Zimmerman Verdict Makes It Official: We Live In The Lawless, Gun-Toting Wild West

Civil, peaceful, anti-gun citizens beware. People of color don't go out at night. Parents who want to protect your children: keep them at home, wean them off Skittles, and pray they don't ever encounter someone with a gun. The right-wing, conceal/carry, NRA nuts have won. They can profile you with impunity. They can stalk you in your own neighborhoods. And they can shoot you dead without repercussion. And not just in Florida. Sure, Florida seems to be an extremist, backwoods exception to reason and compassion (it resembles a KKK/Tea Party lynch mob more than it does a modern state), but now it has set a new standard for barbarism and vigilantism. All future parasites with a gun will be protected by the legal precedent the Zimmerman jury established. And the precedent is this: If I don't like you, I may stalk you, confront you and murder you...and I will not be subject to prosecution. I can patrol neighborhoods, firearm in hand, and keep watch over people who enter, exit, and linger there...EVEN IF THEY LIVE THERE! Blame the Florida jury all you want; they were just protecting their own self-interests. The state is ruled by the NRA, and the blowback a conviction would have brought would have been unimaginable for the jurors. Better one dead black kid than middle-aged white women facing toothless Florida hillbillies carrying sawed-off shotguns. Besides, the white women on the jury admitted they were packing heat themselves! (How can there be not a single African-American on that jury I'll never know.) But the disease is more pervasive than Florida. How sick is a nation that lets schoolchildren get massacred while defending the mad-dog shooter's right to carry machine guns? Why do we permit paranoid, brain-dead loudmouths, who praise Jesus on Sunday and spread hate the rest of the week, intimidate the rest of us? Why do their right to pack supersede our right to live long, healthy lives? When those who have guns rule a nation, call the nation what it is: The Wild West. If the Trayvon Martin case does not prove this, nothing ever will. A 17-year-old kid, brash, full of life, wanting to belong, and most of all, innocent and minding his own business, buys a pack of Skittles and a soft drink at a neighborhood store. He then walks towards home and is confronted by a Barney-Fife wannabee with a loaded weapon. (At least Andy never let Barney put a bullet in his gun.) Zimmerman wants to be a big man in the neighborhood and accosts the black child wearing a hoodie. (We all know how dangerous hoodie-wearing blacks are.) Ignoring the police dispatcher's plea to stand down, Fife stalks the kid and a struggle ensues. The case can be (and should have been) made that the kid was merely defending himself when he punched the stalker (if, in fact, he did). Isn't that what Florida's "stand your ground" law allows? Apparently the law does not apply to black kids. Either that, or the clueless jury decided that both Zimmerman and Martin were defending themselves, and Martin was unlucky enough to bring his fists to a gunfight. This logic, though, is madness. Its inevitable conclusion is that we should all arm ourselves under all circumstances and wherever we go. That is the very definition of The Wild West. Come to think of it, this is the America that right-wingers have always longed for: a return to the 1800s, when slavery was legal; there were no taxes or abortionists; environmental scientists were unheard of; public education did not exist; and females were treated like cattle. There was only the gun. And he who used it best won. So the retrotransformation is nearly complete. We need only revise some iconic lines. The Pledge of Allegiance should now read: "I pledge allegiance to the NRA, and to the Republicans for which it stands...two nations under evangelical Jesus, with injustice and intolerance for all." And the national anthem: "O say can you shoot negroes in the dead of night. What so proudly we failed to jail the vigilante Zimmerman...O'er the land of the Tea and the home of the slave." Finally, the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your AK-47s, your M-16s, and your huddled shooting victims."

Coming Soon...The Release Of My New Book. Here's A Sneak Peek At The Cover

Neverland Publishing has just sent me the mock-up for my new book cover. Release date still to be determined, but look for it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other outlets coming later this summer or early this fall. Rest assured, it will be on the market in time for the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. If you want to know how the treasonous bastards who killed him did it, covered it up, and got away with it, you'll find the shocking answers in "The President's Mortician."

