W. Niederhut

Question for the mods. If a guy like Michael Griffith keeps repeating debunked claims, ad infinitum, is there a point where the Education Forum finally says, "No mas?" Griffith has now posted pages and pages of redundant, defamatory McAdams-type disinformazia about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty and JFK's 1963 Vietnam policy decisions. Whenever the subject, or honest questions, arise, Griffith simply re-posts the same debunked McAdams talking points. It's not a debate. It's like trying to converse with a television broadcasting the same Swift Boat Vet ads.

Geez...what a pathetic choice for Speaker-- hardly less objectionable than Jim Jordan and the other Trump J6 co-conspirators. Perhaps even worse. As for his theology, does this MAGA yahoo think that God put Hitler and Mussolini in office?

Civilian casualties in Gaza since October 7th now exceed 5,000-- about half of them children. Jordan’s Queen: Double standard in treatment of Palestinians | Watch (msn.com) Kristof: We Must Not Kill Gazan Children to Try to Protect Israel's Children October 21, 2023 The crisis in the Middle East is a knotty test of our humanity, asking how to respond to a grotesque provocation for which there is no good remedy. And in this test, we in the West are not doing well. The acceptance of large-scale bombing of Gaza and of a ground invasion likely to begin soon suggests that Palestinian children are lesser victims, devalued by their association with Hamas and its history of terrorism. Consider that more than 1,500 children in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and around one-third of Gaza homes have been destroyed or damaged in just two weeks — and this is merely the softening-up before what is expected to be a much bloodier ground invasion. …The United States speaks a good deal about principles, but I fear that President Biden has embedded a hierarchy of human life in official American policy. He expressed outrage at the massacres of Jews by Hamas, as he should have, but he has struggled to be equally clear about valuing Gazan lives. And it’s not always evident whether he is standing four-square with Israel as a country or with its failed prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime obstacle to peace. …In his speech on Thursday, Biden called for America to stand firmly behind Ukraine and Israel, two nations attacked by forces aiming to destroy them. Fair enough. But suppose Ukraine responded to Russian war crimes by laying siege to a Russian city, bombing it into dust and cutting off water and electricity while killing thousands and obliging doctors to operate on patients without anesthetic. I doubt we Americans would shrug and say: Well, Putin started it. Too bad about those Russian children, but they should have chosen somewhere else to be born. …The best answer to this test is to try even in the face of provocation to cling to our values. That means that despite our biases, we try to uphold all lives as having equal value. If your ethics see some children as invaluable and others as disposable, that’s not moral clarity but moral myopia. We must not kill Gazan children to try to protect Israeli children. More at www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/opinion/israel-gaza-palestine-children.html?unlocked_article_code=1.40w.v7UG.4WZQwsV6xF_9&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Pathetic. Paul Brancato asked the disingenuous Prouty bashers an honest question last Saturday, and-- as I predicted-- the response from Michael Griffith is to simply repeat his same old debunked John McAdams defamation tropes. Mcadams - Laughing stock of the internet (blackopradio.com)

Obama is not quite ready to give Joe Biden a Ph.D. in diplomacy for supporting Operation Bomb-a-Baby-for-Bibi. Instead, Obama seems to agree with Bernie Sanders' and Ralph Nader's take on halting the genocide in Gaza (with less strident rhetoric than Nader.) Obama: Israeli military strategy ignoring human costs will 'backfire' Former president Barack Obama posted his thoughts on the conflict to Medium. He acknowledged that Palestinians are continuing to be displaced by a settler movement backed by Israeli policies, but he added that antisemitism and hate toward Palestinians and/or Arabs and Muslims cannot be tolerated. “The world is watching closely as events in the region unfold, and any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs could ultimately backfire,” he wrote. He said the Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population could worsen a growing humanitarian crisis but also “further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/israel-gaza-war-news-hamas/#link-7FLQEVS4E5BJFIE7GN3DBBW27A

