Benjamin Cole

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

So a intend serious thread is denigrated to bashing short people.  I had a short friend once.

 

 

Great song. No, I am not denigrating short people. Those two people in the Denny Z photo look tiny. Like HO scale figures. Something about the photo....maybe a wide angle lens effect? 

I watched the "Killing Oswald" film over the last two night. Short-hand, I give it a "B." 

I will prepare a review in the next week or so. If anyone wants to jot down some comments here for my consideration, have at it. 

56 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Friendly advice- don't pretend there is an equivalence between nude protests at Parliament and 1/6 if you want to be taken seriously when discussing history and politics...

If there are young women at these nude protests, I think you should provide a photo, as evidence. 

41 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

The WaPo film clips clearly show Brian Sicknick being sprayed with a chemical, then retreating in distress.

Also, I don't want to unfairly impugn Diaz's reputation, but, as a graduate of the top-rated medical school in the U.S., I'm underwhelmed by his C.V.  He's a graduate of a foreign medical school in the D.R. who did a residency in Detroit.

I remain skeptical of Diaz's conclusion that Sicknick's death was unrelated to the January 6th attack.

What potential chemical toxins were screened for at autopsy?  Why the 100 day delay in releasing his findings?

 

I looked at some clips on MSNBC and PBS of tussles between police and protestors, and I do not see Sicknick. There is one clip, that looks like him, after an event and behind the front lines, and he walks to a wall and rests briefly, appear to shake it off, and walks away. 

Are you able to link to a Youtube that shows an identifiable Sicknick being sprayed?

The Diaz autopsy or medical examination is not online, that I can find. I cannot answer any questions about the autopsy. 

Diaz, of course, is from the DR. He was not a US citizen who could not get into a US medical school, and went foreign. Diaz appears to have earned positions of increasing importance through his career.  

It would interesting to have a Cyril Wecht, or someone of that calibre, review the Diaz autopsy. 

My guess is Diaz, an administrator in a Democratic Party stronghold, did not want to release the autopsy as Sicknick was lying in state, and so on. If anything, the pressure on Diaz would be to find that Sicknick died heroically battling  rioters, preferably by a blow to the head. I am sure the Capitol Police wanted that version. 

Sure looks to me like Diaz did his job, kept as low as possible, and then released the results when it would cause less ripples. He played along as much as professional obligations would allow him. 

Probably, Diaz is deserving of admiration. The Democrats are the ruling party nationally, and in DC, and we live in extraordinarily polarized times.  Sicknick had been manufactured into a hero by the Democratic Party, laid to rest in the Rotunda. 

But Diaz did his job. 

That's my take. 

 

 

 

12 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

This was my view from behind the fence in 2010, arrow pointing to the x on the street.

Those two people to the right of the arrow---they look like they are three feet tall. But not shaped like midgets. 

11 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

Nobody says he was totally uninvolved. No one. Why do you think the only options are him in the snipers nest or him being a 100% innocent bystander?

In your scenario he was a professional part of a professional fake flag operation. Why wasn't he in place on the sixth floor at 12:25, the time when Kennedy's car was supposed to pass?

In your scenario, in five minutes he ran up five flights of stairs, ran the entire diagonal length of the sixth floor from the nw corner to the se corner through a maze of boxes, grabbed a rifle of some sort, and fired at the last few possible seconds. That's what he has to do in five minutes.

And then in the next three minutes immediately following, he ran back the full diagonal length of the sixth floor through a maze of boxes, stashed the Mauser, then ran down five flights of creaky stairs, not seen or heard by others also descending at the time.

After all this, he was not sweating or out of breath.

It's just not humanly possible to do all that in that length of time, and not be noticeably sweating or out of breath, it simply isn't.

This isn't a matter of differing opinions and agreeing to disagree about a meaningless piece of trivia, this is about common sense and reality. No matter how young and in shape you are, you're still going to show some signs of exertion running up five flights of stairs, a maze twice, and down four flights all in one go. Olympic athletes are in the best possible physical condition, and even they display physical signs after strenuous exertions. Oswald might have been young, but he was no Olympian. How many years since basic training? Any witnesses say he was exercising regularly? These facts matter.

And we are not even mentioning:

- Lack of nitrates on his cheek.

- That he was not seen or heard by others descending those creaky stairs at the same time. If he was "practically going downhill" then he would be dropping his full body weight repeatedly on those stairs every flight. You know that, I know that, anyone who has ever descended a flight of stairs rapidly knows that.

- The natural stress that would also come along with the act of firing a rifle at the president of the United States.

Not only was he fitter than an Olympian, he was lighter than a feather, invisible, the world's greatest actor, and also had nerves of steel. A real pro, so why wasn't he in position at the time the target was passing?

Denny Z-

People have walked off the lengths and LHO (not LOH) had time to get to where he met Marion Baker. It was tight, but doable. 

Getting upstairs in five minutes is no big deal. Time yourself going up five flights of stairs sometime. 

https://www.studyfinds.org/heart-health-good-climb-four-flights-stairs-90-seconds/

This study suggests between 45 seconds and 90 seconds for four flights, and the latter group is slow. 

LHO was only fleetingly looked at when he was by the coke machine. He may have feigned calm, and no one took his pulse. Remember, LHO was a CIA asset, who got himself into the Soviet Union by faking a suicide attempt. He once slugged a Marine sargeant. Probably participated in a fake assassination attempt on General Walker. Passed out leaflets supporting Castro on the street of NO. He was in his line of work. 

The LHO cheek nitrates test was administered too late, and LHO may have washed his face in the interval.  Speaking of perspiration, too much face sweat can wash off the nitrates. Also, if LHO fired a single shot, or there was a flow of air from the window outwards, the amount of nitrates would have been less. Pat Speer addressed this issue at length, even getting into Guinn's super-duper nitrate tests...but by then the casts had been washed....I would not consider the cheek tests indicative of anything. 

But hey, maybe LHO was not in the sniper's nest. Maybe it was Eladio Del Valle. 

My best guess is that what happened on Nov. 22 was a fake false-flag assassination attempt, piggy-backed on by people who shot for real. This fits all the evidence we have. 

9 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Why do you abbreviate Lee Harvey Oswald as LOH? Just curious. 

A senior moment. OK, moments. OK, I sometimes forget what day of the week it is. BTW, what were we talking about? 

5 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

Here are the newly released WaPo/DOJ videos showing precisely where Sicknick was standing when he got sprayed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/sicknick-attack-video/

Behind a paywall...

On 2/16/2021 at 9:36 AM, Chris Barnard said:

 

I think one of the most frustrating things is that if you were to mention in social circles that you believe that 35th US President, John F. Kennedy was murdered as part of a conspiracy (ie a plot involving more than one person), that people will look at you as if you think the moon is made of cheese or, that you have a poster of David Icke or Alex Jones on your wall. That is a generalisation, society is certainly staggered in terms of peoples capacities to critically think and question conventional narratives. At least in my observations, there seem to be at least five types of people who seem to indulge in conspiracy theories. 

• There are low IQ, or limited education types who are incredibly impressionable and would believe just about anything that is in front of them, without questioning it, they are also the same type that nods slack-jawed, glassy-eyed when a president says anything at a rally. 
• Next, there are the resentful types that hate the government, because they don't drive a new Mercedes and live in Malibu, so they will spew anything that attacks anybody or anything linked to wealth, success or authority, as it makes them feel good. 
• Then you have the people with a decent level of education or life experience, who try to weigh things up and see what seems logical or probable based on their understanding of how things work or can work. I suspect that describes many of the people here. 
• Next are the people who could be any of the above who have the first-hand experience witnessing a conspiracy at play, no matter how big or small, they have experience of such a thing happening. That could be a fireman, lawyer, soldier, diplomat, journalist or even Lee Bowers working on the railroad.
• Lastly, you have highly intelligent people who are extremely well-read and who may have studied various fields, they have a strong understanding of domains such as psychology, history, political science and anything that would allow them to efficiently analyse scenarios in a logical and informed fashion. 

For anyone who really gets into the JFK evidence, there can only be one conclusion, and that's that there was more than one person involved and more than one shooter. But, how many people in the public domain just will not listen or even look at it, because of the stigma attached to such a belief? I am sure you've all experienced that when talking to friends, family, or even partners at times. It is very frustrating and when you make your clear case so that a toddler can understand it, they then change the subject or make a throw-away comment to devalue the truth they've just been told. Very few people like being wrong but, there is a much deeper reason why they are reluctant to accept even when your argument is compelling, logical and backed by evidence. The main reason is that they have trouble accepting is their trust for the mainstream media and google search results. 

