head shot

It’s that time of year again. Time for the spook-house media to double-tap the American psyche by 1) evoking public memory of the traumatic slaughter in broad daylight of a beloved US President, and 2) assaulting the character, intelligence and sanity of anyone willing to claim that copious available evidence indicates a “conspiracy” involving–among other actors–intelligence assets of the US government in that atrocity.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27705829

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/books/review/Burrough-t.html

“What Bugliosi has done is a public service; these people should be ridiculed, even shunned. It’s time we marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we’ve marginalized smokers; next time one of your co-workers starts in about Oswald and the C.I.A., make him stand in the rain with the other outcasts.”

Since Brian Burrough published those words in the New York Times in 2007, Bugliosi’s door-stopper Reclaiming History has been shredded by many of the “outcasts” it targets http://www.marklane.com/writings/articles/VinnieitisRound.pdf , but why would the New York Times and the other ”mainstream” media have so shamelessly promoted such a commercially stillborn project in the first place?

A better question might be: Why did the CIA issue “Instructions to Media Assets” regarding “Criticism of the Warren Report” in 1967?

http://192.220.64.45/collections/assassinations/jfk/cia-inst.htm

b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.

4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:…

Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

Students of other “traumatic national events” may recognize such recommended “useful arguments” as “conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal”.

Surely there was no “large scale conspiracy” among the corporate media to ignore the deathbed confession of notorious CIA black operator E. Howard Hunt regarding that “big event”, was there?

http://www.saintjohnhunt.com/testament.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13893143/the_last_confessions_of_e_howard_hunt

Even if Hunt’s account is one last “limited hangout” from the master psy-operator (fingering Johnson and minimizing Agency involvement), was it not worthy of mention beyond Rolling Stone?

So why is the Establishment still lying about JFK after all these years? What have they got to lose by telling the truth that has been self-evident from the moment the other lone gunman–Jack Ruby–stepped in to “spare Mrs. Kennedy the pain of a trial”? Yes, this Jack Ruby:

Why are the fevered mutterings of a few “outcasts” of such concern that former CIA Director George H.W. Bush could not help but to invoke them in his eulogy for former President and last living Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford?

Perhaps Mort Sahl answered best:

“…certain people had to take President Kennedy’s life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III. There’s been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I’m afraid a great deal of our hope was interred with his remains.”

“They don’t want to lose their power. And they don’t want to fall. It has become government by hoodlum. And I don’t blame them. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to fall either. I would pull out all the stops as well, as they have. On the other hand, while I know that neo-Nazis would want to kill a man like John Kennedy, I don’t understand why liberals would want to protect them from prosecution.”

“Once the neo-fascists became bold enough to slay the President on the street, they showed their hand. They showed how arrogant they had become. Now it’s a question of symptom. That crime was a national symptom. If we can turn our back on that, we will pay a terrible price. That will be the end of this democracy.”

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mort%20Sahl/Mort%20Sahl%20-%20Argo.html

talking head like a hole

Prime Time by Laurie Lipton

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24854188#24854188

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/28/gibson/

Before the next episode of the “Global War on Terror” begins, a reminder from Glenn Greenwald’s evisceration of the network news “journalists” for their uncritical promotion of Bush/Cheney Iraq pre-war propaganda:

“While Katie Couric impressively argued that the media did fail to do its job — pointing out that the White House threatened networks which were perceived to be too critical with cutting off access to the war and that anyone who questioned the war was deemed unpatriotic and all of that “affected the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media” — the painfully empty-headed Charlie Gibson and the mindlessly establishment-defending Brian Williams both insisted that the media did a perfectly fine job and that they would do nothing different. “There was a lot of skepticism raised about” the Colin Powell speech, said Gibson, in one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV. He continued:

I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System [group giggles]. I think the questions were asked. . . . I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials for asking questions they didn’t feel comfortable with. 

It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it’s our job to ask the questions.

Indeed. Perish the thought that journalists should be adversarial to our political officials, challenge what they say or point out when they’re lying. Instead, their job is merely to pose polite questions, let political officials say what they want in response, and then go home — just as Charlie Gibson said. This is why most establishment journalists will never be convinced that they failed to do their job, no matter how much evidence is presented: because of the understanding they have of what “their job” actually is. If anything, by Gibson’s understanding of what they’re supposed to be doing, they did their job brilliantly, by letting Bush officials go on their shows and — as Cheney aide Cathy Martin said about what happens when they went on Tim Russert — “allow[ing Bush officials] to control the message.”

As I often do, I’ll use this 2005 speech by the great David Halberstam, delivered at the Columbia School of Journalism, to illustrate how rancid and worthless our establishment journalists of today are — especially the TV stars like Gibson and Williams. Halberstam observed that “by and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are,” and recounted that his proudest moment in his career was when, as a young reporter in Saigon, he stood down a General in Vietnam who was attempting to threaten and intimidate him from independently investigating claims that the Pentagon was making about the war. Halberstam apparently didn’t share Gibson’s aversion to “debating” government officials.

Back in 1999, Halberstam wrote: ”Somewhere in there, gradually, but systematically, there has been an abdication of responsibility within the profession, most particularly in the networks.” He continued:

Television’s gatekeepers, at a time when a fragmenting audience threatens the singular profits of the past, stopped being gatekeepers and began to look the other way on moral and ethical and journalistic issues. Less and less did they accept the old-fashioned charge for what they owed the country. 

