The Last Serious Journalist In America Speaks Out On the Bushes, the JFK Assassination, the Secret Parallel Government, and the Complacent Media Who Let the 1% Rule Everything

Someone once said that in a capitalistic society, where the super-rich reign over everyone else, truth is the first casualty. Never was this more true than in America today. Corporate-allied media is loathe to seriously investigate any event which might lead straight back to their bosses as the culprits. Thus, it is hard to find the truth of serious matters in current or recent American history being broadcast or printed anywhere. However, I have found a source that is breaking new ground in authentic journalism; it’s a website called WhoWhatWhy, led by editor-in-chief Russ Baker, whose stunning book “Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, And The Hidden History Of The Last 50 Years” is a read I highly recommend. Recently Baker was interviewed by Joan Brunwasser in a piece that was published on OpEd News. I have reprinted portions of it here:

JB: So, did they [the Boston Globe] do some long-overdue serious investigative journalism? And what is this secret “double government” exactly? Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good, that’s for sure.

RB: Naw, but they did run a couple of pieces about a book by a “respectable” person starting to edge into the territory we’ve been blazing for several years—the idea that while we put all our attention on what the president and Congress do and don’t do there’s a whole other apparatus calling the shots. It’s that old combo Ike warned about—the one percent and their allies in the permanent part of government—intel agencies, Pentagon, bureaucracy throughout.

JB: Tell us a bit more about the “respectable” book and author that launched the Globe’s about-face. We need something to sink our teeth into, beyond generalizations about the evils of the 1%.

RB: A Tufts professor wrote a book on the “Double Government.” I haven’t read it yet, but his thrust is that a president’s will can easily be thwarted by the non-elected part of Washington. The point for me is that the mainstream media is willing to embrace critiques that get beyond the fantasy of a viable democracy where we choose our leaders and they do our bidding. What’s generally missing, even probably from his book, is the notion that it is not really the “double government” that drives things, but private capital. And then we begin to come to terms with why we never seem to get what we want—or what we are promised by the pols.

JB: Is there a tie-in between this reputed “Double Government” and the Bushes, the subject of your 2010 book, Family of Secrets? If so, what is it?

RB: Well, I haven’t read the professor’s book yet, but I highly doubt he mentions the Bushes in any detail. Academia generally shies away from anything too controversial. But I’d say the Bushes themselves embody the notion that elected officials are only successful to the extent they have deep links into the Double Government—and funding and support from…ahem…the Triple Government. My research for Family of Secrets really underlined the extent to which secret events and alliances shape our country’s course constantly.

JB: Well, that’s certainly a teaser, Russ. What are you referring to? Can you give us something more concrete to sink our teeth into, to mix a metaphor? It could ultimately cause a groundswell of interest in your book, you know!

RB: Well, what I found is difficult to sum up in just a few sentences, because the facts are so incredibly disturbing, and run so counter to what we’ve been told up to this point. There’s a fantasy in this country that our politicians, as occasionally criticized as they are, fundamentally are gentlemen and gentlewomen. We treat them like celebrities or royalty. But power accrual and wielding is an ugly business, more akin to other lines of work that are about ruthlessness. Anyway, handicapped by not being able to present my thousand-plus footnotes here, I’ll just present a few particulars on the Bush clan:
Bush 41, HW Bush, was in the secret employ of the intelligence services decades before he was appointed as a supposed newcomer, to the CIA directorship. Among other things, he was part of a group, inside and outside CIA, that felt threatened by JFK and furious at him. He hid the fact that he was in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot. He was a good friend of Lee Oswald’s mentor. He was mentioned in FBI documents related to the assassination and to Cuban exiles who were enraged at Kennedy.

He and his family were, secretly, principal sponsors of Richard Nixon’s career. But when Nixon tried to buck his handlers, they turned on him. The real story of Watergate is the framing of Nixon by others in the Republican camp.

JB: Hold on a second, Russ. Why did Bush and Co. want to get rid of Nixon? Didn’t they like him initially?

RB: I devote three chapters of Family of Secrets to unraveling the mystery of the relationship between Nixon and George H.W. Bush. I spent a long time investigating—discovered they anointed him to be the pawn of banking interests, but over the years he chafed at being dominated. Then he began seriously challenging the corporate folks. And then he was out.

JB: I had no idea. That’s quite a backstory. Sorry for the interruption. I was just curious. Nixon was such a nemesis in American history.

RB: No problem. Also:
The Bushes, including George W., were up to their elbows in bizarre massive money movements and odd companies that never seemed to be about actually turning a profit—populated by the Shah of Iran, the Saudis, Ferdinand Marcos, Harvard University, and other rogues and mainstays.
Much more on this in Family of Secrets—about 600 pages of this kind of stuff. Enjoy!

JB: Yikes! 600 pages of “this kind of stuff”? I’m not sure that “enjoy” is the operative word here. What happens with all these explosive revelations? The Bushes seem pretty impervious to major scandal or outrage which this might have engendered in years past. How has your blockbuster been received? Has the corporate media just ignored you? Does everything just get swept under the rug?

RB: The corporate media—and so-called “progressive” and “alternative” news sources as well—have almost completely ignored these discoveries. Why? Laziness and discomfiture with major openings that could fundamentally shift our understanding of how things work. Everyone’s in on the game of “left-right” that keeps members of the public at each other’s throats while the one percent of one percent of one percent keeps on driving the train.

JB: Based on what you’ve said and what I’ve read, how are things shaping up with the Bush Co. vis a vis 2016? Are we in for, God forbid, a permanent Bush-run, Republican dynasty?

RB: I would say that, due in large part to a complacent and docile media, plus a public with little long-term memory, we are very likely in for a third President Bush, aka Jeb. And, if I were to peer into a crystal ball, I’d say that in a dozen years or so we might see a fourth President Bush, in the person of Jeb’s son, George P. Bush. Just elected overwhelmingly to state office in Texas! Half-Hispanic! That will wow the same media that brought us Barack Obama.

JB: If that’s the case, do you worry that your work will be some day burned, banned or outlawed? Has everything you’ve learned so far caused you to pretty much given up on our restoring any semblance of a true democratic system or do you somehow hang on to a bit of cautious optimism?

RB: I am always alert that things can go very bad very quickly in any society. I do see signs of that possibility here. The Boston Bombing with the related apparent cover-up, harassment of witnesses, passivity of the media, tolerance of disappearing public rights to privacy and inquiry into law enforcement actions—this kind of situation is deeply disturbing. At the same time, I see the rise of a vigilant opposing sector, and remain both hopeful and energized—because, what option do we have?

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

McCulloch’s Star Witness Lied; Presented False Evidence To Darren Wilson Grand Jury

There is now more evidence that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch manipulated and rigged the grand jury process in the case of Darren Wilson, murderer of Michael Brown. Not only did McCulloch give the grand jury misleading instructions, evidence and testimony, he actually put on a witness who was never at the scene of the shooting. Sandy McElroy, whom the FBI called a racist, presented testimony that almost identically matched the testimony of Darren Wilson himself. McCulloch certainly knew that McElroy's testimony was not credible, yet he presented her as the prosecution's "star witness."

McCulloch, whose father was a St. Louis policeman killed in the line of duty, is well known for protecting bad cops and cops who kill unlawfully. The illegal and unethical lengths he went to protect Wilson are only now being made public.

The article below, written by Shaun King, appeared in the online publication The Daily Kos:

"Sandy McElroy was never near Canfield Drive on August 9. She completely fabricated her entire story weeks after Darren Wilson killed Mike Brown. During their interrogation of her, Sandy McElroy was completely shredded by the FBI as a racist, a liar, unstable, and more. They proved in their own interview, with evidence, that McElroy lied about ever being there, about how she left the scene, about key details of the case that she claimed she witnessed, and more.

Furthermore, Sandy McElroy, beyond being a convicted felon, had a record in St. Louis of interfering with investigations and making preposterous claims about connections she had to cold cases. All of this was known to St. Louis officials. Her extreme racism was not private, but public, and was discussed at great length with the FBI before she was ever allowed to testify before the grand jury.

You must understand, then, that Sandy McElroy, whose testimony matches that of Darren Wilson's better than any witness who testified, was called to the grand jury, not once, but twice, and allowed to present concocted physical evidence at that, because she was a neutron bomb for this case. Not ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE proving that she was there could be found and scores of evidence that she made the entire thing up was presented weeks before she was ever allowed to testify before the grand jury, but it was all deliberately ignored.

Not only was it negligent to allow Sandy McElroy to testify, it was a deliberate attempt at poisoning the grand jury, who stated to her on record many times that they did not believe she was lying. Furthermore, her testimony has been used to champion the credibility of Darren Wilson time after time by conservative media who seem to not care at all about her character or credibility.

All by itself, I believe the inclusion of Sandy McElroy as a witness before the grand jury is grounds for a new grand jury. Her testimony did irreparable damage to the case—which was clearly her intent from the start."

This is grounds for McCulloch's dismissal from his post. The question is, does St. Louis County have the fortitude to do it?

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

Barbara Walters Lobs Softballs to David Koch; She Should Retire For Good

Didn’t Barbara Walters announce her retirement years ago? Then what in God’s name is she still doing on television? Her interview with David Koch which aired last night on that preposterous show she does (“The 10 Most Fascinating Billionaires”? Apparently Barbara thinks that only the wealthy are worthwhile interviews.), and it proves that she is not now, and probably never was, a legitimate journalist. Imagine if you had the devil himself in front of you and you asked him things like “If you were a tree, what kind would you be?” That’s about how easy Baba Wawa made it for the most evil man in America.

