I'm Reading Jesse Ventura's "63 Documents The Government Doesn't Want You To Read"

[ChoppinBroccoli]

I'm only about 20 pages in, and this crap is already chilling me to the bone. It's not JUST the fact that our own government actively participated in some of this stuff, but the casual way the people writing the documents talk about it, like they're discussing what they're going to be doing over the weekend, really gives me an uneasy feeling. And I haven't even gotten to the stuff about Bush, 9/11, et al.

I'll be honest, the whole "Operation Northwoods" stuff, as well as the post-WWII assassination program stuff, and the ties to the Kennedy assassination, is really unsettling (particularly the part about how the CIA's assassination list contained the names of 11 world leaders and 9 of them died violently).

I'm not one given to conspiracy theories, and I generally take the things Jesse Ventura says with a grain of salt, but he's talking about these things and providing the actual documents proving them, so it's a little hard to just laugh them off as the ravings of a paranoid government-phobe.

Has anyone else read this book, and what are your thoughts on it? Because I'm really finding it quite interesting. I got it from the Socialist public library (you can't let people borrow and read books for free--that's Socialism!!!), but I'm really considering buying it, because I have a feeling I might be referencing it often.

[Maru Kitteh]

1. I fully expect to see JV on the news someday wearing only a pair of chaps, covered in pickles

and mumbling something about how the pigeons were right the whole time.....

[mojowork_n]

7. And ...

You're at home in your pajamas.

So what. The visual imagery is irrelevant.

Doesn't sound like he's making anything up, it's source material. (At least that's what it sounds like.
I'm not familiar with the book, only some of the subject matter. I was hoping to learn something.)

Do you have a point, except to make an ad hominem slam

[frylock]

12. of course you do

[Kaleko]

21. Proudly parading lack of insight...

... woo hoo, that's the American way! Number 1 in the catastrophic combo of ignorance and arrogance, hooray!

[Newest Reality]

2. Be careful there ...

If you look behind the curtain and peer too deeply into the way the system works, you might end up like some folks who realize that the whole world is a conspiracy and that it is not merely a theoretical affair.

;)

[Wilms]

3. Here's a link to Operation Northwoods.

Suggesting something regarding Item 3 on Page 8 will get you kicked to the dungeon.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/index.html

[Bladian]

6. Oh good god.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Sometimes conspiracies are real,

[Shandris]

10. Of course they're real.

Even the government admits conspiracies are real. After all, you can be charged with it as a crime! :P

[Solomon]

16. More people are convicted on conspiracy theory, er, that is

black people, than the underlying crime. As in, if you were in the car when somebody else gets busted, you're going down for conspiracy to distribute drugs. You were in the apartment? Conspiracy. You knew the guy that did it. Conspiracy.

Only when it gets applied to government, as in "government conspiracy", does it all of sudden become a "grassy knoll" thing.

[SDuderstadt]

17. That isn't "conspiracy theory"...

that is people charged with "conspiracy to commit..." rightly or wrongly.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Actually you can

it is a serious LEGAL charge... hard to prove. RICO comes to mind...

But what they have done is make the word have no meaning for the average joe... that is another type of conspiracy, which has little to do with you or me.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. Jesse's asking questions and that is important.

He tells us the government lies to us all the time -- and Piers was SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you!!

I have the book "American Conspiracies" where he brings up questions starting with Lincoln's assassination.

Somebody needs to ask questions.

On Piers' show, Piers asked him, "How do you know Oswald did not kill Kennedy?" and Jesse said "because I am an expert marksman and I could only get one shot off in eight seconds on this piece of crap bolt action rifle, and Oswald supposedly got three shots off in six seconds".

Piers was shocked.

Piers also called him a coward. Jesse said, "Young man, I have done things as a Navy SEAL that would make the hair on your neck stand up on end." I thought Piers was being very disrespectful.

[JCMach1]

8. He has drifted more and more to the left since his time as governor

He is probably somewhere in the spectrum of left-libertarian at the moment.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

9. I Think He's Solidly Libertarian

I've heard him on Howard a few times. He hates Republicans, doesn't think much of the current crop of Democrats, and says that the only person in Washington willing to speak the truth is Ron Paul. Based on all the things I've heard, I think he's basically a Libertarian without all the other "Republican trappings" that most Libertarians have. He's an entertaining guy, but again, I take what he says with a grain of salt. The thing about this book is that he does little more than just provide the documents and give short commentaries on them. As I said, it's hard to claim he's making any of this up when all the documents are available on the internet for anyone who wants to see them. And the first few things in the book were all claimed to be "tinfoil hat conspiracy theories" years ago, but they all turned out to be true.

[Ikonoklast]

14. Jesse must be a crappy shot, then.

And a Carcano is definitely NOT a 'piece of crap' rifle.

I'd be willing to bet he has never fired one in his life.

I have.

"Expert Marksman" is a step BELOW "Sharpshooter", which Oswald qualified for twice, before being rated an "Expert Marksman".