Britain's use of propaganda during the Boer Wars and WW1 was so powerful as a tool, that governments began to mimic the tactics used in peacetime. Logically, why wouldn't you make use of something that is such an effective tool in persuading the masses to comply with a government directive. For those of you who don't know, Britain was telling its citizens that Kaiser Wilhelm II's German soldiers were taking babies and driving bayonets into them on their march through Europe. You can imagine the profound effect this had on the citizens of Britain and other nations, hearing this unimaginably reprehensible thing. The result was you had the allies understandably full of passion and raring to fight this evil sweeping Europe. The problem was; none of it was true about the bayonets and babies, it was an outright lie by the British, a deception. A young German soldier who was wounded in Ypres, Belgium, toward the end of WW1, recovered and when the war was over, began to study the British propaganda campaign during WW1 very carefully. That young man was Adolph Hitler, the effectiveness of the Third Reich's use of propaganda under a man called Joseph Goebbels. led to disastrous consequences. They used a series of lies to agitate passions amongst the German people during a very depressing time for the German economy, suggesting the Jews were responsible for many of the country's misfortunes. Anti-semitism turned into people wearing badges, working as slaves and genocide. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and various propaganda chiefs (Suslov, Shepilov etc) we saw an equally effective use of propaganda which resulted in mass murder in numbers never seen before on the planet, intellectuals executed, networks of forced labour camps (The Gulag Archipelago) where innocent farmers were dehumanised, in what is now the Ukraine, who earned just a little bit more than other people were brutally raped & murdered. Because they were murdered, there was nobody to produce the food and an estimated 10,000,000 starved to death. China adopted similar methods and all told in the 20th-century experts state the number between 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 were dead as a result. There are lots of lessons to be learnt in that period but, propaganda was the tool to achieve it all. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda

It may seem I have sidetracked there but, it seems what is fundamentally not understood by most of the public is how powerful propaganda is as a means of persuasion. The former paragraph is ample evidence that people can be made to do just about anything. It is also evidence that human beings have a natural proclivity to conform to authority. If we think the Germans during WWII were all made to do the reprehensible things they did by force, we're wrong, some were but, it's overwhelmingly the case that most people just conformed to propaganda and the words of authority. This correlates to the conspiracy theory argument. If a human being told repeatedly, for days, weeks, months and years that something is so, it becomes truth to that person in most cases. In the same way if you repeatedly receive ads about a certain product with positive language, a lot of people will end up buying it. That is a tried and tested formula, that plays out in many forms but, works very effectively. Ideas and products are sold to the public in the same ways. 

As a population, most of us trust the government and the news. We may disagree with some things but, many things we might be on the same page. The human mind trusting news networks or governments is down to several variables but, ultimately as a voter or reader we must subscribe to the concept that government is doing us good, that it is in the interests of humanity, compassion and Judeau-Christian values. If a news network persistently runs stories about kindness, compassion and improving things for everyone, and exposing injustice we are likely to trust them, as it fits our values. When that same network tells us Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK and acted alone, we think, why would they lie? When that same network tells us some middle eastern or African leader is a bad guy, and we need to help restore democracy in that country for the good of its people, the same again, we think; that sounds good, why would they lie? 

What if the public understood that the news networks were just a bunch of people like you or me, earning a lot of money, and sorted into a hierarchy. That hierarchy has the owners at the top, then an editor and so on. Instead of our concept that all journalists are like Lois Lane or an Erin Brokovich type character exposing truths and corruption. What if the reality at a news network like Fox or CNN is that the owners/editors dictate what is covered and how? It's them who have the decision if a story goes to press or how it is told, it is they who refuse a story or assign a journalist something else to cover. Not the idealistic young Vicky Vale. We know about the late 50's Dulles moles in the press like Ben Bradley, why would we assume that those 8 or so weren't the tip of the iceberg? Why were we assume that those numbers haven't multiplied exponentially? Someone would have talked? A Dorothy Kilgallen type perhaps? For those of you that buy into Fletcher Prouty explanation of assets being placed at high levels of the military-industrial complex or FBI, why wouldn't they do the same with the press, considering its power? The press carries an enormous amount of power, the people who carry that power are not elected to that position. There is enough public information available to see how media networks are funded, we don't even need to get into special handshakes at high-brow country clubs or anything too elaborate. Let me asks the sceptics, what if they turned a blind eye to high-level corruption and were being used as a piece of apparatus for private entities to make as much money as possible? This argument will vary depending on the country and the network, the BBC for example works almost like a counterpoint in the UK. At a glance they seem at loggerheads with the conservative party, in reality, the BBC assists policy. We never sit and think; hang on, the BBC is mostly funded by the state. But, if it was Russia or China we'd make a flippant remark about the people of those countries being under a spell or brainwashed, as the government owns the media. 

The subconscious plays a huge part in absorbing propaganda and shaping our thoughts. I sometimes wonder how much of part it plays in whether we accept a conspiracy theory or not. If you've just had 50 years of the words; freedom, liberty, & democracy drummed into your brains through government and media channels, as well as film, documentaries, TV & books, what chance do you have of believing the US government on some levels isn't virtuous? Perhaps the most staggering example is that a person can believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK but, that a 9/11 conspiracy is inconceivable. One apparent thing is that people from both sides will never accept the opposing view, no matter how much evidence is in front of them. But, some people are not logical thinkers. Does patriotism and love for one's country play a part in preventing you from finding the truth? It almost certainly does. As does being at the epicentre of the propaganda, being a direct target of it. I would be more blind to any British related deception, which Americans might easily see. I might identify American government propaganda much more easily than an American person. Someone in the middle east might see both America and Britain with perfect clarity. Some will seem out of "left field" and they'll be some curveballs in there. We can judge them vs what the news networks and what our governments told us.

Let's take some popular conspiracy theories in relatively recent history and ask ourselves which are credible, probable or something deserved of a tin foil hat wearing loony. 

The Federal Reserve Creation & Fractional Reserve Banking 

The Iranian Coup - Mossadeq

The death of UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld 1961

The assassination of John F Kennedy 

The assassination of the Diem brothers 

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr 

The assassination of Robert F Kennedy 

Watergate & Nixon's resignation. 

Iran Contra

The Oklahoma City Bombing 

9/11

War in Afghanistan

War in Iraq II



To be honest, could look at many of the coups in South & Central America, many have been touched upon by researchers here. For a lot of this, you don't need to read authors embellishing, you can now read declassified papers from the government and see the evidence. Then we can get into the following:

Operation Paperclip

Project Bluebird & Artichoke

Project MK ULTRA, Midnight Climax

Operation Northwoods

Operation Mockingbird

etc etc 

All these are things that started as conspiracy theory or still are considered as so. We may as well consider some of the ones that get the worst reputation in the public domain. 

UFO's

Chemtrails 

Covid

Vaccines

Eugenics 

Fluoride in the water supply

Bayer Monsanto chemicals changing the sex of frogs

How many of the above are just plain absurd or ridiculous theories? How many have some truth in what is being alleged? How many have had their original context taken and distorted into something else? These are all questions we should ask ourselves before dismissing them. Of the ones above that are true or have some truth in them, they would all need the complicity or apathy of the media to succeed without a pubic outcry. 

It's all very well me pointing to significant world events, but, many JFK researchers here have also come across this on more of a macro level. How many of us have seen character assassinations? Is Jim Garrison the most famous? Or JFK himself? Or the many people that spoke out in the direct aftermath of the assassination, up until the present day. Mainstream media plays a huge role in facilitating that, and as pointed out above, they are trusted by most of the public and they have the loudest voice. It simply is not possible to destroy the reputations of upstanding citizens without the use of media tools, that's the only way you convince the public. Should I add Sprague to the list? Or Gaeton Fonzi? Or even Oliver Stone, who was on top of the world after Platoon and a pariah even before the launch of JFK the film. I am sure many of you are astute enough to identify people with axes to grind in your everyday lives, why don't you see it when it comes from the media? If we take away the Republican/Democrat bias here and look at a conspiracy theory that hit the headlines in late 2019, (which should be free of that political bias). What are your thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein and how the mainstream media has covered the case? Is that good investigative reporting? Is it honest reporting? Was the president and the former president, WBC investigated enough? Were the answers satisfying in terms of what he'd been up to and with who? Were the circumstances of his death satisfying in terms of having answers? It's taxpayers money that paid for the investigation. It was a sham. 

