The Two-Bit Jedi Mind Trick

Yep...I'm at it again, dear readers. The mendicants at CounterKnowledge keep calling me back...you can begin here for the nonsense that begat this rant:

Of course, John...these pathetic dicks just attempt their sophistry over and over again. They think that they're two-bit Obi-Wans trying a Jedi mind trick...

"Steel-framed buildings CAN collapse from fire..."

"Those Israelis who found the private residences of DEA agents aren't spies..."

"Passports survive conflagarations that can damage an indestructible black box..."

"Taking a juicy load to the throat doesn't make you a cock-smoker..."

"Our tribe would never collude to defraud the world and give each other Nobel Prizes and PhDs and "peer-review" each others' completely factless propaganda..."

"I will insist that you defend someone else's statement even when you clearly post a link separating your comments from referred text from another personage..."

"These are not the fund-stealing, child-blood drinking, scat-loving, lying sacks of shite you're looking for..."

You guys are the ultimate asshats. To think that you fucking mendicants could "magic" away my 60-page document providing NAMES, DATES, TIMES OF ATTEMPTED INFILTRATIONS of your retarded countrymen who, if it is to be believed, located the homes of the various intelligence personnel COMPLETELY AT RANDOM, selling "paintings" they didn't even create, for exhorbitant amounts.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU GODDAMN NITWITS?

Do you really think that John Thames and I are going to wake up one day and say, "Gosh...we've been such silly geese! Of course open-air jet-fueled fires can melt steel! Of course the Holocau$t happened as stated - why would someone lie about that?"

Every bloody day, some new facet is peeled from the lie factory you pieces of garbage have built. Keep adhering to your stupid lies...I hope you are all buried in the rubble when it all comes crashing down.

Chosen People: How to atone for being a WASP - Scott McConnell

December 01, 2009 Issue
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative

Chosen People: How to atone for being a WASP

By Scott McConnell

Measured in terms of military dominance, Israel has never been stronger. But Israel’s campaigns against its Arab neighbors no longer receive the international applause they once did. Many Europeans consider Israel a regional bully. Even in the United States, a recent essay in the New York Review of Books argued that a state grounded in ethnicity is an anachronism, a throwback to the ethnonationalism that the West sought to transcend after World War II.

In the realm of soft power, Israel finds itself somewhat beleaguered, with its cultural and economic exports facing incipient boycotts and its military actions scrutinized and rigorously condemned by prestigious international jurists. Among gentiles, Israel’s strongest support comes from Christian Zionists, but the country’s more sophisticated enthusiasts recognize that Armageddonite eschatology is not a solid foundation from which to ensure Washington’s unconditional backing.

To Zion’s rescue comes George Gilder, veteran luminary of the American Right, author of a successful polemic against feminism and a Reagan-admired ode to the free market, and publisher of a newsletter touting technology stocks. The Israel Test is in many respects a crackpot work, but it is more original than most contemporary political bestsellers, and it is bold.

Some mainstream conservative magazines have dutifully reprinted excerpts, and a few right-wing bloggers have praised the book. Still, one senses hesitation: is this an argument conventional Republicans really want to embrace?

Stripped to its basics, Gilder’s book attempts to view the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of the scientific and racialist thought influential in Europe and America in the first decades of the last century. By the 1920s, scientific racism was already facing intellectual resistance, perhaps most insistently from Catholics such as Hilaire Belloc, and its later association with Nazism eventually brought about its near complete demise. A generation before Hitler, Madison Grant, then scientific racism’s most prominent American exponent, had been a friend of presidents and a stalwart of the Eastern establishment. He published The Passing of the Great Race in 1916 to wide readership and considerable acclaim. The “Nordics,” claimed Grant, had given the world most of its explorers and leaders, the organizers of great endeavors. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine how an Anglo-Saxon might survey the world early in the last century, observe where its most fertile centers of economic, scientific, and technological innovation were located, and construct a plangent theory about endangered Nordic superiority.

George Gilder takes this template and recasts it, deploying group IQ data that didn’t exist in Grant’s time. For Gilder, the superior men are not Teutonic explorers or generals but Jewish scientists and financiers. He takes a brief tour through the birth of quantum physics, the Manhattan Project, and the computer revolution and finds Jews central at every stage. It is indisputably the case that in proportions much greater than their share of the population, the leading scientists and mathematicians of the 20th century have been Jewish. Half of them? Probably not. Over a quarter? Almost certainly. No surprise then that America won the race to build the first atom bomb with a boost from Jewish refugee scientists from Central Europe or that the computer revolution took off in a region congenial to Jewish talent and innovation—that is, California.

Gilder takes these facts, which are neither novel nor very carefully explored, and grafts them to an argument about Israel, the Middle East, and America’s broader conflict with the Muslim world. At the core of this struggle, he sets his “Israel test.” Is one able to admire and embrace Jewish superiority and creativity, or does one, out of envy, oppose it? This is the examination we all must face. The Nazis failed, of course, and so, he says, have the Arabs. Gilder does not concede that the anti-Semites of the past century were more likely to dwell on the prevalence of Jews in the upper echelons of Bolshevism than in the physics lab. Yet the envy that he describes has often been an unacknowledged part of their complaint.

In transporting his “Israel test” to the contemporary Middle East, Gilder runs awry. To pass the test, one must accept propositions held almost solely on the far Right of the Israeli political spectrum. He argues that no accommodation with Palestinians is desirable or possible. Those who suggest otherwise, even such robust friends of Israel as Thomas L. Friedman and The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Gilder labels weak-kneed appeasers.

Though this book is leavened by cheerleading for Israeli high-tech entrepreneurs and digressions into the theory of computers and the history of the Manhattan Project, the bulk consists of Gilder repeating the same argument: all opposition to Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism, a resentment among the masses for the brilliant and creative. Support for Israel is the only way to honor the Jews. Capitalism is the only social system that honors creativity and innovation. Hitler was an anti-capitalist, thus anything less than wholehearted support for the Likud and the Israeli parties to its right is rooted in envy, anti-Semitism, Nazism.

When addressing conditions in the Middle East, Gilder sinks to cartoonish agitprop. Palestinian leaders are “mostly Nazis.” “[W]ithout the presence of the Jews, there is no evidence the Palestinians would want these territories for a nation,” he writes. During Israel’s war of independence, “Palestinian Arabs fled, chiefly evicted or urged to flee by Arab leaders.” This catchphrase of Israeli propaganda, repeated a million times in the past 50 years, is designed to absolve Israel of any responsibility for Palestinian refugees—they did it to themselves. But it is contradicted by a powerful and growing historical literature, much of it based on Israeli military and government archives, which records Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine in 1948, including drawing up lists of Arab men who were to be seized and assassinated before the villagers were driven out. One can—and many Israelis do—debate the morality of these acts, central both to Israel’s founding and the sense among Palestinians of their own tragic history. Pretending they did not happen cannot be the basis for a serious book.

Similarly fanciful is Gilder’s assertion, oft repeated, that Arab leaders claim “the right to banish or kill 5.5 million Jews.” He names no Arab leaders making this claim and would be hard put to do so. Is Gilder simply being mendacious? It’s hard to know.

By the book’s end, one senses the author’s exasperation. Gilder seems to know that most readers welcome Jewish excellence in the sciences. But what does that have to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict? It pains him that many brilliant Israeli innovators seem to want nothing more than to lead their lives and build their companies in Europe and the United States. A frantic tone creeps in: “We need Israel today as much as Israel needs us, as much as we needed Jewish physicists and chemists [for the Manhattan Project].”

Gilder never explains why, beyond misty paeans to the spirit of enterprise and capitalism and Jewish genius. (“Jews have known before the fatherhood of Abraham that it was the word that made the world—the ultimate assertion of algorithmic power.”)

But what kind of Israel does America “need”? The 9/11 Commission Report, stating the obvious, noted that American support for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is a prime theme of anti-American terrorist propaganda. Why should Americans support roads designated for Jews only and a web of checkpoints that strangles Palestinian life? The United States has strived with difficulty to overcome its own history of racial discrimination. Why should it embrace a stronger version in Israel? And the Israel of scientific advancement—not to mention the growing contingent of Israelis abroad—hardly needs the violent West Bank settlers to make a positive contribution to the world.

While there are other examples of authors writing books about the superiority of ethnic groups to which they do not belong, they make up a small subset in the literature of ethnonationalism.

After thumbing through The Israel Test, blogger Matthew Yglesias speculated that Gilder may be a kind of WASP who “likes Israel in part because he wishes American Jews would leave him alone and go live there instead.” This interpretation strikes me as insufficient. Perhaps a better one can be derived from Gilder’s final chapter, in which he paints a portrait of his artistically and financially successful ancestors and the upper-class WASP world in which he was raised. The focal point is an incident that occurred when he was about 17. While trying to impress an older girl, his summer tutor in Greek, he blurted out something mildly anti-Semitic. The young woman dryly replied that she was in fact “a New York Jew.” Gilder was mortified. He relates that he has never quite gotten over the episode. It is the kind of thing a sensitive person might long remember. Variations on this pattern are not uncommon in affluent WASP circles to this day: guilt or embarrassment at some stupid but essentially trivial episode of social anti-Semitism serve as a spur for fervent embrace of Likud-style Zionism. Atonement. It would not be surprising if a similar process helped to shape George W. Bush’s mentality.

