TECTONIC PLATES ADRIFT? - Wilson, Lenin; Putin, Obama - rUSsiA

                                                    by Hugh Murray
     I was away for two weeks in Asia, and spent less than 3 hours on the net.  The cable TV in my hotel room was quite limited, and I had trouble finding real news of the world.  BBC and CNN seemed to show nothing but homages to Nelson Mandela, the South African radical who was jailed for years and then emerged as a negotiator for the dismantling of apartheid.  Day after day, the funeral seemed to be the only world news on the British and American channels.  Deutsche Welle showed talking heads.  The local Thai stations showed the continuing demonstrations in Bangkok, but I did not understand the language, so quickly changed the channels.  The Fox Sports channel showed little soccer, and then mainly from the Dutch league, which I do  not follow.  I did chance upon one channel, in English, that kept my attention.  Oliver Stone was interviewed for about an hour, with a co-author on the Hidden History of the US.  I generally disagreed with his views, and yet because of his terrific film, JFK, I kept watching.  There was other news from the Washington bureau.  Yet, I had never heard of the channel.
     Then there was a program on army life, but the language was a Slavic one.  The news showed the demos in Thailand, but much more time was devoted to those in the Ukraine.  Then it dawned on me, RT must stand for Russian Television, Russia Today.  The Ukrainian reports were substantial.  American Sen. John McCain was shown as he asserted among the anti-government protestors that the Ukrainian government's decision not to join the European Union was unacceptable.  We were informed that an American State Dept. official was among the crowd handing out food to the protestors.  But there was additional commentary.  One surmised that if the Ukraine joined the EU, it would be among the most impoverished, joining Greece, and Spain in poverty, while the wealth of the country would be sent to EU bankers.  Later, RT stressed that while anti-gov. protestors were in one square, pro-gov. protestors were just a short distance away in another square.  Clearly, many wanted to move closer to the EU and Western Europe; just as clearly, the govt. and many others preferred to stay closely allied to Russia.
     RT also devoted considerable time to Russian leader's State of the Union speech this December, 2013.  When I heard the analysis of his speech on RT, I began to think the tectonic plates of the world may be changing.
     Soon after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the new Communist government did many things.  Like Snowden who exposed so many secret documents, the Soviets exposed the double-dealing of the Allies, and how they intended to divide the world into colonies and spheres of influence if the Western nations defeated the Central Powers - i.e, if the UK, France, the US, etc. defeated Germany, Aus.-Hungary, and Turkey.  The Soviets also abolished the supremacy of the church in the new Soviet state, and abolished the anti-homosexual laws that had been on the books.
     The West did win the war, and American President Woodrow Wilson seemed a savior of democracy and the world, for a short time.  The religious man, who demanded racial segregation of the American federal bureaucracy, who was determined that the new League of Nations would not cave to the Japanese demand for a statement of equality of all races, had also used federal troops to close the bordellos in New Orleans where a genre of music had originated.  Unable to find work in the closed cat houses, the musicians moved North to Memphis, St. Louis, Chicago, New York and eventually Paris and the world.  From the houses of jizz and sex, jazz became an international rage.  Under Wilson, the religious strain could also be seen in the enactment of Prohibition, the ban on drinking alcohol.  By 1920, Americans were disillusioned with Wilson and his war.  Wilson's Democratic Party was swept out of office, and the Republicans led the nation to a return to Normalcy.  Not quite.  Women cut their hair, shortened their skirts, began to smoke, and dance ( and even drink, in defiance of the new law).  The new automobiles were becoming bordellos on wheels, according to some preachers.  Yet, even in this relaxed atmosphere in America, with some jazz titles like Masculine Women and Feminine Men, homosexuality was still illegal and strongly stigmatized.  By contrast, homosexuality was no longer illegal in the New Red Russia.  And Communist front-groups, like the League of Militant Athiests in the West, made it clear that they rejected the old morality of the church.  And though illegal in the new Weimar Germany, it was becoming quite open, and even films were made like, Different from the Others, and A Man's Young Girlhood, and Dr. Magnus Hirschfelt's sexual institute and campaign for legalization of homosexuality made Berlin a center of research and agitation on this issue.  Christopher Isherwood would stay at the institute when he moved to Berlin in the early 1930s.  In the 1920s then the new Soviet Union, and to some extent Weimar Germany may have been viewed as gay havens.  Dispite flappers and speakeasy (illegal liquor) in the US, the KKK marched down the streets of Washington DC and traditional values were upheld; religion was popular, and evolution was condemned even in the courts.
     The Depression brought out new demands for morality, to clean up the filth that may have caused such economic misery.  Admittedly, it was not so clear in the US, for with the election of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, one of the first acts was to end Prohibition, so Americans could drink alcohol legally once again.  But there would be no more immorality portrayed on the silver screen, as the Hays office would censor Hollywood films.  No more homos portrayed in the movies, no more exposure of so much skin by the young starlets, and dialog had to be decent.  Just a few weeks before FDR took the oath as President of the US, Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor, and he too demanded greater morality of the Germans.  Quickly, the Hirschfeld institute was raided and closed, and its books and research volumes were burnt.  Most gay publication were now illegal, as were most gay bars.  And in 1934, when Hitler killed Roehm and other leaders of his Storm Troopers, then homosexuality was utterly condemned in the new Germany.  Hitler's New Germany was to be a Moral Germany.  Not to be outdone, Stalin created a new constitution for his USSR, and each state in that union was now required to ban homosexuality.  The Webb's assured readers that homosexuality had been imported into the USSR by foreigners, anyway.
      In WWII, the various nations went to war expressing their own versions of "morality," and incarcerating, criminalizing, and sometimes exterminating those deemed immoral or unworthy of life.  By the 1950s, there were basically 2 super powers and views of the world, atheistic communism, which still outlawed homosexuality, and free, religious America.  To illustrate the contrast, the American pledge to the flag was changed again.  Initially, one was to raise the right arm to the flag, palm up, and recited the pledge.  But that was to similar to the fascist salute, so the right hand over the heart replaced the outstretched arm.  In the 1950s, the wording was changed: "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" was lengthened by the insertion of "under God" after nation.  Judeo-Christian morality against atheistic Communism.
     By 2009 with the election of Barack Obama as Pres. of the US, one can see the enormous changes.  Judeo-Christian morality is no longer on a pedestal in the age of multiculturalism.  Moreover, the foreign policy of Obama and Hillary Clinton is openly pro-Muslim, and helped the fanatical Muslim Brotherhood achieve power in Egypt, and its allies take power in Libya, and almost in Syria.  Europe has ever more Muslim immigrants who achieve a privileged status thanks to liberal judges and bureaucrats in the EU.  Londonstan has areas of sharia law today, as do many cities in the UK, the Netherlands, France.  The Left has allied itself with the most anti-feminist, most anti-gay crowd, the Muslims.  Obama generally accepts this view inside the US.
    Putin's Speech of December 2013 is in some ways amazing.  The former KGB official comes out defending Christian morality, implicitly attacking gays, Muslims, and the cult of the multi.  Meanwhile, America's President Obama has become a champion of gays, illegal aliens, Hispanics, Blacks, single mothers abortions, etc.  While Obama demands a liberal agenda for most nations, Putin now urges nationalism, national traditions, traditional values, religion.  Suddenly, the former KGB Communist seems to have more in common with the right wing in Europe that seeks to preserve national traditions, that opposes liberal judicial edicts from Brussels, that opposes economic diktats from Berlin.  The Left of the KGB seems to be meeting the Right of Marine LePen in France, of UKIP in Britain, and of various right wing parties throughout Europe.  One contrast, some of the Rightwing parties, as those in the Netherlands, have be led by gays who are horrified by the violent hatred of the Muslims.
     In the 1950s, America stood for traditional religion and traditional values and traditional bigotries.  Today, it stands for multiculturalism and persecution of any speech that offends one of the many "favored" minorities or women.  Today, Putin proclaims the New Russia stands for traditional values and religion and (traditional bigotries).
    American Rightwinger Pat Buchanan had long criticized Pres. G W Bush and Obama for meddling in Eastern Europe and antagonizing Russia.  He would not agree with Sen McCain in the Ukraine.  Indeed, in his most recent column, Buchanan sees Russia's Putin as one of "us," a Paleoconservative.
    Bottom Line - In the 1920s America, even with its flappers, represented nationalism and traditional religious values.  In the 1920s the New Soviet Union represented internationalism, and a sexual revolution in which a woman official declared sex was like a "glass of water," (perhaps she should have said like a box of chocolates) with abortion, homosexuality, and more open-type marriages.  Religion in the USSR was persecuted.  Today, there has been a reversal - Putin represents nationalism and traditional religious values; Obama represents internationalism and secularism, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, etc.   How the world has changed?  Or is this just cosmetic?  And how will it continue to change?

