Hey B,
When Mark and I were in about 2nd grade, we spent a week at the Tabolts and Thompsons. Separate trips. Mark and I generally went at separate times. Upon returning from the Thompsons one Sunday night, I told Mark I needed 'a psychiatrist.' We had just learned the word. We missed our week and weekend visits with the cousins so much, we felt maladjusted. Didn't want to be home.
That's how I feel now.
I'm glad we made it home safely, but I really would rather be back in Chiang Mai. It was great seeing you and Lak. I wish you could bring her to Lake Gaston. A woman who used to work at RockBill (way back) suggested that in Chiang Mai, I contact a poet named Dino Delano. I told her that I'm pretty sure I met him. She verified it. Said that they lead a poetry group in Denver.
This vacation was probably the best of all. Very relaxing. Everything was perfect. Right now (from work), I'm watching videos of Chiang Mai at vimeo.com.
Oh: we saw Ralph Fiennes at the customs terminal in New York. JFK. I said "Mr. Fiennes, I've seen Quiz Show eleven times." He was nice. "Did you?" he replied. He was shorter than I thought he'd be.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The UNPOEM
time
is
an illusion
we've been told
just a measure
of how dead
one can
be
metes, bounds
coffee
spoons
still--
if the only
way to
beat
moloch
is to
give
give
give
you might
as well
give
some
time to
some
one
some
time
time---
your
time,
which,
although
an
illusion
is
well-spent
because
the gift
is
some
Thing
thought
thinks
it
can
count.
is
an illusion
we've been told
just a measure
of how dead
one can
be
metes, bounds
coffee
spoons
still--
if the only
way to
beat
moloch
is to
give
give
give
you might
as well
give
some
time to
some
one
some
time
time---
your
time,
which,
although
an
illusion
is
well-spent
because
the gift
is
some
Thing
thought
thinks
it
can
count.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Stupidest
End: Aleph & humility
Intro; 2. RockBill/Leonard Cohen; 3. Margo; 4. Crown Heights; 5. RockBill/Tom Waits, Geo. Clinton/more berating friends; 6. Reuben, talks with; 7. END (calls Josh, cries, HUMILITY, the aleph, the living and the dead)
A.
I was born a Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, and although my brothers and sisters and I all made our first communions, our first confessions and all were successfully and XX confirmed XX, we were never particularly sentimental about our ethnicity: no Irish jigs or XX, no one drank excessively--not really-- (dad sz jaysus); and Saint Pat's Day was no big deal (green). We attended church every Sunday until I was about twelve, then we stopped going just as easily as we XX, that is, we slipped off the XX of just as the XXXX, and yet, there was one thing that, over the years, rankled me, the idea that the Irish are XXX and XXX.
"When the Irish potato famine happened," an old college friend started with XX, "they didn't have to starve. I mean, they could've just fished for their meals out of the XXX."
Oh my God, I had to mutter under my breath as XX. "Oh, my XXXX god. Are you fucking stupid, or what?" I shot back at him. "The point isn't that there were no potatoes to eat, asshole, the point is that their entire economy, their entire XX in trade was purposely wiped out by the British and all those poor tenant farmers ended up in XX debt to their XX Protestant landlords. They had to pay rent, too, dickhead. Just like you and me."
You see, I knew what he was doing: XX couldn't defend his point about XX, so he resorted to bigotry, and was saying, essentially, that the Irish XX were too goddamn stupid to feed themselves; too XX to put a fishing rod in the XX and feed their families---and he was saying this, or implying this, because his position was completely indefensible and he knew it.
"How fucking stupid do you want to be?" I continued with Xx. "Even a hungry dog, a mangy, flea-bitten mut will feed itself any way it can. Are you still taking the stupid pills? Are you, like, so pathetically XX by your XX, that you literally can't distinguish your asshole from a XXX?"
I couldn't stand the arrogance and prejudices of some of my friends—absolutely hated the XX—but I could always get my revenge by berating them for their XX. And it was especially sweet to XX and XX my Jewish friends. You see, I was a precocious child, I knew XXX by the age of seven and I loved it ---I didn't like it, I loved it ---when my Jewish friends said something not XXX and I could correct them. In other words, I loved telling my Jewish friends how stupid they were. I'm not an anti-Semite, it's just---well, let's face it---how many times does an Irish Catholic get to tell Jewish professors and publishers and XX that they're so fucking stupid, he can barely XXX?
