Benjamin Cole

Larry H-- Every four years, people lament about their Presidential choices, and that the two major parties have ossified and become corrupt. Perhaps there were shades a gradation in the old days, and certainly JFK was a horse of a different color. Today? Today the institutional Democratic Party is more aligned with the Deep State and media censorship than the GOP. Note I said "institutional Democratic Party." There are many fine individuals in both parties, and across the political spectrum. I have met fair, smart and witty Trump backers, and intelligent people who voted for Biden. But I am hardly the first to note that institutions can first become rotten and then ossify. To become coprolite.

In recent years, we have seen what used to be thought of a "liberal" or "left-wing" elements in US society gravitate towards authoritarianism, censorship and alliance with globalists and the national security state. Hey, I am an old left-winger, believe me. From "The Wrap" review of JFK Revisited: "Stone’s film is not a companion piece, making-of or follow-up to his all-star 1991 drama 'JFK' (a director’s cut of which played in the Cinema de la Plage section on the beach the night before) but a procession of white, male authors and experts in boring shirts hectoring you with their theories and old books." ---30--- So identity politics is now just another useful bludgeon in the hands of Deep State. If you are hip, you don't believe these old white guys.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/oliver-stones-crackpot-jfk-revisited-through-the-looking-glass-is-a-hilarious-mess This is what passes for "alternative" press these days. The author, Caspar Salmon, is a little weenie film critic in London.

Robert B.-- Sorry I do not have the cite, but after 1963 the CIA set out to define JFKA research as the work of "conspiracy nuts" with an actual emphasis on the word "conspiracy." It is hard to fathom, but US media is more in tune with the national security state than ever. They are howling at CNN that the US should stay in Afghanistan, after all the US has been in S Korea for 75 years. The multinationals want a global guard service, and every public agency wants a deeper mission and bigger budget. And they own the media.

https://deadline.com/2021/07/oliver-stone-mainstream-docs-propaganda-pieces-us-empire-in-fear-revisiting-jfk-assassination-cannes-1234790181/ Hey, a fair shake from Deadline.

Right-o. Thanks.

Hey, we appreciate your research. The paper trail on LHO is often key. Someone once said the paper trail is the story. BTW, stayed tuned. Over in DiEugenio's K&K sometime soon, look for a story on the hole in John Connally's shirt.

Great article. What was the ID in the Byron Phillip wallet? AS in driver's license, or Social Security or what? And LHO's mom kept the wallet and money for a couple of years after either receiving it, or stealing it? With the ID still in the wallet? And despite being financially struggling, never spent the money? Would you steal a wallet (for the money in it) but then keep the identifying wallet and accompanying ID? I guess one possibility is Marguerite Oswald had an affair with Byron Phillip....explaining subsequent behavior and the gift of the wallet...

I found if you save the image as a JPEG, then you can post it.

Great research. Amazing stuff.

This uncertain paper trail fits in with my narrative of the JFKA, that it was done by lower-level CIA assets. I think a better job could have been done on the details, if the JFKA had been planned out in advance by higher-ups. There was a lot of impromptu covering-up to do, after the fact. Egads, the autopsy alone... There was definitely a CIA long-term biography build being done on LHO, including the fake assassination attempt on General Walker. John Newman says that LHO biography build was to create a WWIII virus that would stunt any true investigation of the JFKA. "This will lead to nuclear war, so we have to say LHO acted alone." As the FBI-Warren Commission was a cover-up, not an investigation, perhaps a mythology has evolved, that of a well-planned and financed, sophisticated JFKA. My take is the CIA planned a fake false-flag JFKA, and planned to blame Castro. That plan was piggybacked on by Cubans alright---anti-Castro Cubans. My view in no way absolves the CIA. It was their plan that resulted in the JFKA, and they covered it up and wrecked lives and careers along the way. Arranged for the murder of LHO, and who knows what happened to Jack Ruby.

Steven T--- Jonathan Chait? The twerp that wrote this: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/jfk-accomplished-little-but-his-historic-myth-endures.html That Chait? Chait strikes me as a punked mouthpiece.

Joseph M- Verily, I lived in L.A during those riots as well, on Molina St. near downtown L.A. Huge columns of black smoke like pillars to the sky, observable from the roof. "After the riots broke out, Gates told reporters that the situation would soon be under control, and left Parker Center to attend a previously scheduled political fundraising dinner." The LA Sheriffs were stupified, and calling LAPD every 15 minutes, asking if the LAPD needed help. (Many cities in South LA County contract with Sheriffs). Gates told them no. You can't make this stuff up.

Right. Showing My L.A. roots. The ol' LAPD Chief.

