Conservative Knuckle heads Protest "Julius Caesar" Play In Park - Prove They're Hypocrites and Pro-Censorship

Scene from 'Julius Caesar'  in Shakespeare in Park performance. Idiot Trumpies who rushed the stage can't tell fiction from reality.

We are in parlous times indeed when morons of the Right are unable to even parse reality from a fictional play and actors from actual personae. And so it was several days ago conservative lamos tried to interrupt the current Shakespeare in the Park performance of Julius Caesar because they believed it was portraying the "assassination" of their scumball hero prez who loves to grab pussies and insult the disabled.

The bimbo who did the main interruption later identified herself on social media as Laura Loomer . This half wit had jumped onto the stage just after the assassination of Caesar and began shouting, “Stop the normalization of political violence against the right,” and, “This is violence against Donald Trump.” Ms. Loomer described  herself as a “a right-wing investigative journalist and activist” who has previously worked with James O’Keefe, the guy who loves to confabulate false news using edited videos.

Subsequently,  her compatriot emerged shouting  to the crowd: “You are all Goebbels,” a reference to the Hitler aide and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.  Again, this sorry fool unable to distinguish a genuine Nazi piece of filth from a crowd who's merely gathered for some free entertainment. He really needs to go back to his meds, or ECT.

On social media,  this looneytune - Jack Posobiec-   describes himself as an activist who supports President Trump and has been associated with conspiracy theories, identified himself as Ms. Loomer’s collaborator. Well, nuts of a kind are equally blind.

Loomer, however, is little different from the odd knuckleheads who dispatched tweets to 'Fox n' Friends' this a.m. with such stellar observations as ; "The Left must stop killing our POTUS!"  And, paying a genuine tribute to free speech and artistic independence: "The Left must learn it has to temper what it says and does".  Oh really, you asswit? Like you do when you screech about the Left denying Anne Coulter a speaking gig? Gimme a break!

The earlier tweet about "killing our POTUS" shows how fucking dumb these fools are, they can't even tell a play from reality. But it's no surprise given how they indiscriminately gobble up fake news. In fact, no one is being "killed" as it's a play with actor Gregg Henry (of "Rich Man, Poor Man" fame) playing the role of Julius Caesar. That he might happen to look slightly like the Donald doesn't make him the Donald.  A point that shouldn't need repeating but to people who can't tell fable from fact it does.

Other deranged half wits attempted to disrupt the final performance yesterday. One protester, Jovanni Vale, even stormed the stage and shouted “Liberal hate kills” before being quickly grabbed by security, according to the New York Daily News. Soon after, Salvatore Cipolla did the same while yelling “Goebbels would be proud.”  No, asshole, the same Goebbels who oversaw massive Nazi book burnings would be proud of a loser like you it you managed to shut down the production!

What are more apropos remarks than the Right's squealing included New York Times theatre critic, Jesse Green, writing: “Its depiction of a petulant, blondish Caesar in a blue suit, complete with gold bathtub and a pouty Slavic wife, takes onstage Trump-trolling to a startling new level.”

Well, uh yeah, but let's not forget how the Trumpies  (not to mention Trump himself) trolled the rest of the country all the way through the 2016 campaign and then after.

David von Drehle in his TIME article ('Never Mind Trump, We Need Shakespeare More Than Ever', June 26, p. 17) was probably more on target when he pointed out that:

"With Trump in power, dressing a blonde actor in a long necktie and calling him Caesar is, for an impressario, as obvious as Wonder Woman 2"

He goes on to describe how and why the play so easily adjusts and adapts to different settings in space and time, because - there will always be tyrants, or wannabe tyrants, and they can always be made to come alive anew in the right casting.

Adding:

"Shakespeare would revel in the hypocrisy of Trump's shocked, shocked defenders".

Indeed. Because these nitwits are blind to their hypocrisy and how they enjoyed - not doing actual plays as artistic license- but straight out hanging Obama in effigy and claiming "free speech" e.g.


Actor Gregg Henry  was quoted by the UK Telegraph:

"The Roman emperor became drunk with ego, drunk with power, drunk with ambition and the belief that he and he alone must rule the world. The idea for me was to try and show you that this could be Trump.”

Adding:

 “When a tyrant comes to power, it’s very important how you then try to deal with the problem - because if you don’t deal with the problem in a proper way, you can end up losing democracy for like, 2000 years.”