This sequence might be amusing if the real-life consequences were less sinister. It is now often acknowledged—if not widely regretted—that Palestinians have had to pay the price for Nazism and the Holocaust. It is they, after all, not the Germans, who are now stateless. But Gilder’s confession, and the book it animates, establishes a corollary to this truism: Palestinians are now required to pay not only for the crimes of the Nazis but for the genteel anti-Semitism of America’s fallen WASP elite. __________________________________________

Scott McConnell is The American Conservative’s editor at large.

The American Conservative welcomes letters to the editor.
Send letters to: letters@amconmag.com

Please go over to Bill Moyers' blog, and ask yourself if the Goldstone Report is just too one-sided.

Was Albert Einstein A Plagiarist?

This is a very long posting, so I'm just going to provide this link at BibleBelievers.org and let you. dear readers, peruse this posting at a more eye-friendly page than this one.

Now...I must say, if this proves to be valid, this could cast a huge pall upon our current educational system. I had read something similar to this just days ago, but I had no bloody idea it reached this far.

Let's read the verbiage from Bjerknes:

Albert Einstein, The Incorrigible Plagiarist

(Christopher Jon Bjerknes)
(XTX Inc., DownersGorve, Illinois, USA, 2002)

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
(Albert Einstein)

Proposing again the remark which we made some time ago in the presentation of Kostro's Einstein and the Ether (Episteme, N. 3, 21 April 2001, pp. 306-310), "common people", and even "common scientists", will be surprised by the facts they discover in Bjerknes' book (about 400 pages), which is quite useful, in that it establishes a realistic - and more reasonable! - picture of one of the most propagandized scientific myths of all time, namely Einstein's myth (see for instance: Alan J. Friedman & Carol C. Donley, Einstein as Myth and Muse, Cambridge University Press, 1985).

As a matter of fact, reading this text should be a must for all people professionally interested in the "history" of Physics or of Science (for these readers the book, its "polemical" thesis notwithstanding, could become an indispensable tool, packed as it is with information, quotations, meticulous references, etc.), but it is highly recommended even to teachers, scientists of all kind, philosophers, epistemologists, in general to every person interested in the evolution of human civilization and knowledge. Indeed, it would be difficult to deny that the emergence of modern science is one of the most relevant events of all times, and that Relativity in particular is the "theory" which had the greatest impact and influence on XXth Century Western thought - though, in our opinion, and clearly in Bjerknes' as well, a negative one).

The book is a successful attempt to break down some of the many commonplaces and misconceptions which fill the typically apologetic History of Science, and the author does not seem at all afraid to take on such a "giant". As a consequence, the result of his efforts is a genuinely "rare find" and an interesting one.
In addition, we must emphasize that Christopher Jon Bjerknes is the great great grandson of Carl Anton Bjerknes, who created the Pulsating Sphere Theory of Gravity and of Electromagnetism, and who played an important rôle in the creation of the concept of charged particle mass.

Vilhelm, Carl's son, also became famous for his work in Meteorology (Polar Front Theory; see for instance Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and Construction of a Modern Meteorology, by Robert Marc Friedman, Cornell University Press, 1993; Vilhelm Bjerknes, MEM Volume of the American Meteorological Society, 1962), but his primary focus was always on Physics and Hydrodynamics of Aether Models, and he was the scientist who gave the Columbia lectures which are quoted in Almansi's paper (Fields of force, Columbia University Press, New-York, 1906; see the section entitled Reprints in this same volume of Episteme).
Continuing a truly fine family tradition, Vilhelm's son, Jacob, is also quite famous for his work in Meteorology (Theory of Cyclones - El Niño), and now we can say that Christopher Jon is carrying on following the footsteps of "aether theorists", who disliked (as we do) Einstein's theory, and the consequent disappearance of the concept of aether from mainstream Physics.

We must emphasize that this choice of "party" does not influence the usefulness of Bjerknes' essay even for those not willing to admit this criticism of Relativity. As a matter of fact, the book could even be construed to be rather more in favor of Relativity than the contrary, since the proof that Einstein "borrowed" many ideas from others famous scientists, renders them responsible for the dangerous nichilistic and irrational drift of modern scientific thought, which Episteme has always aimed to fight...

We proceed with the presentation of the book presenting first its Table of Contents, and further a few excerpts. Afterwards, we publish some additional commentary, mainly Phipps' review (another scientist well known for his rather critical attitude against Relativity; we thank Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, the Editor-in-Chief of Infinite Energy Magazine, for his consent to publish it in parallel). We end this "chapter" with an Appendix written by Bjerknes himself for the next edition of his research, honored to be able to present it to our readers in exclusive preview.


TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. THE PRI0RITY MYTH

2. SPACE-TIME, OR IS IT "TIME-SPACE"?

3. "THEORY OF RELATIVITY" OR "PSEUDORELATIVISM"?

4. HERO WORSHIP

5. E = mc2

6. EINSTEIN'S MODUS OPERANDI

7. HISTORY

8. MILEVA EINSTEIN-MARITY

9. P0LITICS AND ANECDOTES

NOTES

INDEX

- - - - -

info@xtxinc.com

http://www.xtxinc.com

[Two articles of the author, together with information about his life and work, are published in this same volume of Episteme]

- - - - -

Excerpts (Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved)

It is easily proven that Albert Einstein did not originate the special theory of relativity in its entirety, or even in its majority. The historic record is readily available. Ludwig Gustav Lange, Woldemar Voigt, George Francis FitzGerald, Joseph Larmor, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, Jules Henri Poincaré, Paul Drude, Paul Langevin, and many others, slowly developed the theory, step by step, and based it on thousands of years of recorded thought and research. Einstein may have made a few contributions to the theory, such as the relativistic equations for aberration and the Doppler-Fizeau Effect, though he may also have rendered an incorrect equation for the transverse mass of an electron, which, when corrected, becomes Lorentz' equation.

Albert Einstein's first work on the theory of relativity did not appear until 1905. There is substantial evidence that Albert Einstein did not write this 1905 paper on the "principle of relativity" alone. His wife, Mileva Einstein-Marity, may have been co-author, or the sole author, of the work.

If Albert Einstein did not originate the major concepts of the special theory of relativity, how could such a historically significant fact have escaped the attention of the world for nearly a century? The simple answer is that it did not.

- - - - -

Book Description

(from an auto-review appeared in Canberra Times, an Australian newspaper, Thursday, 19 September 2002)

The name ''Einstein'' evokes images of a good-humoured genius, who revolutionised our concepts of space, time, energy, mass and motion. Time named Albert Einstein "person of the century". The language itself has incorporated "Einstein" into our common vocabulary as a synonym for extraordinary brilliance. Many consider Einstein to have been the finest mind in recorded human history.

That is the popular image, fostered by textbooks, the media, and hero worshiping physicists and historians. However, when one reads the scientific literature written by Einstein's contemporaries, a quite different picture emerges: one of an irrational plagiarist, who manipulated credit for their work.

Einstein is perhaps most famous for the special theory of relativity, published in 1905 in the German physics journal, Annalen der Physik. The paper was devoid of references, a fact that Einstein's friend and Nobel prize winner for physics, Max Born, found troubling.

''The striking point is that it contains not a single reference to previous literature,'' Born stated in 1955, before the International Relativity Conference in Bern. ''It gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course, as I have tried to explain, not true.''

Though Einstein's 1905 article contained no references, it was so strikingly similar to a paper written by Hendrik Lorentz the previous year, that Walter Kaufmann and Max Planck felt a need to publicly point out that Einstein had merely provided a metaphysical reinterpretation and generalisation of Lorentz' scientific theory, a metaphysical reinterpretation and generalisation Henri Poincare had already published.

As Charles Nordmann, astronomer to the Paris Observatory, pointed out: ''It is really to Henri Poincare, the great Frenchman whose death has left a void that will never be filled, that we must accord the merit of having first proved, with the greatest lucidity and the most prudent audacity, that time and space, as we know them, can only be relative. A few quotations from his works will not be out of place. They will show that the credit for most of the things which are currently attributed to Einstein is, in reality, due to Poincare.''

Einstein acknowledged the fact, but justified his plagiarism in a cavalier fashion in Annalen der Physik in 1907. "It appears to me that it is the nature of the business that what follows has already been partly solved by other authors. Despite that fact, since the issues of concern are here addressed from a new point of view, I believe I am entitled to leave out a thoroughly pedantic survey of the literature, all the more so because it is hoped that these gaps will yet be filled by other authors, as has already happened with my first work on the principle of relativity through the commendable efforts of Mr. Planck and Mr. Kaufmann."

The completed field equations of the general theory of relativity were first deduced by David Hilbert, a fact Einstein was forced to acknowledge in 1916, after he had plagiarised them from Hilbert in late 1915. Paul Gerber solved the problem of the perihelion of Mercury in 1898. Physicist Ernst Gehrcke gave a lecture on the theory of relativity in the Berlin Philharmonic on August 24, 1920, and publicly confronted Einstein, who was in attendance, with Einstein's plagiarism of Lorentz' mathematical formalisms of the special theory of relativity, Palagyi's space-time concepts, Varicak's non-Euclidean geometry and of the plagiarism of the mathematical solution of the problem of the perihelion of Mercury first arrived at by Gerber. Gehrcke addressed Einstein to his face and told the crowd that the emperor had no clothes.