Another topic relating to the media is the acceptance of 'coincidences' or ' incompetence' as a determining narrative to explain something that looks deliberate, suspicious or corrupt. We hear phrases like; "coincidences happen" or "we are all human" to explain away something that looks entirely improbable. Of all the very talented, highly educated reporters, not one of them seems to understand mathematical odds or probability. Similarly, of all these exceedingly smart media people, nobody seems to understand the concept that if you are someone who has a degree from a first-rate institution, and you have climbed your way to the top of society, that you are a very competent human being, often in multiple domains. The world is so competitive, you have to be. When people at that level make a series of catastrophic errors that costs the taxpayer a fortune, you should be raising your eyebrows. The ones who raise their eyebrows now, are the "conspiracy theorists". That, in a roundabout way, has created an environment of soft-censorship. Nobody dare speak up about what they are seeing. That is a chief complaint we see on the forum, if you question a president's motives for going to war, you're a conspiracy theorist. 

In the past year, we've seen press agencies and politicians reportedly warn of the dangers of conspiracy theories, there has been a concerted effort. That will now look justified after the attack on the US Capitol. But, the cost to us all is free speech. On top of that, we have big tech zealously censoring the public, removing channels, content, comments, and it's implied its because they are compassionate or woke. The MSM has openly supported social media and internet censorship, even the BBC suggesting we follow China on this. That kind of talk would be unheard of 20 years ago. What was one with the legal apparatus and framework prosecuting individuals for breaking laws? Did it work right? Yes. Now we have another unappointed, unelected body deciding what enters our thoughts daily. Young people are sometimes spending 5 hours+ on social media each day, the impact is profound on the human mind and tech companies are deciding what we are exposed to and what is hidden. Their algorithms will throw up what they think is best from a web search, their social media platforms will show you content based on their engineering. If you're thinking, who cares?! Just consider how that works in the run up to elections promoting candidates. I would highly recommend you have a look at how Cambridge Analytica did this in 2015/16. If you're writing articles about JFK conspiracy or any others, don't expect it to get seen. Those organisations have tremendous power. Others are more qualified than I who could perhaps shed light on the origins of some of these tech giants, leading back to DARPA/ARPA and the Pentagon. That's another conspiracy theory you may want to look at. 

Interestingly, since Covid began, the sales of "1984" by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Bair) have rocketed. Another author from that same ilk is Aldous Huxley who (he coincidentally died on the same day as JFK, along with CS Lewis), wrote "Brave New World". The two of them differed in their opinions on where the next big threat would come from and how, and the two books have been much debated by intellectuals. Huxley's book was released in 1931, but, in 1958 he released another version having changed his mind. In 1961 he felt that the next threat of totalitarianism or tyranny would not come overtly through force, but, through the subconscious, he said:

“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will, in fact, have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGkymdspups&t=4s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning

If you struggle with that concept of freedom being an illusion, this video makes you ponder your current situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92GG5k6aUfs
 

If I look at Robert F Kennedy's "Ripples of Hope" speech in South Africa, Some of the warnings are so prescient, they so aptly describe what we are seeing now and so many of the mistakes made between 1966 and 2021. The reference regarding timidity rings particularly true in terms of the pubic apathy toward the loss of our rights, free speech and resistance to immoral things. 

"First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities – no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honourable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty, but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are – if a man of forty can claim the privilege – fellow members of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo_91HbhHTo 

 

President John F Kennedy said:

"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427

That was taken from the 1961 speech to the American press, which was largely centred around the threat of the Soviet Union but, he makes it very clear about an internal threat in that passage. That speech was one week after the Bay of Pigs failure. He references that nobody should attempt to stifle the news, he probably had experienced that first hand.




I see most of the public are now like the toddler who falls over, and before crying, looks at his parents to see their reaction to see if they should cry or not. Society does that with the news. The human neurochemistry is being cheated by all manner of things, including the blue light emitted by your phones and computer screens, which induces the release of dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure. That same chemical is released when we get likes on Facebook or Instagram, the more likes we get, the better we feel. It's no wonder people are running about virtue signalling to collect likes. It's no wonder there is so much attention-seeking behaviour in general. Our body is supposed to function on an effort vs reward system. If you complete a difficult task, you get a flood of dopamine in the brain. If you do exercise, you get serotonin release too, a chemical associated with feeling happy. Originally we needed those chemicals to motivate us to get out of our cave and go hunting to feed our family. What tech giants, food manufacturers, or any manufacturers of stimulants have tapped into, is that our neurochemistry can be hacked. You may say, oh that's great, people feeling happy or pleasure but, there is a big downside, depression and feeling low. Alcohol for an example is a depressant, initially, you get this flood of dopamine, you feel great and the next day you have never felt lower, emotions all over the place. We wonder why so many kids and teenagers are self-harming now, it's because they are tracking their social status on Facebook, Instagram etc and they feel incredibly low when they can't get the 'likes' or engagement. The government knows the reason for this, as do psychologists, as do the media, as do tech companies, as do those marketing and selling products. When I read the words of Huxley above, I see another facet of this manipulation of society. If we are a democracy, which means "rule by the people, for the people", then why are government, big tech, and the mainstream media doing this directly to the detriment of the many and only benefitting the few? We can say it's just capitalism, the best system so far but, it is not democracy. If we have our thoughts shaped by news sites, academia, film, tv, documentaries, social media ads and books, to our detriment, is that democracy or something dystopian? 


To me, the question is not whether the mainstream media and government are deliberately complicit in suppressing conspiracies, the question is; to what extent are they doing it? 

Great stuff, Chris. Not a dull moment. I am in agreement. 

Though I get some flak for it, I repeat:

One reason to study the JFKA in depth is to understand how government, media and commerce work together---in the present day, more so than ever, due to the internet, and the scale of the multinationals. 

1 minute ago, Denny Zartman said:

This was my view from behind the fence in 2010, arrow pointing to the x on the street.

Denny Z--

Great picture. Thanks for posting. There is the x. So, it appears the concrete wall would present a problem, until the limo emerged from behind it. 

Funny how small those people in your photo look, to the right of the red arrow. They look shorter than the red sedan going down the road, like people in a H0-scale railroad display. 

1 minute ago, Denny Zartman said:

Benjamin, why do you persist in believing Oswald was on the sixth floor shooting?

Oswald was seen on the first floor at 12:25 and on the second floor at 12:32, and he was not sweating or out of breath. That's just not possible. Do the facts not matter to you at all?

Denny Z-

OK we just have a different take on this one. No biggie.

LOH was a young man, former Marine. It was cool day in Dallas (note people wearing coats). 

Surely, LOH could ascend the floors to the sixth floor in a few minutes. As for coming down---sheesh, when you are 24, going down a flight of stairs is nothing. It is literally downhill. 

As for the 12:25 sighting of LOH...is that a hard time, or could be off a minute or two? The 12:32 time is solid, but the 12:25 time is witness testimony. People do not monitor each other by the minute. 

But, you could be right. It may be LOH agreed to be the patsy in a false-flag fake assassination attempt, and then edged to a place where he could make a quick getaway. Someone else (Eladio Del Valle?) was to take to fake shot at the President, and then run down the back stairs and get out. The plan was for the rifle to be traced to LOH, but by then he would be long-gone. But Del Valle shot in earnest as did another gunman, and possibly someone from the Grassy Knoll.

The problem with LOH being totally uninvolved and a patsy is his CIA background, and his going home to get his gun, by taxi too. He knew he had been set up. How could LOH know he had been set up if he was a mere box-boy doing his job? 

 

 

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

DOJ releases new videos showing Jan. 6 assault on Officer Brian Sicknick (msn.com)

And where is Sicknick? 

This seems like just the type of coverage I was pointing out.

I see there are, in fact, images of a protestor spraying something. Also the Capital Police appeared to have sprayed something.  

But where is Sicknick? 

The invisible man!

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

DOJ releases new videos showing Jan. 6 assault on Officer Brian Sicknick (msn.com)

Ron--

 

And where is Sicknic

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

Anytime someone suggests Trump "took on the deep state" I just laugh. That ship sailed the day Pompeo told him not to declassify the JFK files, and Trump just did what he was told.

