Saturday, May 09, 2009

How Much Was Fox Paid to Shill Bush's War Crime in Iraq?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The Fox network conspired with Bush's criminal regime to profit from the US plunder of Iraq. Fox was and will continue to be Bush's 'propaganda ministry' for as long as there is money to be made depicting dead Iraqis who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. 911 was an inside job.

Who is most motivated to lie about a crime? Simply, the guilty! The biggest lies about any crime are told by those who perpetrate the crime. Fox was clearly motivated and, predictably, told the biggest whoppers about both Iraq wars. The biggest gains and the biggest whoppers are found among Bush, his co-conspirators and the Fox Network. Murdoch should be subpoenaed and compelled to testify before a federal grand jury. He shares Bush's guilt and that of the GOP, the NEOCONS, and willing, eager participants throughout the MIC.

Millions now support the prosecution of Bush for war crimes and mass murder. But what of his enablers and co-conspirators? What charges should be brought against the murderous liar --Rupert Murdoch --the modern incarnation of Hearst? How many members of the Fox board, how many executives, how many on-camera shills conspired with Bush to spread the bald-faced lies that made mass murder 'photogenic' and, therefore, palatable to an American society hooked on images of things and bodies blown up?

It boils down to a legal term: quid pro quo --the word given a 'transaction', an agreement that an item or a service is returned for something of value. Certainly, throughout Bush's war of aggression against Iraq, a war crime in which some 4000 US service personnel were sacrificed upon a bald faced lie, the relationship between Fox and Bush has been symbiotic and conspiratorial.

Fox is thus motivated to convince you that 'conspiracies' do not exist though hundreds, perhaps thousands of SCOTUS decisions have to do with conspiracies of one sort or another. There is a body of 'conspiracy law'. That such decisions exist does not prove the existence of 'conspiracies'; it is, rather, the law that defines conspiracy.

There is probable cause that Bush and Fox achieved agreement upon a quid pro quo! Members of the Fox board of directors and key executives should be considered war criminals just as was Goebbesl during the Third Reich. There is probable cause to indict many FOX executives.

To be fair, FOX has not confined its venal reporting style to a decade that will be recalled as the era of Bush atrocities and war crimes! Fox was under investigation by the ITC (independent television commission) back in the 90s, specifically nine complaints by viewers of Sky Digital satellite, controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Fox's jingoistic support of Bush's war, however, begs to be investigated by a federal panel with the power of the subpoena, an investigation with teeth. It is of little consolation to millions of victims of Bush's war of aggression in Iraq that if Fox is found to have breeched ITC 'impartiality rules', it could be forced out! Simply --Fox does not give a shit. 'Forced out' is insufficient. The Mikado said: 'let the punishment fit the crime!' I want federal indictments!

Fox does not merely slant the news; it makes it up! Keith Olbermann and Robert Greenwald exposed the truth about Fox lies.

If I were on a Federal Grand Jury investigating Bush's capital war crimes, I would demand that 'we' --the Grand Jury --issue subpoenas to Fox execs and Murdoch himself! We ask them --while they are under oath --just what is in it for Fox to make up news favorable to Bush! If Murdoch should fail to show up, we indict him for obstruction of justice. We turn Murdoch into a fugitive from justice and the rule of law. Prosecute his sorry ass. Subpoena him. Compel him to ask tough questions under oath.

What, for example, was Fox paid to orchestrate billions of dollars in 'free' publicity in support of Bush's war crimes in Iraq? To what 'quid pro quo' did Fox agree for its support of an oil war known to be extremely profitable for the Military/Industrial complex? Armaments manufacturers 'get paid' for supporting wars of aggression and other war crimes! I want to know how much the blood suckers in the media get paid for their share of the kill!

I want to ask Rupert Murdoch how he benefits personally by presiding over a news organization that when it is not making up the news lies about it. I want to know what's in it for Murdoch.

A timely subpoena might cough up thousands of emails revealing how Fox conspired with Bush to defraud Americans and the world. There is a bigger story here than a single memo. What is Murdoch's specific connection to the Bush crime syndicate? Who got paid? When? And how much?

Murdoch-owned Fox likes to think its cover 'patriotic'. Lies deliberately told to enable a traitor are themselves high treason! There is nothing patriotic about lying to the American people and the world in support of and on behalf of war criminals! There is nothing patriotic about conspiring to grease the wheels for Bushco's theft of Iraqi oil! There is nothing patriotic about sending US troops to die for Bush's vainglorious visions of conquest and oil theft. There is nothing patriotic about Fox's support of Bush's crimes, his disdain for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, documents that Bush was sworn to uphold but, instead, subverted!

At market rates for production and air time, Fox's support was worth $billions$. FOX's foray into NFL football, for example, came at a price --almost 2 billion dollars. The move made upstart Fox a major player, right up there with CBS, ABC and NBC. Are we to believe now that Murdoch had simply given away valuable network air time to the likes of war criminals? Murdoch is not suspected of having compunctions. Murdoch is in it for the big bucks. A war on Iraq was surely worth $billions$ to Murdoch.

The 'Fairness Doctrine' came under attack during the Reagan years. By 1990, the FCC had abandoned many rules and procedures that might have prevented broadcasters from using and abusing their publicly licensed stations in service to blatant propaganda or ideology. This Reagan-era mania for 'de-regulation' made it possible for Murdoch to build an entire network around outright lies!

The objective of the 'Fairness Doctrine' was, rather, the preservation of all points of view, a requirement enforced by an FCC mandate. De-regulation, however, eliminated guidelines for non-entertainment programming guidelines. The FCC justified it all with bureaucrat-speak. Fox was thus 'set free' to propagandize and brainwash! The era of the 'media whore' was ushered in. The biggest whore of them all? FOX! Without a 'Fairness Doctrine', media whores are free to prostitute themselves, subvert what had been the profession of 'journalism'. Advertising is, at least, honest in that it is possible to learn how much the big corporations pay for spots. Ads do no pretend to be what they are not. Not so the hidden sell-out, the lie behind 'fair and balanced'.

Bill O'Reilly --arguably the world's most obnoxious, repugnant liar and loud-mouthed blowhard --stated: 'Flat out lies should be confronted.' 'Confronted' is surely O'Reilly-speak for 'embraced'. 'O brave new world, that hath such people in it'!
Since the Iraq conflict began on March 20, Fox News has been on a mission to legitimize it. One problem for Fox's protracted apologia is that despite promises of evidence of current weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) by the Bush Administration, the evidence has been ambiguous at best. Unfortunately for the network, I’ve been keeping a scratch diary of their reports since the war began.

Keep in mind that in the first three weeks of March, before the bombs started officially dropping, Fox was spreading all sorts of Pentagon propaganda. Iraq had "drones" that it could quickly dispatch to major US metropolitan areas to spread biological agents. Saddam was handing out chemical weapons to the Republican guard to use against coalition troops in a last-ditch red-zone ring around Baghdad. Given what we now know about Iraq, these reports seem to be laughable fantasies, but they were effective in securing public backing for the war. The following is a short chronicle of lies, propagation of lies, exaggerations, distortions, spin, and conjecture presented as fact. My comments are in brackets

...