50th Anniversary Of JFK Peace Speech

It happened 50 years ago today, and it was supposed to change the world. (Remember when Americans used to dream of changing the world? Hint: you have to be a Boomer to remember…and if you were born after 1980, we don’t mean the invention of the I-phone.) And it did change the world, but not in the way intended. It made the world worse because it led to the death of the last U.S. President to stand for anything. Its reverberations and shockwaves led to the formation of a new America—more corrupt and baser. A quasi-fascist oligarchy really. One ruled by maniacal militarists, greedy profiteers, and diabolical spooks. Yet for all its gravity, you’ve probably never heard of this event. In subterranean realms, where it is still safe to whisper the insurrectionist truth, it’s known as the “peace speech,” a cataclysmic vision of a world without war delivered by President Kennedy on June 10, 1963. You have never heard of it for good reason: “mainstream” historians (read: state-approved prevaricators), mindless media hacks, and the ruling class never wanted you to hear the words and hope for a better day, a peaceful world, and the end of conflict. They won’t tell you, so I will. It was supposed to be a boilerplate commencement address to the faculty and students of American University, but what JFK delivered that day was the most courageous and farsighted speech given by a U.S. President in the 20th century. Those few who know of it, and the fewer still who have chronicled it, call it simply the “peace speech” because in it JFK called for an end to the Cold War, and all war for that matter. He decried the squandering of resources—national treasure, human lives, man’s ingenuity—in the pursuit of killing one another. He praised the Soviets, our dire enemies. He urged his fellow citizens to consider peace as a rational, life-affirming, viable solution to our endless animosity with the USSR. This rhetoric astounded and infuriated the Pentagon, defense contractors and the intelligence community…all threatened with distinction at the obsolescence of war. The Joint Chiefs saw their lives flash before their eyes. Defense contractors saw easy billions floating away. The CIA, the NSA, and the DIA were faced with looming irrelevance. Kennedy did not just shake things up; he turned the establishment on its ear. In fact, in some circles he was called a traitor. His enemies were entrenched—financially, emotionally, and politically—in the perpetual war state. And they came to the conclusion that it was either them or Kennedy who would survive. Both could not exist in the military-industrial-intelligence complex called the United States. It became an internal war. Kennedy on one side, and the Cold Warriors on the other. We know who won that war, and a wise man once wrote that history is written by the winners. That’s why the peace speech has been long forgotten. The winners don’t want you to know why he was killed. Just read the speech yourself, and see what I mean. Here are a few excerpts: “I have…chosen…to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave nor the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living…not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” When they heard these words, Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis “Bombs Away” Lemay shit his blue trousers and Allen Dulles swallowed his smoking pipe. Then they called the one man they knew they needed on their side if they were to do away with Kennedy: Lyndon Johnson. “I speak of peace because…total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.” LBJ immediately rang up his old Texas oil pals—H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and D.H. Byrd—to raise some “Kill Kennedy” cash. “Today the expenditures of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles…is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.” The CIA’s David Atlee Phillips began recruiting treasonous Secret Service agents—William Greer, Roy Kellerman, and Emory Roberts—into the plot. “Too many of us think [peace] is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief.” War contractors like Bell Helicopter, Halliburton and Ling-Temco-Vought were persuaded that JFK had to go. “Peace, in the last analysis, [is] a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence.” D.H. Byrd, close friend of General Lemay, gave the plotters the perfect fall guy—Lee Harvey Oswald, who had worked for Byrd in the Civil Air Patrol and the Texas School Book Depository. “We shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just.” CIA handlers George DeMohrenschildt and Ruth Paine were enlisted to frame Oswald. “And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” Phillips contracted professional assassins, and Texas politicians LBJ and John Connally lured Kennedy to Dallas. “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” On November 22, 1963, the dreamer of peace had his head blown off, and the world has never dreamed of peace again. Think I’m embellishing the ramifications of Dallas? Think again. Name an era since when we have not been at war or confronted by the imminent threat of war. Make no mistake: when JFK died, the war machine won and thrived. Every president and Congress since has presided over a war state and a military-centric budget. Forget Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs. The Pentagon and its private-sector partners get most of your tax dollars. War profiteering has continued unabated for a half-century. But you won’t hear this on the nightly news. The networks are owned by war profiteers like GE and Dresser Industries. Of the 20 richest media corporations, only two are not represented on the Council on Foreign Relations. They control the news, and they have written their own history of America…an alternate history bearing no resemblance to the truth. So I’m willing to bet you won’t hear a word about the 50th anniversary of JFK’s peace speech on the news tonight. But I wouldn’t be surprised if NBC’s Brian Williams runs one of those cute puppy videos instead.