This was Einstein's response published in the Berliner Tageblatt und Handels-Zeitung on August 27, 1920, translated into English in the book Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity edited by Gerald E. Tauber: ". . . Gerber, who has given the correct formula for the perihelion motion of Mercury before I did. The experts are not only in agreement that Gerber's derivation is wrong through and through, but the formula cannot be obtained as a consequence of the main assumption made by Gerber. Mr Gerber's work is therefore completely useless, an unsuccessful and erroneous theoretical attempt.

"I maintain that the theory of general relativity has provided the first real explanation of the perihelion motion of mercury. I have not mentioned the work by Gerber originally, because I did not know it when I wrote my work on the perihelion motion of Mercury; even if I had been aware of it, I would not have had any reason to mention it."

The fact that Einstein was a plagiarist is common knowledge in the physics community. What isn't so well-known is that the sources Einstein parroted were also largely unoriginal. In 1919, writing in the Philosophical Magazine Harry Bateman, a British mathematician and physicist who had emigrated to the United States, unsuccessfully sought acknowledgment of his work.

"I am perhaps entitled to do this as my work on the subject of general relativity was published before that of Einstein and Kottler, and appears to have been overlooked by recent writers."

My book is a documentation of Einstein's plagiarism of the theory of relativity. It discloses his method for manipulating credit for the work of his contemporaries, reprints the prior works he parroted, and demonstrates that he could not have drawn his conclusions without prior knowledge of the works he copied but failed to reference.

Numerous republished quotations from Einstein's contemporaries prove that they were aware of his plagiarism. Side-by-side comparisons of Einstein's words juxtaposed to those of his predecessors prove the almost verbatim repetition. There is even substantial evidence presented in the book that Einstein plagiarised the work of his first wife, Mileva Maric, who had plagiarised others.

"Although generally associated with the names of Einstein and Minkowski, the really essentia physical considerations underlying the theories are due to Larmor and Lorentz." -- Alfred Arthur Robb

"Einstein published a paper which set forth the relativity theory of Poincaré and Lorentz with some amplifications, and which attracted much attention." -- Sir Edmund Whittaker

"The appearance of Dr. Silberstein's recent article on 'General Relativity without the Equivalence Hypothesis' encourages me to restate my own views on the subject. I am perhaps entitled to do this as my work on the subject of General Relativity was published before that of Einstein and Kottler, and appears to have been overlooked by recent writers." -- Harry Bateman

"All this was maintained by Poincare and others long before the time of Einstein, and one does injustice to truth in ascribing the discovery to him." -- Charles Nordmann

"Many of you have looked upon [Einstein's] paper 'Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper' in Annalen der Physik ... and you will have noticed some peculiarities. The striking point is that it contains not a single reference to previous literature. It gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course, as I have tried to explain, not true." -- Max Born

"In point of fact, therefore, Poincaré was not only the first to enunciate the principle, but he also discovered in Lorentz's work the necessary mathematical formulation of the principle. All this happened before Einstein's paper appeared." -- G. H. Keswani

"Einstein's explanation is a dimensional disguise for Lorentz's. ... Thus Einstein's theory is not a denial of, nor an alternative for, that of Lorentz. It is only a duplicate and disguise for it. ... Einstein continually maintains that the theory of Lorentz is right, only he disagrees with his 'interpretation.' Is it not clear, therefore, that in this, as in other cases, Einstein's theory is merely a disguise for Lorentz's, the apparent disagreement about 'interpretation' being a matter of words only?" -- James Mackaye

Mr Bjerknes, an American historian of science, has authored six books on Einstein and the theory of relativity. Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist (ISBN 0971962987) is available at www.amazon.com.

- - - - -

A reviewer, a physicist, July 18, 2002

ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS INDEED A PLAGIARIST

This book is very well documented, and, therefore, very convincing. I read the Dover reprint of 'The Principle of Relativity' years ago, and realized then that Einstein just copied Lorentz, because Lorentz' article appeared a before Einstein's and says essentially the same things. But this book goes far beyond that and really shows a pattern by Einstein of plagiarism. I was surprised to discover that Einstein's wife may have written the journal articles for him. The number of citations and quotations in this book is really impressive and together form a compelling argument stated in a very logical progression of facts. My only regret is that there isn't more on the general theory of relativity, but the author hinted that more is to come, and that this book is part of a series. I look forward to the future releases. I'm pleased with it and would recommend it. It will change your view of Einstein and of the theory of relativity. If you are doing research, I can tell you that I have never seen a book which provides more information on the complete history of the theories than this book, including Whittaker's.

Samizdat - 10/28/2009

Two Smackdowns • The U.S. as Failed State • Russia's Daring Vote

TWO SMACKDOWNS

Al Franken eviscerates a Stepford spokeswoman from the Hudson Institute on medical bankruptcies. Anyone who thought "Stuart Smiley" would be a lightweight in the Senate is wrong -- he's tough, well-prepared and he doesn't pull any punches:

"How many medical bankruptcies were there in Switzerland last year?"

"How many medical bankruptcies were there in France last year?"

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/22/795842/-Watch-Franken-slice-and-dice-the-nice-wingnut-lady-(updated-w-transcript)

MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan takes on Chamber of Commerce chief Tom Donohue:

Ratigan: "Unless the government and people like you that lobby to the exemptions that allow banks to [speculate with taxpayer money] get out of the way, we will never have fair play again in this country and we'll have job creation by virtue of taxpayer theft, which is ultimately destructive, and I would argue, treasonous to this country... Especially when you talk nonsense."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/dylan-ratigan-to-chamber_n_320397.html

________________________________________________________


The US as Failed State

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts10222009.html

The US has every characteristic of a failed state.

The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.

According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way.

While the US government squanders $400 per gallon of gasoline in order to kill women and children in Afghanistan, many millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their homes and are experiencing the kind of misery that is the daily life of poor third world peoples. Americans are living in their cars and in public parks. America’s cities, towns, and states are suffering from the costs of economic dislocations and the reduction in tax revenues from the economy’s decline. Yet, Obama has sent more troops to Afghanistan, a country half way around the world that is not a threat to America.

It costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who are at risk of life and limb, are paid a pittance, but all of the privatized services to the military are rolling in excess profits. One of the great frauds perpetuated on the American people was the privatization of services that the US military traditionally performed for itself. “Our” elected leaders could not resist any opportunity to create at taxpayers’ expense private wealth that could be recycled to politicians in campaign contributions.

Republicans and Democrats on the take from the private insurance companies maintain that the US cannot afford to provide Americans with health care and that cuts must be made even in Social Security and Medicare. So how can the US afford bankrupting wars, much less totally pointless wars that serve no American interest?

The enormous scale of foreign borrowing and money creation necessary to finance Washington’s wars are sending the dollar to historic lows. The dollar has even experienced large declines relative to currencies of third world countries such as Botswana and Brazil. The decline in the dollar’s value reduces the purchasing power of Americans’ already declining incomes.

Despite the lowest level of housing starts in 64 years, the US housing market is flooded with unsold homes, and financial institutions have a huge and rising inventory of foreclosed homes not yet on the market.

Industrial production has collapsed to the level of 1999, wiping out a decade of growth in industrial output.

The enormous bank reserves created by the Federal Reserve are not finding their way into the economy. Instead, the banks are hoarding the reserves as insurance against the fraudulent derivatives that they purchased from the gangster Wall Street investment banks.

The regulatory agencies have been corrupted by private interests. Frontline reports that Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers blocked Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives. President Obama rewarded Larry Summers for his idiocy by appointing him Director of the National Economic Council. What this means is that profits for Wall Street will continue to be leeched from the diminishing blood supply of the American economy.

An unmistakable sign of third world despotism is a police force that sees the pubic as the enemy. Thanks to the federal government, our local police forces are now militarized and imbued with hostile attitudes toward the public. SWAT teams have proliferated, and even small towns now have police forces with the firepower of US Special Forces. Summons are increasingly delivered by SWAT teams that tyrannize citizens with broken down doors, a $400 or $500 repair born by the tyrannized resident. Recently a mayor and his family were the recipients of incompetence by the town’s local SWAT team, which mistakenly wrecked the mayor’s home, terrorized his family, and killed the family’s two friendly Labrador dogs.

If a town’s mayor can be treated in this way, what do you think is the fate of the poor white or black? Or the idealistic student who protests his government’s inhumanity?

In any failed state, the greatest threat to the population comes from the government and the police. That is certainly the situation today in the USA. Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. Washington is controlled by interest groups that enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

The one percent that comprise the superrich are laughing as they say, “let them eat cake.”

_________________________________________________________________________

Russia's Daring Vote

By ISRAEL SHAMIR

http://www.counterpunch.com/shamir10222009.html

Russia's vote to endorse the Goldstone Gaza report in the United Nations Human Rights Council last Friday was an important, milestone event both for Palestine and for Russia. For Palestine, this vote opened a way to try and sentence Israeli mass-murderers, and thus ushered Israel into a new era of responsibility after a long period of Wild West-style, Colt-45 justice. For Russia, this vote has proved to its own country and to the world that it is free from American and Zionist diktat and able to navigate its own policy...

