Tuesday 4 August 2015

Who Will Guard Against The Gatekeepers...?


I can't say for certain whether this was in fact a planted question put to Canadian author and journalistic tool, Johnathan Kaye at the Washington Spy Museum event in 2013, during the Q&A session of his "debate" (so-called) up against Webster Tarpley - I stress the "so-called" aspect, since to call it debate implies some competitive desire to make the better case, to change minds and influence others to do so, all traceable back to at least a basic nominal desire, or even mere vague intent to win it - Mr. Kaye showed no indication of maintaining such an attitude, and remained throughout as unengaged, condescending and charmless as may be seen here.



LARRY ELDER: AN ELEGY
Posted by David Cole Stein

Larry Elder, the conservative/libertarian author and talk show host, has been fired by KABC radio in L.A., where, until yesterday, he’d presided over the coveted 3pm – 6pm drive-time slot. KABC’s operations manager Drew Hayes claimed (in an internal memo obtained by the Hollywood Reporter) that getting rid of Larry was part of his program of making “improvements” at the station. According to Southern California public radio station KPCC, Larry’s ratings had been in free-fall, plummeting his program to #32 in the L.A. drive-time slot.

Ouch.

And now he’s doing a podcast. Good luck being the next Adam Carolla, Larry. You’ll need the luck, because you don’t have the skills for that kind of thing. So I’m here both to bury and praise you, old friend..."


http://www.countercontempt.com/archives/5476




"The periodicals in which From Time Immemorial had already been favorably reviewed refused to run any critical correspondence (e.g. The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary). Periodicals that had yet to review the book rejected a manuscript on the subject as of little or no consequence (e.g. The Village Voice, Dissent, The New York Review of Books). Not a single national newspaper or columnist contacted found newsworthy that a best-selling, effusively praised 'study' of the Middle East conflict was a threadbare hoax." - Finkelstein




Chased by a Klezmer

By Gilad Atzmon


I am amused that as the Zionist smear campaign against me and my work has faded, the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists, A.K.A AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists), are ever more infuriated by my thoughts. They are desperate to silence me. They don’t have a chance, but, let’s face it, they have some really good reasons.

The recent events in Palestine have proved beyond any doubt my interpretation of Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity politics. It is not a coincidence that I was the only one to predict the Israeli defeat even before the first Israeli soldier entered Gaza. Since Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, its actions and atrocities must be understood within the context of Jewish culture and heritage. This is my line of thought and this is what I am known for.

Leading commentator, Jeff Blankfort, argued recently that the Jewish Left is not the solution, it is actually a continuation of the problem. I believe that the Jewish Left is not merely a continuation of the problem, it is actually at the heart of the problem. Jewish power, as I see it, is the capacity to silence criticism of Jewish power. In that regard, AIPAC and the Jewish Lobby are not ‘Jewish power,’ they are symptoms of Jewish power. The institutional attempt to silence any debate about Jewish power is provided by the Jewish Left and the so called Jewish anti Zionist network (JVP, Mondowiess, Chomsky, Blumenthal, etc.). It is the Jewish Left that attempts to set the boundaries of the discussion and dictates what can and cannot be said.

For instance, we may talk about Zionism and Israel but we must never elaborate on the Jewishness of the Jewish state. Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, it attests to its affinity to Jewish history, and it draws its vile inception from the Old Testament, yet, the Jewish pro Palestinian outlet Mondoweiss, changed its comment policy to ban discussion of Jewish culture in the context of criticizing Israel. To sum it all up, I am not just an anti Zionist, I am actually critical of all forms of Jewish politics, both Zionist and Anti. I contend that all forms of Jewish politics are ethno-centric and to a certain extent, racially driven. And in my latest book The Wandering Who I substantiate this point and yet to see any attempt to prove me wrong.

In the last few days I have came across several attempts to defame me. I am cheered by each of them. I tend to see these attempts as an acknowledgment of the importance of my contribution to the discourse.

Earlier today I read a clumsy diatribe written by Nick Cooper, a Jewish ethnic campaigner as well as a Klezmer artist from Texas. In his article,Why Other Critics of Israel Won’t Work With Gilad Atzmon Anymore, Klezmer Cooper engages in a Dershowitz like cherry-picking exercise but, instead of exposing me, he conveniently provides us with an example of morbid Jewish Left ideology and tactics.