He Hurls a Compendium of Facts

IT’S TIME FOR THE TRUTH!  THE JFK COVER-UP:

THE REAL CRIME OF THE CENTURY (2012) by CHARLES E. HURLBURT

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Hurlburt has written an “overview” of the Kennedy assassination case.  His book is not based on new research, but he has assembled and organized the research of many authors who have delved in the topic.  Hurlburt has deduced a reasonable assessment of the entire case – the murder in Dealey Plaza, the autopsies, the slaying of the accused, the investigation, and the “cover-ups.”  With Hulbert’s numerous footnotes, he guides the inquisitive reader to the sources of his assertions.

            Hurlburt does not pretend to hold all the answers to these crimes; indeed, he asserts that some of the evidence is blatantly contradictory, so one will have to arrive at the most probable conclusions from what we are provided.  Unfortunately there is much that we still do not know, for “the CIA is still refusing to release over a million records…until at least 2017…”(p. 306)  I do not accept all of Hurlburt’s hypotheses.  While he rejects Kennedy’s throat wound as being the exit wound for a bullet fired at the Texas School Book Depository (that in the Warren Report version then travels to injure Gov. Connally in several spots), Hurlburt also rejects the notion that the small throat wound in Kennedy was the result of a shot from the front.  Instead, Hurlburt argues that a bullet from the back cracked Kennedy’s skull, and a small piece of bone might have exited the throat.  Hurlburt also contends that there were seven shots in Dealey Plaza fired at the President from different locations.  Needless to say, Hurlburt believes that the assassination was a conspiracy, and one that reached high levels of government.

            Yet, Hurlburt’s short summary of so much material permits new questions to rise.  For example, he notes that when Oswald was Marine stationed in Japan, he received medical treatment for VD, which he contracted “in the line of duty, not due to in own misconduct.”(115)  Was Oswald having sex with a suspected KGB prostitute for the US Government?  Was Oswald and agent of the US Government?

            Hurlburt spend many pages on “a dirty rumor.”  Beginning in November 1963 rumors circulated that Oswald was employed by the FBI, and possibly the CIA, even earning $200 a month from the FBI.(75-76)  Hurlburt quotes early Warren Commission proceedings as to how they should tackle this “dirty” rumor, and how to resolve the issue.  After considerable discussion, they basically asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover about Oswald.  Hoover denied Oswald was either an agent or an informer.  The Warren Commission made no further investigation of the topic.

            Yet, one of the first actions by the FBI in November 1963 was to destroy evidence.  Earlier that month Oswald had left a note at the FBI office in Dallas for Agent Hosty.  Once Oswald was identified as the probable assassin, Hosty was order by his FBI superior to destroy that note.  Hosty flushed it.  In his own book, former FBI Agent Don Adams reveals that his FBI reports of November 1963 were distorted to absolve other possible suspects, and aimed at fulfilling Hoover’s view that Oswald was the lone, nut assassin.  When Oswald was arrested for disturbing the peace in downtown New Orleans in the summer of 1963 – the scuffle he had while distributing pro-Castro leaflets with a group of anti-Castro Cubans – Oswald requested to speak with an FBI agent.  There seems to be no notes of that conversation.  Were those notes ordered to be destroyed by FBI superiors, too?

            Despite the FBI’s distortion and destruction of evidence, the Warren Commission decided to rely chiefly upon the FBI for its investigation into the Kennedy assassination.

            Hurlburt writes how the Establishment sought to smear and destroy those who questioned the official conclusion that Oswald was a lone, nut assassin, who in turn was slain by Jack Ruby who hoped to spare Mrs. Kennedy the trauma of a trial in Dallas.  To maintain the official line, liberal icon, Earl Warren sought to prevent American publication of Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment, an early, powerful critique of the Warren Commission’s conclusions.

            Hurlburt includes how Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, sought to derail the Jim Garrison investigation by appointing a small panel of pro-CIA doctors to review the Kennedy autopsy photographs and x-rays and thereby prevent Garrison from subpoenaing the records.  Unfortunately, Hurlburt does not include the statement Clark made soon after Garrison arrested New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw in connection with a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.  On national television, Clark declared that the federal government had looked into Shaw, and he was not involved in any plot.  Garrison arrests Shaw for involvement; that week, the US Attorney General declares Shaw innocent!  But Clark’s absolution raised other questions at the time.  When was Shaw cleared?  By whom?  Why was he investigated about this case?  Clark’s attempt to smother the Garrison investigation backfired in this particular incident.

            Hurlburt may have been misled by a Garrison article stating his interest in the Kennedy case was spurred by a conversation with Louisiana Sen. Russell Long.  Garrison had acted much earlier.  In November 1963 he had David Ferrie arrested in connection with the murder, and then handed him over to the FBI.  The FBI questioned Ferrie and had him released.  One wonders if those notes were also destroyed.

            Hurlburt is far too harsh on New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, whose investigation brought up for the first time Oswald’s visits to Clinton, Louisiana, his relation to Guy Banister, David Ferrie, pro-Castro Cubans; and Garrison placed Dr. Pierre Finck under oath to testify about the Kennedy autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and how doctors were ordered by the big brass not to perform basic functions of an autopsy.  Garrison also showed a print of the Zapruder film many times in court so all could see the President’s head knocked to the left and back, presumably by a bullet from the front right.  Garrison failed to prove Shaw guilty of conspiracy to the jury; but interviewed on television soon after, many of the jurors were convinced there was a conspiracy.

            Hurlburt is excellent at taking on the defenders of the Warren Report – the New York Times, CBS, Gerald Posner, and Marquette Prof. John McAdams.  For example, Prof. McAdams emphasized the movement in the Zapruder film of Gov. Connally’s lapel, meaning the bullet hit him earlier than Connally was aware.  Hurlburt shows a photo of the Governor’s coat, and the bullet hole is not by the lapel.  Yet, occasionally Hurlburt’s discussion is unclear, as when he seeks to describe where Oswald was in the lunch room with his Coke on the 2^nd floor of the TSBD shortly after the shooting as a police officer Baker was able to see and confront him.

            Hurlburt reminds the readers of some obvious facts too often overlooked.  For example, the “magic bullet” of the Warren Commission, that entered Kennedy’s back, exited his throat, then hit Connally’s side, wrist, and leg, had no blood or fleshy material on it.  Also, the rifle discovered on the 6^th floor of the TSBD was identified by two weapons experts as a German Mauser.  The rifle bought by Hidell (Oswald) was a Mannlicher-Carcano and had “Made in Italy” clearly stamped on it.  There are many other thought-provoking facts in this book.  Overall, Hurlburt has provided a service with his work.  It is an easy to read compendium of important material.  Even when one disagrees, his argument provokes thought.  The book indicts the government for its long-term and continuing cover-ups of the assassination of Pres. John Kennedy in Dallas.   

LEE OSWALD: PRESIDENT KILLER, or LADY KILLER (or both)?

            We rarely think of Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of Pres. John Kennedy, as a stud.  Perhaps, it is time to reconsider.  The following is part of a page from Charles E. Hurlburt’s It’s Time for the Truth: The JFK Cover-up: The Real Crime of the Century (2012), p. 115.

            “Although Oswald espoused a fondness for the Russian language and political system [while in the Marines] so openly that he was given the name ‘Oswaldskovich’ by his fellow Marines, he was assigned duties that allowed him access to ‘top secret’ areas and data.  Atsugi [US base in Japan] was not far from Tokyo, and Oswald often went into town, like most of the American servicemen, to visit the many nightclubs and meet girls.  One such club, named the Queen Bee, was too expensive for low-paid enlisted men like Oswald (one date there could exceed what Oswald was netting per month).  Nevertheless, he was seen there on several occasions in the company of one of the hostesses who, according to another Marine buddy, was questioning Oswald about his work at Atsugi.  Some researchers hypothesize that Oswald was being funded by his superiors to frequent this over-his-head establishment and feed false information to this ‘KGB spy.’  Fueling suspicion that Oswald was more than he appeared tp be was a Marine medical report showing that he was treated for a venereal disease that he contracted ‘in the line of duty, not to his own misconduct.’  His dates with the ‘KGB spy’ may be the explanation for his being treated for gonorrhea contracted ‘in the line of duty.”

