BP then use our nuclear option to solve the enviromental disaster in the Gulf.
Crisis in the Gulf Part II. The nuclear option, then and now.
I am all for the nationalization of the oil industry but don't be fooled by the name of the company. The majority of BP is owned by American investors.
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Another favourite of mine is Art Young. He was a highly successful cartoonist working for all the leading newspapers and magazines. In March 1902 Young was commissioned to draw an anti-immigration picture for Life. After it was published he sent back the $100 cheque and vowed that in future he would only draw pictures that reflected his own political beliefs.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTyoung.htm
A Christian Socialist, here is the front cover of the Masses on the outbreak of the First World War.
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After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, The Masses, a socialist magazine published in New York City, came under government pressure to change its anti-war policy. When it refused to do this, the journal lost its mailing privileges. In July, 1917, it was claimed by the authorities that articles by Floyd Dell and Max Eastman and cartoons by Art Young, Boardman Robinson and H. J. Glintenkamp had violated the Espionage Act. Under this act it was an offence to publish material that undermined the war effort.
Floyd Dell argued in court: "There are some laws that the individual feels he cannot obey, and he will suffer any punishment, even that of death, rather than recognize them as having authority over him. This fundamental stubbornness of the free soul, against which all the powers of the state are helpless, constitutes a conscious objection, whatever its sources may be in political or social opinion." The legal action that followed forced The Masses to cease publication. In April, 1918, after three days of deliberation, the jury failed to agree on the guilt of Dell and his fellow defendants.
The cartoon by Boardman Robinson was one of the cartoons that the US government believed undermined the war effort.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTboardman.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTmasses.htm
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Hank, you said in your William Morgan article that Morgan had publicly declared that he would "kill any American Marines" who attempted to invade Cuba or to interfere with Castro's objectives.
Do you know if the US media reported those words at the time (which I think was early to mid '59?)
thanks in advance to you or anyone else who can answer this.
bump
Greg, I have emailed Hank this question.
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Paul Gaynor was the chief of CIA's Security Research Staff (CRS). Anyone have an interesting information on him?
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Part of Anthony Frewin's review of A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments:
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lob...9/lobster59.pdf
On Thursday 19 November 1953 Olson attended a meeting at Deep Creek Lake with several of his colleagues and was slipped LSD laced with a ‘truth drug’ before being interrogated. He began to display strange behaviour, extreme anxiety, and feelings of paranoia. The loose cannon was now ricocheting about like the ball in a pinball machine. He was taken up to New York to see the CIA-approved Dr Abramson who seems to have realised that there was going to be no easy fix here. Then it was decided that Olson should be taken away to a secure CIA-approved asylum and the forcible removal of Olson from the Hotel Statler was entrusted to two ‘goons’. Things got out of hand in the hotel room and Olson was precipitated out the window with the goons probably thinking, they’ll thank us for this (indeed, they might even
have been instructed to do same). The two goons were Pierre Lafitte and Francoise Spirito. Who they?
Spirio and Lafitte
Spirito has been dubbed the father of modern heroin traffickers. He was born in Sicily in 1898 and spent his formative years in Marseilles. The 1970 French film Borsalino was largely based on his life but left out much of his less pleasing side, such as his Nazi collaboration during the war.
Just before the Olson business Spirito had been released from Atlanta’s Federal Penitentiary where he had been serving a
sentence for drug trafficking. Less than three weeks later he was picked up by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service and deported back to France where he died in 1967.
Spirito had known Lafitte since about 1939 and they had first met in Marseilles. It was Lafitte who engaged him for the job.
Now let’s turn to Lafitte. In 1952 nine large framed paintings including The Flaying of St. Bartholomew, believed to be by Mattis Preti, a famous Neapolitan artist, were stolen from St Joseph’s Cathedral in Bardstown, Kentucky. In April 1953 FBI agents arrested three people in Chicago in connection with the theft: Norton I Kretske, an attorney, Joseph DePietro, a deputy bailiff for a Chicago court, and an individual identified as Gus Manoletti. The case went to trial in October and the government’s second prosecution witness answered to the name of Jean-Pierre Lafitte but as he approached the stand he was recognised as Gus Manoletti.