If you are a regular reader of this site, you know that I have detailed the twisted and megalomaniacal Koch family history, but it is worth reprinting here:

“Koch Family Exposed As John Birchers And JFK Haters
If you watched, as I did, the glut of JFK assassination documentaries this past November, you must have wondered why none of them built the case for a conspiracy, despite a mountain of evidence indicating that JFK was murdered by a secret cabal of intelligence/military operatives, facilitated by LBJ and his billionaire oilmen supporters. PBS, an otherwise credible source of investigative journalism, was out in front of this pack of broadcast liars, with such blatant historical frauds as ‘Cold Case JFK’ and ‘Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?’ Why was the truth squashed? For the answer, all you have to do is follow the money. Who paid for these disinformation pieces? David Koch, that's who. That's right, PBS sold its journalistic integrity down the river for a few shekels from one of the most vitriolic and extreme right-wing billionaires in America.

If you don't know David Koch, let me give you some background. He is one of the richest men in America. He and his brother are right-wing fanatics committed to abolishing Social Security, taxation of the wealthy, Medicare, minimum wages, and voting rights for minorities. He has spent millions trying to prove that Obama is a socialist Muslim who was born in Kenya. He is a lying, tax-dodging, Kennedy-hating, fascist Oligarch. He can buy anything he wants, and the truth is for sale. And the family's extremist politics did not start with the brothers. Their father, Fred Koch, an oil billionaire and member of the John Birch Society, paid for hateful posters which were passed out in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The posters had front and side views of JFK beneath the headline ‘Wanted For Treason.’ So maybe there's good reason not to trust the Oswald-did-it-alone documentary paid for by the Kochs. You think?

The Koch family history is not tied to just the John Birch Society; there is evidence that the German Kochs were Nazis. There are some who believe that Ilse Koch, the notorious ‘Bitch of Buchenwald’ was related to the American Kochs. She was the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp. After World War II, Ilse was tried for war crimes and imprisoned by a U.S. tribunal. Information connecting Ilse and Koch Industries is hard to find but is a string of fragments, pieces of information that connects the American and German Kochs and this connection gives us a clear image of the sentiment behind the Tea Party and conservative American politics since the 1950s. Where is the connection between the German Kochs and Fred Koch? Besides evidence the American Kochs were related to Ilse’s family, Erich Koch (an important Nazi official in charge of Prussia) induced Fred Koch to sell his oil in Nazi Germany when Fred was banned from doing business in the US. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Erich Koch and Fred expanded their oil empire to the Soviet Union. A few years later the Soviets took Fred Koch’s oil and prosecuted Erich for war crimes – Fred Koch returned to the US, became anti-communist, and was allowed to do business in the States again.

The links between the American and Nazi Kochs are tenuous, but they certainly shared the same political ideologies. What we know for certain about the Kochs in America comes from this article in the summer 2014 issue of ‘The Progressive’:

‘In 1961, at the age of twenty-six, Charles Koch moved home to Wichita, Kansas, to work for Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, which was led by his father, Fred Koch, who was on the national council of the John Birch Society. Charles subsequently opened a John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita with a friend of his father, Bob Love, the owner of the Love Box Company in Wichita, according to Dan Schulman’s Sons of Wichita. The John Birch Society’s 'American Opinion Bookstores' were stocked with material opposing the civil rights movement Birchers had put up billboards in Kansas and elsewhere calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who had ordered the desegregation of the public schools in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. There’s no indication that Fred or Charles objected to the Birch campaign to impeach Warren. There are indications they paid for ads in Dallas in 1963 with President John F. Kennedy’s head depicted like two mug shot photos, with the word 'Treason' below, shortly before the assassination of the President ... Or when [Birchers] opposed the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on the Bircher claim that the movement was created as a forty-year front for the communists. Or when [they] supported billboards calling Martin Luther King a communist.’ "

Baba Wawa asked David what it was like to beat prostate cancer. I would have asked him what it was like to be able to afford the most expensive and capable medical care in the universe when you try so hard to deny health care to millions of others. Do you believe that only billionaires should have health care.

Here are just a few of the other questions a competent journalist would have asked Koch:

“Your family accused MLK of being a racist. Do you now denounce that accusation?”

“Your father was involved heavily in the John Birch Society. Are you still involved with it; are you a racist?”

“Did you pay for the posters which were handed out in Dallas in November 1963 accusing JFK of being a traitor?”

“Are you a direct descendant of the Nazi Germany Kochs? If so, do you still adhere to Nazi ideology?”

“You and your right-wing brother are single-handedly responsible for the creation of the Tea Party? Are you proud of that?”

We didn’t get to hear the answers to these legitimate questions, because a fluffhead octogenarian, somehow still considered a competent interviewer, is on the airwaves dumbing down America.

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-Mortician-Tim-Fleming-ebook/dp/B00I6GNPD4

Recommended Book Of The Month: Alter Ego by Tory Allyn

If you're looking for a page-turning thriller, I recommend "Alter Ego," by Tory Allyn. Here's the synopsis:

"After a partially-covered body displaying unusual physical characteristics was found in the backwoods of Virginia, FBI agent Jack Stanwick is once again summoned. This was the third victim to be discovered in this condition, and with most of the brotherhood on another high-profile case, he needed some outside help. Jack knew just where to go. He hires three former police officers who work for the Davenport Detective Agency. During the initial investigation, the detectives focus their attention on the militia group, M.A.G.O.C. (Men Against Government Overtaking Control), only to find that several members and a high-ranking official in the White House are involved in a governmental conspiracy. Digging further, the detectives come upon Prescott Chemicals, where an elixir that was discovered in the Amazon Rainforest by the Mayapo natives years before, is now being transformed into a formula with irreversible consequences. While investigating a lead, the detectives accidently come into contact with the elixir and experience a change to their bodies and minds causing some amusing, yet permanent issues. With the assistance of a beautiful journalist and a bitter French physicist, the detectives come upon the location of the perpetrators and uncover a plot which culminates into the betrayal and a secret that affects one of detectives, changing his life."

Here's the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Alter-Ego-Tory-Allyn/dp/0692287507

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

St. Louis County Prosecutor Should Resign; He Misled Michael Brown Grand Jury

In any grand jury hearing, especially when murder charges are considered, the prosecutor acts as an advocate for the victim and tries to convince the grand jury that charges should be brought against the defendant. In the Michael Brown case, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch turned that process on its head. Rather than using the evidence to try to convince the grand jury to return a true bill against killer cop Darren Wilson, McCulloch did his very best to twist the evidence in favor of Wilson. Not only did he leave the grand jury to wade through a mountain of evidence without prosecutorial assistance, we now know that McCulloch lied to the grand jury.

On his MSNBC program "The Last Word," Lawrence O'Donnell reported that after reviewing the transcripts of the Darren Wilson Grand Jury he discovered that McCullough and his lackeys gave the jurors an outdated copy of Missouri Law. To wit, that St. Louis County police officers are justified in using deadly force if they believe they face a "reasonable threat." In other words, a cop can kill anyone at anytime if he imagines that he is in some sort of danger. "Imagine" is the operative word; no need for any objective basis for believing there's an imminent threat.

However, according to O'Donnell, "In 1985 the Supreme Court amended this law to include a 'probable cause' requirement under Tennessee v Garner. The misleading information was given to the Grand Jury directly before Darren Wilson's testimony giving the impression that all that was required under the law for Wilson to kill Michael Brown was his belief that he was in danger, without the additional requirement of probable cause for such a belief."

The difference between "reasonable threat" and "probable cause" is enormous. It is the difference between pardoning a random, whimsical judgment about life or death being made by an angry, trigger-happy cop...or calling it a criminal act. The St. Louis Grand Jury should have been told this before Wilson testified, so that jurors could have judiciously assessed his actions. McCulloch violated all prosecutorial ethics by misleading the Grand Jury, and for that he should lose his job.

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

Emissary’s 1963 Discussions With Castro Illuminate Motives Of JFK’s Killers

The New Republic recently reprinted a riveting article written by journalist Jean Daniel describing his conversations with Fidel Castro the very week of JFK’s assassination. Daniel had been sent to Cuba on a secret mission at the behest of President Kennedy. What follows are excerpts from the article. Notice how prescient and shrewd Castro’s remarks are. He had an insight into American political and intelligence communities that was spot-on.

“During this nocturnal discussion, Castro [said that] Washington had had ample opportunity to normalize its relations with Cuba, but that instead it had tolerated a CIA program of training, equipping and organizing a counter-revolution…He was speaking, he said, from the viewpoint of the interests of peace in both the American continents. To achieve this goal, a leader would have to arise in the United States capable of understanding the explosive realities of Latin America and of meeting them halfway. Then, suddenly, he took a less hostile tack: ‘Kennedy could still be this man. He has the possibility of becoming, in the eyes of history, the greatest President of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists…he would then be an even greater President than Lincoln. I know, for example, that for Kruschev, Kennedy is a man you can talk with. I have gotten this impression from all my conversations with Kruschev. Other leaders have assured me that to attain this goal, we must first await his re-election…[Kennedy] has come to understand many things over the past few months…I’m convinced that anyone else would be worse.’ Then he added with a broad, boyish grin, ‘If you see him again tell him I’m willing to declare Goldwater my friend if that will guarantee Kennedy’s re-election.’”

The above conversation between Daniel and Castro took place just hours before JFK was assassinated. They two were together when news of Kennedy’s wounding came over the radio in Cuba. Daniel wrote, “[Castro] remarked while we waited, ‘Es una mala noticia (this is bad news). There is an alarmingly sizable lunatic fringe in America…but you wait, I know them they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.’ Then the word came through, in effect, that the accused assassin was a young man who was a member of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, that he was an admirer of Fidel Castro. ‘There, didn’t I tell you?’ exclaimed Castro. ..Fidel declared, ‘If they had had proof they would have said he was agent, an accomplice, a hired killer. In saying simply that he is an admirer, this is just to try and make an association in people’s minds between the name of Castro and the emotion wakened by the assassination. This is a publicity method, a propaganda device. It’s terrible.’”

