JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GUARDIAN OFFERS AN IMPOVERISHED LIST OF KENNEDY ASSASSINATION BOOKS - I OFFER A FEW OF THE BEST ALTHOUGH A COUPLE OF THEM ARE NOW HARD TO GET

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

The best books about the JFK assassination, from Norman Mailer to Don DeLillo

Will the release of the latest cache of classified papers unleash a slew of books about the death of the charismatic Kennedy?

Sorry, but what an impoverished list this is.

As someone who has always had an interest in these events, who has read a great deal of the literature, and who has published essays on the subject, I feel it fair to so characterize it.

Norman Mailer's book was a fraud.

He certainly was assisted by CIA in writing it.

I imagine his big fat book on the CIA, which would have needed all kinds of cooperation to write, was quid pro quo for the Oswald book. The CIA very much does work this way with publishers and authors.

Gerald Posner's book was packed with errors and it was written at a time the author had no new evidence of consequence to work with.

Jerome Corsi's book is pretty close to a set of bad dreams, not worth opening the cover.

There are a number of books I could recommend, but the finest book ever written on the subject was Anthony Summers' original “Conspiracy.” The then-great investigative reporter's work is well worth reading still despite being published in 1980.

Its later “updates”, under the title “Not in Your Lifetime,” 1998 and 2013, represented an entirely new work and not really a new edition. It is inferior to the original in many respects, lacking its encyclopedic examination and being heavily influenced by "the Mafia did it" crowd, an idea I find unconvincing.

David Lifton’s book, “Best Evidence,” is an important one which focuses on the handling of the President’s body and its autopsy. Published in 1980 and later updated.

Another valuable and well-written book is “Mary's Mosaic (3rd edition)” by Peter Janney. It offers some very important sidelights and additional strong motives for the assassination.

Readers may enjoy:

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/1544/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/the-cia-and-americas-presidents-some-rarely-discussed-truths-shaping-contemporary-american-democracy/

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HERE'S AN ADDITIONAL BATCH (ALTHOUGH STILL NOT ALL) OF THE REASONS THAT KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY - NOW WITH A FURTHER BATCH ADDED

COMMENT ADDENDUM:  MORE REASONS WHY JFK’S KILLING HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY

In the first moments after the shooting, some police headed uphill on the Grassy Knoll. Many indications from sound to the way crowds moved and pointed suggested something had occurred there. One policeman ran up the slope and began searching behind the barriers with his gun drawn. He met a suited man who quickly offered an official-looking ID card for the Secret Service.

The policeman holstered his gun and didn’t pursue the direction he had been headed. Nor did he note the identity of the “agent.” The trouble with that brief episode is that the Secret Service is known not to have stationed any officers on the Grassy Knoll. It was, of course, a terrible error in their preparations for the motorcade, but it is nevertheless what they did. So, who was the suited man with the false Secret Service ID? And what was he doing there? And where would he obtain such an ID? I think we’re safe in saying he wasn’t Oswald.

The fake Secret Service agent may well have been a man seen by another witness briefly earlier. A man who could only communicate by sign language told a clear story of being on the overpass and noticing a man in a suit, just behind the wooden picket fence that stood along the top of the Grassy Knoll, holding something. He saw the man in the suit swing around and toss what he was holding to another man in work clothes, waiting nearby.

The man who caught what looked like a rifle quickly broke it into two parts, stashed them into his large open toolbox, and walked away. Just behind the Grassy Knoll with its picket fence then was a parking lot and extensive rail yards, just the kind of place for a workman with a tool box to disappear into. The official investigators chose to ignore this witness. Most people who ‘heard” a story like that from a witness speaking in sign language would take it very seriously. After all, in a sense it requires a great of extra effort for such a witness to give his testimony and I think that adds to its credibility.

Why was the immensely important evidence of the presidential limousine so quickly destroyed? The car was sent back to the manufacturer near Detroit to be rebuilt instead of being preserved for serious and extended forensic study. The interior was, of course, spattered with blood, but it also contained bits of bullets and marks from bullets, things which were very important evidence.

There were witnesses at the hospital, when the car was briefly parked in front to deliver the mortally-wounded president, who testified that there were both a bullet crease on the windshield’s chrome frame and a small hole in the windshield’s glass. Shouldn’t this have been preserved for close study and to reassure people that every detail was scrutinized? But it was not. Why? Even if the car was rebuilt, key pieces like the windshield or the rear interior could easily have been set aside, as were so many more trivial objects that found their way into the National Archives.

The most important single piece of evidence in the case, the Zapruder film, has its own remarkable story. The film was purchased from Abraham Zapruder, who happened to be standing on the concrete pergola along part of the Grassy Knoll taking home movies of the parade (just a note, his position was hidden by trees or shrubbery from the position further along the picket fence from which at least one assassin fired). His film was purchased by Life Magazine for what was then a very large amount of money. Actually, you might have thought it should have been seized by local police or FBI as evidence, but for some unknown reason, this single most important piece of evidence ended up in private commercial hands.

Apart from the police not seizing key evidence, what is wrong with that, you might ask? Well, it is just a fact that Henry Luce’s Time-Life publications in those days often worked with and served as covers for the CIA. Allen Dulles was part of Luce’s social circle. Luce himself wrote a famous article in the 1940s called “The American Century,” the title becoming a frequently-used expression, and he was an ardent supporter of the values we associate with the Washington establishment, especially with the CIA.

It is no secret that the Luce newsmagazines were considered as important keys on the CIA’s “mighty Wurlitzer,” as one former agent referred to the list of publications and writers that was regularly used in getting a story “out there” to the public. 

The film was withheld from the general public for a long time. Why should that be? We even had Dan Rather on CBS Television do a little broadcast of what he saw when supposedly shown the film in private. His was a completely false description, as you may easily see for yourself (see FOOTNOTE). Why was that required, a deliberate false description broadcast by one of the most well-known men in American broadcasting? One can only be sure Rather did not just decide on his own to do this or that his broadcast had anything to do with Oswald, except to support the unproved notion that Oswald, supposedly behind the president on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository building, was the sole assassin, an idea that had been set in stone early by J. Edgar Hoover.

We have testimony that the film was delivered to a quickly-assembled group of specialists at CIA by hand. They worked into the wee hours to assemble a “story board” for some very high-level presentation. There’s nothing wrong with that, but at a later date, one of these technicians was shown what we now understand as the Zapruder film, and he said that it clearly was not the original film.

Importantly, the halo we now see above Kennedy’s head as a bullet struck was not on the original film. Instead there was a cone-shaped ejection from the rear of Kennedy’s head. That ejection would, of course, suggest a shot from the front, and it would also support other testimonies as that of a police outrider on his motorcycle being spattered with blood and brain tissue. That simply could not happen with a shot from where Oswald supposedly was.

The film, as we know it, has been altered. You see, we know an early copy of the film – three had been made – was delivered also to the CIA’s top photo lab in Rochester for work. This was a lab in which almost anything possible to do with film could be done. The world’s best equipment and top experts worked there. We do not know what was done, but considering the comment, above, of the technician who worked on what definitely was the original film, it would appear changes were made to a copy that resulted in the film we now see.