Nonsense, Matt. It's an epic foreign policy disaster for the U.S.-- with global ramifications. Perhaps you haven't been reading the international news this week-- about Iraqi attacks on U.S. troops, and a mob setting fire to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. There was also the cancellation by officials in Jordan and Egypt of a scheduled meeting with Biden. This past week also witnessed the resignation of a senior U.S. State Department official, in response to Biden's misguided kowtowing to Netanyahu's war on the besieged civilian population of Gaza. Opinion | The Spectacular Failure of Biden's Middle East Policy | Common Dreams

Matt, Your misleading AP propaganda article is predicated on a semantic sleight-of-hand-- denying that the St. Porphyrios Church compound was hit by an Israeli missile. Go back and read WaPo's detailed, on-the-ground, descriptions of the attack on the St. Porphyrios Church compound (above) and the deaths caused by that Israeli missile attack on the church compound-- similar to the attacks by 6,000+ other Israeli missiles launched into residential neighborhoods in Gaza since October 7th. You should also read this article (below) by the Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times Middle East correspondent, Chris Hedges, about Israel's history of systematically lying about their crimes against Palestinian civilians. As a long-time Middle East correspondent, Hedges' opinions are based on direct observation. Israel's Culture of Deceit, by Chris Hedges - The Unz Review October 18, 2023