Lafitte said he lived in San Diego and had been employed for the last three years as a special investigator for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Before that he had been employed overseas on ‘special missions for the United States government.’ He explained that he had been engaged by the FBI to locate the stolen paintings and had posed as a buyer in the art world and after months of undercover work had purchased the stolen paintings from Kretske and DePietro for $35,000. They were then arrested in a sting operation.
Since Lafitte was the government’s star witness, the attorneys for the defendants made strenuous efforts to find out more about his background. The prosecutors objected and the judge sustained their objections citing public interest issues and forbidding any disclosure. So, here we have a man trusted by government agencies and seemingly employed by
them over many years. It’s unclear when and where Lafitte was born; possibly Corsica in the early 1900s. He certainly grew up in Marseilles and in his early teens, either having run away from home or having been abandoned by his mother, was working in restaurant kitchens where he discovered a natural aptitude for cooking, a talent that would stand him in good stead throughout his peripatetic life.
His involvement in the Marseilles underworld parallels his restaurant work. The late 1930s found Lafitte travelling back
and forth between New York, Montreal, Boston, Paris and Marseilles, probably facilitating drug deals. During the 1939-45
war he is thought to have been involved in a number of OSS operations in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Sometime after the war he hooked up with George Hunter White, a buccaneering agent of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, who would provide plenty of work for him. (White had free access to LSD in the early 1950s and was dosing unwitting subjects left, right and centre in the many safe houses he ran for the FNB and other agencies).
In 1951 White enlisted Lafitte’s help in a major narcotics case. A Joe Dornay, an alias of Joseph Orsini, was arrested in
New York for drug trafficking. When he was placed in a cell on Ellis Island prior to deportation who was his cellmate? None
other than Lafitte, put there by the FBN to gather information about Orsini’s network. Orsini spilled the beans thinking that
Lafitte could mind the store while he was away. As it was, Orsini effectively handed the network on a plate to the FBN
and the FBI via Lafitte.
Lafitte’s career as a ‘non-attributable’ agent for various government agencies is described in great detail by Albarelli and includes the remarkable story of Joe Valachi, the Mafia song-bird, who had murdered John Joseph Saupp in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary yard. The US Attorney there had sought the death penalty but Valachi, through a go-between,
got a message concerning his predicament through to Robert Morgenthau who was then the US Attorney for the Southern
District of New York. The message was that he was prepared to tell all about the mob, as he subsequently did, in exchange
for the death penalty going away.4 Albarelli reveals Lafitte was that go-between.
In 1953 Lafitte had been working undercover doing lowly work in several New York hotels, probably for the FBN, certainly for George White. He was working at the Hotel Statler when Olson exited the window.
Shaw, Oswald, New Orleans
Now we’ll go to a contemporary ‘parallel’ universe: Clay Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald, and New Orleans.
In 1967 the New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw for conspiracy in the assassination of John
F Kennedy. Shaw was a prominent New Orleans businessman and a leading director of the World Trade Center, a ‘non-profit association fostering the development of international trade, tourism and cultural exchange.’ In 1969 Sidney Gottlieb
announced at a staff meeting that the FBI had arrested Lafitte in New Orleans where he was working as the manager-chef of the Plimsoll Club within the World Trade Center5 (Shaw had praised him as ‘the best chef in New Orleans’ (Others who sang his praises included the Louisiana Governor John McKeithen and Mrs Lyndon Baines Johnson who sent him a letter from the White House. See ‘The Gourmet Pirate’, Time magazine, 19 December 1969.). Richard Helms, now director of the CIA, wanted to know what was going on and ordered an inquiry.