There are a great many more such serious issues left totally unresolved today, the kind of issues which should not be unresolved with the most ordinary murder, let alone the murder of a president. Perhaps the greatest set of issues is around the President’s autopsy. There is a huge set of issues here, and I won’t go through them all. Several entire books have been written on the topic, including the very important “Best Evidence” by David Lifton. I’ll mention only a few glaring matters.

In the Zapruder film, we see President Kennedy, his car emerging from behind a freeway sign, grasping at his throat with both hands. Clearly, even in the altered film we have - and there is reason to believe that this emergence-from-behind-the-sign sequence was also altered - Kennedy was hit by a bullet in the throat. The emergency medical people attending him – all experienced, very senior people – later described the wound as a small puncture wound just above the knot of his necktie, a puncture wound with bullets invariably indicating an entrance wound. A tracheotomy was performed - involving two tiny slits (about two centimeters long) on the sides of the wound – to accommodate the insertion of a tube for emergency breathing.

Now at some point in time later, autopsy photos of the President were taken by someone and distributed to the press. Some of them are strange and mysterious photos, poorly lighted, not always well focused, and in black-and-white – not at all to the standard of official autopsy photos of the time. The most striking one is of Kennedy on his back with his eyes still open. There is a sizable gash in the center of his throat, big enough to almost resemble someone having started to try slashing his throat. This was what the official autopsy doctors and technicians saw, and it bears no resemblance to what was described in Dallas. This strange wound ended-up being called an exit wound for a bullet which entered Kennedy from behind – in other words, the direction of the bullet making it was reversed.

The official autopsy notes, which of course in a murder case becomes an important legal document, were destroyed later and burned by the doctor writing his report. He wrote fresh ones, and we have often been given the silly excuse (silly certainly when it comes to matters like an autopsy) that this was because the original notes had blood on them. This destruction was an illegal act.

Of course, legality played very little role in how the President’s body was treated. We know that local officials in Dallas demanded that the body be autopsied there, as required by law, and a literal fight broke out with the Secret Service drawing guns to wheel the body away. The body was flown to Washington along with Mrs. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Even its treatment then is seriously in doubt with many bits of evidence suggesting it was not even in the coffin brought along with Mrs. Kennedy to the autopsy hospital. Instead it appears to have been delivered in the rear in a kind of cheap shipping coffin.

The importance of this lies in the fact that we have testimonies that the President’s body, when received for formal autopsy, had already had some medical work done on it. The technician receiving and opening the shipping case has described what he found which you can read in Lifton’s book.

Further, and very importantly, two FBI agents who attended the autopsy made notes which became an official record apart from the doctor’s report. Two riveting small items are in that FBI write-up. The first involves the agents’ description, before the autopsy was started, of the body as having had some “surgery about the head.” We are given no details. The second is a tiny mention of receiving a “missile” removed from the President by one of the doctors. Again, no details. Was this missile the bullet that we believe entered Kennedy’s neck from the front?

We don’t know exactly what happened to the President’s body in being moved from Dallas to Washington. Was his body ever in the casket with Mrs. Kennedy and President Johnson? Had it been sent off separately for the quickest possible receipt in Washington? Or was it surreptitiously removed aboard the plane? The fact is that work was done on the body by someone somewhere in Washington before the official autopsy seems beyond dispute. The autopsy proper, an event with a number of generals and admirals and big suits standing in the room as witnesses, must have been a very bizarre event. Why were they necessary?

Why was the autopsy even held in a military facility with military doctors and many high-ranking military men watching and even sometimes telling the doctors what to do, as one of the doctors related years later? The military autopsy doctors did not compare in expertise to the pathologist in a large American city like Dallas where shootings are frequent. But of course, military doctors follow orders.

Another intriguing and unexplained event involving the trip back to Washington was Lyndon Johnson’s insistence on being sworn into office. We’ve all seen the photos taken inside the plane. Poor Mrs. Kennedy had to stand there in a confined space, still in her blood-spattered clothes, watching the man she knew her husband distrusted being sworn into office. It was all completely unnecessary. Was Johnson subjecting the Kennedy family to some kind of degradation ceremony? It was possible with this unbelievably crude man, a man who, as President in the White House, is known for behaviors like talking to reporters while sitting on the toilet and once, in response to a question about why America was in Vietnam, unzipping his pants and pulling out his penis, saying something like, “See, this is why.”

Of course, once Johnson was sworn into office and had possession of the “best evidence,” Kennedy’s body, a fundamental division in post-assassination events occurred. Attention in many respects shifted to Washington rather than remaining where it should have been, the scene of the crime in Dallas. Johnson could, with the cooperation of people like the admired and admiring J. Edgar Hoover, direct the way events unfolded, and he very much did. Bobby Kennedy’s authority was imperceptibly, to outsiders, reduced to that of a token office holder. Within a week, the Warren Commission was appointed, a commission whose job was twisted badly from the beginning.

Earl Warren did not want to serve as Chairman of the Commission, but Johnson used a suggestive and threatening line, delivered in a theatrical tone of voice, to convince him otherwise, a line he used on many people at the time. It went something like, “If you knew what I know, the lives of tens of millions could be at risk in these events.” Well, what responsible high official could turn down an appeal put in those terms? It was a complete lie of course, but it had not been that long since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and memories of those truly frightening events were fresh.

The terms establishing the Warren Commission virtually guaranteed its failure. Most importantly, the FBI did all the investigation, Hoover’s FBI, that is. Hoover, the man who extraordinarily-early had said they had their man in Oswald. Also, behind the scenes there was Johnson’s often repeated, “If you knew what I know, the lives of tens of millions could be at risk in these events.” So, it was essential that findings be established quickly to avoid some vaguely-forecast catastrophe. Since Hoover considered that they already had their man, it was only necessary to collect a big pile of tidbits supporting that conclusion, and that is precisely what was done.

Those who are familiar with the Warren Report understand that it is just one long prosecutor’s brief. It is not an objective effort in the least. Indeed, at times it goes so far out of its way to be unfair, it is embarrassing to an honest mind. None of the Commission’s activities reflected the standard rules of courts with arguments and evidence from both sides. In essence, it is a document which cast aside all principles of normal justice and fair procedure to declare a dead man guilty of murder with a carefully-selected pile of exhibits and witnesses, that man having no proper representation even in the proceedings, and certainly no other person or group was even considered worthy of investigation.

Why was it necessary to do things in that fashion? If you wanted to find the truth, you would never proceed that way, but it is just what you would do if you wanted to get a story “out there,” and out there with an impressive shelf-full of books which resemble the client-confidence props you see in every lawyer’s office. The twenty-six volumes of “evidence” published after the 889-page report were so carelessly assembled that no index was provided. Imagine, publishing the equivalent of a huge encyclopedia of photos and transcripts and exhibits with no way of finding anything? And as all researchers know, the way in which these were thrown together, literally in a jumble, makes an index even more necessary. It did serve, though, to slow mightily all efforts for independent checking of the report’s claims. You see, even though exhibits and witnesses were carefully selected and many witnesses were guided as what to say by FBI agents, the vast pile does contain some interesting information, a good deal of it suggesting the Commission’s conclusions were often not well-considered and even deceptive.

