"It would have been bad news - in spades," he wrote

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As my interest has shifted from the topical news narrative to reports on the global deep state, I am somewhat startled at what is available in the public domain (if not on Public Radio). An example, stumbled across this evening: a Guardian report on a declassified document about a 1961 US nuclear weapons accident that few people under 60 have heard of:

The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.

Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.

The Jones being quoted is a gentleman named Parker Jones, whom the Guardian identifies as "a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons". The title of this post quotes a remark by Mr. Jones in characterizing the results if that fourth safety switch had failed along with the other three.

It seems clear to me that the archives of the global deep state must be jam-packed with files that are every bit as exciting as this one. Read the whole Guardian story; it's short.

1963 [updated]

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I considered embedding the Zapruder film today, but I just can't do it. If you have the stomach to watch it, here's a narrated version of it that includes other film from the heinous moments and sound imposition from two Dictabelt recordings that were made concurrently with the assassination. And here is a close-up (cropped and restored or enhanced) version. Both are upsetting, possibly more so to people who were alive at the time than to people who relate to it mostly as a remote 20th century historical event.

Over the years I've become baffled by the drumbeat of polemic to the effect that only "nuts" believe that there was a conspiracy involved in gunning down President Kennedy in his November 22 motorcade. Acknowledging that we don't have all the facts, and that reasonable people can disagree, it seems incredible to me that anyone could accept uncritically that Oswald was the lone gunman. As the narrator of this clip indicates, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1976 that four shots were fired from two different directions and that, consequently, the crime was an act of conspiracy.

The anti-conspiracy drumbeat has really ramped up over the past 15 years or so. Die-hard proponents of the Lone Gunman Theory must rely on absurd concepts like the "magic bullet" that injured Texas Governor John Connally (in the front seat of the limo) before wounding the President. They also must rely on arcane ideas about intracranial pressure and questionable ballistics analysis (black-box concepts that are not testable by the average person, significantly) to explain why the President's head violently snaps in the opposite direction from where the fatal shot was supposedly fired... and in the same direction as the erstwhile contents of JFK's cranium. They also rely heavily on discrediting the whole idea of conspiracy because many people have advanced absurd ideas about who did it and why. Along these lines, Oliver Stone probably did more to discredit previous legitimate conspiracy investigations than any ten other lunatics. But an idea is not invalidated simply because crazy people talk about it.

If I had more time on my hands I'd consider checking the ages and political affiliations of the most prominent rabid anti-conspiricists. The analysis might turn up nothing, or it might turn up something interesting, I don't know. But I'm just plain stmped about why so many people (a loud crew, but still a minority of the U.S. populace) are so obstinately closed-minded about the idea of a conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States. It was, after all, the U.S. crime of the century.

Update: I apologize to younger readers for glossing over several basic Dealey Plaza details in this post, the absence of which leaves several of my thoughts to appear incomplete. Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, is the general location of the motorcade when the assassination was committed. In the Zapruder home movie, which unintentionally documented this watershed event in U.S. politics, you can see the effects of two shots on the President. The first effect is when he clutches at his throat, with the First Lady and Governor Connally turning to see what is happening. It is commonly, and non-controversially, understood that he was hit in the back of the neck from Lee Oswald's 6th floor perch in the Texas School Book Depository. The second effect is 2 or 3 seconds later, when the right-front portion of the President's head explodes and he falls violently to his left, onto the First Lady. To any observer not previously "educated" to the contrary, it seems very clear from the evidence of one's own eyes that this fatal shot was fired from the front and right of the limousine, from the infamous "grassy knoll" or at the back edge where it abuts a residential district. Conspiracy deniers, and others undoubtedly in good faith, have developed an opaque, complex, and untestable theory about how a bullet fired from above and behind the president might have produced the appearance captured by Zapruder. This theory of dumdum bullet ballistics and intracranial pressure effects is absolutely necessary to explain away the hypothesis (observation, many would say) of a gunshot from across the knoll. Without acceptance of this theory, which seems highly improbable to many, many people, we are forced to conclude that shots were fired from two different directions on that morning. Two people making arrangements to shoot at the same motorcade would constitute a conspiracy.