The plotters wanted to have it both ways: remove the man who was moving towards détente (peace and nuclear disarmament) with the communist world and blame it on those very communists. The Joint Chiefs and the CIA hoped that attaching Oswald to Castro would incite Americans to war and the demise of Castro. But Lyndon Johnson used this threat of war to bully and coerce Warren Commission members into whitewashing the truth of the assassination. He told more than one congressman he recruited that 50 million dead from a nuclear holocaust are the stakes if they didn’t name Oswald as the lone killer. LBJ got his cover-up, and the CIA and Joint Chiefs got their war—southeast Asia.

Jean Daniel’s conversations with Castro are illuminate the motives JFK’s killers had. Thus, in the 50 years since, they have downplayed the significance of Kennedy sending his own back-channel emissary to Cuba in the first steps towards normalizing relations with Cuba, an act that no doubt would have infuriated the CIA, the right-wing fringe in America, and American business interests (including the Mafia) who wanted Castro dead.

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

Incompetent Journalists At McCulloch Press Conference Fail To Ask The Most Important Questions About Michael Brown's Murder

You know by now that killer cop Darren Wilson got off scott-free, just as I predicted he would. Three months ago, on the day that St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch announced that a grand jury would be convened to look into the shooting death of Michael Brown, I knew the fix was in and I said so on this blog site. In his 24 years as the county prosecutor, McCulloch, whose father was a St. Louis cop shot and killed in the line of duty, has never indicted a single police officer for any crime. In fact, to my knowledge, no St. Louis County policeman has ever been censured, suspended, or even chastised for any wrongdoing whatsoever. This is one remarkable record! Either the St. Louis County cops are the most professional, fair-minded, unsullied, tolerant, racially blind, and incorruptible police force in the history of mankind...or, Bob McCulloch is a master at covering up and dismissing police misconduct and brutality. As someone who has lived here all my life, I can assure you it is not the former.

So it galled to me to no end that he was not grilled, fried and sauteed about his record when reporters had their chance last night. As I sat and watched McCulloch's press conference, I grew more frustrated with each stupid question asked by the so-called "journalists" present. It was as if they were McCulloch "plants" the way they lobbed softballs in his direction. The local media, who know McCulloch and his ways better than the national media, were particularly culpable. Granted, McCulloch has ways of intimidating and bullying local "journalists," but you would think at least one would ask a tough question. Instead, what we got were questions like these:

"What was the grand jury's vote?" McCulloch explained that the grand jury's ballot is secret and, by law, no one is allowed to ascertain how the vote broke down. This question was asked by three different reporters!

Someone clumsily asked McCulloch about his presumed bias because of his father's murder. McCulloch brushed it aside without much effort.

Another newsman asked about the racial makeup of the jury. McCulloch toyed with him.

There were half-hearted efforts to explore the actual evidence, but the reporters seemed to have a tenuous grasp of the facts. One even asked McCulloch if the videotape of the shooting would now be released. McCulloch barely restrained a smirk as he pointed out that there was no videotape of the shooting.

Here's what McCulloch should have been asked:

1) "Why didn't you instruct the jury as to their options regarding the various counts the grand jury had to consider." In other words, in any murder case, the prosecutor, as a matter of course, would detail the various indictments (or true bills) for the jury to consider--everything from murder one to involuntary manslaughter. McCulloch did not do this in the Brown case. Why did he deviate from normal prosecutorial methods? Was it to go easy on Officer Wilson and induce a no-true bill from the jury?

2) "Isn't this a case of overkill? Brown sustained 10 bullet wounds, most of them from a distance of 150 feet. That's half a football field's length. How can it be argued that Officer Wilson was in imminent danger from half a football field away?" It is undeniable that Brown was already critically wounded and of no threat to Wilson when Wilson delivered the kill shot."

3) "Why was Brown's body left to lie in the middle of the street for four hours? Was a cover-up being concocted during this delay?"

4) "If, as you say, Officer Wilson knew that someone matching Brown's description was suspected in a petty theft, why is there no record of this in Wilson's broadcast conversation with the police dispatcher? Wilson's own supervisor, the Ferguson Police Chief, himself admitted just days after the shooting that Wilson had no knowledge of Brown being a theft suspect at the time of the shooting."

5) "How is it that no policeman, on your watch, has ever been suspended, much less indicted or convicted of any crime, in your 24 years as County prosecutor? No county in the country has such a record for the last 24 years. This is despite the fact that hundreds of officer-involved shootings have occurred since you took office in 1990. All those shootings were justified? That is one remarkable record. How do you account for that, Mr. McCulloch?"

6) "Did your office prosecute this case with the same zeal as you would have prosecuted a case which involved an officer being gunned down by a private citizen?"

7) "Why is your prosecutorial record of convicting black offenders wildly disproportionate to the racial composition of St. Louis County?"

I should have been at the press conference to ask these questions myself, but I am much too educated, unintimidated, and independent to obtain a media credential in this town.

[You can read more of my excoriation of the St. Louis County police in my historical novel The President's Mortician.] http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

Collinsville IL Public Library Hosts My JFK Assassination Presentation on Saturday Nov. 22

As part of the Collinsville Public Library's "Meet The Author" series, I will be discussing the JFK assassination on November 22, 2014, at 2 pm. My book, "The President's Mortician: A Story Of How And Why JFK's Murder Was Executed And Covered Up" will be available for purchase at a discounted price of $12. I will be happy to sign all purchased copies. The presentation is open to the public.

The discussion will include how and why JFK was murdered; the true nature of the plot that took his life; the extent and mechanics of the cover-up; the aftermath for America; as well as the long-term ramifications. More specific subjects that will be addressed include why the mainstream media have not exposed the truth; who were the likely triggermen; how and why JFK's wounds were altered; how the assassination affected our Vietnam policy; the Warren Commission whitewash; and the CIA's coordination of the plot.

The Collinsville Public Library is located at 408 W. Main Street in downtown Collinsville, Illinois. For more information, call (618) 344-1112.

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

Turns Out The “Black Devil” President Has Done A Good Job

The results of the recent midterm elections are more a reflection of low voter turnout and white backlash than anything else. Certainly it has nothing to do with President Obama’s job performance, for he has been a very effective president in terms of getting positive results in his six years in office. But that didn’t matter to the Koch Brothers and other right-wing extremists who poured millions into a mass propaganda effort to demonize Obama. It worked, but only because it appealed to ignorant, misinformed and racist white voters…the kind who turn out in droves to vote in any election. Too bad the liberals didn’t show up to offset the angry white voters. Voter turnout was the lowest for a midterm election in 78 years. Barely 34% of the electorate came to the polls. That’s a disgrace for a country which calls itself a democracy. I suppose we deserve the quasi-fascist government we are going to get.

Democratic candidates must share the blame for their losses. Instead of embracing the good that has been done under a Democratic administration, they inexplicably ran away from Obama’s accomplishments the last six years. The strategy was as stupid as it was frustrating. Democrats should have put Republicans on the defensive by reminding Americans of what it was like when Obama took office and how things are much better now. For instance: in January 2009, unemployment was at 7.9%; it now stands at 5.8%. GDP growth stood at -5.4%; today it is at +3.5%. The Dow Jones index was at 7,949 when Obama took office; today it is at 17,573. Consumer confidence coming out of the banking/lending crisis was 37.7%; today it’s 94.5%. Bin Laden is dead; General Motors is alive. Seven million more people have affordable health care. All this while Republican obstructionists stubbornly stood in the way of all progress.

That’s some great record. And when history is written a hundred years from now, Obama will be considered one the great presidents of the 21st century …unless, of course that history is written by an angry white racist.

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

What Do Midterm Results Mean? Right-Wing Extremists Are Good Liars

Recently a secret recording was made of a Republican lobbyist, named Richard Berman, addressing a meeting of energy-industry executives. What the lobbyist revealed is at the core of the right-wing strategy for getting Americans to vote against their own interests. “We exploit their basest emotions. We prey on their fear, greed and anger. The truth never matters. Because if we hit them in their gut, they don’t care what the truth is.” With these “inspiring” words Berman elicited millions in donations for Republican political candidates from a quasi-fascist group called Western Energy Alliance, whose members include Halliburton, Devon Energy, and Anadarko Petroleum. And because the Supreme Court has removed limits on corporate spending, right-wing billionaire groups like Western Energy can literally buy elections with their money. That’s the right-wing playbook. That’s how it works. That’s America in 2014. The richest, greediest, most conservative people in the country can hire paid liars to do their bidding to get what they want.

Climate change is real, but liars like Louis Gohmert can convince voters it’s not by pointing out that it’s a black man who has the audacity to tell us it’s real. Obamacare is working, but Mitch McConnell can exploit racist Kentuckians to believe otherwise. Scott Walker can convince working class Wisconsinites that their taxes will go up if they don’t elect him; in reality, it is only the super-rich whose taxes will rise. The rise of lower and middle class families makes America better, but when white bigots see blacks and Latinos getting opportunities, they become jealous, angry and fearful. Limbaugh and FOX News exploit this fear with dire warnings of brown people swarming into America spreading disease, going on welfare, and voting for minority candidates. The colored hordes are coming, is the message.

To fend off these lies, one must be educated and well-read. Sadly, most of white, rural America is woefully unlearned. They can’t afford higher education, and they have limited access to the truth. They will believe the most bellicose, incendiary, and hateful voices they hear. That’s how Republicans want them—stupid, poor, and pissed-off. The way they will always be under Republican rule.

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Vanity Fair Article Barely Scrapes The Surface On Secret Service Involvement In JFK Murder

A recent article in Vanity Fair, written by Susan Cheever, purports to blow the lid off the behavior of Secret Service agents in Dallas on November 21-22, 1963. As usual, though, popular magazines and “investigative reporters” are slow to catch up to the inside facts of how and why JFK was killed. Cheever’s revelations may seem earth-shattering to the uninformed, but long-time assassination researchers yawn at her supposed bombshells.