Ouch! Don't go there, Mr. Henry or the Reich's imbeciles will believe you actually are pretending to BE Trump!

Meanwhile, the unhinged freakazoids of the Right keep on with their petty victimizations. Though the  Times has been sponsoring the  Public Theater for over 20 years, and said they would continue to do so for reasons of artistic independence - the right wing website The Daily Caller published a story with the headline: "The New York Times is sponsoring an assassination depiction of Donald Trump."

Again, the historical and literary retards can't discern it's a depiction of the assassination of Julius Caesar in a modern setting, wearing suits instead of togas. Not Donald Trump.

If we are now going to allow the Right to try to enforce censorship of artistic productions, we are really in deep shit as a nation. Dick Cavett, when asked about his opinion by Ari Melber yesterday evening was blunt: "I'm against any kind of censorship. That's not what this nation is about."

But make no mistake, the weenies and hypocrites of the Right - after the shooting last week - will try their level best to use it to snuff out creative productions, as well as intense criticism of their agenda. The Left and Democrats must not allow this, and stand up to this lot each time they try to conflate fiction and reality.

Words from Shakespeare to remind us of the times we're in where too many can't discern reality from fable:

"Indeed, it is a strange disposed time:

But men may construe things after their fashion,

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves."

Author Maria Konnikova on Maher's 'REAL TIME' Confirms Trump Is Playing Confidence Game

Maria Konnikova exposed Trump's confidence game on Bill Maher's Real Time last night.

Well, someone had to come out and say it. Namely, that the Trump (Drumpf) supporting suckers are being taken for a confidence game ride. If you've ever been snookered by an over-hyped investment, a snake oil product that doesn't deliver as per its advertised claims, or a business deal that was lousy from the start, you know what I mean. These confidence game deals succeed because as P.T .Barnum once put it, "there's a sucker born every minute" and alas, 'Murica is full of suckers.

Anyway, Bill Maher's timely guest last night was the author of 'The Confidence Game', Maria Konnikova. She and Maher began the discussion by showing the image of all Trump's phony products - from Trump steaks to "Finest Super Premium Vodka" (described on the site 'Vodkaphiles'  as "havng the flavor of gas station burritos and expired Skim milk") to 'Success' eau de toilette (described on one site as like "household cleaner and headache -inducing")  and other crap. As Ms. Knnikova put it:

"When I saw that I said, 'I'm a psychic', because I clearly predicted this was going to happen. The moment that they analyzed what his products actually were they found out they weren't his products. He was blatantly lying and the hallmark of a psychopath - and also a con artist - is someone who deceives you for their own ends. So they're trying to convince you to support them, to vote for them and they're doing it by tactics that are disreputable."

Wow! Couldn't put it better. Trump steaks, for example, were produced at an entity called Bush Brothers Provisions, They weren't even sold at any formal supermarket chain, or outlet, but - good grief- at a downstream clothing company called 'The Sharper Image'. Plus the trademark was discontinued two years ago. You can read more here:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trademark-trump-steaks-was-canceled-two-years-ago-records-show-n535876

It's like comedian John Oliver put it on his last show: "Uh...I'd like one of those crappy puff collar suits and ten pounds of Trump  steaks!" I mean, cheese Louise, why the hell would you sell your alleged premier steaks at a place like that? The only reason would be to perhaps conceal the fact their quality wasn't much better than a Mao-style puff suit.

As Bill put it last night:

"Am I reading too much into this? I mean standing there in front of a table full of steaks. I mean I don't eat steaks....I thought this was like subliminal advertising. I mean people looking at that and going Trump - Steak, Trump - Steak....if I vote Trump I'll eat steak."

Ms. Konnikova then replied:

"Yes, think of the voters he's actually going for, people who want steak but can't afford it. So ...let them eat steak! And we see him in trying to get the popular vote saying he's honest, he's a man of the people. He's telling everyone exactly what they want to hear.  And he doesn't actually say anything. That's what confidence artists do!"

The last sentence is especially germane if one has read the Wall Street Journal breakdown of Trump's campaign ('Trump's Campaign Based On His Book', March 3, p. A1) and how it could have been forecast years in advance if anyone had read 'The Art of the Deal'. All the main bullet points of the book were highlighted in the Journal piece, one by one (p. A6), including 'Think big', 'Know your market' (i.e. view the electorate as the target market),  'Enhance location', 'Contain the costs' (Trump does this by using only a pittance of his own $$ and extracting the rest - over $17 m - as "loans" from his campaign), and 'Have fun'.