There are many anecdotes demonstrating the “agenda” of the Commission and that of its investigative arm, the FBI, but my favorite one is when the Chairman, Earl Warren, visited Jack Ruby in his Dallas cell, Ruby having killed Oswald on national television and in the police station. Ruby literally told Warren that if he wanted him to talk about the truth, he must take him to Washington. He strongly suggested that events hadn’t been as they appeared. He pretty close to begged Warren, saying it was not safe in Dallas for him to talk.

This was all said in Ruby’s usual gangster-like, twisted and garbled speech, but what he was saying couldn’t be clearer. And who could doubt the matter of safety with a police department riddled with corruption and dark secrets, some of whose members clearly had assisted Ruby in his tasks and some of whose members had so badly handled pieces of evidence that they became legally useless?

Warren told Ruby that that would not be possible. Why would that be? Who would have argued with the Commission Chairman and former Chief Justice if he said that is what he wanted to do to secure vital information? No one, of course. So much for Warren’s battle for truth.

    

FOR DAN RATHER’S EARLY DISHONEST DESCRIPTION OF THE ZAPRUDER FILM PLUS THE ACTUAL FILM ITSELF AS WE NOW KNOW IT, SEE:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/john-chuckman-comment-old-phony-and-cia-shill-dan-rather-cited-second-time-recently-against-trump-fake-news-from-one-of-the-corporate-presss-old-experts-in-fakery-the-record-on-the-zapruder-fil/

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITISH SCRIBBLER JONATHAN FREEDLAND CHIMES IN WITH HOW "CONSPIRACY THEORIES" DISTRACT US FROM REAL THREATS - ALMOST THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

"Conspiracy theories such as JFK distract from the real threats we face'

That is not even close to being the case.

If the assassination of a President can be effectively covered-up, what cannot?

And a great many terrible events have happened in the United states since that crime. Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria plus many other bloody awful things that make no sense.

Of course, the author’s use of the term "conspiracy theory" should be a red flag for astute readers.

That term was generated by a CIA publicist/disinformation officer in 1967 as a way to express contempt for those doubting the Warren Report, a document in fact riddled with errors and inconsistencies.

But the corporate press a half century later still uses it, as we see here.

Readers may enjoy:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/john-chuckman-comment-release-of-secret-jfk-files-why-was-this-junk-ever-secret-is-the-question-to-ask-i-offer-just-some-of-the-reasons-the-killing-had-to-be-a-conspiracy-here/

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SECRET JFK FILES RELEASE - WHY WAS THIS JUNK EVER SECRET? IS WHAT TO ASK - I OFFER JUST SOME OF THE REASONS THE KILLING HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO THE INDEPENDENT

JFK files: Many of most important and secret files kept from public, perhaps forever

Donald Trump said the still unreleased documents could cause 'potentially irreversible harm', in a comment sure to encourage conspiracy theories

Thanks, Independent.

This is not what most of the press is featuring today, but it is actually the big story here.

I've read some quickie summaries of documents released, and I have to say they contain almost nothing that was not known and certainly nothing of decisive importance.

Relative trivia like Hoover warning Dallas Police of an attempt on Oswald's life. A memo which of course could be interpreted as nothing but Hoover covering his behind.

Hoover was always a very suspicious character through the entire assassination events. First, it was his agency that did all the investigative work for the Warren Commission. His Agency that selected which witnesses would testify and which would not, the selection often seeming to show the most perverse inclination to the witness who an unbiassed observer might say was the least reliable.

And it was his Agency which browbeat many witnesses into amending details of what they witnessed and told a number in threatening terms not to divulge what they were saying. We also have witnesses who later discovered their words in the published Report had been altered from what they actually said.

And it is Hoover who early on named the guilty party as Oswald. He never offered any sound reason, always referring to Oswald along lines like “some lone nut communist.”

Hoover was of course aware of Oswald owing to Oswald’s having been a “defector.” And we even have an earlier memo of Hoover’s, never explained, about perhaps someone impersonating Oswald. It just hangs there in space with no context or explanation.

It should be mentioned, too, that Hoover loathed the Kennedys, both of them. I do not believe he was associated with the assassins – though some people very much do – but I think he privately rejoiced in Kennedy’s death. With the President gone, he would no longer be seriously subject to the demands of his formal boss, Attorney General Robert, a man he truly detested. And he would not be asked to retire because Lyndon Johnson loved him.

The investigation of the assassination was also the opportunity to once again preach his favorite official sermon about the extreme danger communists represented to America. He had pursued communists for decades, even at the cost of letting a genuine national threat, the Mafia, grow and prosper. It was said at one time that about thirty percent of the American Communist Party’s members were FBI agents or informants. And, quite simply, Hoover had no motive to relentlessly pursue the people who had actually improved his life as well as America’s, as he saw it.

The arrest of Oswald was one of the most bizarre and unexplained matters in the whole assassination saga. There was no reason at all for anyone to seek him. There was no basis for a suspicion. The only thing that was known not long after the assassination was that Oswald had left work, as did others. A description that went out on police radio was so generic as to be virtually useless in locating any specific person. And why would police converge on a movie theater away from downtown owing simply to call claiming a man had sneaked in without buying a ticket?

Why was Oswald at that movie theater? Almost certainly to meet someone he knew from the conspiracy, quite likely Jack Ruby. Ruby is very likely to have been the man who earlier shot Officer Tippet on the street. Oswald could not have made it there in time for that event, walking as he did from his boarding house. We have good timing testimony on that killing from several witnesses.

And Tippet was known as a shady cop in Dallas, with right wing associations. He was quite likely involved with the plotters in some minor way. Ruby shot him to silence him just as he may have been headed to the theater to meet and shoot Oswald, but all the sudden heavy police presence prevented him from doing so. He, of course, two days later shot Oswald while right in police custody in a supposedly high-security prisoner transfer.

The summaries of new documents just released I saw are so uninformative you have to ask yourself why the documents would ever have been classified in the first place.

They include things like the fact that Lyndon Johnson was once a member of the Klu Klux Klan in Texas. Wow, now there is a serious state secret. And a fact, considering all the other horrors of Johnson’s career – documented election rigging, massive financial corruption with people like Billy Sol Estes, foul behavior of every description, starting a massive pointless war in Vietnam, complicity in Israel’s 1967 War and its attack on an American spy ship – the KKK fact seems trivial.

Indeed, as was asked at the time of the assassination, why was any of it a matter of state security and secrecy if the murder was the work of one disgruntled man? Why were any documents ever made secret? And why are many still secret after this dump?

Oswald is said in one document to have spoken with a KGB agent, Valeriy Kostikov, from the KGB's directorate for assassination, in Mexico City? We already knew that story. You can find it in dozens of books.

The real question remains whether Oswald himself was, in fact, ever in Mexico City? It is just taken for granted by our press, as it pretty much was by the Warren Report.

The CIA covered the Soviet Embassy there with cameras and telephone intercepts 24 hours a day, yet when asked to produce photos and recordings of Oswald back for the early investigations, the CIA produced a photo of a total stranger, blindingly clearly not Oswald, and claimed any phone recordings had been routinely erased.

There is not one shred of solid evidence placing Oswald in Mexico City, although we know very well that someone resembling him was there, going between the Cuban and Russian Embassies and bringing a lot of attention to himself. Cuba? Russia? Early 1960s?

Why would anyone do that? The best guess is to have Oswald’s name associated with Cuba when the assassination occurred.