For instance, anyone who has seriously investigated the Secret Service’s actions in Dallas has known for almost 50 years that key members of JFK’s protection detail were drunk or hungover during the fatal motorcade. At least six, and probably closer to nine, agents had partied at a notorious local club until the early morning hours of November 22. The club, The Cellar, was known for catering to cops, politicians, reporters, and Mafia types. Cheever thinks she has uncovered dynamite; in reality she is 50 years late to the party. She writes:

“It took the Cellar’s owner, Pat Kirkwood, however, more than 20 years to provide a more detailed account of the night. In the letters he wrote in 1963, he was certain that none of the Secret Service agents in his establishment had been drinking. Then, in 1984, as Jim Marrs would note in his book Crossfire, published five years later, Kirkwood opened up in an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, recounting the glory days of the club and explaining that although he did not ‘officially’ serve liquor, he actually handed out large quantities of booze, especially to people like lawyers and politicians and policemen who might later be helpful. ‘About 3:30,’ Kirkwood said, “these Secret Service men were sitting around giggling about how the firemen were guarding the president over at the Hotel Texas.’

“Cellar manager Jimmy Hill would also tell his side of the story in that same Star-Telegram article: ‘After the agents were there we got a call from the White House asking us not to say anything about them drinking because their image had suffered enough as it was. We didn’t say anything but those guys were bombed. They were drinking pure Everclear.” (Everclear is a strong intoxicant—either 151- or 190-proof—and was known at the time as a spike for drinks such as a Salty Dick.) In addition, the waitresses at the Cellar—a late-night drawing card for the club—were scantily clad. These underdressed women sometimes attended to over-served men, and if their testimony was ever provided, it has never surfaced.’”

Cheever, in a half-hearted attempt to be thorough, also quotes Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent. “‘I knew it would happen. I told those playboys that someone was going to get the president killed if they kept acting like they did. Now it’s happened,’ said Bolden. Today, Bolden, a 79-year-old retiree in Chicago, thinks that drinking definitely had something to do with the ‘lackadaisical’ Secret Service performance when the Kennedy motorcade was under attack. ‘The biggest problem I ran into with the Secret Service when I was an agent was their constant drinking,’ he told me.”

What Cheever doesn’t reveal is that Bolden’s book contains much more explicit and explosive indictments of the Secret Service in JFK’s time. Bolden asserted that several agents regularly professed their hatred of the president and insisted they would step aside if anyone tried to assassinate him. Not exactly the best attitude for those entrusted with Kennedy’s life. But Cheever ignores this. She never even hints that perhaps the Secret Service was in on the hit, despite overwhelming and long-standing evidence that it was. Cheever ascribes the agents’ culpable behavior to negligence or drunkenness. High treason and conspiracy to commit murder aren’t considerations.
However, the evidence for Secret Service participation in the plot and the cover-up is overwhelming. I believe at least four agents could have been tried and convicted as accomplices to murder: Roy Kellerman, Winston Lawson, William Greer, and Emory Roberts. For 50 years, though, no mainstream media outlet has dared to explore this dark alley because doing so would lead to back to the real brains behind the dirty project: Lyndon Johnson and the CIA, the men who recruited into the plot Secret Service agents who hated Kennedy and wanted him dead.

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More Proof That CIA Hired Mass-Murdering Nazis

Upon publication of my first novel, Murder Of An American Nazi, I was ridiculed in many quarters for having the audaciousness and affrontery to suggest that the CIA hired thousands of Nazis after World War II to help do its dirty work. The central thesis of my novel is that Allen Dulles and other American spymasters employed these mass murderers to spy on the communists, indoctrinate U.S. intelligence in torture techniques learned in the Nazi death camps, show the CIA how to use LSD as a mind control drug, and develop space rocketry and weapons for American use in the Cold War (see Operation Paperclip). As the years have passed, and I’ve been proven right, my detractors have cowered back under the slimy rocks from which they emerged, because they have no ground on which to stand. The declassification of millions of CIA documents have exposed more immoral, ruthless, and senseless Nazi collaboration than even I had imagined.

The latest CIA misdeeds are chronicled in the Toronto Globe and Mail, in an article written by Eric Lichtblau. (God forbid an American paper should report on CIA atrocities; of course, most American media outlets have been CIA assets for the last half-century anyway [see Operation Mockingbird]. The establishment hacks have howled at me about this assertion too.) Lichtblau writes:

“One SS officer (hired by the CIA), Otto von Bolschwing, was a mentor and top aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the “Final Solution,” and wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews.

“Yet after the war, the CIA not only hired him as a spy in Europe, but relocated him and his family to New York City in 1954, records show. The move was seen as 'a reward for his loyal postwar service and in view of the innocuousness of his [Nazi] party activities,' the agency wrote.

“His son, Gus von Bolschwing, who learned many years later of his father’s ties to the Nazis, sees the relationship between the spy agency and his father as one of mutual convenience forged by the Cold War. ‘They used him, and he used them,’ Gus von Bolschwing, now 75, said in an interview. ‘It shouldn’t have happened. He never should have been admitted to the United States. It wasn’t consistent with our values as a country.’

“When Israeli agents captured Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, Otto von Bolschwing went to the CIA for help because he worried they might come after him, memos show.

“Agency officials were worried as well that von Bolschwing might be named as Eichmann’s ‘collaborator and fellow conspirator and that the resulting publicity may prove embarrassing to the U.S.,’ a CIA official wrote.

“After two agents met with von Bolschwing in 1961, the agency assured him that it would not disclose his ties to Eichmann, records show. He lived freely for another 20 years before prosecutors discovered his wartime role and prosecuted him. He agreed to give up his citizenship in 1981, dying months later.

“In all, the American military, the CIA, the FBI and other agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis and collaborators as spies and informants after the war, according to Richard Breitman, a Holocaust scholar at American University who was on a government-appointed team that declassified war-crime records.

“The full tally of Nazis-turned-spies is probably much higher, said Norman Goda, a University of Florida historian on the declassification team, but many records remain classified even today, making a complete count impossible.

“ ‘U.S. agencies directly or indirectly hired numerous ex-Nazi police officials and East European collaborators who were manifestly guilty of war crimes,” he said. “Information was readily available that these were compromised men.’

“None of the spies are known to be alive today.

“The wide use of Nazi spies grew out of a Cold War mentality shared by two titans of intelligence in the 1950s: Hoover, the longtime FBI director, and Dulles, the CIA director.

“Dulles believed ‘moderate’ Nazis might ‘be useful’ to the United States, records show. Hoover, for his part, personally approved some ex-Nazis as informants and dismissed accusations of their wartime atrocities as Soviet propaganda.

“In 1968, Hoover authorized the FBI to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in the U.S., internal records show. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, a potential threat to national security.

“John Fox, the bureau’s chief historian, said: ‘In hindsight, it is clear that Hoover, and by extension the FBI, was shortsighted in dismissing evidence of ties between recent German and East European immigrants and Nazi war crimes. It should be remembered, though, that this was at the peak of Cold War tensions.’

“The CIA declined to comment for this article.”

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New Study Reaffirms Conservatives’ Bias and Ignorance

If you are liberal, as I am, you are probably regularly frustrated and mystified by the ignorance and misinformation of your family, friends and acquaintances of conservative persuasion. There is just no way to talk sense to these people, and, thanks to a new study, there are viable and identifiable causes for conservatives' inability to consider alternative philosophies or develop open-minded approaches to societal and philosophical matters. In short, their minds are closed, and they don't want to listen to any other viewpoints. So says Chris Mooney in his new book, "The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality."

At its core, Mooney's book postulates then proves this immutable fact: Conservatives are largely born into authoritarian households, grow up to be rigid in beliefs and ideology themselves, and then seek out affirmation for those beliefs without considering other viewpoints. Enter FOX News, the perfect outlet for the conservative. Reinforcing old, illusory and non-factual beliefs is what FOX does best.

Mooney's hard data are the results of public opinion surveys which ask respondents about their beliefs and "information media" preferences. The surveys' subject matters were climate change, health care, the Iraq War, the Ground Zero mosque, the 2010 elections, and other currently debated topics. The results show that those who watch FOX News are more likely to be misinformed about factually uncontestable matters (for instance, were there really no WMDs found in Iraq). But this begs the question: Which comes first the conservative or FOX News? Mooney's research provides an interesting answer.

While watching FOX News certainly makes one more misinformed and ignorant, naturally predisposed ignorant and misinformed people seek out FOX News to reinforce their stupidity. In other words, if you're born stupid you cannot get smarter by watching FOX News; however, ironically, the dumber you are the more likely you are to do the one thing that will keep you dumb: seek out outlets like FOX News to reinforce your stupidity. It's a Catch-22, but don't tell conservatives that. They will not understand the reference, and they will deny the scientific results of any survey which claims they are stupid anyway.

According to Mooney, political conservatives tend to have a higher need for closure. They are uncomfortable with loose ends that are a natural residue of life's complexities. For instance, it is comfortable and simplistic for conservatives to decry the welfare state, while at the same time being oblivious to the fact that investment banks and military defense contractors are the biggest welfare vacuums in America. Corporatists suck billions of tax dollars down their greedy holes, compared to the drop-in-the-bucket consumed by the genuinely needy.

Conservatives are, by and large, authoritarian/absolute in their beliefs, and they limit challenges against their belief systems by surrounding themselves with sources of information that will tell them they are right...and by defiantly, even violently, challenging those who tell them they are wrong.