In other words, Trump's public is being played for suckers in a lousy deal. But back to the point of his never saying anything, the WSJ piece quotes him as saying "I play it very loose". In other words, he never follows a policy guide line or script he just spouts BS off the top of his head. This was also substantiated in David von Drehle's recent (Mar. 14, p. 36) TIME piece on Trump, describing how he actually took a raft of documents, papers his campaign team had given him - and tossed them off his table while on his Trump ONE jet. His answer: "I can't be bothered with that!" And this is the guy these fools want to be president?

What the fuck is this asshole going to do when the CIA head delivers to him the PDB (President's Daily Brief') and it notes an imminent terror attack by ISIS? Will he toss it away and say "I can't be bothered with that"? Will he "play it loose"?  The American electorate that thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced cheese better hope not.

So, at the end both Maher and Konnikova agreed Trump is a consummate con artist, who knows how to exploit images, PR and pure baloney to mind fuck millions into thinking he's their savior. The only turd who can "de-Obama-ize" the nation and make it safe for white people

Knnikova also noted it's a myth that Trump "hijacked" the Republican Party. No, the whole nature of the confidence game, according to Konnikova is "we give them our confidence. The whole origin of the game is that a guy on the street walked up to people and asked 'Do you have confidence in me to lend me your watch until tomorrow and I'll give it back plus an extra five bucks?' And they gave him their confidence,, their watches, and this is exactly what Trump is doing to the Party. He isn't asking for anything, people are willingly giving their trust to him."

The most important takeaway from last night's interview with Konnikova is how she explained that truth to Trump is a "fungible thing", it is never absolute, only what you can make it at the time. Trump meets this standard and also displays the "triad" of traits recognized as: 1) Psychopathy, 2)Narcissism and 3)Machiavellianism.

Where did we see these before, in one person? Well, in Adolf Hitler.

If you dispute it then read Robert Payne's book, 'The Life And Death of Adolf Hitler' (1972) and how the same sort of psychopathic and narcissistic seeds are also evident in Trump's background (see von Drehle's TIME piece, as when Trump in his teens was so fascinated with gang styles that he collected his own set of lethal switch blades.)

Avoid Trump Rallies IF You Believe In Free Speech

Protester Rekeem Jones shows the battered cheek he got after a hee-haw cornpone goon sucker -punched him for exercising his free speech rights at a Trump rally in NC.  (Right, the dumb hick who did it, John McGraw , who now is in jail)

The parade of violent events at Trump rallies reached a crescendo yesterday as news feeds showed a wild-eyed North Carolina hick in a cowboy hat sucker punching a black protester exercising his free speech rights. Not only did this cornpone maggot make  a mess of Rekeem Jones' face he also blabbered, like a true domestic terrorist,  “Next time we see him, we might have to kill him!”

The video images evoked scenes shown to me in 1978 by my now deceased German friend, Kurt Braun, from newsreels he compiled of the Nazi rampages in the 1930s.  E.g.

Some of the most violent scenes showed Hitler's Brownshirts, the S.A., wading into political demonstrations with sticks - beating Jews, socialists (real ones, not the faux national "socialists"), labor union members and communists. All targeted in assorted protests and beaten to a pulp by the Hitler thugs. As former Hitler Youth Kurt put it, "Germany must never descend to such depths again".  Maybe, but if he saw what was happening in America today he'd be retching his guts out.

The latest incident, with terror hick McGraw acting out his Id,  is only the latest of a string of vile assaults captured on video, including of Michelle Fields - a conservative reporter from Breitbart.com. So it appears Trump's goons are an indiscriminate bunch of tormentors.

But this latest broadcast mugging shows some Trumpies really have S.A. creds. The sickening spectacle,  caught-on-camera, was yet another example of free speech protesters and media members being manhandled at Trump rallies. The most egregious aspect is that it went down as cops were actually ejecting the 26-year-old Jones from the event. So, get this, Jones was being frog marched out and barely gets to the top of the stairs and the exits when he's coldcocked by the 78- year old wannabe tough guy, Trumpie loyalist.