There were other efforts at such association during Oswald’s time in New Orleans. He worked passing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba organization, even though he was never a proper member. Some of these leaflets were actually mistakenly stamped with the address of Guy Bannister Associates on Camp Street, Bannister being a retired fairly senior FBI Agent and a known advocate for right-wing causes.

His Agency was likely in part a front for CIA’s anti-Castro weapons acquisition and distribution. Remember, these were days of intense anti-Castro activity by CIA and its proxies like the various anti-Castro groups. A couple of witnesses saw Oswald at the office once or at another location with Bannister.

Oswald’s leaflets, when people filled out the form to support Fair Play for Cuba, simply provided Bannister and those working with him with lists of local Castro sympathizers. The effort of course further associated Oswald’s name with Cuba and with vaguely Marxist sympathies, something that was certainly an act.

Why would he desire to create all that attention? So that, after the assassination, the name Oswald would be firmly connected with those awful places, Russia and Cuba. And believe me, there is nothing in 1963 that the CIA wanted to see more than another invasion of Cuba. The Bay of Pigs invasion by a proxy army of trained refugees in 1961 had badly failed, and part of Kennedy’s agreement with Khrushchev, late 1962, to end the Cuban Missile Crisis included a promise not to invade Cuba. Those two events alone and their aftermath made Kennedy loathed at the CIA and by America’s Cuban refugee terrorist groups in places like New Orleans and Miami.

Another not widely-known fact which screams conspiracy were previous assassination plots against Kennedy, one in Chicago and one in Miami. The one in Chicago was planned remarkably along the same lines as Dallas. High-power rifles, elevated position, several shooters, and a patsy candidate. It was broken up, but the would-be assailants escaped. In Miami, the President’s trip was changed from a car to a helicopter in the face of serious threat information.

The people actually plotting the assassination wanted not only to get rid of a President they hated but they wanted the assassination itself to provide America with an irresistible cause for invading Cuba in force despite any previous understanding with the Russians. They were trying to “kill two birds with one stone.”

It should also always be borne in mind that Oswald himself had no known motive. He said more than once that he admired Kennedy. He was not really some wild-eyed Marxist either, despite pretenses. Indeed, the suggestion provided by his associations in New Orleans – as Guy Bannister - was that, if anything, he might have had right-wing sympathies. But there is reason not to believe even that. Oswald did work as an FBI informant, despite Hoover’s denial, and I believe that work would have been associated with the Kennedys’ efforts to clamp down on CIA and anti-Castro activities to improve relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba after the Missile Crisis.

The likelihood of Oswald being impersonated briefly in Cuba parallels somebody resembling Oswald involved with a list of pre-assassination incidents in Dallas we know about. These ranged from a man acting bizarrely while test-driving a car with a salesman and claiming to be Oswald (Oswald himself could not drive) to a man making a spectacle of himself at a shooting range.

Everyone who has read at length on the subject knows there was a man resembling Oswald deliberately and showily doing various odd things around Dallas, there being many witnesses, to call attention to himself in the weeks before the assassination. Indeed, right in the Texas Book Depository, there was another employee named Billy Lovelady who greatly resembled Oswald, enough to often be confused with him. Indeed, Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, a man whose various testimony suggests good observational ability, maintained that he thought he saw Oswald leave the Book Depository and jump into a light-colored station wagon which sped away. Oswald himself we know did not leave that way.

Of course, no serious assassin would ever do such things to call extreme attention to himself as someone did in Oswald’s name shortly before the assassination, and the set of events is just one of a number of things which strongly suggest conspiracy.

We still have no indication how Oswald learned to speak Russian in the United States while in the Marines, but we have evidence that he did so fluently although not always with good grammar, and he spoke it before his discharge and going off to the Soviet Union. The Warren Commission studiously avoided details of this tricky topic.

And how did a man who had threatened to tell the Soviets radar secrets about the U-2 spy plane he learned in the Marines, as Oswald very much did, get to return home without any controversy or penalties?

How did he get an early discharge from the Marines on the flimsiest of evidence of a compassionate problem with his mother, whom he left just two days after arriving from the Marines to take off on an elaborately-planned journey to Russia? Who planned that elaborate trip which reflected knowledge of the easiest location for entering the Soviet Union? Who paid his costs?

How did he manage to bring a Soviet wife, who spoke almost no English, with him when he returned to America in less than three years? In the early 1960s, with the “Reds are at the Gates” rage going on? Unbelievable.

And how did he manage to hit upon a group of White Russian emigres and Russian-speakers in Dallas, people who gave the couple all kinds of assistance? And several of those people had past associations with CIA although they weren’t employees. People like George de Mohrenschildt and Ruth Paine.

Why would White Russian (anti-communist)-associated people take any interest in a so-called Marxist just returned from having defected to the Soviet Union, and a young man of very humble means and origins when some of them were seriously connected? Mohrenschildt, for example, was a sophisticated aristocrat and was related to Jackie Kennedy.

I could make a long list of important facts screaming cover-ups and conspiracy, but I think one of the more important ones came to light recently, and not from these documents. It was from the Cuban refugee, CIA-trained terrorist Antonio Veciana of the violent anti-Castro group, Alpha 66, finally telling us the truth about a famous incident known to all researchers.

Veciana saw a contact of his, a man with the pseudonym Maurice Bishop, talking with Oswald before the assassination. In the past, he would never identify Bishop as the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips, but he finally has done so in his recent book. So here we have a quite senior CIA agent, David Atlee Phillips, meeting with Oswald before the assassination, identified by a man who worked closely with him, albeit under another name.

Again, during the meetings of the Warren Commission, there was an emergency meeting called about the discovery of an FBI informant number for Oswald as well as an uncashed voucher for $200. They simply dropped the whole matter with a self-serving letter from Hoover denying any connection.

We know Oswald had intelligence connections, but still apparently nothing is in this release of trivia.

This dump of bits of redacted papers it seems will add nothing of substance to our understanding, and that is what it clearly was meant to do. It has been done only to say, “See, we told you so.”

Saying CIA had no involvement in Kennedy's assassination is exactly like the claim, made a thousand times, that CIA had no role in the induced-terror imposed on Syria to topple its government, or, indeed, a long series of ugly coups and assassinations in a number of countries abroad.

Readers may also enjoy:

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/1544/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/lincoln-was-wrong-the-ease-of-fooling-most-of-the-people-most-of-the-time/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/john-chuckman-comment-some-really-interesting-historical-stuff-on-the-assassination-of-john-kennedy/

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AS TRUMP TURNS BACK ON THE WORLD STAGE IS SET FOR XI'S CHINA - WASHINGTON RESEMBLES A LUNATIC ASYLUM TODAY AND NOT JUST TRUMP

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

"As Trump turns his back on the world, the stage is set for President Xi'

There is a lot of truth in this idea.

And I'm sure this brilliant and well-educated man, Xi, (degree in chemical engineering and a doctorate in Law from one of China's best universities, in a country where the competition for acceptance is fierce) will take every advantage he can.

Trump represents a step backward, but then so does virtually this entire generation of American leaders. A whole list of inadequate people who busy themselves over total nonsense like Russian election influence. Washington resembles a dangerous lunatic asylum at times.

Trump himself, despite his past business success, has really now demonstrated a remarkable degree of incompetence and I would say cowardice in the face of powerful domestic interests.

