Benjamin Cole
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Posts posted by Benjamin Cole
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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://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/83746
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
Let me post this again since Parnell wants to ignore it.
Please do not. Its an important article. Paul did something that no one had ever done before. I mean no one. He actually contacted many of these authors of history text books.
He asked them two basic questions,: what they had read on the JFK case, and what they based their statements on in their books. The answer to the first was, very little. A repeated answer to the second was Posner and Bugliosi.
But this is the clincher: in most of the cases, the author did not even reveal if he had read those two books! Does anyone think they read Bugliosi's door stop? No indication they did.
What Parnell wants to ignore is this fact: these authors understand the drift. No one gets ahead in the game advocating for the true facts of the JFK case e.g. Jim Garrison, Dick Sprague. We saw what happened at CBS in 1967. (Another one about which he says, I read that, let us ignore it.) Even "alternative media" PBS succumbed in 1993 when they hired the two hacks, Gus Russo and Dale Myers to do their cover up show, replete with Ed Butler.
The other thing Parnell wants to ignore is that this demonstrates that Kennedy's assassination was a political crime. It was not Oswald, or the Mafia. This is why Bob Loomis and Harold Evans did what they did with Posner. This is why Alec Baldwin could not get his program on NBC, as big a star as we was and is. They said to Alec something like, we have reconciled ourselves to the official story.
No one will ever know what actually happened to President Kennedy. So this unified theory that he talks about is pie in the sky. No one will ever know the actual way the plot worked and who the planners were and who the hit men were. One reason being the rigged autopsy. The other reason being something Parnell does not want to admit: the Warren Commission covered all that up. I mean way back then, attorney Stanley Marks accused them of doing just that. He did not buy the idea that they were in the dark as to what really happened. They were willing accomplices. And they kept at it for decades on in, even going after Oliver Stone 30 years later. And let us not deny this because Jerry Ford admitted it to Giscard d'Estaing years later when he was president.
I don't see how it gets worse than that. But Parnell will say, I read that. Doesn't matter if one of the Commissioners confessed.
🙂
James D-
Egads, the more one reads about the JFKA and US foreign-policy military history, the more depressing it gets.
The standard chatter from historians is clueless.
How many people understand the global security state and the multinational-commercial class for which it works?
Thanks to leads from you, I read up on Indonesia. In some respects, I wish I hadn't. It is like learning the US dropped 260 million cluster bomblets on Laos. They still go off sometimes, taking limbs. No one cares.
As you recently stated, there are few rewards for being informed.
Don't stress about people with different opinions. You do have admirers.
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4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
In my opinion, Mili Cranor is one of the best we have on the autopsy and the ballistics evidence. She does not have a lot of letters behind her name. But she knows the evidence as well as anyone I know.
In her review of Thompson's new book, part one deals with the "later shot" that Tink advocates for, the one after the 313 head shot.
In part two, she debates Thompson's idea of the throat wound being caused by a piece of skull matter. its a mixed review, but she ends up deeming the book an overall favorable rating.
Great stuff from Milicent Cranor.
I have stayed away from whether JFK was shot front to back, or otherwise, as I have concluded JFK and Connally were not struck by the same bullet (watch the Z film). So JFK's head wound comes too close, time-wise, to Connally's wounds, to have been executed by a single-shot bolt action rifle. Ergo, at least a second gunman.
Plus, you have dozens of experienced witnesses (vets, cops) smelling gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
So, somebody shot at JFK in Dealey Plaza, and maybe more than one person from behind. That means a conspiracy.
This is just the basics, indisputable.
You have to lie through your teeth with a forked tongue---like Life magazine---to present a different picture.
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If I ever knew, I had forgotten about the Pike Report suppression.
To this day, no ones seems to know what is the CIA "black budget."
