Jim Garrison on Fascism

[Octafish]

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was the only government official
to pursue and prosecute alleged conspirators behind the assassination of President Kennedy.
His thoughts on fascism from 43 years ago are most prescient.

Jim Garrison, Playboy Interview

Playboy, October, 1967

EXCERPT...

"What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in (the assassination of President Kennedy), is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.

In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.

I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."

CONTINUED...

http://www.jfklancer.com/Garrison4.html

Garrison was on to something,as seen in this video courtesy of the great DUer CGowen. The Clay Shaw interview is chilling.

Tip o' the cap to the great DUer Libertyordeath for the first incarnation of this post several years ago.

Edit: Re-hosted the picture.

[abq e streeter]

1. nothing to add but k&r

[Octafish]

4. Thanks, abq e streeter! Here's what Michael Parenti has to say about Garrison...

The historian observes how media gatekeepers' reactions to Oliver Stone's "JFK," which centers on Jim Garrison's investigation, reveals much about our nation.

The JFK Assassination:
Defending the Gangster State

by Michael Parenti

EXCERPT...

JFK is the only movie I know that continues to be attacked years after its run. Reviewers and commentators persist in making gratuitous references, describing Oliver Stone as "the man who reinvented history with movies such as JFK" (Oakland Tribune, 10/13/95), referring to "Oliver Stone's near-pathological monkeying with history" (East Bay Express, 12/14/95), and describing him as "a man who makes his living being a ranting maniac" and a "dangerous fellow" (San Francisco Examiner, 1/9/96). If anyone is ranting, it's the press.

Sociologist David Simone compiled a study of the books published on the Kennedy assassination, some 600 titles, and found that 20 percent of them blamed either a lone assassin or the mafia or the Cubans or Russians. The other 80 percent ascribed the assassination to a conspiracy linked to U.S. intelligence agencies, some of these also saying that mobsters were involved at the operational level. Ignoring this 80 percent of the literature, publications like the New York Times and Washington Post have listed the various theories about the JFK assassination as follows: (a) lone assassin, (b) mafia, (c) Cubans/Soviets, and (d) the "Oliver Stone movie theory." In other words, they ignore the existence of a vast literature from which the movie is derived and ascribe the critical theme presented within the film solely to the imagination of a film maker. The press would have us believe that the notion of a state-sponsored assassination conspiracy and coverup came out of a movie--when actually the movie was based on a rich and revealing investigative literature.

Like the Warren Commission, the press assumed a priori that Oswald was the killer. The only question it asked was: Did Oswald act alone? The answer was a loudly orchestrated YES. Meanwhile, almost every in-depth investigator had a different conclusion: Oswald did not act at all. He was not one of the people who shot Kennedy, although he was involved in another way, as a fall guy, in his own words "just a patsy."

The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state. In 1978, when a House Select Committee concluded that there was more than one assassin involved in the Kennedy shooting, the Washington Post (1/6/79) editorialized:

Could it have been some other malcontent who Mr. Oswald met casually? Could not as much as three or four societal outcasts with no ties to any one organization have developed in some spontaneous way a common determination to express their alienation in the killing of President Kennedy? It is possible that two persons acting independently attempted to shoot the President at the very same time.

It is "possible," but also most unlikely and barely imaginable. Instead of a conspiracy theory the Post creates a one-in-a-billion "coincidence theory" that is the most fanciful of all explanations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.michaelparenti.org/JFKAssassination.html

It seems that every day more people wise up to the traitors.

[maryf]

2. Plus another

K&R

[Octafish]

5. Thanks, maryf! Did you know two members of the Warren Commission worked closely with NAZIs?

It's true. It's a fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission.

The other five were conservative, at best.

I know it's old news to you, my Friend.

The reason I bring this up is Corporate McPravda ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutwork missed the story.

[maryf]

16. Corporate media blinders...

miss a lot...

[Hardrada]

3. True enough

[Octafish]

7. Oliver Stone: Jim Garrison, the KGB, and the CIA - an open letter to Foreign Affairs magazine

Foreign Relations refused to allow readers to learn what the director had to say about Clay Shaw and his connections to fascists.