America is desperately flailing around in every direction to enforce its global dominance in the face of new realities with new rising powers and new economic realities.

The post WWII glory is unavoidably headed for relative decline for many reasons, and a multi-polar world is emerging. These are things we should all welcome.

America’s efforts to avoid its relative decline is a hopeless and dangerous effort.

Readers may enjoy:

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/john-chuckman-essay-dangerous-flailing-and-bellowing-of-the-beast/

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP PROVIDES A CONTINUING SPECTACLE OF COWARDICE - RATHER THAN STAND UP TO THE ISRAEL LOBBY HE LIES AND APPOINTS INCOMPETENTS AND ENDANGERS PEACE OVER IRAN

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GARETH PORTER IN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE

U.S-Iran policy is closer to Israel than it has been in years.

“Trump Trashes Iran Deal to Satisfy Netanyahu”

I really do not think anyone needs to be told that, but I still welcome anyone supporting the truth.

It is as obvious as if Trump had a Star of David branded into his forehead while speaking about Iran, a country which has scrupulously abided by its nuclear Agreement and a country, unlike Israel, which has in the modern era never started a war.

It is a good measure of what a truly cowardly figure Trump has proved to be.

Instead of the true long-term interests of the country he was elected to lead, he goes against the testimony and concerns of every statesman and nuclear expert in the world and risks instability and war.

And he has appointed, also undoubtedly at the behest of Israel’s lobby, the biggest loud-mouthed hack ever to represent the United States in the UN, Nikki Haley, who works hard at regularly sounding as though she represented Israel rather than the US.

Of course, in that, as in almost her every word about anything, she sounds much like a lunatic to most of the planet.

The true measure of cowardice in my view is a leader failing to stand up to unfair and dangerous demands from special interests.

But that is exactly what Trump has done, just as he has folded vis-a-vis the Washington establishment and the CIA.

A true coward, that’s our Trump.

Of course, the really dangerous thing is that he likely knows this in his own heart of hearts.

And that embarrassing knowledge may drive him to prove what a “tough guy” he really is in other spheres, such as relations with North Korea.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BACK TO THE DISCREDITED DOSSIER AND WHO FUNDED IT - CIA DISINFORMATION TACTICS AS PART OF AMERICAN "DEMOCRACY"

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Hillary Clinton's campaign and DNC helped fund Trump-Russia research

Dossier that contends Russia was engaged in a longstanding effort to aid Trump is likely to fuel complaints by the president that it was politically motivated

"...fuel complaints by the president that it was politically motivated..."

You are kidding, aren't you?

What on the earth else could it have been?

The search for truth?

Good God, I seriously doubt Hillary has told the truth about anything since she 7 years old, and maybe not even then.

And the DNC in recent years, as WikiLeaks has so clearly shown us doing the job of investigation that corporate newspapers refuse to touch, has been as bent as she is.

_____________________

Response to a reader who said they all do research on opponents:

The issue is clear.

The "dossier" is not research.

It is a complicated and costly fraud, much the kind of thing dirty outfits like CIA or MI6 do.

Do you think that belongs in a democracy, any democracy?

Talk about Hillary's empty claims of "Russian interference," here are high-level folks playing security service disinformation tricks on voters.

Well, American democracy has well-earned the contempt in which it is widely held

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE NEW YORK TIMES AND ITS NASTY LITTLE GAMES - WARS AND ATTACKING PEOPLE AND APOLOGIZING

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RINF

NYT Laments ‘Forever Wars’ Its Editorials Helped Create

The NYT has a totally consistent record of supporting wars of aggression.

Check it out, and you won't find an exception.

But the NYT has another consistent record.

And that one concerns its many past abuses in reportage of internal American events.

The game it has long played there is: go ahead, attack and attempt to destroy someone or something, and then, afterwards, quietly admit you may have made a mistake and you are setting the record straight.

It has followed that pattern many, many times - one of the reasons I have zero respect for the paper as journalism.

So now it is applying the "principle" to war?

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COLUMN-SCRIBBLER JONATHAN FREEDLAND DEMONSTRATES WHAT A SEA OF HYPOCRISY READERS ARE PITCHED INTO

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

With Trump and Brexit, politicians must put principles before prospects

"politicians must put principles before prospects"?

Is this a sarcasm?

Please name the last politician with principles?

Bob Corker has made a cold calculation about Trump, who is unpopular in the US, with some record low approval ratings at this stage, and who is very unpopular abroad, so much so in Britain that he can't visit so far.

The entire Republican establishment does not like Trump who is viewed as having hi-jacked the party. They mostly don't openly attack him, but in various ways they make their views understood.

Please name a politician who works to diminish his/her prospects? Pure fantasy.

Jeremy Corbyn comes the closest to being a genuinely principled politician in either country, Britain and the US, but Jonathan Freedland helped lead the charge, attacking him a number of times over what were, as it happens, completely unsubstantiated charges.

Well, so much for consistency in the principles of column scribblers.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: OUR COMPLETE IGNORANCE OF WHAT POWERFUL PEOPLE DO TO THE WEAK - WEINSTEIN-STYLE SEXUAL CRIME AND ABUSE IS ONLY THE TIP OF AN ICEBERG

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOSIE COX IN THE INDEPENDENT

Having reported on the still very alpha male-dominated world of business and finance for the last eight years, I could write a book about the sexist remarks and inappropriate jibes I’ve been on the receiving end of

"We’re still dangerously unaware of the full extent of sexual harassment in the workplace"

Yes, of course we are, just as we are dangerously unaware of many, many things where people with power secretly hurt others.

How about the half million killed in Syria, including many women and children, by the US and its allies (including Britain) using mercenaries who pretend to be jihadists?

How about the horrors Israel imposes on Gaza? How many readers could cite one of them?

How about America's dangerous nonsense about Russia?

When some men are very powerful and those who oppose them are weak, there is always abuse and even horrors. We should all understand this instinctively. There is nothing surprising about it when it happens.

If we don't take an interest in millions killed in the Mideast, how should it surprise us that other powerful, unaccountable men behave like Harvey Weinstein?

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICA RUNNING FULL-SPEED BACKWARDS TOWARDS THE 1930s - RELIEF WORK AND THE UN

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

US will stop funding 'ineffective' UN Middle East relief efforts in favour of faith-based groups, says Mike Pence

Intergovernmental organisations 'often failed to help the most vulnerable communities especially religious minorities', claims Vice President

These goons in America just keep attacking the UN.

One part of the organization after another. It was UNESCO’S turn just a short while ago.

Faith-based groups in the Mideast?

I think we all know that they are overwhelmingly Muslim in that part of the world.

Just as we all know the American government wouldn't give five cents to Muslim groups.

America really does seem to be running full-speed backward towards the 1930s.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: RIGHT WING WEAPONIZING OF THE INTERNET? BUT IT HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE BY CIA AND FBI WITH OUTFITS LIKE FACEBOOK AND WIKIPEDIA AND GOOGLE - MORE SCAREMONGERING FOR MORE CONTROL

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LIZZIE DEARDEN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Far-right extremists targeting UK as they 'weaponise internet culture' to spread hatred around the world

Key figures from the European Identitarian movement have met in London 'to discuss starting new UK branch'

'weaponise internet culture'?

