This new ad on the NY subway (like Starbucks) seems asking and aching for a stencil campaign.
The old NAACP (if memory serves) motto comes to mind: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” I see it stenciled, shouting, across this wannabe actress’s face.
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The caption up top (clipped as I snapped the photo) reads in full: “Education for the Real World.”
Indeed:
– The world of Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education, who spent the first decade of the New American Century turning five public schools in Chicago into ‘military academies.’ No need to even begin going through the motions of education. Just teach’em how to spit and shoot and salute and send them off to patrol the mideast.
The administration’s newly announced Space policy, looking mostly to undo Bush-Cheney unilateral militarism and return to the norms of Reagan, Bush pere and Clinton, modest as it seems, echoes a bit ominously.
To begin, it seems intended to put NASA out of the spaceship business.
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NASA in 1963 was a deeply Cowboy institution. And when the president that year signed National Security Action Memo No 271 — headed “Cooperation with the Soviet Union on Outer Space Matters” — the reaction from the national security apparat was pale.
The same day Kennedy signed a less well known memo headed “Classification review of all UFO intelligence files affecting National Security” which referenced NSAM 271 and directed the CIA, which had recently taken over the UFO beat from the Air Force, to begin declassifying UFO files with an eye toward partnered investigation with the Soviet Union.
Jim Marrs, author of worthwhile books on both JFK and UFOs, reports:
In this memo Kennedy stated, “I have initiated [blacked out] and have instructed [then NASA Administrator] James Webb to develop a program with the Soviet Union in joint space and lunar exploration. It would be very helpful if you would have the high threat cases reviewed with the purpose of identification of bona fide as opposed to classified CIA and USAF sources. It is important that we make a clear distinction between the knowns and unknowns in the event the Soviets try to mistake our extended cooperation as a cover for intelligence gathering of their defense and space programs.”
Kennedy then asked for all files on “Unknowns” to be turned over to the NASA authorities and an interim report be forwarded to the White House no later than February 1, 1964.
Kennedy signed the two memos on November 12 and ten days later was dead.
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Werner von Braun and his President
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After running in 1960 as a Colder Warrior than Nixon, then nearly getting sunk by conniving brass and spooks at the Bay of Pigs some 70 days after taking office, after being embarrassed and outfoxed by Khruschev in Vienna then outlasting him at the psy ops battle of West Berlin, and after defusing the Cuban missile crisis by outfoxing his own warmongering brass while brokering a back-channel compromise with the Reds …
After all that, Kennedy during his last summer confirmed his fundamental turn with a commencement address at American University. For a few months it was rather in the news:
“Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other.
“And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland — a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.
“Today, should total war ever break out again — no matter how — our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first twenty-four hours.
Kennedy then voiced clear comprehension of what Eisenhower had been struggling with since making his truce in Korea with Peking and then had spoken of with quiet thunder in his farewell address days before Kennedy took office.
“And even in the cold war [Kennedy said in '63], which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation’s closest allies — our two countries bear the heaviest burdens.
“For we are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.
“In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. …
“So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
The speech, written by young brain-truster Ted Sorenson, had opened more abstractly, contesting the notion that war was the inevitable condition of modern states, taking clear cue here from FDR’s speech at Chicago in 1937.
Kennedy then broke some surprising news, announcing that the US would henceforth refrain, unilaterally, from testing nukes in the atmosphere, and that talks had been set in Moscow “looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty.”
He then concluded:
“Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. … ‘When a man’s ways please the Lord,” the Scriptures tell us, “he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.’
“And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights — the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation — the right to breathe air as nature provided it — the right of future generations to a healthy existence?
“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war ….”
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It’s only against JFK in June 1963, and Eisenhower in 1961, and FDR in 1937, that one can fully appreciate the depths to which we’ve been pulled by the Bush-Cheney doctrine and practice of preemptive war. Indeed, the contrasting lines of argument are so strong that Vladimir Putin at Munich in 2007 reminded the world of FDR at Chicago, in long, loyal paraphrases, while trying to organize the international community in opposition to the American warmongering.
It bears repeating that the Baby Bush Doctrine was promulgated for the most part by the American Likud Lobbyists gathered under the umbrella of The Project for the New American Century in DC.
And lo. Unilateral and exclusive military exploitation of space is high on the agenda of the manifesto published by the group in 2000, two months before the failed election. Half a dozen leading PNAC “Vulcans” were then advising baby Bush’s campaign and months later two dozen would take command of his War Room.
And so it’s only natural to wonder what today’s Apparat thinks of Obama’s announcement about peacefully sharing the last frontier.