Jim Garrison, the KGB, and the CIA
An open letter to Foreign Affairs magazine

by Oliver Stone
The Nation magazine, August 5 /12, 2002

Last fall, Nation contributing editor Max Holland wrote an article for the ClA publication Studies in Intelligence asserting that former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was duped by a KGB disinformation operation that led him, along with most Americans, to believe that the CIA had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

This spring, Foreign Affairs magazine published a generous review of Hollands article. As co-writers of the film JFK, we sent a reply to Foreign Affairs. The editors refused to publish it. We offered to pay for an ad, but Foreign Affairs again refused.

For the record, here is our reply:

Dear Editors of Foreign Affairs

Philip Zelikow's review of Max Holland's recent article in the CIA publication Studies in Intelligence is a disservice to your readers. Zelikow uncritically accepts Holland's theory that a KGB disinformation operation back in 1967 is at the root of most Americans' current belief that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

Holland's thesis rests on one unproven premise: that the KGB planted a false story in March 1967 in Paese Sera, an Italian leftwing newspaper. The story reported that Clay Shaw, then recently charged with conspiracy to assassinate the President, was a board member of Centro Mondiale Comerciale (CMC), an organization that had been forced out of Italy amid charges that it was a CIA money-laundering front.

The problem Zelikow ignores is that Holland's only evidence to support his premise is one handwritten note by a KGB defector named Vasili Mitrokhin that "refers to a disinformation scheme in 1967 that involved Paese Sera and resulted in publication of a false story in New York." The note, supposedly summarizing a KGB document that Holland has never seen, does not mention Clay Shaw, Centro Mondiale Comerciale, Jim Garrison, or any specific New York publication.

Holland speculates that the New York publication may have been the National Guardian, which based an article on the Paese Sera series. But one short article in an obscure left-wing weekly that routinely picked up stories from the international press does not seem like much of an accomplishment for a KGB disinformation operation. There is no evidence that the Guardian article was picked up anywhere else in the U.S.

Rather than speculate, Holland might have tried to interview the editors of Paese Sera who were responsible for the articles on Centro Mondiale Comerciale, as scholar Joan Mellen has done for her forthcoming biography of Garrison. They would have told him that the six-part series had nothing to do with the KGB or the JFK assassination, that they had never heard of Jim Garrison when they assigned the story six months before, and that they were astonished to see that Shaw might have any connection to the assassination. The articles were actually assigned in the wake of a right-wing coup in Greece and were intended to prevent such a coup in Italy.

Holland says "everything in the Paese Sera story was a lie." His evidence? A recently released CIA document saying that the Agency itself looked into Paese Sera's allegations. and found that the CIA had no connection to CMC or its parent Permindex. Holland may be willing to accept this as the whole truth, but it is unconvincing to the rest of us who have noticed the Agency's tendency to distance itself from its fronts, to release to the public only documents that serve its interest, to fabricate evidence, and to lie outright even under oath to congressional committees.

Two important facts from the Paese Sera story remain true:

1. CMC was forced to leave Italy (for Johannesburg, South Africa) in 1962 under a cloud of suspicion about its CIA connections.
2. Clay Shaw was a member of CMC's board, along with such well-known fascist sympathizers as Gutierrez di Spadaforo, undersecretary of agriculture for Mussolini; Ferenc Nagy, former premier of Hungary, and Giuseppe Zigiotti, president of the Fascist National Association for Militia Arms.

Holland claims that the Paese Sera articles were what led Garrison to believe the CIA was involved in the assassination. This is nonsense. Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins describes in detail how his uncovering of various pieces of evidence actually led him to the conclusion that the CIA was involved. This gradual process began two days after the assassination when he questioned David Ferrie, a pilot who flew secret missions to Cuba for the CIA and trained Lee Harvey Oswald in his Civil Air Patrol unit. It included his investigation of a 1961 raid of a munitions cache by CIA operatives in Houma, Louisiana; the discovery that several of Oswald's co-workers at Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans now worked at NASA; the fact that Oswald was working out of an office that was running the CIA's local training camp for Operation Mongoose; many eyewitnesses who saw Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Oswald together, etc. No doubt the Paese Sera series was another piece of the puzzle for Garrison, but it was not the centerpiece of his thinking that Holland makes it out to be.