"Wait," I stopped another friend, Joshua Moses, my former editor. "You're telling me that crime went down in the 1990s because abortions were more available in the 1970s? You mean, the answer to the problems of crime, XX, xx is killing black babies? Is that what you're saying? Shit, you'll believe anything they tell you. Anything the mass media wants you to believe, you accept. How can I even stand in the same room with such a XX moron? You're an embarrassment, do you hear me? You're XXXX."
Describe his response.
The word applied to me, eventually, was 'strident.' I was XX and XX. Couldn't be dealt with.
loved calling them stupid:
golding (a burnout; too much PCP)
grossman: legislature & Hispanic; nose job
larry king
nancy speez, scandalously ignorant; pours back soup, Bucky, Casablanca
my favorite: "the shit that comes out of your mouth"
1. holocaust/good ordinary people
2. "that's the tragedy"
3. Vietnam and Jim Crow--neighbors look the other way
4. "you're a dolt!"
5. "I didn't know they made Jews that dumb."
Conversations w JM: politics, spirit
w blau: cosmos, holocaust
B. RockBill (before Crown Hts): Cohen, Phil Bloom , Hubert
C. Margo (same chapter?): all about the dog, beauty and sweetness, and I hope she wrote her story.
D. Crown Hts, Ivan and the Russians, Ellenville, aleph-beis, smells of room
(i.) A beard or whatever you call it
(ii.) That's what I'm afraid of
(iii.) just what Reuben shows you
(iv.) "i wouldn't say he's brilliant"
(v.) Reuben the Gentile story
(vi.) other Rockbill interviews, later: Tom Waits, Geo Clinton (Hammer: “you’ve infiltrated the community”)
A.
I was born a Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, and although my brothers and sisters and I all made our first communions, our first confessions and all were successfully and XX confirmed XX, we were never particularly sentimental about our ethnicity: no Irish jigs or XX, no one drank excessively--not really-- (dad sz jaysus); and Saint Pat's Day was no big deal (green). We attended church every Sunday until I was about twelve, then we stopped going just as easily as we XX, that is, we slipped off the XX of just as the XXXX, and yet, there was one thing that, over the years, rankled me, the idea that the Irish are XXX and XXX.
"When the Irish potato famine happened," an old college friend started with XX, "they didn't have to starve. I mean, they could've just fished for their meals out of the XXX."
Oh my God, I had to mutter under my breath as XX. "Oh, my XXXX god. Are you fucking stupid, or what?" I shot back at him. "The point isn't that there were no potatoes to eat, asshole, the point is that their entire economy, their entire XX in trade was purposely wiped out by the British and all those poor tenant farmers ended up in XX debt to their XX Protestant landlords. They had to pay rent, too, dickhead. Just like you and me."
You see, I knew what he was doing: XX couldn't defend his point about XX, so he resorted to bigotry, and was saying, essentially, that the Irish XX were too goddamn stupid to feed themselves; too XX to put a fishing rod in the XX and feed their families---and he was saying this, or implying this, because his position was completely indefensible and he knew it.
"How fucking stupid do you want to be?" I continued with Xx. "Even a hungry dog, a mangy, flea-bitten mut will feed itself any way it can. Are you still taking the stupid pills? Are you, like, so pathetically XX by your XX, that you literally can't distinguish your asshole from a XXX?"
I couldn't stand the arrogance and prejudices of some of my friends—absolutely hated the XX—but I could always get my revenge by berating them for their XX. And it was especially sweet to XX and XX my Jewish friends. You see, I was a precocious child, I knew XXX by the age of seven and I loved it ---I didn't like it, I loved it ---when my Jewish friends said something not XXX and I could correct them. In other words, I loved telling my Jewish friends how stupid they were. I'm not an anti-Semite, it's just---well, let's face it---how many times does an Irish Catholic get to tell Jewish professors and publishers and XX that they're so fucking stupid, he can barely XXX?
"Wait," I stopped another friend, Joshua Moses, my former editor. "You're telling me that crime went down in the 1990s because abortions were more available in the 1970s? You mean, the answer to the problems of crime, XX, xx is killing black babies? Is that what you're saying? Shit, you'll believe anything they tell you. Anything the mass media wants you to believe, you accept. How can I even stand in the same room with such a XX moron? You're an embarrassment, do you hear me? You're XXXX."
Describe his response.
The word applied to me, eventually, was 'strident.' I was XX and XX. Couldn't be dealt with.
loved calling them stupid:
golding (a burnout; too much PCP)
grossman: legislature & Hispanic; nose job
larry king
nancy speez, scandalously ignorant; pours back soup, Bucky, Casablanca
my favorite: "the shit that comes out of your mouth"
1. holocaust/good ordinary people
2. "that's the tragedy"
3. Vietnam and Jim Crow--neighbors look the other way
4. "you're a dolt!"