It’s just astonishing that given the track record of Blackwater, which is a repeat offender endangering our mission repeatedly, endangering the lives of our military and costing the lives of innocent civilians, that there would be any relationship,” Schakowsky said.
“That we would continue to contract with them or any of Blackwater’s subsidiaries is completely unacceptable.”
Most of Colonel Prouty’s writings are archived by heroic Len Osanic at Prouty.org — but not this one: an article from Gallery magazine and 1975, chatting about the “assassination business.”
Shop talk done, the author then wanders back to the watershed — both his and the Republic’s — of November 1963, when first President Diem of Vietnam and then President Kennedy of the U.S.A. were dispatched.
One bothers to post Prouty’s piece now in support of Roger Craig’s moving last testament — for Prouty’s piece focuses on the technique of suiciding targets in places, like Washington D.C., where moblike drive-by blasts wouldn’t do.
Craig was deemed to have died — months after filming his testament — by a suicidal rifle blast to the chest.
But that was then, surely. Not now …
Well. The Prouty piece emphasizes his conviction that the fix was in at the Secret Service in Dallas.
And one can’t help but note the odd event at the White House last week, when the Secret Service allowed — for no reason yet public — an oddball couple sans invitation to enter the White House grounds, then the building and then the East Room, where a State Dinner was in progress, and shake hands with the President.
Is it merely funny that this happened just days before Obama’s long-awated All Things Considered speech in which his decision as to the future of the National Security Apparat’s venture in Pakghanistan will be revealed?
Might a little slip in security just be a way to remind the young Prez who’s got his back, and why?
I was so busy a week ago that I forgot to observe the 46th anniversary of the murder that, to my mind, marks the end of the American republic and the germination of what blossomed so wonderfully under Bush-Cheney. Call it what you will. Likely four years hence it’ll be in our face again.
– was on the Grassy Knoll within moments of the murder, and
– was present when the rifle of the Book Depository was found and identified by Seymour Weitzman as a Mauser of a different caliber than the old Italian soldier’s rifle that the Warren Commission reported found and attributed to Oswald.
Pressing these and other conflicts with the official story across the years seemed to cost Mr Craig his life:
In 1973 a car forced Craig’s car off a mountain road. He was badly injured but he survived the accident.
In 1974 he surviving another shooting in Waxahachie, Texas.
The following year he was seriously wounded when his car engine exploded. Craig told friends that the Mafia had decided to kill him.
Roger Craig was found dead on 15th May, 1975. It was later decided he had died as a result of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
(From the Spartacus vault maintained by John Simkin in England. Even better, visit his massive Education Forum, on the web, re these matters.)
Craig’s suiciding prompted the attorney Mark Lane, author of two of the most important books on the first Kennedy murder, to stitch together the documentary linked above, based on a filmed interview Craig gave in 1974.
One supposes one might suppose a causal connection between the interview of 1974 and the faux suicide months later. The gunshots were plural, to the chest, with a rifle.
So lend Mr Craig your eyes and ears. Five parts of nine minutes or so, all there on youtube.
And then, for elaboration but also pleasure, Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb.
One comes away with a clear picture of not only what we did to Italy in the postwar era, but prudent guesses as to what we are doing to ourselves, having seen the enemy …
Most of what the film has to say is familiar. But the last two parts (on youtube) have revived basic despair about not only our owner-operator class but the young soldiers, who seem as alien and rabid as the teen zealots of 1917 did to so many Russians.
It’s only a few baby steps from shooting civilians for fun in Iraq to the same in American cities. I guess we will see this sooner than later, perhaps even before election day 2016 if Romney beats Obama in 2012.
And of course I don’t mean to imply that it’s okay in Iraq. It’s so NOT okay that … words elude.
And thoughts of leaving the country intrude.
I mean only to gauge the degradation of our people — our enemy met that is us — raised on video games and patriotic television. We mirror the owner-operators with gruesome fidelity.
And have deprived ourselves of sound basis for complaint should one day a city of our own go up in smoke.
Frank Schaeffer was the son of a famous right-wing Christian preacher-activivist. Became one himself. But then saw the light and went Left.
His simple scorn for the movement is bracing.
But his certainty as to its essential violence — that violence itself, born of long resentment within a civilization that passed it by, is its aim — is ominous.
There has been good solid journalism about this threat throughout the decade, of course. This is a quick, sharp reminder.
And when one considers the black boy who was beaten to death in Chicago weeks ago — that horror that seems to have largely escaped notice …
One realizes how difficult the tightrope this President must walk shall be.
The story of September converges from four corners:
1. Weeks ago — on 9/11 — two top-drawer generals, Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, came out of retirement to blast Cheney on torture in the Miami Herald.