Carter Page worked for five years as an intelligence officer for the Marines in the Western Sahara, a nation (sort of) recently absorbed by Morocco, with US approval. The joke is every nation on the planet is "strategically critical" except for those places that are "critically strategic." BTW, a book worth reading, oddly enough, is "Duty" by Darryl Gates, the Secy Defense guy. In it, without blushing, he relates how many smaller nations, all over the world (dozens), have effectively turned over "palace guards" to the CIA. This is, in part, because they fear coups, otherwise. Of course, this means the CIA is embedded all over the world, eyes and ears everywhere and entanglements always a possibility. There are many other ramifications as well. The Libya bombing...ooof. Libya has been destabilized ever since.

As I say, one reason to study the JFKA, in context, is to understand US foreign-military-trade policy. From Smedley Butler, through the JFKA, to the Biden Administration, there is the chronic theme of a national security state in alliance with multinationals. Both the globalist national security state and the multinationals have grown increasingly powerful since the JFKA, not less. The Gaitan-Colombia story is yet another page in a very fat book. Avoiding foreign entanglements used to be the byword of US foreign policy. Today the dark onus is on citizens who think the US should not have a global military empire.

Draw a line across the photo, at the top of their heads. The answer is obvious. They are all members of the Cubanos 5' 9" tall club. Adios.

Ditto. Except "feeling dense" can become the default mode, once a certain age barrier is breached...

You are correct I am disappointed in the Trump Presidency, although my bar was rather low to start with, due to Trump's worrisome personality traits. Anyways, like a said, Trump is fading in the rear view mirror, and the national security state is getting stronger. I enjoy reading your point of view, even if I differ.

Kirk G- Actually I live in Thailand now, so I do not see US cable news, or any TV news. I read Google News, and then Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald and a lot drab economics-financial stuff that would probably bore you. True, I loathe identity politics. My take is that ID politics is divisive, and intentionally so. There is a great book out there, "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Michael Pettit. Give it a read. Anyways, you have your views, and I do not dismiss your views. They are simply different from my views. Good luck in DC. About this time of year, we have something in common: heat and humidity.

Kirk G- Well, we have different viewpoints, and that is OK. I believe the Washington DC medical examiner's report on Sicknick, and so be it. Maybe I am wrong. Actually, I am not as obsessed with the Sicknick story as the Wuhan lab-leak story (or the JFKA for that matter). Egads, what would you call the prolonged active censoring, and de-platforming, of people who properly considered a Wuhan lab leak a real possibility? And the mainstream media with its "debunked conspiracy theory" antics regarding Wuhan? The national security state has formed an alliance with media and the Democratic Party. Caveat emptor. PS You know who is best pals now with the D-Party? Liz Cheney. The are volumes of information in that one small answer.

W Niederhut: I am not disputing anything you say, save our disagreement on the Brian Sicknick affair. OK, we disagree on Sicknick, and that's fine. What I am referring to are FBI efforts after 9/11 to find domestic terrorists, often through enticement and entrapment. In some cases it looked like the FBI manipulated half-wits into possibly compromising statements, and then prosecuted, all in the heated emotions of the time. My bigger point is that national security state is a lot more fear-inducing than the guy in buffalo-horn hat.

Ron E.-- Obviously, we have different points of view, and that's fine. I will say this: Someday Trump will be gone (I hope sooner rather than later), but the globalist-national security state and its allies in an increasingly concentrated, pervasive and censored media, will be here and stronger than ever. We might even agree what are the root causes behind the BLM movement, and the Trump movement. I think it is declining living standards for people who work for a living. There is some culture-war stuff, and some race stuff, but at bottom is the globalists crapping on the employee class for 50 years running. And then playing ID politics to the hilt.

I dunno. I would not draw conclusions yet. In the wake of 9/11, the FBI entrapped some half-wits into making terrorist statements and plans, in which the FBI itself was the driving force. I have seen films of the riot at the Capitol. Believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for the marginalized, the outcasts, the misfits, the estranged, the lost, the embittered. With a bump or two in the wrong direction, there goes I. That's who invaded the Capitol that day. Unsympathetically put, the "rabble." The guy in buffalo-horns hat? That's who we fear? We have already been through the whole debunked Brian Sicknick story. Really, the national security state is about 1 million times better-financed and globally menacing than the lulus who occupied the Capitol on Jan. 6. The national-security state (and media allies) always want dangerous domestic subversives and foreign enemies. I refuse to be afraid of the guy in the buffalo-horned hat.

Oh, I lived in DC in the Carter days. He became the punching bag and was framed as a weakling. Boy, he had bad luck. OPEC oil shortages, the failed rescue mission in Iran, inflation. On the other hand, he had been a sub captain in the Navy. There was no Russiagate. Carter was an outsider, but not from the moon, like Trump. The highlights of the Carter Presidency include Billy Beer and this nugget: "In 1979, Carter deregulated the American beer industry by making it legal to sell malt, hops, and yeast to American home brewers for the first time since the effective 1920 beginning of Prohibition in the United States.[157] This Carter deregulation led to an increase in home brewing over the 1980s and 1990s that by the 2000s had developed into a strong craft microbrew culture in the United States, with 6,266 micro breweries, brewpubs, and regional craft breweries in the United States by the end of 2017.[158]"