            On this blog, I previously posted “Lee Harvey Oswald – Stud?”  I shall add this to that post.  But because that post is older, I am also posting this separately.  Was the US government subsidizing Oswald’s amorous encounter for his role as a spy?  Was Oswald a lady killer, a stud, a cold-war Chippendaler?  Was he a President killer?  A lady killer?  Or both?  Was he a lone nut?  Or someone who spread such cheer, that the government paid for his romances?  (To avoid confusion, "lady killer" is a phrase for a man whom women find very attractive, and whom they want to bed.  It does not mean a man who murders women.)HUGH MURRAY

CHEERING PRES. KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION

    I have already written about where I was and what I was doing when Pres. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  I repeat a shortened version of the story to make an important point.  I was teaching at a new school in New Orleans, a private one.  There were 3 classes of 5 grade classes, all near each other.  During time for lunch, Mrs. Flagg had her pupils eat in the classroom (we had no cafeteria) and enjoy a bit of play.  One pupil had brought a small transistor radio, and Mrs. Flagg called me into her room to listen to something special.  The 3 of us craned our necks over the small radio, trying to hear over the din of the rest of the pupils at play.
    I heard the news, and then had to return to my class.  I was absent for only a few minutes, for it is not wise to leave a class unattended for any length of time.  I reentered, closed the door behind me, and announced, "I just heard on the radio that Pres. Kennedy has been shot it Dallas."  Immediately, the kids erupted in cheers and applause.  One girl was the exception; she placed her head on a table and cried.  I was shocked by the reaction, and for once, angry at my pupils.  I said, "You think this is the end of integration.  That segregation in the South is now safe (almost all of us assumed the President had been killed to halt integration.)"  Then I told them of the assassination of Pres. Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, and how some thought that would restore victory to the South.  Instead, it only made the North more determined to destroy slavery and the old Southern way of life.
    I repeat this story because the website vdare has an article by Hugh McInnis who was teaching at a public school in a small town in central Alabama.  When the news came over the loudspeaker that Pres. Kennedy had been killed, his students also cheered.  I recall a guest on a news program earlier this year who was in Florida when Kennedy was killed.  Again, the school children cheered.
    Only with all the news on TV about the 50th anniversary of the assassination did I hear of the story of how CBS reporter Dan Rather was almost fired in November 1963.  Rather, who worked for the Dallas affiliate of CBS, KRLD, reported that school children at a school in Dallas cheered the news of the assassination.  His superiors were outraged.  No.  It must have been that they were cheering the news that they would be dismissed from school early as a result of the assassination.  Apparently, the school officials did not want the reputation of the institution besmirched with such a report about its students.  They were going to fire Rather, when national CBS intervened to save his job.  The pupils WERE cheering the assassination of Kennedy, and then they were happy to be released from school.
    I have heard that there were many schools in the South where students cheered in celebration of the killing of Kennedy and "his integrationist policies."  But there was almost no reporting of this.
    I think that one reason for the silence was that when Oswald was found, and deemed the assassin, he was also labeled a Communist.  And with that news, some people reacted, "Oh, isn't it awful what that Communist did (in killing Kennedy)?  And then they would smile or wink.
    Once the villain was labeled as a Red, those who initially cheered the deed, suddenly pretended to be sad.  The myth was that no one would celebrate the killing of Kennedy and Camelot - except a lone, nut Commie.  I think this refusalt to report the truth about the cheering was one of the first examples of a cover-up in the assassination of Pres. John Kennedy.---------Hugh Murray

PBS FRONTLINE (OFFICIAL LINE): LEE HARVEY OSWALD, 2013

Some Reflections about the program--------Hugh Murray

            There are some obvious questions that rise after viewing the PBS Frontline special on Oswald.  For example, Oswald was arrested in downtown New Orleans in 1963 when several anti-Castroites surrounded him as he distributed his pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets.  The program interviewed several NOPD officers who handled Oswald.  They wondered why he simply did not pay the $25 and leave.  Instead, he wanted to be finger-printed and booked.  What the program did not show, is that he also requested to be interviewed by the FBI.  That occurred.  Yet, there is no record in the files of what he said.

            Frontline interviewed Dallas FBI Agent Hosty a number of times on the program.  Yet, no one asked Hosty about the time in November 1963 when Oswald visited and left a note at the Dallas FBI office.  After Oswald’s arrest on November 22, J. Edgar Hoover ordered that all such records be destroyed, and Agent Hosty dutifly flushed Oswald’s note down the toilet.

            Another authority interviewed by Frontline was staunch supporter of the Warren Commission’s basic thesis, Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed.  In that book, Posner showed that because of the different dates of activities, David Ferrie could not have been active in the Civil Air Patrol when Oswald was active.  With the photograph showing Oswald and Ferrie, and testimony of former members, it is clear that Posner can be wrong on some things.  Missing were questions about Ferrie as a powerful influence on some youngsters.  The isolation of the young Oswald in New York (discussed by social workers), may have ceased once the teen joined the CAP in NO.  I knew someone who believed his whole life had been turned around for the better because of Ferrie.  Ferrie was gay, but my friend was quite straight.  Still, Ferrie helped to mold him so he would become a success, and today there is a building named after my old friend.  Might Ferrie’s patriotism have inspired the young Oswald to quit Warren Easton High to join the Marines.

            When Oswald left for the USSR, others have noted he was allegedly going to a university in Europe, he flew to Finland on a plane when there were no commercial flights, and so on.  Yet, the CIA asserts he was not an agent.  Of course, some of the files still under wraps are those of the CIA re Oswald.

            Frontline showed Oswald distributing FPCC leaflets in NO.  He was not alone.  He was paying some to leaflet with him.  How many leftists PAY to have others leaflet?  It is absurd.  Just like religious people distribute literature on the street, the point is also to speak and convert the passers-by.  A church would not have an atheist leafleting.  A leftist, who believes in the cause, would want other believers to leaflet, not simply neutrals.  And where did Oswald get the money for the fellow leafleters?  Why were they not interviewed?  Or, were they possibly some of the gay Latinos who accompanied Oswald to the office of Attorney Dean Andrews?  (The attorney who spoke about a Clem Bertrand, whom some think was Clay Shaw).  And some of the leafleting pictured on Frontline just happens to be in front of the old International Trade Mart, whose leader just happened to be Clay Shaw – not mentioned on Frontline.

            There was no discussion of the possibility that Oswald was at a training camp in 1963 in Louisiana for those planning another invasion of Cuba to oust Castro.

            Once Oswald was arrested, he was paraded occasionally before the reporters.  When someone mistakenly linked Oswald by mistake, not with the FPCC, but with a group that was anti-Castro, who corrected the error?  Jack Ruby, in the police station knew the politics of the Cuban groups, and immediately corrected the speaker, that Oswald was not in the anti-Castro group, but was pro-Castro.

            For much of the proof of Oswald’s guilt, Frontline relied on the words of Priscilla McMillan.  After the assassination, when Marina Oswald was probably one of the most hated women in America, McMillan spent much time with her.  McMillan had been in the Soviet Union, too.  There are many who believe she was CIA.  Marina did not partake in the program, but on other programs, she has stated that Oswald was innocent.  Immediately after the assassination, she may have been so frightened she told McMillan what McMillan and the US government wanted to hear.  Marina’s absence should be considered.

            The grassy knoll hardly exists in Frontline.  When people rushed up the hill, they were met by a Secret Service Agent, showing his credentials.  Later, the Secret Service denied having any agent there.  The autopsy questions were sloughed over; NO District Attorney Jim Garrison’s trial placed one of the autopsy doctors, Pierre Finck, under oath, and he admitted when he went to probe the path of a bullet in Kennedy, he was ordered not to do so by the big brass in the room at Bethesda Hospital.

            Frontline, with its emphasis on the defenders of the official line – Posner, Hosty, McMillan, has produced one more defense of the lone-nut theory.  It ignored most of the major critics.  It was a disappointing program.

Martin Bashir - Base Shit

      Martin Bashir, a British journalist who previously reported on ABC-TV's Nightline, and now has his own program on cable television MSNBC is part of the liberal media establishment.  On Friday 15 November, proving his proper credentials, he declared that someone should shit into the mouth of conservative politician Sarah Palin.  By contrast, nothing but shit comes out of the mouth of Mr. Bashir.
      The following week Bashir apologized to Palin.  He keeps his job.  Had Bashir suggested someone shit into the mouth of Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama, he would have been fired on the spot.  But it is OK to humiliate a conservative woman.  Like the liberal late-night TV host and comedian, Jimmy Fallon, Bashir keeps his job.  Fallon had invited onto his program conservative Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.  The music that accompanied her introduction on the show as she walked onto the stage was "Lyin Ass Bitch."  Fallon apologized, but no one was fired.  Liberals pretend to be compassionate, yet they are the most vicious people in attacking those with whom they disagree.  They do not debate, they insult and smear and intimidate - and get away with it.
      I am old, and I have never heard in all my years anyone on radio or TV speak of shitting in someone else's mouth.  It is a new low.  Yet, if anyone criticizes Obamacare, or the murders in Benghazi, or the amnesty for invaders proposals, then one is a racist and should be shut up, fired, etc.  Unfortunately, the trend in the West over the past few decades has been away from freedom, away from free speech, and instead toward the humiliation, firing, beating, or worse, for those who oppose the Leftwing orthodoxy.
         Hugh Murray  