Many people doubted his impartiality: Goldstone is a Jew -- a self-described Zionist, well-connected to Israel – he sits on the board of its University and his daughter even lived in Tel Aviv for a while. Goldstone was guided by his conscience and not by his blood. He went to Gaza, invested a lot of time and effort, and concluded: Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. He recommended the case be transferred to the ICC court in the Hague. Israel did not cooperate and tried to undermine and block the report, but failed. That was the first Israeli defeat...

Israel was infuriated by this development. The Jewish State considered itself invulnerable behind the triple defense of the Sixth Fleet, the US Senate and the Holocaust Museum. President Obama's soft request to freeze the settlement building was met in Tel Aviv by what Internet chat calls "lol". He was ridiculed. Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu even sped up their building plans in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to show that they could not care less. And now, all of a sudden, Jewish ministers of state are going to be judged as if they were Serbs or Sudanese.

Israeli leaders activated their main reserves, the US State Department and the Lobby. A few days ago I spoke with Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Tel Aviv, and he confirmed that the US State Department will do all it can to stop the Goldstone report before it gets to the Security Council. Another American veto would not look good. Worse, an insulted and hurt Obama might just forget to veto an anti-Israeli decision...

A few years ago I wrote: "The world needs Russia, for since her star was obscured in 1990, for almost twenty years the runaway train of US and the loose cannon of Israel made a mess on the planet. Russia must stop their orgy of aggression and regain its place as the ultimate protector of the weak and the meek. This is her manifest destiny". The Geneva vote proved that Russia has done just that. We may once again connect our hopes with Russia in her friendship with China. They also can stop Israel from hurting itself and others.

So many people in the US and France, in Egypt and Palestine are tired of Israeli intransigence, egotism, hypocrisy and impunity. That is why so much hope was invested in Barack Obama after his Cairo talk. Obama had promised to cut Israel down to size, but meanwhile Israel cut him down to smaller-than-life. That is why the US is going down just like the Titanic, undermined by a Lobby iceberg and fleeced by financial wizards. Now Russia is coming under tremendous pressure from the US and other Zionist-led groups and states. We should pray she will withstand it and maintain her and our dignity.


Travis Kelly Graphics
http://www.tkellygraphics.com

Editorial & History Cartoons
http://www.traviskelly.com

CafePress:
Cartoons on T-Shirts, Posters, Calendars, Mugs and more
http://www.cafepress.com/traviskelly

I Think This Image Says It All...

Empire - A Review

Good afternoon, dear readers! Today, I'm going to review the 2002 release Empire, starring John Leguizamo, Peter Sarsgaard, Delilah Cotto, Denise Richards, Isabella Rossellini, Fat Joe, Treach and a cast of other very good actors.

The Wikipedia article on this movie does not do it justice. This movie is fantastic, and, if more people had paid attention to the myriad storylines within, maybe a lot of those people who fell prey to the likes of Bernard Madoff and the like would have seen what was coming.

John Leguizamo plays Victor Rosa, an entrepreneur (read: dope peddler) in the South Bronx, in the midst of a very sensitive turf war with three other dealers. They all purchase their dope from La Colombiana, played by Isabella Rossellini. As in the real world, the dealers have an identifying name to go with their particular offering; Vic calling his product Empire. He prefers to cut it the least, and develops both a good breed of customer and brand loyalty. His rivals, Tito Severe for example (played by Fat Joe), prefers to deal in quantity and cuts it without regard for purity. Vic is very cunning and has, for the most part, avoided the arrests that are usually prevalent in his line of business. At one point, Vic sets up decoys with wax paper bags filled with crushed graham crackers with "FUCK YOU" stamped on the baggies, thereby faking out the all-too-obvious undercover narcotics teams.

Vic has a beautiful girlfriend, Carmen, played by Delilah Cotto, who, even knowing his business, stands behind her man. It isn't blind loyalty, as you will see later in the movie. I wish to entice you to want to go buy this movie or rent it at Blockbuster or Netflix - it really is that good.

Of course, with any turf war goes the overstepping of boundaries, and this is dealt with quickly and decisively by Vic's crew. The person responsible unwittingly sets off the escalating chain of events that put everyone in danger, and the consequences are frightening.

Carmen's co-worker, Trish, played by Denise Richards, has a boyfriend by the name of Jack Wimmer, played by Peter Sarsgaard. Jack is charismatic, cool, and most importantly, not blind as to the reality of how he makes his living; for that, when he is introduced to Vic, he does not look down upon him; rather, he sees Vic and himself as kindred spirits, and they befriend each other immediately.

Carmen informs Vic that they are pregnant; not long after that, the repercussions of earlier retributions return as a hit is taken on Vic, who is wounded, but not fatally. This gets Vic to thinking about leaving his business, and instead joining Jack in his very lucrative investments. He moves out of the South Bronx into an unused Soho loft, offered by Jack. He begins alienating his former crew for socialite parties with Jack and Trish, something Carmen now regrets.

His first investment pans out to a 200% return; Vic is amazed with the ease at which Jack can make such things happen. When a deal is mentioned that has an even higher rate of return, Vic throws caution to the wind and goes for it...but there are extenuating circumstances. One, he must rein in Jimmy, his former lieutenant, from his hyper-violent proclivities; two, being a million and a half short, he approaches La Colombiana with an offer to include her into the money train - her response to him is that Jimmy must go, and the money is his. Painful decisions are made, and the deal is in the offing.

Of course, this is where the movie parallels recent occurrences - Vic is taken for every cent he's got, and Jack Wimmer disappears...seemingly without a trace. Vic returns to what's left of his former crew and elicits what financial means they have to try out a long shot, which pans out. Of course, Jack Wimmer's fate does not parallel Bernie Madoff's...at least, not as of yet, but if you see this movie, you may ask yourself...why NOT.

Speaking of Bernies...how's my pal, Bernie Kerik...or should I say Inmate #210717? Not so bloody smug anymore, now are we?

Glenn Beck To The Rescue! - Travis Kelly

Have You Read The Goldstone Report?

I haven't, yet. I'm printing it out to read on the way home. You should, as well.

So...it looks as if we will be spared World War III, if we can go the next handful of hours without a false-flag attack occurring, to somehow be blamed upon Iran. Of course, if the United States continues to support the scumbaggery perpetrated by Israel, there's always Resolution 377. Suck on that, nitwits.

So...how about that "Samson Option", eh? Let's see if you silly bastards really have the balls.

The War Game - David Hirst's account of the Arab-Israeli conflict, The Gun and the Olive Branch, caused a storm 25 years ago. In this edited extract from his new and updated edition he offers a personal and highly controversial view of the current crisis in the Middle East

* The Observer, Sunday 21 September 2003 00.51 BST

By the summer of 2002, George Bush had firmly set his new course: 'regime change' and reform in the Muslim and Arab worlds, and, where necessary, American military intervention to achieve it. Hitherto, it had been assumed that the US could not go to war in one of the two great zones of Middle East crisis - Iraq and the Gulf - before it had at least calmed things down in the other, older and more explosive one, Palestine. But the American administration's neo-conservatives had a very simple answer to that. The road to war on Iraq no longer lay through peace in Palestine; peace in Palestine lay through war on Baghdad.

It was all set forth, in its most comprehensive, well-nigh megalomaniac form, by Norman Podhoretz, the neo-cons' veteran intellectual luminary, in the September 2002 issue of his magazine, Commentary. Changes in regime, he proclaimed, were 'the sine qua non throughout the region'. They might 'clear a path to the long-overdue internal reform and modernisation of Islam'.

This was a full and final elaboration of that project, 'A Clean Break', which some of his kindred spirits had first laid before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu back in 1996. It was the apotheosis of the 'strategic alliance', at least as much an Israeli grand design as an American one.

Under the guise of forcibly divesting Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, the US now sought to 'reshape' the entire Middle East, with this most richly endowed and pivotal of countries as the lynchpin of a whole new, pro-American geopolitical order. Witnessing such an overwhelming display of American will and power, other regimes, such as Hizbollah-supporting Syria in particular, would either have to bend to American purposes or suffer the same fate.

With the assault on Iraq, the US was not merely adopting Israel's long-established methods - of initiative, offence and pre-emption - it was also adopting Israel's adversaries as its own. Iraq had always ranked high among those; it was one of its so-called 'faraway' enemies. These had come to be seen as more menacing than the 'near' ones, and especially since they had begun developing weapons of mass destruction.

So excited was Israeli premier Ariel Sharon about this whole new Middle East order in the making that he told the Times, 'the day after' Iraq, the US and Britain should turn to that other 'faraway' enemy - Iran. For Israel, the ayatollahs' Iran had always seemed the greater menace of the two, by virtue of its intrinsic weight, its fundamentalist, theologically anti-Zionist leadership, its more serious, diversified and supposedly Russian-assisted nuclear armaments programme, its ideological affinity with, or direct sponsorship of, such Islamist organisations as Hamas or Hizbollah.