IRS Was Right To Target Phony Right-Wing Tax Evaders

Ceaselessly looking for ways to topple the Black Muslim, socialist, Kenyan President, conservatives have crosses blazing and rhetoric on fire like it's a KKK meeting. They think they have finally latched onto some meaty Obama scandals, and hatemongers like Darryl Issa, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the Klan are whipping the base into a frenzy. And what's at the center of all the hoohah? An attack of a middle East consulate (54 of which occurred under W without so much as a whimper from the right), the Justice Department tapping phones in the name of national security (a daily occurrrence under Cheney), and some zealous IRS agents doing the job they were paid to do. The Benghazi incident is much ado about nothing. The Republicans are acting like Obama himself, M-16 in hand, attacked our embassy and killed a few of our foreign delegation. The phone taps were apparently unlawful, but right-wingers were mute when Dick Cheney regularly used his AT&T cronies to spy on left-wingers' phone calls during the Bush administration. And W used the IRS against his political enemies. A liberal southern California church which took a stand against the Iraq War was hounded for years by W's IRS. That IRS church was targeted for unwarranted auditing and was threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status. A year later the NAACP was attacked in the same way after the civil rights organization criticized various Bush administration policies. These were legitimate tax-exempt organizations, unlike the phony Tea Party groups who seek only to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Here's how these right-wing groups work: One fringe hillbilly says to another fringe hillbilly, "Hey, let's me and you git us a name and call ourself sumpin' like 'Patriots for Freedom.' Thattaway, we can ask for donations and we ain't a-gonna have to pay no taxes on that there money. We'll show that uppity Obama." Hundreds of these groups have cropped up in recent years, and they need to be scrutinized. They are nothing but illegal tax avoidance schemes, and they should be policed by the IRS. Which is exactly what the IRS was doing, until some Tea Party nut came along and cried foul. Now these tax frauds will be immune from prosecution, and rednecks everywhere will be forming their own tax-exempt "Fascists for Freedom" groups.

My Conversation With JFK Coincidence Theorist

It is sometimes a burdensome and wearying task to educate the uninformed about the truth of the Kennedy assassination, but I feel compelled to do it whenever I bump into a coincidence theorist (i.e., one who believes Oswald acted alone, or a "lone nutter"). I call them coincidence theorists because they must overlook a mountain of suspicious coincidences to believe no conspiracy was involved in JFK's murder. For instance, the accused murderer had a direct link to one of the men charged with investigating the murder. Lee Harvey Oswald and his family lived with Ruth Paine in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Ruth Paine's mother was best friends with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles's mistress. You know, the same Allen Dulles who was on the Warren Commission. Ruth Paine's statements to authorities helped frame Oswald for the murder. Dulles never disclosed his relationship to Paine. Just a little suspicious, don't you think? Anyway, the other day a stranger sitting next to me is reading a copy of Vincent Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History." I casually remarked, "You don't believe those lies, do you?" The stranger looked at me like, "Who are you?" I told him I was an author currently working on a book about the assassination called "The President's Mortician." His eyes narrowed in disbelief. He fumbled for words, and finally said, "Why Mortician?" I replied, "Because a mortician alterd JFK's wounds as the the President's corpse was being transported between Dallas Parkland Hospital and Bethesda Naval Hospital on Novemeber 22, 1963." The stranger exclaimed, "Why would anyone do that?" "Simple," I said. "To make it appear as if he had been shot from the back and not the front. Thus the autopsy report could be used to frame Oswald." The stranger gathered his thoughts and said, "But that would mean that the autopsy had to contradict what the Dallas doctors said. How do you know which group of doctors was right?" I responded, "Whom should we believe? The doctors who were experts in gunshot wounds and who saw JFK immediately after he was shot, or the autopsy doctors who had never performed an autopsy before and who were not experts in gunshot pathology and who saw JFK six hours after he was shot?" The stranger put down the book and thought about that one for a while.

Bungling Dallas Cop Profits From His Incompetence and Spreads Historical Lies

In a stunning display of uncritical journalism yesterday, the Topeka Capital Journal reported that the Dallas cop who was supposed to protect Lee Harvey Oswald gave a speech at Washburn University where he insisted that Oswald acted alone. "Retired Dallas police detective Jim Leavelle told a standing-room-only crowd at Washburn University that Oswald killed Kennedy because he wanted to be famous." This raises many troubling questions: 1) They really have universities in Kansas? 2) Does anyone teach history at these universities? 3) Who would pay 92-year-old Jim Leavelle, who failed at the only important task he ever had in his life, to travel all the way to Kansas to spread his preposterous falsehoods? 4) What sort of real college students/journalists would let him get away with it? Well, as Dorothy said, we're not in Kansas anymore, Jim, and it's time to disspell your lies. According to the Capital Journal, Leavelle believes no shots missed the limousine. He said, "...the first shot struck Kennedy, the second shot struck Texas Gov. John Connally, sitting in front of Kennedy, and the third hit Kennedy." This would certainly be news to bystander James Tague who was struck in the face by a piece of pavement dislodged by a shot that completely missed the limousine. Either there was a second gunman (which means conspiracy) or there were four shots fired by Oswald (physically impossible given the timeframe indicated by the Zapruder film). However, the unthinking Kansans apparently swallowed Leavelle's whopper whole. Leavelle went on to say that "...the president didn't bear any entry wounds to the front of his body." Apparently Jim considers himself an expert on forensic anantomy too. Too bad the Dallas doctors did not agree with him. At a press conference immediately following the assassination, Dr. Malcolm Perry stated three times that the President had been shot from the front. He noted an entry wound at the base of the throat and an exit wound at the back of the head. Truth 2, Jim 0. Leavelle also claimed that "three tramps arrested a few blocks from the Kennedy shooting were just tramps travelling through Dallas." No mention of the fact that two of the tramps were CIA killers Charles Rogers and Charles V. Harrelson. And no mention of the fact that the "policemen" who made the "arrest" let an interloper come between them and their "prisoners." The interloper was positively indentified as Edward Lansdale, Air Force general and CIA officer. Strike three, Jim is out. If it weren't so appalling, Jim's appearance at some backwater school in Kansas would be amusing. But all critical thinkers and all who treasure historical truth cannot sit idly by and let people like Leavelle get away with their outlandish lies. Leavelle is particularly galling because he failed to protect Oswald. He let Ruby walk right up and shoot him. You've all seen the pictures of that murder...Leavelle is the one on Oswald's right, wearing a white suit and a Stetson hat. He merely stares passively as the most important prisoner of the 20th century is gunned down. Now Jim dresses in the same stupid hillbilly hat he wore on Nov. 24, 1963, as a sort of perverse celebrity traveling from hick town to hick town, getting paid for being historically incompetent. The most lamentable part is, had JFK's life not been taken by a sophisticated, diabolical, massive intelligence plot, we would never have to be subjected to rubes like Leavelle pissing on history and profiting from our dead president's demise. Being from Texas, and having been a detective in the Dallas police department (where membership in the John Birch Society or the KKK was a prerequisite for promotion), I'm sure ol' Jim despised President Kennedy.