An utterly meaningless phrase crafted by those with an interest in control, opposition to the free flow of information, and just basically totalitarian mentalities.

If the phrase has any meaning, it applies to American hi-tech Internet companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.

These companies all surreptitiously steal customer information to supply the thugs at the CIA and FBI, as well as sell it God knows where for profit.

_____________________

Response to a reader comment quoting Wikipedia:

Wikipedia has been so penetrated by American security services that a great many of its current articles aren't worth reading.

Rooms full of guys at CIA must type out new stuff giving the American government slant on things 24 hours a day.

Just check any article on a significant subject involved in important controversy and you will find the clearest effort to "control the narrative."

Wikipedia started as an interesting idea, but it has badly degenerated in recent years.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SOME REALLY INTERESTING HISTORICAL STUFF ON THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN KENNEDY

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YOUSSEF EL-GINGIHY IN THE INDEPENDENT

JFK files: As Donald Trump looks to release classified documents, last living link to assassination drops bombshell

Antonio Veciana, 88, has authored a memoir that promises to shed light on one of the greatest mysteries of our time

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/john-f-kennedy-assasination-cuba-cia-lee-harvey-oswald-antonio-veciana-a7957481.html

This is one of the best summary articles to appear in any newspaper on the subject of the assassination.

I have a life-long interest in the assassination, have read most of the important literature on it, have written published essays on the subject, and have always been a skeptic on the Warren Report.

Indeed, “skeptic” is too tame a word. I have always treated the Warren Report as a shameful compilation of lies since its publication.

One of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell, after reading an advanced copy of the report back in the 1960s, said:

“If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?”

That profound question has never been answered.

Readers may enjoy;

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/1544/

___________________________

Response to another reader who said: “The key to what happened centres on Kennedy’s sacking of John Foster Dulles in November 1962”

Yes, that and one or two other important events, but I think you mean his brother, Allen Dulles, Director of CIA.

The outcome of the Cuban Missile crisis, including Kennedy's backchannel communication with Khrushchev, was another.

Kennedy opposed both Pentagon and CIA advice during the Crisis, and thank God that he did. They would have launched WWIII by landing troops to destroy the Soviet installations.

The CIA and Pentagon were ignorant of the fact that the Soviets had many thousands of troops in Cuba working on and guarding their medium-range missile installations.

The Soviet troops were equipped with a number of short-range Luna nuclear-armed missiles ready to be fired at any landing force.

I think perhaps the final spur for the assassins, if any were needed, was Kennedy's romantic affair with Mary Pinchot (Meyer), a well-connected society type who had a project for world peace. She introduced Kennedy to marijuana in the White House and may well have introduced him to LSD.

She had a bit of a hare-brained scheme for getting eight high Washington society women to turn on their husbands to LSD and somehow manipulate them for world peace. The list of names does not come down to us, but they were all wives of major figures in Washington.

One can just imagine the mandarins at Langley listening to recordings of the Kennedy-Pinchot pillow-talk in 1963. And with Kennedy's proved independent-mind set, I think they decided he was a danger to their idea of the United States.

Mary was assassinated less than a year after Kennedy, and her diary was stolen. She had got up a head of steam concerning what may have really happened to Kennedy while working on her own investigation, and being so well-connected, her investigation might well have been fruitful. After all, her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, was a high-ranking CIA operator.

She was completely aware of the things the CIA did and knew well many people like James Angleton and the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee, almost certainly a covert CIA man.

By the way, many well-informed people believe Angleton himself ran the program of fake American defectors to the Soviet Union in the late-1950s, the one for which Oswald was recruited as a young Marine. Here was a young Marine in the late-1950s suddenly receiving communist literature in the mail at his base and who somehow mysteriously learned to speak Russian.

He was obviously being “sheep-dipped” for his “defection” to the Soviet Union. He then went to live in the Soviet Union for a couple of years, coming back to the United States with a Soviet bride, both of them admitted with relatively little trouble considering the harsh political climate then. They ended-up living among, and being assisted by, a community of Russian-speakers in Dallas, a truly remarkable connection.

The defection program was just the kind of goofy, elaborate scheme that that dangerous man, Angleton, was fond of. Years later, he was dismissed from the CIA, having caused a great many serious internal problems.

But he was still regarded as a demi-god in intelligence circles in the early 1960s, and his name comes up several times in key events around the assassination, especially for some years afterward. He was involved in retrieving secret files from Mexico City after the assassination, he was involved in events around Mary Pinchot’s murder, and he became embroiled in the infamous Nosenko affair at CIA during the 1970s, an affair with some connections to the assassination.

Having been part of the (secret) defector program and having returned to the US made Oswald a perfect candidate for patsy, being vulnerable to being described as a far-out communist, something he most certainly was not. We know Oswald was working as a paid FBI informant at the time (his informant number actually was discovered long ago), and he must have stumbled across the plotters in New Orleans who, in turn, saw his potential as a patsy.

The Kennedys were leaning hard in those last days on all the CIA-established Cuban refugee terror camps in an effort to improve American-Russian and American-Cuban relations. The CIA operations had been huge and made anything Osama bin-Laden later had in the mountains of Afghanistan look like scout camps. And, of course, the Kennedys well knew that the CIA often ignored or misinterpreted presidential directives with which its management disagreed, as they still do today. So, the FBI, undoubtedly against J Edgar Hoover's personal wishes, was ordered to become involved in discovering and breaking-up facilities. Oswald was just one of their informants. He obviously hit the jackpot and paid with his life.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF CIA DOCUMENTS ON THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION - DON'T EXPECT MUCH - AND ALREADY IMPORTANT ONES HAVE GONE MISSING

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RACHEL ROBERTS IN THE INDEPENDENT

JFK Files: What are they and why is Trump releasing them?

Classified documents were due to be released under law - but timing could prove convenient if they discredit the agencies involved in the Russia investigation 

Even if we ignore heavy redactions that will be in the released files – redactions typical in all past releases of such files - and even if we ignore the fact that the CIA has had decades to sanitize any portions that it seriously dislikes, we already know that an important portion of the expected files has disappeared. Yes, that’s right, disappeared.

Files around that most sensitive of all subjects, Lee Harvey Oswald, which were to be part of this release, have already gone missing.

See: https://sputniknews.com/military/201709111057289386-jfk-files-oswald-cia/

This very much reminds me of CIA activity some years back when files on the 1954 coup in Guatemala were legally set for release, and they simply disappeared.

The coup in Guatemala was a CIA operation that deposed a democratic government, that of President Arbenz, and installed a military dictatorship. The CIA was working for interests like America’s banana importers.

___________________________

Response to another comment about the involvement of secret interests:

What about the American establishment which consists of megacorporation interests defended by their servants at the CIA and Pentagon?

There is no other explanation required.

Comic book terms like the Illuminati, Bilderbergs, etc., only serve confusion and cover-up, much like that idiot term, "conspiracy theory," a term coined by CIA publicists in 1967, to discredit legitimate doubts about the Warren Report and a term sadly which has been repeated over and over by the corporate press ever since, including this newspaper.

___________________________

Response to a comment about Trump’s unspoken motive for releasing the files, to discredit an organization, the CIA, which has hounded him:

Maybe, but then isn't that the kind of thing done by all politicians?

I do think it important to recognize that this release is very much the kind of thing Trump's political base expects, although they are certainly not the only ones.