"... stating that "marketplace solutions can be consistent with public interest concerns," [FN100] that "significant amounts of nonentertainment programming of a variety of types will continue on radio," [FN101] and that "stations will continue to present such programming as a response to market forces." [FN102] In the same proceeding, the Commission eliminated the requirement that stations conduct ascertainment studies to determine the problems and needs of their communities. [FN103] It dismissed concerns that free market competition would tend to limit broadcasters in their assessment of community problems to those of the economically significant segments of the community, [FN104] and left the methods of assessing community problems and needs to broadcasters' "good faith discretion." [FN105] In this proceeding, the Commission also eliminated its commercial guidelines, [FN106] stating that marketplace forces would more effectively curb excessive advertising [FN107] and that "[n]o government regulation should continue unless it achieves some public interest objective that cannot be achieved without the regulation." [FN108] [Pace University School of Law, Summer, 1990. Marc Sophos] Also [Deregulation] [Fairness Doctrine] [Fox Bias]

The independent television commission is investigating nine complaints by viewers of the channel, broadcast on Sky Digital satellite, also controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Dale Steinreich, Fibbing It Up at Fox

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Hooray! The Surge is Working…Again

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

-H. L. Mencken
The previously discredited CNBC ace shill Jim 'Mad Money' Cramer has now become the point man for the regenerated Wall Street hydra, launching into a sleazy Rovian war with a real life economist who actually got it right in predicting the collapse Nouriel Roubini. Roubini, a man who was from the outset mocked, scorned and derisively labeled ‘Dr. Doom’ by the same type of four-flushing assholes who brought us Deep Capture has been declared public enemy number one and must be taken out with extreme prejudice for the big con to succeed. The oafish court jester of looter capitalism is now back with a vengeance as he according to this piece by Frank Rich of the damned liberal New York Times states in his recent piece Awake and Sing!:

“I am pronouncing the depression over!” declared CNBC’s irrepressible Jim Cramer on April 2. The next day the unemployment rate, already at the highest level in 25 years, jumped yet again, but Cramer wasn’t thinking about the 663,000 jobs that disappeared in March. He was thinking about the market. Mad money. Fast money. Big money. The Dow, after all, has rallied in the weeks since Timothy Geithner announced his bank bailout 2.0. Par-tay! On Wednesday, Cramer rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, in celebration of the 1,000th broadcast of his nightly stock-tip jamboree.
Roubini appropriately dismissed the man who acts like a baboon on crystal meth:
But "Cramer is a buffoon", the professor countered, on the sidelines of a conference in Canada on Tuesday night. "He was one of those who called six times in a row for this bear market rally to be a bull market rally and he got it wrong. After all this mess, and after Jon Stewart, he should just shut up because he has no shame."

The latest rally will fail when it becomes clear the economy is not improving and that several banks will be unable to pass the "stress tests" currently being carried out by the federal government, Mr Roubini says.

"Cramer keeps insulting me personally and saying a bunch of lies," he told an Associated Press reporter. "He is not a credible analyst."
Which of course didn't stop the NYT from piling on Roubini in a Wednesday Op-Ed column by that unbiased source of wisdom William D. Cohan (a contributing editor for Fortune Magazine, the rag that featured a fawning hagiography back in the Depression years about Benito Mussolini and his fine corporate fascist system) that in upholding the finest traditons of Judith Miller poo pooed the questioning of the miraculous profits of Goldman Sachs as so much conspiracy theory even though Hank Paulson obviously had at best a conflict of interest in presiding over the TARP plan to socialize the losses of the looters to keep the big casino going. Similar sliming has been done to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman in the insipid Newsweek cover story of a few weeks back by hack Evan Thomas who openly and brazenly admits his bias: "If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy.". Stenographers for the elite like Thomas are largely responsible for this disaster to begin with in that they failed to perform their constitutional duties in ensuring that a free press would ensure that power be kept in check but he and his ilk are more interested in careerism, sucking up to the establishment and ensuring that they keep get invited to cocktail parties. No wonder that the regular corporate media is getting its ass kicked by the alternative media and the blogs, you just can't trust the bastards on anything anymore.

But I digress...

It is asinine and childish to think that Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs did not abuse his position as the Bush regime's Treasury Secretary to favorably rig the big bailout for the benefit of his cronies, just look at how the AIG bailout was used to further shore up the big Kahuna of the street and ensure that the revolving door between the temple of avarice and the White House remains fully operational. Seems like the blood sucking jackals at the real center of American political power, Goldman Sachs is sending it's legal army after a Florida based blogger named Mike Morgan for daring to set up a website Info, Comments, Opinions and Facts About Goldman Sachs. The white shoe Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke has been set loose upon poor Mr. Morgan for his daring to question these criminal pigs and their ongoing assault on the American economy - you know it's bad when they don't outsource their wetwork to India but somehow the site which as the delightful url of http://www.goldmansachs666.com/ has really but a bug up the pasty white asses of the house of Paulson and Blankfein.

I would recommend that everyone take the time to not only check out Mr. Morgan's site but to back him in his David versus Goliath stand against the mother of all moneychangers in Goldman Sachs. Let the buffonish tea baggers take to the streets at the behest of the deranged shill Glenn Beck, Dick Armey, uber crackpot Richard Mellon Scaife and the Texas oil Nazi Koch Foundation (see Think Progress for the scoop on who is really sponsoring this phony white populist mayhem) but the real enemy of America sits in the ivory tower at 85 Broad Street in lower Manhattan and it's toxic tentacles extend directly into the highest realms of the new Obama administration. Putting Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers in charge of economic policy along with other dubious appointments (or in the case of real progressives non appointments) are an early indicator that the only change for Obama is going to be chump change. The hedge fund hyenas and derivatives alchemists and their pushers are going to have free reigh while an exponentially growing number of Americans are being rendered jobless, homeless and exiled to tent cities...hell, at least Reagan gave people surplus cheese.

In a remarkable interview on the PBS program Bill Moyers Journal former S & L regulator William K. Black gets right to the heart of things:

BILL MOYERS: Is it possible that these complex instruments were deliberately created so swindlers could exploit them?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, absolutely. This stuff, the exotic stuff that you're talking about was created out of things like liars' loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad. And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That's why it's toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years. So finally, only a year ago, we started to have a Congressional investigation of some of these rating agencies, and it's scandalous what came out. What we know now is that the rating agencies never looked at a single loan file. When they finally did look, after the markets had completely collapsed, they found, and I'm quoting Fitch, the smallest of the rating agencies, "the results were disconcerting, in that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined."

BILL MOYERS: So if your assumption is correct, your evidence is sound, the bank, the lending company, created a fraud. And the ratings agency that is supposed to test the value of these assets knowingly entered into the fraud. Both parties are committing fraud by intention.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Right, and the investment banker that — we call it pooling — puts together these bad mortgages, these liars' loans, and creates the toxic waste of these derivatives. All of them do that. And then they sell it to the world and the world just thinks because it has a triple-A rating it must actually be safe. Well, instead, there are 60 and 80 percent losses on these things, because of course they, in reality, are toxic waste.