The author then goes on to note that they’re also disinclined to watch anything else. FOX keeps constantly in their minds the idea that the rest of the media are “biased” against them, and conservatives duly respond by saying other media aren’t worth watching—it’s just a pack of lies. According to Public Policy Polling’s annual TV News Trust Poll (the 2011 run), 72 percent of conservatives say they trust FOX News, but they also say they strongly distrust NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN. Liberals and moderates, in contrast, trust all of these outlets more than they distrust them (though they distrust FOX). This, too, suggests selective exposure of conservatives.

What does this all mean? As long as there is a FOX News there will be right-wingers, and as long as there are right-wingers there will be a FOX News. Our only hope is to grab them when they're young before intransigence and ignorance settle like concrete in their brains.

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

Oswald Conferred With CIA Chief Just Weeks Before JFK Assassination

Among the revelations at a recent JFK assassination conference was one that definitively links the CIA to its patsy for the crime, Lee Harvey Oswald. At the Assassinations Archives and Research Center meeting at the Bethesda Hyatt Regency in Bethesda, Maryland, former CIA asset Antonio Veciana told the attendees he is convinced the CIA organized the president's murder and that he saw Oswald meeting with a CIA official in Dallas just prior to Kennedy's murder on November 22, 1963. Veciana said he believes Oswald was a CIA operative whom the agency decided to blame for the killing.

Veciana named now deceased CIA covert operations head David Atlee Phillips as the man he saw conferring with Oswald. Phillips was a high-ranking CIA official who used the cover named "Maurice Bishop" during his many meetings with Veciana. Earlier this year, Veciana confirmed to researcher Marie Fonzi, widow of his friend the author Gaeton Fonzi, that "Bishop" was "Phillips." But Veciana never previously answered questions in a public forum.

The CIA placed Phillips in charge of the CIA's Cuba operations after the newly created agency recruited him from newspaper work in the 1950s. According to biographers, Phillips, a former actor born in Texas, used hundreds of aliases in his CIA work. After retirement from the CIA Phillips organized thousands into the politically influential Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Veciana, 85, spoke through a translator and with a son by his side. He said he was trained as a CPA and admired "Bishop" and the CIA deeply for many years. Now, however, he said he wanted to set the record straight because he has come to admire Kennedy, whom he and Phillips once regarded as a "traitor" for allowing communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro to remain in power.

For the informed JFK researcher, these revelations are not new. Many years ago Veciana named Phillips as one of Oswald's CIA handlers. In his 1989 best seller, "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy," author Jim Marrs wrote, "...Veciana, a Cuban accountant who turned against Castro...and founded the violent anti-Castro group Alpha 66, claimed to have worked for a CIA officer known to him as Maurice Bishop. According to Veciana, he met with Bishop more than a hundred times, and the CIA officer helped guide the activities of Alpha 66, including plans to assassinate Castro. Veciana said his relationship with the agency did not end until 1973, when Bishop paid him $253,000 as back pay for his services. But Veciana's most astounding claim is that, during a trip to Dallas in late August or early September 1963, he saw [Bishop] in conversation with a man he later recognized as Lee Harvey Oswald...the House Select Committee on Assassinations later developed information that Bishop was none other than form chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division's Directorate of Operations, David Atlee Phillips."

Unless Phillips just happened to bump into Oswald to ask him for directions to Dealey Plaza (I like to amuse myself with the wild justifications coincidence theorists would concoct for a meeting between a CIA chief and JFK's accused killer just days before the President was murdered), it means that the CIA was directly involved in setting up Oswald to take the fall for the murder of the century.

Religious Fanatic Costs My Team The Pennant

Please forgive my grief as I pause from politics and history to vent about my baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, losing the pennant to the San Francisco Giants. The National League Championship Series was a bitter disappointment, and here in St. Louis fans are irate over the dumb decisions made by Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. This is not just the usual griping from fans sulking over a crushing defeat. Matheny is even being skewered by local sportswriters, as compliant and obsequious a bunch of ink-stained wretches as you'll ever read. Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz went so far as to write that "Bruce Bochy (Giants manager) managed circles around Matheny." That's usually considered blasphemy in this red-all-over city. But now it merely reflects the citizenry's palpable contempt. And there is just cause for anger. Matheny, whose only previous experience was managing Little League baseball (seriously), bumbled and gaffed his way through five agonizing games. Not one of his moves worked. And there is a reason for his incompetence. He's a genuine Jesus-loving fanatic who lets his faith guide him in all decisions. This is not a good thing for a baseball manager (and probably not for most of the rest of us at the mercy of such know-it-alls in America today).

See, the problem is when you turn everything over to the Eternal White Man in the Sky, you make decisions which are sometimes unsound and irrational. And the problem with having a not-so-bright religious fanatic as your manager is that he believes fervently in things that are not real, and denies things which are real. When the things he believes do not come to pass, he writes it off as God's will. Thus consigning all reason, logic, and human intelligence to the trash bin. We weren't meant to win because the Almighty didn't deign it so, doesn't matter what bad decisions Matheny made. This is a dangerous philosophy to have when you're a baseball manager, because Faith has nothing to do with solid baseball thinking. Faith prompts you to send out Randy Choate (a gruesomely awful relief pitcher) to face 3 Giants hitters with the game on the line; then do it again the very next night to prove the redemptive powers of the Almighty. Faith prompts you use a pitcher who hasn't pitched in a month in the most crucial inning of the year. Faith prompts you take out pitching wizards John Lackey and Adam Wainwright too soon, and leave shaky Shelby Miller in too long. Faith prompts you to bat Matt Holliday (overpaid choke artist) third and Jhonny Peralta (overpaid choke artist) fourth without any evidence to support it. Faith prompts you to...oh hell, you get the idea. It's all a morality play; baseball sabremetrics (scientific evidence) be damned.

CIA Still Stalling On Release Of JFK Assassination Records

A San Francisco judge has ordered the CIA to release JFK Assassination records or show cause as to why the documents should not be released by the end of this month. U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Corley is responding to a suit brought against the CIA by a private San Francisco attorney named Anthony Bothwell. Bothwell is seeking the Agency's records on Jean Souetre, David Morales, and Johnny Roselli, all of whom have been suspected of being involved in the November 22, 1963, murder of President Kennedy.

According to Courthouse News Service, Corley ruled "...that the CIA's description of its final search for records lacked enough detail for Bothwell to challenge the search's adequacy - or for her to rule in the CIA's favor." Corley wrote, "'While the declaration by CIA litigation chief Martha Lutz provides sufficient detail regarding CIA FOIA procedures and the rationale behind searching the National Clandestine Service and Directorate of Support, the description of the CIA's final search lacks the detail 'necessary to afford Bothwell an opportunity to challenge the adequacy of the search,'" Corley wrote. "It does not name the databases searched by the NCS and DS, nor does it provide a scheme of the database systems or any details of the final search strategy other than the use of names. This lack of clarity is compounded by some of the inconsistencies and ambiguities that Bothwell identifies in Lutz's description of the search results, as discussed below, and precludes the court from granting summary judgment in the CIA's favor.'"

Unfortunately Corley, perhaps due to a severe lack of knowledge of the case, has exempted Souetre's files from the suit. Who was Souetre? He was a French-Corsican hit man who was in Dallas on the day JFK was murdered. His whereabouts, definitive identity, and actions that day have been cloaked in mystery since. However, a recently published work by author Jerome Corsi has uncovered valuable information about Souetre, alias Michael Mertz, alias Michael Roux. I wrote about this in a previous blog, and I reprint the information here:

According to author Jerome Corsi, a hit man connected with the SDECE, the French equivalent of the CIA, could have been the assassin who fired the shot that killed President Kennedy. In response to a 1976 Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA released documents 632–796 confirming that Jean Souetre, a.k.a. Michel Roux, a.k.a. Michel Mertz--a world-renowned Corsican hit man with a long and successful history as an assassin and with ties to the French Connection drug trade stretching from Southeast Asia to the U.S--was in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was a gun for hire who sold his skills to intelligence agencies around the world, including the CIA. A memo, dated April 1, 1964, was discovered among the released documents and it reads as follows:

"Jean SOUETRE aka Michel Roux aka Michel Mertz--On March 5, Dr. Papich [an intelligence source] advised that the French had hit the Legal Attaché in Paris and also the SDECE man had queried the Bureau in New York City concerning subject stating that he had been expelled from the U.S. at Fort Worth or Dallas 48 hours after the assassination. He was in Fort Worth on the morning of 22 November and in Dallas in the afternoon. The French believe that he was expelled to either Mexico or Canada. In January he received mail from a dentist named Alderman living at 5803 Birmingham, Houston, Texas. Subject is believed to be identical with a Captain who is a deserter from the French Army and an activist in the OAS. The French are concerned because of de Gaulle’s planned visit to Mexico. They would like to know the reason for his expulsion from the U.S. and his destination. Bureau files are negative and they are checking in Texas and with the INS [U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service]. They would like a check of our files with indications of what may be passed on to the French. Mr. Papich was given a copy of CSCI-3/776,742 previously furnished the Bureau and CSDB-3/655,207 together with a photograph of Captain SOUETRE."

According to Corsi, Souetre was also attached to the OAS, or Organization de l’Armée Secrétée, a right-wing extremist group opposed to French President Charles de Gaulle that engaged in acts of terrorism and assassination and opposed France’s policy to grant the African nation of Algeria independence from French rule.

The CIA, naturally, never shared this information with the Warren Commission. Even if it had, Allen Dulles, the de facto head of the Commission and a man with direct ties with the accused assassin, would have certainly squelched it.

Republican Candidate For Congress Shot and Killed Neighbor's Dog

If you live in southern Illinois, as I do, beware. There's a madman on the loose, and he's running for the U.S. Congress. His name is Mike Bost; you may know him from his out-of-control rant on the floor of the Illinois state senate that has become a You Tube sensation. During his wild tirade, he screams, turns red in the face, and throws papers in the air. Apparently, his furious tantrums are nothing new as he's had many problems with neighbors and serious run-ins with the law. What's more scary is that he is a gun-loving, government-hating, Obama-baiting Republican. And he doesn't just talk about his love of guns...he uses them. Several years ago, according to the Huffington Post, Bost got angry with his neighbor's dog and blew the poor animal away. He was charged with a crime, and the case went to trial, but somehow Bost got himself acquitted.