From the moment his investigation of the JFK assassination became public, Garrison was pilloried in the press. This treatment was part of an orchestrated effort by the CIA to discredit critics of the Warren Commission. A CIA memo dated April 1, 1967, never mentioned by Holland or Zelikow, outlines the strategy and calls for the Agency's "assets" in the media (writers and editors) to publish stories saying the critics were politically motivated, financially motivated, egomaniacal, sloppy in their research, supported the Soviet Union, etc. This is exactly the inaccurate portrait of Garrison that emerged in the press.

With the publication of Holland's recent article attempting to link Jim Garrison to the KGB, the CIA continues to pursue this misguided strategy of smearing Garrison and other critics of the Warren Commission. Fortunately, the American public has never bought the tired old lie that the CIA's misadventures can be written off as figments of KGB disinformation. Too bad your critic did.

- Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar co-writers of the film JFK

SOURCE:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/JGarrison_KGB_CIA_OStone.html

[OnyxCollie]

6. K&R. nt

[Octafish]

8. Thanks, OnyxCollie! Did you hear about the law professor at the University of Georgia?

Professor Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., is a national treasure.

DESTINY BETRAYED:
THE CIA, OSWALD, AND
THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (Dec. 7, 2005).

Author: Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law.

In place of the strong sense of faith in man and mankind, we now have a heavy feeling of a failed mission, of destiny betrayed and unfulfilled. – Rav Alex Israel

The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization. – Bulletin of the Federation of American Scientists

Today, 42 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, few responsible researchers who have studied JFK’s murder accept the Warren Commission’s main conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, committed the crime. (The Warren Commission was the body appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the Kennedy assassination; it released its Report in September 1964.) As these researchers have shown again and again in scores of books and articles, evidence available to the Commission but improperly evaluated, erroneously rejected, or simply not pursued by that body, together with new evidence unavailable to the Commission, discredits the principal finding of the Warren Report. JFK’s death was, these researchers believe, carried out by a conspiracy; it was not the act of a lone assassin. Different researchers, however, have different conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists also disagree about Oswald: some maintain that he was simply one of the conspirators; others claim that, while he was a member of the conspiracy, he was also unknowingly a dupe of the other conspirators who intended for him to be the fall guy; and still other theorists think that Oswald was a wholly innocent person set up by the conspirators as the patsy. Furthermore, the theorists who regard Oswald as a conspirator disagree as to whether he fired any of the shots in Dealey Plaza.

Currently, the conspiracy theories most worthy of consideration are these: (1) the Mafia did it; (2) the CIA did it; (3) the anti-Castro Cubans–that is, opponents of Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro–did it; (4) white-supremacist racists and right-wing extremists did it; and (5) the conspiracy consisted of persons who were affiliated with the Mafia, the CIA, or various anti-Castro or extreme rightist groups, but who were acting as individuals (albeit perhaps with some connivance from the organizations with which they had affiliations). Although still the subject of lively discussion in JFK assassination literature, conspiracy theories that the assassination was attributable to the FBI or the Secret Service, to the Soviet Union, to Fidel Castro’s Cuba and pro-Castroites, or to Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson (and Johnson’s supporters), appear less credible with the passing of each year.