BILL MOYERS: You're describing what Bernie Madoff did to a limited number of people. But you're saying it's systemic, a systemic Ponzi scheme.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Oh, Bernie was a piker. He doesn't even get into the front ranks of a Ponzi scheme...

BILL MOYERS: But you're saying our system became a Ponzi scheme.

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Our system...

BILL MOYERS: Our financial system...

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Became a Ponzi scheme. Everybody was buying a pig in the poke. But they were buying a pig in the poke with a pretty pink ribbon, and the pink ribbon said, "Triple-A."
In a nutshell the system itself is rotten to the core and Geithner, Bernanke and the rest of Mr. Obama's A Team of the best and the brightest are just more of the same dirty rotten scoundrels who have destroyed the global economy and are now being allowed to finish the job. For Christ's sake, Obama is actually going out on television and pushing refinancing as if most people really qualify anyway for the simple reasons that (a) the banks aren't lending (b) their existing loans are well in excess of the property value in most cases...and (c) you can no longer instantly qualify for a 400,000 loan if you have no job and about a million a month are being jettisoned as the real economy continues the freefall. I mean Jesus Fucking Christ, is this guy a president or a pimp?

Selling the Sizzle: The recent attempts to manage perception in order to reflate the bubble and save the squadrons of corrupt paper dealers is a propaganda masterpiece unseen since the bloodshed and chaos of the Iraq war was flushed down the memory hole courtesy of the great General Petraeus and THE SURGE. What is now going on is every bit as dishonest and even more monstrous in that the large scale thieves who run the system are using their media and pocket politicians to further entrap Americans in the shackles of debt slavery from which they shall never be free as long as the failure of unregulated looter capitalism is not dealt with and the cancer cut out once and for all. Don't believe anything, it's all a big lie of Hitlerian proportions, a public relations stew of deception that Goebbels would be proud of and you just have to love that little bumper sticker slogan Green Shoots.

Do NOT, I repeat do NOT put one nickel into the markets because in the end you will be sorry. I am advising people to take this postponement of the looming collapse as an opportunity to shore up your personal positions. Do not spend a dime you don’t have to spend, take all of your money out of your 401k once it has been reflated and put it into real assets. Pay down debt, start learning about how to garden, hey our grandparents did it didn’t they? Stockpile non-perishable food, buy a Lifestraw (provided you can find one) because they are coming to privatize your water soon, buy guns and ammo and most importantly be suspicious of anything that the assclowns who run the corporate media try to sell you with their propaganda.

Obama, tagged as the pope of hope by one blogger is just another errand boy for the big banks. Pope of dopes is more like it , it took Clinton and Bush years to cheapen the presidency but Obama has done it in record time, sliming around with the likes of Jay Leno on the electronic crackpipe, taking pot shots at cripples, escalating the war in Afghanistan, reneging on boatloads of campaign promises and in the absolute nadir shilling for the banks in imploring people to refinance their overvalued McMansions and other cheaply constructed shitboxes.

The Obamanoids eat it up too, they are legion and tripping over themselves in falling in line to shill for the most despicable of the Obama administration policies, like the failure to order the Justice Department to arrest Karl Rove for flouting subpoenas, continuing the illegal wiretapping, escalating the war in Afghanistan and most odiously as all choosing to back the banksters in the gutting of the American economy. Sure, there are the little feely good cosmetic changes like stem cell research and relaxing restrictions on Cuba (both by the way make economic sense and if there is one thing to commend Obama on it is the lack of ideology exhibited early on, which in a way is also damnable in that it only supports the status quo) and that ridiculous ‘pirates’ thing which is about as phony as Reagan’s defeat of that industrialized military juggernaut Grenada.

One thing is for certain though, no matter how well that Surge II works it is only going to make the inevitable collapse that much worse when it does come. And those vicious shitheads who worship the unholy trinity of Limbaugh, Palin and Joe the Plumber will only become meaner and more better positioned to take advantage when it becomes apparent that the only change that has occured is a new coat of paint on the whorehouse that is American capitalism.


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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Canadian Study a Lesson for Teabaggers: "Three in Four Suffer From Cuts to Public Spending"

From CBC.ca:
Tax cuts could diminish the standard of living for the vast majority of Canadians who enjoy the public services that they fund, according to a study (pdf HERE) by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released on Wednesday.

The majority of Canadian households enjoy a higher quality of life because of the public services their taxes fund, the study argues.
[...]
"What passes for a tax cut debate in Canada is really only half the debate," said study co-author Hugh Mackenzie, an economist. ..."The suggestion we often hear, that taxes are a burden, hides the reality that our taxes fund public services that make Canada's standard of living among the very best," he said.

The study uses Statistics Canada data on government revenues and expenditures to compare public spending in categories including health care, education, social services, old-age security benefits and employment insurance. ...Using the statistics, the report finds that the average per capita benefit from public services in Canada in 2006 was about $16,952.
[...]
"The overall impact of tax cuts — and the cuts in public services that accompany them — has not been addressed in any substantive way," the study states. "Tax cuts are always made to sound like they're free money to middle income Canadians. They are anything but," Mackenzie said. "We're far better off with the public services our taxes fund than we are with tax cuts." Any reduction in income tax results in an equivalent constraint on public spending, the study says, and about three in four Canadians suffer from cuts to public spending.

Overall, the tax cuts implemented in Canada in the last 15 years have had the net effect of reducing the living standards of most Canadians, the reports says.

The study also finds that the number of public services used by Canadians appears to increase as household income and size increase. This is particularly true for households that have children who are accessing publicly funded elementary and secondary schools and seniors who are more likely to use the public health-care system. "Families with young children will tend to benefit relatively more from the health-care system, whereas families with older children will tend to benefit from the public education system to a greater extent than other types of families," the study states.
It's not hard to predict the kind of reaction that this report is going to get from the conservative movement in the US. Reports based on provable facts and confirm-able statistics are not to their liking anyway. They much prefer to rely on ideologically-based theory drawn out of thin air (or worse) - thin air that evidently gets compressed and heated, then spewed out of bloviators' blowholes at FOX "news" in support of this tea-bagging movement. Which, by the way, is an excellent example of astroturfing as defined by Wikipedia, "formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous "grassroots" behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf."

Nor should the motive behind this campaign escape anyone but the morans (sic, see photo) it is directed towards. (or should that be against?) The conservative movement has been pretty successful in the past at getting the poorly educated to vote against their own interests based on simplistic slogans. "Read my lips, just say no, drill baby drill" etcetera. My guess is that they're trying to bring back the glory days of monosyllabic right-tard propaganda -- in spite of being utterly discredited by the spectacular economic disaster wrought from their trickle-down 'free market' policies. My hope is that they're wrong, and that even the worst of the low-information voters will wake up once they've lost their jobs and their homes, and are living in cardboard boxes and depending on food stamps. But then, past experience has been that really poor people don't vote at all, and the GOP has made it nearly impossible for the homeless to even register to vote, so that hope might be a bit optimistic.