Trump didn't take on jack sh*t.

There's the imaginary person people wanted him to be, and pretend he was, and then the cold hard reality of him being a fragile-ego'd incompetent dolt.

Pretending he was "taking on the deep state" was a ruse concocted by Roger Stone and it's pathetic how many suckers bought into it.

Thanks for reading. 

I concur that Trump should have released all the JFK files. 

I think a good case can be made the Deep State took on Trump, if not the other way around. 

But hey, different opinions we all have. 

 

46 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

A.  Shot to the throat, 22, over the wall.

B.  One of the head shots (right part of the picture), past the wall, from something bigger and a different shooter.

Food for thought?

More thoughts,  guns in a car trunk immediately.  Walk away, mingle, mix in.  Secret Service, DPD credentials

  

Those are great photos, thanks. 

1 hour ago, Chris Davidson said:

PhotoCredits: Greg Davidson(miss you brother)

 

Those are great photos, thanks. 

Certainly looks like a shot is possible from that section of fence, except possibly if the limo were behind the protruding corner of the wall. 

I have always wondered about the shot to the throat---do you posit it went through the windshield?

Also, I think I see the "X" on the pavement (right-hand photo), which supposed to line up with the fatal shot to JFK. This does suggest the shooter had to wait until the limo cleared the corner of the wall. 

12 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Respectfully, I dunno, Ron.  In the last seconds before JFK exited the plaza without a mortal wound, there may have been a "Free fire" order, or a call for shooters who hadn't fired many rounds to risk exposure and open up.  But I feel those last seconds were a frenzy to complete the mission, hence the "flurry" of shots that Kellerman reported.  Shots fired in the last few seconds of an an ambush that was only seconds long in total would seem synchronized.  I'd imagine that every shooter was tracking the head and ready in the last seconds, and the spotters called in the "flurry" they'd been trying to avoid until those seconds arrived.

I roughly agree.

Even if the shooters had walkie-talkies, they cannot simultaneously shoot (well, depending on your definition of "simultaneous," but generally speaking). Human reaction time, sighting in, and so on.

My guess is LOH (the patsy, he believed he was in a false-flag fake assassination attempt) fired one shot as an intentional miss (possibly the Tague shot), and that was the signal to others to fire away. 

The other shooters may have almost simultaneously fired as a result. 

BTW, if there was a Grassy Knoll shooter, he could not fire on the limo until it cleared one of the walls around the colonnade (to the left of the Grassy Knoll-picket fence), and the parapet, pedestal upon which Zapruder stood.  That is, the wall obscured the view of the limo. 

There is, of course, endless controversy whether JFK was shot from the front. My guess is the Grassy Knoll shooter was a decoy, or diversion, and it worked. The Grassy Knoll shooter (with Secret Service credential) covertly fired an intentionally smoky round from a snubnose .38. Snubnose are loud, and issue a lot of smoke-muzzle blast especially if the right ammo is chosen. That explains why so many people smelled gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. 

My guess is the true assassins fired from behind, with near simultaneous strikes, and one miss that hit Connally. 

Interestingly, before they were put under control, the JFK autopsy-ists speculated there had been two shots to the rear of JFK's head. Thereafter, the wound on JFK rear head wanders up and down by a few inches, depending on which report you read. 

 

 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

      The conclusion that Sicknick died of mere "natural causes" unrelated to the mob attack is improbable on two counts-- 1) the low probability (p1) of a fatal basilar stroke in a man of his age, and 2) the coincidental timing (p2) shortly after the assault.  So we get p1 x p2-- a very low number.

      Another unknown is the nature of the toxins.  What exactly were these rioters spraying at the cops out there?  I saw a recent story about a January 6th rioter who was spraying the police with some kind of aerosol wasp killer.

      What toxins were screened for at autopsy?  What are the elimination half-lives of possible toxins used by the mob?

      Was Sicknick sprayed with something that caused a fatal hypertensive crisis or cardiac arrhythmia (resulting in basilar ischemia?) 

      As for Glenn Greenwald, my impression is that he sold out to Rupert Murdoch.  I know that he had a falling out with the guys at The Intercept-- including such esteemed investigative journalists as James Risen and Jeremy Scahill.

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

      The conclusion that Sicknick died of mere "natural causes" unrelated to the mob attack is improbable on two counts-- 1) the low probability (p1) of a fatal basilar stroke in a man of his age, and 2) the coincidental timing (p2) shortly after the assault.  So we get p1 x p2-- a very low number.

      Another unknown is the nature of the toxins.  What exactly were these rioters spraying at the cops out there?  I saw a recent story about a January 6th rioter who was spraying the police with some kind of aerosol wasp killer.

      What toxins were screened for at autopsy?  What are the elimination half-lives of possible toxins used by the mob?

      Was Sicknick sprayed with something that caused a fatal hypertensive crisis or cardiac arrhythmia (resulting in basilar ischemia?) 

      As for Glenn Greenwald, my impression is that he sold out to Rupert Murdoch.  I know that he had a falling out with the guys at The Intercept-- including such esteemed investigative journalists as James Risen and Jeremy Scahill.

W. Niederhut:

Neither here nor there, but I took my son one day to Kaiser Permanente  in Hollywood, got on an elevator with a good-looking woman in her 20s, who was limping. Stupidly, I wise-cracked she injured her leg ski-ing when there was no snow. It was in the middle of summer, ha-ha funny joke by me.

No, she replied, she had a stroke. 

Evidently, young people have strokes. 

To repeat, I think there are substantial grounds for skepticism regarding the JFK autopsy, as I already outlined. 

So far, the Sicknick autopsy is opaque (I looked online, and it does not appear available, or even the medical examiner's report, if that is not the same thing).

So, we are left with the statement from the examiner's office:

The chief medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, attributed the death to natural causes rather than a homicide committed by another person. Diaz found that Sicknick, 42, died of "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis."--MSNBC

Is there something about the history of Francisco Diaz, the chief medical examiner in DC, that makes you skeptical? 

Also, despite who knows how many still and video images of the Capitol riot that day, seemingly capturing every episode....Sicknick is invisible! How is this possible? Was he even there?

Again, I ask you---can you find any image of Sicknick at the Capitol during the riot? I can't. 

One possible scenario is that Sicknick was not involved much in the Capitol riot, but there is a better benefit and pension if a cop is injured or killed on duty. So, the Capitol Police union posted  his death as one in the line of duty. 

 

 

 

 

. 

36 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I would’t worry too much, as long as the majority of threads are purely JFK focussed. I have a thread running and it’s mostly media / corruption themed but, I am drawing as many parallels with things that were done or some suspect were done in the JFK era or in the direct aftermath. There are lots of parallels. Whether I look at the military, pharma, media, academia, there is this common theme of reciprocity, a synergy, mutually beneficial arrangements that are well below the public radar, Smedley Butler might say “rackets”. Its all very incestuous and usually money is the only thing that tells the story, no matter how much misdirection. 
 

I think the media are largely the marketing/PR department for the globalists/deep state/power elite/corporations, academia is teaching compliance and obedience, the military serves 6 - 10 munitions/military hardware companies. News outlets being funded (paid advertising) by big pharma are serving big pharma, as are medical journals the same way, as are faculties reliant on funding. Seemingly reputable trusted figures are prostituting themselves by putting their names to things which ultimately deceives the public. It is a swamp alright . Even right down to lobbyists and the way political funding / donations are achieved. 
 

I am just reading “Conspiracy Theory In America” by Lance De Haven-Smith. He explains the history of conspiracy theories in the US, starting with the founding fathers and England, then on to Hamilton and Burr. He has a whole chapter on the JFK assassination and CIA’s role in deflecting critique of the Warren Commission. He explains how dangerous the CT term is, as it means institutional corruption or governmental malfeasance is never even looked for in any investigations of significant events,  not on a conspiracy level , which makes circumstances right for a conspiracy. He points out this is exactly what the founding fathers were worried about, that they thought criticism and suspicion of the state was vital if democracy was to be maintained, ie free speech. I am just at this part where he is discussing the 25th amendment (I think), its where in 1965 an act is passed where the VP can replace the president if a letter is sent claiming the president is unfit to serve his duties. The author is making the case that the powers that be wanted a way to remove a leader through non violent means. That this may have been under discussion about JFK with all his ailments and Dr Max Jacobsens amphetamine salts injections. The military had seen JFK buckle with the Bay of Pigs (in their view) and do the same with Krushchev. 
Its certainly interesting that this law came in under LBJ in 65. 
What I like about the JFK stuff is that he’s really organised the events around the assassination in a rational way that makes the state seem like they’d be no.1 suspect in any investigation or at least right up there. He talks about the Warren Commission & 9/11 Commission a fair bit, and their focus not ever really being on a possible inside job, whilst ignoring evidence. I am half way through it but, I suspect you and @James DiEugeniowould find it interesting. 
 