The viewpoint seemed to be — from their testing and polling — that the American people did not want to know what was going on, so why bother them with unwanted facts too soon? So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time.

The arc of our country and its media: from David Halberstam’s confrontation with a U.S. General in Vietnam over his demands to investigate (rather than mindlessly accept) the Pentagon’s war claims to Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams sitting around giggling on TV with Matt Lauer and muttering about what a great job they did in covering the administration’s march to invade Iraq, when even Bush’s own Press Secretary mocks them for being weak, complicit little mouthpieces for government propaganda.”

“UPDATE: Concerning this statement by Gibson — “You go back to the Powell speech. There was a lot of skepticism raised about that” — I just described it as “one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV.” But when I wrote that, I hadn’t gone back and read what Gibson and his Good Morning America colleagues were saying at the time about the Powell speech. Now that I’ve done that, I realize that I was far too kind in describing Gibson’s comment.

 On February 6, 2003 — the day of Powell’s speech — Gibson had on as guests former CIA Director James Woolsey and Terence Taylor of the International Institute For Strategic Studies to analyze Powell’s claims. Here are some of the super-tough, skeptical questions Gibson asked:

* Terence Taylor, let me start with you. Specifically, of all the biological and chemical weapons that he outlined, and the means of delivery, what’s the most frightening? Should be the most frightening? 

* Question number two that was in my mind. James Woolsey, he showed intercepts, he showed photo intelligence. He talked about human resources that we had. How much intelligence was compromised?

* On a scale of one to 10, one being the most sanitized of intelligence information and 10 being laying out all our intelligence ammunition, where was he yesterday on the scale?

* Terence Taylor, as I look at some of the pictures that we were talking about just a moment ago with James Woolsey, the pictures dramatic in that they show Iraqi trucks pulling away from sites virtually as the, as the inspectors trucks are pulling up. How compromised are the inspectors there? Are they totally infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence?

Here’s how the segment ended:

CHARLES GIBSON: 

James Woolsey, the Iraqis immediately challenged a lot of what was shown, said it was altered, said it was doctored. The international community — do they know that stuff was genuine?

JAMES WOOLSEY:

Oh, anybody who is objective about this I think does. The people who now doubt whether or not Saddam really has WMD programs, chemical and bacteriological, in particular, are really of two types, either they work for Saddam or they’re doing a human imitation of an ostrich. There really are, I think, no other possibilities.

CHARLES GIBSON:

James Woolsey, former CIA Director, Terence Taylor, former weapons inspector, I thank you both.

Oh, the “skepticism” is just so bountiful. The administration must have been just furious with Gibson for his tough, skeptical questions. Later in the show, Diane Sawyer introduced Gibson at the top of the hour and he said: “I’m Charles Gibson in New York. We’re gonna have more reaction to Colin Powell’s presentation at the United Nations. It was very direct, it was detailed, it was comprehensive.“ 

All those furrowed brows about “weapons of mass destruction”, and not a syllable about an estimated 200 billion barrels of shallow crude under the Iraqi sand. http://tinyurl.com/ydgoux

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/oil-giants-return-to-iraq-851036.html

Corporate News is not about the First Amendment, it is Big Business. Gibson and his peers make seven or eight figures to sell the product. Caveat Emptor.

Turn around

Delusion Dwellers by Laurie Lipton

Allegory of the Cave (The Republic, Book VII)

Socrates:
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

Glaucon:
I see.

Socrates:
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

Glaucon:
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Socrates:
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

Glaucon:
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

Socrates:
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Glaucon:
Yes, he said.

Socrates:
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy, when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

Glaucon:
No question, he replied.

Socrates:
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

Glaucon:
That is certain.

Socrates:
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

Glaucon:
Far truer.

Socrates:
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?

Glaucon:
True, he said.

Socrates:
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he is forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities?

Glaucon:
Not all in a moment, he said.

Socrates:
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?

Glaucon:
Certainly.

Socrates:
Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.

Glaucon:
Certainly.

Socrates:
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?

Glaucon:
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about it.

Socrates:
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Glaucon:
Certainly, he would.

Socrates:
And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer, Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?

Glaucon:
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.

Socrates:
Imagine once more, I said, such a one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?

Glaucon:
To be sure, he said.

Socrates:
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable), would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.

Glaucon:
No question, he said.

“those who would tear the world down”

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=6186344

Afghan President Demands Obama End Civilian Deaths

The Afghan president on Wednesday demanded that President-elect Barack Obama put an end to civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people — nearly all of them women and children.

The bombing Monday afternoon of the remote village of Wech Baghtu in the southern province of Kandahar destroyed an Afghan housing complex where women and children had gathered to celebrate, villagers said. Body parts littered the wreckage and nearby farm animals lay dead.

Jalil said American forces came into his village late Monday night or Tuesday morning — after the bombing run — and searched the villagers and detained some of the men. Jalil said he told the Americans that they could search his vineyards and his home but that they wouldn’t find any militants.

“The Americans came and told us, ‘You are sheltering the Taliban,’ and I told the Americans ‘Come inside and see for yourself, you are killing women and children,’” Jalil said. “After they saw that all the dead were civilians, they gave us permission to bury the bodies.”

Another witness to the bombing, Mohammad Nabi Khan, told AP at the main hospital in Kandahar city that two of his sons, ages 4 and 11, and his wife’s brother were among the dead.

“What kind of security are the foreign troops providing in Afghanistan?” he asked.

Is the TAPI pipeline really worth this slaughter, Mr. Obama?