The Economist just hosted a debate on whether it's time that the rich be required to pay more in taxes. Just reading some of the closing remarks by Chris Edwards of the Cato institute, arguing against the motion, reveals the paucity of the conservative argument. Unable to attack the logic of his opponent, he mounts a personal, ad hominem attack. "[Parisian economist Thomas] Piketty's understanding of the nature of income is very European, " he whinges. Name calling is rightly regarded as the lowest rung on the scale of debating technique, (see triangular diagram near the bottom) and is characteristic of someone who can't base their argument on facts or logic. So I would say the pro-tax side won the argument.

(Parenthetically, it could, should and must be said that this debate is just one battle being fought in an ongoing and increasingly bitter war between the classes. Because this whole unfortunately named teabagging movement is nothing more than a propaganda effort to perpetuate the Reagan tax cuts. The rich would prefer that you pay for the jackboot that presses against your own neck. If you don't mind, there's a good boy.)

One of the comments at The Economist succinctly expresses why certain functions should not and can not be left to the marketplace.
Of course, the free market doesn't provide universal quality education: thus we must rely on governments to provide this service, and others like it that also serve the greater good but generate no profit. Isn't that the point of taxes in the first place?
You'll often hear Thom Hartmann make the same point in a slightly different way on his radio show. "Don't we already have socialist fire services, socialist police forces, socialist roadways, and a socialist armed forces?"

I would add an observation of my own to that argument. When governments contract out to private enterprise to provide necessary services, they almost invariably do so under a system that is more crony capitalism than healthy competitive free enterprise. Can you say 'cost-plus, no-bid?' It is far better for the public that the money be spent within a government department where it can be more carefully controlled, and where there is recourse for diversion, mis-spending and waste. The whole 'privatization is more efficient' argument falls apart under any close examination.

Certainly the argument against paying taxes for government corruption is a valid one, but just as certainly the remedy is to attack the corruption, not the taxation. Ironically the same type of people who want to spare their buddies the burden of paying their fair share tend to be the type who want to pay off those same buddies through graft. A kind of self-fulfilling prophecy which if you think of it is hardly surprising considering that they want the government to fail. Or at least they claim to; really what they want is a government under their control - maximizing and guaranteeing their profits, socializing their losses, and calling out the guard should the hoi-polloi ever get fed up with the arrangement. In a word, fascism.

Going back to the comment made in The Economist, I think the author chose the perfect example. There is no better investment that a government can make than providing the public with free quality education. A better-educated citizen will earn much more during his lifetime, eventually paying back all the taxes gone into his schooling with interest. Which a wise government will then re-invest on educating his kids.

Maybe it's high time that the wise taxpayer learned that simple lesson. It would certainly be preferred to being conned into participating in some phony protest against your own interests.

ADDENDUM: Just as one example of the COST of LOWER taxes, here's a study of what it cost Americans to NOT have universal health care. (From the National Coalition on Health Care.) Just one fact from this piece forms a conclusive argument. The US spends 17% of GDP on health care and 40% of people are either not covered or not sufficiently covered. Canada covers EVERYBODY for 9.7% of GDP.

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Why this Crisis May be Worse than the Great Depression

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

About one percent of the nation owning more than about 90 percent of the rest of us combined not only foresaw the impending crash but planned to benefit from it. GOP types have traditionally gotten rich by playing 'last man out loses'! A race to be first to 'get out' has triggered many a panic creating bargains to be picked up, fortunes to be made on the inevitable upside. The big difference now is that --this time --there may not be an upside.

The sheer size of this crisis is worrisome. During the Great Depression, the US still had viable industries that had not yet been exported to China by way of the Bushes and Wal-Mart. The US manufactured automobiles, refrigerators, radios and, later, televisions sets. The steel industry created Pittsburgh. Autos made Detroit. America's work and labor were the sources of its wealth. The right wing exploitation and export of that wealth is the source of our current poverty, the financial collapse and our impending slide into third world status. An increasingly tiny elite is the cancer upon the body politic and economic.

The US oligarchy demonstrates why it so foolhardy to transfer so much wealth to so few so quickly. These 'few' foresaw the crisis and triggered it by bailing out early. It is left to the rest of us to pick up the tab.

Something like 50 trillion dollars in derivative debt is far bigger than even the stock market. Derivatives are collateralized debt obligations, leading to the erroneous conclusion that 'debt is money'. The current crisis is proof that it is not. Moreover, anyone who has ever taken a course in accounting knows the accounting equation: net worth = assets - liabilities. That the money changers swapped these instruments did not change the accounting equation. Money owed you is not money in the bank --a lesson that is, of late, very expensive.
Many have said that 'we are doomed'! Our borrowing will be financed by our own savings. Already, Beijing is poised to become the financial capital of the world.

We can thank Wal-Mart and GOP policies for that outcome. In previous articles, I have traced the rise of the Axis of Wal-Mart/China to the faustian bargain Bush Sr cut with Chinese poohbahs as he paved the way for Nixon's infamous visit to the Forbidden city back in 1973. The quick rule of thumb: whenever the US is betrayed, you can be sure to find a GOPPER in hiding whenever the shit hits the fan.

Lately, it has become fashionable to 'spread the guilt' around! What's up with that? I suspect another scheme, another right wing tactic. Fact is GOP 'trickle down' policies have had the measurable effect of enriching just one percent of the nation's population. When the GOP has been caught holding the blood-dripping dagger over the corpse I am in no mood to listen to crap like: 'but Democrats are 'bad' too!' Not this time! Democrats were in office but eight years out of thirty! But in those measly eight years the trend in which wealth flows upward was reversed only to be undone by Bush Jr.

So --if you wish to dilute the open/shut case against Reagan/Bush/Bush Jr cite me some facts and spare me the bullshit!

It was not so long ago that a Democratic president had left to his incompetent GOP successor a whopping budget surplus, a growing economy, the lowest unemployment in decades, and --for Republicans --the most worrisome trend of all: the rich were no longer getting richer as they had done during the Reagan/Bush years. I can think of only one group of people who are most miserable when times are good! REPUBLICANS!

Historically, Republicans have always benefited from recessions.
  1. Recessions are not caused by declining stock markets but seem always to be accompanied by them and are often predicted by them. Republicans play the game of 'last man out wind', taking their profits in numbers that often cause the panic. Only insiders benefit. Others are forced to take their losses.
  2. A depressed market becomes an opportunity for the elite oligarchs to get back in. This elite, in fact, controls the market. Everyone else is exploited by the oligarchs.
  3. It is easy to make money 'selling short' if you have an insider's knowledge of the market. That fortunes were made short-selling subsequent to the 911 attacks seems to me persuasive, perhaps conclusive evidence that 911 was an inside job. What was known by whom and when? No wonder Bush covered up 911. The answer to those questions would have exposed a murderous conspiracy, perhaps 'insiders' inside Bush's criminal and treasonous administration.
  4. Unemployment always rises during times of recession. Should they survive, companies will hire from a larger labor pool at lower wages, lower salaries, reduced benefits, and less vacation or sick time. The GOP despises the Clinton years --not because they were bad but because they were good years and fondly remembered. Europe after the Black Death has that much in common with the Clinton years. The labor supply had been depleted by plague. A would-be employer often had to accede to a worker's demands--better working conditions, more money, a place to live! The serfs had been freed and it was the beginning of the end for Feudalism. I had hoped that a less traumatic cataclysm would have already freed modern day "corporate serfs." Alas! My hopes are dashed. If the US survives at all, you can rest assured that the ruling elite will hire from an impoverished and growing labor pool. Wages and salaries are sure to be inadequate and, as a result, the 'recovery' (should there be one) will be slower for it.
  5. Only the oligarchs benefit when many businesses go out of business during depressions which have the effect of 'weeding out' the competition, consolidating oligarchical gains. A conservative, therefore, is someone who supports a free market when it benefits him and the oligarchy at every other time.
  6. Recessions are not always accompanied by a decline in prices. As many businesses fail, competition is decreased and higher prices result. Given the demand for a particular product, a company may actually earn more money selling fewer units. The difference comes out of your ass. Such demand is called: inelastic, i.e. revenues increase as prices increase --even if total sales should fall.


