Category: Crime

Posted on

It is a fact that there will be many more mass shootings in the U.S. So whenever I see a new one that makes the news, I am tempted to feel rather sanguine about it. There is no element of surprise. They come and go like the rain and the wind even though, unlike the rain and the wind, it is possible to stop them.

Here’s the basic elements of the American equation:

  • guns are easily, readily available almost everywhere in the country
  • the government has not the slightest real curiosity about the purpose, mental condition, or emotional stability of the purchasers of these guns
  • these guns include assault rifles capable of firing off hundreds of rounds very, very quickly
  • a substantial percentage of the population is mentally ill or emotionally unstable or becoming emotionally unstable or about to get fired or dumped by a girlfriend
  • there is no way to detect a person who is about to be emotionally unstable and may choose to mark his first occasion with a few fireworks

Given these elements, mass shootings are not likely: they are inevitable. They are not merely inevitable: they are scheduled. We may not know the exact date and time of any particular mass shootings but we know with a good deal of certainty that they will occur on a regular basis over any fixed period of time and that no one will make any real attempt to prevent them from happening again. In fact, a lot of effort will be made– successfully– to ensure that they happen again.

Here’s another fact:

  • since no one can know when a person will begin shooting, having armed guards at various locations, like schools, will, at best, limit the damage.

And then, here’s the kicker:

  • some people will be killed by accident by some of the armed guards, or as a result of more guns being in circulation due to the the belief that arming as many people as possible will prevent future mass killings
  • the armed guards are very likely to miss their targets very often, thereby killing more bystanders

Even the police, with all their training, can rarely shoot straight in an actual confrontation with a man or men with guns.

In a high-noon scenario, a shoot-out, at the OK corral or wherever, each duelist knows that the other person is about to try to shoot him. Each person has a fair chance of beating the draw and shooting at the other person first. In reality, most of these shots will miss. In a mass shooting, the killer always has first draw.

Are we being brainwashed by TV in which killers always hold last conversations with their victims before shooting? We better hope the killers are brainwashed too– if not, the first shot at an armed guard will be a surprise every single time.

There is no high noon for a mass killer. Since no one really waits for someone to start shooting, and you can’t possibly always wait, the killer will draw his weapon first and stands a pretty good chance of killing a fair number of people before anyone anywhere nearby can respond. So go ahead and vote for that idiot politician who wants to add the cost of an armed police officer or private security guard to every elementary school in the country just so every potential killer doesn’t have to ever undergo a grueling background check before he takes possession of a new gun. Go ahead, and if you are unlucky enough to be a parent of the first child shot at the next school shooting and the security guard did not have ESP and did not manage to anticipate that the kid with the kit bag was a killer with a semi-automatic rifle and shoot him first, go ahead and sue, if you want. The Republicans have passed a law making everyone responsible for providing guns to mentally unstable people– and lots and lots of ammunition– immune to lawsuits.

Yes, Toyota can be sued for an imaginary accelerator problem, but no gun manufacturer or gun store owner can be sued for providing an efficient, deadly weapon to a deranged teenager.

Americans live in a country which has virtually scheduled for itself a mass shooting every few months. It has guaranteed it. You vote for these assholes over and over again– you have nothing to complain about. Spare me your shock and outrage when the next one happens, on schedule, soon. You refuse to do anything about it.

[Update 2019-03-27: a State Supreme Court in Hartford, Connecticut has just reinstated a lawsuit against Remington in spite of the legislation exempting gun-makers from liability.]

 

Posted on

Medical Marijuana

It is no great shock that the Canadian government should suddenly decide that human beings in this province must not be allowed to grow a certain plant. The only surprise is that, given the real purpose behind this kind of legislation, the government didn’t also make it illegal to grow your own food. If you grow your own food, the wealthy corporations who can call government ministers and arrange meetings with them and donate to their re-election campaigns, will have competition for their products. But even Harper could not go that far. But he could make it illegal for you to grow your own marijuana, even if a doctor prescribes it for your own medical use.

It’s a bizarre world. By what moral or ethical authority does the government take it upon itself to stop you from harmlessly enjoying a few tokes in your own basement while watching the latest episode of Homeland? Who invented his ridiculous idea?