5. "I didn't know they made Jews that dumb."
Conversations w JM: politics, spirit
w blau: cosmos, holocaust
B. RockBill (before Crown Hts): Cohen, Phil Bloom , Hubert
C. Margo (same chapter?): all about the dog, beauty and sweetness, and I hope she wrote her story.
D. Crown Hts, Ivan and the Russians, Ellenville, aleph-beis, smells of room
(i.) A beard or whatever you call it
(ii.) That's what I'm afraid of
(iii.) just what Reuben shows you
(iv.) "i wouldn't say he's brilliant"
(v.) Reuben the Gentile story
(vi.) other Rockbill interviews, later: Tom Waits, Geo Clinton (Hammer: “you’ve infiltrated the community”)
1. vi. Still berates J friends for ignorance (at RockBill)
ALEPH: “If a man is humble, he can go anywhere,” stated your teacher, Reuben, in his high-pitched voice; higher-pitched than yours or JoMo’s.
Arch in Washington Square Park is ALEPH (we’d joke)
“All Hebrew letters extend upward on the right side,” fat, incisive and delightful Rabbi Wudowsky once explained, “because every one, every letter, yearns to be with Ha-Shem (God) in the World to Come. It’s the yearning, the desire that saves us, not the attainment of the impossible. It’s the unquenchable passion for redemption, souls on fire, that redeem the world, even when we can’t help but hate.”
And there was indeed hate, cheis, even in Crown Heights, even among those named for the city of love (Lubav), among those who can talk to the dead. There were racists, some who cursed at the ‘schwarzes’ and ‘niggers’ on Eastern Parkway. There were insurance scammers and adulterers. There were other unsavory aspects: weeping, wailing beggars from Minsk and Buenos Aires with their cups out on Sunday morning, tears rolling down pancake make-up faces. There were lecherous old men.
“He’s fucking the mother,” Blau said of one hasid, “to get to the daughter.”
“This world and the One to Come can be harmonized,” said Rabbi Krinsky over lamb shanks. “Must be harmonized.”
Sanity.
But where were the women?
One evening, while you and the other Reuben were studying in the shule’s (school’s) rather charmless wood-paneled basement room, which always smelled like roasted chicken and lamb and carmelized onions, a dozen or so men, most of them bearded and clad in black or dark blue, began filing in as the air-conditioner continued to crank out a cool electric breeze. Most of them sat down at one of the long tables and, in no time at all, were voicing songs of mercy and desire, all but forgotten melodies; bashing their fists on the table in the hope of ushering in the Messianic age. One of the men clad in black placed a bottle of vodka and a bag of tiny cups on to your table. Reuben began pouring it into the tiny cups.
“The king is in the field now,” Reuben exclaimed over the growing din. “Anyone who wants to see the king can do so now. But if you wait too long, the king will no longer be in the field. He will be in the palace and the door might be locked.” Reuben placed a cup of vodka in front of you. “It will be a lot harder, then, to see him.” Male voices shaped the shira or song:
“The king is in the field, the king is in the field, don’t you want to see him now?”
END: When you told Reuben that you could no longer continue studying with him because you’re not Jewish, he expressed surprise, then said it was okay with him. You could keep coming to shule in your black suit jacket and yarmulke for Hebrew and religious instruction.
“Your parents must think you’re off the wall, eh?” Reuben said over the phone.
“I haven’t mentioned it to them,” you replied.
**Crown HeightReuben:
1. what music (viola) teaches you: share, listen, be silent, act instead of criticize
- major keys/minor keys: waking and dreaming
- Dylan says this: “you like Dylan?” (everybody must atone/I would not feel so all alone)
2. humility/aleph
3. nothingness & zero
4. that means you really wanted to be here
5. judge the state not the man who inhabits that state
5a. arthritis
6. macrobiotic
7. yang/yin
8. men/women
X. *Ellenville, sabbath, Russians
Y. **Rockbill, ribbed about Lubavitch (infiltrated the community)
Z. Margo and Josh Moses
9.death and life: asking questions at night; answer in morning; the Temple
9a. Moses by Emil bock; the Dead Are with Us
10. Cain and Abel
11. Beth-Hakmidsash
12a. the dead
13. kindness
14. sword
15. hand on mine; Yakov @ turnstile/micah, new orleans
16. Chani
17. the living & what we can do for the dead
18. Reuben ruminates, meditates on his illness
10. Cain and Abel
11. Beth-Hakmidsash
12a. the dead
13. kindness
14. sword
15. hand on mine; Yakov @ turnstile/micah, new orleans
16. Chani
17. the living & what we can do for the dead
18. Reuben ruminates, meditates on his illness
ROCKBILL NOTES:
- Tom Waits
- Leonard Cohen
- Berating
- HKD, Hammer
Thursday, February 16, 2012
The World's Dumbest Jew
End: Aleph & humility
A.