Nothing, in fact, better illustrated the ascendancy which Israel and the American 'friends of Israel' have acquired over American policy-making than did Iran. Quite simply, said Iran expert James Bill, the 'US views Iran through spectacles manufactured in Israel'. Impressing on the US the gravity of the Iranian threat has long been a foremost Israeli preoccupation.

By the early 1990s, the former Minister Moshe Sneh was warning that Israel 'cannot possibly put up with a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands'. That could and should be collectively prevented, he said, 'since Iran threatens the interests of all rational states in the Middle East'. However: 'If the Western states don't do their duty, Israel will find itself forced to act alone, and will accomplish its task by any [ie including nuclear] means.' The hint of anti-American blackmail in that remark was nothing exceptional; it has always been a leitmotif of Israeli discourse on the subject.

The showdown with Iraq has only encouraged this kind of thinking. 'Within two years,' said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, 'either the US or Israelis are going to attack Iran's [nuclear sites] or acquiesce in Iran being a nuclear state.'

To where this Israeli-American, neo-conservative blueprint for the Middle East will lead is impossible to forecast. What can be said for sure is that it could easily turn out to be as calamitous in its consequences, for the region, America and Israel, as it is preposterously partisan in motivation, fantastically ambitious in design and terribly risky in practice.

Even if, to begin with, it achieves what, by its authors' estimate, is an outward, short-term measure of success, it will not end the violence in the Middle East. Far more likely is that, in the medium or the long term, it will make it very much worse. For the violence truly to end, its roots must be eradicated, too, and the noxious soil that feeds them cleansed.

It is late, but perhaps not too late, for that to happen. The historic - and historically generous - compromise offer which Yasser Arafat, back in 1988, first put forward for the sharing of Palestine between its indigenous people and the Zionists who drove most of them out still officially stands. It is completely obvious by now that, without external persuasion, Israel will never accept it; that the persuasion can only come from Israel's last real friend in the world, the US; that, for the persuasion to work, there has to be 'reform' or 'regime change' in Israel quite as far-reaching as any to be wrought on the other side.

Given the partisanship, it is, admittedly, highly unlikely to happen any time soon. But if it doesn't happen in the reasonably foreseeable future, there may come a time when it can no longer happen at all. The Palestinian leadership may withdraw its offer, having concluded, like many of its people already have, that, however conciliatory it becomes, whatever fresh concessions it makes, it will never be enough for an adversary that seems to want all.

The Hamas rejectionists, and/or those, secular as well as religious, who think like them, may take over the leadership. The whole, broader, Arab-Israeli peace process which Anwar Sadat began, and which came to be seen as irreversible, may prove to be reversible after all. In which case, the time may also come when the cost to the US of continuing to support its infinitely importunate protégé in a never-ending conflict against an ever-widening circle of adversaries is greater than its will and resources to sustain it.

That would very likely be a time when Israel itself is already in dire peril. And if it were, then America would very likely discover something else: that the friend and ally it has succoured all these years is not only a colonial state, not only extremist by temperament, racist in practice, and increasingly fundamentalist in the ideology that drives it, it is also eminently capable of becoming an 'irrational' state at America's expense as well as its own.

The threatening of wild, irrational violence, in response to political pressure, has been an Israeli impulse from the very earliest days. It was first authoritatively documented, in the 1950s, by Moshe Sharett, the dovish Prime Minister, who wrote of his Defence Minister, Pinhas Lavon, that he 'constantly preached for acts of madness' or 'going crazy' if ever Israel were crossed. Without a 'just, comprehensive and lasting' peace which only America can bring to pass, Israel will remain at least as likely a candidate as Iran, and a far more enduring one, for the role of 'nuclear-crazy' state.

Iran can never be threatened in its very existence. Israel can. Indeed, such a threat could even grow out of the current intifada. That, at least, is the pessimistic opinion of Martin van Creveld, professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. 'If it went on much longer,' he said, 'the Israeli government [would] lose control of the people. In campaigns like this, the anti-terror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We'll destroy ourselves.'

In this situation, he went on, more and more Israelis were coming to regard the 'transfer' of the Palestinians as the only salvation; resort to it was growing 'more probable' with each passing day. Sharon 'wants to escalate the conflict and knows that nothing else will succeed'.

But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? 'That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.'

* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Don't Drop The Soap, Bernie!

Scumbag Bernie Kerik's going back in the can! Hahahahahahaha!

Remember Bernie Kerik, that swaggering sack of testosterone? Looks like he's in real trouble now:

NEW YORK - Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik has been indicted on charges of making false statements to White House officials vetting him for the position of Department of Homeland Security secretary.

The indictment was handed up Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. It means Kerik will face trials in New York and Washington.

Similar false-statement charges were brought as part of a larger case in New York but were dismissed and transferred to Washington, where prosecutors say the crimes occurred.

The indictment alleges Kerik falsely denied that as a public official he had any financial dealings with contractors seeking to do business with the city. Prosecutors say the contractors spent more than $255,000 renovating Kerik's apartment.

Don't drop the soap, you stupid sack of shit - someone's waiting for that nice virgin territory. And as for you, Giuliani - you're not known as "America's Mayor"...you're known as "America's Asshole". Don't run for governor, asshat.

Hiram...you're not far behind (pardon the pun).

The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror by David Hoffman Chapter 10 - The Octopus

A bit of a preamble...I am very well read on the PROMIS scandal - this ties in to the Iran-Contra mess, served as a precursor of CALEA, and was directly related to the October Surprise, which featured a photo-finish of Ronald Reagan's inauguration and the release of the Iranian hostages.

The Octopus was the name given to the encompassing layers of tentacles of monied interests and compromised government contacts by Danny Casolaro. Danny, as you may or may not know, is listed as one of those "suicided" individuals. He "committed suicide" by slicing his wrists horribly in a bathtub. His notes on the Octopus, to be assembled into a book, disappeared, never to surface again.

The book was printed, but for some reason was missing the following chapter - here it is, for your reading pleasure.

Chapter 10

[E: This chapter was omitted from the printed edition.]

The Octopus

"This underground empire is controlled by a handful of people for money — that's the only secret of the temple."
— Investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, prior to his murder by the Octopus

The nomenclature of the Lockerbie and World Trade Center bombings provide a unique and unparalleled insight into the dynamics of the Oklahoma City bombing. Each event gives the reader a glimpse of how the Shadow Government operates, utilizing drug dealers, criminals, and terrorists to do its bidding.

All three bombings were sting operations that utilized, and were utilized by, terrorists bent on causing destruction.

But the question still remained: who was controlling the terrorists? To understand that, one must peer through the doorway of time stretching from WWII to the present.

To prepare for the invasion of Sicily during WWII, the OSS (which later became the CIA) collaborated with the Corsican Mafia. The arrangement permitted the Mafia use the port of Marseilles for heroin smuggling in exchange for its assistance in defeating the Nazis.[1117]

After WWII, the heroin operation moved to Vietnam and Laos, then to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the CIA embroiled itself in a covert war against the Soviets. Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs Richard Armitage sat on the "208 Committee," which oversaw military aid to the Mujahadeen. Fazoe Haq, the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (the largest heroin growing province in Afghanistan), who was originally worth $100,000, was suddenly was worth $200 million after the war. Armitage was his main contact.[1118]

Vince Cannistraro (Mr. "Libya done it") also sat on the 208 Committee, representing National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Oliver North's supervisor.[1119]

Shortly after the start of the Afghani operation, the CIA began arming the Contras in Nicaragua. Cannistraro himself [along with Duane "Dewy" Clarridge, then Chief of the CIA's Latin American Division] headed Casey's original operation to arm the Contras, based on Reagan's March, 1981 decision. As former Green Beret Andrew Eiva said, "Cannistraro was up to his ears by 1985." This is significant, considering the Boland Amendment, prohibiting aid to the Contras, was passed in 1984.[1120]

Some of these are the same players who moved into other Central American countries, setting up security services (death squads) for U.S.-backed dictators, and profiting handsomely from the cocaine trade.

If anyone thinks these are outrageous allegations, consider the statements of Mike Levine, one of the DEA's most highly decorated veterans: "For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers," including the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the Contras in Central America, the DFS in Mexico, the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, and "any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manuel Noriega. Support of these people has been secretly deemed more important than getting drugs off our streets."[1121]

Or consider the words of Lt. Col. Bo Gritz, former commander of the Special Forces in Latin America and the most decorated soldier in Vietnam. Gritz made a trip to the Golden Triangle in 1983 to search for American POWs, a mission that was ultimately stonewalled. Gritz believes the POWs are being used as drug mules, and the government doesn't want them returned alive, for fear they would expose the Octopus. As Gritz said: "[They] would not want the American POWs to come home. Because when they do, there will be an investigation as to why they were abandoned. At that time we will uncover this secret organization and its illicit drug money and financing. The Secret Team would then be exposed."[1122]

As Gritz later wrote in Called to Serve:

If Richard Armitage was, as Khun Sa avowed, a major participant in parallel government drug trafficking, then it explained why our efforts to rescue POWs had been inexplicably foiled, time after time... If it was true, Richard Armitage would be the last man in the world who would desire to see prisoners of war come home alive.[1123]

As "Special Consultant to the Pentagon on the MIAs," in Bangkok in 1975, Armitage reportedly spent more time repatriating opium profits then recovering POWs. In 1976, when Khun Sa was still selling heroin to CIA officials, the head of the CIA was none other than George Bush.[1124]

Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, who was appointed presidential investigator for POW/MIA affairs, came upon the same information, and was warned by former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci to stop pursuing the connections to Armitage. As he sadly explained to a group of POW/MIA families in 1987: "I have been instructed to cease and desist."[1125]

Ironically, between 1987 and 1991, Vice-President Bush served as head of the South Florida Drug Task Force, and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, both set up to "stem" the flow of drugs into the U.S. While Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. tripled.[1126]

Celerino "Cele" Castillo, the DEA's head agent in El Salvador and Guatemala from 1985 to 1991, told reporters and Senate investigators of numerous known drug traffickers who used hangers controlled by Oliver North and the CIA in El Salvador's Ilopango military airbase. When Castillo naively tried to warn Bush at a U.S. embassy party in Guatemala, Bush "just shook my hand, smiled and walked away…"[1127]

"By the end of 1988," added Castillo, "I realized how hopelessly tangled the DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind."[1128]

"The CIA — they're making deals with the Devil," adds Mike Levine. "Unfortunately, the Devil is smarter than they are."[1129]

Some of those devils, like Monzer al-Kassar — "business partner" of Richard Secord and Oliver North — would be utilized to do the Octopus's dirty work.