As soon as it became clear that the courts were ready to allow medical marijuana for private use, the toadies to the pharmaceutical industry– the government– had to step in to preserve Corporate Profits. Their worst nightmare is that the public should get to use nature’s bounty without having to pay for the services of a pimp.

Posted on

LSD

There is an experiment going on right now in Switzerland in which LSD is given to terminally ill patients to help them deal with the approaching end of their lives. Scientists want to know if it can ease the feelings of anxiety and depression.

The hysterics who still want to fight the war on drugs must have their skivvies in a knot about it. They are not innocent. It is because of the hysterics that the most effective drug against pain that there is, heroin, is not available to terminally ill cancer patients. And it is because of them that tens of thousands of young men spend years in prison for crimes that harm no one but themselves. And it is because of them that the terminally ill may not choose to end their lives with dignity at a time of their own choosing. It is because of them that we torture people in the last months of their lives, injecting and pricking them, bombarding them with x-rays or chemicals that destroy their resistance to colds and viruses and cause them no end of discomfort in the illusory hope that this time will be one in a million and they might get better.

There is no dearth of people eager to tell you what you may or may not do or say or ingest. But let’s be clear: nobody is in favor of drug abuse, and nobody wants drugs distributed like candy to anyone with a momentary impulse to escape life’s issues. But, by any standard, the “War on Drugs” in the U.S. has been a colossal failure and the only thing that keeps people from admitting it is the powerful urge to delude ourselves into believing that when we do something that ruins the lives of thousands and thousands of people and wastes billions of dollars was good and necessary and right.

How could we possibly have not learned the lesson of prohibition? The cure was far worse than the disease.

I suspect that we will always have a drug problem. We will always have people in our society who can’t cope or don’t want to cope or can’t postpone gratification or control their urges. Most of them go for alcohol, but those who want more powerful anesthesia will find drugs whether they are illegal or not. But the dumbest thing we, as a society, ever did, was to compound the problem by sending tens of thousands of these people to prison for possession of even a small amount of an illicit drug. It’s a medical and social problem and should be treated the same way we treat those issues: with therapies, medical treatment, and support. Perhaps our governments have learned the lesson of prohibition– but perhaps the campaigns against drugs are just a smoke screen for the need to guarantee a monopoly on anesthesia to the pharmaceutical companies.

Or maybe we should treat that problem the same way we treat obesity. With complete indifference.

Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s our parents and teachers and government exerted themselves to hysteria in the attempt to convince us that if you tried a drug like LSD or marijuana or cocaine or heroin, you would immediately become addicted for life. Without a doubt, those drugs are addictive, but so is alcohol. That doesn’t mean that all users become addicted. It is believable to me that no one would fund a study to determine how many people can and do use drugs recreationally, on the odd weekend, at a party, and so on, but remain more or less functional at work and in social settings.

The great, raging hypocrisy among American conservatives is their determination to allow anyone who wants to to own a gun. How bizarre is that? You want to ingest a substance that may give you a consciousness-raising experience, or just make you feel good, and the nanny government steps in to stop you, even though no one is endangered by your actions. But even in the face of overwhelming evidence that guns causes thousands of deaths every year, they believe it would be “intrusive” for the government to regulate where and when you can carry a gun. These people are so irrational it hardly seems worthwhile to argue with them. Every poll shows they represent a small minority of voters. They need to be pushed aside and marginalized for society to function rationally, but the Republicans won’t let that happen because they provide the electoral margin of victory in many states.

Posted on

50th Anniversary of the Lone Assassin

If I had been part of the group of men and women who plotted the assassination of John F. Kennedy– if there was a plot– I would very gratified to know the state of the conspiracy theories today: it’s a colossal mess.

It’s democracy in action, of course, but a mess. A simply search of Youtube will turn up dozens and dozens and dozens– if not hundreds– of amateur criminologists all claiming to have turned up some hitherto secret detail that would finally prove that there was a conspiracy. And nothing, of course, does more to discredit the idea of a conspiracy than a multitude of crackpot theories.