The folks who want a wall on Mexico, jail for Hillary Clinton, a pardon for a discreditable sheriff in Arizona, etc., are keen on the release of government secrets, of which there are many in modern imperial America with its seventeen security agencies (yes, seventeen) and worldwide plots and wars.

Trump spoke before being President of releasing the facts on 9/11, of which I am sure there are many embarrassing ones. However, this seems unlikely in view of how close we are in time to the event and how powerful are some of the interests likely involved.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: GUARDIAN COLUMN ON THE UGLY HANDIWORK OF ISIS (DAESH) IN IRAQ'S MOSUL IGNORES THE REAL STORY OF MODERN IRAQ - THANK YOU, AMERICA, FOR TWENTY YEARS OF HORROR

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Iraq’s lost generation: ‘I have forgotten what happiness is’

"... then Isis destroyed Mosul. Three years on, can they start over?"

Please, this was a terrible set of events, but it does not compare to the George Bush-Tony Blair invasion of Iraq.

Perhaps a million people killed. Millions made refugees. Children lacerated to pieces by American cluster bombs, and the brave photographers of Al-Jazeera actually gave us some unforgettable images of them.

Years of poor electricity service. Years of poor water service. National and world treasures looted, never to be replaced.

Torture, civilian bombing, the use of white phosphorus.

No jobs in what had been the Mideast's most advanced society, one where women and religious minorities were treated better than in Saudi Arabia.

And of course, years of chaos with attacks by rival groups, groups the former government kept in their place.

And all that chaos led eventually to ISIS itself, an ugly monstrosity pretending to a be jihadi group but actually a collection paid mercenaries supported by the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and others including Britain and France.

Their job was to get rid of the previous Iraqi government, topple the government of Syria, and generally to create chaos, keeping the region in tatters.

And when the US actually decided to attack in Mosul the ISIS they'd helped create, for various reasons, they bombed in the most terrible and careless fashion. Thousands of the dead died from American bombing.

Almost twenty years of horror, thank you, America.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CIA URGES DELAY OF FINAL RELEASE OF JFK RECORDS - GEE I WONDER WHY ? - LYING AND KILLING FOR A LIVING IN THE GOOD OLD USA

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN ZEROHEDGE

CIA Urges Trump To Delay Release Of 3,000 Never-Before-Seen Documents On JFK Assassination

I've never believed they will release any truly critical documents.

Why?

Because they cannot help but show CIA involvement, both in the murder and in the cover-up.

Bertrand Russell, at the release of the hopeless Warren Report, profoundly asked: If as we are asked to believe the assassination comes down to murder by a single disgruntled man, where is the reason for secrecy?

His question was never answered, and it cuts to the bone of the whole business since the assassination.

Of course, we know from past events, CIA is also capable of hiding documents in its labyrinthian filing systems or, alternatively, just destroying them.

If any files indeed even exist over such a sensitive matter.

The last release of documents was a joke. The CIA was trying to flog a dead horse with the old Soviet defector Nysenko affair.

That matter is pretty well understood by all people who read history, and it really has no bearing on the secrets of the Kennedy assassination.

Such papers should never even have been regarded as secret. And they really are a pile of disinformation.

So, the CIA is perfectly capable of serving up a bad joke and calling it secret truths.

After all, that's part of what they do for a living.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: NEW RELEASE OF OLD SECRET PAPERS SHOWS CIA KNEW AND SUPPORTED 1960s MASS SLAUGHTER IN INDONESIA - AMERICA'S ACTUAL RECORD IN POSTWAR GENOCIDES

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

US knew about 1960s mass killings of communists in Indonesia, declassified documents reveal

Embassy in Jakarta makes records public from 1963-1966 that expose CIA's knowledge of and support for mass killings carried out at height of Cold War anti-socialist hysteria

We actually did know this already, although the knowledge was perhaps not widespread.

Indeed, the State Department was said to be burning the telephone wires to Jakarta at the time submitting the names of "communists" for the slaughter.

In every case of genuine genocide in the postwar period, rather than make an effort to halt the slaughter, the United States has either contributed in some way to its operation, reflecting political motives, or it has just ignored the whole thing, as it did under Clinton in Rwanda, not wanting to get its hands dirty. It is not an enviable record.

America's secret bombings in Cambodia caused the toppling of a neutral government there and brought into power the Khmer Rouge with their killing fields. America did not lift a finger against the horror, just as it did not in Indonesia or Rwanda.

America's armed services do not serve peace or rights of democracy or human decency. They do not protect the oppressed or brutalized. They do not fight injustice. They serve only the furtherance of empire. Where that is not involved, they will not be found at work.

Yet, it is interesting the way we still so often see words putting America in the place of world protector of democratic and human rights or dire warnings about genocides predicted from some set of events. The words are as empty as all the advertising claims for a thousand products blaring night and day from American television.

At least three times in my adult life, when it might have made a difference, America in fact did nothing. About 3 million lives snuffed out.

And yet people still mindlessly repeat, “Never again.”

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE CRAP DROPPED FROM ON HIGH - MI-5 CHIEF WARNS OF ACCELERATED JIHADI ACTIVITY - THE REAL TRUTHS ABOUT WHAT WE CALL INTERNATIONAL TERROR

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

Britain is facing a terrorist threat as unrelenting as it is unprecedented, MI5 chief warns

Jihadis can 'accelerate from inception to planning to action in just a handful of days'

Crap from on high.

There are only two forms of jihadi terror in this world.

One, the hired-mercenary kind employed by the US and its allies in destroying, or trying to destroy, countries like Libya and Syria.

Britain and France have been complicit in these horrors. Lying about fighting outfits like ISIS and Al-Nusra while in fact assisting them with weapons, advisors, and surreptitious air force support in bombing Iraqi or Syrian infrastructure.

The other form we see, one which is a direct result of the first, are small groups who are seeking vengeance for what has been done to their homes and families by the US and allies like Britain and France.

It is called "blowback" by the secret security people. All of the attacks in France and in London are exactly of this type.

However, just compare the carnage the US and its allies have caused in the Middle East. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and other places including the coup against Egypt's only brief democratic government, that of Morsi.

America's march of terror through the Middle East has taken at least a couple of million lives, crippled countless numbers, and sent millions running for their lives as refugees, something which has nearly destabilized Europe.

Britain and France have not only never opposed America's horrors imposed on a list of countries, they have indeed been willing helpers.

I think I can guarantee if governments get out of the American mass-killing business, the reprisal attacks by desperate groups, the behaviors mistakenly called "international terror" would utterly cease.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: IRAQ'S OCCUPYING KIRKUK FROM ITS SEPARATIONIST KURDS - PRESS MISREPRESENTATION OF THE KURDS - AMERICAN AND ISRAELI PLOTS ENDED

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE INDEPENDENT

Iraq seizes Kirkuk from Kurds leaving two US allies locked in conflict and bringing end to move for independence

Century-old movement for Kurdish independence suffers a calamitous defeat as military reaction to referendum leads to fall of city

Quite poor analysis here.

Iraq has only occupied in Kirkuk what has long been part of Iraq.

And why wouldn't they when the region contains much of the country's oil?