Unless someone blows the whistle or exercises some clout, the increasingly tiny elite of just one percent of the US population will be even richer at the end of this ruinous and tragic financial collapse. You can be sure the oligarchs foresaw the collapse and hastened it. You can be sure that they alone will benefit from it as they have benefited from every other such crisis in US history.

Depressions are defined by a 'contraction' of the supply of money. It has been asked: 'where did all the money go?'. Much of it was exported to offshore bank accounts in anticipation of a domestic collapse. But much of that money didn't really exist. It was just paper. It became fashionable to consider DEBT as money. But debt is not money and never was. Anyone who has ever considered the significance of the accounting equation --capital equals assets MINUS liabilities knows the truth of it. Nor is 'debt' money for those holding the paper. Loans are good only when backed up by collateral or, in some cases, one's earnings and ability to re-pay. As in all crashes, a 'bill' has come due but cannot be paid.

If debt is not money, what is? A question that was debated just prior and during the Great Depression and, again, in the 1980s. At that time, there were attempts to create a stable ERM --an Exchange Rate Mechanism for European currencies. A gold standard was also discussed. In both cases, it was 'labor' that sucked up the costs of implementation which consisted of efforts to force manufacturers to keep costs down. Again --it is not wealth that trickles down. It is 'costs' that always trickle down and labor is always expected to suck up the costs and consequences of such schemes.

More recently, a 'gold standard' was discussed. Who would have borne the costs of such a scheme when it became clear that the US cannot back up but a fraction of its 'currency' with gold? Ron Paul, I believe, advocated a tax rebate for precious metals purchases. That would have hastened the collapse by encouraging a run on the dollar! But, in fact, the ordinary working person does not invest in precious metals and, if he had done, the decline in consumer spending would have brought about the collapse of our economy even sooner and, arguably, the effects would have been even worse.

Following is a PBS NEWS HOUR Interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb of October, 21, 2008. A Famous economist, Taleb authored "The Black Swan". Also appearing on the video is Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of Mathematics. Both point out several reasons that make the current crisis worse, more serious than the Great Depression.



Monday, April 13, 2009

Revolution Delayed: Remembering Stokely Carmichael

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Kwame Ture, better known to the American public as Stokely Carmichael, gave the Civil Rights movement its most memorable phrases and slogans, most notably, 'Black Power" and "Black is Beautiful". It was on the campus of the University of Houston that I heard Carmichael urge the 'radicalization' of every college and university campus in the nation. Many feared that the idea would catch on. But for the local and national media reps, I may have been the only 'white' face in the auditorium --a sign of
troubled times.

In the video following this article, he is similarly impassioned, warning of possible 'genocide' against the black man, as in fact, genocide had been perpetrated against my own ancestors -- the Native Americans. On yet another occasion, Carmichael quoted the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre --and added that he did not need a law from the 'white man' to tell him that he was free. "I know that I am free!" He didn't need a law --a 'honky' law -- to tell him what he already knew.

Later, white students, perhaps inspired to exercise 'student power', protested the US quagmire against the various 'peoples' in Southeast Asia. When they were fired upon at Kent State, four students were killed and nine others wounded. They died martyrs to the cause of free speech in America.

White students were inspired to exert 'power' -- if not 'black power'. Both faced a common oppression, a Military/Industrial complex which by way of a 'draft' sent young men of both races to SE Asia to fight yet another war of US imperialism in defense of a string of faceless Viet Namese generals --all US stooges. In response, an entire generation proposed to change the world.

Despite the best efforts of a generation, we are now dictated to by a ruling oligopoly that represents but one percent of the nation's population. The oligopolists have partnered with their military wing --the 'Military/Industrial Complex'. This unholy alliance is supported by and benefits only the increasingly tiny, ruling elite of just one percent of the nation's population and more specifically a right wing media owned by just seven major, powerful corporations. It is an environment in which your so-called 'representatives' in Washington may ignore you with impunity.They no longer have to care and don't.

Your only chance of making your preferences known are all but nullified by an obstacle course called the 'primary process', the object, the measured effect of which is to marginalize the independent vote, i.e, any candidate not issuing from either wing of the establishment, that is, the Democrats or the Republicans. Meaningful 'campaign reform' requires the outright abolition of the absurd, seemingly endless and prohibitively expensive 'primary' process. It's only effect is a bad one: it guarantees a corrupt two party system in which just two parties compete for crooked money.

In a race to the rear, both parties are corrupt. The only logical choice --the Democrats --are desirable or better but only because they are merely 'less bad'. It's a fucked up system! Our only choice is not between better or worse but between crooked on the one hand and utterly beyond all redemption on the other. Even in the thirties, humorist Will Rogers would assure us: "I am not a member of any organized political party! I am a Democrat!" Another, more recently, defended his support of Democrats: "...at least they are our crooks!" The reductio ad absurdum of American politics sounds like an early 1960s TV game show: "Choose Your Crook!"

Carmichael, the flamboyant civil rights leader, died of cancer in Conakry, Guinea at the age of just 57. In the mid-1960's he may have ignited a white backlash and alarmed even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nevertheless, he understood what every revolutionary of the period understood: the US 'establishment' is corrupt and illegitimate. His words are just as relevant today as they were when they were spoken. He spent his last 30 years in Guinea, advocating revolutionary agenda that was all but ignored in the US.

He joined the SNCC --the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee --in 1960 while a student at Howard University. By 1961, he had became a member of what is remembered as the 'Freedom Riders --black and white volunteers who sat next to each other as they traveled throughout the Deep South. Initially, the 'white' community regarded the tactic as a deliberate provocation. And so it was! The tactic had roots in Thoreau and Ghandi. Violent reactions to it merely proved the point. Arguably, the tide had turned. Bigotry had been exposed; point made!

It was in 1966 that James Meredith began a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson. He was soon shot by a sniper. Immediately, other campaigners, including Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King took up the banner in Meredith's name.