On another note, I posted on my thread the other day about the planned Covid Commission. The person in charge is Philip Zelicow, yes, the same guy who was executive director of the 9/11 Commission, took over from Henry Kissinger but, like Henry had to recuse himself before the end as it transpired that he’d written the Iraq War policy for President Bush. What is more, for the 9/11 Commission he wrote a template with topics of discussion, sub headings, picked all staff, lines of enquiry, had absolute control, etc before the investigation even began, he had predetermined his outcome, and it was like a running joke at the Commission that a fix was in. It mirrored the style of the Warren Commission. You can’t even make this stuff up ....  

Chris B.--

 

Let me go and read your thread. I agree, in general, that academia and media, and the inside-the-beltway crowd is more than ever controlled and owned by the multinationals. They are the government today, and becoming the de facto media. 

As long as we are powerless here in the Education Forum, and few read us, we will be OK. 

If ever we gain a larger following...we might be de-platformed. 

28 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

Thanks for posting this one, Benjamin. Again, it’s an interesting read and clearly took a while to write. It always seems to me that there are majority Democrat voters here which can make for a blind spot when Trump or Republican’s are brought into a topic. That blind spot works the opposite way too. For this reason it makes it difficult to have a purely logical conversation as passions are high. Those of us living elsewhere in the world should be cognisant that our media will have another slant. 
 

I felt despite Trump’s persona, which might have fitted nicely in a Caddy Shack movie, I think he did go against certain interests but, was smart enough to keep some interests onside. If you have no allies, there is only one outcome. You have to do things incrementally. I think he pissed off the military and frustrated them but, seemed to tow the CIA line. He could have given us some more JFK documents, right? He certainly wasn’t rogue or free range in my opinion. With Covid it’s very difficult to judge his presidency for me at least. I’ve seen the case made here that he was a disaster and i’ve also seen the case made that it was the usual Pepsi and Coke situation, nothing changes, you just have a different actor for 4 years. Because of the media persistently propagandising the public and shaping opinion, it’s very hard to look at it objectively. 
 

In response to your question about the Wuhan Lab and the absence of coverage; I would need to dig out links but, back in April 20 I saw it being alleged/stated that US interests had poured millions of dollars into that particular lab in China for research reasons. Which may well have been inconvenient information for the narrative at that time, which was “China Virus”. 
 

Just addressing Kirk’s point about Britain and isolationism. Though I don’t live in the UK, I am a UK citizen and was there during Brexit. My opinion based on my experience is that it’s complicated, barely anybody voting to leave the European Union that I knew was doing so because they wanted to be isolationists, having our own laws and say over our own affairs is important to the people. The media myth run by remainers was that people wanting to leave think the British Empire will return and they’ll be former glory, it was nonsense and a propaganda tool for the pro-Eu lot and part of the unfounded claim that people voting ‘out’ are racists. People IMHO were unhappy about the revolving door on immigration, they would have preferred a points based system and better checks, and they were unhappy about the octopus that is the EU forever increasing in power and influence, Greece being a vassal state. We didn’t want a united states of Europe, though we wanted a good relationship with our neighbours and to be trading with them. The third reason to a lesser extent in my area was the common fisheries policy, in the eyes of many it was very unequal. I actually did a two hour interview with Nigel Farage on these issues, who I believe is touring the US at present. Germany was the biggest bill payer and Britain was the second in terms of contributions, its difficult to swallow when people are making decisions against your best interests and you are picking up the tab. 
We have lots of globalists, I am sure you’ve heard of Tony Blair, always gets an invite to Bilderberg, you may remember him for not finding WMD’s and Iraq Ii. He is constantly the poster boy for globalism chirping about the EU And China. In the ruling class there are tons of people who’d sell the country down the road if it added to their own net worth. Working class people are different, they want quality of life/safety.

With Japan I just see them as a vassal state unable to arm up and dominated by US military bases trained on China. 
 

I have my thoughts on the aims of the globalists, I can see the direction it’s taking, it’s getting pretty overt. It worries me China’s alarming social policies may be the forerunner or example for what we’ll experience next. 
 

Anyway, this has been a pretty tired effort replying, apologies in advance for the spelling and grammar issues. 

Chris B-

Thanks for reading. 

Obviously, these are huge issues, and trying to examine such in an article or reply necessitates a lot of shorthand and generalizing. 

It is fascinating that in large parts of the world, ordinary people are turning against globalism and global institutions. Yet the think thanks, academia and media are thick with globalists, and multinational hire the best lobbyists. 

The worst crime in the world is to be considered a "nativist," or not cosmopolitan. 

What I wanted to do with place in contect JFK's run-in with (and possible murder by) the globalists of the 1960s, and mention that Smedley Butler had similar experiences, as did Trump. And to highlight the media environment. 

Again thanks for reading, and I promise next post will be totally JFKA. I am thinking about a guy named Thomas Peasner, or a review of "Killing Oswald" by e2 films, now available on Youtube. 

Thanks again for reading. 

 

3 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Ben:No, I do not regard Trump as a saint. 

To be clear. I hardly said after acknowledging your adverbs, that you think Trump is a saint. I said your key premise that Trump is anti globalist is just false.

Ben: I define my preferred US foreign-military policy as "non-interventionist."

Well you might be surprised but from what I've gathered most people here want at least a much more non interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

Ben:I would like Iraq and Afghanistan (or any other nation) to blossom into democracies, and even to have large private-sectors. What I want and what can be achieved...

It's just like someone here mentioning the other day that the U.S. should have free health care. It's like a million things. We'd all like that.

Ben:The multinationals love the CCP and China. 

The CCP? I think that's just another monolithic statement. I assume some sarcasm. I don't think there's any  love, and probably a lot resentment  among financial elites for the CCP. And on the other hand, there's some with great support for Hong Kong. And there's a sizable amount of world elites without great Chinese exposure.

Kirk:

OK, you make good points. 

On the CCP and multinationals, I take issue with your statement, but hey, that's my opinion. 

My next post will be pure and micro-topic JFKA. 

 

37 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

And yet the new Republican Party ceaselessly, and without apology, tells us that Democrats are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led socialists hell-bent on imposing socialism, taking away everyone's hamburgers, and cancelling everything. Certainly an accurate way of describing a party that is walking hand-in-hand with Wall Street and multinational corporations, wouldn't you agree?

Unless I'm mistaken, I think it would be fair to say that a reasonable percentage of people in the "national security state" could be described as either military, former military, or at the least military-friendly. And I'm sure those types of people just loooooove The Squad and the Democrats in general.

The "Deep State", which is either not all-powerful since both Obama and Trump were elected, or is all-powerful and so mysterious and seemingly contradictory in their reasoning as to be virtually indistinguishable from random chance that they engineered the elections of both Obama and Trump.

And what was the result of Trump's trade policies?

https://www.uschamber.com/issue-brief/trump-s-trade-policy-assessment

https://www.bea.gov/news/blog/2021-02-05/2020-trade-gap-6787-billion#:~:text=The U.S. international trade deficit,exports decreased more than imports.

https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/83746

-

Benjamin, in my opinion your piece just reads as thinly-veiled pro-Trump propaganda and as I see it the relevancy to discussion of the JFK assassination is dubious. I'm not sure what you hope to achieve from this op-ed. There have always been moneyed forces behind the scenes throughout history. I believe it's probably rare when there isn't. That's said not to support the concept in any way or say that's the way things should be; I'm just saying it's already a well-known fact of life and probably not news to many.

I personally don't believe the forum benefits from going off-topic again discussing issues whether or not Russia interfered with the 2016 election or whether or not Donald Trump was fit for public office. Discussions on the "Deep State" and whether or not Trump was treated fairly or not just serve to divide us on non-JFK topics and ultimately distract from the forum's purpose.

Denny Z-

 

Well, thanks for reading, and yes my article rambled a bit. 

I am actually not much of a Trump fan, and I loathed Nixon, back in the day. 