OBAMACARE AND THATCHER'S POLL TAX

                                       by Hugh Murray  
      I think there is a comparison to be made between Obamacare, the "Affordable Health Care Act," and the poll tax levied by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government in the UK some years ago.  We normally do not compare Thatcher and Obama, but in this case, it may be apropos.  Obamacare mandates that all Americans purchase insurance.  If they do not, the fines for the first year are small, but they rise to become quite heavy fines after a few years.  When Obamacare was challenged in court, going all the way to the US Supreme Court, the American high court ruled in 2012 that Obamacare was legal, it was simply another tax.  In reality, it is another poll tax.
     Thatcher's tax was the product of the British Tories, and the Labour Party and the Left responeded with massive riots.  Implementation of the act was also very difficult to enforce, with local councils unable to be certain who was staying in the government houses, and if they were students, employed, unemployed, and therefore what rate of the tax they must pay.  Needless to say, Obamacare is off to a slow start.
     Thatcher's poll tax was to take effect in 1990, but riots, its unpopularity, its difficulty in implementing, all weakened her leadership.  She also had other rivals in the Tory Party who disagreed with her opposition to closer relations with "Europe," the expanding Common Market.  While on a visit by P. M. Thatcher to Europe, her Tory opponents led a coup inside the Conservative Party, and deposed her.  Margaret Thatcher was no longer Tory leader; no longer Prime Minister.  Her Conservative successor, John Major, scrapped the poll tax.
    Obamacare will raise the insurance rates on most middle-class Americans.  For some, the rates will rise sharply, AND the co-pay may now be thousands of dollars instead of the previous $50 or so.  Worse, with millions more in the pool, and the same number, OR FEWER DOCTORS WILLING TO PARTAKE IN THE NEW PLANS, it may take far longer to visit a doctor.  In effect, Obamacare, with new delays, will probably institute death panels, even if there are no panels - just millions of more patients with fewer doctors.
     Will there be riots against the new American poll tax?  Will Obama fall like Thatcher?  We shall see.     

OBAMACARE = OBAMONSTROSITY

The more we see of the failure of the Obamacare website, and learning how many cannot keep their present plans, and will be forced to pay for plans that do not apply to them, like men having to purchase maternity insurance, one can see more clearly this is a scheme to hurt most productive Americans.  When 40 million uninsured Americans are added to the pool, but the number of medical doctors remains the same, even if the system were cheaper, there would not be enough doctors.  The waiting time to see a doctor will become much longer.  For the elderly, this will mean just what Sarah Palin said it would mean - Death Panels for the elderly, because the doctors will have to see the young.  Obamacare does demand more affirmative action doctors, but recall Dr. Patrick Chavis, the poster doctor of affirmative action in the New York Times Magazine, proof that a-a worked.   Dr. Chavis, it turned out, was so bad, he performed liposuction on his Black women patients without anesthetic, and finally one died, and he was disbarred.  (For more on this, see the excellent book by William McGowan, Coloring the News.)  Or what about Dr. Conrad Murray, who was the physician for Michael Jackson.  Will these be our new doctors?  Affirmative action means NOT getting the best qualified, but the lesser and the unqualified.  Flooding the hospitals with affirmative action doctors will be another way of creating Death Panels.-------Hugh Murray

HIGH-POWERED BOOK SHOOTS DOWN WARREN REPORT

From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: A Report to the Public

From an FBI Agent…(Walterville, OR: TrineDay, 2012) by DON ADAMS

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Don Adams has written a short, repetitious, extremely important book.  The repetition stems from the many FBI documents which support and expand upon material described in the text.

            Why is the book important?  Don Adams was an FBI agent who interviewed a character who may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination.  Adams queried him a week before, and then several days following, the murders in Dallas.  Adams knows what he did and what he was ordered to do.  Yet, it was not until some three decades after the assassination of Pres. Kennedy that Adams began to study some of the FBI documents; only then did he become aware of how his own information, his reports, had been revised, distorted, and falsified.  True, from November 1963 Adams was aware of pressures placed upon him and other agents from supervisors to avoid certain questions and to silence doubts about the official line on the Kennedy assassination.  Only later, however, did he begin to read critics of the Warren Report, and only after that, did he become aware of how his own FBI reports had been warped by his superiors.

            Adams wrote this book from personal experience.  In 1963, as an FBI rookie agent, he was assigned to the small FBI office in Thomasville, Georgia.  Soon after arriving in town, he overheard his local FBI chief warn the sheriff that Adams was “a Catholic, a Republican, and a Yankee.”(p. 30)  On 13 November 1963 Adams was assigned to interview a right-wing, racist, crank, Joseph Adams Milteer of Quitman, Ga.  This was a high priority assignment, for the agency had been alerted that Milteer had threatened President Kennedy.    On Saturday 16 November Adams spoke with Milteer as he distributed right-wing literature on the street.  Milteer quickly disclosed that he hated the Kennedys, Blacks and Yankees, but he issued no threats.  A week later when Adams heard the news from Dallas, Adams worried that Milteer might have been involved, and that he, the FBI agent, might have failed to prevent the murder.

            Adams was not the only FBI agent concerned about the local Kennedy-hating crank.  By 5 pm on 22 November 1963, Adams received orders to locate Milteer immediately, interview him and then hold him for the Secret Service.(8)  Adams rode to Milteer’s home, then to that of his lady friend and all his usual haunts, searching for his VW bus which was covered with right-wing signs.  Neither Milteer nor his vehicle were to be found.  Days passed.  Finally, Adams spotted the propaganda bus, but then, following FBI procedure, had to get another agent to accompany him.  The interview with Milteer began on the night of Wednesday 27 November into the early hours of Thursday the 28^th.  By this time, his superiors had commanded that he ask Milteer five, and only five questions.  Adams wanted to ask many more, but his boss made it clear, these five questions only.  Adams (with his silent colleague present) interrogated Milteer.  One question was, did Milteer have knowledge of the bombing of the 16^th Street Church in Birmingham on 15 September 1963.  Milteer denied any such knowledge.  The fifth question Adams was assigned to ask was, did Milteer ever make threats to assassinate the President, or had he participated in a plot to kill Kennedy.  Milteer adamantly denied ever making such threats or conspiring with others to kill the President.(42)  Case closed, as a prominent author might conclude.

            What Adams did not know at that time was that both the Miami Police Dept. and the FBI knew that Milteer had in October and November 1963 spoken with others on ways to assassinate the President.  Some of these threats were tape recorded on 9 November 1963.  The agency clearly knew of Milteer’s threats.  That is why they dispatched Agent Adams to locate Milteer both in mid-November and again on the day of the assassination.  Yet, the FBI did not inform Adams that the FBI had a copy of the tape of Milteer speaking with an informant and discussing how to take out the president with a high-powered rifle from an office building.  Adams was not informed about the tape, or the threats that Milteer had made, and he was constricted as to what he was allowed to ask Milteer by his FBI superiors.   Thus, when Milteer denied making threats or conspiring, Adams had no information with which to dispute Milteer.  And even if he had had the information, his superiors ordered him not to ask any more questions than the original five.

            Just what kind of investigation of the assassination was this?  It was one in which the FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover, conferred by phone on 22 Nov. 1963 with newly sworn in President Lyndon Johnson and by 9 pm they had decided that Oswald was guilty and he had performed the deed alone, without conspirators.  Once the FBI Chief had made that decision, all information from the FBI agents was to bolster that view, and any evidence to the contrary was to be dismissed, denigrated, destroyed, forged, or falsified in order to promote the lone-nut Oswald theory.  Adams’ book is an indictment of the FBI in the case of the Kennedy assassination.

            Adams was not the only FBI agent to break ranks.  I recall at the time of the Garrison investigation, an FBI man appeared on local New Orleans television asserting that there had been FBI teletypes warning of an assassination soon before the deed in Dallas.  This was being exposed about the same time as the FBI’s destruction of a note hand-delivered to the Dallas FBI office in November 1963 by Lee Oswald.(52, 94)  Yet, the agency did nothing to reveal that Oswald might be dangerous.  Later, it was revealed that even a page of Oswald’s address book had been removed because it contained information about FBI agent James Hosty.  The page had been removed so the Warren Commission would not see it.

            Adams was slow to publicly question the FBI’s Kennedy investigation.  The FBI was the agency for which he worked for decades, and which he still holds in high esteem.  Yet, he is convinced it failed on this, its most important case.  The Adams’ book is more like the reluctant good soldier who grows to doubt, to question, and then to condemn, his commanders.  Adams condemns the FBI leadership on this most crucial case, crucial for Adams, for the FBI, and for the nation.