Obviously, a number of crackpot theories does not really diminish the possibility that there was a conspiracy. If anything, these crackpot theories are the result of the massive gaps and omissions and errors in the initial investigation and the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination.

So when some theorist announces that he has proven decisively that there was no conspiracy, he is missing the point. He can’t prove that there was no conspiracy. He can’t even prove that Oswald fired the shots. He can only provide answers to the questions that a conspirator would be happy to offer as evidence.

That’s why there is such an obsession with proving that Kennedy was shot from behind. Zing, bang, biff: no conspiracy. But of course, even if the proof is decisive (it’s pretty good), it only proves that the shots came from behind, not that they came from Oswald.

When Dale Myers insists that he has proven conclusively that the shots came from the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository, I really begin to wonder if he isn’t in the pay of the conspirators. The idea that he can establish, from his CGI reconstruction, that the shots came from exactly that location– that he can insist that he didn’t set out to prove that they came from this location to begin with and that he only “discovered” it from his “research”– beggars belief. Is he serious? Why would he make such a ridiculous assertion? Why not stick to something reasonably credible and demonstrable, like the idea that the shots probably came from behind and above?

Because he has an agenda.

And PBS’ Nova later showed that a more accurate reconstruction of the assassination implied that the shots came from the Dal-Tex building: at least these researchers accepted the science, not the ideology, while acknowledging that identifying the exact location of the shooters is not really possible.

ABC News, in their report, insists that the FBI has established that the bullets could only have come from the gun owned by Oswald.  This was “proven” by a chemical analysis of the composition of the lead in the bullet.  Impressed?  We now know just how reliable that evidence is: the FBI itself has informed other law enforcement forces that it will no longer provide testimony to that effect in any court case in the U.S.  Because it was never true.

ABC News insists that a palm print from Oswald’s hand was found on the barrel of the rifle. It omitted the fact that no prints at all were found when the rifle was initially examined by the most credible expert: the FBI’s Sebastian Latona. He reported that no identifiable prints could be found anywhere on the rifle. It was returned to Dallas where the Dallas police, surprisingly, found the magical palm print. ABC News also reported that Oswald’s finger prints were found on the boxes used to form the “sniper’s nest”. But only one was recent, and Oswald’s job, after all, was to handle boxes on the 6th floor. No other boxes were tested. Other prints from other Depository employees were also found. And so were prints from the police– the evidence was contaminated and would never have been accepted in court.

If Oswald had lived to receive a fair trial and he had had good representation, I think it is quite likely he could have given the Dallas prosecutors a hell of a run for the money. He would have been convicted anyway, because juries can be easily swayed by the weight of opinion held by what they perceive to be the establishment, but a reasonable person might easily have concluded that nobody showed that Oswald actually fired the shots, or that they could not just as well have originated from the Dal-tex building, or that Oswald was not exactly what he said he was: the patsy in a conspiracy.

Many Warren Commission defenders love to point out that it’s been 50 years now and no conspirators have yet come forward to confess their role in the assassination. And if one did, would that change their minds? They would never believe him.  That’s the genius of it.  A conspirator could come forward right now and give 60 Minutes a lengthy interview and provide all kinds of details and no one would believe him.

I Am a Patsy

Answer the right questions: the establishment seems to relish giving alternative answers to the questions that aren’t really germane to the conspiracy. The only essential question is, did Oswald fire the shots? Did he or someone else act alone? For all their protestations to the contrary, the evidence for Oswald as the shooter is quite weak.

I am a patsy.

I have always been intrigued by Oswald’s use of the word “patsy” in the Dallas police headquarters, when asked by a reporter if he shot Kennedy. If you had committed a serious crime and were arrested for it a few hours later, and someone asked you if you did it, what would your first response be? I think mine would be, you’ve got the wrong guy. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know anything about it. I have an alibi. I was having my lunch when it happened. You’re making a big mistake.

Oswald said, “I’m just the patsy”. Patsy, of course, has a very specific meaning: I have been set up to take the blame.