Ali Abunimah Did Ask Me To Lie

Cooper is convinced that my words are too often “defamatory, inaccurate, and self-aggrandizing.” He accuses me of “fabricating” a statement by Ali Abunimah. Cooper quotes a line of mine from an email exchange. “Abunimah,” I wrote, “calls Israelis Zionists because he needs the so called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists to support his operation. The last time I communicated with Ali Abunimah he wrote to me, ‘Just refer to Zionism instead of Jewish identity and everything would be fine’. He basically asked me to lie.. I obviously refused’…”

If Cooper bothered with even minimal research he would find out that Mr Abunimah admitted that he sent me a message along this exact line. The email is available on Ali Abuimah’s web site:

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/response-recent-efforts-cast-me-racist
From: Ali Abunimah

November 30, 2010 at 5:16 pm

Dear Gilad, I appreciate your note… What you describe as “Jewish” might perhaps be more accurately described as “Zionist,”- and then we might find grounds for a lot of agreement..
Rather than ‘fabricating’ Abunimah’s words, I described his embarrassing non- ethical offer pretty accurately.

Jewish Exclusivity


Klezmer Cooper is correct in claiming that in our correspondence I told him that he wasn’t intelligent enough to grasp the relatively simple argument that Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist organizations are exclusive to Jews. No doubt, Jewish organizations are happy to collect subscription fees from Goyim (gentiles). But can a Goy become the secretary of Jewish Voice for Peace or the spokesperson for the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network? Not really, and why? Is it because the Goyim aren’t racially qualified or is it because they are ethnically unfit for the job? The answer should be embarrassing to the Jewish Left, as it seems even the Israeli Knesset is more tolerant than Western Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist organizations.

Truthfulness

Cooper is also correct that I see “Jewish exclusivity everywhere.”



How Gerald Posner Got Rich and Famous: Or,
Bob Loomis and the Anti-Conspiracy Posse


Although Gerald Posner had written several books prior to 1993's Case Closed, he had never achieved any kind of broad notoriety, broadcast exposure, or large sales prior to that book. And although there had been other Warren Commission volumes circulating at the time, e.g. Jim Moore's Conspiracy of One, none ever became nearly as famous, or infamous, as Posner's. Why?
The answer is: Robert Loomis.

To understand who Loomis is and how far his reach extends in the publishing business, one must go back and study the origins and sad end of one of the very best books written on the Robert Kennedy assassination. That book --- The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy --- was written by Bill Turner and Jonn Christian and was published in 1978 by Random House. The book had been a special project of Jason Epstein, one of the more literate, intelligent, and creative editors on the publishing scene. The book that emerged was an excellent one in the field. Epstein was quite content with the result. He wrote attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who played a feature role in the book, "I hope you are as pleased as we are with the way it turned out. The jacket looks great, but more important is the tough case that is made between the covers." And Epstein had plans for a good publicity campaign, which never really materialized.

In an unexpected reversal the book, for all intents and purposes, was withdrawn from circulation. No paperback rights were sold. Random House used the possibility of a lawsuit by an organized crime figure mentioned in the book as the excuse. But the book had already been vetted by Random House's lawyers for libel and the lawsuit never was filed. When a friend of Turner's, Betsy Langman, called Epstein about the book's reversal of fortune, he replied, "I don't want to talk about it."

But someone at Random House did know what happened to the book. He was the man who had shepherded Robert Houghton's previous book on the case, entitled Special Unit Senator, through Random House. Houghton had been in charge of the secret investigation of the RFK case inside of LAPD. An investigation that, by any objective standard, was a complete and shameful cover-up of the true facts of that murder. Houghton's sponsor at Random House was named Robert Loomis. Loomis had told others that the Turner/Christian book had been withdrawn and burned. When alerted to the possibility of a lawsuit, he brushed it off cavalierly with words to the effect of: "So what?"

Perhaps no other person in the publishing world has been more vigilant against any real investigation of the assassinations of the sixties, or of exposes of conspiracies in general, than Robert Loomis. Another client of his was the late James Phelan. Phelan was always friendly with the intelligence community and was exposed in the nineties as having done journalistic assignments for the government, like informing on Jim Garrison to the FBI. In the seventies, he did a book for Loomis entitled Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years. There had always been rumors and indications that Hughes had been working closely with the CIA, so many were interested as to what had happened to the eccentric millionaire in his later years and the odd circumstances of his death. Loomis made Phelan's book a top secret project for Random House. Only Loomis and one other person at the firm knew about it. All dealings between New York City, and Naples, California (where Phelan rented a cottage to write the book) were done either in person or by hand-delivery. There was no mail or phone contact. The two mains sources for Phelan were two lower level employees in the Hughes empire.