            Yet, Adams’ writing style and organization leave many loose ends.  For example, in a memo from the FBI’s Civil Rights Div., the SAC of Atlanta (the larger dist. which included both Agent Adams and the extreme racist Milteer) requested to have Milteer’s long distance phone checked “to ascertain if there were any calls to Dallas or New Orleans, during pertinent period.”(77)  Why the inquiry regarding calls to New Orleans, specifically?   Did the FBI have someone in mind in New Orleans with whom it thought Milteer was conspiring?  If so, who?  Oswald seemingly left NO in September 1963.  If the pertinent period is narrow, and closer to the assassination, who in New Orleans did the FBI have in mind?  (Recall, shortly after NO DA Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw, US Attorney General Ramsey Clark proclaimed that the Feds had already investigated Shaw and found no conspiracy.  Might the FBI have been thinking of Shaw in 1963?  Of Banister?  Of whom?)

            Even more intriguing, Adams reveals more about the informant, William Somersett, who spoke with Milteer in Florida where the conversation was taped on 9 November 1963.  This taped discussion provides the title of Adams’ book, for then Milteer spoke of killing the President by using a high-powered rifle from an office building.  He also said a patsy would be quickly arrested to divert the authorities from the real perpetrators.  Adams reports that the same informant, Somersett, continued his contacts with extremists and authorities later in the 1960s.  Writes Adams: “On April 3, 1968, Somersett called the Miami Police Dept. to alert them that he had obtained reliable information that Martin Luther King, Jr. was to be assassinated the next day.  Somersett’s information was ignored.”(117)  King was assassinated 4 April 1968.  One wishes Adams would have written more about Somersett.

            What Adams does expose is how the FBI “mistreated” Somersett.  Somersett not only spoke with Milteer on 9 November concerning the method to kill Kennedy, he met Milteer in Jacksonville on 23 November, where Milteer was “jubilant” about Dallas.  “Everything went true to form.  I guess you thought I was kidding when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle.”  Somersett asked if Milteer had been guessing when he had predicted the assassination earlier in the month.  Milteer snapped, “I don’t do any guessing.”(103)

            Milteer’s jubilation and bragging that he predicted the Kennedy assassination reminded me of a personal incident.  I had swum against the stream in high school and college in my native New Orleans.  In 1960 I was one of the early members of New Orleans CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), and in September of that year was arrested in the city’s first lunch-counter sit-in.  Some of my relatives were horrified, and to restore honor to the family, one uncle sent money to George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party.  I rarely saw this uncle, but he would occasionally stop by my parents’ when I was there.  His usual greeting to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This teasing would annoy me, which is what he wanted.  But, in time, the shock wore off, and I shrugged it off as his “hello.”  Nevertheless, there were serious differences between our world views.   In the early 1960s, if he had a few drinks, he would groan, “Ouuu, that Bobby [Kennedy]!  They’re going to get that Bobby.”  I tried to ignore that comment, too.  It was probably in early 1964, the first time I had seen him for awhile.  At some point in the visit, he smiled and said, “Didn’t I tell you!  Didn’t I tell you they were going to get him?!”  It took a moment for his comment to register with me, for at first I did not comprehend his reference.  Then my jaw dropped when I understood.  I replied, “You said they were going to get Bobby.”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  Exasperated, I finally asked, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  Nonchalantly, he answered, “The mob, out in the parish.”  Out in the parish meant Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, and the leader of the mob there was Carlos Marcello.  In early 1964 no one else was linking the Mafia to the Kennedy assassination.  So, in 1964 that remark only confirmed my view that politically my uncle was on another planet.

            Milteer’s teasing and bragging, like my uncle’s, may have been simple bluffing, braggadocio, bull s***, or it might have been…

            Informant Somersett also told the FBI that he received a phone call at 10:30am on Friday 22 November from Milteer calling from Dallas!  Milteer then assured Somersett that Kennedy would never return to Miami.  At 5:30 pm that day, the FBI assigned Agent Adams to locate and interrogate Milteer with only five approved questions.  Adams searched, but was unable to find Milteer at his home in Quitman or at his lady friend’s, driving by many times.  He could not locate Milteer in his Georgia locale until several days later.  However, unbeknownst to Adams, the local FBI office reported that Milteer was in Quitman on 22 November.  Adams maintains that he was the agent assigned to find Milteer, and the vocal racist was not there.  Recall, Somersett had reported that Milteer had called him from Dallas.  Because Somersett’s information contradicted the official FBI story, Adams discloses how the FBI began to undermine Somersett, inserting comments into his files that Somersett was not a reliable informant.  This discrediting of Somersett BEGAN only with the Kennedy assassination.

            The point is that Milteer was let off the hook by the FBI that declared (without good reason to do so) that Milteer was in Quitman, Georgia on 22 November 1963.  This attempt to deflect suspicion from Milteer was in direct conflict with the reliable information supplied by Somersett.  Therefore, Somersett had to be discredited.

            There is a minor discrepancy I should mention in this book.  On Sunday morning 24 November 1963 a young woman rang the doorbell of the Adams’ home in Georgia, and after some fearful misunderstanding, she identified herself as a student at Tulane/Newcomb Univ. in New Orleans.  “Ms. [Vereen} Alexander told me she had come to me because she knew Lee Harvey Oswald…”(39)  Yet, Adams, in his FBI report of the discussion does not report that.  He writes that there was a party in the summer of 1963 at the home of Dave Hoffman, at which Ms. Alexander “had the strong belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was also possibly present at the party.”(70)

            Ms. Alexander identified Al Peccarero as “a leader” and member of a local socialist group in New Orleans.”  Peccarero, in another FBI report, (not in this book), was also presented as the publicity director of the New Orleans Council on Peaceful Alternatives.  Yet, the same Al Peccarero, during the early 1960s, presented a speech before a large audience of the local White Citizens’ Council.  Which side was Al on?  I suspect he may have been on the payroll of Guy Banister, Kent Courtney, or some agency to spy on the student and university left.  (Admittedly, one may change views.  I have changed, and am now a conservative.  But this change took time.  One does not actively partake at the same time in integrationist and segregationist organizations, or, like Oswald, pro-Castro and anti-Castro, unless for covert reasons.)

            There are many other tidbits in this book that provoke thought, and illustrate that even with excellent agents on the ground, the FBI investigation of the Kennedy assassination was flawed, forged, and distorted to support the instantly fossilized presupposition that Oswald was the lone-nut assassin; to do this the FBI ignored, warped, and buried in trivia evidence to the contrary.

            Here are some revelations from Adams’ book, which is excellent for several reasons.  It includes a transcription of the tape in which Milteer on 9 November speaks to informant Somersett on how to kill the President using a  high-power rifle from an office building and then having a patsy arrested while the real culprits escape.  Milteer’s threats were taken seriously enough by the Miami Police Dept. that Kennedy’s itinerary was changed when he visited Miami on 18 Nov. 1963.  The FBI had a copy of the tape, but it did not push any change in the itinerary when Kennedy visited Dallas a few days later.  And when Oswald visited the FBI office to deliver a threatening note, the FBI did nothing to watch Oswald; it did nothing except destroy his note after the assassination!

            On the morning of 22 Nov. Milteer phoned William Somersett from Dallas who assured him that Kennedy would never again return to Miami.  On 23 Nov. the exuberant Milteer met Somersett in Jacksonville, assuring the informant that his prediction of how to take out the President was no guess work.  Receiving such reports from Somersett, the FBI decided to destroy the informant’s credibility.  3 April 1968 Somersett alerted authorities that Martin Luther King would be assassinated the next day.  The warning by the discredited informant was ignored.  King was killed the 4 April 1968.

            Adams produced a short book with numerous photographs and copies of official documents making the text even shorter.  It is repetitious.  There should have been an expanded index.  Yet, this is a book essential to all interested in the assassination of President John Kennedy.     

CELEBRATE COLUMBUS DAY! - DEFEND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Chinese explorer Zheng He may have discovered America before Columbus, according to new book

Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News 7 hours ago

`Does a 600-year-old Chinese map prove that Christopher Columbus was not the first explorer to navigate the New World?
In his book “Who Discovered America?,” published Tuesday, author Gavin Menzies says the settling of North America by nonnative peoples is more complex than previously thought.
‘The traditional story of Columbus discovering the New World is absolute fantasy, it’s fairy tales,” Menzies, 76, said in an interview with the Daily Mail....