His brushes with the law did not end there, however. In 2006 he may have threatened another man's life with a gun that he claimed was later stolen from his home. The gun in question was a .357-caliber weapon, and Bost claimed that a 17-year-old girl somehow pilfered it from his locked safe. Conveniently for Bost, the gun's disappearance meant he could not be connected with the deadly threat on another man's life, so Bost was neither charged for assault with a deadly weapon nor carrying a concealed weapon.

I quote here from the Huffington Post article: "Bost, a gun-rights defender who in 2008 voted against a bill to require the prompt reporting of stolen guns, did not report a gun that was stolen from his own home.

"In 2006, Bost's nickel-plated special edition .357 Rossi revolver was stolen from his gun safe. According to police records, Bost did not know about the theft until police showed up at his door to inform him that the gun had been used to threaten another man's life. Bost led investigators to the safe, and the firearm was indeed missing.
It is unclear who stole the weapon and how it was removed from the safe, but Bost and family members suspected that the thief may have been connected to a 17-year-old girl who had stayed briefly in Bost's house. Bost told police that he usually did not lock the side door to the room that contained the safe.

"Other incidents found in the files are less distressing, but similarly portray Bost as an aggressive man whose actions often put him in conflict with others.

"While Bost once felt justified in shooting a dog to death, in later years, he wasn't too worried about his own dog roaming the neighborhood. Local police records show that neighbors were so concerned about Bost's pet scampering around their homes and the local school that they called police at least four separate times."

Please, southern Illinoisans, do not send this man to the U.S. Congress. We already have enough angry, white, middle-aged, gun-loving assholes there. And this one doesn't just sleep with his gun, he will point them at other living things and sometimes even pull the trigger.

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The National Archives and the CIA Are Still Stonewalling JFK Researchers

With outrageously smug and Orwellian tactics, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Archives Records Administration refuse to release over 1,000 files relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. Which leads me to ask one question: Why? Why after 50 years do these government agencies resist all attempts for full disclosure? Their lack of transparency invites supposition and suspicion. It seems to me that there must be some dynamite in those files. But what is it? What could be so earth-shattering and incriminating that even 50 years after the fact the documents can’t be exposed to the public?

We can safely say, at the very least, that there is some cognitive dissonance going on here. The government’s official position for 50 years is that there was no conspiracy to be found in the murder of the 35th President. Oh sure, the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 found that a conspiracy was likely, but the government, specifically the Justice Department and the FBI did not act on the Committee’s conclusions. And since that time, no President, no CIA official, no FBI head, no Congressional representative, no governmental agency of any sort has publicly asserted that anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald committed the crime. So if that’s true, why not release the remaining 1,000 files to the public. The answer is obvious. The files would contradict the government’s official position.

But let’s get real here. Anyone who has taken a hard look at the case already knows that the most powerful men and organizations in the country were involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. And most of them were connected in some way to the CIA. If the full truth were made public, the CIA might be destroyed by the virulent public backlash. So maybe it’s just a matter of survival for the spy agency.

Writing in today’s edition of OpEd News, JFK researcher Jim Lesar skewers the CIA and NARA: “NARA, deferring to the CIA, continues to refuse to release these records until 2017 -- if then. The present circumstances clearly warrant immediate release. This is an egregious violation of the JFK Act and the unanimous intent of Congress.

“These records are, almost without exception, more than 50 years old. Under President Obama's new executive order on national security classification, E.O.13526, nearly all information more than 50 years old is subject to automatic declassification and must be released. Yet the CIA and NARA continue to insist that these materials should continue to be withheld. I invited the National Archivist, Mr. David Ferreiro, to address this policy at [ the AARC--Assassination Archives and Research Center] conference on the Warren Report. He did not respond directly, but conveyed his decision to decline the invitation through a phone call to me by NARA's legal counsel Gary Stern.

“The NARA/CIA refusal to obey the law is egregious. The JFK Act was passed unanimously to get Kennedy assassination information to the public in a timely fashion, so the people could assess the controversies over JFK's death. The 50th anniversary is the perfect opportunity for NARA and the CIA to produce these withheld records and to stop violations of the JFK Act. Instead, NARA has reneged on its previous commitment to make these records available by the end of 2013.”

http://neverlandpublishing.com/tpm.html

George Zimmerman is roaming Florida with impunity looking for another kill

The proliferation of “Stand-Your-Ground” statutes, now the law in most states, and the right-wing’s raging push to arm everyone have bred a new kind of animal—the guy who is armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. Open-carry bullies roam playgrounds, shopping malls, taverns, restaurants, ballfields, and churches without even being cited for disturbing the peace by police. Innocent citizens, cowering like children, refuse to press charges for fear of repercussion from the armed bullies. No better example of this madness exists than in Florida where, despite the lunatic right’s claim that the streets are safer, no one is safe from gun harassment. This is what the new Wild West of American gun lunacy has come to: accquitted murderer and self-appointed vigilante George Zimmerman is stalking, bullying and threatening, with impunity, anyone he chooses.

The latest Zimmerman victim is an unnamed man who was doing nothing more than driving next to Zimmerman on a Florida road. Zimmerman threatened to shoot and kill the driver during a road rage incident in Lake Mary and later showed up at the man's workplace, according to police.

Not surprisingly, the threatened driver declined to press charges, so Zimmerman was not arrested.

A local television station reported that, “Police said the man, whose name was not released, called police after a truck pulled up next to him and the driver yelled, ‘Why are you pointing a finger at me?’ Police spokeswoman Bianca Gillett said the man recognized the truck driver as Zimmerman. The man said Zimmerman then asked, ‘Do you know who I am?’ and threatened to kill him.” Reportedy Zimmerman’s exact words were, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

You may recall that Zimmerman, after being acquitted of murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, was arrested for threatening his ex-wife with a gun. Subsequent to that, Zimmerman was also questioned by police for patrolling a Florida gun store without the consent of the gun store owner who reportedly said, “I didn’t okay it. I didn’t authorize it. I didn’t pay for it. I sent him a text message telling him not to come back to the store anymore.” Apparently even gun nuts don’t want him around. Nevertheless, Zimmerman told police at the time that the gun store owner gave Zimmerman permission to guard his store.

This is strikingly similar to the Trayvon Martin killing, when Zimmerman, despite his claims to the contrary, was not acting in any official capacity as a security guard when patrolling the Florida housing complex where Martin lived.

Make no mistake, there are other George Zimmermans out there just waiting to pull the trigger. As long as we have “Stand Your Ground,” the NRA, and right-wing gun nuts we will all be in danger. The land of the free is now the land of the “freeloaders,” as in free to load, lock, and fire whenever they damn well choose.

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Parents Let 9-Year-Old Fire Submachine Gun; What Could Go Wrong?

Just when I thought gun nuts had exhausted every stupid and dangerous thing they could do with their guns, there comes news of this: a nine-year-old girl, firing an Uzi, shot and killed a gun instructor on an Arizona firing range. Here's the article that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--

PHOENIX • A 9-year-old girl accidentally killed an instructor with an Uzi at an Arizona shooting range as her parents watched. Immediately after the shooting the girl said that she felt the gun was too much for her and had hurt her shoulder, according to police reports released Tuesday.

Her family members were focused on the girl because they thought she was injured by the gun's recoil and didn't immediately realize instructor Charles Vacca had been shot until one of his colleagues ran over to him.

The family, whose hometown hasn't been revealed by investigators, had taken a shuttle on Aug. 25 from Las Vegas about 60 miles south to the Last Stop range in White Hills, Ariz.
The report did not say why the family had gone to the range or why they let the girl handle the Uzi.

After arriving, the girl, her parents, sister and brother took a monster truck ride before heading out to the shooting range.

The girl's father was the first one in the party to handle a weapon. After he fired shots, Vacca instructed the girl on how to shoot the gun, showed her a shooting stance, and helped her fire a few rounds.

Then, he stepped back and let her hold the Uzi by herself. She fired the gun, and its recoil wrenched the Uzi upward, killing Vacca with a shot to the head, according to the report.

The girl dropped the Uzi, and Vacca fell to the ground. The girl ran toward her family, who huddled around her as she held her shoulder. Another instructor rushed over to help Vacca. The other children were then taken away from the range, according to the report.

The report describes the family as shaken by the accident.

Prosecutors are not filing charges in the case. Arizona's workplace safety agency is investigating the shooting-range death.

County prosecutors say the instructor was probably the most criminally negligent person involved in the accident for having allowed the child to hold the gun without enough training. They also said the parents and child weren't criminally culpable.
The girl's mother had video-recorded the accident on her phone.

"All right, go ahead and give me one shot," Vacca tells the girl in the video. He then cheers when she fires one round at the target.

"All right full auto," Vacca says. The video, which does not show the actual incident, ends with a series of shots being heard.

The shooting set off a powerful debate over youngsters and guns, with many people wondering what sort of parents would let a child handle a submachine gun.


It is hard to grasp what it is more shocking: the fact that idiotic parents would let a child handle a weapon of any kind, much less a submachine gun...or that the Arizona authorities are not filing charges. It is incomprehensible to me that this is not considered, at the very least, a case of negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. The gun-nut parents should be locked up and never have the opportunity to wield firearms again...or let their children anywhere near firearms.

It is not shocking to me that this sort of accidental shooting happens every day in a country that not only condones but encourages widespread, indiscriminate gun possession and usage nearly everywhere people gather. It is the single sickest aspect of the right-wing bully culture that has reared its ugly head in 21st century America. And we on the left who do nothing about it are simply cowards. Meanwhile, more gun deaths occur in this country than in all other countries of the world combined.