It was the 27th time that Carmichael had been arrested. Upon his release --on June 16th --Carmichael made his historic 'Black Power' speech.
Upon his release from jail on June 16, 1966, Carmichael made an impassioned speech on the topic of Black Power, railing against advocates of integration and calling instead for black rage and militancy:
"The advocates of Black Power reject the old slogans and meaningless rhetoric of previous years in the civil rights struggle. The language of yesterday is indeed irrelevant: progress, non-violence, integration, fear of 'white backlash,' ... One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to this point there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghettos and the black-belt South. There has been only a 'civil rights' movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of middle-class whites.... We had only the old language of love and suffering. And in most places -- that is, from the liberals and middle class -- we got back the old language of patience and progress.... There is no black man in the country who can live 'simply as a man.' His blackness is an ever-present fact of this racist society, whether he recognizes it or not.... 'Integration' as a goal today speaks to the problem of blackness not only in an unrealistic way but also in a despicable way.... 'integration' is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy."

By this time, Carmichael had clearly rejected nonviolent civil disobedience as a vehicle for black progress. His desire instead was to burn all bridges between black and white America. Establishing himself as a committed black separatist, he denounced the integrationist Martin Luther King, Jr. as an "Uncle Tom" and began advocating armed violence as the favored means of promoting civil rights.

--Stokely Carmichael, A Guide to the Political Left
A book followed in 1967: Black Power. It was not universally embraced. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called Carmichael's ideas 'black racism' Nevertheless, 'black power' is more readily remembered than his other slogan: "Black is Beautiful". Madison Avenue failed to equal either slogan for their ability to 'brand' and 'position' not just a product but a movement and, at the same time, putting all opposition in a defensive posture from which they never recovered.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Edward R. Murrow: Why the Fairness Doctrine Must be Restored

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The Communications Act of 1934 had affirmed the principle that the 'airwaves' belonged the people. Thanks to GOP/right wing policies, the airwaves have been stolen. 'Public ownership' of the airwaves is under attack by GOP regimes primarily and the large corporations benefiting from so-called 'de-regulation' during the Reagan years. More recent legislation also took its toll. Clear Channel Communications, for example, grew to include some 1200 radio stations as a result of the GOP assault upon fairness.

Formally adopted in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine had required broadcasters to devote air time to the discussion of 'controversial matters of public interest'. To maintain a 'license' broadcasters were required to 'air' opposing and contrasting opinions and viewpoints. Given wide latitude, TV and radio outlets really had little to complain about. Nevertheless, the doctrine was all but repealed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan’s pro-big business FCC.

The doctrine can be traced back to the early days of broadcast regulation. It was the 'teeth' in the federal law that affirmed the public ownership of the 'airwaves'.

Your right to challenge the licenses of abusive outlets is now severely restrained or non-existent. Because there is no real competition, 'big media' can lie to you, slant the news, fill up air time with Billo and bullshit. Big media can jack up the rates on air time and other advertising.

'Fair and balanced'?? I don't think so! What you really get are corporate, focus group approved 'talking points' --not facts! You get Wolf Blitzer cliches and banalities passed off as 'analysis'. You don't get the news; you get right wing propaganda. Millions have been 'brainwashed' and don't even know it.

The Fairness Doctrine had required broadcasters to devote air time to the discussion of 'controversial matters of public interest'. To maintain a 'license' broadcasters were required to 'air' opposing and contrasting opinions and viewpoints. Given wide latitude, TV and radio outlets really had little to complain about.

There is precedent for a 'people's revolution' that will take back our media.


Edward R. Murrow "Wires and Lights In a Box" Remembered
A license permits broadcasting, but the licensee has no constitutional right to be the one who holds the license or to monopolize a...frequency to the exclusion of his fellow citizens. There is nothing in the First Amendment which prevents the Government from requiring a licensee to share his frequency with others.... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.

--U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Fairness Doctrine in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 1969.

Certainly, broadcasting has become subservient to the ruling oligopoly of less than one percent of the population, an oligopoly which spawned it and expects it to serve them --not you, not the public! Public access had been guaranteed by law. It is now restricted or non-existent.
What happened to the American Media? After Nixon's demise, the right wing of the Republican party decided that they could no longer afford to allow the free dissemination of information to the US public. The simple solution? Have their friends buy up the major networks, newspaper chains and magazines, so they could be controlled from the top on the corporate level. The Left's Media Miscalculation was to stand by and watch them do it.
"The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

-- Henry A. Wallace, Vice President to FDR, 1944, The Danger of American Fascism
Having wrested control over the channels of public information, they went on to remove any impediment to their injecting their poisons into the public dialogue. The first step was to get rid of the fairness doctrine.

--Sadbuttrue, What Happened to the American Media?
Certainly the relationship between the American media and the increasingly tiny elite, a 'ruling oligopoly' is entirely too convenient to have come about by chance.
The CIA has always recruited the nation’s elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation’s rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"

Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society’s elite.

By the 1950s, the CIA had riddled the nation’s businesses, media and universities with tens of thousands of part-time, on-call operatives. Their employment with the agency took a variety of forms, which included:

  • Leaving one's profession to work for the CIA in a formal, official capacity.
  • Staying in one's profession, using the job as cover for CIA activity. This undercover activity could be full-time, part-time, or on-call.
  • Staying in one's profession, occasionally passing along information useful to the CIA.
  • Passing through the revolving door that has always existed between the agency and the business world.
Historically, the CIA and society’s elite have been one and the same people. This means that their interests and goals are one and the same as well. Perhaps the most frequent description of the intelligence community is the "old boy network," where members socialize, talk shop, conduct business and tap each other for favors well outside the formal halls of government.

...


Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.

The instigators of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today’s publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post’s ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war, both in readership and influence. (8)

MOCKINGBIRD was extraordinarily successful. In no time, the agency had recruited at least 25 media organizations to disseminate CIA propaganda.

At least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according to the CIA’s testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975. (The committee felt the true number was considerably higher.) The names of those recruited reads like a Who's Who of journalism:
  • Philip and Katharine Graham (Publishers, Washington Post)
  • William Paley (President, CBS)
  • Henry Luce (Publisher, Time and Life magazine)
  • Arthur Hays Sulzberger (Publisher, N.Y. Times)
  • Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star)
  • Hal Hendrix (Pulitzer Prize winner, Miami News)
  • Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal)
  • James Copley (Copley News Services)
  • Joseph Harrison (Editor, Christian Science Monitor)
  • C.D. Jackson (Fortune)
  • Walter Pincus (Reporter, Washington Post)
  • ABC
  • NBC
  • Associated Press
  • United Press International
  • Reuters
  • Hearst Newspapers
  • Scripps-Howard
  • Newsweek magazine
  • Mutual Broadcasting System
  • Miami Herald
  • Old Saturday Evening Post
  • New York Herald-Tribune
Perhaps no newspaper is more important to the CIA than the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most right-wing dailies. Its location in the nation’s capitol enables the paper to maintain valuable personal contacts with leading intelligence, political and business figures. Unlike other newspapers, the Post operates its own bureaus around the world, rather than relying on AP wire services. Owner Philip Graham was a military intelligence officer in World War II, and later became close friends with CIA figures like Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Desmond FitzGerald and Richard Helms. He inherited the Post by marrying Katherine Graham, whose father owned it.

--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass
One wonders how many of the more obvious shills have been recruited for their abilities to 'serve' the ruling oligopoly. These 'super-wealthy' have, over the years, consolidated many ways by which they may acquire more wealth and power. By 1912, a year in which the Los Angeles Times building was bombed, the Scripps-Howard organization had already become a media powerhouse with newspapers in many American cities.