My comment:

There is little doubt that Zheng He's fleet sailed to SE Asia, and even to East Africa.  But, the Chinese sailing to Europe and even the Mississippi River in America?  I doubt it.  In the 1990s someone discovered bones in the western state of Washington.  It appeared to be a murder, with an arrow in the man’s leg.  The sheriff looked and thought a white man had been killed by an arrow.  He sent the skeleton to scientists who judged it about 9,000 years old, the oldest full skeleton found in N. America (Kenniwick Man).                  Immediately, the Amerindians demanded the bones.  The hate-science Democratic Party prefers to appease the religious superstitions of Amerindians than explore science.  An outrageous law signed by Dem. Pres. Jimmy Carter was used to restrict the time the scientists could study the bones.  Dem. Pres. Clinton returned the "white" skeleton to the Amerindians for burial.  I suspect they buried these bones so no white man will ever see them again.  (Some of the absurd privileges granted to Amerindians today is bases on white guilt for killing so many of the savage Indians when Europeans came to North America.  If, whites were here before the Amerindians came, then they were the truly murderous group, and whites have no moral obligation to allow them to own casinos, a right often denied to whites.)  Democratic Pres. Clinton also destroyed the site where the bones were found.  The Democrats dare not disturb the cult of multi and its hate-whitey views.

   Chinese may well have sailed the Pacific to the west coast of the New World.  The Vikings clearly came across the Atlantic.  Some Olmec sculptures appear quite Negroid, so it is possible Africans also sailed to the New World.

   Still, the voyage of Columbus is the most important one.  The earlier discoverers of America resulted in short-term contact.  With Columbus, there would be continuous contact between Old World and New.  Columbus united the world as never before.  Like it or not, he began a new globalism.  It is Columbus, and the European sailors who followed him, who made the modern world.  We may recall Zheng He and Leif Erickson, but it is Columbus whose discovery created the modern world.

Slavery, disease, death: the dark side of the Christopher Columbus story

Jay Busbee 8 hours ago

On Monday, the United States will observe Columbus Day, schools and banks closing and parades marching in honor of the man who, as we all learned in school, discovered America in 1492.
And according to The Oatmeal’s Matthew Inman, Columbus Day is a dangerous farce.
Inman contends in his current strip on The Oatmeal, a humor/political commentary website, that the legends we believe about Columbus are not only misleading but grossly unfair. He cites primary sources and journals recounted in Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and James Lowewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me” to dispel the traditional narrative of Columbus as brave traveler who connected the Old World and the New.
Here are a few of The Oatmeal’s conclusions about Christopher Columbus:
• In 1492, no one actually thought the earth was flat. “Pretty much anyone with an education knew the earth was round. The Greeks had proved it 2,000 years before Columbus was born.”
• Columbus didn’t actually “discover” the New World. Not only were there natives living in the Americas for 14,000 years, Leif Ericson found the same territory 500 years before Columbus.
• Columbus wanted gold, and lots of it. His initial ideas for a new trade route to Asia fell by the wayside as he realized how much gold was available in the New World.
• The natives would provide little resistance. According to his own journal, Columbus believed the indigenous Lucayans would not be a significant challenge. “I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men,” he wrote, “and govern them as I pleased.”
• For his second visit, Columbus armed for war. When Columbus returned to the New World, he brought 17 ships and 1,500 men.
• Columbus treated the natives brutally. Columbus demanded treasure, food and sex for his men, and when the Lucayans refused, he ordered their noses and ears cut off to serve as a warning.
• Columbus treated his conquered people harshly. When the Lucayans rebelled, Columbus crushed the rebellion and carted off 500 Lucayans to be sold into slavery in Europe.
• Columbus disrupted the entire economy of three continents. Post-Columbian disease and starvation killed three to five million people over the next fifty years. And the influx of gold disrupted the global economy to the point that African slaves became a dominant commodity.
…MY COMMENT

   The hate-the-West crowd is at it again.  Educated men in Europe may have believed the earth to be round, but they opposed the voyage of Columbus because they believed it far too large, and the one huge ocean far too long to reach land (imagine the earth with no New World, and a watery journey from Spain to Asia).  The learned in Spain opposed Columbus because they thought the sailors would not survive such a lengthy voyage.  It would be like sending a manned voyage to Mars today - in effect beyond the technology of the times.  Columbus was wrong in that the earth was much larger than he presumed; however, his mistake resulted in the “discovery” of the New World.

    The most developed of the Amerindians, the Aztecs practiced mass murder that makes the conquest by Europeans seem mild.  Indeed, it was often only with the help of the oppressed Amerindians that the vastly outnumbered Europeans were able to topple the empires of the Aztecs and Incas so quickly.

   Others surely discovered the New World before Columbus.  But there discoveries remained cut off from their lands of origins.  Only with Columbus' discovery, would the world become united, a global economy that would allow all people to flourish.  Only with Western Civilization would the stone-age Amerindians grow to their numbers of today.  Only with Western Civilization would all, including the descendants of African slaves, multiply and prosper (and have far more modern lives than those left behind in Africa.)  It is Western Civ., with its rejection of superstition and its embrace of science, that has wiped out and curtailed so many diseases.

   Hooray for Columbus.  He made the modern world.  Celebrate Columbus Day!

LEE HARVEY OSWALD – STUD?!? (updated 28 Nov 2013)

By Hugh Murray

            I am bewildered by some of the items I have read about Oswald.  Clearly, he was married to Marina and fathered two children with her.

            Yet, when the question of the influence on David Ferrie on Oswald became an issue with the Garrison investigation of the mid-1960s, there was a subtext of homosexuality.  Was Oswald’s mentor gay?  Was Ferrie the man who urged Oswald’s mother to sign the underage teen into the Marine Corps?  Ferrie was gay.  The question was how much and in what ways did he influence Oswald?  One researcher, Al Rodgers, informed me that had Oswald had a boy with Marina, he would have named him David.

            I had read in at least one book that when Oswald was stationed in Japan at Atsugi base, he frequented a gay bar.*  In the 1980s I even published a short article in a New York gay newspaper beginning with the question, was Oswald gay.

            By the 1990s, without studying the particular topic, I had assumed that the troubles Oswald was having in his marriage with Marina were probably due to his own homosexual tendencies.  In the 90s I was researching for an article on the New Orleans Council for Peaceful Alternatives.  The group is mentioned in the Warren Commission material, and some thought the government’s version was inadequate.  One researcher even sent me an old copy of the Councilor, the publication of the White Citizens’ Council.  That paper had several photos of a march along St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans sponsored by the NOCPA.  I was asked if I could identify Oswald among those partaking.  I could not, but I did identify Tulane students Mel Jones and Ruth Ann Kloepfer, among others.  They were an attractive couple, and Ruth Ann was a real beauty.  I telephoned Ruth Ann – my first discussion with her since the 1960s - and asked about some other things too.  One of the most important, I asked about her meeting with Lee Oswald.

            In the summer of 1963 Ruth Paine, a Quakeress in Texas, had called the clerk of the tiny New Orleans Quaker group to ask if they knew anyone who spoke Russian, and who might help a Russian woman with a small child and who was expecting another.  The clerk of the NO Quakers was Ruth Kloepfer, mother of Karol and Ruth Ann, her two college-age daughters.  In September, the trio drove to the Magazine Street home of the Oswalds.

            For the first time, in the 1990s, I asked Ruth Ann about that meeting.  Anger filled her voice.  She related that while the pregnant Marina, her small child, Ruth Ann’s mother and sister were in one room, Lee was coming on to her in another.  She was furious.  She and her family had not come to visit him; they had come to help the pregnant woman in need.  And she was in the next room!  What kind of man would try to come on to someone when his wife and her mother and sister are so near?  What kind of, well she was still angry at him over three decades later.  With this conversation, I began to revise my thinking about Oswald’s sexual orientation.

            I even began to revise my thoughts about Oswald and Ferrie.  I had roomed with a white civil rights activist in New Orleans during the university year 1960-61.  Oliver told me that as a youth, he had been on the wrong path, sliding into juvenile delinquency.  He was saved as a teen when he joined the Civil Air Patrol headed by David Ferrie.  Though Oliver was by then a senior at Loyola University, and was no longer close, he still maintained contact with Ferrie.  Indeed, I recall, he looked forward to a party Ferrie was giving at his apartment in the spring of 1961.  I had never met Ferrie, was not invited, and did not attend that party.  When I next saw Oliver, I asked him about it.  He was not enthusiastic, “Oh, David was playing soldier.”  At the time, I thought nothing of it.  But that party was about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.  David may have been doing more than “playing” soldier.

            Oliver was greatly influenced by David Ferrie.  Ferrie was clearly gay.  Yet, Oliver was straight.  He was a staunch Roman Catholic and made it very clear, in words and deeds, that he was not gay.  If straight Oliver could have been so influenced by gay Ferrie, without becoming gay, so it is surely possible that Oswald may have been influenced by Ferrie without becoming gay.

            In the summer of 2009 (I think) in the Special Collections section of the Tulane University Library, I chatted with an older librarian, Kenneth Owen.  He remarked that he had encountered Oswald in a beatnik-hippie place on Rampart St. in 1962 or 63, a place that preceded the Quorum Club.  The Quorum was raided by the police in 1963 and the names of over 30 customers were printed on page 1 of the local newspapers.  The club was raided because in was an alleged center of drugs, homosexuals, and integrationists.  I assume the club that had opened and closed prior to the Quorum must have been somewhat similar.  In the conversation between Owen and Oswald, the librarian became convinced Oswald was gay.