“Peace, War, and 9/11” A Cinematic Portrait of Graeme MacQueen, A Warrior for Peace EDWARD CURTIN • OCTOBER 19, 2023 “Peace, War, and 9/11”, by Edward Curtin - The Unz Review It is one thing to read a review of this important and compelling film – a tour de force – and another to watch it. The former fades into insignificance when one takes an hour-and-a-half to immerse oneself in its tragic yet revelatory story. For in it we see and hear a dying man speak eloquently of how he accepted the role that life brought him – a 9/11 truthteller and peace apostle – and now, as he departs the stage, hopes this last effort will ease his exit and help fulfill his mission as a man of peace. Because Graeme MacQueen was my close friend for the last ten years of his life, I found it very hard to watch this film since his death on April 25th is still raw and painful. For more than three years he suffered greatly and yet found the strength to cooperate with his colleague Ted Walter in the making of this important film. Walter’s direction admirably portrays MacQueen’s nobility by having Graeme narrate his life’s work interspersed with documentary footage that illuminates the truth about many issues, most notably the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. The result is a very powerful and important lesson in personal courage and historical truth. From the opening scenes we see Graeme tell it bluntly and hopefully: that the official story of 9/11 is a fraud, and that because his life’s work has been to oppose war, he hopes he has fulfilled his “mission.” Humble as he was, it is inspiring to hear him speak of his mission, which is another word for vocation or calling, a mystery beyond analysis. “Peace, War, and 9/11” can be viewed here and here. Or you can watch it below. A long-time professor of religious studies at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada where he was the Founding Director of the Center for Peace Studies and a Buddhist scholar, he was also a peace activist, who traveled to El Salvador and worked with peace groups to learn for himself the truth about other conflicts and help resolve them. His writing and research were meticulously logical and evidence based to a fault, and it would be impossible to accuse him of ever reaching rash conclusions based on speculation. While there are powerful documentaries that focus exclusively on facts and are narrated by omniscient and objective narrators, Peace, War, and 9/11, while also based on proven facts, is doubly powerful because it is told by a man whose personal story is a moving example of one who, from a young age, was inspired by a reverence for life and the embrace of non-violence, and whose vocation long preceded his scholarly and anti-war pursuits. The documentary footage begins with a clip from President John Kennedy’s indispensable American University speech of June 10, 1963 where he appeals for an end to the Cold War, the abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of a Pax Americana, and the establishment of a genuine peace: “. . . the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables men and women to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.” This clip sets the stage for all that follows, for it is implied that this speech, among his other anti-war actions, led to JFK’s assassination by the CIA. The film makes similar points about the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. The point is clear: Peacemaking is a dangerous activity, but it is necessary if we are to reverence life and live by conscience. To listen to MacQueen give his analysis of war as a system, at times cold and others hot, not one event but a series of events – a tumor on human society as he describes it (echoing the tumors that are killing him) – is to receive a concise lesson on war and peace. The film illustrates his words with powerful footage from Vietnam, the Tonkin Gulf, Pearl Harbor, the words of the warmaking class, etc. all leading to the attacks of September 11, 2001. He explains how his suspicions about those events gradually grew until in 2005 he read an article by David Ray Griffin that startled him. It was about the testimony of New York City firefighters who heard explosions in the Twin Towers. This prompted him to pursue what his scholarship had prepared him for: the careful pursuit of textual analysis in pursuit of evidence, and so he read the 12,000 pages of the World Trade Center task force report only to discover that 118 NY firefighters talked about explosions throughout the towers and 10 did not. The more he studied, the more he found additional eyewitness, such as police officers, to bring the number to 156. Such eye witness testimony, reinforced by the first reports from television announcers kept adding up, as thermite was found in the dust of the towers. The evidence for controlled demolition of the buildings kept increasing; he concludes that “the evidence is overwhelming.” His words are supported by confirmatory video from many of the people he mentions. This video testimony makes this film so powerful. From there he dissects the same day emergence of the official narrative which blamed Osama bin Laden for 9/11 without any evidence to support it. It became the propaganda narrative of good versus evil. Evidence for the alleged 19 hijackers was not produced, then or ever. War was simply declared against the bad guys, who were declared guilty by fiat. Finally, Graeme analyzes the anthrax letters that were sent in the weeks following September 11. Only five people died but the effects were profound. He leads the viewer through his important research as presented in The 2001 Anthrax Deception. His book shows conclusively that the anthrax attacks were an inside job coming from a U.S. government lab, not an Al-Qaeda operation. Nevertheless, this led to the Patriot Act, the invasion of Afghanistan, and in 2003 the invasion of Iraq, although all were based on lies. And significantly, if the anthrax attacks were an inside job which he conclusively proves, so too were those of September 11th, as some of the alleged hijackers, particularly the leader Mohamed Atta, were involved in the anthrax deceptions. He concludes by saying many people don’t get the deep state because they can’t imagine treachery of this kind and scope. He accuses many traditional leftists of falling down on the job of showing how 9/11 was a propaganda coup based on “mendacity and deception.” Many such leftists who have often been critics of U.S. domestic and foreign policy – and we are shown pictures of Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Glen Greenwald, et al. – have also refused to even discuss the matter. This Graeme says “is probably from fears of looking ridiculous and admitting you were wrong for years and years on a really important topic.” Here I must disagree with my dear friend, for this seems to me false, for these same people could have examined the evidence as Graeme did when he jumped into his research starting in 2005. They adamantly refused then and now and so have given cover for the justification of the endless U.S. wars on terror that are ongoing. I do not believe this was because of “looking ridiculous.” It is more insidious than that. We see an interview with General Wesley Clarke who says he was shown a paper in the Pentagon in late September 2001 where he was informed that the U.S. was not going to just invade Afghanistan but Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran. Graeme makes clear that any country that dares to resist the U.S. “and our Israeli companions” will be attacked and destroyed. This is the war system at work. It is, as he says, all about collective punishment; the warfare states will attack you and kill you in large numbers even if you individually have had nothing to do with any of this. Systemic killing is at the heart of this state terrorism, as the Israeli massacres of Palestinians has long shown, even as I write. To cap off his analysis, we are shown video of the collapse of Building 7 at the World Trade Center. It was not hit by a plane and came down in free-fall speed at 5:20 P.M. It was clearly taken down by controlled demolition and its fall was predicted by 60 firefighters in advance. It was the final crime committed that day, one that it has taken many people years to discover, if they have. “We haven’t tried very hard to abolish war,” Graeme says at the end. It is “this mutually reinforcing tumor on societies” that many don’t understand because of its systemic nature and because they don’t take the time to read and study closely all the official narratives that explain it as unavoidable. These are lies. Yet just as 19th century crusaders for justice finally abolished slavery and started a gradual process to try to stop wars – to no avail – the fight goes on. As JFK said at American University, “We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” This deeply moving film will elucidate and edify those who care for the world’s children. While one man’s story, it is universal. Graeme MacQueen has departed this earth, but he has fulfilled his mission as a man of peace. “You do your best,” he tells us. What more can we ask of him, and ourselves as well. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