Watching the film of Oswald after his arrest, I don’t find it difficult to imagine that Oswald was involved in something, of which he understood little, and quickly realized that he was being set up. I think he quickly realized that he was the patsy and that he would likely be killed rather than arrested. I wonder if Officer Tippit was sent to “arrest” Oswald, and report that this desperate criminal resisted arrest, so he had to shoot him, and Oswald realized that and shot him first.

When the police seized him in the movie theatre, he loudly protested against “police brutality”, almost as if he understood that they were going to kill him if could at all have been made to look creditable. The number of police who converged on the theatre to arrest him was astounding.

For example, check out this guy, George S. de Mohrenschildt. If you think it’s preposterous to believe in a conspiracy, how preposterous is it that this man would be acquainted with the “lone nut” who shot Kennedy? Or that Oswald would send him a copy of the famous backyard picture of him holding a rifle? Just too weird for words.

Bill O’Reilly now defends the Warren Commission. Why oh why do defenders of the Oswald acted alone theory always seem to discredit themselves (as do many conspiracy theorists). O’Reilly claims to have been at George S. de Mohrenschildt’s door at the moment he committed suicide. The private investigator working for the House Assassinations Committee, who visited de Mohrenschildt the morning of the event, begs to differ. (“Killing Kennedy: the End of Camelot”, “co-written” by Martin Dugard.)

And then you explain why there are conspiracy theorists…

We are told that many Americans just can’t accept that someone as inconsequential as Oswald could assassinate someone as important and charismatic as John F. Kennedy.

How about if I explain why so many Americans believe that the U.S. intelligence services and military have too much respect for democracy to ever take violent, drastic actions to “save America from itself” in the face of the global communist threat? There were Generals in the Pentagon who essentially regarded JFK as a traitor for backing down from the confrontation over missiles in Cuba. Moreover, they didn’t think he had the “character” to stand up to the international threats to American hegemony and economic dominance. They believed that they were the true guardians of the American nation– the same kind of people who today describe Obamacare as a communist plot and insist he was not born in the U.S.

Can we have Peter Jennings or Walter Cronkite please offer your mellifluous voices, projecting reason and sobriety, as you describe the behavior and attitudes of people like General Lemay? And then tell us that rational people don’t believe that people like that exist?

 

Posted on

A Woman in a car in Washington D.C.

Is it possible to take a minute and analyze carefully what just happened in Washington D. C. that has the entire Twitterverse buzzing like a chainsaw jackhammer?

First thing I saw on TV was a police officer telling us that the police performed absolutely heroically. They were courageous and smart and wonderful and they got Timmy safely out of the well. Boy, we’re GREAT. I mean it.

Shots were fired. That’s always electrifying and the first reports on CBC stated that “shots were fired”. They were– by the police.

The police sprang into action. Why? Because they saw other police chasing a car and running down the streets. They sprang into action, locked down government buildings, prevented congressmen from crossing the street, and I’m sure a couple of Secret Service agents threw themselves on top of Obama. All of this was the result of the perception that other police were running around pointing guns and chasing people off the sidewalks. Why were these other police running around and chasing people off the sidewalks? Because some police cars went by with their sirens blaring. And shots were about to be fired.

What actually happened: a woman drove her car towards the White House and appeared to try to drive through the very powerful barricades in front of the President’s home. When the police tried to stop her, she backed up, into a police car, and drove away.

Now, I’m as sentimental as the next guy and I’m sure that that woman spokesperson for the police meant well, and wanted to reassure us that there was nothing the police couldn’t do, but it appeared to me that the police at that moment needed more than anything else to immobilize that car, and this they failed to do. They actually let her reverse the car, back up and out, and drive off, resulting in a hysterical chase down Pennsylvania Avenue as she headed towards….. (very loud basso profundo now) CONGRESS. Where clearly she meant to GTA the Tea Party and get the country moving again.

She smashed into a guard hut and the police surrounded her car and shot her to death. Since they seemed clueless about how to block a car in so it couldn’t escape again, I guess they thought they had no choice.

I’m sure the NRA will assure us that cars don’t kill people: only women with babies kill people, and if only an upstanding NRA member had had his car there at that moment, all would be well.