What we have beheld - in these assorted violent beatings by the Trumpies,- encouraged by Trump himself ("Get him outta here! Punch him in the face! Kick him! Step on her head!") is their total intolerance for the free speech they supposedly hold dear (in every other situation where it suits them).  But this opposition should not surprise us because Trump himself has gone on the record vowing to shut down the presses - if he's elected- and they write anything "bad" about him.

As reported in a recent TIME article on him by David von Drehle (March 14, p. 36) Trump has no patience or tolerance for what he deems "dishonest" or "inaccurate" statements.  What is his solution?

"He would like to open up the laws on libel to protect people like himself"

Similar ideas percolated in Adolf Hitler's head after becoming Chancellor in 1932 and this led to the establishment of the Reich laws which permitted the arrest and detention of journalists and news reporters in Germany - including being sent to the camps- if they so much as wrote a single sentence critical of the Fuhrer.

Would Trump do this if President? We don't know but the current signs and portents are not encouraging. And even if he himself didn't pass specific anti-free speech laws, who is to say what his insane, unhinged supporters might do?  Form gangs and smash the windows of  local  TV stations and newspaper offices, a la Kristillnacht?

The most disturbing aspect of this latest attack is the way videos showed  the ponytailed McGraw, clad in a cowboy hat and black leather vest, sitting back down after cold-cocking the peaceful young black protester. This,  as his knuckle-dragging  seatmates congratulated him on the dirty blow.

Then, to add insult to injury, McGraw - later confronted over his action - spitting out that the guy "might need to be killed next time" and besides "he wasn't even an American".  HUH?

In fact, Jones was one of the few REAL Americans at the Crown Coliseum in Fayetteville NC  given he was actually invoking his first amendment rights. The anti-Americans, the faux Americans, were the yahoos like McGraw who felt it their bounden duty to shut a real citizen up and even waylay him

Welcome to the new Nazis, and if Trump is elected President, look for many more to come out of the wood work.

13 Pages On The 'Conspiracy Industry' - And TIME Gets Hardly Anything Right

In two lengthy articles on the "conspiracy industry" in the latest TIME (Nov. 25, pp. 40- 52) the two authors (David von Drehle, 'We Have Lived With It For Half A Century';  and Jack Dickey, 'Debunker Among the Buffs')  try to take us back to look at that fateful day  50 years ago and the intervening years in terms of how the conspiracy meme became entrenched. But alas, the ardent truth seeker finds very little other than useless conflations, misdirection, long since exposed canards and the usual balderdash the corporate media has refined in the last 50 years to keep Americans deaf, dumb, blind and stupid.

Von Drehle in his first article, consuming nearly 10 pages, at least makes a halfway decent effort but after the first few pages it's evident he lacks the bona fides, education or determination to separate wheat from chaff in parsing conspiracy theories to do with this event. And yes, like the conspiracy zeitgeist in general, not all theories are created equal because not all theorists put in the same amount of research, hard work. This ought to be self-evident, but not to von Drehle. who first complains (p. 42) that "the number of explanations offered for that moment in Dallas is dizzying: Kennedy was murdered by a lone gunman, the Mafia, the CIA, the Military -Industrial complex, his own Secret Service, right wing millionaires, Fidel Castro, Kennedy's Vice President Lyndon Johnson".

And when the untutored reader sees this, he's inclined to agree, failing to see the components involved are muddied together, which makes it appear that the whole conception of conspiracy is absurd. But that has been the intent of the 'Mockingbird' media for as long as I can recall. For example, if one intelligently grasps that the ones who actually carried out  the deed are separate from the architects, then he also sees it's stupid to single out actors as if they are all distinct possible conspirators to the same degree and with the same objectives.  But had von Drehle really done his homework for the piece, especially using texts such as Donald Gibson's 'Battling Wall Street - The Kennedy Presidency',   he'd have seen how the CIA, Oil, Banking, and the Military-Industrial Complex have been in bed together for decades.  Hence, it's nonsense to separate the Military-Industrial Complex, the CIA and right wing OIL millionaires, when they had shared interests in seeing Kennedy killed and were linked at the hip by the backgrounds of people like Allen Dulles, H.L. Hunt. John Foster Dulles. But people like von Drehle are too lazy or intellectually incompetent to pursue the research where it leads.