            In 2013 I became aware of the book, Me & Lee, by Judyth Vary Baker in which she alleges that in the summer o 1963 in New Orleans, while Oswald was married to Marina, and she was newly married to Robert Baker, she and Oswald conducted a secret affair.  Indeed, she maintains that Oswald was going to divorce Marina and she and Oswald would soon be together, probably in Mexico.  Because they were both married, theirs was a most secret affair.

            In her book, and The Secret Order by H. P. Albarelli, there is discussion of Oswald having a short affair with Silvia Duran, who worked in the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City.  On the other side, also in Albarelli’s volume, he claims that Rose Cherami accused Jack Ruby and Oswald of screwing each other.

            Michael Snyder, in his fascinating analysis of the plays and writings of Clay Shaw, writes that Gore Vidal asserted that the young Oswald in New Orleans knew Clay Shaw because the youth was hustling in the gay community.
            Was Oswald a stud?  A president killer, or a lady killer, or both.  One should also consider this paragraph from a new book.The following is part of a page from Charles E. Hurlburt’s It’s Time for the Truth: The JFK Cover-up: The Real Crime of the Century (2012), p. 115.

            “Although Oswald espoused a fondness for the Russian language and political system [while in the Marines] so openly that he was given the name ‘Oswaldskovich’ by his fellow Marines, he was assigned duties that allowed him access to ‘top secret’ areas and data.  Atsugi [US base in Japan] was not far from Tokyo, and Oswald often went into town, like most of the American servicemen, to visit the many nightclubs and meet girls.  One such club, named the Queen Bee, was too expensive for low-paid enlisted men like Oswald (one date there could exceed what Oswald was netting per month).  Nevertheless, he was seen there on several occasions in the company of one of the hostesses who, according to another Marine buddy, was questioning Oswald about his work at Atsugi.  Some researchers hypothesize that Oswald was being funded by his superiors to frequent this over-his-head establishment and feed false information to this ‘KGB spy.’  Fueling suspicion that Oswald was more than he appeared tp be was a Marine medical report showing that he was treated for a venereal disease that he contracted ‘in the line of duty, not to his own misconduct.’  His dates with the ‘KGB spy’ may be the explanation for his being treated for gonorrhea contracted ‘in the line of duty.”

            Was the US government subsidizing Oswald’s amorous encounter for his role as a spy.  Was Oswald a stud, a cold-war Chippendaler?  Was he a President killer?  Or a lady killer?  Or both?  Was he a lone nut?  Or someone who spread such cheer, that the government paid for his romances?

            I am not the expert.  I have written this short essay because I find the material so contradictory.  If others are interested, they might research further – although proving who is bedding whom is not so easy a task.  But, for the moment, viewing all these claims, it appears that Lee Harvey Oswald was some stud.

            *(My own excuses - I am poor, reside in an efficiency flat, and have had to move a number of times.  I have had to dump my libraries from time to time, painful as that has been.  I know I had read of Oswald going to a gay bar while he was stationed at Atsugi, but cannot recall in which book.  Most of my older, underlined, JFK books are gone, and about to turn 75, I do not want to re-read all those volumes.  So, here I am relying on memory.  If some complain that I am posting unfinished material on the blog, my excuse is that I feel I have to post unfinished material before I am finished.  I have a dead line!)

(A few of his marine buddies thought Oswald was gay, but they were basing their conclusion on rumor and his aloof personality.  Their assertions may have been nothing more than a manner of indicating that they did not like him.  Posner had Oswald frequenting an expensive bar where he associated with a Japanese woman while he was in Japan, and others also thought he was having an affair with a Japanese gal.  Bottom line - others, if inclined, may search further on this topic.)(The phrase lady killer does not mean a man who murders women; it means a man whom women find sexually attractive and whom they would like to bed.)

Email from Judyth Vary Baker

Subject: Re: LHO study
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2013 09:37:31 +0200

In Me & Lee I also mention that Lee told me he fell in love with a Japanese girl and that she was beaten when she tried to refuse any more prositution (high class style, she was an expensive girl at the Queen bee). Lee told me he thought he would return for her, but time slipped away.

I am sorry you are in impoverished circumstances. I,too, have often suffered. Even though you write the word 'claim' instead of 'assert' regarding my relationship with Lee Oswald, nevertheless, I'd like to send you the second volume of David Ferrie (there will be two, I had so much to say and to provide evidence for). It will be a year from now and hope you will be well and stay well.

Judyth

My reply:

Hey Judyth,

   I was trying to use synonyms for allege, claim, and so forth.  Until I wrote this piece, I did not realize how many encounters Oswald may have had, or tried to have.  The sentences in the Snyder work imply that he was hustling quite a lot as a teen, yet I am most skeptical of that claim.  But as you have discovered, proving or disproving sexual hook ups is extremely difficult.  I just wanted to place on the net what seems to be a growing list of claims about his sexual activities, and surely one that does not fit the lone nut image of Oswald.

   I normally do not complain about my lot.  I made my choices, and have paid for them.  I have not had a teaching post in the US since 1969, so I have no office or place to keep books, or access to a univ. library, etc. [except when I visit New Orleans].   But I suspect you have had to pay a price too.

   Also I am now old.  One reason I place reviews on amazon rather than submit them to journals is that I want to be alive when my review is posted/published.  For academic journals, even if they accept, it may take 2 years.

   My memory is still good.  I met the librarian at Tulane on one of my annual summer week in NO.  It may have been 09 or 2010 or so.  I was less interested in getting the year right than describing what he said.  The basic point of what he said is there.

   Hope your session in NO goes well.

    Take care,--------Hugh 

I should have added in my letter that I am poor but not impoverished.  I have no luxuries, like an automobile.  But I have enough for most of my needs.  I fume when I feel my writing is limited because I lack access.  But I enjoy all the basics, heat, good food, vitamins, etc.  And I do get to travel.  This article would have been stronger had I access to some of the pieces I have written previously, like the newspaper article from the 1980s.  I simply do not have copies of most of my own writing, much less than the ability to retain the volumes by others.  I do not have the room.

The point of this article, unfinished, incomplete, as it is, is this, --- the image of Oswald as a lone nut may have to be revised.  ----   Hugh Murray

         

CIA, SHRINKS, TORTURE - IN CONTEXT - & JFK KILLING

A SECRET ORDER: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the

 JFK Assassination, v. 1 (Walterville, OR.: Trine Day, 2013) – by H. P. ALBARELLI, JR.

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            After reading this book, I can only rephrase Gurtrude Stein, “Is there a there there?”  After concluding the book, I am still wondering, what did I read?  I can understand why the author declined to write a concluding chapter – there is nothing to conclude.

            I was angry after reading one chapter on “the bizarre diary of Eric Ritzek.”  The diary, found 9 months following the Kennedy killing in Dallas, was left at Trailways bus ticket office in Los Angeles.  The diary describes the hypnotic abilities of two college students, Erik and his roommate Charles.  These two master craftsmen use their powers of mind control to hypnotize Oswald to kill Pres. Kennedy, and then do the same to Jack Ruby so he can murder Oswald.  At one point, Erik implies that his superiors are from another planet. (p. 336)  So, the people behind the assassination in Dallas are from another planet!  Seems I read that decades ago in headlines of the National Enquirer, or was it the Globe?  That chapter was a total waste of my time.

            In later chapters the author describes something, and then he repeats the same story as it was told to Congressional investigators, or the FBI, or other officials.(as on 336)  This redundancy both lengthens and dullens the book.  While Albarelli pads this volume to over 400 pages, he promises to detail certain items in the next volume.  Had Alb removed the repetition and fluff, and added what might be interesting from the proposed volume 2, then he might have written one worthy book.

            Despite my criticisms, the book is not worthless.  On a very personal note, Albarelli answered one lingering question for me.  I recall a pretty girl in my high school named Rose Cheramie.  I have always wondered if she were the same person that warned of the impending assassination of Kennedy when deserted by two men on a road in rural Louisiana a few days before the killing in Dallas.  As I attended the same high school (and junior high) as Lee Oswald, I have always wondered if he might have known the gal in school who years later predicted the assassination of the President.  Well, Albarelli cleared it up.  The Rose Cherami who was in the Louisiana State Hospital was some 15 years older than my high-schoolers.  Moreover, she had been born Melba Youngblood in Houston.  The older Rose also asserted that she knew Oswald, but more through Jack Ruby, whom she claimed was a lover of Oswald.(97)  She was not the same Rose Cheramie from Easton High.  Or, to echo Stein again, a rose is a rose is a rose, but in this case, they are two distinct roses.