I was born a Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, and although my brothers and sisters and I all made our first communions, our first confessions and all were confirmed XX, we were never particularly sentimental about our ethnicity: no Irish jigs or XX, no one drank excessively--not really-- (dad sz jaysus); and Saint Pat's Day was no big deal (green). We attended church every Sunday until I was about twelve, then we stopped going just as easily as we XX, that is, we slipped off the XX of just as the XXXX, and yet, there was one thing that, over the years, rankled me, the idea that the Irish are XXX and XXX.
"When the Irish potato famine happened," an old college friend started with XX, "they didn't have to starve. I mean, they could've just fished for their meals out of the XXX."
Oh my God, I had to mutter under my breath as XX. "Oh, my XXXX god. Are you fucking stupid, or what?" I shot back at him. "The point isn't that there were no potatoes to eat, asshole, the point is that their entire economy, their entire XX in trade was purposely wiped out by the British and all those poor tenant farmers ended up in XX debt to their XX Protestant landlords. They have to pay rent, too, dickhead. Just like you and me."
You see, I knew what he was doing: XX couldn't defend his point about XX, so he resorted to bigotry, and was saying, essentially, that the Irish XX were too goddamn stupid to feed themselves; too XX to put a fishing rod in the XX and feed their families---and he was saying this, or implying this, because his position was completely indefensible and he knew it.
"How fucking stupid do you want to be?" I continued with Xx. "Even a hungry dog will feed itself any way it can. Are you still taking the stupid pills? Are you, like, so pathetically XX by your XX, that you literally can't distinguish your asshole from a XXX?"
I couldn't stand the arrogance and prejudices of some of my friends----absolutely hated the XX---but I could always get my revenge by berating them for their XX. And it was especially sweet to XX and XX my Jewish friends. You see, I was a precocious child, I knew XXX by the age of seven and I loved it ---I didn't like it, I loved it ---when my Jewish friends said something not XXX and I could correct them. In other words, I loved telling my Jewish friends how stupid they were. I'm not an anti-Semite, it's just---well, let's face it---how many times does an Irish Catholic get to tell Jewish professors and XX and that they're so fucking stupid, he can barely XXX?
"Wait," I stopped another friend, Joshua Moses, my former editor. "You're telling me that crime went down in the 1990s because abortions were more available in the 1970s? You mean, the answer to the problems of crime, XX, xx is killing black babies? Is that what you're saying? Shit, you'll believe anything they tell you. Anything the mass media wants you to believe, you accept. How can I even stand in the same room with such a XX moron? You're an embarrassment, do you hear me? You're XXXX."
Describe his response.
The word applied to me, eventually, was 'strident.' I was XX and XX. Couldn't be dealt with.
loved calling them stupid:
golding
grossman: legislature & hispanic
burn-out
larry king
nancy speez, scandalously ignorant; soup, bucky, Casablanca
my favorite: "the shit that comes out of your mouth"
1. holocaust/good ordinary people
2. "that's the tragedy"
3. Vietnam and Jim Crow--neighbors look the other way
4. "you're a dolt!"
5. "I didn't know they made Jews that dumb."
Conversations w JM: politics, spirit
w blau: cosmos, holocaust
B. RockBill: Cohen, Hunter, George Clinton, Phil Bloom , Hubert
C. Margo: all about the dog, beauty and sweetness, and I hope she wrote her story.
D. Crown Hts, Ivan and the Russians, Ellenville, aleph-beis, smells of room
(i.) A beard or whatever you call it
(ii.) That's what I'm afraid of
(iii.) just what Reuben shows you
(iv.) "i wouldn't say he's brilliant"
(v.) Reuben the Gentile story
(vi.) other Rockbill interviews
Reuben:
1. what music (viola) teaches you: share, listen, be silent, act instead of criticize
2. humility/aleph
3. nothingness & zero
4. that means you really wanted to be here
5. judge the state not the man who inhabits that state
5a. arthritis
6. macrobiotic
7. yang/yin
8. men/women
X. *Ellenville, sabbath, Russians
Y. **Rockbill, ribbed about lubavitch
Z. Margo and Josh Moses
9.death and life
10. Cain and Abel
11. Beth-Hakmidsash
12a. the dead
13. kindness
14. sword
15. hand on mine; Yakov @ turnstile/micah, new orleans
16. Chani
17. the living & what we can do for the dead
18. Reuben ruminates, meditates on his illness
A.