The theory that JFK’s murder was engineered by the CIA (or by persons affiliated with the CIA), and that the CIA covered up its connections to the murder, warrants serious consideration and should not be peremptorily rejected. In the 1960’s the CIA more resembled an untouchable crime syndicate than a legitimate government entity. Lavishly but secretly funded, unrestrained by public opinion, cloaked in secrecy, conducting whatever foreign or domestic clandestine operations it wished without regard to laws or morals, and specializing in deception, falsification, and mystification, the CIA was riddled at all levels with ruthless, cynical officials and employees who believed that they were above the law, that any means were justified to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, and that insofar as their surreptitious activities were concerned it was justifiable to lie with impunity to anyone, even presidents and legislators. Many of these individuals, thinking he was soft on communism, that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex, and that he was to blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961), hated and despised Kennedy. The CIA routinely circumvented and defied attempts by the executive and legislative branches to monitor its activities. It was involved in innumerable unlawful or outrageous activities. It illegally opened the mail of Americans. It interfered with free elections in foreign countries and arranged to destabilize or overthrow the governments of other countries. It plotted the murder of various foreign leaders. It arranged to hire the Mafia to help with some of these proposed murder plots. It unlawfully stored–in quantities, UGA political science professor Loch K. Johnson notes, sufficient “to destroy the population of a small city”–exotic toxic agents, including cobra venom and shellfish toxin, for the purpose of committing murders. It manufactured and used sinister lethal weaponry, including what Prof. Johnson calls “the ultimate murder weapon,” an electric handgun (the CIA called it a “noise-free disseminator”) with a telescopic sight which could noiselessly and accurately fire poison-tipped darts (the CIA called them “nondiscernible microbioinoculators”) up to a distance of 250 feet. It undoubtedly carried out multiple secret murders and other heinous crimes which it successfully kept hidden. Furthermore, it is now firmly established that after the JFK assassination the CIA simultaneously lied to, and withheld important information from, the Warren Commission.

One of the first serious investigators to raise credible claims that CIA operatives or ex-CIA operatives were involved in the JFK assassination was Jim Garrison, who served as the district attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1962 to 1974. (A brief chronology of Garrison’s life and investigation is set forth at the end of this article.) Garrison and his office investigated the assassination for about five years, from late 1966 until early 1971. His investigation led Garrison to believe that, regardless of whoever actually fired the shots in Dealey Plaza, the assassination was the result of a plot hatched in New Orleans by persons with CIA connections. Furthermore, Garrison concluded, following the assassination the CIA engaged in a coverup to protect itself and the assassins. Garrison brought to trial the only criminal proceeding in which someone was actually charged with involvement in the JFK assassination. Garrison wrote two important books, the first published in 1970, the second in 1988, in which he recounted his investigation and shared the important new facts he had discovered.

In the words of journalist Fred Powledge, who wrote a magazine article on Garrison published in 1967, Garrison thought that “the assassins were CIA employees who were angered at President Kennedy’s posture on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and that the CIA was frustrating his investigation, although the agency knew the whereabouts of the assassins.” Philosophy professor Richard H. Popkin, in another magazine article published in 1967, summarized Garrison’s views on the assassination as follows: “The thesis Garrison has set forth is that a group of New Orleans-based, anti-Castroites, supported and/or encouraged by the CIA in their anti-Castro activities, in the late summer or early fall of 1963 conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy. This group, according to Garrison, included Shaw, Ferrie, Oswald, ... and others, including Cuban exiles and American anti-Castroites.... heir plan was executed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. At least part of their motivation ... was their reaction to Kennedy’s decisions at the Bay of Pigs and the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba following the missiles crisis of 1962.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/jfk_22destiny.html

Thanks for understanding what it's all about, my Friend!

[OnyxCollie]

9. Thank you, Octafish!

I've already added this to my bookmarks.

[defendandprotect]

13. I do take exception to the exclusion of LBJ in the plot, however . . .

or to Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson (and Johnson’s supporters), appear less credible with the passing of each year.


IMO, the plot nor the cover up could have been done without the collusion of VP LBJ and

John Connolly --

Nor could the plot and cover up have been so protected without the power of the Presidency.

Many still have illusions about LBJ, perhaps because of his having pushed the

Civil Rights legislation?

However, LBJ had strong ties to Mafia and oil industry -- and a long history of corruption,

if not murders in his own right!