The timing and some particulars struck me as odd, portentous and a tiny bit ominous: Why this and why now?
Hoar was the commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees the mideast, from 1991 to 1994.
And his co-author is a former Commandant (top dog) of the Marines and — curious — is the son of another General Krulak, Victor, who once was an ally of JFK in his struggle with the Pentagon over Vietnam policy. (See last link above.)
2. Nine days later, September 20, President Obama, during a whirlwind tour of five Sunday talk shows, went off topic (health care) to talk about Pakghanistan — and for the first time publicly cast doubt upon the policy that he had cheerleaded without reservation during the long campaign, and had then inherited:
He said before he decided whether to send more troops, he needed to determine whether the United States was pursuing the proper military strategy.
“The first question is, are we doing the right thing?” Mr. Obama said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Are we pursuing the right strategy?”
The next morning 66 pages from General Stanley McChrystal appeared in the Washington Post, predicting “failure” in Afghanistan unless the Pentagon’s request for tens of thousands of new pairs of boots were soon granted.
3. Five days later, we noted remarks by General Michael Lenhert — who built and for a time ran the Bush-Cheney Gitmo prison — denouncing the prison as a bad idea from Day One. He didn’t name Cheney (in reports I’ve seen) but, simultaneously, Cheney was telling think tanks that Obama is wrong to try to shut the prison down.
Harpers also noticed Lenhert’s remarks and quickly put out a piece that extends them to explicitly target the former vice president: “The Generals vs The Cheneys.”
Krulak & Hoar on torture. Lenhert on Gitmo. Three big guns, trained upon Cheney as he bellows about the speaking circuit. Curious …
It seemed curious that such men would suddenly raise their profiles and such a ruckus, merely to blast a retired, old and disgraced vice president, on issues that the new president had already turned around.
Or … Was Dick speaking for more than himself — for something yet vital in the power scheme?
4. Days later (early this week), NewsMax.com, which feeds Fox News fodder, published an elaborate memo explaining why a military coup to solve the “Obama problem” was “not unrealistic” and not a bad idea.
Chris Matthews jumped in, and appropriately so. See the Hardball clip embedded in the Harpers link in item 3 above.
And note that the clip comes from Human Rights First — and that the two military men Matthews talks with — including Lt General Henry Soyster, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, criticizing Cheney’s fear-mongering and his Gitmo campaign — are explicitly associated with Human Rights First on its webpage.
And note that Generals Krulak and Hoar, too, associate themselves with HRF.
Reading the Krulak-Hoar piece alone, in its oddness, provoked a question: Do these high generals sniff something unpatriotic fermenting within the wide circles of their brassy acquaintance?
However that may be, that a roomful of such men suddenly gathered to speak loudly against Cheney in September is reason to not summarily dismiss the NewsMax blip as lunatic-fringe fantasy signifying nothing.
The Beer Hall Putsch was lunatic fri — HA !
Matthews goes on to mention MacArthur — versus Truman! — in the same breath as McChrystal — and then asks his brassy guests if we’ve seen this movie and it’s Seven Days in May — HA !
A fortiori forsooth: It seems that sometime this summer a bevy of high-brow brass was organized to oppose a right-wing call-it-what-you-will — movement? — the poster children of which are Cheney and, for the moment, McChrystal.
Gathering under a Human Rights banner to grapple with Dick, blow by blow, topic by topic, might be a way for august generals to tell their wide acquaintance the Preakness pool has been closed until further notice.
That President Obama would sooner or later have to face down the Pentagon he inherited with so little complaint (disturbing neither Gates nor Mullen nor their vision for victory in Pakghanistan) — and would then tred paths parallel to those of JFK and LBJ — was apparent and a worry during the interregnum last winter.
Vegas odds remain stacked against deposing any president with an army.
But the bile-laden bullet points in the NewsMax memo itemize real thoughts inspiring right-wingers with rage. JFK’s inner circle initiated the production of the Seven Days in May film, and saw the work through with unprecedented support — evacuating the White House to make way for the film crew — because by 1963 they knew the novel was not fantasy.
Media talking points by a person named Perry at NewsMax, which feeds Fox News — re the bright side of a military coup to solve the “Obama problem” — were published on the NewsMax site this week.
Then taken down Wednesday (two days ago).
Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.
America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:
# Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized …
Goes on at some length.
First thought: a hoax.
But the crudeness of the language, screwy thoughts about the Constitution, were reminiscent of totalitarian hoplites that populate literature from behind the Iron Curtain.
And soon a Spokesvolker for Newsmax acknowledged the memo, telling TPM (where the text has been salvaged, linked above) that Perry was an “unpaid blogger.” The NewsMax site itself says he “contributes a regular column.”