My concerns are that we have a national security state, aligned with multinationals, who run foreign, military and trade policies to their benefit, paid for by US taxpayers. The Deep State, the Shadow Government, you name it. 

When Nixon asked to see the CIA files on the Bay of Pigs, he was rebuffed. What kind of executive branch is that, when the CIA operates with impunity, and refuses to comply with an executive order?

On Trump, the Deep State was after him even before he became president. 

I agree with you, the GOP is wrong in their stupid popular definition of the Donks as "socialists." The Donks are really crony capitalists, with a repellent and heavy dose of ID politics tossed in. 

In addition, the old-line GOP---the Bushes and so on---was totally on board with the globalist vision. 

You may be right on whether or not the Deep State should be discussed here. 

But I see this thread that runs from Smedley Butler, to the JFKA to the present day. 

If you want to understand the JFKA, you have to understand that thread.

But hey, thanks for reading. I am running out of topics anyway. If I post again, it might be a JFKA micro-topic. 

 

 

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

     I remain skeptical about the conclusions of the medical examiner in the Brian Sicknick case, as I mentioned the last time you raised this subject.  What is the probability that a young man of Sicknick's age would suddenly die of unrelated "natural" causes shortly after being assaulted by a violent mob?

     Brainstem strokes are very rare in men of Sicknick's age, in the absence of unusual risk factors like extreme hypertension and/or stimulant intoxication.

     It also seems odd, IMO, that the medical examiner waited 100 days to release his unusual conclusion that Sicknick's death was unrelated to his assault and likely exposure to toxic chemicals on January 6th.  

     If there was a Deep State conspiracy to make Sicknick a martyr, why was the medical examiner's report published in the mainstream media at all?

     I also see few, if any, meaningful parallels between JFK's murder by people in the U.S. military-industrial complex, and Brian Sicknick's untimely death after an attack on the U.S. Congress by a delusional, angry mob of Trump fanatics.

     Trump is no victim of the U.S. Deep State.  His improbable 2016 election was facilitated by FBI Director James Comey and Rudy Giuliani's Weiner laptop associates in the FBI.  It was also enabled by weeks of persistent headlines before the election about Hillary's Emails in the U.S. mainstream media, including the NYT-- often based on anonymous FBI "leaks." Meanwhile, Dean Baquet put the kibosh on any pre-election NYT stories about Trump's ties to Russia-- as we learned from the staff at NYT after the 2016 election.

How the Media Covered Hillary Clinton's Emails | The Takeaway | WNYC Studios

     

W. Niederhut:

Thanks for reading, and yes I presented a bit of a ramble. If you had the patience to wend your way through, I thank you. 

On the DC medical examiner---I do not follow.  

On the JFKA autopsy, we have reasonable grounds for skepticism. We have the insights of Cyril Wecht, who has reviewed the case and evidence in detail, among many others. You can look for yourself at the bullet hole in JFK's coat. The CE399 bullet has been debunked. We have the Z film. We are reliably informed the autopsy scene was chaotic, with the autopsy-ists answering to brass. 

On the DC medical examiner---has anyone challenged the results? Including the Capitol Police union?  

Can you show one videotape of Sicknick being struck, or even being sprayed? If he was sprayed, was it incidentally by police or by protestors? 

On strokes, you must know that, unfortunately, young people get strokes. I know a potter in LA had a stroke in his late 30s. Double-sad, as full recovery is not possible. 

On strokes: 

"It's true that your stroke risk increases with age, but stroke in young people — even infants, children, and adolescents — does happen. In fact, between 10 and 15 percent of strokes occur in people ages 18 to 50, according to a study published in February 2020 in the journal Stroke"

---30---

I do not only take my cues from Glenn Greenwald, but he is a tenacious and unaligned reporter. His views on the media treatment of Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop story, or the Wuhan lab leak, are worth considering. 

Well, we have different perspectives, and that is what makes a good conversation. 

 

 

 

 

Just now, Benjamin Cole said:

 

Ron B.

As always, thanks for reading. 

Bear spray has the same effective ingredient at police pepper spray. 

I think this is a rather weak case to make, that Sicknick did not die of natural causes.  I would say the pressure, in this case, was to "blame" protestors. I lived in DC (1980-4), and it is a Democratic stronghold. 

 

 

13 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

You're definitely the only here obsessed with that Brian Sicknick story, Benjamin. You've mentioned it a number of times even  injecting into other detailed thesis of yours to the point that I was wondering. "How did this get here?" You are certainly sure of yourself about this.You certainly wanted this to be your "scoop" What are your sources?

You've written a lot of stuff here.  It would a long while to respond to every thing. I'm going to try to focus on a few things.I appreciate your scope. When I first came to the forum, The devil always seemed to be the exact same deep state government military industrial complex, often I thought perpetuated by Di Eugenio at the time.  I thought it was very limiting in scope. It's since broadened a lot to include what you're talking about.  

I get the impression with some of the UK residents who have recently come to post here that the absolute worst thing, most evil slimy thing that any Brit could call another Brit is a"globalist". Would that make you all "isolationists" Ben? I certainly couldn't imagine a current world where Japan or the U.K., with rather limited resources, what some fossil fuels?,  would ever take an isolationist tack toward the world. Wouldn't that just be suicide? I don't know. In the past, wasn't that why they built an empire?

But I take your point. I do understand a lot of the sentiment behind anti globalism. But I think there's so much this willingness to believe that the experiences in the UK and the US are so identical, there's this naive belief that Trump is some knight in shining armor, and somehow not a globalist, when he's  the most globalist,  pro business President in American History. The first 2 years of his Presidency was the greatest "perfect storm' for the Republican party in at least 100 years of American history. But having said that, I think Trump's recognition of the China economic threat will be what he is singularly most remembered for. I think the world will be  more wary of the Chinese economic dominance in the future, largely because of Trump. But in reality, he was also a horrible bungler. However strong a stand his economic people , (which were probably his most competent people) took against China, Trump actually tried to undo for his personal pursuits by offering favors to Xi to again, investigate the Bidens to aid his re election prospects! And that's just for starters.

Just as the the world power focus has changed since the days of the JFKA. The elites you preach about aren't near as monolithic as you think. Just as people in the U.S. who could be said to be part of these elites could be say Democrats or Republicans, they're not all as freaked about Trump's policies as you project. Some honestly do see a nationalist threat from China. And there's already been a lot of shifting of  supply chains. A lot of it is going to SE Asia and India. I've gotten the continual impression from you that all of them have been against Trump from the very beginning, and  wanted him out. That belief is identical to the hard core Trumper's disenfranchised. The pairing off of the elites was really very gradual. 

Ben said: Trump, being Trump, entered the DC landscape in 2016, and immediately and bluntly, inarticulately, woefully, bombastically, and unskillfully warred with the global Deep State and its media minions. Well, and anybody else too.

I might add "ineptly" and" corruptly" to your list of adverbs.  And crediting Trump with intentionally focusing that on the "global deep state' is really overrated, but "anybody  else too" is underrated. To use your words, bluntly, inarticulately, woefully, bombastically, and unskillfully and I'll add ineptly, corruptly are not really qualities anyone really wants from a leader, whether you're an everyday person or an elite. With exposure everyday to these Trump attributes, In this specific case I think there's just a bedrock of people, who didn't really need a persuasive media to brainwash them into wanting Trump gone, though I know that's always the prevalent projection here.  Besides the elites like the great majority of people, of course want the preservation of the country as well.

 

Kirk G--

 

Well, as always, thanks for reading. 

No, I do not regard Trump as a saint. 

I define my preferred US foreign-military policy as "non-interventionist."

I would like Iraq and Afghanistan (or any other nation) to blossom into democracies, and even to have large private-sectors. What I want and what can be achieved....

Elites are not homogenous, and there are occasional schisms sometimes between the multinationals and elements in the US military, both with their own agendas.

For example, the US military is much more wary of China or sees "the China-threat" as a major source of funding and growth. The multinationals love the CCP and China. 

Again, thanks for reading. We have different viewpoints, and that is what makes an intellectual stew. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Benjamin,

     I remain skeptical about the conclusions of the medical examiner in the Brian Sicknick case, as I mentioned the last time you raised this subject.  What is the probability that a young man of Sicknick's age would suddenly die of unrelated "natural" causes shortly after being assaulted by a violent mob?