Above Top Secret

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Items like this give me the willies. Few remember today what Daniel Ellsberg is remembered for. [Editor's note: the previous sentence is lexical nonsense, but it has a nice Yogi Berra feel to it, so we'll keep it intact and start over with a new paragraph.]

I think it's accurate to say that most people today don't really understand what Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg did to become famous starting in 1969, but when I read about it as a mature adult it's truly a mind-blower. You don't have to be anyone special to get a Top Secret clearance, you only have to demonstrate a need to know information classified at that level and convince a nice FBI agent that you're not a current or potential traitor, or highly susceptible to bribery or blackmail by one. So it seems reasonable to me that there must be at least some levels above Top. If Ellsberg says there were 10 levels above when he provided orientation for new National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger --- and I don't know of any reason to doubt him --- then maybe now there are 15 or 20.

It's a shibboleth of conventional wisdom, smugly accepted by everyone from Josh Marshall to Glenn Beck, that people who suspect that some national events are shaped by large conspiracies are "conspiracy theorists," and that "conspiracy theorists" are ipso facto lunatics. Therefore, all reasonable adults know that grand covert conspiracies could never take place because that would just be crazy. The conspiracy to conceal the truth about the unwinnable Vietnam War from the public never happened, and neither did the conspiracy to cover up the Watergate burglary. The Warren Commission Report fully explains away compelling visual forensic evidence of a President's murder that we all can see with our own two lying eyes. And all of the questions raised by theologian David Ray Griffin in his densely footnoted 9/11 Contradictions are "spurious" just because some of them are. Good thinking!

Just to avoid being misunderstood, like every other responsible adult I'm aware that the country is full of conspiracy nuts. But just what exactly do we suppose is locked away in those Armageddon-proof safes where the Top+10 files are archived?

Fuck it. I'm heading for The Saturday Night Fish Fry!

"Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution" [updated]

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As seen on Atrios: I assume that "Newsmax" is some kind of influential far-right nuthouse organ. But in these times, the drool of self-marginalized lunatics bubbles in chunks from underneath the toilet seat cover and into our public commons too fucking often for my taste. To paraphrase one of the commenters in the linked piece on Media Matters: Judas Fucking Priest --- these people lost one single election, not even a year ago, and they're already halfway down the path toward advocating violent revolution. Wingnuts just need to get a grip on things, because they still control the Senate with the help of Democrat Copperheads, and the media are choked with projectile vomit from the neckholes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the rest. Meanwhile, genteel corporate media celebrity pundits are afraid to acknowledge the existence of this puke fountain, let alone suggest that it's an odious and disturbing nuisance.

Anyway, someone needs to let this John Perry guy know that coups actually are not permitted by the U.S. Constitution, whether by "patriotic general and flag officers" or racist asshole bloggers. But, then, maybe the Congress will decide to repeal all federal laws that prohibit insurrections (Article 8), and John Perry can then enjoy his "bloodless coup." John Perry claims that "[d]escribing what may be afoot is not to advocate it." Well, yes it is actually, John Perry. And if you have foreknowledge that a treasonous conspiracy by patriotic military men "may be afoot," I hope that some Secret Service agent won't have to beat it out of you too hard... especially not the 7 foot bald one with a gold grille and prison tats.

Update: I'm sure we all can look forward to indignant editorials festooning the op/ed pages across the land, plus salvos of sharply worded criticism by national TV news treasures like George S. and Chris Matthews, in response to the astonishing revelation that Newsmax is sponsored by the Republican National Committee. It Can't Happen Here Dunt Duhduh Dunnnnn! Yawn....