Iraq, before the American-British invasion, was by many measures the most advanced Arab state. Women had more rights than in almost any other Arab state, and certainly by far compared to Saudi Arabia. Fundamentalist religion was not forced on people. There was a vibrant economy with advances in many areas. Financed of course by oil.

This separation stuff is US-inspired, and of course the US has never had any business even being in Iraq. They are war-criminals.

It wants a weakened Iraq for Israel's long-term benefit. And it wants the Kurds to supply oil to Israel. Neither of which is any of America's business.

Imagine trying to get Texas to leave the Union. What do you think Washington's reaction would be?

America has played this dirty game with the Kurds more than once.

In Kissinger's day, the Kurds were given encouragement and support to rebel against Saddam.

Saddam crushed them.

Kissinger and Co in the US just sat picking their noses.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE IMPORTANT CASE OF AL-JAZEERA'S DOCUMENTARY ON THE BRITISH ISRAEL LOBBY INCLUDING AN UNDER-COVER JOURNALIST GETTING REVEALING AND EMBARRASSING TRUTHS

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

Israel's Helpers in Media, Government, and Academia - Al-Jazeera Documentary

"No American national interest, apart from the completely phony contention that Israel is some kind of valuable ally, would justify the taxpayers’ largesse."

"In reality, Israel is a liability to the United States and always has been."

This effort is a very important work of investigative journalism.

I understand that Al-Jazeera also did work inside the American Lobby.

That will be interesting to see whether it can even get air play in the US, the pressures brought to bear by the Lobby in the US at times being almost beyond belief.

Israeli-friendly interests simply control every major broadcaster in the US plus all the big-name newspapers.

This kind of investigation brings to light truths many already understood, but it is always welcome to have additional support for the truth.

In Britain, Tony Blair's "New Labour" was really a code word for a new deal by his Labour Party and Britain's Israel Lobby.

The truth of this is seen in Blair's readiness to lie and manipulate his way into helping the US kill about a million Iraqis in a totally illegal war.

The truth is also seen in his being given the Israel "Peace" Prize of a million dollars after the carnage.

And again, Blair's appointment to a number of positions and sinecures - such as The Mideast Quartet, where he did absolutely nothing - all of which helped make him a very rich man.

The Iraq War was about nothing but destroying the Mideast's most advanced Arabic society and balkanizing the country for Israel's benefit. It had no other purpose, despite all the phony talk at the time, even by deluded liberal opponents, about grabbing the oil.

And just so, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Also the coup in Egypt. All of it an effort to create a cordon sanitaire around Israel and dispose of any governments which were independent-minded about American policies. It has been a 15-year long gradual slaughter, and one which produced millions of refugees, almost de-stabilizing Europe.

Of course, America's whole new tear of aggression in many directions is encouraged by the same interests. The Neocons in the US view a hyper-aggressive America as Israel's best security.

And despite the huge bloodshed and waste of resources and completely immoral behavior of America, the average American just does not understand what is taking place. They always naively believe America fights for democracy and rights. The "Stars and Stripes" always stands for what is right. They believe that because the television and newspapers and paid-politicians all keep telling them so.

And here, of course, we come to the reason America's Washington establishment is so against Russian media. It is simply because the Russian media are able to counteract some of the nonsense ordinary Americans are fed night and day.

In fact, years ago, Al-Jazeera was also extremely controversial in the United States. Some of their brave journalists and photographers gave the world a peek at what was really happening in Iraq and other places. There was a big lobbying effort against Al-Jazeera being allowed to operate in North America, with members of the Israel Lobby leading the charge.

I actually did not think Al-Jazeera had it in them anymore to do this kind of expose, so I'm not quite clear about the whole political atmosphere which permitted this, but the results are welcome. Truth should always be welcome, especially in democratic societies so that voting can be based on facts and not just advertising slogans.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE CONCEPT OF "ANTI-SEMITISM WEAPONIZED" - THE CASE OF BRITAIN'S CORBYN - SUMMARY OF WHAT IS KNOWN OF THE ETHNIC ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY ISRAELIS

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ISRAEL SHAMIR IN RUSSIA INSIDER

"Anti-Semitism Weaponized" 

An accurate phrase for what we see occurring.

The most glaring case was the long campaign against a decent man, Jeremy Corbyn, after he was elected new leader of the Labour Party.

Newspapers like The Guardian - likely the most prejudiced newspaper in Britain - carried on a regular campaign against him on the grounds that there was anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

Not one shred of evidence was ever produced, but there were articles, editorials, and stories.

The campaign reminded me of Senator Joseph McCarthy's phony attacks on "communists in the State Department." McCarthy, an old drunk, had hit upon a way to spark up his flagging political career.

Good old Tony Blair and his acolytes made major contributions, Mr. Blair - with his Iraq War, his Israel "Peace" Prize, and his sinecure appointments like the one to the Mideast Quartet - was one of the Israel Lobby's driving forces in British in British politics.

Why was Britain's Lobby so set against Corbyn?

His views on Israel and Palestine are far-minded, and that is not allowed in Western politics where the Israel Lobby has a firm grip. You must be overwhelmingly for Israel and ignore its countless abuses. Otherwise you are "anti-Semitic."

Well, the brave and capable Corbyn managed to survive the hideous attacks, and today he thrives.

____________________

Response to another reader’s comment on the Origins of contemporary Israelis

Yes, it is even possible that the Palestinians themselves are the closest we have to descendants of the Hebrews.

The Romans were not known to remove the people from the lands they conquered, and they left no record of having done so with the Hebrews.

The dominant people who identify as Jews today are the Ashkenazi, a Germanic people, whom some DNA tests suggest arose about a thousand years ago on the Mediterranean near Italy and migrated north.

Their language is a Germanic language, Yiddish, not Hebrew, although many or most maintain the tradition of learning the ancient Hebrew tongue in their religious schools, just as many Muslims around the world learn Arabic in order to read Koran in its original.

Some DNA tests also suggest Ashkenazi origins, again maybe a thousand years ago, in the Caucasus region going back to the Khazar (Turkic) civilization, another group of people converted to Judaism. But as with other ancient groups affected by Hebrew evangelism, of course, there was movement back and forth between regions and inter-marriage.

Following the extreme success of Christianity which actually started as a sect of Judaism in evangelizing, evidence suggests the Hebrews were for some period evangelists. That's why there are Jewish groups in central Europe, in the Caucasus, and a little in North Africa. There is even a small group called Cochin Jews in India.

Of course, there would eventually have been some inter-marriage - Judaism being a relatively small religion whose various adherents have often have had problems finding a large enough pool of marriage prospects (we see this today with the ultra-Orthodox sometimes travelling long distances for marriage prospects) - so DNA tests today do find some Semitic characteristics in the Ashkenazi.

But overall, the science tells us the Ashkenazi people are Germanic from central or eastern Europe.

Of course, we see the origins not only in DNA and language but in food and physical culture. The traditional foods of Jewish delicatessens and for holiday events such as Passover Seder have no Middle Eastern origins.

The people in Israel have made a conscious effort to assume Middle Eastern foods as their own - thus, we have everything from "Israeli" couscous to "Israeli" olive oil. Thus, Jaffa oranges, which existed well before Israel was re-created, are regarded as Israeli.

If indeed the Palestinians are the true descendants of the Hebrews, it only adds a level of bitter irony to the whole abusive situation of contemporary Israel where they are oppressed and abused and often despised.