[Octafish]

29. The guy went along with the warmongers pushing the Gulf of Tonkin...

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!



His choice of friends says a lot to me.

[defendandprotect]

31. Agree -- !!

:)

Thanks for all your work here trying to keep us informed!!

[laughingliberal]

10. k & r n/t

[Octafish]

17. Garrison’s Case Finally Coming Together

The facts show Jim Garrison was correct: Shaw was very connected to CIA.

Garrison’s Case Finally Coming Together

by Martin Shackelford

In 1969, government secrecy severly hampered the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison into the assassination of President Kennedy. Today, with the documents released under the JFK Records Act, some of that secrecy has crumbled, and elements of Garrison’s case look stronger today than in 1969.

SNIP...

Clay Shaw’s connections to the Central Intelligence Agency are now thoroughly documented. Though he told reporters he was in the Medical Corps during World War Two, documents show that he worked for an Army Counterintelligence group called the Special Operations Section. His military record remains classified. In Europe, he became involved with a Rome-based CIA front organization, the Centro Mondiale Commerciale. Between 1948 and 1956, he filed reports with the CIA’s Domestic Contact Division, and provided documents to the Foreign Documents Division.

The CIA paid for one of Shaw’s trips in 1955, and the following year he actively solicited information for them. Although a CIA internal report described him as a valuable informant, his formal connection with the Agency suddenly ended in 1956. His CIA activities, though, continued. The House Select Committee on Assassinations learned, but didn’t report, that Shaw was heavily involved in anti-Castro activities; he allowed one group rent-free space in his International Trade Mart. He had a working relationship with former FBI agent Guy Banister, many of whose former employees now confirm that Banister employed Oswald in the summer of 1963.

As late as 1967, Shaw had a “covert security” classification for a top secret program called QKENCHANT. The program remains so highly classified that we are still unable to learn anything about its nature, but Shaw’s classification was approved by the CIA’s then covert operations chief, Richard Helms, and we know that clearances were being granted in December 1962. Former CIA official Victor Marchetti said that QKENCHANT was most likely run out of the Domestic Operations Division of the Clandestine Services, run by Tracy Barnes. Support for this comes from recently-released documents identifying Barnes’ then-deputy, E. Howard Hunt, as another individual involved with QKENCHANT. We also know that a pilot was considered for clearance for the program. One of the few others known to have been cleared for QKENCHANT was Monroe Sullivan, director of the San Francisco Trade Mart, and Shaw’s alibi witness for November 22, 1963.

CONTINUED....

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/25th_Issue/shaw.html

Thank you for giving a damn and understanding why this is so important, laughingliberal.

[defendandprotect]

11. "It can happen here--" and it is happening!! We are still fighting WWII . . .

For those who may not know . . .

Operation Paperclip brought tens of thousands of Nazis into America --

they were used to found the CIA, they were funneled into the FBI - NASA -

and other government agencies.



Thank you for this reminder from a brilliant man -- Jim Garrison.

I read all of the Playboy interview --

but will be back tomorrow for the final links you included.

Those in control of our country are manipulating events more openly than ever before, IMO.

Too many still sit in front of their TVs actually expecting that one day the truth of

America's half century of overt right wing political violence will come tumbling from it!

Not only do we have a corporate-press under the thumb of our "National Security State" and

its lies -- but under the control of the CIA/Pentagon.


Needless to say, Garrison also addresses our problems from the highest perspective --

fascism -- and the overpopulation we were learning about even at that time which so

diminishes the value of human life.

Like Mae Brussel, Garrison addressed the issue of "neo-Nazis" even in 1967!



And re the Magic bullet -- for those who may not know this ....

The official autopsy reports that JFK's neck wound was an entry wound and had NO OUTLET --

Also, that the wound in JFK's back was in his right shoulder blade and had NO OUTLET --

The back wound was probed repeatedly with finger tip and medical instruments - NO OUTLET--

FURTHER, the wound in his right shoulder blade was made at a 45 DEGREE DOWNWARD ANGLE --!!



