Conspiracy Theories & The Media: JFK & Beyond ....

[Guest]

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? 

[Pamela Brown]

 

Chris Barnard said:

"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?"

Absolutely, they are. It is all part of the Ongoing Coverup.  Think of it as a mind-control experiment, where the public is repeatedly chastised for thinking for themselves and praised when they let others do their thinking for them. The WCR was the first major test case.  To this day, the press will seem to push conspiracy, yet end up claiming 'that poor little Communist" LHO did it alone.  It's been all downhill since then. 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Pamela Brown

[Guest]

On 2/17/2021 at 4:44 AM, Pamela Brown said:

 

Chris Barnard said:

"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?"

Absolutely, they are. It is all part of the Ongoing Coverup.  Think of it as a mind-control experiment, where the public is repeatedly chastised for thinking for themselves and praised when they let others do their thinking for them. The WCR was the first major test case.  To this day, the press will seem to push conspiracy, yet end up claiming 'that poor little Communist" LHO did it alone.  It's been all downhill since then. 

It just amazes me the public think this is limited to purely one topic, JFK. These are the words of Sigmund Freud's nephew, the godfather of modern PR and author of the 1928 book "Propaganda"... 
 

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”  Edward Bernays 


"He who moulds public opinion is more powerful than he who makes laws."  Abraham Lincoln 

 

[Pamela Brown]

23 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

It just amazes me the public think this is limited to purely one topic, JFK. These are the words of Sigmund Freud's nephew, the godfather of modern PR and author of the 1928 book "Propaganda"... 
 

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”  Edward Bernays 


"He who moulds public opinion is more powerful than he who makes laws."  Abraham Lincoln 

 

This is indeed our fate.  When a lot of us didn't buy the WCR, or Dan Rather, they moved to add celebrities into the mix.  Tom Hanks is one of the poster-kids for the Ongoing Coverup, and so, at least until Murder Most Foul, was Bob Dylan.  There are hoards of fans just waiting for them to release 'inside' information about what is going to take place.  

Ironically, this plan backfired bigtime during the Capitol Hill siege, as Dylan had written these words back in 1963....everyone is keeping mum about this...

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
 

https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/

[Guest]

22 hours ago, Pamela Brown said:

This is indeed our fate.  When a lot of us didn't buy the WCR, or Dan Rather, they moved to add celebrities into the mix.  Tom Hanks is one of the poster-kids for the Ongoing Coverup, and so, at least until Murder Most Foul, was Bob Dylan.  There are hoards of fans just waiting for them to release 'inside' information about what is going to take place.  

Ironically, this plan backfired bigtime during the Capitol Hill siege, as Dylan had written these words back in 1963....everyone is keeping mum about this...

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
 

https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/

I agree Pamela, Hanks is one of the worst shills. If your aim is to deceive the public, use people trusted or respected by the public. That can be celebrities, or anybody with a great deal of popularity. Of course it's far more common to use someone with letters after their name or of high rank in an intellectual domain. Either way vast swathes of the public are accepting without question. 

Bob Dylan's words are very eloquent and clearly something that had been on his mind a long time and wanted to get them out. 

Hunter S. Thompson wrote some very interesting words on the day JFK was assassinated:

[Pamela Brown]

Chris Barnard said: Bob Dylan's words are very eloquent and clearly something that had been on his mind a long time and wanted to get them out. 

Well, Dylan did wait quite a long time.  And during the waiting time he said nothing. And then, Dylan being Dylan, he countered himself with the 'magic bullet' connection in Black Rider...

https://dylagence.wordpress.com/2020/12/06/black-rider-a-bit-of-dylans-gallow-humor/

So he's not getting a free pass from me...

[Paul Brancato]

Chris - that is quite an essay. Thank you for sharing it. I was sitting here thinking about all that is going on in the world and trying to fit the pieces together. There are so many conspiracy theories floating around now - it’s become a business. A friend sent me a link today, saying for one day only I could access all the conspiracy stuff on the website for free. Golly gee, you mean you are paying to watch 2 hour videos by experts telling you what to believe? The worst part of what is going on now is the deep rift being hammered into the heart of what we call the Left. Surely that is intentional, and though not new it is today especially pervasive. I find myself unable to talk sensibly with good liberal friends. The NY Times is their truth if they are ‘sensible’, and if not they are buying the propaganda coming from thousands of internet sites of unknown pedigree and from thousands of credentialed ‘experts’ who no one has ever heard of. 
I find Russell Brand to be like a voice crying out in the wilderness. His videos are short and they address all the wacky stuff without censure, looking for common ground between artificially created factions. An example - wacky ‘right wingers’ believing all kinds of hooey like QAnon and storming the Capitol are seen at least as rightfully pissed off. Of course they are - aren’t most of us too? Another example - Bill Gates isn’t trying to inject us all with microchips. But he is wielding enormous clout with his billions, and his intent is far from clear. We could perhaps believe that Monsanto is doing is all a huge favor by feeding the world, monopolizing our seed heritage and creating better strains of food crops, but did they ask the people of India whether that was ok with them? No, for sure not. Cable News from the ‘liberal’ side isn’t news at all, it’s politics and propaganda. I can’t even watch Fox, but I’m damned sick of my well meaning friends thinking that Rachel Maddow and MSNBC is worth watching. We simply don’t see what is actually going on globally unless we search hard and long, and even then we have to filter everything. Can all this be explained simply by saying that Capitalism is running amok and self interest is the root cause? I’m beginning to question that long held belief in these days of Covid, where, in my opinion, the cure is worse than the disease. We are not asking the right questions. Why is Africa better off? Why India? Didn’t we all expect that they would be in the throes of unspeakable horror by now? Well, they are not. And what about all the homeless encampments on the West Coast? Wouldn’t we have thought they would be ravaged by Covid? So who is being hurt? Why, the poor service workers, mostly non white, taking care of our daily business while we hold up in our safety pods. Is that a good thing? We don’t know for certain whether this virus was created in a lab or not. We don’t know what long range effects the new vaccines will have on our species. But we do know that the rich are getting richer off this. If any of you have young children or grandchildren you will know that doctors are now pushing for all of us to get booster vaccines for all the childhood diseases, to take the new two shot shingles vaccines, and who knows what else. I can tell you as a performing musician I see no chance that the performing arts will ever return to normal. For all of time we have lived with risk. We live with it every day. Germs can kill you, cars can kill you, guns can kill you, Big Macs can kill you, cigarettes can kill you. But now living our lives normally has to come to a screeching halt because this virus can make you sick, and if you are weak or old or poor it might even kill you. I’m not buying it any more, not because I believe in UN conspiracies but because I don’t trust our authorities and our media. And in truth I never have, so why was this decision so difficult? 
 