Another name Khun Sa mentioned repeatedly was Ted Shackley.[1130] A long-time CIA player, Theodore G. Shackley (known as "The Blond Ghost") began his Agency career as CIA Station Chief in Miami, where he directed the CIA's JM/WAVE Operation, a post-Bay of Pigs attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro and wreck havoc within that sovereign nation. Utilizing Cuban expatriates, the CIA conducted hundreds of sabotage raids against Cuba in direct violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act. Shackley also worked in close partnership with Mob figures John Roselli, Sam Giancana, and Santos Trafficante.[1131]

While the operation was shut down in 1965, due mainly to revelations of organized crime connections and drug smuggling, many of the participants remained in Miami, continuing their illegal activities.

Later, as Station Chief of Laos, Shackley directed Major General Richard Secord's air wing in tactical raids against the Communist Pathet Lao, who happened to be General Vang Pao's main competition in the opium trade. By keeping the Pathet Lao busy with the help of the CIA and the American military, Pao's Hmong tribesmen were able to become the region's largest heroin producers.[1132]

Of course, Shackley, his deputy Tom Clines (who supervised the air base in Long Tieng), and their colleagues in CIA front companies like Air America were only too happy to help, smuggling heroin to the U.S. in the gutted bodies of dead GIs (with the assistance of their old Mob buddy Santos Trafficante, who had helped form their ZR/RIFLE assassination team, and Vietnamese Air Force General Nguyen Cao Ky), and laundering the profits in the Nugan-Hand bank. As a 1983 Wall Street Journal article stated:

Investigations following Mr. Nugan's death and the failure of the bank revealed widespread dealings by Nugan-Hand with international heroin syndicates, and evidence of massive fraud against U.S. and foreign citizens. Many retired high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials were executives of or consultants to Nugan-Hand.[1133][1134]*

Shackley, along with Nugan-Hand's attorney — former CIA Director William Colby — directed the infamous "Phoenix Program," a largely successful attempt to "neutralize" by torture and murder approximately 40,000 Vietnamese civilians suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers. One Phoenix operative, testifying before Congress, stated that Phoenix was "a sterile, depersonalized murder program… it was completely indiscriminate." The assassinations would continue in Nicaragua under the code-name "Operation Pegasus."[1135][1136]

After becoming the head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations (Latin American Division) in 1972, Shackley supervised the overthrow of the Chilean government ("Operation Track II") by murdering democratically elected President Salvador Allende. With the backing of the CIA under Shackley, the military led a violent coup by Right-wing General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the abolishment of the Constitution, the closing of all newspapers save for two Right-wing dailies, the outlawing of trade unions, the suppression of all political parties, and the arrest, torture, and execution of thousands.[1137]

After a brief stint as Director of the Far East Division, Shackley directed CIA agent Edwin Wilson in training the Shah of Iran's notorious secret police, the Savak, who routinely tortured and murdered the Shah's opponents. Later Shackley would assist more directly in these efforts.[1138]

In 1975, Shackley became Associate Director in the Directorate of Operations, which put him in charge of Covert-Operations, Counter-Intelligence, and ironically, Counter-Narcotics, all under the command of George Herbert Walker Bush.

These associations naturally led to Shackley playing a role in the formation of the "Secret Team," (to coin a phrase invented by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty) the covert and illegal enterprise that was the driving force behind the Iran-Contra operation. Donald Gregg, one of Shackley's subordinates during his Saigon tenure, would later become Assistant National Security Advisor during Iran-Contra, reporting directly to Vice-President Bush.

It was against this backdrop that Shackley served as a "consultant" to players such as Bush, Secord, North, and Casey in their illegal and bloody guns-for-drugs network that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the flooding of our streets with tons of drugs.

As Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny writes about Ted Shackley in his book, The Crimes of Patriots:

Looking at the list of disasters Shackley has presided over during his career, one might even conclude that on the day the CIA hired Shackley it might have done better hiring a KGB agent; a Soviet mole probably could not have done as much damage to the national security of the United States with all his wile as Shackley did with the most patriotic of intentions.

Between Shackely's Cuban and Indochinese campaigns, more dope dealers were probably put onto the payroll of the United States Government, and protected and encouraged in their activities, than if the government had simply gone out and hired the Mafia — which, in the case of the Cuban campaign, it did.

CIA Director Admiral Stansfield Turner forced Shackley to resign from the Agency in 1979, due to his "unauthorized" dealings with rogue agent Edwin Wilson, who was selling plastic explosives to Libya (with Shackley's approval). Had he not left, Shackley would likely have become head of the Agency.[1139]

George Bush, who headed the Agency in 1976, strongly desired to continue in that post. He was not reappointed when Jimmy Carter took office.[1140]*

Moreover, Turner, who had little faith in HUMNIT (Human Intelligence) sources, decided to reshape the CIA along more advanced technological lines. As a result of Turner's infamous "Halloween Massacre," the CIA cut its field agents from several thousand to just over 300. As President Jimmy Carter would later state, "We were aware that some of the unqualified and incompetent personnel whom he discharged were deeply resentful."[1141]

The old hands of the Agency, who formerly had at their disposal almost unlimited "Black Budget" funds for covert operations, were suddenly forced into retirement, or forced into lockstep with Turner's new guidelines.

Although CIA Director William Casey hired 2,000 new covert operators in 1980, many CIA critics felt Turner's actions had already caused the secret cells of the good-old-boy networks to bury themselves — and their illegal activities — even deeper.

It is this element, birthed in the hysteria of the Cold War, legitimized by the paranoia of the National Security state, and nurtured by the politics of greed, that has buried itself in the core of American politics.

As long-time Army Criminal Investigator Gene Wheaton defines it: "An elite, very clandestine, very covert group within the intelligence community…. The CIA and DIA is just the lightening rod for the people who really control things."

Those who could accept the idea of government foreknowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing would be hard-pressed to accept the notion that certain factions within the government might have orchestrated the bombing itself. Those who have a difficult time accepting this are stymied by what they perceive as "government."

As Wheaton explains, "The government is just a bunch of monuments, office buildings, computers, and desks. They don't see the crazies in the government — the little conspiratorial cliques within the government."[1142]

These little conspiratorial cliques — the same players that Shackley intersects with, going back to Cuba, Laos, Afghanistan and Nicaragua — have been involved for decades in everything from drug and gun-running, to assassinations, covert warfare, and outright terrorism. It is a terrorism that increasingly has no particular face, no ideological credo, no political goal. It is a terrorism motivated by power and greed.[1143]

By no means the lone man behind the curtain, Ted Shackley represents one of the more visible of this lexicon of covert operators upon whom the powers that be depend on for their endless supply of "black ops" and dirty tricks. Perhaps this is how Shackley knows, or seems to know, the complex truth behind Oklahoma City. It is a truth that remains hidden behind a sophisticated labyrinth of covert operatives, all of whom converge at similar times and places. They are, as David Corn writes, "the little faceless gray men we never see and seldom hear about." Those we call the "Shadow Government," the "Parallel Government," the "Enterprise," the "Octopus," or a half-a-dozen other names, are carefully hidden behind an endless roster of official titles and duties, and a plethora of familiar-sounding organizations and institutions.