PS: Interesting that across from the Garrison video was one by Fletcher Prouty

talking about the drug trade and our impenetratable air defense system!!

[Octafish]

18. Jim Garrison and Discovery

Thank you, defendandprotect. Your post spells out the facts that Corporate McPravda will never touch.

For those interested in WHY Jim Garrison cared so much about the assassinations of President Kennedy, Dr. King and Sen. Kennedy, please read the essays by "ratitor" and Penn Jones:

Disappearing Witnesses: what does "justice" mean w.r.t. assassination?

PS: Agree totally with you, my Friend. Fletcher Prouty should be honored for his work with Jim Garrison to bring Justice to the assassins of President Kennedy.

[defendandprotect]

32. Thank you -- I will soon catch up with

the rest of the links here I haven't not been able to read as yet --

Loved Fletcher Prouty --

Clearly, since the coup on JFK and our people's government no one has had

the power to bring the truth of it to the American people.

[EFerrari]

12. "In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon

with Congress reduced to a debating society."

:kick:

[Octafish]

19. Explains why when we elect Al Gore, we get George Bush.

Also explains why Diebold and ES&S aren't worried about any hand-counted paper ballots soon, if ever.

WHO RULES AMERICA? HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Joan Mellen
Stewart Mott House, Washington, D.C., September 14, 2007.

I like to begin my talks with a mantra. It goes like this. Jim Garrison, district attorney of Orleans Parish, whose investigation into the Kennedy assassination is the subject of my book, “A Farewell To Justice,” after it was all over and Clay Shaw was acquitted, was asked: how could you ever have believed that you could convict CIA operative Clay Shaw for participation in the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy in a state court in Louisiana?

“I guess I thought I was living in the country I was born in,” Garrison said.

This line has particular resonance today. Many of us were not born in a country where martial law was legitimized; where the President could countermand any law he wanted to with promiscuous signing statements; where there was illegal government surveillance of citizens accompanied by neither warrants nor probable cause; where what library books you took out could become known to the government; where America, having legalized the use of torture, was defined as a country inevitably pursuing preemptive foreign wars, and where, as in George Orwell's “1984,” war was a permanent part of the country's identity. You all know the litany.

It also has become clear even to those in deepest denial that the Democrats are not about to reverse these assaults on the U.S. Constitution. In policy, in principle and in action, the Democrats are revealing themselves as offering no substantive difference from the party in power. Howard Zinn made the point that there was little difference between the two parties in “A People's History of the United States,” first published in 1980. Zinn's observation is more true than ever today as some people, albeit half-heartedly, continue to be tempted to place their faith in a change of administrations in the hope of reversing the damage to the democratic fabric we have witnessed in the past eight years.

In our continuing attempt to understand when this assault on the Constitution began in earnest, so that in the administration of George W. Bush it accelerated at so astonishing a pace, I would like first to raise the question of whether it is in to fact true that with Bush and Cheney we have seen an inflation of the power of the Executive. Or has the power of the president in fact shrunk so drastically that it is entirely inappropriate to blame Bush for the war, or for the assault on the Constitution? Let me suggest that it is the organ grinder with whom we have to be concerned, rather than the monkey.

CONTINUED...

http://www.joanmellen.net/whorules.html

In many ways, Professor Mellen reminds me of you, Beffers.

[EFerrari]

23. Might explain why when we elect Obama, we still get BushCo's

national security apparatus.

:hi:

[truebrit71]

26. Bill Hicks had that nailed down years ago...

...

[EFerrari]

27. Yes, he did indeed. n/t

[omega minimo]

14. This OP is pointless without photos

:evilgrin:

[Octafish]

20. Correctemundo.

Had to look twice...

[Gabi Hayes]

15. as always, thx for your contributions. now, on a ''lighter note:''

back, and to the left....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Fl9ZVJ7B8&NR=1

[defendandprotect]

35. Thank you --

Somehow I'd never heard of Bill Hicks !!

Is he still with us?

How long as he been around -- ?

Needless to say, I'll try to find out!