Posted on

“Breaking Bad” Goes off the Rails

The last few episodes of “Breaking Bad” betray a sense that the show has gone off the rails. They are trying to strong-arm the plot into setting up various confrontations that might prove more visually exciting but drain away plausibility. I am not convinced Jesse would find Hank any less repugnant than Walt, and that he wouldn’t find himself even more repugnant for betraying a man who actually treated him pretty well. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. I’m saying that it is a dramatic challenge to make it believable, and Gilligan completely failed that challenge.

The same goes for Hank’s senseless decision to keep his suspicions of Walt private, including chasing him out to where they think he hid the money without backups, and with Jesse in the car. This is so obviously intended to provide a motivation for Walt to kill Hank and Jesse (what would the point be if Hank’s colleagues had the information) that it would be laughable if it weren’t so lame. It’s just not believable on any level at all.

Nor was it believable that Walt would be so stupid as to fall for Jesse’s trick phone call. But it was the height of ridiculousness to have Walt confess most of his murders to Jesse on the phone while screaming at him on his way to check on his money, not suspecting for one moment that it was being recorded or monitored. This is a huge lapse of sanity on Walt’s part and there is no dramatic groundwork for it. They couldn’t do better than that to set up the confrontation that they wanted? Or that Huell Babineaux would so readily believe Hank about having been betrayed by Saul Goodman. Sure, he’s a fool– but fool’s are just as likely to disbelieve the truth as they are to fall for a lie. Just how many implausible events and coincidences had to occur to get to this scene, in the dessert? The credibility and the tension sap away, which is a shame, because it was so good up to the last season.

“The Wire”, on the other hand, ended without a single false note– gracefully.  “The Wire” ranks among the best TV series ever, and much higher than “Breaking Bad”.

Skyler’s Complaint

Posted on

Skyler’s Complaint

In a baffling op-ed piece in the New York Times, August 23, 2013, the actress Anna Gunn complains about what she perceives to be a double standard: the main male character of the TV series “Breaking Bad”, Walt White, seems to be regarded as a kind of lovable rogue, who’s just trying to take care of his family while selling methamphetamine to pathetic addicts who have faded further and further into the background of the series. Her character, Skyler White, who, she says, lives a relatively faultless life, is vilified. Why? It’s because, she says, Skyler is a woman. It’s a double standard. Skyler has become “a measure of our attitude towards gender”. And that measure indicates rage and hypocrisy towards women who don’t stand by their man. At least, that’s Anna Gunn’s take on it.

Guilty. I’ll admit it: I found the character of Skyler White repugnant.

Is she arguing that Skyler should be admired? She says Skyler “has become a flash point for many people’s feelings about strong, non-submissive, ill-treated women”. Ill-treated? If, I suppose, you buy one of the fundamental conceits of “Breaking Bad”, which is, that there really is something admirable about Walt White’s desire to support his family, even if it means destroying hundreds of other lives. Then Skyler is ill-treated, I suppose, by Walt’s dishonesty. But Skyler had the opportunity to walk away and didn’t take it. Walt provides for her, desires her, and wants to sustain their marriage. How is that “ill treated”?

But what if you didn’t even buy the first part: that Walt is admirable in some way, because, after all, he is taking care of his family. Americans seem to be complete suckers for family: you can commit any atrocity, as long as it is to protect your family.

Well, in my view, Walt is a psychopathic criminal and a cold-blooded killer. In my view, anyone who would harm another man’s family to protect his own is not admirable: he’s selfish. Just as a mother who brags about her overweening love for her children can be suffering from “overflowing self-infatuation”. I don’t admire either of them. Am I off the hook?

The brains behind the program, Vince Gilligan, claims that “Breaking Bad” is about how far a man will go to take care of his family. If he is a psychopath.

Skyler wants it both ways, and it’s not unusual for audiences to find hypocrisy more repellent than mischief or even murder. Walt is repellent but he really doesn’t hide the fact that he doesn’t have any morals other than the desire to provide for his family, which isn’t really a moral. It’s a motive. And it doesn’t, in my view, make him admirable. His family really isn’t “other”. It isn’t someone other than himself who benefits from his criminal activity. And his passion for his family, as dramatized in “Breaking Bad”, is fundamentally unbelievable. In real life, that is something put on, a charade. In real life, people like Walt White are fundamentally psychotic and narcissistic.