These same faceless little gray men would pop up in the Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy like interminable weeds between the cracks of the pavement. From the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to Oklahoma City, the names, faces, and players would coalesce for a brief moment in time into an indistinguishable menagerie of politicos and spooks, terrorists and assassins — to commit their terrible deed, then fade into the seamless world were little distinction is made between assets and criminals.[1144]

Ted Shackley was officially forced to resign from the CIA due to his dealings with friend and renegade agent Edwin Wilson. Wilson and former CIA employee Frank Terpil had smuggled two tons of C-4 to Libya, and at the behest of Shackley, had set up terrorist training camps there utilizing Green Berets led to believe they were working for the Agency. The ostensible purpose of this maneuver was to permit the CIA to gather information on Soviet and Libyan weapons and defense capabilities, and to learn the identities of foreign nationals being trained for guerrilla warfare. Upon obtaining their passports and travel plans, Shackley would alert their home country's secret police, who would then assassinate them upon their return.[1145]

While Wilson was sentenced to a long prison term, Terpil fled to Cuba, and has since been involved in numerous dealings with the PLO and other terrorists, supplying them with sophisticated assassination weapons, detonators, and communication systems.[1146]

Terpil also supplied torture devices to Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin, who used a bomb supplied by Terpil to assassinate Kenyan cabinet member Bruce McKenzie.[1147]*

One month later, Terpil was implicated in the murder of three executives of the IBEX corporation — a high-technology company that was doing business with the Savak. John Harper, IBEX's former director of security, said that while in Tripoli, he saw a mock-up of the ambush site at the training facility that Terpil and Wilson had set up.[1148]†

Readers will recall this is the same Frank Terpil that was seen by Cary Gagan in Mexico City with Omar (Sam Khalid?), six months before the Oklahoma City bombing. "I saw him down in Mexico," recalled Gagan, "in November of '94, in Mexico City… with Omar."

Gagan said he and Omar met Terpil at the Hotel Maria Isabelle in the Zona Rosa district. Gagan didn't know who Terpil was at the time, but described him as a fat, balding, 60ish fellow, who was "terribly dressed." In other words — Frank Terpil.

"I heard the name because I knew Wilson's name from the Florence Federal Penitentiary in Colorado." Gagan said that one of his intelligence contacts, a man named Daniel, told him about Terpil. "The conversation came up in reference to the Gander, Newfoundland crash," said Gagan.

Was Terpil in Mexico to supply explosives to Omar? While Gagan wasn't privy to the conversation, he believes that was the purpose of the meeting.

When Wilson and Terpil were selling arms and explosives to Libya, they were reporting to none other than Ted Shackley. Kwitny notes that Wilson and Terpil were hiring anti-Castro Cubans from Shackley's old JM/WAVE program [and Green Berets] to assassinate President Qaddafi's political opponents abroad:

Some U.S. Army men were literally lured away from the doorway of Fort Bragg, their North Carolina training post. The GIs were given every reason to believe that the operation summoning them was being carried out with the full backing of the CIA.…[1149]

Readers will also recall that while Timothy McVeigh was still in the Army, he wrote his sister a letter telling her that he had been picked for a Special Forces (Green Beret) Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. These illegal activities included "protecting drug shipments, eliminating the [Octopus's drug] competition, and population control."

This is exactly what Shackley, Clines, and Secord did in Laos — assassinating and bombing Vang Pao's opium competition out of existence.

Could this CTU McVeigh claims he was recruited for be a latter-day version of Shackley's assassins? Former federal grand juror Hoppy Heidelberg said McVeigh's letter indicates that he turned them down, while former FBI SAC Ted Gundersen claims McVeigh actually worked for the group for a while, then became disenchanted.[1150]

If McVeigh had actually been recruited for such a group, the question arises of what cover-story he was given. As discussed, it is highly likely he was told that he was on an important mission — to infiltrate a terrorist organization and prevent a bombing. Considering McVeigh's background and character, it is unlikely he is a terrorist who set out to murder 169 innocent people.

Also recall that McVeigh was seen with Hussain al-Hussaini. The Iraqis would provide a convincing and plausible excuse if McVeigh was led to believe he was part of a sting operation: "Son, you were a hero in the Gulf War. Your country needs you now in the fight against terrorism." It is a story a young, impressionable man like McVeigh would fall for.

It is also possible that McVeigh was sheep-dipped as disgruntled ex-GI for infiltration into the neo-Nazi community, which would provide a doorway into the bombing conspiracy through places like Elohim City.

Or perhaps, as a result of his becoming "disenchanted" and "leaving" the CTU, he became targeted for "termination," and was set up as a fall-guy. Such is standard operating procedure for those who attempt to leave the world of covert operations.

Either way, the fact that there appeared to be two "Timothy McVeighs," just as there were two Oswalds, would suggest a sophisticated intelligence operation, one that was designed to put McVeigh in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like Oswald, McVeigh probably believed himself to be a government agent, part of a secret project. Like Oswald, McVeigh was not told what the plan really involved, and was trapped, framed, and made a patsy.

This goes a long way towards explaining why an armed McVeigh didn't shoot and kill Officer Charles Hanger when he was stopped on the Interstate after the bombing. Why would a man who had just killed 169 men, women, and children balk at killing a cop (a member of the system that McVeigh allegedly hated) on a lonely stretch of highway? The only possible answer is that McVeigh believed he was part of a sting operation — a government asset — and would be protected.

Whatever McVeigh's actual purpose and intent, it is curious, to say the least, that Ted Shackley would tell D'Ferdinand Carone that the perpetrator of the bombing was somebody from here.

How did he know?

Roger Moore, the mysterious gun dealer whom the government claimed McVeigh and Nichols robbed to "finance" the bombing, ran a company next to Bahia Mar Marina in South Florida (a popular hang-out for the Iran-Contra crowd), which manufactured high-speed boats. The boats — sold through Intercontinental Industries of Costa Rica (an Ollie North "cut-out") — were used to mine Nicaragua's harbors in "Operation Cordova Harbor."[1151]

One source I spoke to said Moore had direct contact with Oliver North. "I don't know who his [Moore's] contact was on Iran-Contra beyond Don Aranow. I know he had access and would talk directly to Oliver North. He knew Felix Rodriquez pretty well, he knew Nester Sanchez, Manny Diaz, all those guys around Jeb [Bush] pretty well."

This source also claimed that Moore was a "paymaster" for Tom Posey's Civilian Military Assistance (CMA) — the covert paramilitary operation that served as the primary nexus for arming the Contras.

A retired CIA/DIA agent I spoke to in Arkansas, said "[Moore] was an Agency contractor."

Other sources say Moore was an informant for the FBI. He allegedly tried to sell heavy weapons to the Militia of Montana (MOM) as part of an FBI sting operation. A call to MOM indicated that Moore had indeed stopped by for a friendly chat. He told Randy Trochmann, one of MOM's leaders, that he was traveling the country meeting with militia groups in an attempt to verify black helicopter sightings and rumors of UN troop movements. This seems a peculiar pastime for a man who worked for a network of spooks devoted to bypassing and subverting the Constitution.[1152]*

What is also peculiar is a letter written by Moore to McVeigh in early 1995. Introduced at the trial of Terry Nichols, the letter, speaks of "a plan… to bring the country down and have a few more things happen."[1153]

Robert "Bud" McFarlane went on to form his own consulting firm, and joined the board of American Equity Investors (AEI), founded by Prescott Bush. AEI's board of directors reads like a Who's Who of the spook world, including former CIA officials George Clairmont and Howard Hebert, and CIA lawyer Mitch Rogovin, who was George Bush's legal counsel when he was Director of the Agency.[1154]

AEI invested in a Tulsa, Oklahoma company: Hawkins Oil and Gas, from 1988 to 1991. McFarlane was a "consultant" for Hawkins and several other companies on the Ech power project in Pakistan, which required frequent trips to that country.[1155] This was during the tail end of the largest covert operation the U.S. ever conducted — the arming of the Mujahadeen, who trained in Pakistan. McFarlane sat on the "208 Committee," who's job it was to procure weapons for the Mujahadeen, and arms contracts for the Pakistani government.

Recall that Richard Armitage, who was the contact for Fazoe Haq, governor of the Northwest Frontier Province, also sat on the "208 Committee." As Alfred A. McCoy writes in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia:

It's known that the CIA paid the Afghan guerrillas, who were based in Pakistan, through BCCI.… That the Pakistan military were in fact banking their drug profits, moving their drug profits from the consuming country back to Pakistan though BCCI. In fact the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.…

BCCI also served as a conduit for the Iran-Contra operation, largely through Gaith Pharon, former head of Saudi Intelligence, who operated out of Islamabad, Pakistan. The Saudis played a major role in funding the Mujahadeen and [via the request of Secord and McFarlane] the Contras.

McFarlane — who former Mossad official Ari Ben Menashe claims is a Mossad asset — worked with the president of Hawkins' International Division, Mujeeb Rehman Cheema, on the Ech project. Was Hani Kamal's supposed statement that Khalid was connected to the Mossad accurate? A prominent Muslim community leader, Cheema claims he does not know Sam Khalid.[1156]

Interestingly, Gagan said that at one point, Terry Nichols rendezvoused with his Middle Eastern friends at the Islamic society of Nevada. Cheema is chairman of the Islamic Society of Tulsa. Is there a connection? And what of Cheema's links to McFarlane? Was McFarlane using Hawkins as a front for CIA activities in Pakistan?

It is perhaps prophetic that many of the terrorists implicated in the major bombings of the last decade attended the terrorist conference held in the Northwest Frontier Province town of Konli, Pakistan in July of 1996. As noted, Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi who funded the Mujahadeen and was implicated in the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings, (a close associate of Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman, implicated in the World Trade Center bombing), Ahmed Jibril (who bombed Pan Am 103), and senior representatives of Iranian and Pakistani intelligence, and Hamas, HizbAllah, and other groups attended the conference.[1157]

Stephen Jones claimed he had learned through the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service that Iraq had hired seven Pakistani mercenaries — Mujahadeen veterans — to bomb targets in the U.S., one of which was the Alfred P. Murrah Building.[1158]

Just who were these "Pakistani mercenaries," and were they really working for Iraq?