[fascisthunter]

21. those who vote republican will never get it

because the ugly truth demands they internalize and do something about it. They lack the guts to do so...

[MinM]

22. Judge Joe Brown and Richard Sprague too...

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/?az=archives&j=4168&page=8

Keep up the great work, Octafish.

[MinM]

38. J. Lee Rankin, Harry Connick Sr., Robert Blakey et al.,

were on the other end of that spectrum.

J. Lee Rankin
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrankin.htm

Probe V2N5: Canning's Letter to Blakey
http://www.ctka.net/pr795-canning.html

Probe V2N5: The Transcript from Harry's Hell
http://www.ctka.net/pr795-harry.html

Probe V2N5: Raymond vs. Connick: Round One
http://www.ctka.net/pr795-rvc.html

Probe V2N5: Connick vs. Garrison Round Three
http://www.ctka.net/pr795-gvc.html

http://www.ctka.net/jfkarticles.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgarrison.htm
http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson1.ram
http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson2.ram
http://www.blackopradio.com/black365c.ram
http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black366a.mp3

[Octafish]

39. Earl Warren wanted Warren Olney to serve as Chief Counsel

The two were a crime fighting duo from their time in California. Allen Dulles and Gerald Ford did all they could to foist the puke turd Rankin.

Just started reading : Gerald McKnight's history of the Warren Commission. It should be required reading. Jim DiEugenio gives us a spanking good review: Breach of Trust.

As head of Justice's Criminal Division Olney also had a shared history with FBI Director Hoover that was altogether different. Hoover despised Olney. As one FBI agent remarked, "Olney was the only guy who had balls enough to stand up to Hoover." (p. 41)

Kind of puts the ass in fascism, that guy.

PS: Thank you for all the work you've done in regard to making the truth about Dallas available for others to learn, MinM. Especially me.

[Waiting For Everyman]

24. K&R A true hero, a man of real integrity - thanks for posting!

I followed intensely at the time, and will never forget, his prosecution of the assassination. And I also remember when the attacks against him in the media started - it was soooooo obvious.

He was right on target, and what he had to say is very worth reading. One man, against the whole establishment - had the guts to prosecute the murder of a President.

That's when I knew how screwed we were.

I wish we had more like him now.

[truebrit71]

25. He nailed that one for sure...

..

[Rhiannon12866]

28. K&R. Great post! Bookmarking...

:patriot:

[slay]

30. K&R

"In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line."

I don't even think I need to say anything else. :(

[HCE SuiGeneris]

33. Damn, but you're a fountain of knowlege.

Thank you for another eye-popping post... and the incredible sources of info that can be found throughout its threads.

[Echo In Light]

34. K&R

[robertpaulsen]

36. On the subject of fascism, courtesy of Thom Hartmann.

The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"
by Thom Hartmann


The Republican National Committee has recently removed from the top-level pages of their website an advertisement interspersing Hitler's face with those of John Kerry and other prominent Democrats. This little-heralded step has freed former Enron lobbyist and current RNC chairman Ed Gillespie to resume his attacks on Americans who believe some provisions of Bush's PATRIOT Act, his detention of American citizens without charges, his willingness to let corporations write legislation, and the so-called "Free Speech Zones" around his public appearances are all steps on the road to American fascism.

The RNC's feeble attempt to equate Hitler and Democrats was short-lived, but it brings to mind the first American Vice President to point out the "American fascists" among us.

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman President), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents - John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945). In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

It's an old column, but I thought appropriate to this thread. Keep up the great work, Octafish!

[northofdenali]

37. Garrison was a bit of a genius, IMHO.

K&R

[MinM]

40. One of the 'journalists' commissioned to smear Garrison is in Hot Water...

Again!

Gerald Posner admits he's guilty of plagiarism - inadvertent plagiarism, that is
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=278091&mesg_id=280292

"Case Closed" author Gerald Posner, inadvertently reveals his CIA ties...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=490878&mesg_id=492367

VIDEO - Posner Lays An Egg

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10528