Pat, Indeed. And it's a train wreck that could escalate into WWIII. The planet's 1+ billion Muslims are enraged by the bombing of besieged civilians in Gaza. U.S. troops have been attacked in Iraq, and a mob tried to burn our embassy in Beirut. Israel is threatening to bomb Iran, and China is, reportedly, sending war ships to the Middle East.

Matt, I'm surprised that you would condone Bibi's current blockade and massacre of women and children in Gaza-- allegedly, in "retaliation" for the recent terrorist attacks by Hamas. The civilian casualties and infrastructure demolition in Gaza has been massive. It's, basically, ethnic cleansing. Do you also condone Chivington's massacre of Native American women and children at Sand Creek in 1864-- in "retaliation for the Cheyenne "Dog Soldier" attacks on white settlers in Colorado? Whites and indigenous Native Americans at war... Anything goes? If JFK were POTUS, at present, I believe he would have endeavored to prevent Netanyahu's war crimes in Gaza. P.S. Your AP "fact check" about the St. Porphyrios Church bombing is dubious. Who owns AP nowadays? The last time I researched that subject, several years ago, AP was being managed by a right wing propagandist named William Dean Singleton who used to own the Denver Post. Church of England joins Catholic, Orthodox churches in calls for ceasefire after Israel kills Christian Palestinians (msn.com)

The U.S. is Israel's main international ally and supplier of funding and armaments, Sandy. Our U.S. military aid to Israel during the past 60 years has been astronomic. Are you suggesting that we have no meaningful role to play in mitigating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict-- including the prevention of war crimes? The bombing of civilian non-combatants-- including Gaza's one million children-- is a war crime. Israel has already destroyed more than 25% of Gaza's residential housing, while blocking food, water, and medicine supplies to its 2.3 million besieged citizens. There was a time in modern history-- especially during JFK's administration-- when the U.S. endeavored to function as a just, neutral mediator there. Now the tiny Gaza Strip is one of the last remaining Palestinian territories occupied by indigenous Palestinians, and Joe Biden has, essentially turned his back on the massacre of Palestinian women and children in Gaza. Have you studied maps of Palestine during the past century?

These "both siderism" tropes about Israel's current bombing of Gaza's civilian population is a real head scratcher. What are people thinking? War crimes are war crimes. It's like claiming that Chivington's 1864 Sand Creek Massacre of Native American women and children was justified because Native Americans and white settlers had been killing each other for years on the Great Plains. Ralph Nader is spot on today, as usual. Opinion | Biden Will Not Escape History's Judgement for Failure to Stop Gaza Assault | Common Dreams

Addendum: Greek Orthodox church struck in deadly Gaza City blast - The Washington Post Maher Ayyad, 72, a member of the community, said the strike hit a two-story building in the church compound, killing 18 people and injuring at least 20. About 100 people were in the bombed building at the time of the strike, he said, and about 400 displaced civilians, mainly Christians, were taking shelter in the entire complex. Among those reported killed were relatives of former U.S. representative Justin Amash, a Libertarian who once represented Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. Amash tweeted Friday afternoon that several relatives who had been sheltering in the church, including two women he identified as Viola and Yara, were killed in the strike. I was really worried about this. 😔 With great sadness, I have now confirmed that several of my relatives (including Viola and Yara pictured here) were killed at Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, where they had been sheltering, when part of the complex was destroyed as… pic.twitter.com/w5k1xEeTgF — Justin Amash (@justinamash) October 20, 2023 There are about 1,000 Palestinian Christians remaining in Gaza, and the loss was “huge” for the community, Ayyad said. About 500 Christians, including Ayyad, have relocated to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate School in Gaza City.