"Democracy Dies in Darkness"
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5 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:
I’m not so sure that Angleton didn’t report to Jerusalem, and perhaps to the KGB. I found JFK’s ‘private’ communications with Kruschchev quite revealing. Both were worried about their own military hardliners. The Cold War was Big Business. As for Mossad, don’t you find it shocking that they hired Otto Skorzeny to carry out their mission against the Egyptian nuclear program? Skorzeny was a businessman, and a killer, with deep connections to fascists in Spain and elsewhere, and a major player in the ‘Fourth Reich’. I think he was part of the CIA’s QJWIN operation. LHO was not a Mossad agent, but he was also not a murderer. So when looking for who the shooters were and who hired them, the microscopic study of Oswald’s life, while yielding important clues, is also a bit of a rabbit hole. If you look at the evidence against LHO and decide it’s weak, tainted, planted, deliberately obfuscated, it’s time to look elsewhere.
Paul B-
I look at the evidence (much as it is) and I deduce that LOH was an CIA-intel asset, and was in the TSBD at the time of the JFKA, then went home and got a gun. He may have been a patsy (I think so), but he was likely involved. LOH is a valuable lead to put it mildly.
The national security state-globalist class wanted JFK out.
The above all strongly suggests elements of US intel-CIA, perhaps rogue, got JFK.
The JFKA cover-up was not rogue, and the murder of LOH probably was tacitly approved by intel higher-ups.
That's my take.
But more importantly, did you like my joke about reading the Damascus Daily?
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7 hours ago, Richard Booth said:
The reviewer complains that David Talbot's books don't have "Jews" listed in the index.
That's a telling complaint.
Richard B.---
Which reminds of an old joke.
Mr. Finebaum was on his porch in Jerusalem...reading the Damascus Daily.
So his son encounters his father, and asks, "Dad, why every day do you read the Damascus Daily, and not the Jerusalem Post?
"Aaach," says the father, opening up a copy of the Jerusalem Post. "Look at this this. Every day we are surrounded by enemies, besieged even in our homeland," the father said, pointing at various stories. "Not a day of rest."
Then the father unfurled the Damascus Daily.
"Look at this!" said the father.
The headline:
Jews Rule the World!
Control Finance, Media, Governments
"Which paper would you read?" asked the father.
---30---
Suffice it to say, no, LOH was not a Mossad agent, and the Dulles brothers, or Phillips, or Angleton, or Joannides, did not report to Jerusalem.
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2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
John Foster Dulles was the head of the Sullivan and Cromwell law firm, the "front desk" for them and Standard oil. Allen was a lead lawyer representing their interests world wide since the 1920's. When they formed the Council on Foreign Relations, and made Allen and Foster members. Standard Oil selling oil to the poopoo's after WWII started. They were reprimanded lightly for that. United Fruit - Guatemala. David was head of the CFR in 1963. The Dulles never left their service. Allen never left the service of the CIA, even after being fired by JFK. Just the tip of the iceberg. I'm no expert on it all. Corrections invited.
I entirely agree that from the days of Smedley Butler through the present, US foreign-military policy has always reflected the preferences of the multinationals, or globalists.
WWII was a shining exception, in many regards.
A lot about this is concerning, even more so that the multinationals today are larger and more powerful than ever. Sheesh, United Fruit and Freeport Sulphur are pipsqueaks compared to the BlackRocks, Apples, Wal-Marts, Googles, GMs and Disneys of today.
The US military has become a mercenary global guard service for multinationals----a million miles from what the Founding Fathers intended, which was a largely citizen-militia called up to fight foreign invasions when necessary.
The revolutionists who created America loathed, detested and reviled standing armies, and warned against foreign entanglements.
To speak this way today is to be regarded as a ingrate Putin-lover who coddles terrorists, or a Neanderthal isolationist nativist.
Still the most amazing speech of all time is President Eisenhower's farewell address.
This multinational ruling class of people heavily cultivated the post-JFKA media environment, perpetuated a fiction, flummoxed justice. Destroyed Garrison, destroyed Sprague, went after LA Coroner Thomas Noguchi, and too much else to catalog.
Did they order the JFKA? Harder case to make. Their underlings were involved. In the RFK case too, likely.
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Ron B.
OK, I will bite. How are the Rockefellers involved?
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It sure looks like Dick Sprague and Jim Garrison were torpedoed.
There was a lesser episode, but with same dread intent, made in the RFK case: Some elements tried to torpedo the Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Thomas Noguchi, who performed what Cyril Wecht has called a good autopsy.