Capitalism and Democracy: Natural and Eternal Enemies

Last week FOX blowhard Tucker Carlson bemoaned the "moocher class" in America, those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder who have been left behind by corporate America. They have been downsized, outsourced, laid off, and left to fend for themselves. They are unemployed, homeless, and barely able to make ends meet. They are collecting meager unemployment checks, barely enough to let them starve to death. But Tucker thinks they are moochers, sucking at the teat of capitalism. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a hole in his chest where his heart should be, Tucker is oblivious to the fact that this is how capitalism works. There must be many at the bottom (Carlson's moochers) so that the few at the top can thrive. Tucker should be grateful for the dregs of society, for it is on their backs that Tucker's class built their great fortune. Not everyone can be a king of industry, and what few kings there are need hordes of peons to do the dirty work. The lowly construction workers who built the Carlson family mansion, and who are now out of work because Tucker's class stole all their money in stock swindles and investment banking scams, make up the moocher class. Underpaid teachers, who have been laid off due to Tucker's political party's massive education cuts, taught little Tucker how to read and write so that he can now make a fortune spewing hate on FOX News. They are now moochers. The nannies who fed little Tucker his milk cannot afford health care and want some help from the government. The limo drivers who drove little Tucker to his country club don't want their Social Security cut. The servants who prepared little Tucker's foie gras need disability just to make ends meet. All this must infuriate Tucker because people are out there getting money that Tucker can't get his own hands on. And Tucker and his ilk WANT IT ALL. That's how they were raised--greedy, selfish, and completely unconcerned with the problems and struggles of others. They have no social conscience, and they will do anything to advance their own wealth, even to the detriment of everyone else. This, by the way, is capitalism's credo. A few rich people are meant to control everything: the means and methods of production and distribution, and the government by which the laws are made. That is what Tucker does not understand. The huge number of people at the bottom of the rung make it possible for the small number of people at the top of the rung to have everything. He should be thankful for the huddled masses' obsequiousness and servitude, and willingly provide them with the small scraps that fall off his table. For that is all they want. Take that away from them and they will have no choice but to rise up in revolution just to survive. Tucker and his class should take heed of what French aristocrats and Russian czars failed to learn: that starving the lower classes will endanger the existence of those at the top. Give them a loaf of bread; let them have their unemployment checks; don't cut their Medicare benefits. After all, these small morsels won't make a dent in Tucker's fortune. He can just hide a few more trust funds in the Caymans or Switzerland. He can lay off another chauffeur. Or he can cut back to two yachts and three summer homes. Small price to pay to keep the system in place. And the system is what keeps Tucker rich and the rest of us not rich. The last thing Tucker wants, whether he is aware of it or not, is a true democracy, whereby genuine social reform and class justice is implemented. The really smart billionaires understand this. Having everyone share in the pie would be the plutocrats' worst nightmare come true. The huddled masses having a genuine say in who runs the government is a real threat to the established oligarchy. The wealthy must maintain their freedom to buy, sell, and corrupt all that is good, so that their entrenched power remains entrenched. So, Tucker, a word to the wise: Shut your pampered, entitled, whiny trap before you piss off those beneath you and force them to rise up and show you what a bitch democracy can really be.