As for the Mafia, as I noted in my previous FAQ (Pt. 7) it was G. Robert Blakey who incepted that nonsense to misdirect the attention of the HSCA away from the CIA. No serious researcher today believes or accepts the "mob" had anything to do with the killing in any other than a mechanics capacity, i.e.  responsible for bringing in Jean Soutre- a  member of the Corsican Mafia hired out of Marseilles to be one of the snipers. Former Justice Dept. specialist Walt Brown  ('Treachery in Dallas'  ) indicates that FOIA -released files suggest Soutre was the likely grassy knoll shooter. (Often referred to as "Badgeman" from the Mary Muchmore photo taken at the instant of the head shot).

As for LBJ no one, including me, has said he was an active participant. But no one other than a dunderhead (like Vince Bugliosi) would deny he stood to gain immensely if JFK was knocked off - since Kennedy planned to dump him from the 1964 ticket on account of the political damage from the Bobby Baker scandal.  Knowing this, and there's little doubt he did, all LBJ had to do is nominally assent to an existing plan, probably made aware of by Allen Dulles. NO documents need have been signed, or actual vocal indication given. In effect, LBJ as a passive benefactor could not really be regarded as a "conspirator" as such - also because all aspects of the plan were compartmentalized. Hence, LBJ wouldn't have known the identities of any actual mechanics.

As for the Secret Service, I already dealt at length with their plausible passive role in this blog:  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/04/secret-service-scandalnot-first.html


The author then whines about a "forest of conspiracy theories which can swallow a person up" and which are "part scholarship, part fever dream".   He goes on, his frustration obvious (ibid.):

"How easy it is to go from a split second in Dealey Plaza to a fathomless argument over the windshield damage in a presidential limousine. And from there to the idea of forged autopsy documents. And from there to the idea of multiple Oswald's.....the path forks endlessly leading everywhere and nowhere."

He then refers to "the most truly resonant image from the grisly scene" as the First Lady  "on the trunk of the limousine" - but is either too lazy, too dumb or too duped to connect the dots between all of the above.  He's not processing that the windshield damage constitutes physical evidence and if the limo is sent away to be dismantled and rebuilt - as LBJ ordered- then one has destroyed evidence. He's not processing that the forged autopsy documents really DO exist - and Gerald Ford was the one who altered those original documents, to change the location of the back wound higher for Arlen Specter's "single bullet theory" to work, i.e.

The initial draft of the report had  stated:

"A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine."

Ford altered it to read:

"A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine."
 
Clearly, Ford wanted the document to conform with the single bullet myth and would stoop to altering a document on record to attain the goal. If von Drehle had really prepared for the article he wrote he'd also have encountered the forged autopsy photos used by the Warren Commission - see the one below at left and compare to one of the actual autopsy photos (right):

If von Drehle had any rudimentary physics background - even a high school course under his belt - he'd have been able to intelligently relate the photo at right to the fact of Jackie moving across the limo to try to capture a fragment of JFK's exploded skull.  Then, instead of his hyper-emotional bloviating about the "whole shocking sequence" he'd be able to make some sense of it and why exactly the conspiracy meme has been accepted by a majority of Americans (now 62% but down from 81% in 2000, probably because of the incessant media drumbeat to legitimize the Warren Commission follies)

As for von Drehle's  conspiracy "forest" - that was an understandable consequence of the early days in the wake of the Warren Commission- when skeptics learned the Commission (and LBJ ) had ordered all files remain closed to the public until 2037.  In this closed information arena dozens of different and widely variant theories surfaced and hundreds of books attempted to make sense of the events based on a limited constellation of accessible facts. Thanks to the Oliver Stone film 'JFK' this changed and the JFK Records Act was passed to make available millions of files by 1993. These included Oswald's CIA file : 201-289248 CI/SIG, as well as others, which finally opened the window on Oswald to serious researchers - showing he wasn't the "lone commie nut" portrayed by the Warrenites and their apologists and enablers.  This was the first breakthrough paving the way to the CIA as the primary culprit.

Then, with the HSCA's exposure (mainly thanks to brave investigators like Gaeton Fonzi, Danny Hardway, Ed Lopez (author of the Lopez Report) and others, we finally saw how David Atlee Phillips used forged cable to frame Oswald for the hit. With the actual released photos of an Oswald impostor in Mexico City the framing became more evident, and the path led to assets of the Mexico City Station’s Chief of Covert Action and Cuban Operations, David Atlee Phillips.