Matt, Indeed. Propaganda abounds during military ops. Oddly, your AP article (above) is the only thing I've seen denying the Israeli bomb hitting the church compound. On the flip side, multiple news sources-- including Reuters, WaPo, Newsweek, and Al Jazeera-- reported that the St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church was damaged by an Israeli missile, killing at least 16 people in the church compound. I first read about this in the Washington Post yesterday. (Article below re-printed for non-subscribers) Historic Orthodox church sheltering civilians struck in deadly Gaza City blast www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/20/gaza-church-strike-saint-porphyrius/ The Greek Orthodox St. Porphyrius Church, where Palestinians had been taking shelter, was damaged by an airstrike in Gaza City on Thursday. (Reuters) October 20, 2023 JERUSALEM — The historic Church of St. Porphyrius, Gaza’s oldest active church, was struck Thursday as it sheltered hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the war, according to religious officials. At least 16 Christians were killed in the bombing and unknown number injured, the Gaza-based Palestinian Ministry of Health said Friday. The Washington Post geolocated the strike and confirmed the location of the church based on a video that shows people searching through rubble of a destroyed building in Gaza City. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem blamed Israel for the strike. The Israel Defense Forces said in an emailed statement that a strike targeting a Hamas control center “damaged the wall of a church in the area” and that it is “aware of reports on casualties” and is reviewing the incident. In footage geolocated by The Washington Post, people searched through rubble after the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City was struck Oct. 20. (Video: X) The Church of St. Porphyrius’s original structure dates to the 5th century, and the current structure was built in the 12th century. Located in a historic quarter of the city, it is named after a former bishop of Gaza, Saint Porphyrius, and placed where he is believed to have died in A.D. 420. Characterized by thick walls and a richly decorated interior, the church has long been a place of refuge and community for its members, who are a religious minority in the Gaza Strip. Ibrahim Jahshan, a deacon at the church, told The Post that several hundred displaced Christians had taken refuge on the grounds. Rescuers were still digging through the rubble early Friday, but Jahshan said the strike killed nine people and wounded more than a dozen. The Order of St. George, an associated order of the church, issued a statement confirming the strike. “Archbishop Alexios appears to have been located and is alive, but we don’t know if he is injured,” the Order of St. George stated. The blast hit “two church halls where the refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping.” A Palestinian American woman who moved from Gaza to the United States in the early 2000s said in an interview that she had relatives and friends sheltering in the church at the time of the strike, some of whom were injured. “They’re terrified. They’re shaken. They don’t know what to do, and they don’t know where else to go,” said the woman, whom The Post is not identifying because of concern for her family’s safety. She expressed outrage at the idea that more than a million civilians could evacuate from a place as densely populated and heavily bombed as Gaza City — a mass movement called for by Israel last week. “It’s impossible,” she said. She said she grew up going to St. Porphyrius before moving to the United States, and her family has deep ties to the church, dating back to when they became refugees during the 1948 founding of Israel and mass displacement of Palestinians. Describing the congregation as close-knit and family-like, she said she’s not just worried about her relatives. “I’m concerned for everyone because we’re a small community.” Christians make up about 1 percent of Gaza’s population and have faced restrictions and discrimination by Hamas and Gaza’s Islamist government, according to human rights groups. During the 2014 Gaza war, about 1,000 Palestinian Muslims fled Israeli shelling for the Church of St. Porphyrius, where graves were damaged by shrapnel from a nearby strike, Reuters reported. Gaza hospital where hundreds were killed is owned by Anglican Communion branch In a statement early Friday local time, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem said targeting churches sheltering innocent citizens “cannot be ignored.” “The Patriarchate stresses that it will not abandon its religious and humanitarian duty, rooted in its Christian values, to provide all that is necessary in times of war and peace alike.”