I was born a Roman Catholic, Irish Catholic, and although my brothers and sisters and I all made our first communions, our first confessions and all were confirmed XX, we were never particularly sentimental about our ethnicity: no Irish jigs or XX, no one drank excessively--not really-- (dad sz jaysus); and Saint Pat's Day was no big deal (green). We attended church every Sunday until I was about twelve, then we stopped going just as easily as we XX, that is, we slipped off the XX of just as the XXXX, and yet, there was one thing that, over the years, rankled me, the idea that the Irish are XXX and XXX.
"When the Irish potato famine happened," an old college friend started with XX, "they didn't have to starve. I mean, they could've just fished for their meals out of the XXX."
Oh my God, I had to mutter under my breath as XX. "Oh, my XXXX god. Are you fucking stupid, or what?" I shot back at him. "The point isn't that there were no potatoes to eat, asshole, the point is that their entire economy, their entire XX in trade was purposely wiped out by the British and all those poor tenant farmers ended up in XX debt to their XX Protestant landlords. They have to pay rent, too, dickhead. Just like you and me."
You see, I knew what he was doing: XX couldn't defend his point about XX, so he resorted to bigotry, and was saying, essentially, that the Irish XX were too goddamn stupid to feed themselves; too XX to put a fishing rod in the XX and feed their families---and he was saying this, or implying this, because his position was completely indefensible and he knew it.
"How fucking stupid do you want to be?" I continued with Xx. "Even a hungry dog will feed itself any way it can. Are you still taking the stupid pills? Are you, like, so pathetically XX by your XX, that you literally can't distinguish your asshole from a XXX?"
I couldn't stand the arrogance and prejudices of some of my friends----absolutely hated the XX---but I could always get my revenge by berating them for their XX. And it was especially sweet to XX and XX my Jewish friends. You see, I was a precocious child, I knew XXX by the age of seven and I loved it ---I didn't like it, I loved it ---when my Jewish friends said something not XXX and I could correct them. In other words, I loved telling my Jewish friends how stupid they were. I'm not an anti-Semite, it's just---well, let's face it---how many times does an Irish Catholic get to tell Jewish professors and XX and that they're so fucking stupid, he can barely XXX?
"Wait," I stopped another friend, Joshua Moses, my former editor. "You're telling me that crime went down in the 1990s because abortions were more available in the 1970s? You mean, the answer to the problems of crime, XX, xx is killing black babies? Is that what you're saying? Shit, you'll believe anything they tell you. Anything the mass media wants you to believe, you accept. How can I even stand in the same room with such a XX moron? You're an embarrassment, do you hear me? You're XXXX."
Describe his response.
The word applied to me, eventually, was 'strident.' I was XX and XX. Couldn't be dealt with.
loved calling them stupid:
golding
grossman: legislature & hispanic
burn-out
larry king
nancy speez, scandalously ignorant; soup, bucky, Casablanca
my favorite: "the shit that comes out of your mouth"
1. holocaust/good ordinary people
2. "that's the tragedy"
3. Vietnam and Jim Crow--neighbors look the other way
4. "you're a dolt!"
5. "I didn't know they made Jews that dumb."
Conversations w JM: politics, spirit
w blau: cosmos, holocaust
B. RockBill: Cohen, Hunter, George Clinton, Phil Bloom , Hubert
C. Margo: all about the dog, beauty and sweetness, and I hope she wrote her story.
D. Crown Hts, Ivan and the Russians, Ellenville, aleph-beis, smells of room
(i.) A beard or whatever you call it
(ii.) That's what I'm afraid of
(iii.) just what Reuben shows you
(iv.) "i wouldn't say he's brilliant"
(v.) Reuben the Gentile story
(vi.) other Rockbill interviews
Reuben:
1. what music (viola) teaches you: share, listen, be silent, act instead of criticize
2. humility/aleph
3. nothingness & zero
4. that means you really wanted to be here
5. judge the state not the man who inhabits that state
5a. arthritis
6. macrobiotic
7. yang/yin
8. men/women
X. *Ellenville, sabbath, Russians
Y. **Rockbill, ribbed about lubavitch
Z. Margo and Josh Moses
9.death and life
10. Cain and Abel
11. Beth-Hakmidsash
12a. the dead
13. kindness
14. sword
15. hand on mine; Yakov @ turnstile/micah, new orleans
16. Chani
17. the living & what we can do for the dead
18. Reuben ruminates, meditates on his illness
Sunday, January 8, 2012
To Chuck Hahm
Hey Chuck,
I'm so glad you came to the wedding and I hope all is well. I wanted to briefly clarify my position with regard to the JFK assassination (a) because I think it's an important issue and (b) I want you to know that my position is well thought-out. So, with no stridency, let me say:
1. One has to know the facts of any case to venture anything more than a guess with regard to the truth. A dozen experts, specialists, even physicists cannot shed much light on a case without knowing specific facts. In other words for you or me or anyone to formulate a theory of this case, the specific facts of this specific case must be known and are of greater importance than, if you'll excuse me, a mere invocation of "the physics of it."
