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Bankrupt Media Scared to talk about 1963 Coup d'Etat


Guest Robert Morrow

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Guest Robert Morrow

Here is a good example:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-cloudy-logic-of-political-shootings/69147/

Well, I was basically right ... James Fallows manages to quietly slip in the official fantasy about Oswald, but at least he does not lead with it.

The Cloudy Logic of "Political" Shootings

By

James Fallows

Jan 8 2011, 7:36 PM ET

After this horrible news from Tucson....

... let me amplify something I said half-coherently in a live conversation with Guy Raz on All Things Considered a little while ago. My intended point was:

Shootings of political figures are by definition "political." That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say "assassination" rather than plain murder.

But it is striking how rarely the "politics" of an assassination (or attempt) match up cleanly with the main issues for which a public figure has stood. Some killings reflect "pure" politics: John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln, the German officers who tried to kill Hitler and derail his war plans. We don't know exactly why James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, but it must have had a lot to do with civil rights.

There is a longer list of odder or murkier motives:

- Leo Ryan, the first (and, we hope, still the only) Representative to be killed in the line of duty, was gunned down in Guyana in 1978 for an investigation of the Jim Jones/Jonestown cult, not any "normal" political issue.

- Sirhan Sirhan horribly transformed American politics by killing Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, but Sirhan's political causes had little or nothing to do with what RFK stood to most Americans.

- So too with Arthur Bremer, who tried to kill George C. Wallace in 1972 and left him paralyzed.

- The only known reason for John Hinckley's shooting of Ronald Reagan involves Jodie Foster.

- It's not often remembered now, but Manson family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to shoot Gerald Ford, again for reasons that would mean nothing to most Americans of that time.

- When Harry Truman was shot at (and a policeman was killed) on the sidewalk outside the White House, the attackers were concerned not about Cold War policies or Truman's strategy in Korea but Puerto Rican independence.

- The assassinations of William McKinley and James Garfield were also "political" but not in a way that matched the main politics of that time. The list could go on.

So the train of logic is:

1) anything that can be called an "assassination" is inherently political;

2) very often the "politics" are obscure, personal, or reflecting mental disorders rather than "normal" political disagreements. But now a further step,

3) the political tone of an era can have some bearing on violent events. The Jonestown/Ryan and Fromme/Ford shootings had no detectable source in deeper political disagreements of that era. But the anti-JFK hate-rhetoric in Dallas before his visit was so intense that for decades some people debated whether the city was somehow "responsible" for the killing. (Even given that Oswald was an outlier in all ways.)

That's the further political ramification here. We don't know why the killer did what he did. If he is like Sirhan, we'll never "understand." But we know that it has been a time of extreme, implicitly violent political rhetoric and imagery, including SarahPac's famous bulls-eye map of 20 Congressional targets to be removed -- including Rep. Giffords. It is legitimate to discuss whether there is a connection between that tone and actual outbursts of violence, whatever the motivations of this killer turn out to be. At a minimum, it will be harder to anyone to talk -- on rallies, on cable TV, in ads -- about "eliminating" opponents, or to bring rifles to political meetings, or to say "don't retreat, reload."

Meanwhile condolences on this tragedy, and deepest hopes for the recovery of all who still have a chance.

Edited by Robert Morrow
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Guest Robert Morrow

Here is a good example:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/the-cloudy-logic-of-political-shootings/69147/

Well, I was basically right ... James Fallows manages to quietly slip in the official fantasy about Oswald, but at least he does not lead with it.

The Cloudy Logic of "Political" Shootings

By

James Fallows

Jan 8 2011, 7:36 PM ET

After this horrible news from Tucson....

... let me amplify something I said half-coherently in a live conversation with Guy Raz on All Things Considered a little while ago. My intended point was:

Shootings of political figures are by definition "political." That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say "assassination" rather than plain murder.