Why does Vince Gilligan make this a central trope in “Breaking Bad”?  So the viewer can enjoy Walt’s shenanigans without feeling repulsion.  After all, he’s just taking care of his family.

Skyler doesn’t walk away. She doesn’t turn him in. She accepts the money. She cheats on Walt. She helps her employer cheat. Just what does Anna Gunn believe is admirable about her? That she is “strong”? But not strong enough, apparently, to walk away.

Posted on

Marinus Van der Lubbe

The Reichstag was set on fire February 27, 1933. June 30 – July 2, 1934: “The Night of the Long Knives”.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party won a fair amount of popular support by 1932– about 33% , the Communists won about 17% of the seats, and other parties, including the “Catholic Center” party (which later joined with the Nazis to approve “The Enabling Act” making Hitler dictator), the rest.

It was not enough to give Hitler absolute power.

Then came the burning of the Reichstag, part, it was alleged, of a plot to overthrow the government, led by Marinus Van der Lubbe.

Was there ever a less impressive threat to national security than this pathetic little whiner, who was actually drummed out of the Communist Party several times because he seemed to have no sense whatsoever? No wonder many historians tried their best to prove that he was never actually involved, that it was actually Goering and his fellow jackboots (Goering joked about being responsible for it at Nuremberg). But history seems to have coalesced around the idea that Van der Lubbe really did do it– handed the Nazis a fabulous excuse to arrest their political opponents. Hitler, a witness reports, seemed genuinely startled and confused by the event.

Was Goering? There’s room for doubt. But I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.

One thing is clear: if the Nazis had planned it, it was brilliant.

People are easily frightened. Very easily frightened. Very, very easily frightened. And they are easily deceived. The weakest leaders of all, the most frightened and timid and stupid, are those who panic in a crisis and enact draconian measures. Why “The Enabling Act”, which gave Hitler absolute power? Why the NSA today? Because our leaders are cowards. They are terrified. They don’t know what to do. So they make a great show of doing something, of spending unlimited amounts of taxpayer money on useless security measures, on wars on countries that were not even involved in the original attack, and then they trump up charges against marginal suspects and rigged the court system and march them off to prison, because they are cowards.

Who has wrecked more real havoc on the lives of Americans today than the terrorists? Well, the banks. Drug dealers with the violent gang wars. Energy companies with their coal plants. The medical establishment with their ruinous charges and their end-of-life unnecessary treatments. The government, sending foolish young men overseas to die in wars against the wrong enemy. The chemical – fertilizer industries with their explosions and their fires.

It is a duty of every citizen to take sufficient measures to ensure that his own indifference, ignorance, or complicity does not lead to his fellow citizens becoming subject to tyranny.

Incidentally, the Germans can’t get enough of Marinus Van der Lubbe, the crazy Dutchman who allegedly burned down the Reichstag. After his initial trial before the Reichsgericht (German High Court) in which he was found guilty and beheaded, he was posthumously given an eight-year sentence in 1967, found innocent in 1980, not guilty by reason of insanity in 1981, and pardoned in 2008. Did he actually do it?

Ernst Rohm

The Officer class of the German Reichswehr and Hitler’s industrialist sponsors were notably concerned about the “morals” of the SA (Sturmabteilung — “Storm Battalion”) under Ernst Rohm. They didn’t like the homosexuality, the parties, and the street violence. Once Hitler eliminated Rohm and his cohorts, they were fine with the rest of the Nazi program: genocide, war, totalitarianism. As long as we don’t have any of that icky homosexuality.

Posted on

Dan Rather’s Big Lie

After 50 years, I remain fascinated by a single incident related to the Kennedy Assassination. And I really believe that you may find it as fascinating as I do no matter what you believe about the Kennedy Assassination. Actually, I don’t think that’s true at all, but I don’t care. You should be fascinated by it– it makes no sense. And it makes all the sense in the world.