            Many years ago I attended as many sessions of the Clay Shaw trial as my schedule permitted – I was then teaching at university and could occasionally arrange time to see the trial.  For a few sessions, I met a friend there, and we sat as spectators.  After I left New Orleans, I maintained an annual contact with that friend, and usually asked, if there were new leads on the Kennedy case.    Decades ago he told me about a woman, quite respectable, a scientist, who had a story of conspiracy.  But she had no physical proof of her story.  I was pleased to read that the experience of Adele Edisen is now a chapter in print in Albarelli’s book.

            Albarelli, who had previously written about CIA experiments on innocent Americans, one such that resulted in the death of a CIA agent, here elaborates on such experiments.   Indeed, the chapter on Adele Edisen might be nothing more than a famous doctor, Dr. Jose Rivera, spiking her drink with LSD.  But it might have been that, and considerably more, as asking her to telephone Oswald in New Orleans and giving him an order to kill the boss.

            Albarelli  is good at showing that government agencies were involved in medical experiments on Americans, in juvenile detention centers in New York, in Louisiana in this hospital and that.  Perhaps, I have become more cynical concerning medicine, doctors, and their opportunism.  Albarelli shows that some of David Ferrie’s gay teen “friends” were treated with LSD in the hope of curing them of homosexuality.  This was in the same Louisiana hospital in which Oswald later filed a job application, and in which Rose Cherami was treated in November 1963.  It is also where doctors connected to the CIA conducted experiments.  Albarelli spends many pages connecting doctors who were engaged in CIA medical inquiries.  Perhaps, Albarelli should have gone the other way in his writing – asking, if the CIA requested them, were there any hospitals or facilities that would refuse unwarranted experiments upon patients?

            That Dr. A knew Dr. B who knew Dr. C who was involved in CIA experiments with Dr. D is more reminiscent of the 6 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon than proof that all were engaged in misconduct.  Reading page after page, I am thinking, what does this prove?  And to take a totally contrarian view, it was not that long ago historically, when doctors had to rely on grave robbers to gain access to a corpse upon which to perform medical teaching techniques and discoveries.  And one might glance at my article on Nazi medicine to appreciate more the methods of Western medicine.  Though one may readily criticize the arrogance of the American doctors working for federal agencies, I suspect they were quite minor when compared to the practices to end deviancy (especially the political varieties) as practiced contemporaneously under Communism in the Soviet Union.

            In his first chapter Albarelli exposes the opportunism of a psychiatrist who had examined Lee Oswald for half an hour when the youth was truant, apprehended, and processed by NY Social Services.  When Oswald was arrested and murdered years later in Dallas, the New York psychiatrist seized the moment to gain fame, prestige, and probably more money, by lying – pretending that he had predicted many of the problems Oswald was to encounter because of his distorted personality.  So what if the doctor exaggerated, lied?  He was simply stepping on the grave of one of the most hated men in America.  The doctor was squeezing that half hour interview into 15 minutes of his own fame.  Is such opportunism – a very human characteristic – a crime?  Unfortunately, Albarelli devotes nearly 90 pages of a chapter to this psychiatrist.

            There were a few facts I learned in this chapter.  I was surprised to read that Guy Banister put up the bail for Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell when he was arrested in New Orleans for picketing the film “Exodus.” (81)  There were rumors in New Orleans at the time that the powerful political leader of Plaquemines Parish, Judge Leander Perez, had sponsored the trip to New Orleans of Rockwell’s “hate bus.”  This was meant to counter the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality that were also making headlines in the spring of 1961.  (Strangely, the NOPD was not very sympathetic to the Rockwell group.  Recall, in the 1950s Banister had been active Superintendent of the NOPD.  Yet, not only were the Nazis arrested for merely picketing a movie, but they were required to cover the main sign on their hate bus – gas (or kill, I forget which) Jews, Queers, Commies, and perhaps, a 4^th group to be terminated.  We arrived too late to see the uniformed Nazis arrested, but did see police arrest picketers in civies.))  Perhaps, more pertinent to the events in Dallas, spring 1961 also witnessed the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

            Much of Albarelli’s work centers around US agencies and their efforts to use medical experiments to modify, control, interrogate, torture, etc.  I shall now go off-topic in order to return to the topic of the book later.  On 29 Sept. 2013 CBS TV’s “60 Minutes” opened its new season with a segment on how the closing of mental institutions in the late 60s-early 70s has resulted in many insane people being warehoused in jails and prisons.  Worse, because it is now much more difficult to commit someone to a hospital for treatment, many of the insane are on the streets.  Some of them are quite dangerous.  In a similar vein, Ann Coulter, in her column of 18 Sept. 2013 noted that with the closing of the old asylums, and the difficulty of having someone committed, America has seen the rise of the homeless, AND the shootings by crazies of large numbers of innocents in movie theaters, in schools, in universities, even in a naval facility.  Before the reforms of the 1960s, both Coulter and “60 Minutes” asserted, one did not have the mass shootings by crazies that have occurred since.  Now, it is even difficult for relatives to commit a son or daughter, unless the child is willing to be committed.  They note the result is often disastrous.

            Three films of the earlier era are related to this topic: 1) “The Snake Pit” (1948) depicting in a shocking and frightening way what may occur in the mental institutions, 2) “Street Car Named Desire,” (1951) in which Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) is committed to the insane asylum after being raped by her brother-in-law (Marlon Brando), and 3) “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” (1975) in which inmate Jack Nicholson contends that those inside are just as sane as those on the outside (indeed, the inmates may be ever more sane).  The latter film (and the book that preceded it) may well have persuaded public opinion to close down most of the older mental institutions and accept the newer notions making it very difficult to have someone committed against their will.

            I was quite active in the civil rights movement in my native Louisiana.  A friend in New Orleans CORE was a white college gal from Birmingham, Alabama.  When she returned home, her parents were quite upset.  Connie had to flee hidden in the floor of a car to get to the airport so she could fly out of town.  Her parents had planned to have her committed to a mental institution and then lobotomized.  One wonders, how many suffering from civilrightsophrenia might have suffered similar fates?  (Blacks might have been diagnosed with uppityitis; gays with upthea__iatis, and so on., but whatever the scientific terminology, it was all determined to prevent deviance from the dominant society.)  Albarelli mentions LSD (90) and electric shock (128)  to cure homosexuality; and what about lobotomy for this disease too?  The parents would have their children committed for their own good, of course.  Unlike the Muslims, there was little need for “honor killings” when the state provided mental institutions and “cures.”.

            And so the promiscuous teenage girl might be committed.  And what of the wealthy widower who was suddenly enamored of a pretty young stripper?  Surely, his family might want to inherit the wealth and not see it squandered by the horny old man who must now be certified as mad?  He should be committed.   Or the poor man married to a rich woman; but he now wants to be with a poor beauty?  His wife must now be certified as insane.  If he knows the right lawyer, the right doctor, he may well have her committed.  And the reverse – the poor wife with a rich husband.  And so on.  Indeed, some of the women’s films of the era were explorations of this very theme - the husband seeking to drive the wife insane, such as “Gaslignt”(1944) with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.  To put it bluntly, family values were often imposed by brute force using the state via its mental institutions.  It was probably allowed AND EXPECTED, that the family would prevent deviancy through these measures.  Clearly, there were many abuses in these institutions that had nothing to do with the CIA.

            Perhaps the most amazing example of what might happen in a family dispute occurred in Louisiana in 1959.  Democratic Governor Earl Long, was brother of the more famous Huey Long who was assassinated in Baton Rouge in 1935 by a Dr. Carl Weiss.  (Dr. Victor Weiss examined Rose Cherami in the Louisiana hospital in November 1963, but I have no idea if Weiss of one assassination was related to the Weiss of the other.)

              Earl Long was Governor.  He and his wife, Blanche, had a falling out, possibly about his friendship with stripper Blaze Starr.  (A 1989 film starring Paul Newman, “Blaze” was a fictionalized version of their relationship.)  Blanche then had her husband, the governor of the state, committed to the insane asylum.  Earl Long, inside the hospital, was still governor.  Earl then fired the state’s head of the institution and appointed another doctor as chief administrator.  The new health chief then determined that Earl was sane, and had him released.  When Earl ran in the next election, he asserted that he was the only candidate who had been certified as sane.  On one level, it is a funny, true story.  But on another level, when even a governor could be committed against his will, for perhaps displeasing his wife, or perhaps for only on a political disagreement, one can see how reform was necessary.  Yet today, many like Ann Coulter, “60 Minutes” and myself believe that the pendulum of reform has swung too far one way, and now America must make it easier to commit the crazies.

            My purpose here is NOT to defend the CIA and its use of medicine to enhance torture or captivate minds.  But actions by CIA doctors should be placed in the context of the times.  This context is not simply the Cold War against Communism, in which case the Soviets and their allies were probably doing worse things.  But the context of those times must include the  “normal” cures and procedures inflicted by families and doctors upon patients.