Noguchi found that RFK was shot from behind at very close range.
Trying to square Noguchi's findings with the Sirhan shooting scenario...well, like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
I will put together a piece on the media hatchet job done on Noguchi.
One starts to see a pattern....
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5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
Take a look at who this guy is and what he does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Uscinski
Can TP be serious with this approach?
Not to belabor a point, but Uscinski could have a few good ideas, and indeed, certain elements of the public could be susceptible to conspiracy theories.
So what?
There could be 100 crackpot theories out there on various topics, and they have nothing to do with the facts in the JFKA.
And BTW, the mainstream media presented the Hunter Biden laptop story as a conspiracy theory, fomented by Russian disinformationists. And that the Wuhan lab leak was a "debunked conspiracy theory."
Egads. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has earned---with hard sustained work earned---the distrust of American readers.
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11 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:
You would not believe the abuse and "dismissive responses" I have received since I have been working on my current Maurice Bishop project. I had an email exchange with a prominent CT researcher who I assumed was above such tactics. How wrong I was. It would make for interesting reading but I (of course) have a policy of not revealing private email exchanges. So, it works both ways assuming your characterization of your exchanges with McAdams is accurate.
W Tracy---
I am sorry there has been umbrage in your JFKA work.
McAdams was dismissive of my inquiries, but not abusive, as I recall (been about 10 years).
What puzzled me, was that I wrote the McAdams that Connally did a full 180 in his seat, to look back at JFK, after JFK raised his hands to his throat. Around frames 260-280, you can nearly see the left profile Connally's face, from the perspective of the Z film. It is a concerned face, but not a face in agony. That does not look like a man who has been shot through the chest.
McAdams said Connally did not really turn a 180.
My other comments, to the effect that when it appeared Connally was shot and the head shot of JFK are too closely spaced to have been accomplished with a single-shot bolt action rifle were more or less ignored.
But, for the record, it was not an abusive exchange. It just left me puzzled, and thinking that WC supporters have circled the wagons.
Well, that's my little story.
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10 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:
In light of the vitriol displayed in this thread, it is unsurprising to me that McAdams chose to go to a JFK conference incognito. If I understand it correctly, he revealed his true identity at the conclusion of the conference. Where's the harm?
W. Tracy--
Impersonation does not sit right. Harm?
You can say "little" in the circumstance under question.
But such an action decreases trust, and rents the social fabric. So, the next time people convene, there is some distrust. Are you who you say you are? Do you have a hidden agenda? Are you gaining my confidence under false pretense?
I realize in modern America, no one seems to care anymore about the social fabric, or to have reasonable national pride, and feel they have civic duties.
Maybe I am naive, I think one should be straight-forward.
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3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
No. He earned his self befouled memory and it should be properly disseminated for the public in pursuit of the Truth for the sake of History.
History will not absolve us. History will not be kind to us. Can't remember who I'm quoting at the moment, but applicable.
Ron B-
Oddly enough, McAdams is one of the reasons that my interest in the JFKA was re-ignited.
Years and years ago, I was just anew nosing around the JFKA again (the first two iterations of my JFKA interest involved reading books, which is about all one could do. I might not have even known about JFK conferences, etc.). I had discovered the internet had radically changed the landscape (and 90% for the better) and discovered McAdams.
I reviewed the Z film online for myself, and noted Connally did a 180 in his seat after JFK moved his hands to his throat. Connally is seen looking back, with a concerned look on his face, but not a pained look from about frames 260-280. Connally does not appear to been have been shot.
So I sent McAdams a very polite e-mail, and received a dismissive reply. I again e-mailed politely, to another dismissive response, but no real answer. The third time my e-mail was ignored.
I thought to myself, "If that is how backers of the WC think, then something is wrong."
Later, I re-discovered (what many JFKA'ers already knew) that many experienced observers (veterans, police officers) smelled gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA.
OK, the JFKA was not looking like a lone gunman, based on what I could see with my own eyes, and what too many consistent witnesses had said about gunsmoke. I tend to treat witness testimony warily, as it is so garbled, whether it favors my view or not. But everybody experienced seemed in agreement they smelled gunsmoke.
So...there you have it. McAdams triggered me into being a JFKA'er.
