The Truthiness About Oswald

Trouble reading it?  Go here.

Why Gerald Ford, you may ask? Because Ford was the FBI's inside man on the Warren Commission, faithfully reporting each day's information back to his masters, to make sure the correct damage control was applied.

And how were you rewarded... Mr. President?

The Powell Memorandum and Other Conspiracies

In my earlier post today, I Want to Meet a Tea Party-er!, I mentioned my interesting car-pool ride to Santa Barbara. On that journey, the subject of The Powell Memorandum came up.

Written in 1971 for the US Chamber of Commerce by Lewis F. Powell, a corporate lawyer and tobacco lobbyist, the Powell Memorandum is almost unknown, yet it could fairly be described as the blueprint for our present state of society.

In this Blog a while ago, I shared an extract from my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s", in which I described the infamous Memorandum and its effects. For those who may not have seen it, I'm reproducing it today as a separate Post.

Now I've come across another document, another chunk of what we might call the "Anti-Constitution", created by our Con-Founding Fathers....  This one was written by none other than Roger Ailes, President of Fox News

Roger Ailes, Con-Founding Father

You can learn more about the Ailes document in this extract from an interesting new Documentary, "The Brainwashing of My Dad", made by Jen Senko (you can skip the ad, thank goodness) -

The Documentary is discussed in today's "Daily Kos", here.  This is how "Kos" describes the film:
"When the filmmaker's parents moved to a place where her father had a long solo commute to work and started listening to Talk Radio to alleviate the boredom, her family saw him change from a non-political Democrat to a radicalized, angry Right-Wing Republican. What happened to Dad?"

It's Time We Had Some Fun....

... and very soon I'll be bringing you  "Topless and Literary in NYC".

In the meantime, though - just cos it's on my mind - let's talk about  COINTELPRO.

This is from my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s":

"On a night in March 1971 when much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing-match, a group of activists broke into the two-man FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, with a crowbar, and emptied the file cabinets of more than a thousand documents.

They called themselves The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the papers revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress any challenge to the status quo.

16 days later, over the Government's objections, the “Washington Post” revealed that it had received an envelope with 14 FBI documents, detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, mail carriers and a switchboard operator at nearby Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

The “burglars” were never identified; and the American public heard for the first time a sinister new word,: "COINTELPRO". Short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," this was created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

It wasn't until 1975-76 that the Senate mounted a full-scale investigation, known as the Church Committee after its chair, Sen. Church of Idaho. They found that the FBI, working with local Police forces, ignored the law and the Constitution....

“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

Along with the Anti-War Movement, and even occasionally the Ku Klux Klan, the prime target of Cointelpro was the Black Panthers."

More about the Black Panthers another time....

How long will we put up with this VILENESS?

Sorry, I didn't quite catch up on everything I meant to cover on Monday.  Will try to get myself sorted out today, Tuesday....


Did you hear (or see?) Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" this morning? (It's so easy to get on the Web!)

This country just becomes more foul all the time, under our "liberal", "progressive", "socialist", President.  I know it's not all Obama's fault, but he does, so to speak, "Preside" over it - the least he could do is speak out!

Vileness #1:  the State of Mississippi plans today to execute Willie Jerome Manning, 44,  (Black, of course) for murder.  The excellent (and cautious in its reporting) Innocence Project reports that the FBI themselves has stated that the guy's conviction is unsafe, that DNA testing would resolve the question, and they, the FBI, have offered to do the necessary testing.

But no, Mississippi insists on going ahead with this cold-blooded killing.

...............................................
Vileness #2:  US Border Patrol Agents are shooting across the border into Mexico, killing innocent Mexican citizens as they go about their business.

A 16-year-old Mexican boy was gunned down by one of these creeps when he stepped out of his girlfriend's family's house to buy a hot dog.

The father of a family was shot dead while enjoying a birthday picnic for his two young daughters.

This has been reported by John Carlos Frey in the May/June issue of the Washington Monthly, in a joint effort with the Nation Institute.

On the southern bank: Ernestina Santillan stands on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, where her son, Juan Pablo, was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents last July. (John Carlos Frey)

The full report is here. To my eye, it leans way too far toward giving the Border Patrol the benefit of the "doubt". Shooting across the Border is an act of war. It's also specifically against the protocol agreed between the US and Mexican Governments.

In Amy Goodman's interview with John Carlos Frey, he is more forthright.  He says the Border Patrol and the US Government have failed to provide him with any response to his questions, or to say whether there is any investigation or punishment of the Border Patrol "officers" involved in these insane acts.

COINTELPRO, Anyone?

From my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" -

On a night in March 1971 when much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing-match, a group of activists broke into the two-man FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, with a crowbar, and emptied the file cabinets of more than a thousand documents.

They called themselves The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, and the papers revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress any challenge to the status quo.

16 days later, over the Government's objections, the “Washington Post” revealed that it had received an envelope with 14 FBI documents, detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, mail carriers and a switchboard operator at nearby Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

The “burglars” were never identified; and the American public heard for the first time a sinister new word,: "COINTELPRO". Short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," this was created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

It wasn't until 1975-76 that the Senate mounted a full-scale investigation, known as the Church Committee after its chair, Sen. Church of Idaho. They found that the FBI, working with local Police forces, ignored the law and the Constitution....

“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”