Phelan's book is pretty much worthless today. It basically set the rather deceiving model of the bizarre lifestyle of the long-haired fruity Hughes who got more and more neurotic as time went on. None of the intricate ties between Hughes and the CIA, for example, in regard to the use of an island for Cuban exile training, or, another example, his connection to the Watergate scandal is touched upon. Phelan wrote another book for Loomis called Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels, an anthology of essays which includes a section on the JFK case which is basically a rehash of his anti-Garrison writings that had appeared in 1967.
In the nineties, four more books emerged dealing with Oswald and the Kennedy assassination, Kennedy's presidency, and the death of Martin Luther King. All were sponsored by or directly related to Loomis and his clients. All received a lot of hype, which the Turner-Christian book did not. Loomis sponsored Case Closed for Random House. He apparently knew Posner through an earlier effort of his entitled Hitler's Children. As one can clearly discern through reading the footnotes, Posner's Kennedy assassination book was a rush job that was done in the wake of the furor surrounding Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK. Posner told Jim Marrs after a debate in Dallas that Loomis approached him about the book at that time and told him he would have the cooperation of the CIA on the project. This explains how Posner got access to KGB turncoat Yuri Nosenko, who was put on a CIA retainer in the late seventies. The book was timed for release on the 30th anniversary of JFK's death which explains why it was such a clear hurry-up job. (See attached articles for a chronicle of only some of the many, many errors is this hapless book.) 

Loomis also commissioned Norman Mailer's concoction of a book Oswald's Tale, done with longtime FBI informant on the Kennedy case Lawrence Schiller. Mailer tried to make the case that the book was warranted by his access to some of the Russian files on Oswald that he had access to from the newly formed government of Belarus. Yet, according to John Tunheim of the ARRB, there is an approximately five foot high stack of documents that no one has seen on Oswald. Not even the ARRB. Mailer got nowhere near the majority of these files. Predictably, Mailer's book presented the probability of the case against Oswald as the lone assassin.

Further on into the nineties, Posner came out with another book on an infamous assassination of the sixties. This one was on the Martin Luther King case. It was called Killing the Dream and also made the same single-minded case against James Earl Ray as Posner did against Lee Harvey Oswald. He told one interviewer: "There is no question. Ray was the shooter. That's how I see the evidence, how anybody objective has to see the evidence." To put it mildly, this is a rather gross overstatement as can be seen by reading any credible book on the King murder, like say Harold Weisberg's Frame-Up or Ray's own Who Killed Martin Luther King? Let us not forget that in the only two real trials of this case, the jury decided for conspiracy; namely the HBO mock trial in 1993, and the civil trial held in Memphis by the King family vs. Loyd Jowers in 1999.

Finally, let us consider Seymour Hersh and his embarrassment of a book on the Kennedy presidency, The Dark Side of Camelot. Hersh is a darling of the so-called liberal print media. People like Jacob Weisberg and Eric Alterman defended his career and his awful book when it was being attacked in so many quarters when it came out in 1997. These commentators, and just about everyone else, ignored the fact that Hersh's career has always been quite questionable in his relationship to the CIA and his reliance on sources there. Also, that from the beginning Hersh's book publishing career has been advanced by Bob Loomis. This whole rather strange career with Loomis and the questionable judgments and maneuvers Hersh has done in that career are examined in The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (pgs. 364-373).

If one calls Loomis' office one will learn from his secretary that he spends a lot of time in Washington D.C., even though Random House's main offices are in New York. This probably began because his former wife Gloria had once worked for the CIA. She was the personal secretary to none other than James Angleton, the legendary counter-intelligence chief of the Agency for 20 years. He is also the man who many writers and researchers, like John Newman and Lisa Pease, believe was handling the Oswald file in the CIA. This undisclosed fact would then explain how Posner got the CIA clearances to talk to people no one has access to. It also helps explain why Loomis does what he does. But wouldn't it have been more honest to the reader of Posner's book if he would have explained that it had been commissioned by someone whose former wife had worked for the man who was probably running Oswald as an intelligence agent?

Did Posner make a Faustian deal with Loomis? A quid pro quo in political parlance? Consider the similarities between these two quotes dug up by attorney and longtime Kennedy researcher Roger Feinman: "All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public's belief in the government, and that, to me, is a crime." (Bob Loomis, Publisher's Weekly, 5/3/93) "But I also think that the conspiracy theorists have made us lose faith in government." (Gerald Posner, Dallas Morning News, 11/21/93).

Coincidence or conspiracy?


---Jim DiEugenio

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