I can already hear the NRA response to this incident. "This obviates the necessity for all children to have proper gun training in this country. If every nine-year-old knew how to handle a machine gun, this tragedy could have been avoided." Yes, that's the logical solution--more guns in more children's hands. It certainly would gun makers profits soar. And, by the way, for those of you who are oblivious to gun makers' greed and callousness, that's the whole point of the more-guns-for-America propaganda: it's not about Second Amendment rights, or opposing government tyranny, or preparing for a civil war with the Kenyan President. It's about more money in the pockets of gun makers and their public relations firm--the National Rifle Association.

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St. Louis County Municipalities Prey On The Defenseless

Here in St. Louis one often hears the expression, "Ours is the biggest small town in America." What this means is that St. Louis is a provincial place composed of rigid strata of power divided by race and place. These starkly contrasting spheres are known to all. Staying in one's sphere is essential to one's well-being. But this, of course, is impractical when one must traverse many boundaries just to work, eat, live, play, and shop. There are hundreds of neighborhoods and municipalities in the region, and each has its own infrastructure of bylaws and expectations. North and West St. Louis County alone are mazes of tiny villages. Most of these villages have as their main sources of revenue fines paid by citizens, mostly non-resident minorities, for minor offenses like traffic offenses and such. Thus, police forces in these small pockets are always on the lookout for misdemeanor offenses by which they harass people, largely otherwise law-abiding African-Americans, to raise the money which provides for their own salaries. This leads to unnecessarily draconian and racist implementation of the law; just ask Nicole Bolden, St. Louis County resident and single black female. Her story is recounted in yesterday's Washington Post by investigative reporter Radley Balko. I have reprinted excerpts of it here. It is not insignificant that it took an outsider to lay bare what all St. Louisans already know. The passive, conservative local media would not dare to expose the truth.

How St. Louis County, Missouri profits from poverty
By Radley Balko
Washington Post
September 3 at 1:30 PM

On March 20th in the St. Louis County town of Florissant, someone made an illegal U-turn in front of Nicole Bolden. The 32-year-old black single mother hit her brakes, but couldn’t avoid a collision. Bolden wasn’t at fault for the accident, and wanted to continue on her way. The other motorist insisted on calling the police, as per the law. When the officer showed up, Bolden filled with dread.

“He was really nice and polite at first,” Bolden says. “But once he ran my name, he got real mean with me. He told me I was going to jail. I had my 3-year-old and my one-and-a-half year old with me. I asked him about my kids. He said I had better find someone to come and get them, because he was taking me in.” The Florissant officer arrested and cuffed Bolden in front of her children. Her kids remained with another officer until Bolden’s mother and sister could come pick them up.

The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions: the towns of Florissant and Hazelwood in St. Louis County, and the town of Foristell in St. Charles County. All of the warrants were for failure to appear in court for traffic violations. Bolden hadn’t appeared in court because she didn’t have the money. A couple of those fines were for speeding, one was for failure to wear her seatbelt, and most of the rest were for what defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call “poverty violations” — driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration, and a failure to provide proof of insurance...

The Florissant officer first took Bolden to the jail in that town, where Bolden posted a couple hundred dollars bond and was released at around midnight. She was next taken to Hazelwood and held at the jail there until she could post a second bond. That was another couple hundred dollars. She wasn’t released from her cell there until around 5 pm the next day. Exhausted, stressed, and still worried about what her kids had seen, she was finally taken to the St. Charles County jail for the outstanding warrant in Foristell...

...By the time Bolden got to St. Charles County, it had been well over 36 hours since the accident. “I hadn’t slept,” she says. “I was still in my same clothes. I was starting to lose my mind.” That’s when she says a police officer told her that if she couldn’t post bond, they’d keep her in jail until May. “I just freaked out,” she says. “I said, ‘What about my babies? Who is going to take care of my babies?” She says the officer just shrugged.

“It’s different inside those walls,” Bolden says. “They treat you like you don’t have any emotions. I know I have a heavy foot. I have kids. I have to work to support them. I’ve also been taking classes. So I’m late a lot. And when I’m late, I speed. But I’m still a human being...”

…this was Bolden's second arrest, and since Foristell's municipal court was in session only once every two weeks, she would remain in jail.

The Foristell warrant stemmed from a speeding ticket in 2011. As mentioned before, Bolden didn’t show up in court because she didn’t have the money to pay it, and feared they’d put her jail. It’s a common and unfortunate misconception among St. Louis County residents, especially those who don’t have an attorney to tell them otherwise. A town can’t put you in jail for lacking the money to pay a fine. But you can be jailed not appearing in court to tell the judge you can’t pay — and fined again for not showing up. After twice failing to appear for the Foristell ticket, Bolden showed up, was able to get the warrant removed, and set up a payment plan with the court. But she says that a few months later, she was a couple days late with her payment. She say she called to notify the clerk, who told her not to worry. Instead, the town hit her with another warrant — the same warrant for which she was jailed in March...

...Bolden’s bond was set at $1,700. No one she knew had that kind of money. Bolden broke down; she cried, she screamed, and she swore. She was given a psychological evaluation, and then put on suicide watch. She finds that memory particularly humiliating. Bolden would remain in jail for two weeks, until Foristell’s next municipal court session. She wouldn’t let her children come visit her. “I didn’t want them to see me like that,” she says. “I didn’t want them to think it was normal, that it was okay for one of us to be in jail. I missed them so much. But I wasn’t going to let them see me like that.”

We're told that while Bolden was in jail "...she missed a job interview. She fell behind in her paralegal studies. When she finally got her day in court… '...I was sad, and I was mad,' she says. 'I smelled bad. I was handcuffed. I missed my kids. I didn’t feel like a person anymore.'"

Bolden's story is not untypical of the African-American experience of living in St. Louis County, where justice and punishment are meted out unevenly. If you are in the upper strata, and white, you are unlikely to experience what Bolden did.

Holocaust Survivor and Ferguson Protestor Knows Fascist Tactics When She Sees Them

Of all the disgraceful acts committed by St. Louis area cops after the murder of Michael Brown, one of the most reprehensible was the arrest of 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein. Hedy was peacefully protesting Darren Wilson's senseless slaughter of Brown when suddenly, for no apparent reason, she was handcuffed by police. Did the cops really think that an unarmed 90-year-old woman presented a threat to them? Did they suspect her of domestic terrorism? What exactly were the cops thinking? Hedy says they never told her why she was arrested.

The incident evoked powerfully painful memories for Hedy. Born and raised in Germany, she recalls the Nazi reign of terror in the 1930s directed at Jewish families like hers. Her father was arrested on Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when SS officers and Nazi sympathizers rampaged through the streets, ransacking and demolishing Jewish homes and businesses on November 9, 1938. The sound of shattering glass gave the nefarious night its shameful name. Much like the Gestapo, St. Louis-area cops unlawfully terrorized and accosted innocent citizens. The parallel incidents, separated by 75 years and 6,000 miles, reverberated in Hedy's consciousness. But unlike then, when as a small child she was forced to endure the death of her father in Dachau, today she is fighting back. She has hired a lawyer and will demand justice in a St. Louis courtroom. Her protest itself was an act of defiance and hope. She is fighting against the same fascist tactics which devastated her childhood.

The "good" citizens of St. Louis have responded to Hedy's bravery by sending her hate mail. That's right, the same right-wing radicals who have donated half a million dollars to killer-cop Darren Wilson have filled her inbox with anti-Semitic rants and vile threats. To be fair, Hedy says she has also received notes of praise and encouragement. But it makes one wonder how, in 2014, so many decades after the Holocaust, there are still so many demented and depraved individuals running around in America, where they are free to spew hate and give violent vent to their uncontained rage.

Michael Brown Case Prompts Generous Giving By St. Louisans...To The Killer Cop

One of the most horrifying sidebars to the senseless murder of unarmed Ferguson teen Michael Brown is the money that has come pouring in, apparently from racist St. Louisans, to an all-purpose slush fund for Ferguson cop Darren Wilson. St. Louis television station KSDK reports that, as of today, the "Support Officer Darren Wilson" fund has raised a quarter of a million dollars. Moreover, according to KSDK reporter Lisa Zeigman, fund organizers are transferring the money to something called "Shield of Hope," an "authorized" charitable foundation, so that future donations will be tax deductible. Huh? It is one thing to contribute to a murderer's defense fund; it is quite another to make those contributions tax deductible. Can you imagine the outcry if the roles were reversed? If a black man had gunned down a white cop, the Tea Partiers would be gathering on the White House lawn with pitchforks and nooses should the government declare that contributions to the black man’s defense fund could be tax write-offs.

KSDK is also reporting that “all funds received will be donated to Officer Darren Wilson to cover potential legal fees, and relocation and living expenses of both Officer Wilson and his immediate family.” Not only do St. Louisans (and all other right-wing nutjob non-St. Louisans) have no objection to Wilson slaughtering a defenseless kid, they are making it profitable for the cop to have done so. It turns out that murdering African Americans can be a good career move for white St. Louis-area cops.

This should stun and stupefy you. But if you’re from St. Louis, you are probably not shocked at all. Having lived in the segregated neighborhoods of the St. Louis area all my life, I am quite familiar with the white-racist rage that simmers just beneath the area’s placid veneer. For decades it has been barely suppressed by a live-and-let-live attitude (as long as they don’t live by us). Now, though, it has exposed its ugly caped head in the most blatant way imaginable. What those who contribute to the killer cop’s bank account are really saying is this: “I don’t care if it’s murder; just send the message to the black community that we have the power of life-and-death over you, so stay in your place.”