Samizdat - 10/20/2009

Lawyer: Oklahoma City Bombing Tapes Missing Key Portions

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/09/27/lawyer-oklahoma-city-bombing-tapes-missing-key-portions/

After a long, drawn out Freedom of Information Act battle, Salt Lake City lawyer Jesse Trentadue finally obtained video tapes from the area around the Murrah Federal Building for April 19, 1995, when a bombing killed 168 people...

The audioless tapes show periods before the bombing and the chaotic aftermath, footage taken from four cameras at four different office buildings near the attack. Trentadue, however, says “the real story is what’s missing.”

The video footage obtained by the lawyer shows all four cameras blanked in the few minutes leading up to the attack, and as a result there was no footage of the truck before the attack. The official explanation is that all four cameras just happened to run out of tape at the same time, though they all conveniently enough come back on just after the 9:02 blast...

Trentadue’s interest in the case came when his brother Kenneth was arrested and as matching the description of a suspect in the bombing. Kenneth Trentadue died in federal custody just days after his arrest, and while officials insist he committed suicide the Trentadue family won a wrongful death suit in federal court and Jesse maintains his brother was strangled during interrogation regarding the bombing.

For those unfamiliar with the OKC bombing, there are many parallels with 9/11 (almost a dress rehearsal):

1. Bomb-sniffing dogs pulled off duty during week before blast.

2. Initial reports by firefighters, police and news crews of "other bombs found in the building"

3. Physical impossibility of an ANFO bomb destroying reinforced concrete columns from the distance that McVeigh's van was parked (subsequent tests conducted at Eglin AF base by AF Gen. Ben Partin, an ordnance expert) confirmed this.

4. Video tapes of the attack sequestered by the authorities (similar to the multiple surveillance camera tapes of the 9/11 Pentagon attack still classified)

The definitive account of this false-flag terror attack was penned by journalist David Hoffman in 1998. Published online here:

The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror

http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/ocbpt.htm

Hoffman's theory, and that advanced by many others, is that the militia movement ignited by the Randy Weaver and Waco tragedies was considered a serious threat in the Beltway. OKC effectively discredited the militia movement -- membership and recruitment declined dramatically in the aftermath... but it's back, more or less, with the Oath Keepers (http://oathkeepers.org/oath/). If this movement continues to grow, don't surprised by another homegrown terror attack attributed to this group.

_________________________________________________________

Princess Diana: death 'was not an accident' says leading lawyer
The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was not an accident, according to the memoirs of lawyer Michael Mansfield who represented Mohamed Fayed at the inquest into the crash.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/diana/6124673/Princess-Diana-death-was-not-an-accident-says-leading-lawyer.html

He added: “There is still a widespread belief that the inquest was a waste of time and money and came to no different conclusion than previous investigations and inquiries. This is a serious misconception. “On April 7, 2008, the jury did not decide it was just a tragic accident but returned a verdict of unlawful killing by the drivers of both the Mercedes and the following vehicles. The ‘following vehicles’ element in the verdict was an aspect that very few commentators picked up on, or bothered with.”

The book also reprises other issues set out in the trial but were not “resolved by evidence, or reflected in the verdict”. These included the box of missing personal papers belonging to Diana, the missing driver of the white Fiat, the three hours on the evening of August 30, 1997, during which the movements of Dodi’s chauffeur Henri Paul could not be established and the unexplained regular and sizeable sums of money going into Henri Paul’s several bank accounts over the three months before the crash....
_______________________________________________

Still Classified: Lee Harvey Oswald's and Marguerite Oswald's tax returns, 1957 – 1963

Many people are under the impression that the Assassination Records Reveiw Board, formed after the publicity generated by Oliver Stone's JFK, resulted in the release of all classified files about the JFK assassination. This is not true. The tax returns of LHO and his mother, Marguerite, were specifically exempted from declassification by the ARRB. What could be so sensitive about 50-yr. old tax returns? In 1997, researcher John Armstrong published his first articles detailing the parallel tracks of two Oswalds over a 9-year period, from his brief sojourn in New York to his arrest in the Texas Theater after the assassination; one "Oswald" in junior high in New York, another attending junior high in Ft. Worth. One "Oswald" working in New Orleans while the Warren Commission has him based in Japan with the Marines. Met with incredulity by assassination researchers at first, his work was buttressed by court, school and employment records, and interviews with witnesses over this period, assembled in a 1000-page book, "Harvey and Lee," now out of print (Armstrong is at work on a new book about the assassination). The following first chapter is an intriguing introduction to the Oswald mystery, and the use of doubles in other espionage cases.

Armstrong's theory: the two Oswalds were part of an intelligence operation to insert a false defector to the Soviet Union, at at a time when intelligence on that closed society was negligible (before the U2; most false defectors had been either doubled or killed). The "Harvey" Oswald was later hijacked in the assassination conspiracy.

An excerpt from "Harvey & Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald"

by John Armstrong

http://www.jfkresearch.com/jfk_101.html

Update: The segment in the last Samizdat about the two Oswalds was prompted by the following NY Times article on Oct. 16:

C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

Probably not. [Note the unwarranted presumption] But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior. For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963... The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963...

“The methods of defeating or deterring covert action in the 1960s and 1970s can still be instructive to the United States’ current enemies,” a C.I.A. official wrote in a court filing...

________________________________________________________________________________

Harr-harr. Who needs Comedy Central with these kind of statements? The NY Times, which unreservedly praised and published the Warren Commission report in 1964) is still digging with a teaspoon. There are still thousands of government documents -- CIA, FBI, Warren Commission, HSCA -- about Oswald and the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations that remain classified.

Here is some more of Armstrong's work in Harvey and Lee... he notes that Warren Commission members were troubled by these dual, conflicting records of two Oswalds -- an epidemic of discrepancies that could only be explained by the hand of a sophisticated intelligence op -- either CIA, KGB or both. It was the same baffling maze that still haunts us, and they opted for the simple "lone nut" tale, fearing both the possibility of Soviet involvement (leading to possible war), or the daunting task of exposing a powerful faction of right-wing fanatics within the US government.


From John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee:

The Warren Commission tells us Oswald attended only 24 days of school (in New York City) thru May 7, 1953. Yet WC Exhibit 1384 shows him attending 109 days of school at the same time. The court and school records are both Warren Commission exhibits...

Oswald was remanded to a Youth House for truancy. His mother, Marguerite, met with Lee's probation officer, John Carro, and the interview is part of the Warren Commission evidence (Vol. 19, p. 309) The summary of that interview:

Marguerite told Carro she was the youngest of 6 children, yet there were 5 children in the Claverie family. She gave Lee Oswald's father's name as Robert Lee Harvey, when his real name was Robert Edward Lee Oswald. She said Lee's father died at age 45, yet we know he was 41 years old when he died. She gave her marriage date as July 19, 1929, yet she married Robert Oswald in 1933. She gave her sister's name as Lillian Sigouerette, when we know her sister's name was Lillian Murrett. She said she formerly owned a house in Corning, Texas yet there is not and never has been a "Corning," Texas. She gave Lee Harvey Oswald's birth date as October 19 when the correct date was October 18th. She said Lee was baptized at the Trinity Lutheran Church in New Orleans, when the records show he was baptized at the Redeemer Lutheran Church in New Orleans. When she was asked whether Lee's father was right or left handed she replied "I do not remember, sir." (Warren Commission testimony). There is no reason for a 45 year old woman to make these kind of errors concerning her background. Would you, reader, make any of them? Had she forgotten, was she lying, or was this person truly Lee's mother?

This is one of hundreds of such "anomalies" in the documentary record of Lee Harvey and Marguerite Oswald. Armstrong closes his Probe articles with this curious revelation:

Jack Ruby's tax returns were published in the Warren Commission volumes while Marguerite and Lee Oswald's remain classified. Both Marguerite and Lee Oswald's income tax returns for the years 1956 through 1962 are listed in the National Archives master list of JFK documents. They are marked 'classified,' and are unavailable to the public . Curiously, the JFK master list shows that a John Smith and Minnie Smith also have tax returns for the years 1957 through 1962 listed and marked 'classified.' Certainly, the names of John and Minnie Smith can be found nowhere else in the entire expansive world of Kennedy assassination research -- not in the National Archives files, the Warren Commission documents, the HSCA files, or anywhere else. The only documents at all indicating the mere existence of John and Minnie Smith are the 'classified' tax returns listed in the National Archives master list of JFK documents (126).

One has to wonder if John and Minnie Smith might be pseudonyms for another couple, more mysterious than any we know. Could they be for Harvey Oswald's real mother and father? Or, if not a husband and wife, could they in fact be for the other Lee and Marguerite? If not, who are these people, and what possible relevance do they or their tax returns have to the assassination? (127)

Travis Kelly Graphics
http://www.tkellygraphics.com

Editorial & History Cartoons
http://www.traviskelly.com

CafePress:
Cartoons on T-Shirts, Posters, Calendars, Mugs and more
http://www.cafepress.com/traviskelly