It was known almost immediately that someone had shot a film of the assassination. In fact, there were several films, but there was only film that captured the essential event in glorious colour, with sharpness, and reasonable proximity: that is the film, of course, shot by clothing merchant, Abraham Zapruder, who was standing on a kind of pagoda with the assistance of his assistant, Marilyn Sitzman. A reporter chatted with Zapruder after the assassination. If you are into conspiracies– and who can resist– you will note that the reporter offered to put Zapruder in contact with a Secret Service Agent, who, we would have assumed, would have loved to have a beautiful, clear, colourful, cinematic souvenir of them all standing on the follow-up car staring at the assassination event.

The Secret Service accompanied Zapruder to a local television station and then to Eastman Kodak’s local processing plant, and then to another processing plant, the Jamieson Film Company, to have some copies made. The Secret Service had a look at this film. And then Richard Stolley, an editor from Life Magazine, amazingly arrived to negotiate with Zapruder for exclusive rights to the film and all prints from the film, for about $150,000. Richard Stolley worked for a man named C. D. Jackson at Time-Life.

C.D. Jackson was a close friend of the CIA, and helped establish the Bilderberg Group. You couldn’t make this shit up. Yes, this guy who had obtained custody of the most compelling evidence of a conspiracy in the Kennedy Assassination worked with the CIA.

We now know it didn’t work, but, if you were the suspicious sort, what this looks like is the conspirators jumping in to make sure that nobody ever sees the evidence that might disprove that Oswald and Oswald alone killed Kennedy, from the 6th Floor the Texas Book Depository, from behind.

I say it did not work. Or it worked better than in their wildest dreams.

Zapruder had a nightmare about people paying to see his film in Times Square. He didn’t mind the paying part. But I guess his nightmare included people being repelled about the idea of him selling frame 313, in which Kennedy’s head explodes. So a condition of sale was that frame 313 could not be shown. He kept his money.

Life Magazine eventually published very poor quality prints taken from the film, but that was all the American public would see of the film for a long, long, long time.

Understandably, there was considerable curiosity about the film. Once it became clear that a “commission” of sterile old fat white men was going to pin the whole thing on a “lone nut” no matter what the evidence was (I’m not sure why they even bothered to hold hearings or examine anything: they disregarded any evidence that opened any doors), there was even more curiosity. One of the central tenets of the Warren Commission’s findings was that all of the shots came from behind, from Oswald’s “sniper’s nest”. But some witnesses and conspiracy theorists didn’t believe Oswald could have fired all of the shots. Some people in Dealey Plaza thought the shots came from the grassy knoll. There was some discussion even at Parkland Hospital about an “entry” wound in the neck, and about the head snapping backwards, and even about an entry wound in the forehead.

In the midst this hot and heavy discussion rode CBS reporter Dan Rather to the rescue. The public was told that, as little children, as tiny, irresponsible, wee little children, they could not be trusted to view the best evidence of who killed their president, but Dan Rather would assume this burden for us, almost like Jesus going on the cross. And so Dan Rather watched the film very, very carefully– this was by far, the biggest news story of the decade, after all, so he wouldn’t want to miss a detail– and then, instead of staying to try to outbid Life Magazine for the film, he ran as fast as he could back to the local CBS affiliate so he could breathlessly report to the American public that the film, indeed, showed Kennedy’s head going violently forward with the impact of the third shot. “Forward and to the right”.

“forward and to the right”

I am still astonished at this. Kennedy’s head, of course, jerked violently backwards, to the left. It’s the most obvious thing about the third shot: backwards and to the left. As if Kennedy might have been shot from the front.

I leave aside the complicated argument that a shot from the rear could have produced that motion.  It is possible, but complicated.

So, Dan Rather, with a chance to be at the center of the biggest news story of the decade, lies to millions of people. Why?

Was it a mistake? Could it be that Dan Rather, for all his fame and all of his promotion and self-promotion, and self-aggrandizement, and posturing, was a complete idiot who couldn’t tell left from right, up from down, or in from out? Could it be that he could not, fifteen minutes later, remember which direction Kennedy’s head was going in when his skull was blown open by a rifle shot, after viewing the most shocking, important 22 second film clip in history?