For example, one has to know that:
a. coroner's reports all indicated that the throat wound was an ENTRY wound;
b. coroner's reports all indicated that the back of JFK's head was blasted out, meaning entry for the final head shot was in FRONT;
c. the first shot fired at the president was the worst shot; the last shot was the best. This is completely anomalous. The rule is the first shot is ALWAYS the best shot;
d. many witnesses claimed to have seen smoke rising from the white guard rail at the grassy knoll;
e. many witnesses actually ran in that direction ---toward the guard rail---after hearing the report;
f. by any all and indications, Oswald was at best a mediocre shot and yet this shooting was executed almost perfectly; and
g. the best shot would have been the front shot as the limousine approached the depository, but the shooter(s) waited until the procession was in a triangulated crossfire. In other words, if Oswald alone fired from the depository, he would certainly have taken the front shot as the motorcade approached him; he wouldn't have waited and taken a shot from the BACK as it drove away from him.
There are other facts, but let me just set forth a few more. There's the matter of witnesses claiming to have seen Oswald and Ruby together way before November 1963; the suppression of the Zapruder film; suppression and exclusion of much evidence and quite suspicious to me:
The fact that Dan Rather and other journalists claimed intially, on Nov 22, that the president's head jerked violently backward. Later, Rather claimed that the head jerked violently forward, contradicting his own statement and the Zapruder film.
2. Let's talk briefly about the the motion of the head.
No matter what your background in physics or even ballistics, you'd have to have more than a little direct experience and first-hand knowledge to come up with a scenario that contradicts what many people can plainly see in the Zapruder film.
So: do you have this experience? In other words, can Chuck Hahm say without hesitating that he's seen many cases in which a man was shot in the back of his head and his head jerked violently backward? Can you cite something specific? If not, then we have yet another anomaly. Can you say without equivocation that if we were to shoot at a cadaver from such and such a distance ---if we were to shoot from the back ----that the head would jerk violently backward? Can you say this conclusively? Without hesitation? I doubt it.
As you saw in the Zapruder film, Kennedy's head was initially propelled backward, then jerked forward ---exactly what (I believe) one should expect: Action, reaction, balance.
Forgive me for saying that without a serious study of this case, all one can hope to do is venture a guess or guesses about it. To employ a sexy, talismanic, sort of conversation-chilling phrase like "the physics of it" cannot take the place of serious study--of this specific case.
Are you absolutely sure that the motion of JFK's head was perfectly consistent with other known cases involving shots from the back?
Are you implying that you know something that many many scientists, physicists, witnesses and lay people don't know?
The information is out there. There's no real mystery. I'm not the mystifier in this case . . .
3. Here are one or two reasons why I believe the news media are controlled by corporate and other powerful interests:
a. there are enough facts in this case that contradict the official version. Even if I'm wrong, even if we kooky conspiracy theorists are mistaken, an unbiased media would implicitly say "yes, there are many anomalies and strange twists in this case. You are NOT kooky for having doubts and misgivings about the official story. But, here, we're going to tell you what really happened . . ." (yes, the History channel and some others will run conspiracy stories occasionally, but the official story remains the lone gunman theory);
b. all throughout history, information above almost anything else, was controlled by the powerful and doled out, as needed, to "the masses." The Catholic Church had an entire department tasked with "the propagation of the faith" or propaganda. In the 1920s or so, Freud's nephew, Bernays, started calling propaganda "public relations." As ALL of the common law comes from the Church and as the Corporation was modelled on the Church hierarchy (Pope=CEO; cardinals = executive vice-presidents and so on; this isn't conspiracy prattle, this is taught in law school), it is obvious to me that the current of history hasn't changed. Not much.
This is all my argument: the current of history hasn't changed. Court intrigue, coups d'etat, assassinations, false flag operations, election-rigging, extortion, psychological warfare, propaganda, wars for profit, contrived shortages of resources, national banks printing a nation's currency to profit the few ---this is the stuff of history, and yet our news media would have us believe that all of this is "over" or occurs only in Third World countries or among Mafiosi.