But it is striking how rarely the "politics" of an assassination (or attempt) match up cleanly with the main issues for which a public figure has stood. Some killings reflect "pure" politics: John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln, the German officers who tried to kill Hitler and derail his war plans. We don't know exactly why James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, but it must have had a lot to do with civil rights.

There is a longer list of odder or murkier motives:

- Leo Ryan, the first (and, we hope, still the only) Representative to be killed in the line of duty, was gunned down in Guyana in 1978 for an investigation of the Jim Jones/Jonestown cult, not any "normal" political issue.

- Sirhan Sirhan horribly transformed American politics by killing Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, but Sirhan's political causes had little or nothing to do with what RFK stood to most Americans.

- So too with Arthur Bremer, who tried to kill George C. Wallace in 1972 and left him paralyzed.

- The only known reason for John Hinckley's shooting of Ronald Reagan involves Jodie Foster.

- It's not often remembered now, but Manson family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to shoot Gerald Ford, again for reasons that would mean nothing to most Americans of that time.

- When Harry Truman was shot at (and a policeman was killed) on the sidewalk outside the White House, the attackers were concerned not about Cold War policies or Truman's strategy in Korea but Puerto Rican independence.

- The assassinations of William McKinley and James Garfield were also "political" but not in a way that matched the main politics of that time. The list could go on.

So the train of logic is:

1) anything that can be called an "assassination" is inherently political;

2) very often the "politics" are obscure, personal, or reflecting mental disorders rather than "normal" political disagreements. But now a further step,

3) the political tone of an era can have some bearing on violent events. The Jonestown/Ryan and Fromme/Ford shootings had no detectable source in deeper political disagreements of that era. But the anti-JFK hate-rhetoric in Dallas before his visit was so intense that for decades some people debated whether the city was somehow "responsible" for the killing. (Even given that Oswald was an outlier in all ways.)

That's the further political ramification here. We don't know why the killer did what he did. If he is like Sirhan, we'll never "understand." But we know that it has been a time of extreme, implicitly violent political rhetoric and imagery, including SarahPac's famous bulls-eye map of 20 Congressional targets to be removed -- including Rep. Giffords. It is legitimate to discuss whether there is a connection between that tone and actual outbursts of violence, whatever the motivations of this killer turn out to be. At a minimum, it will be harder to anyone to talk -- on rallies, on cable TV, in ads -- about "eliminating" opponents, or to bring rifles to political meetings, or to say "don't retreat, reload."

Meanwhile condolences on this tragedy, and deepest hopes for the recovery of all who still have a chance.

WASHINGTON POST STILL ADDICTED TO LYING ABOUT JFK ASSASSINATION:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011006310.html

Small man, terrible act

Jared Loughner at the 2010 Tucson Festival of Books. (

MICHAEL GERSON

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

When President John Kennedy visited Dallas in November 1963, he was greeted by a full-page newspaper ad accusing him of being a communist fellow traveler. To his wife he observed, "Oh, you know, we're headed into nut country today." The city, according to historian William Manchester, was a "mecca" for "the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies."

In the hours following Kennedy's assassination, aides assumed a right-wing radical was responsible. When Robert Kennedy informed Jacqueline about Lee Harvey Oswald's leftist background, she felt sick. "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights," she said. "It's - it had to be some silly little communist." Eventually, the Warren Commission found no direct connection between Kennedy's assassination and the city's "general atmosphere of hate."

It is a natural human desire to invest tragedy with meaning, to make grief coherent. Manchester, who chronicled JFK's final day, concluded, "If you put the murdered president of the United States on one side of the scale and that wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it doesn't balance. You want to add something weightier to Oswald. It would invest the president's death with meaning."

The killings in Arizona deserve to have a meaning. The first assassination attempt on a female federal officeholder. The shooting of a respected federal judge. The murder of a girl born on a day known for death, Sept. 11, 2001. We want these lives and all the others to be balanced by something weightier than Jared Loughner.

Edited by Robert Morrow
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