Well, for me, forgiveness is something that you have to do (barring war criminals and true monsters). I have made mistakes in my life, plenty.
But each to his own. Still, let us look forward.
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25 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:
This is what happened.
McAdams went to a JFK conference, in as I recall, DC.
At that same conference, there was a journalist there who was going to do a hit piece on the critics. And he later admitted that is what he went there for.
He happened to meet up with a guy who was calling himself Patrick Nolan. Nolan supplied him with a couple of derogatory quotes. The problem was that some people there knew and recognized McAdams. So his cover was blown. But further, evidently, McAdams had done some work in advance to fit the profile of this guy Patrick Nolan (it was not the author).
So when the real Nolan read the article, he got furious and blasted McAdams online for stealing his name and using it to do something he would not do.
That was the real John McAdams. A covert operator, who also ran CIA recruitment ads on his acapella radio station.
If this description of John McAdams behavior is accurate (and James D. places an emphasis on accuracy in his writing) I do not see how McAdams can be defended.
I feel sorry for McAdams, who has befouled his own memory, but as he has passed on, probably less said the better.
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8 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
Looking for a photo of JFK speaking in Memorial Auditorium I remember but didn't find I stumbled across this. Some fantastic pictures of him there and elsewhere in Texas in 1960. Along with some very interesting commentary. Never seen before, by me at least. Well worth the read/view if you've not imho.
Interactives: JFK's Forgotten Dallas Motorcade (dallasnews.com)
Great stuff, the old b/w photos, and the picture of JFK with Willy's widow, Willy being a vet who perished with Joe Kennedy, JFK's older brother, in a WWII bomber.
Those were the days when the elites actually wore uniforms, and we had a draft, not a mercenary force. Of course, JFK served in the Pacific.
You won't see that again.
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8 hours ago, Mark Wengler said:
Lets get this stright. Oswald misses walker. who was mere feet away. Yet he hit JFK in a car that was moving away from him ?? I say B.S.
Mark W---
Thank for reading.
Yes, an accurate telling of the Walker episode raises more doubts than it closes off.
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25 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:
I don't disagree. Not sure what you mean here but yes Zapruder does not show Greer firing. Hickey is once again ridiculous. That's reasonable to me.
Yes, I mean the Zapruder does not show anyone inside the limo, or a follow-up car, shooting at JFK. No eyewitnesses reported as such, including the Connallys, Jackie etc.
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6 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:
I think that Greer-shot-the-president theory is pure disinformation, just like mortal errors ridiculous story (still highly rated on amazon, unfortunately) of SSA Hickey accidentally shooting JFK. They're both pure horseshit. A CIA Mockingbird wet dream. Meant to distract from real research on the subject as well as distill public opinion with sensationalism.
Ron B. and others:
I try to be as open-minded and gentle as I can be in JFKA discussions, as the hard details of what actually happened are not nailed down. In addition, there is planted disinformation afoot, and any of us can be fooled on some matters (including me).
But, after all, we have the Zapruder film and numerous witnesses. I see no indication anyone inside the JFK limo was shooting. Beyond that, who would plan to have someone inside the limo shoot a President in public and get away with it? And no one saw the Secret Service man with the automatic weapon shoot JFK?
Reasonable people can disagree, and do. But let us be reasonable.
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10 hours ago, John Butler said:
Thank you. That post was very interesting and instructive. I have never thought much of the Walker Incident. That is in the sense that the evidence was credible. So, I am going to attempt to summarize things for my own benefit.
Take the Walker photo that you didn’t mention. This is it:
Some one has manipulated the evidence. The license plate on the vehicle has been removed. Who did that? Lee Harvey, Marina, Ruth Paine, the authorities, or sinister forces? No one knows, or claims ownership of the deed. Would this be used it court?
I understand why you didn’t mention this. What evidence is available to connect this to Oswald? Marina’s statements. She said Oswald told her he shot at Walker. Supposedly, there was a photo album with more photos of Walker’s house. She said Oswald burned it after the incident. Can the words of Marina Oswald be trusted?