I believe the assassination of JFK was a military execution; a coup d'etat. Kennedy had signed an executive order, effective Dec 1963, for the withdrawal of the first thousand US troops from Vietnam and he was absolutely going to pull all US troops from Nam by 1965. The documentation is all there, signed by the appropriate ministers. From early on, LBJ had his political enemies eliminated. This is well documented. Was he complicit in this murder? I'm not sure, but he did completely reverse JFK's Vietnam policy on Nov 26, 1963, the day after Kennedy's burial. The war was NOTHING during JFK's presidency. Under Johnson, it became . . . The Vietnam War. A war DIRECTLY profiting his Texas oil-banker-aeronautics and Brown & Root buddies.
Kennedy called for the joint US-Soviet space missions and a general end to the Cold War (in his famous speech at American University in the summer of '63). He also promised --this is a direct quote --- to "break the CIA into a million pieces." Interestingly, on December 21, 1963, former president Harry Truman wrote a column in the Washington Post.
Here's the link:
http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html
Here's an excerpt:
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it."
Interesting that Truman wrote this a month after JFK's assassination.
Kennedy was also going to end the Federal Reserve, or at least appeared to, when he directed the Treasury Dept in 1963 to begin printing Silver Certificates. Of course, some disagree with this conclusion (although the Executive Order was signed by JFK--- E.O. 11110):
Funny thing: Lincoln wanted to do the same thing.
My question to you, Chuck: after viewing the Zapruder film, can a RATIONAL person conclude that a gun shot came from the FRONT? OR . . . does the Zapruder film show and prove conclusively that all shots came from the BACK? Conclusively? If not, then there's room for reasonable people to disagree. How, then, is one a "kook" or irrational or unreasonable for having doubts and misgivings about the original story?
Chuck, you may not use these words ("kooky," "whacky"), but the news media dole them out like candy. Even journalists who are assuredly proud of their expansive vocabularies ---Garry Wills, for example---will use the word 'whacky' ONLY when discussing conspiracy theorists. It's their preferred adjective, although some use 'kooky' and 'silly' as frequently as 'whacky.' Look for it! Look for these words and notice how they're employed ONLY when discussing conspiracies and nutty comedians.
Happy Birthday and Happy New Year,
Bo'b
I'm so glad you came to the wedding and I hope all is well. I wanted to briefly clarify my position with regard to the JFK assassination (a) because I think it's an important issue and (b) I want you to know that my position is well thought-out. So, with no stridency, let me say:
1. One has to know the facts of any case to venture anything more than a guess with regard to the truth. A dozen experts, specialists, even physicists cannot shed much light on a case without knowing specific facts. In other words for you or me or anyone to formulate a theory of this case, the specific facts of this specific case must be known and are of greater importance than, if you'll excuse me, a mere invocation of "the physics of it."
For example, one has to know that:
a. coroner's reports all indicated that the throat wound was an ENTRY wound;
b. coroner's reports all indicated that the back of JFK's head was blasted out, meaning entry for the final head shot was in FRONT;
c. the first shot fired at the president was the worst shot; the last shot was the best. This is completely anomalous. The rule is the first shot is ALWAYS the best shot;
d. many witnesses claimed to have seen smoke rising from the white guard rail at the grassy knoll;
e. many witnesses actually ran in that direction ---toward the guard rail---after hearing the report;
f. by any all and indications, Oswald was at best a mediocre shot and yet this shooting was executed almost perfectly; and
g. the best shot would have been the front shot as the limousine approached the depository, but the shooter(s) waited until the procession was in a triangulated crossfire. In other words, if Oswald alone fired from the depository, he would certainly have taken the front shot as the motorcade approached him; he wouldn't have waited and taken a shot from the BACK as it drove away from him.
There are other facts, but let me just set forth a few more. There's the matter of witnesses claiming to have seen Oswald and Ruby together way before November 1963; the suppression of the Zapruder film; suppression and exclusion of much evidence and quite suspicious to me:
The fact that Dan Rather and other journalists claimed intially, on Nov 22, that the president's head jerked violently backward. Later, Rather claimed that the head jerked violently forward, contradicting his own statement and the Zapruder film.
2. Let's talk briefly about the the motion of the head.
No matter what your background in physics or even ballistics, you'd have to have more than a little direct experience and first-hand knowledge to come up with a scenario that contradicts what many people can plainly see in the Zapruder film.
So: do you have this experience? In other words, can Chuck Hahm say without hesitating that he's seen many cases in which a man was shot in the back of his head and his head jerked violently backward? Can you cite something specific? If not, then we have yet another anomaly. Can you say without equivocation that if we were to shoot at a cadaver from such and such a distance ---if we were to shoot from the back ----that the head would jerk violently backward? Can you say this conclusively? Without hesitation? I doubt it.