It transpires that the Feds had little choice but to pick Lafitte up as six years earlier he had swindled a businessman
out of $400,000 in an elaborate scam that involved diamond mines in South Africa.
However, Lafitte’s ‘interfacing’ with the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath do not end there. Earlier, in 1967 or 1968, with Allan Hughes, a CIA operative who had attended the Deep Creek Lake meeting where Olson had been dosed, and the reporter James Phelan, Lafitte burgled Garrison’s office to retrieve papers relating to Shaw.
And there’s an even more intriguing connection. On 9 May 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald applied for work at the William B Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans. The eponymous Reily was a rabid anti-communist who gave financial support both to Sergio Arcacha Smith’s Crusade to Free Cuba Committee and Ed Butler’s partially CIA-funded propaganda outfit, the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). The Reily vice-president, William Monaghan, was a former FBI agent and was a charter member of INCA. Jim Garrison believed that Reily’s was part of an intelligence apparatus. A view bolstered somewhat by Gerry Patrick Hemming’s claim that William Reily had worked for the CIA for years.
Oswald worked for Reily May through July, and Albarelli notes that ‘Around the time of JFK assassination’ Lafitte too
was working for the Reily company. The world gets smaller and smaller.
Lafitte is unknown in the literature of the JFK assassination. I checked the indices of some ten works. He’s obviously a person for whom further and better partics are needed.
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Part of Anthony Frewin's review of A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments:
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lob...9/lobster59.pdf
On Thursday 19 November 1953 Olson attended a meeting at Deep Creek Lake with several of his colleagues and was slipped LSD laced with a ‘truth drug’ before being interrogated. He began to display strange behaviour, extreme anxiety, and feelings of paranoia. The loose cannon was now ricocheting about like the ball in a pinball machine. He was taken up to New York to see the CIA-approved Dr Abramson who seems to have realised that there was going to be no easy fix here. Then it was decided that Olson should be taken away to a secure CIA-approved asylum and the forcible removal of Olson from the Hotel Statler was entrusted to two ‘goons’. Things got out of hand in the hotel room and Olson was precipitated out the window with the goons probably thinking, they’ll thank us for this (indeed, they might even
have been instructed to do same). The two goons were Pierre Lafitte and Francoise Spirito. Who they?
Spirio and Lafitte
Spirito has been dubbed the father of modern heroin traffickers. He was born in Sicily in 1898 and spent his formative years in Marseilles. The 1970 French film Borsalino was largely based on his life but left out much of his less pleasing side, such as his Nazi collaboration during the war.
Just before the Olson business Spirito had been released from Atlanta’s Federal Penitentiary where he had been serving a
sentence for drug trafficking. Less than three weeks later he was picked up by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service and deported back to France where he died in 1967.
Spirito had known Lafitte since about 1939 and they had first met in Marseilles. It was Lafitte who engaged him for the job.
Now let’s turn to Lafitte. In 1952 nine large framed paintings including The Flaying of St. Bartholomew, believed to be by Mattis Preti, a famous Neapolitan artist, were stolen from St Joseph’s Cathedral in Bardstown, Kentucky. In April 1953 FBI agents arrested three people in Chicago in connection with the theft: Norton I Kretske, an attorney, Joseph DePietro, a deputy bailiff for a Chicago court, and an individual identified as Gus Manoletti. The case went to trial in October and the government’s second prosecution witness answered to the name of Jean-Pierre Lafitte but as he approached the stand he was recognised as Gus Manoletti.
Lafitte said he lived in San Diego and had been employed for the last three years as a special investigator for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Before that he had been employed overseas on ‘special missions for the United States government.’ He explained that he had been engaged by the FBI to locate the stolen paintings and had posed as a buyer in the art world and after months of undercover work had purchased the stolen paintings from Kretske and DePietro for $35,000. They were then arrested in a sting operation.