Von Drehle rambles on in his piece noting the Dallas connections to Big Oil, Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt, as well as the right wing extremists (like Ted Dealey) ensconced there, and then mentions the attack on Adlai Stevenson, but it's all mainly a parade of incidents that he refuses to tie together - hence leaving the reader to believe we are confronting dozens of unrelated characters and coincidences.  He does also mention Oswald's famous declaration at the Dallas Police station: "I am just a patsy" but evinces cluelessness at what it means. He writes:

"Exactly what he meant by this is never revealed, because instead of facing trial Oswald was shot to death on Nov. 24th while being transported from one jail cell to another."

Had von Drehle done enough research to make himself aware of David Atleee Phillips' role in framing Oswald, he'd not have wondered - despite Lee's being murdered by Jack Ruby-  who later insisted he needed to go to Washington to explain. He maintained it wasn't about merely "protecting Jackie from having to testify" as the media made out. Ruby died of cancer before his final explanation emerged. Meanwhile, von Drehle and cohorts remain undisturbed by the fact that all other lone assassins proudly proclaimed their deed. Oswald, the one they insist had a "huge ego" and believed himself bigger than life, didn't. How come? They don't have any answers and are too dense to see their narrative of Oswald doesn't jibe with his patsy statement.

Then there is Jack Dickey's article which mainly extols one of the top disinformationists around, Prof. John McAdams. According to Dickey's piece, based on talking to McAdams, he is a "debunker". Just like the guys that debunk UFOs John sees his job as debunking conspiracy theories, and hence being a proper apologist (like Vince Bugliosi) for the Warren balderdash.

Long before there was Twitter, Facebook or Blogs, there was something called Usenet where entities known as "newsgroups" sprang up to encourage debate and discussion on any number of issues, topics.  I had observed McAdams putdowns in the (un-moderated)  newsgroup alt. conspiracy.jfk for some months before actually engaging in a one on one exchange with him. This was concerning my REAL FAQ  that I had published in the newsgroup as an antidote to a pro-lone nut FAQ by frequent poster John Locke. 

In one particular confrontation, McAdams complained about my reference to Jackie “climbing over the limo trunk” in an effort to retrieve part of JFK’s blown out skull fragment (later inferred to be the Harper bone fragment retrieved by William Harper). He insisted she wasn't "climbing over anything" to which I then said, Ok, she's moving across it to the rear - which shows a frontal shot".  He tried to "debunk" this but a picture says a thousand words. And in my FAQ Part 5 readers can see the image for themselves.

I added more kapow to my response citing  her Warren Commission Testimony (from Volume Five of the special hearings) where she says:

"You know, then, there were pictures later of me climbing out the back, but I don't remember that at all."

She was referring to this Z-film image:

From her secret testimony (excised from original version), op. cit., p. 16:

"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on."

But once again, McAdams disputed my sources and said Jackie also must have been mistaken, as there was no time at which she climbed across the trunk. SO much for John's "debunking" which is largely a matter of denying reality.

Perhaps the best information ever assembled on John McAdams (nee, “Paul Nolan”) was put together by Jim Hargrove. The basic thrust is to answer questions concerning McAdams and his background because it so much seems to fit the sort of CIA assets described in the CIA document 1035-960 wherein it specifies under subsection (3b) the objective: “to employ propaganda assets to negate and refute the attacks of the critics”. While TIME author Dickey waxes on about, oh no, move along, no CIA here with McAdams, he never does cite the CIA document that legitimized the role for assets including in Usenet newsgroups.

Hence, when McAdams blabs: "These people think the CIA cares about them. It does not!"

One is led to ask, 'Oh really? Then how account for the CIA document that explicitly states in one primary objective:  "To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics".

How can this be reconciled with a guy who "just likes to brawl"? Well, if brawling consumes more time than useful communication about facts (like Jackie's limo trunk action) and files (like Oswald's  201-289248 CI/SIG) than one can say the objective has been achieved.

If McAdams has been a real CIA propaganda asset, it makes sense one of his first obligations would be to neutralize any outlets for serious JFK assassination discussion he doesn’t control (like his moderated newsgroup). Thus his intrusions into the un-moderated group shed definite light on his intentions.  Consider, for example, this McAdams post from  (John McAdams) Date: 14 Feb 1997 22:17:02 -0700:

“You buffs have been cooperating marvelously with my scheme to make this group a shambles. And you know the bizarre part? My scheme is not a secret. I have publicly announced it. I have made it perfectly obvious.  I have rubbed you buffs' noses in it. It's blatantly obviously to everybody.”