By the mid-1970s these methods became a well-oiled, efficient propaganda machine, a Ministry of Bullshit! By 1975 it had became a slick noise machine for advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms. Who benefited? Just one percent of the US population, the 'ruling elite' that profited by the dumbing down of America.

Local markets are served by a limited number of stations, because radio stations are local in reach and licensed to utilize a specific frequency that is assigned by the Federal Communications Commission. A similar system exists for television, cable systems, et al. The communications industries are thus characterized by the Concentration of 'large scale ownership', in other words, 'media consolidation. Most recently, it is reported that only seven major corporations own 99 percent of all media outlets in the United States.

The biggest owners include: Disney, National Amusements, Viacom, CBS Corporation, Time Warner, News Corp, Bertelsmann AG, Sony, General Electric, Vivendi SA, Hearst Corporation, Organizações Globo and Lagardère Group. None of them are 'liberal'. The consequences are measurable.
  • Fewer jobs for media workers
  • More homogenization of music on radio
  • Less community-oriented programming
  • Loss of local control over programming decisions Less independently-produced programming
  • Increased censorship of divergent views
  • Less political discussion
  • Inadequate emergency weather/disaster warnings
  • Fewer minority-owned broadcast stations.
  • The 'brain-washing' of the American public by FOX
  • The media has become the propaganda arm of the GOP
At last --the idea that media is 'liberal' is, therefore, a myth. The handful of large corporations owning the media are 'conservative' --not liberal. In fact, the 'liberal voice' is essentially non-existent in today's monopolistic BIG MEDIA.

The following video featuring Bill Moyer exposes a clear and present danger to dissent and to the very lives of those who dare dissent in the United States. When you watch this video, keep in mind that the ugly hatred, bigotry and venom that is revealed is the result of right wing attacks upon the Fairness Doctrine. Clearly --there is only one reason anyone would oppose 'fairness' and that is that they wish to be 'unfair'; they wish to shout, scream and accuse while muzzling you. They wish to lie while shutting you up. They wish to deny you the right of free speech that had been guaranteed to us in the US Constitution.

Addendum:

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

The Origins of US Illegitimacy: Fatal Flaws that Sink the Warren Commission

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It might have been so simple. JFK is gunned down in Dallas. The fall guy du jour --Lee Harvey Oswald --would take the rap. The patsy was said to have fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. One of them was said to have created injuries in both President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov John Connally. Another --said to have killed the President --is likewise attributed to the single shooter in the famous sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

The Warren Commission's 'official theory' is shot through with more holes than Swiss chesse. If Lee Harvey Oswald had gone to trial he would have walked.
  • The fatal shot came from the front.
  • A 'Magic Bullet' was said to have defied the laws of physics (primarily gravity), requiring an elaborate and ex post facto violation of Occam's Razor to make it sound remotely plausible.
  • The 'Magic Bullet' --CE-399 --may have been planted or, more innocently, misidentified; the 'chain of evidence' is non-existent; and, had the case gone to trial, it would have been thrown out of court.
It is claimed that CE-399 was fired from what is 'said' to have been Oswald's rifle, an assertion that is impossible to support. The famous photo linking Oswald to the rifle is an obvious fake. It has been said that the 'chain of evidence' was broken. In fact, CE-399 --found on John Connally's gurney at Parkland Hospital --has no traceable history that places it at the scene of the crime.
I asked myself, Is the bullet sitting in the National Archives today really the same bullet recovered at Parkland Memorial Hospital in the wake of the Kennedy assassination? I decided to put the issue to the test.

Phantom Identification

It was on March 16, 1964 during James Humes' testimony before the Warren Commission (WC) that CE-399 was first introduced into evidence. Arlen Specter related on the record that CE-399's bone fides were "subject to later proof," but would be introduced with the proviso that the bullet was the same "missile which [had] been taken from the stretcher which the evidence now indicates was the stretcher occupied by Governor Connally." The fact that Humes was the first witness to testify about CE-399, yet had played no part whatsoever its chain of custody, forced Specter to introduce CE-399 "subject to later proof." Fifteen days later, Specter queried SA Robert Frazier on CE-399's provenance:
Mr. EISENBERG. Mr. Frazier, I now hand you Commission Exhibit 399, which, for the record, is a bullet, and also for the record, it is a bullet which was found in the Parkland Hospital following the assassination. Are you familiar with this exhibit?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir. This is a bullet which was delivered to me in the FBI laboratory on November 22, 1963 by Special Agent Elmer Todd of the FBI Washington Field Office.

Mr. EISENBERG. Does that have your mark on it?
Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, it does.

Mr. EISENBERG. The bullet is in the same condition as it was when you received it?

Mr. FRAZIER. Yes, sir; except for the marking of my initials and the other examiners.(3H428) [March 31, 1964]

Frazier established that the CE-399 bullet before him was the same one he'd received from SA Elmer Todd on 11/22/63. But Frazier's testimony that CE-399 was the same bullet handed to him by SA Todd, in and of itself, does not begin to establish whether or not it was the same bullet that actually came off the stretcher in Dallas.

Oddly, Elmer Todd was never called to testify before the WC. Nor were SA Richard Johnsen, or chief of Parkland Hospital security and former DPD detective, O. P. Wright, whom both figure prominently in the chain of custody of CE-399.

The WC did call on the employee who actually found the bullet. On March 20, 1964 the WC took Parkland Hospital orderly, Darrell Tomlinson's testimony. That was a mere four days after CE-399 was introduced during Humes' testimony. Incredibly, Tomlinson, whose testimony was taken in Dallas, was queried extensively about where he found a bullet (which stretcher), but was never shown CE-399 or asked to identify it as the bullet he found the day Kennedy was assassinated. Having Tomlinson ID the bullet is the "proof" that would have established that the bullet's bone fides were in order. But that didn't happen. What did happen was that the day after Tomlinson testified, Robert Frazier delivered CE-399 to the WC (See Figure 1).

--John Hunt, The Phantom Identification of the Magic Bullet: E. L. Todd and CE-399
A key phrase is 'non-fatal'. Had this case gone to court, a single fatal wound might have been sufficient to get a conviction. Not even the Warren Commission believed the 'magic bullet' to have been fatal. That dubious honor belongs to the single bullet that struck JFK in the right forehead driving his head '...back and to the left'. The Warren Commission, however, failed to acknowledge the fact that whatever struck the President on Frame 313 of the Zapruder film came from the front --the grassy knoll. The elaborate 'magic bullet' upon which Arlen Specter gambled his good name and credibility, is irrelevant!
In contrast to the testimony of witnesses who heard and observed shots fired from the depository, the commission's investigation has disclosed no credible evidence that any shots were fired from anywhere else.

--Warren Commission Report, JFK Assassination
The Warren Commission knew that it could get away with such an absurdity. There were big names on the commission. But so egregious is this error, one must ask the obvious question: what was the Warren Commission deliberately trying to hide? Quick response: the government's own complicity in murder.

The Warren Commission did not fear a sudden outbreak of truth. The Zapruder Film, it was believed, had been sealed. Everything had been nailed down, covered up, or cover storied!