Since Lafitte was the government’s star witness, the attorneys for the defendants made strenuous efforts to find out more about his background. The prosecutors objected and the judge sustained their objections citing public interest issues and forbidding any disclosure. So, here we have a man trusted by government agencies and seemingly employed by
them over many years. It’s unclear when and where Lafitte was born; possibly Corsica in the early 1900s. He certainly grew up in Marseilles and in his early teens, either having run away from home or having been abandoned by his mother, was working in restaurant kitchens where he discovered a natural aptitude for cooking, a talent that would stand him in good stead throughout his peripatetic life.
His involvement in the Marseilles underworld parallels his restaurant work. The late 1930s found Lafitte travelling back
and forth between New York, Montreal, Boston, Paris and Marseilles, probably facilitating drug deals. During the 1939-45
war he is thought to have been involved in a number of OSS operations in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Sometime after the war he hooked up with George Hunter White, a buccaneering agent of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, who would provide plenty of work for him. (White had free access to LSD in the early 1950s and was dosing unwitting subjects left, right and centre in the many safe houses he ran for the FNB and other agencies).
In 1951 White enlisted Lafitte’s help in a major narcotics case. A Joe Dornay, an alias of Joseph Orsini, was arrested in
New York for drug trafficking. When he was placed in a cell on Ellis Island prior to deportation who was his cellmate? None
other than Lafitte, put there by the FBN to gather information about Orsini’s network. Orsini spilled the beans thinking that
Lafitte could mind the store while he was away. As it was, Orsini effectively handed the network on a plate to the FBN
and the FBI via Lafitte.
Lafitte’s career as a ‘non-attributable’ agent for various government agencies is described in great detail by Albarelli and includes the remarkable story of Joe Valachi, the Mafia song-bird, who had murdered John Joseph Saupp in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary yard. The US Attorney there had sought the death penalty but Valachi, through a go-between,
got a message concerning his predicament through to Robert Morgenthau who was then the US Attorney for the Southern
District of New York. The message was that he was prepared to tell all about the mob, as he subsequently did, in exchange
for the death penalty going away.4 Albarelli reveals Lafitte was that go-between.
In 1953 Lafitte had been working undercover doing lowly work in several New York hotels, probably for the FBN, certainly for George White. He was working at the Hotel Statler when Olson exited the window.
Shaw, Oswald, New Orleans
Now we’ll go to a contemporary ‘parallel’ universe: Clay Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald, and New Orleans.
In 1967 the New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw for conspiracy in the assassination of John
F Kennedy. Shaw was a prominent New Orleans businessman and a leading director of the World Trade Center, a ‘non-profit association fostering the development of international trade, tourism and cultural exchange.’ In 1969 Sidney Gottlieb
announced at a staff meeting that the FBI had arrested Lafitte in New Orleans where he was working as the manager-chef of the Plimsoll Club within the World Trade Center5 (Shaw had praised him as ‘the best chef in New Orleans’ (Others who sang his praises included the Louisiana Governor John McKeithen and Mrs Lyndon Baines Johnson who sent him a letter from the White House. See ‘The Gourmet Pirate’, Time magazine, 19 December 1969.). Richard Helms, now director of the CIA, wanted to know what was going on and ordered an inquiry.
It transpires that the Feds had little choice but to pick Lafitte up as six years earlier he had swindled a businessman
out of $400,000 in an elaborate scam that involved diamond mines in South Africa.
However, Lafitte’s ‘interfacing’ with the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath do not end there. Earlier, in 1967 or 1968, with Allan Hughes, a CIA operative who had attended the Deep Creek Lake meeting where Olson had been dosed, and the reporter James Phelan, Lafitte burgled Garrison’s office to retrieve papers relating to Shaw.