Now, let’s clear our heads and think about this a bit: Would a normal everyday professor of Political Science be doing these things? Would he be bragging about leaving a Usenet newsgroup a “shambles”?  It doesn’t add up.  Bill Hargrove, in his “McAdams FAQ” provides the Charter Policy written by McAdams himself for his own moderated group. Reading its first paragraph sheds a lot of light:

CHARTER AND MODERATION POLICY

This group will be for the purpose of providing an area for serious discussion and research of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The group will be moderated to prevent the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued alt.conspiracy.jfk and made it nearly useless as a vehicle for intelligent research. Questions surrounding JFK's death have made this one of the most talked about and controversial issues of our generation. This will be the one usenet group which deals seriously with this important topic.

But as Hargrove observes:

“One supposes that since the noise and chronic personal attacks which have plagued the alt.conspiracy.jfk group were and are part of McAdams freely admitted plans to turn the group into a shambles, the moderated group can only be seen as his personal vehicle for selective manipulation of content”

Which is totally logical, and again, it comports with CIA doc. 1035-960!  Hargrove then quotes McAdams from a letter written to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

“(Dr) Gary Aguilar accused me on the politics forum of being A CIA sponsored 

disinformationist because I was once the Marquette Official representative of the I.C.P.S.R. an utterly 

unspooky social science data archive.”

In truth, The ICPSR is housed in the Institute for Social Research, or ISR which itself

 has been documented as recipient of “spook” (e.g. CIA) research grants.

 They also have a webpage:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/

Which the interested reader can explore for himself. My own take is that it could easily be a CIA  (Clandestine Operations) front for  psy-ops intelligence operations which could easily include anti-conspiracy propaganda. We already know that the founder of American Propaganda – Edward Bernays – was steeped in the social sciences and firmly believed the public was too irrational to entrust to its own thought and conclusions and therefore had to be manipulated toward specific directions. In his own words:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 

habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in 

democratic society”

What better way to do that than from a networked academic consortium – interwoven into all the social 

sciences – with access to a central data clearinghouse that’s amassed everything from 

the latest frequency of teen pregnancies, to homicides by race or gender, or assorted 

other historical arcania. It’s literally a propagandist’s dream.

 All of this leaves us with the question of why TIME would put two such dubious articles in its issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event. But in this case, we perhaps need some recollections of TIME's own history.  If we look at TIME's background, we see that it was (and is) part of the Luce Press, including FORTUNE. As James Douglass observes[1]:

“Besides being CIA-friendly, Henry Luce was an enemy to Kennedy. In the wake of the April, 1962 steel crisis, Luce’s FORTUNE magazine had implicitly warned the president, on behalf of the American business elite, to beware ‘the ides of April’ for his dominant role in settling the crisis”.

And who can forget that the Zapruder film first came into possession of TIME, where CIA handlers attempted to exchange key frames to remove the backward head snap, providing support for the theory that a shot came from behind. Fortunately, they didn’t succeed and the (Orville) Nix film shows not only the backward head snap but a piece of skull hurtling over the limo trunk. Such motions are impossible for a rear shot.

In fact, Kennedy was going up against not only U.S. Steel but powerful banking interests. As James Douglass has pointed out (ibid.), in connection with an unsigned editorial appearing in Fortune (a Luce Press magazine), betraying the extent of corporate hostility:

“The editors of Fortune knew that the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel’s Board of Directors. It included top level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, The First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, AT&T.”

Douglass goes on to note  (ibid.) that the Fortune editors themselves answered the key question of why financial interests baited Kennedy into “a vitriolic and demagogic assault”. It had to do with their perception of his prior appeal not to raise prices as “a threat of jawbone control” of prices.  In Douglass’ own words – which I can’t match:

“In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another office holder beholden to the powers that be.”

If readers and those interested in history truly want insight as opposed to pop bunkum and dignifying CIA assets they are better served by reading James Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable than TIME's nonsense.  Yes, the latter is shorter, much shorter, but that alone ought to suggest why you need to dig a bit deeper. (Oh, and be sure to turn off all the morning news programs and most of the nightly ones, that keep to the propaganda of one lone nut)

 

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[1] James Douglass: 2007, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, Orbis Books, p. 164.