We're witnessing an historic atrocity, folks. It's hard to believe that the U.S. isn't intervening more aggressively to stop these war crimes in Gaza. Yesterday, Israel bombed the ancient Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrios in Gaza City, killing (?) 16 civilians, including some relatives of former U.S. Congressman Justin Amash, a Palestinian-American Orthodox Christian. 'Totally Insufficient': Groups Say Trickle of Gaza Aid No Match for Ongoing 'Mass Atrocities' (commondreams.org)

Sandy, If I recall correctly, from his books, Prouty was directly involved in providing transportation and supplies for the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion. He also described personally witnessing the phone call from (?) McGeorge Bundy (or one of JFK's staffers) nixing additional, last minute U.S. air support for the invasion. Some planes were on stand-by, but they didn't get the go-ahead order to fly. Joseph McBride's discovery of the J. Edgar Hoover memo about "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" was publicized in July of 1988, so it would have been public knowledge in informed circles in 1989. (My hunch is that Prouty must have known, previously, that GHWB and Zapata Oil were CIA assets, but I may be mistaken. I don't recall Prouty mentioning GHWB as a CIA asset in The Secret Team or in JFK--The CIA, Vietnam, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy.)

So, is it just a coincidence that the guys serving up these Prouty pseudo-scandal nothing burgers are also aggressively denying that GHWB's CIA front company, Zapata Oil, was using it's platform off of the coast of Cuba to assist the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion? Hmmmm...

True, Paul. And, as I pointed out above, Prouty's belief that Operation Zapata was named by Allen Dulles and the CIA for the GHWB/CIA Zapata Offshore Oil Company may have been a result of Prouty not being privy to the secret deliberations of the CIA. Prouty's job was to furnish transportation and equipment to the Dulles/Bush CIA people for their secret ops. It's a nothing burger. Another Prouty non-scandal. As for Zapata Offshore, do Doug Campbell, Greg Kooyman, et.al., sincerely believe that GHWB and his CIA front company, Zapata Oil, were not involved in the CIA's Bay of Pigs op? What bunk.

Doug Campbell's claim (above) that there was no connection between GHWB's Zapata Oil Company and the CIA's Bay of Pigs/Operation Zapata is inconsistent with evidence described by Russ Baker and other researchers. Russ Baker wrote in detail about the history of GHWB's Zapata Oil Company in Family of Secrets. Here are some of Baker's excerpts about Zapata, re-printed at Who What Why in serialized articles. Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 2: Skull and Bones Forever - WhoWhatWhy Excerpts Zapata Offshore . . . [was] launched by Poppy in 1954, just as the U.S. government, under an administration dominated by the Dulles-Bush circles, began auctioning offshore mineral rights In 1958, Zapata Offshore’s drilling rig Scorpion was moved from the Gulf of Mexico to Cay Sal Bank, the most remote group of islands in the Bahamas and just fifty-four miles north of Isabela, Cuba. The [Cay Sal] island had been recently leased to oilman Howard Hughes, who had his own long-standing CIA ties, as well as his own “private CIA.” By most appearances, a number of CIA-connected entities were involved in the operation. Zapata leased the Scorpion to Standard Oil of California and to Gulf Oil. CIA director Dulles had previously served as Gulf’s counsel for Latin America. The same year that Gulf leased Bush’s platform, CIA veteran Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt joined Gulf’s board. This was the same Kermit Roosevelt who had overseen the CIA’s successful 1953 coup against the democratically elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after Mossadegh began nationalizing Anglo-American oil concessions. It looked like the Bush-CIA group was preparing for operations in the Caribbean basin. The offshore platforms had a specific purpose. “George Bush would be given a list of names of Cuban oil workers we would want placed in jobs,” said one official connected to Operation Mongoose, the program to overthrow Castro. “The oil platforms he dealt in were perfect for training the Cubans in raids on their homeland.” Upon coming to power in 1959, Fidel Castro began to expropriate the massive properties of large foreign (chiefly American) companies. The impact fell heavily on American corporations that had massive agricultural and mineral operations on the fertile island, including Brown Brothers Harriman, whose extensive holdings included the two-hundred-thousand-acre Punta Alegre beet sugar plantation. After Castro took power, the Eisenhower administration began a boycott of Cuban sugar, which is a crucial component of the island’s economy. The Cubans in turn became increasingly dependent on the USSR as supplier of goods and protector. Poppy swung into gear the same year that Castro began nationalizing [American] properties. He severed his ties to the Liedtkes by buying out their stake in Zapata Offshore, and then moved its operations to Houston – which, unlike the remote Midland-Odessa area, had access to the Caribbean through the Houston Ship Channel. Meanwhile, back in Washington, after extensive planning, the Bay of Pigs project began with Eisenhower’s approval on March 17, 1960 . . . Beyond providing a staging area for Cuban rebels, Zapata Offshore appears to have served as a paymaster. “We had to pay off politicians in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and elsewhere,” said John Sherwood, chief of CIA anti-Castro operations in the early 1960s. “Bush’s company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts . . . The major breakthrough was when we were able, through Bush, to place people in PEMEX – the big Mexican national oil operation.”