But since it was broadcast by Geraldo Rivera, the Zapruder film has gone mainstream. Until it can be demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt to have been tampered with, Zapruder remains a yardstick against which all other 'said' evidence must be measured for consistency. Frame 313, for example, is a dramatic moment of less than a tenth of a second in which the President was struck dramatically and mortally. All other timelines must conform to this and other key moments recorded on film.

Gerald Ford admitted to tampering with evidence while he was on the Warren Commission. In other words, Ford committed a federal crime the effect of which has kept the truth from the American people since 1963.
The initial draft of the report stated:
    "A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine."
Ford wanted it to read:
    "A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."

--Gerald Ford's Terrible Fiction
Too timely, too convenient, the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by known mobster Jack Ruby necessitated the creation of the Warren Commission, a 'weighty' panel of well-known public figures, in other words 'big wigs' who could get away with promoting the official cover story.
"According to the Warren Report the missile hit JFK in the posterior neck, then without striking any hard object passed through the neck to exit at the front of his throat. It then entered Texas Governor John B. Connally's back at the right arm pit, sliding along his fifth rib, demolishing four inches of the rib before it exited his chest below the right nipple. The bullet then allegedly struck and shattered the radius of the right wrist on the dorsal side, then exited at the base of his palm and hit his left thigh just about the knee.

The Report then asserts that CE 399 traveled about three inches beneath the surface of the skin, hit the femur and deposited a lead fragment on the bone. Then, sometime later, with a spasm of reverse kinetic energy it spontaneously exited the hole in Connally's thigh and neatly tucked itself under the mattress of a stretcher parked in a hallway of the Parkland Memorial Hospital that the Report asserted was linked to the wounded governor. There it rested calmly under the mattress waiting for its rendezvous with history."

--Gerald McKnight, Researcher

The death of Lee Harvey Oswald who had always maintained that he was a 'patsy' was improbably convenient. It relieved the government of having to get a conviction. Most importantly, however, the Warren Commission could not risk a trial that would have exposed the cover up. That is motive enough to order a 'hit'. Certainly --a trial of Oswald would have been disastrous for a corrupt and perhaps illegitimate government. Oswald knew too much. And what he knew might have been made public. Would the 'powers that be' risk that?

The Zapruder film would have been played back in court, proving to any intelligent jury that the 'magic bullet' was not only wrong and inadmissible, it was irrelevant. The fatal shot came from the front, striking JFK just above his right eye, exploding his skull and driving his head back and to the left. Backward and to the left! If you doubt this, here is a link to a unique site: Zapruder Film Frame by Frame. Every frame of Zapruder is enlarged and accessible with a link. Zapruder can be examined, literally, frame by frame.

The murder of JFK may not have been the classic coup d'etat --but coup d'etat it was.

The many official lies about JFKs murder deflect attention from the real evidence that disproves the official narrative. Had this evidence been followed up it might have been proven that Lee Harvey Oswald:
  1. could not have fired the fatal shot;
  2. was probably not even in the depository window at the time of the murder
  3. would have been ill-placed as a shooter even IF he had a part of the bigger conspiracy.
  4. that the Depository is the least desirable location from which to pull off a hit.
See pictures of the 'magic bullet' [CE 399, click for larger image] at the JFK LANCER. This is the very picture of pristine. It is highly doubtful that it had even been fired, let alone create multiple wounds and extensive bone damage. Secondly, Zapruder frame 230 proves that John Connally had not been hit by the same bullet that magic bullet theorists say struck JFK. On this point, the expert testimony of a pathologist may be seen in the second video in the playlist posted below.

The Warren Commission simply discounted anything that didn't fit officialdom. The magic bullet was concocted by Arlen Specter though he has no experience in forensics! My opinion is, at least, as good as his and most certainly less biased in favor of anything that might benefit the GOP, the MIC, or the CIA.

Specter may have hoped to deflect attention from the real source of the fatal bullet that struck JFK just above his right eye from the front. Specter may have hoped to paper over the holes. Specter's motives are relevant to the Warren Commission's credibility. If it was Specter's motive to cover up the truth by diversion, then he is guilty of obstruction of justice --a Federal crime! Moreover, if the fatal shot came from the front, the 'magic bullet' is just another establishment red herring at best, a federal crime at worst. It hinges upon Specter's motives.

The Magic Bullet was entered into the chain of evidence before it had been taken out of Connally's leg --evidence that the 'official magic bullet theory' was concocted in advance of the investigation. The 'state' desparately sought anything that might shore up the cover story. Real investigations are not conducted in this manner. Cover ups are! Indeed, even the FBI and the Secret Service had stated in their separate reports that JFK and John Connally were struck by separate bullets. John Conally himself stated flatly that separate bullets had struck him and the President. The Warren report is a lie.

Planning for the JFK murder probably began with his historic inaugural address. Subsequently, he promised to smash the CIA into a 'thousand pieces'; he threatened to expose 'secret societies' and 'cults' that he believed posed a threat to the republic [Skull and Bones?]; he promised to abolish the FED. The nation, having endured the seemingly endless and tragic Viet Nam quagmire, abominable abrogations of Civil Rights, a war waged by the CIA and the FBI against civil liberties, it is easy to forget how revolutionary were JFKs words. His words were a threat, a 'clear and present danger' to the entrenched and corrupt establishment, the 'invisible government'.
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

--John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961
Likewise, the entrenched establishment of about one percent of our own population could not have been happy with JFKs commitment to human rights.
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

--JFK, Inaugural Address
In 1961, many powerful forces in and out of the US government would have felt threatened by JFKs commitment to the United Nations, a body not merely opposed but reviled by powerful entrenched forces and interests inside the US.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far out paced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

--JFK, Inaugural Address
And then JFK struck at the very source of an evil 'livelihood' --the Military/Industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower had but recently warned.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.

--JFK, Inaugural Address
The MIC is simply not interested in the 'freedom of man'. usually announced amid great chest beating and displays of arms and/or militia. This coup d'etat was an covert takeover by the low profile beneficiaries inside the Military/Industrial complex and throughout the CIA.

As subsequent events have proven since that date, Lincoln's vision of a 'government of the people, by the people and for the people' did, indeed, perish from this earth. If it was not the classic coup d'etat, we might have been better off if it had been. Our traitors are cowards who subvert us with secrecy, lies, and subterfuge. Some prefer the tyrant that can be seen to unseen 'spooks' who murder by stealth and proxy.

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future--for reducing this threat or living with it--there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security--a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.

This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President--two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

--Secret Society Speech, President John F. Kennedy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, April 27, 1961
Was JFK warning of the Military/Industrial complex as his predecessor had done? Was he referring to the CIA? The Skull and Bones? Most certainly, all of the above given the proprietory interest Skull and Bones has in the world's number one terrorist organization --the CIA! Like the Mafia, the Axis of CIA/MIC/Skull and Bones is in the death business. Under the regimes of Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr, the nation itself become Murder, Inc.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
The following You Tube playlist is worth watching start to finish if one is interested in the truth about a coup d'etat that changed America for the worst, the state sponsored murder of John F. Kennedy.