What’s most important about the NewsMax piece is that it is not an isolated incident out standing in its field.
Rather, it’s surrounded by a bevy of high-brow generals who came out of retirement or obscurity in September to counter the Rumbling Thunder of the Miserable Media Tour of Dick Cheney, who should be history but apparently isn’t.
The Huffington Post dismisses the NewsMax memo as lunatic fringe. Um-hmm. Beer Hall Putsch … And again — but at least makes clear that, yes, the author is an ass raised on Age of Reagan television. Let’s see …
Well and good. But also a bit odd. Is there nothing current behind it? Torture, per se, is no longer an issue. Cheney seems history.
And note that one of the generals — former Marine Commandant Charles Krulak — bears a name that rings in the annals of American postwar history.
In the 1960s (and maybe 50s, under CIA auspices), Marine General Victor “Brute” Krulak was involved in the energetic effort to win in Vietnam. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty worked closely with him, and has written a lot about him.
Relevant bits in a nutshell: Prouty says that Brute, atop the Marine staff in the Pentagon in the early 60s, became a close ally and advisor to JFK in the effort to turn the Vietnam policy around.
The McNamara-Taylor of October 2, 1963 — supposedly the findings of the Secretary of Defense and JFK’s special advisor General Maxwell Taylor on their grand tour of Vietnam — was principally authored by Krulak, Prouty & co, working closely with the White House — and then placed in McNamara & Taylor’s hands, for the sake of the cameras, as they returned from their mission.
That is: The policy change this much publicized report effected was sold using Taylor’s and McNamara’s names, but was actually the thinking and initiative of JFK’s narrow circle, which at this moment included, on the brassy side, Brute and his assistant Fletch. (Thus spake Prouty.)
1. Is Marine Gen. Charles C. Krulak the son of Marine Gen. Victor Krulak? Shouldn’t be hard to find out, I guess.
Uh yes — that’s a roger. Charles is the son of Victor.
2. Why is Charles coming out of retirement to hit the retired Cheney on the head now?
Check out — at Sibel Edmonds website 123Change — the Boiling Frogs podcasts, probing the National Security Apparat.
For example: An INTERVIEW with Investigative journalist Joseph J. Trento, author of, among others, The Secret History of the CIA and Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network.
From the interview:
On All Hallows Eve, 1977 [President Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner] fired 800 people in the clandestine services, which was the old boy club of the CIA.
And after they did that it basically started a revolution against the Carter government. Jimmy Carter never got any intelligence of any value after that as president.
Or click the Trento link above for the full podcast, which helps explain the decline of the civilian government in D.C. since the war, and goes best with sipped sour mash.
She whom Bush-Cheney repressed for seven years — “the most gagged person in the history of the USA” according to the ACLU — testified in a court case re Turkish and Israeli espionage in August.
And now has a big interview re Marc Grossman — alleged Israeli spy atop the State Dept in the 90s — and other spooks and influence peddlars she’s stumbled across, in the current American Conservative magazine.
( Me? I’m a socialist, or would be if there was a party to speak of stateside. But I like Pat Buchanan (of AmCon mag). He’s got a basic respect for discourse that’s rare among pundits raised on and trained for television. )
See Sibel’s website — 123 Real Change — for more about Grossman and other alleged Israeli spies from John Cole, former FBI Counterintel and Counterterror fellow, who has a book out this fall on the subject.
Edmonds is not yet impressed with Team Obama on these issues. From the AmCon interview:
First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.
As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities.
And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity.
This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.
Also check out — at 123 — the Boiling Frogs podcasts, probing the National Security Apparat.
Eg, an interesting interview with investigative journalist Joe Trento, author of Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network and The Secret History of the CIA.Here’s a tidbit.
Former FBI Counterterror official John M. Cole confirms there was strong evidence that Marc Grossman (formerly of the State Dept) was spying for Israel, and says that over a hundred espionage investigations of same profile were turned off for no good reason during his time at the tiller.
Cole has a book out on the subject in November: While America Sleeps. (Echo of Churchill’s While England Slept …)
And here’s an extensive podcast interview with him. Very interesting. Robert Mueller at FBI did everything to keep this story from coming out.
See SIBEL EDMONDS’ website — 123 Real Change — for updates through time.
John Simkin, in Britain, runs both Spartacus and the Education Forum, the latter which is perhaps the best tool for thinking about things like JFK’s murder in cyberspace.
Also note that General Freakley has been working on the suicide problem: Mental Stress Training to wash the brain clean of bloody-minded guilt. See 4th comment here.
America … If it only had a brain. And a heart. And the courage to Stay Home.
Werner von Braun and his President