Pandemic

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Forget the swine flu --- that’s a lightweight compared with the one I'm worried about, which is dragging American civilization with it down the muddy gopher hole of irrelevance and ruin. Of course I’m referring to the creeping tacit conspiracy which binds all of us to pretend that it is genuine for us to act like Hollywood actors who are paid to act like a producer’s idea of how everyday people would act if we were always ready with the appropriate cutting observation, or the perfect ironic retort, or the desire to ceaselessly serve up straight lines to the ones who are always ready with the appropriate cutting observation or the perfect ironic retort, while we simultaneously pretend that we have never seen Hollywood actors say these very words on TV night after night for the past 40 years.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Down and out [updated]

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It seems Dick Cheney is so unpopular that he cannot even find a few pals to help him move boxes to his new secure undisclosed location.

One might think Mr. Cheney could use some of his deferred compensation from Halliburton to hire a moving van and a few heavies. But maybe it's hard to find a competent box mover who also has a TOP SECRET clearance.

Lying until the end and beyond....

Update: seriously... what could have been so important in those boxes that half-invalid cardiac patient Richard Bruce Cheney had to risk injury by carrying them himself?

Next up: vote thievery

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Sadly for my record as a clairvoyant political strategist, but happily for the nation, it really does seem too late for Republicans to pull off a bait-and-switch ticket to any avail before election day. That fear is now trumped by a mundane but effective extralegal way that Republicans influence election outcomes: voter suppression schemes. What curdles my blood is the institutionalization of voter suppression plots through a cynical GOP "concern" about widespread voter fraud.

This one, unfolding in Ohio, has my gut in a small knot. I've hoped all along that so many people turn out on election day for Obama and Biden that no feasible amount of voter fraud could steal the day. And if we are fortunate enough get that far without a first-tier demonstration of the "shock doctrine," there are many more perils to occupy our vigilance. One involves a petulant, demented child-king and red buttons that he could push. The most worrisome by far, in my opinion, is that time-tested American response to the emergence of a new popular leader: someone takes a shot at him. And, finally, after an electoral victory and the cone of security provided by the USSS and others, there is the banality of evil: wingnut media assailants, enabled by supine celebrity corporate journalists and pundits.

I've recently been startled to notice how much I crave a return to normalcy in this country. Not the so-called normalcy associated with a "new kind of Democrat" who is actually a stalking horse for establishing the global hegemony of transnational corporations. Not the so-called normalcy of a humming economy based on information exchange, pointless consumerism, and manufacturing war materiel. I'm hoping for the normalcy of a functioning democracy and adversarial media, neither of which is any longer dominated by authoritarian ideologues and both of which re-legitimize the concept of liberalism. The startling aspect of my craving for such normalcy is that I haven't felt it since Jimmy Carter was the President.

Potentially scary situation [updated]

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I have fears that these Palin/McCain experiments with inciting mobs to violence could be the prelude to something unspeakably ugly. Consider what might happen if, in the next 2 weeks or so, that dark-skinned thugs appeared at Republican rallies and started scuffling with GOP nutbags in order to "defend" Obama. Those thugs would certainly be what the French call "agents provocateurs", and they would somehow, indirectly as hell, be on the payroll of some very, very bad people who have a very keen interest in making sure that Obama never sets foot in the White House.

It would create a public atmosphere ripe for backlash against Obama, not to mention much more sordid or violent potential impacts. The corporate media would be the enablers. I'm not saying it would even work. But think about how heinously effective such an idea could seem to desperate, criminal white men.

Update: in acknowledgment of anon in my comments section, here's a shot of actual paranoia ripped from the comments section of this Politico post:

Between 8:45 PM and 9:15 PM tonight (Oct 8) on Intrade, someone just bet a LOT of money against Obama winning the presidency. And I mean a LOT. His stock, which has been over 70 for a couple of days now and at 76 most of the time today dipped down to 64 or so in those 20 minutes under heavy betting before recovering immediately after 9:15 to 73... Very strange.. is there something someone knows?? What is the news tomorrow, JMart?" Posted By: intrade | October 08, 2008 at 11:54 PM

If you need me tomorrow, I'll be in the bunker with my 50 bottles of wine.