Why would any rational person make out Wilson to be the aggrieved party in this case? What did he do to warrant this outpouring of community support? Do white, conservative St. Louisans automatically back the cops no matter what they do? Do they not have a social conscience? I wonder if donations would have accrued tenfold if Officer Wilson had machine-gunned an entire church full of African Americans. Maybe contributions would have soared into the millions. Apparently white cops can kill with impunity in St. Louis; it not only pleases the white citizenry, but it is a financially lucrative enterprise for the police.

Writer Makes Connection Between Drug Traffickers and JFK Killers; More Proof Of A Massive Plot

I am utterly convinced, and always will be, that JFK’s murder resulted from a massive conspiracy which involved the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, Texas oil billionaires, elements of the Mafia, and military personnel including some of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Some ridicule this notion, saying that such a plot involving these groups which, on the surface, seem to have little in common. It would have been an unwieldy proposition, say the cynics, made more difficult by the need for secrecy among and within these various groups.

My contention is, despite the incredulity of such a plot, it in fact happened that way because that is where the evidence leads. Over the years, as information leaked out, my position has been proven right. Now comes even more proof that the CIA, Texas oil and the Mafia colluded in other criminal activities.
In an August 2014 article in Mad Cow Press, writer Daniel Hopsicker reports that, “A six-year long investigation into the drug trafficking operation in St Petersburg Florida that was exposed when two planes were busted in the Yucatan carrying a total of 10 tons of cocaine revealed the planes had all been ‘parked,’ or ‘sheep-dipped,’ in the names of straw owners to conceal the CIA’s involvement.

“The composition of this group of straw owners, composed of a fascinating collection of people with often interlocking connections through various other enterprises, says a lot about the circles the CIA runs in. Among the few who lent their names to the registration of more than one of these CIA planes is the granddaughter of Texas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, who back in the 1930’s was known as the richest man in America. Hunt’s other singular distinction is having been accused by Russian newspaper Pravda of being behind the JFK assassination.

“The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers, and, of course, the CIA.”

Hopsicker goes on to explain how the CIA tries to hide evidence of its involvement in the drug trade by using “front” organizations to conceal ownership of “mule” planes:
“An almost-always accurate test for picking a sheep-dipped CIA plane out of a line-up: Check out the previous owners. Why? Because when the CIA needs a specific make of plane, they don’t thumb through the 'Planes for Sale' ads in Trade-A-Plane magazine.

"They find the needed plane among the Agency’s own vast inventory. (Remember: the CIA at one time fielded the largest airline on the planet.) Once they’ve found the plane they want, they will very often sell it back and forth a few times between a few of the Agencies’ thousands of off-the-shelf dummy front companies to throw anyone snooping around off the scent.”

The listed owner of one of the planes used in drug-trafficking ring based in St. Petersburg, Florida, turns out to be owned by Alinda Hill Wickert, granddaughter of H.L. Hunt. Who was H.L. Hunt? Only one of the richest men in the world from the mid-1930s until his death in 1974. An avowed JFK hater and right-wing extremist, he made his fortune in oil, and subsequently moved to Dallas where, it can be stated without exaggeration, he owned everything that moved—from the police force to the local politicians and everything in between. That included Lyndon Johnson, whose mistress once hear Hunt admit that he was “the richest man in the world” and could do any damn thing he wanted to do.

His hatred of Jack Kennedy dated back to the Democratic convention in Los Angles in 1960 where Kennedy beat Hunt’s candidate, LBJ, for the presidential nomination.

Hopsicker puts it this way: “In 1963, Dallas billionaire H.L. Hunt poured millions into a ceaseless anti-Kennedy radio campaign; it was the dawn of extremist radio in the nation. Hunt’s program, ‘Life Line,’ reached 10 million listeners a day with scorching attacks against Kennedy.

“Hunt also controlled a vast private intelligence network, that included the John Birch Society.

“Hunt’s son purchased a full-page ad in the Dallas newspaper the day JFK arrived, accusing the President of betraying the Constitution. A leaflet appeared all over town that accused JFK of treason.

“Immediately after the JFK assassination H. L. Hunt was rushed to the airport and taken out of the country by the FBI. Supposedly, they’d received notice of a plot to kill him. But instead of protective custody, they moved Hunt to a secret destination in Mexico.

“Lyndon Johnson’s former mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown, told author Robert Gaylon Ross prior to her death in 2002 that Johnson was involved in the murder of JFK. The plot that had its origins in the 1960 Democratic Convention.”

Hopsicker has supplied a piece of the JFK assassination plot that heretofore has baffled investigators. How did such disparate and powerful groups collude? How could such a massive plot succeed when the participants seemed so unallied and wildly divergent. Well here’s how. The conspirators had two very strong motivations in common—they were accustomed to getting what they wanted (power and wealth) by any means necessary…even illegal means; and they hated JFK.

To read more of the Hopsicker article, go to http://www.madcowprod.com/2014/08/19

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The Awful Truth of Ferguson: If You Think the Brown Killing Will Get a Fair Investigation In St. Louis County, Think Again

In order to fully comprehend what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri, right now, one must first grasp the geography, history and demographics of the greater St. Louis area. It is a quirky yet staid metropolitan area, with traditions and animosities that date back almost two centuries. It is my native home, so I know a thing or two about it. I was born and raised in St. Louis, and I have lived in the area my entire life, so I have an acute understanding of race, politics and law enforcement in St. Louis County. The region is segregated along racial lines and has been for as long as I have been alive. North St. Louis and most of North St. Louis County are inhabited by African-Americans, while the rest of the Missouri side of the metropolis is mainly white. In the 1950s and ‘60s I grew up in white South St. Louis County, an area which is still overwhelmingly white. There are some pockets of black residents on the near south side, but very few are allowed into the exclusively white conclaves of West County and St. Louis Hills. There are some notable exceptions, of course (University City comes to mind), but for the most part whites and blacks do not live in the same neighborhoods. On the east side of the Mississippi River it’s pretty much the same—East St. Louis is entirely black, while the rest of the Illinois suburbs are mostly white. In a region where racial lines are hard-and-fast, and the white suburban cops are known for their quick tempers and low tolerance levels, the killing of an unarmed black kid by a white cop was a tragedy waiting to happen. Hence the current mess in Ferguson, a predominantly black suburb patrolled by a predominantly white police force.

What’s worse, St. Louis County has now taken over the investigation, and it is being headed by a notoriously hard-nosed prosecutor named Bob McCulloch. McCulloch is a right-wing “law-and-order” middle-aged white guy who always sides with the cops in any disputed arrest or shooting. This is because McCulloch has a very large and nasty chip on his shoulder. His father, a St. Louis cop, was shot and killed in the line of duty by a black man. Subsequently, his convictions of African-Americans have been spectacularly disproportionate to the black/white population ratio of St. Louis County. Moreover, to my knowledge, in the entire time of McCulloch’s reign no St. Louis County cop has been indicted, convicted or suspended of any wrongdoing, large or small. This is some incredible record. And, I can assure you from personal experience, that it is NOT because St. Louis County cops are angelic, righteous, incorruptible, and unbiased enforcers of the law.

So be forewarned. The cop who killed Michael Brown is not going to be charged with murder in St. Louis County. Don’t be fooled by McCulloch’s public promises of a fair and honest investigation. He owns the coroner’s office and the medical examiner. He can twist the evidence any way he wants. He has the cops’ backs, and cops can do no wrong.

That explains the police thuggery we’ve seen in Ferguson. Citizens are being smoke-bombed and tear-gassed even when peacefully protesting. News reporters are being arrested and having their cameras smashed. Bystanders attempting to record police misconduct are being harassed. Like bullies who have been emboldened by years of official facilitation, the St. Louis County police do not feel constrained by the demands of decency, much less local statutes.

It’s a good thing the FBI and the Brown family are conducting their own independent investigations. Their discoveries will differ in significant ways from the St. Louis County investigation. Take it from someone who knows the terrain.

Florida Is The New Wild West; Murder Is Now Legal

Earlier this summer in a Walmart parking lot in Florida, a 20-year-old man named Colt Thriemer shot to death 21-year-old Thomas Brown. The two had gotten into a fist fight just moments before, but Brown had, according to witnesses, walked away from the fight. Nevertheless, Thriemer pulled out a gun and shot Brown 10 times. Thriemer, citing Florida’s nefarious “Stand Your Ground Defense,” will face no charges. That’s right, local authorities refuse to prosecute Thriemer. So now it’s official, murder is legal in Florida. If you live there or travel there, beware. If someone does not like the way you look, or you make an off-hand comment to your neighbor, or you flip someone off in traffic, or someone objects to your politics, you may be legally shot to death. Hell, there doesn’t really have to be any reason at all…it’s a shoot-first-and-alibi-later state.

The dangerous precedent set in the George Zimmerman case now has prosecutors everywhere declining to put murderers on trial. In the Brown case, litigators openly admit they have no recourse under the law. “The Stand Your Ground statute makes no exception from the immunity because Brown may have been walking away from Thriemer at the time the deadly force was used,” a memo from the State Attorney’s office states. Think about that for a moment. If you get into a dispute with someone, and then you do the mature thing and simply walk away when it appears the other party might turn the dispute deadly, YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED BY THE LAW IN FLORIDA. Brown was shot in the back by Thriemer.

Here’s a scenario which once seemed like a Nazi Germany nightmare, but which can now actually legally occur in Florida: Your neighbor objects to the political sign (supporting a Democratic candidate) you’ve placed in your yard; he accosts you and destroys the sign. If you threaten to kick his ass for his outrageous actions, he can legally gun you down. In Florida even the provocateur can rightfully hide behind the “Stand Your Ground” statute.

I am writing a letter to Rick Scott, Florida’s Republican governor, to tell him I am never vacationing in his state again. The Sunshine State is now the Shotgun State; I’ll never visit Disney World again because Mickey might blast me for cutting in line.

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