Did Dan Rather know that the assassination was to be pinned on a lone gunman shooting from above and behind and that all conspiracies were to be excluded? It seems unlikely: Rather saw the film on the day of the assassination. On the other hand, everyone knew, by then, that the suspect had worked in the Texas Book Depository, and I’m sure Rather’s instincts were that the American public needed to be reassured that there was no conspiracy regardless of whether or not there had actually been one. Oswald was in custody. He knew the outlines of the conspiracy. He certainly could have been aware of which conspiracy would be the preferred conspiracy.

But perhaps Dan was already prepared, emotionally and intellectually, to play his role in American politics and culture over the next forty years, that of a superficially liberal journalist, of slight but discernibly progressive inclinations, but fundamentally establishment in orientation and interests. This is someone who might eventually think that Nixon should be impeached, but only after he has observed that all political parties do dirty tricks. This is someone who would become opposed to the Viet Nam war only after every other credible authority has long before switched sides, and then he would try to make it sound like he was being courageous. Rather would observe that peaceniks are naïve, because, after all, real enemies will really resist all our attempts to take all their oil.

It was this kind of faux liberalism that led the New York Times to endorse the Iraq war at the time the Bush Administration was hustling it.

About the Camera

The Camera: a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD

1960 Bell and Howell Camera DUO Power Zoom Zoomatic its the image 1

Dan, do you wish that, fifty years later, people would just leave it alone? Sorry. You don’t deserve that kind of forgetfulness.

About Mrs. Kennedy

There is another surprise. Rather — accurately, for a change– described, in his first recorded account of the film, how Mrs. Kennedy had tried to get out of the car in the middle of the assassination. The next day, the day after the assassination, CBS decided to have Rather broadcast his experience of the film live again (Rather was being groomed after all). But, they told him, leave out the part about Mrs. Kennedy. It was considered indecorous. America, they said (according to Dan) was not “ready” to absorb the image of the first lady trying not to get shot.

In fact, I still believe Mrs. Kennedy was trying to retrieve part of John Kennedy’s skull, which had been blown off and was slipping down the back of the limo. It was later recovered by a bystander and “returned” to the Secret Service (and flown up to Bethesda to be reunited with the body.)

I am astonished, but then not astonished, at how casually the establishment decides for Americans what they should or should not know. Just astonished. The omission of important information about what happened is bad, bad journalism, dishonest and irresponsible. And it is these same people, these same institutions who turn pale and almost feint when the idea of getting your news through the internet is raised…. unmediated!! You must be mad!

My Theories on Conspiracies

The Magic Bullet

 

Posted on

Lanny Breuer’s New Old Job

There’s are things that so obvious the wonder is not that anyone missed it, but that that no one did anything useful about it.

And so we have Lanny Breuer, the man who saved the banking industry from even a single successful prosecution for the 2008 collapse, finally relieved of his position at the Department of Justice, taking a position with the law firm of Covington and Burling. What does Covington and Burling do? They represent large, multinational corporations, like– wait for it– Bank of America, Eli Lilly, General Electric, IBM, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, NASCAR, and Verizon. And Halliburton. And Phillip Morris.

So Lanny Breuer is now working for the banks. But wait– that’s not true.

Lanny Breuer was always working for the banks.

As the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Breuer’s main purpose in life, as he appeared to see it, was to see to it that not a single banker went to jail for the massive frauds that caused the incredible financial collapse of 2008. At the height of his “investigations”, Breuer confided to a banquet hall of lawyers that what kept him awake at night was the fear of what would happen to the banking industry if some bankers were prosecuted.

After a Frontline documentary, “The Untouchables”, revealed the depths and breadth of his indifference to the millions and millions of workers and pension holders whose savings and jobs were ravaged by the intentional frauds committed by the banks, he resigned his position to go back to work for the industry for which he was always working.

The question that must occur to any intelligent American: why should I obey the law?

And Did You Know

Others in my personal hall of infamy of people you never heard of who have caused immense suffering and loss to others:

Janet Reno

Paul Wolfowitz

General Curtis LeMay

People you never heard of who caused a lot of good things to happen (or bad things not to happen)

Paul Martin

Bethany Maclean