As you saw in the Zapruder film, Kennedy's head was initially propelled backward, then jerked forward ---exactly what (I believe) one should expect: Action, reaction, balance.
Forgive me for saying that without a serious study of this case, all one can hope to do is venture a guess or guesses about it. To employ a sexy, talismanic, sort of conversation-chilling phrase like "the physics of it" cannot take the place of serious study--of this specific case.
Are you absolutely sure that the motion of JFK's head was perfectly consistent with other known cases involving shots from the back?
Are you implying that you know something that many many scientists, physicists, witnesses and lay people don't know?
The information is out there. There's no real mystery. I'm not the mystifier in this case . . .
3. Here are one or two reasons why I believe the news media are controlled by corporate and other powerful interests:
a. there are enough facts in this case that contradict the official version. Even if I'm wrong, even if we kooky conspiracy theorists are mistaken, an unbiased media would implicitly say "yes, there are many anomalies and strange twists in this case. You are NOT kooky for having doubts and misgivings about the official story. But, here, we're going to tell you what really happened . . ." (yes, the History channel and some others will run conspiracy stories occasionally, but the official story remains the lone gunman theory);
b. all throughout history, information above almost anything else, was controlled by the powerful and doled out, as needed, to "the masses." The Catholic Church had an entire department tasked with "the propagation of the faith" or propaganda. In the 1920s or so, Freud's nephew, Bernays, started calling propaganda "public relations." As ALL of the common law comes from the Church and as the Corporation was modelled on the Church hierarchy (Pope=CEO; cardinals = executive vice-presidents and so on; this isn't conspiracy prattle, this is taught in law school), it is obvious to me that the current of history hasn't changed. Not much.
This is all my argument: the current of history hasn't changed. Court intrigue, coups d'etat, assassinations, false flag operations, election-rigging, extortion, psychological warfare, propaganda, wars for profit, contrived shortages of resources, national banks printing a nation's currency to profit the few ---this is the stuff of history, and yet our news media would have us believe that all of this is "over" or occurs only in Third World countries or among Mafiosi.
I believe the assassination of JFK was a military execution; a coup d'etat. Kennedy had signed an executive order, effective Dec 1963, for the withdrawal of the first thousand US troops from Vietnam and he was absolutely going to pull all US troops from Nam by 1965. The documentation is all there, signed by the appropriate ministers. From early on, LBJ had his political enemies eliminated. This is well documented. Was he complicit in this murder? I'm not sure, but he did completely reverse JFK's Vietnam policy on Nov 26, 1963, the day after Kennedy's burial. The war was NOTHING during JFK's presidency. Under Johnson, it became . . . The Vietnam War. A war DIRECTLY profiting his Texas oil-banker-aeronautics and Brown & Root buddies.
Kennedy called for the joint US-Soviet space missions and a general end to the Cold War (in his famous speech at American University in the summer of '63). He also promised --this is a direct quote --- to "break the CIA into a million pieces." Interestingly, on December 21, 1963, former president Harry Truman wrote a column in the Washington Post.
Here's the link:
http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html
Here's an excerpt:
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it."
Interesting that Truman wrote this a month after JFK's assassination.
Kennedy was also going to end the Federal Reserve, or at least appeared to, when he directed the Treasury Dept in 1963 to begin printing Silver Certificates. Of course, some disagree with this conclusion (although the Executive Order was signed by JFK--- E.O. 11110):
SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 9, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j): '(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821(b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of an outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption,' and (b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof.
SECTION 2. The amendments made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made.
John F. Kennedy,
THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 4, 1963.
Funny thing: Lincoln wanted to do the same thing.
My question to you, Chuck: after viewing the Zapruder film, can a RATIONAL person conclude that a gun shot came from the FRONT? OR . . . does the Zapruder film show and prove conclusively that all shots came from the BACK? Conclusively? If not, then there's room for reasonable people to disagree. How, then, is one a "kook" or irrational or unreasonable for having doubts and misgivings about the original story?
Chuck, you may not use these words ("kooky," "whacky"), but the news media dole them out like candy. Even journalists who are assuredly proud of their expansive vocabularies ---Garry Wills, for example---will use the word 'whacky' ONLY when discussing conspiracy theorists. It's their preferred adjective, although some use 'kooky' and 'silly' as frequently as 'whacky.' Look for it! Look for these words and notice how they're employed ONLY when discussing conspiracies and nutty comedians.
Happy Birthday and Happy New Year,
Bo'b
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