     Brainstem strokes are very rare in men of Sicknick's age, in the absence of unusual risk factors like extreme hypertension and/or stimulant intoxication.

     It also seems odd, IMO, that the medical examiner waited 100 days to release his unusual conclusion that Sicknick's death was unrelated to his assault and likely exposure to toxic chemicals on January 6th.  

     If there was a Deep State conspiracy to make Sicknick a martyr, why was the medical examiner's report published in the mainstream media at all?

     I also see few, if any, meaningful parallels between JFK's murder by people in the U.S. military-industrial complex, and Brian Sicknick's untimely death after an attack on the U.S. Congress by a delusional, angry mob of Trump fanatics.

     Trump is no victim of the U.S. Deep State.  His improbable 2016 election was facilitated by FBI Director James Comey and Rudy Giuliani's Weiner laptop associates in the FBI.  It was also enabled by weeks of persistent headlines before the election about Hillary's Emails in the U.S. mainstream media, including the NYT-- often based on anonymous FBI "leaks." Meanwhile, Dean Baquet put the kibosh on any pre-election NYT stories about Trump's ties to Russia-- as we learned from the staff at NYT after the 2016 election.

How the Media Covered Hillary Clinton's Emails | The Takeaway | WNYC Studios

     

 

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Stimulant intoxication.   I wondered if bear spray might cause some such delayed reaction as a stroke.

Ron B.

As always, thanks for reading. 

Bear spray has the same effective ingredient at police pepper spray. 

I think this is a rather weak case to make, that Sicknick did not die of natural causes.  I would say the pressure, in this case, was to "blame" protestors. I lived in DC (1980-4), and it is a Democratic stronghold. 

 

OK, Education Forum friends, here you go.  This will ruffle some feathers, and this piece admittedly rambles here or there, and is not footnoted and so on, being an op-ed of sorts. But I think the basics herein need to be addressed

From JFK To Brian Sicknick: Deep State Behind the "News"

There is a strong thread that runs through so many high-profile events in US life, often woven by the hidden hand of the national security state, its service to the dominant multinationalist-globalist class, and its influence over a sewn-up US media.  

Media

It hardly need reiteration here that the US media (guided by the CIA) fulsomely embraced, rather than skeptically unraveled, the Warren Commission report in 1964.

And the same media torpedoed Jim Garrison down in New Orleans in 1969, helped kneecap Richard Sprague, first chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in 1978. 

But still, it is always worthwhile to ponder this paragraph in the pillar of 1960s print journalism, Life magazine, which ran in the December 6, 1963 issue. 

"The 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed to the sniper's nest [in the TSBD] just before he clutches it." 

At the time Life went to press the story of the JFKA for public consumption was garbled, and included the idea that JFK had been shot in the throat. 

But Oswald was behind JFK, in the TSBD. So, Life solved the emergent problem by falsely citing the Z film, which it simultaneously withheld from public view. The cynicism may be breathtaking, but is becoming routine in US media in the present day. 

Life was famously owned by magazine magnate Henry Luce who had printed in 1941 the influential article “The American Century,” a grandiose globalist vision of democratic postwar world that also also effectively justified US military and covert action anywhere on the planet to favor multinational business interests. 

The story is well-worn here in The Education Forum that after the JFKA the media, especially Life, went to work defining Lee Harvey Oswald as a leftie-loner-loser, and characterizing those who questioned the accepted official WC narrative as cranks, or communist sympathizers. 

To be considered a  “communist” in the 1960s was to be radioactive—remember that word, “radioactive.” 

The Globalist State 

As has been so excellently chronicled by James DiEugenio and others, President Kennedy was at odds with the multinationals and the national-security state of his day, on issues from Cuba, to Indonesia, to the Mideast, to Africa to Vietnam. 

At bottom, JFK (who had been in real battle in the South Pacific, and knew what war was) did not want to engage in a lengthy, perhaps permanent string of covert actions, occupations and wars in both hemispheres to favor colonialist powers or multinational business interests.

Some posit it was this friction that led to the JFKA, certainly a believable scenario.  

As the charming JFK was a media favorite in many circles for good reasons, the multinationals and the national security state—aka the Deep State, the invisible government, the shadow government—could not so easily “do a Trump” on JFK, and dispense with him accordingly. 

Also, while the mainstream national media was compliant back in the 1960s, it was also a bit of a hodge-podge, and not the nearly monolithic lapdog of the globalist system as it is today. Unlike Trump, JFK schmoozed the media, with some success. 

The epic battle behind the scenes at the Kennedy White House, that between JFK and the Deep State global interventionists, was hardly told to voters, and remains obscure to this day.  

Brian Sicknick

“He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer and Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob” 

That was headline in The New York Times on Jan. 8, about Brian Sicknick’s death a day after rioters briefly occupied the Capitol. 

The story reads in part: 

“Then on Wednesday, pro-Trump rioters attacked that citadel of democracy, overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials. With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”

If the circumstances of Sicknick’s death were simultaneously not so sad and galling, the suddenly icon-worshipping New York Times description of the Capitol building as a “citadel of democracy” might be taken as satire. In iterations perhaps in the previous edition, the paper of record defined the Capitol as a symbol of systemic white racism. 

The “lobbyist stronghold of the neoliberal world order” is probably a truer definition of the domed structure. 

Of course, The New York Times was hardly alone in this wretched skewed first draft of history; the Washington Post and every major news outlet covered the story much the same way—although as early as Jan. 8, the KHOU-11 television station in Houston and some other outlets were running a version of events that did not hew to the dominant narrative. More on that later. 

The truth did not stop The Nation from reporting on Feb. 3 that Sicknick was the “Capitol Police officer who was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.” That’s a visceral image. 

Yet in bottom paragraphs of a cable news story published on the same day, it is conceded that “medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.”

Veracity took a backseat, or was pushed under the bus, as Sicknick’s remains (ashes in urns) on Feb. 2 were displayed in the Capitol Rotunda, with credulous and reverent attendance by mass media. 

The ruling Democratic Party, so eager to defund the police in other circumstances (at least rhetorically) reached the very pinnacles of eulogy in describing Sicknick, and even subsequently impeached a non-sitting US President—that being Donald Trump—on sedition and murder charges, to bring the political theater to a crescendo. 

Murder charges? Yes, on Feb. 2 House Democrats charged that “The insurrectionists [instigated by Trump] killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”

But by then Washington had became a police state, not only of the usual break-ins, blackmail, censorship, wiretaps, surveillance,  honey traps and warped PR and media coverage, but where concertina wire and green uniforms confronted the scant tourists. 

A Competent Autopsy 

The Washington, D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner may not be top-flight at autopsies, but it is not Bethesda Naval Hospital, the site of the JFK “autopsy.” 

The world now knows Sicknick died of natural causes, suffering from two strokes a day after after the events at the Capitol, as reported the DC medical examiner. If Sicknick was doused with bear repellent, it played no role in his death, and the examiner found no evidence of Sicknick had been sprayed.

This was a story that ran on Houston radio station KHOU on Jan. 8, two days after Sicknick’s death. 

WASHINGTON — A police officer with the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) died after he suffered a stroke at the Capitol during riots, according to US Capitol Police in a late statement Thursday night.

There are other published stories well before the House impeachment proceedings began, to the effect that Sicknick had texted his family before leaving for the hospital, and said he was in good shape but had been pepper-sprayed twice. No one seems to know if Sicknick was sprayed by rioters, or incidentally by police. 

After the riot at the Capitol, the mass media decided that right-wing extremists, racists and Trump supporters (all one and the same) backed sinister and evolving terrorist groups, and were a danger to the Republic. 

Dangers? In America, about 80,000 people a year die from drug overdoses, mostly opioids. About 40,000 die from apolitical gunshots and another 40,000 from vehicular deaths. 

But the Deep State wants Americans to fear domestic terrorist groups, presently “right-wing” but previously left-wing and sometimes religious- or racially-based. 

How many people have domestic terrorists killed of late? 

The JFK-Trump Parallel

It is doubtful there are two US Presidents further apart on the spectrum of intelligence and personality than Trump and JFK. 

Trump was and is a vulgarian, boorish, lazy, disinclined to read or exert any mental effort, but very inclined to garish and demoralizing petty squabbles and pompous posturing. (This image may have been exaggerated by mass media). 

JFK was a lifelong scholar, a book author, witty, earnest, urbane, charming. War hero. 

But as JFKA scholars know, true history is stranger than fiction.