The double cutout

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I am becoming unnerved. Something abominable is happening to this country. It is much too big even for my supreme capabilities in analysis and synthesis. The improbable, certifiably stupid and insane Republican presidential ticket is only the tip of an enormous iceberg, as if that weren't by itself enough to make me suck my thumb in wonder by the banks of my own lagoon. This post is a preamble to a large interpretive writing project that I will compose and publish in a series of concise, nonsequential essays.

To address just this iceberg tip at the moment, consider this: for more than 2 weeks our national mass-media dialog (monologue, actually) has largely fixated on a snide, petty, unintelligent nonentity of a provincial politician, Sarah Palin, who was elevated to the status of national sensation by the Republican party and the corporate media. During those 2 weeks Palin has been revealed to be a serial liar, a possible obstructor of justice in an Alaska investigation of prohibited personnel practices, and ridiculously ignorant of political and economic fundamentals... for starters. Her running mate --- "former POW" John McCain --- and his campaign organization have absurdly played the "sexism card" to preempt criticism of her, or even making her the subject of parody on Saturday Night Live. McCain has finally gone off the deep end with his serial lying and slander of Barack Obama, and is no longer even trying to hide it. All this has been reported widely, and it makes me sick to even recap it for conversational purposes. It is even being reported with some degree of accuracy in certain quarters of the corporate media a the same time as some opinion polls appear to show that the Republican Big Lie Campaign is working with "voters." All that is enough to fray the nerves. But there are hints that something more interesting may be happening.

It is now the middle of September. The Republican campaign is utterly out of control by any traditional measure. Only residual decorum now prevents celebrity journalists from saying the obvious on TV: that McCain is mentally, emotionally, and morally unfit for the presidency, and that Sarah Palin is a lightweight joke whose ethical hijinx and lack of intelligence will not stand up to another month of even mild media scrutiny. So what happens in October? Surprises, that's what.

The ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin are the tactical equivalent of a deadlocked Republican Convention. By that I mean the current GOP ticket is untenable, even if the polls say most Americans want to be led by war-crazed moral degenerates. War is bad for children and other living things, as the dumb old hippie poster revealed to us, but furthermore it is also bad for the quarterly profit targets of most transnational corporations. The plutocrats and organizations with the greatest vested material interest in running the U.S. government own far too much of the status quo to allow a President McCain or Palin to get us into a nuclear exchange with Russia or Pakistan.

So Big Otis has got me thinking, once again: what is the real significance of Karl Rove and U.S. News calling out McCain on his filthy campaign of lies? Is the Money Wing of the Money Party preparing to pull the rug out from under John and Sarah? If so, what next? Big Otis seem to think that McCain and Palin may essentially be what are called "double cutouts" in the espionage profession --- "agents" who are enlisted to execute a plot, but not the plot they believe they were recruited for. It is not hard to think of at least one story line in which an aging, confused senator and a mendacious, narcissistic governor will have served their purposes within the next few weeks and are brushed aside in a move much more sensational even than the coming out part of Sarah Palin. Shock and awe.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that anything violent or even illegal would be required to brush McCain and Palin aside. Any method would serve, because it would quickly pale in significance to the rollout of the most mind-bending quadrenniel October Surprise ever. Petraeus/Lieberman '08? Possibly, but the details hardly matter at this point. Anything that gets the corporate media quivering with excitement and the "moderate, undecided voter" throbbing with patriotism would suffice.

This has been my "preamble," admittedly a bit overwrought and driven by anxiety. My exegesis on what the submerged bulk of the iceberg consists of will begin soon. As of now, my working keywords for the exegesis are cognition and awareness. Don't you dare miss it!

Pop quiz

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Bruce Ivins is to the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks as Lee Oswald is to:

a. Paris Hilton's pudenda
b. American Idol
c. the Lone Gunman Theory
d. Mexican Idol