Huh? The good fight? Thanks for the laugh, Kooyman. I haven't seen you around here since that Swift Boat Vet style attack on Prouty a year or two ago. As I recall, you posted some allegedly defamatory link at the time that turned out to be another nothing burger.

Not sure what Doug Campbell imagines to be "fluffy" about the involvement of CIA asset George H.W. Bush and his CIA front company, Zapata Oil, in the Bay of Pigs invasion. It happened. GHWB worked for the CIA, and his Zapata Offshore company was involved in the Bay of Pigs op. I think Mr. Campbell is focusing on the issue of Prouty's apparently mistaken belief (in 1989) that CIA Operation Zapata was named for GHWB's CIA front company, Zapata Oil, rather than for Cuba's Zapata Pennisula. This is HUGE, folks! Prouty was assigned to provide supplies for CIA Operation Zapata in 1961, and he thought the CIA named their op after GHWB's Zapata Offshore Oil Company. Geez... How "nutty" can an Air Force Colonel be? 🤥 It's the biggest Prouty scandal since John McAdams accused Prouty years ago of being a Holocaust denier and a Scientologist. Perhaps Mr. Campbell doesn't know that Prouty was never a CIA insider. He didn't formulate CIA plans or name CIA ops. He worked as a USAF liaison to the CIA-- providing transportation and resources for their special ops. And he wrote about his observations of CIA black ops from the outside.

$5,000? That's chump change for Don the Con. Now, will they finally jail the Orange Bloviator when he violates the gag order again?

George H.W. Bush founded Zapata Oil in 1953, and the Zapata name was, allegedly, inspired by the 1952 hit movie, Viva Zapata, starring Marlon Brando. GHWB worked for Allen Dulles and the CIA beginning in (?) 1953 after graduating from Yale. GHWB was originally outed as a CIA agent by an un-shredded FBI memo discovered by Joseph McBride, which described J. Edgar Hoover debriefing, "Mr. George Bush of the CIA," on 11/29/63 about the FBI "investigation" of JFK's recent assassination. I think Joseph McBride originally discovered and publicized this famous Hoover memo about GHWB in 1988-- a few months before the Presidential election between GHWB and Michael Dukakis. 'GEORGE BUSH,' C.I.A. OPERATIVE | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov) So, not only was GHWB a known CIA agent on 11/22/63, he was sufficiently important to have been personally debriefed about the FBI's aborted investigation of JFK's murder by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover! Zapata Oil was a CIA front company that was actively involved in the CIA's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Zapata Oil's early associates and investors included CIA agents and assets like Phillip Graham and Dresser Industries. So, Prouty's private comments to Weissberg (in 1989) about Zapata Oil and GHWB's involvement in the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion were substantially accurate. Curiously, Zapata Oil's SEC records from 1960-66 have gone missing, somewhat like George W. Bush's Texas National Guard Records during the Vietnam War. It's a "family of secrets," as Russ Baker informed us in detail. HRG Group - Wikipedia As for Barbara Bush, (nee Pierce) as nearly as I can tell, she had no known middle name. Not sure what to make of the "Barbara J." reference, if it's accurate.

Opinion | The Spectacular Failure of Biden's Middle East Policy | Common Dreams October 20, 2023