For all of their differences, JFK and Trump shared and angered a common and dominant adversary—the globalist security archipelago and its commercial backers, aka the Deep State.    

And by the time Trump was president, what had been an 800-lb gorilla to JFK had become the zookeeper in a panopticon.  

The Real Story?

The real story is that globalist Deep State has become so bloated, so expensive, so ubiquitous that even a Trump recognized the Frankenstein that runs Washington’s foreign, military and trade policies. 

Inside the Beltway, the perma-wars, endless occupations, the surveillance state and an interventionist global mercenary military are lionized, and worldwide “free trade” is endlessly touted as an unalloyed benefit. 

Outside of DC, I have never met a citizen who wants to pursue military, or indeed, any solutions in Afghanistan. How about Iraq? Another Vietnam? Flatten Raqqa again in Syria? Drone-bomb civilians in Yemen or Pakistan? Destabilize Cambodia? Make war for Ukraine? 

Some are beating the drums that the US must add onto the $150 million recently spent in Kyrgyzstan, lest it become like its neighbors, the authoritarian regimes of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. (Who knew?)

And it is so unreasonable to wonder that the populous, rich and technologically advanced nations of Germany, Japan and S. Korea cannot defend themselves, more than 50 and 75 years after being liberated? 

But what is the purpose this US-taxpayer-financed global archipelago of weapons and soldiers?

International trade? 

Trade

What ordinary American does not ponder what “free trade” did to Detroit and so many other once-proud industrial citadels? 

Why do living standards feel lower than they were 60 years ago? Why are homeless populations becoming permanent in major cities? 

If wages are soft in the US—as they have been for 50 years—why are de facto open borders for illegal and low-wage immigrants the norm? Why is the offshoring of industry considered a positive? 

Americans know something is wrong, even if the media obscures as much as it reveals.  

The popularity of Trump is one result.

(It is beyond the ken of this article, but necessary reading is Trade Wars are Class Wars by Michael Pettis and Matthew Klein.  In brief, there is no such thing as “free,” “fair” or “foul” trade.  The largest influences on international trade are state subsidies and relative wage repression.) 

So, who benefits from global trade? 

Enter Trump 

Trump, being Trump, entered the DC landscape in 2016, and immediately and bluntly, inarticulately, woefully, bombastically, and unskillfully warred with the global Deep State and its media minions. Well, and anybody else too. 

And so how did much of the globalist media define Trump and his backers? By today’s radioactive word: “Racist.” Think back to the treatment of WC critics as “communists.” 

And the Democrats—that party that a couple generations ago was mostly aligned with the employee class, and hosted a better-late-than-never antiwar movement in 1968—where were they? 

They ridiculed Trump’s naïveté at daring to cross Washington standards, the intel community and the Deep State.  

Trump had not yet set foot in the Oval Office, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Shumer (D-NY) chortled that President-elect Trump was being “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. 

The well-coiffed TV hostess Maddow got a satisfying chuckle out of the Deep State harpooning Trump, evidently blissfully unaware she was fast-becoming the latest iteration of an intel-community “usual idiot.” 

Appallingly, CNN, MSNBC, and other outlets, though characterized as “left wing,” are now bristling on-air with former Pentagon and CIA officials who shape news coverage, including that of the loathsome intruder, Trump. The cable-news reporters no longer report on the national security state, they present the news alongside of it. 

Without apology, the new Democratic Party that Trump battled was and is aligned with globalist Wall Street, Silicon Valley, media-entertainment, as well as the national security state and the multinationals.  

The same elite Olympians that put “Back Lives Matter” on their advertising also ache to craft business deals with the Communist Party of China, no matter how deep the  repression that increasingly defines eastern China, Beijing, and now Hong Kong. Or how much shifting millions of jobs offshore undercuts working Americans, whether Black, brown, white or otherwise. 

But Trump did not see things the same way. 

Digression—Glenn Greenwald and the Russia Hoax

Glenn Greenwald is no one’s fool, and no pal of any political party on the planet. Whatever Greenwald believes, be believes it sincerely. And the guy does his homework.

Greenwald told Matt Taibbi (another great observer) that the Russia hoax was a “lawfare” tactic, a coup by legal means: 

Maybe it’s not so new (lawfare), but it’s more prevalent, it has this modern form, where instead of doing overt coups, you give the cover of concocting corruption scandals against democratically elected leaders you dislike.

I actually think one example that is similar, though not identical, was what the CIA did in manufacturing the Russiagate scandal against Trump.

Greenwald is worth listening to. 

Which suggest a great irony: It was the not the Russians who effectively meddled in the 2016 and 2020 elections. It was the Deep State. They tell you it was the Russians. 

Why Does the Deep State So Loathe Trump?

1. Trade

2. The Global Guard Service For Multinationals 

The primary goal of US foreign policy is keeping the globe open for commerce for multinationals. There are many earnest soldiers inside the US military, and no doubt sincere public servants who actually try to promote human rights inside the State Department. But the modern US armed forces are badly used as a global guard service for multinational commercial interests.

Human rights? 

Before Trump, everyone did business with the China Communist Party (CCP), without blinking an eye. 

Trump barged into this scene, by unilaterally placing tariffs on imports from China—the factory marital bed of of the CCP and multinational manufacturers. And not only manufacturers—Wal-Mart, the largest bricks-and-mortar retailer is thick with China product, while online colossus Amazon is flooded with China gew-gaws. 

In JFK’s day, the multinational community was much smaller. Outfits such as Freeport Sulphur (now FreeportMcMoran), or the Dell fruit empire, or Cuba-based cattle ranchers and sugar farmers were huge for their day, but pale next today’s global behemoths. 

In general, the first iteration of postwar globalists—those who targeted JFK—were in the commodities business, the extracting of minerals or the growing of fruit and crops. 

The biggest US businesses in JFK’s time were still domestically oriented, and were building, sourcing and servicing inside the US.

Today, the globalists rule—a corporation such as Apple, tight with Beijing on computer and smartphone factories, has a market cap north of $1 trillion (yes, “trillion” with a “t.”). The money-manager BlackRock is heavy into China, especially real estate, and manages $8.7 trillion in assets. Yes, also with a “t.” 

Disney not only makes and sells films in China (for which they publicly thank authorities in Xinjiang for help) but operates theme parks in Shanghai and Hong Kong (the CCP is a co-investor in the Shanghai park). Disney owns the television network ABC, by the way. NBC-Universal runs the Universal Beijing Resort, and yes, owns the NBC network. 

Ever wonder why US mass media was so intent on dismissing the Wuhan lab leak explanation for COVID-19 virus? The “de-bunked” lab leak conspiracy theory?  

The Global Guard Service 

With tens of trillions of dollars invested globally, and fiduciary obligations to shareholders that trump loyalties to any nation or region, or indeed any creed or principle beyond bare compliance to law (and even that may be fizzle in large gray zones), the multinationals demand protection, diplomatic and military. 

What is remarkable is how strong this alliance between multinationals and the co-opted US military has been.   A century ago Smedley Butler was a US Marine, becoming the most highly decorated of his time, and raising to the rank to Major General. After a professional lifetime in battle, including WWI other fights too numerous to mention here (but sojourns in the “Banana Wars”) Smedley left the military.

The book Smedley wrote: War is a Racket.

A quote:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

Has much changed since Smedley?

Why Study the JFKA?

So why do we persist in studying the JFKA?

Of course there is obvious: A fellow human being was murdered, and it is everyone’s responsibility to see justice done thereafter. 

And not only that, an elected leader was struck down, possibly in a coup. If we believe in democracy, then again we have a responsibility to seek justice.

But there is even more cause to study the JFKA, and that is to learn how commerce, government and media work in the real world. 

What happened before and after the JFKA, or the Brian Sicknick death, are not rare, but rather the way events are usually curated in mass media, especially in the current season. 

To my fellow JFKA’ers, I advise watching what the Deep State and media minions do to candidates, office holders and to policy, regardless of whether or not a certain candidate or office holder is a personal favorite. 

I consider this a parallel to the principle of freedom of speech. Even today, most people support freedom of speech whether or not we agree with the speaker.

To wear blinders when the Deep State torpedoes an unpopular President is no wiser. 

Beyond that, was Trump wrong to alter terms of trade with China, to want out of Mideast and foreign entanglements and to seek reductions in US global troop commitments? 

To limit immigration into soft US labor markets? 

Who says? And why?