[James DiEugenio]

Chris:

Is that Hunter Thompson note for real?

Its almost too good to be true. Somebody understood that had happened that day, not so much forensically, but the blow to the American psyche that had been delivered.

Truly insightful.

Thanks.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Chris:

Is that Hunter Thompson note for real?

Its almost too good to be true. Somebody understood that had happened that day, not so much forensically, but the blow to the American psyche that had been delivered.

Truly insightful.

Thanks.

It's staggering, James. 

As far as I can tell, it seems 100% legitimate. It's mentioned in lots of links google is chucking up, it's from his personal papers and letters, which I believe are accessible. I did a bit of reading about him last year, I think I first read it in Rolling Stone Magazine, though I can only find a reference to it now in the magazine digitally now. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"November, 22, 1963
Woody Creek

I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at 8:30 when Western Union opens so what the hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything - much less the fear and loathin that is on me after today's murder. God knows I might go mad for lack of talk. I have become like a psychotic Sphinx - I want to kill because I can't talk.

I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and that the "real artist" in the "little magazines" are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the "little magazines" for the past 20 years. And the next 20, if we get that far.

We now enter the era of the shitrain, President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries. Neither your children nor mine will ever be able to grasp what Gatsby was after. No more of that. You misunderstand it of course, peeling back the first and most obvious layer. Take your "realism" to the garbage dump. Or the "little magazines." They are like a man who goes into a phone booth to pull his pod. Nada, nada.

The killing has put me in a state of shock. The rage is trebled. I was not prepared at this time for the death of hope, but here it is. Ignore it at your peril. I have written Semonin, that cheap book-store Marxist, that he had better tell his boys to buy bullets. And forget the dialectic. This is the end of reason, the dirtiest hour in our time. I mean to come down from the hills and enter the fray. Tomorrow a cabled job request to "The Reporter." Failing that, the "Observer." Beyond that, God knows, but it will have to be something. From now until the 1964 elections every man with balls should be on the firing line. The vote will be the most critical in the history of man. No matter what, today is the end of an era. No more fair play. From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency. They can count me in - I feel ready for a dirty game.

Fiction is dead. Mailer is an antique curiosity. The stakes are now too high and the time too short. What, O what, does Eudora Welty have to say? xxxx that crowd. The only hope now is to swing hard with the right hand, while hanging on to sanity with the left. Politics will become a cockfight and reason will go by theboards. There will have to be somebody to carry the flag.

My concept of the new novel would have fit this situation, but now I see no hope for getting it done, if indeed, any publishing houses survive the Nazis scramble that is sure to come. How could we have known, or even guessed? I think we have come to that point.
Send word if you still exist - HST"

 

[Rob Couteau]

22 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Is that Hunter Thompson note for real?

The statement is for real and is included in Thompson's marvelous book of letters: "Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967." (Which actually received laudatory reviews in mainstream media when it appeared in 1998.) According to the editors, it was written to the novelist William Kennedy and utilized the term "fear and loathing" "for perhaps the first time."  The book also contains another reference to JFK that Hunter penned a few years later, which reads in part:

"He [JFK] had a capacity for backing off and watching himself perform, and later commenting on what he’d seen and heard with a quick, half-sublimated sense of humor that often made him seem like a pillar of sanity in the thieving, swinish chaos of American politics. He seemed like the only man who knew what was happening, and although there was rarely any way to guess what he might decide to do about it, there was always the chance that he might find an opening to do something right."

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Proud_Highway/MBZFIHiJgI8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=am+tired+enough+to+sleep+here+in+this+chair,+but+I+have+to+be+in+town+at+8:30+when+Western+Union+opens+so+what+the+hell.&pg=PA420&printsec=frontcover

Edited February 22, 2021 by Rob Couteau

[Ron Bulman]

President Johnson and the hardening of the arteries.      .

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that Rob.

Neat to know that some people really understood what has occurred on that day.

[Andrew Prutsok]

About once a year something (like this thread) prompts me to go back and read the Nixon obituary Thompson wrote to remind me how powerful journalism can be when done right.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/

Edited February 22, 2021 by Andrew Prutsok

[Andrew Prutsok]

This graph could have applied as easily to a more recent occupier of the oval office:

 

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

About once a year something (like this thread) prompts me to go back and read the Nixon obituary Thompson wrote to remind me how powerful journalism can be when done right.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/

You could topple empires with descriptive writing like that. 🙂 Talk about cutting to the bone.