[SDuderstadt]

19. And Oswald's results were easily replicated...

in other tests.

Ventura's personal incredulity is not proof of anything.

[MinM]

32. Absolutely.

...
Drinking a Coke®, in the lunchroom on the second floor of the Book Depository building, is not that hard.

[JonLP24]

23. I don't know how it is in the Navy

but in the Army "Expert" is a step above "sharpshooter".

When I was in, I could always shoot "sharpshooter" but never could get that "expert" badge.

[KG]

11. he's trying peer behind the curtain. that seems to bug alot of folks who think our gov't operates

on the up-and-up and only has our best interests at heart.

[fivepennies]

13. Haven't gotten to that one yet

but I've read "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me" and "American Conspiracies" as well as watching dozens of his YouTube Videos. Some of the videos are pretty theatrical, but he definitely does his due diligence on the subject matter covered in them. Good man!

[bigmonkey]

15. Isn't it strange that citing certain facts gets you a reputation as a kook?

Facts.

On the face of it, that circumstance suggests that our nation, maybe our civilization, is objectively messed up.

[Viking12]

18. The Body's flaw is the illogical move from "some conspiracies exist" to "everything's a conspiracy"

For example, his whack-a-doodle takes on climate science.

[Kaleko]

20. "I'm not one given to conspiracy theories..."

Why would you say such a thing? To forestall the ridicule heaped on people who see through this foolish notion that conspiracies cannot possibly take place at the highest levels of government and commerce?

Nowhere else in the world is the understanding that businessmen and politicians constantly conspire to defraud the public mocked and ridiculed. Only in America. Check it out. Travel around the globe and you will see people laughing at you for NOT recognizing conspiracies to defraud the public are ubiquitous. Decades worth of psy ops have effectively bamboozled a majority of Americans into ignoring the fact that the events on 9/11 (to name just one example) have been explained by offering an officially sanctioned conspiracy theory... which has since been discredited by the very officials in charge of creating the officially fabricated NIST report!

For god's sake, wake up and smell the stench of systemic conspiratorial activities designed to take sheep to their shearing pens and the rest of the herd animals to the slaughterhouse. Please, the world needs Americans to get shocked out of their psy ops-induced trance.

[fivepennies]

22. Well said!!

[hifiguy]

24. Jesse is a lot like a blind squirrel

Every once in a while he does find a nut of truth, but he has to work awfully hard to do it.

[Kaleko]

25. I have to respectfully disagree.

Ventura is one of the few ballsy straight shooters we've got left on the scene. Wish there were a hundred-thousand more of him in the limelight, grabbing a microphone, telling it as he sees it, authentically.

What a unique, raw and truly caring individual.

[WinkyDink]

26. Somebody's blind, but it ain't Jesse.

[hifiguy]

30. Jesse has one problem

and that is he thinks everything that happens or virtually everything that happens is the result of a conspiracy theory. Too often he lapses into "the paranoids are after me" reasoning and that causes some of the very real things he digs into and exposes to be dismissed along with the kook stuff.

I am not suggesting he is always wrong; I've been reading about the Kennedy assassinations for years and can accept the possibility, even the probability of a conspiracy in those and other cases. But sometimes weird or awful things happen for completely random reasons.

Someone once said that one should never attribute to malevolance that which is more easily explained by stupidity.

[Kaleko]

34. Mischaracterization to set up a strawman.

"Jesse has one problem"
Posted by hifiguy

"and that is he thinks everything that happens or virtually everything that happens is the result of a conspiracy theory."

First of all, you must have meant to say that Jesse ascribes pretty much everything that happens to a conspiracy -- not a conspiracy theory since theories are by definition speculations.

Secondly, if it were true that Jesse believes absolutely everything is a result of conspiratorial activities -- including the car accident that happened last night on our street and my uncle Tom's indigestion -- Ventura would be institutionalized undergoing massive therapy, quite incapable of researching actual cases for his writings or TV shows.

Nice try, though.

[defendandprotect]

27. Saw it in Barnes & Noble and browsed it -- and will get back to it ... but thanks

for the info --

Just want to mention for those who still think Watergate was a big nothing ...

Nixon's "Huston Plan" was based on "Operation Northwoods" -- with all the horrors

of that plan -- and was intended to be used to stop 1972 elections!!

[sendero]

29. It's popular to make fun of JV around here..

... there are only about 5 politicians in DC I have more respect for.

Laugh at him all you want he's smarter than you.

[Blue_In_AK]

35. I like Jesse Ventura.

You don't have to be a full-blown conspiracy theorist to admire him for asking the uncomfortable questions. I'm sure our government operatives have many, many skeletons in the closet, and they have the power to keep them there.

[Quantess]

31. Thanks for the suggestion.

I think I'd love to read it.

[Azathoth]

33. Hmm...looking through the table of contents..."Chapter 47 - 9/11 - Controlled Demolition"

Sigh.

[fivepennies]

36. I guess a chapter title

is all you need to critique an entire book.