It is my belief that Marina Oswald was a triple agent. Early records of her behavior indicate she was a Russian “Honey Pot” or prostitute agent used at first by the Soviet intelligent services. When she met Oswald she turned into a double agent to secure her real purpose which was to come to the USA. Marina immediately and willingly begin to cooperate with US intelligence folks. A marriage was arranged which was wanted by both sides. Marina said she had two husbands. I believe that to be true. These were Lee and Harvey Oswald of doppelganger fame.
Here is a good example of the comparison of Lee and Marina and Harvey and Marina:
Even though the faces are basically the same, the hair and ears tell a different story. Harvey, in the right hand photo, has a different hair pattern then Lee in the left hand photo. Harvey has a strange receding hairline which he covers up with a comb over. To see this pattern find Robert Oswald's picture of his brother home from the service and on a hunting trip in 1958. Lee, in the left hand photo, does not have this pattern. The photos are contemporaneous. In comparing ears, Harvey, in the left hand photo, has a fairly unique pattern of a double bend in his upper left ear rim. Lee lacks that.
When she was safely in the US she turned to her real interests, the protection and promotion of the Soviet Union interests as a triple agent.
Other than her statements and the photo found at the Paine’s house, what evidence connects it Oswald? Supposedly, the Walker photo was found at the same time as the Backyard Photos. What greater validity then to be found with the Backyard Photos? Marina’s credibility? She was found wanting by the Warren Commission and others over time.
There was a note also discovered in a book sent by Ruth Paine, the mysterious Quaker CIA spy, to Marina about a month after the assassination. This note was used to incriminate Oswald. But, when examined by the FBI it did not have the fingerprints of Oswald or Marina on it, although it had the fingerprints of 7 others on it. The FBI found this note to be in Oswald’s handwriting. Others refute that. And, this note was found after several complete searches of the Paine residence.
Marina said that Oswald made several scouting raids on the Walker home. He did this carrying his rifle. Oswald supposedly didn’t drive. I guess he took a bus and no one questioned his carrying a rifle in the city of Dallas.
General Walker said the bullet the authorities gave him to examine was not right. It was not the same as the first one he examined at the time of the shooting. Oswald’s alleged rifle was a Carcano firing a 6.5 cartridge. Walker claimed the bullet was a 30.06 round and not a 6.5 Carcano.
Another piece of evidence come from a 14 year old boy. 14 year old boys are not generally believed when it comes to an assassination or other Kennedy matters. I give you Allen Smith as an example.
Anyway, this 14 year old boy, Kirk Coleman, told the Dallas Police he heard a shot around 9 to 10:00 O’clock. He ran to his window and saw two men behind the General’s house. They put something in the trunk of a car. Then, they drove away. Oswald and accomplice, or Oswald by himself, or two totally different people?
Could Oswald drive? It depends on who you talk to and which Oswald you are speaking about.
Was Oswald tied to the rifle used at General Walker’s home? Despite Marina, many say no. They cite that Oswald never picked up the rifle at the Post Office. There is no proof that he did. He never paid for the rifle due to the money order not being cashed at a bank.
John B.-
Thanks for your comments and posting that always-gloomy picture of the Walker house. It looks like Halloween of Friday the 13th every time.
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5 minutes ago, Richard Booth said:
Not only can a human being be so programmed, but we saw it operationally used with Sirhan Sirhan.
I suspect there may be more examples of people subject to "behavior modification" than we will ever know.
Richard B.---
I suspect as much, but have never found compelling evidence. Yes, a few examples are in the official iterature, under limited, perfect circumstances.
I did attend a live show once, where a hypnotist on stage apparently hypnotized bona-fide audience members. I happened to be sitting in the first row, and felt myself falling under the hypnotist's sway, but jerked out of it. I suspected the hypnotist was using a gas sedative or something to that effect (without any proof).
So, I believe I saw first hand how a hypnotist can in fact put someone "under" and they will walk around in their underwear etc. (Unfortunately, the hypnotist had little imagination beyond that, haha).
So maybe, if someone slipped Sirhan a mickey of some type....
The fact that RFK was shot from behind and at close range suggests the security guard shot him, but no one really saw it. Strange case.
From JFKA to Brian Sicknick: Deep State Behind the "News"
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
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.