And there’s an even more intriguing connection. On 9 May 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald applied for work at the William B Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans. The eponymous Reily was a rabid anti-communist who gave financial support both to Sergio Arcacha Smith’s Crusade to Free Cuba Committee and Ed Butler’s partially CIA-funded propaganda outfit, the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). The Reily vice-president, William Monaghan, was a former FBI agent and was a charter member of INCA. Jim Garrison believed that Reily’s was part of an intelligence apparatus. A view bolstered somewhat by Gerry Patrick Hemming’s claim that William Reily had worked for the CIA for years.
Oswald worked for Reily May through July, and Albarelli notes that ‘Around the time of JFK assassination’ Lafitte too
was working for the Reily company. The world gets smaller and smaller.
Lafitte is unknown in the literature of the JFK assassination. I checked the indices of some ten works. He’s obviously a person for whom further and better partics are needed.
Rupert Murdoch and the Corruption of the British Media
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
Interesting article about Rupert Murdoch in today's Guardian. I like the comment that content is king, but the internet is a republic.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/15/rupert-murdoch-paywalls-internet-content
Content is king, as we so often hear. The problem is, the internet is a republic; which means that the most exalted content has to muck in with everything else that's out there.
The biggest technology companies don't sully themselves with creating content: Google generates none (except Street View); nor does Microsoft, or Facebook, or Twitter. Even Yahoo, which has bought a company called Associated Content, is better known for the content on its photo sharing site Flickr. There's no room for kings among that democratic mess.
So how does Rupert Murdoch, a man who is fiercely certain of the value of content, restore it to what he sees as its rightful place as a money-earner in its own right? In effect, by making sure that it stays off the wider internet. BSkyB is a perfect example of controlling the endpoint of consumption: you need to have Sky's satellite dishes and Sky's receiver and Sky's encrypted card – tied to a subscription – to view it. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper that he coveted, lies behind a paywall on the web, and most recently in an iPad app (with, again, subscriptions). Fox is a cable channel, not an internet site. And it's interesting too that BSkyB and the Wall Street Journal rely on content that is fantastically time-sensitive: sports and finance. People will pay for access to those in a way they won't for the latest episode of House or a reality show.
It's instructive to compare Murdoch's success with that content with the biggest failed merger ever, of AOL and Time Warner. Those two couldn't work, because they were the internet equivalent of oil and water: one is an internet distribution company, and the other a content company. With no control of the endpoint, the losses were staggering. AOL has now been cut adrift, but not before Time Warner bled content and money all over the web.
Murdoch has experimented with the republican world of the internet, with MySpace, which News Corporation bought for $580m in 2005. Even that didn't work, because it couldn't keep people locked into the site, and when something more attractive came along, people left in droves: Facebook overtook it in 2007. When last seen, MySpace's visitor numbers were still plummeting, and nobody knows how to turn it around.
So having tried the republican model for content, and found it not to his liking, Murdoch is retreating once again to a kingdom. The paywalls being put up around the Times and Sunday Times are indicative of that thinking.
So if Murdoch has failed on the wider internet, does that mean it's impossible to make content work online? No; but you either need not to be worried about the direct cost, or confident that your strategy is definitely going to pay off in the medium and long terms. For the first example look at the BBC, where its multiple outlets – TV, radio, the web – are increasingly well-integrated: its TV and radio journalism feeds into web pages, while TV programmes are available again on the iPlayer, and radio is spread around the world over the net. The purpose there is clear – to push the BBC brand, which is an end in itself that trumps simple profit-and-loss calculations, though even there it has had to cut back recently.
Then there are the newspapers, where the Guardian and the New York Times are competing to push their content out across the web via an API – the side door to the database of stories and other content. Like the BBC's strategy, it's predicated on having no control of the endpoint, and instead having control of the feed of content, which means either charging for it or including adverts – the same model as the print newspaper, in fact.
It may be that Murdoch will be able to largely ignore the internet and keep the kingdom of content of his properties for as long as he likes, providing he can retain the two must-haves of live sports and financial information. For others, the former king may instead have to live like the Swedish royal family, cycling around with everyone else, and distinguished only in name and history.
But Rupert Murdoch never did much like bicycles.