Reply #5: Don't have much experience. [View All]

[mojowork_n]

I went door to door for Gwen Moore in Bay View, one weekend, for her House race. That's just about the sum total of my involvement with Democratic Party politics.

But I was really, really encouraged to see the Democrats in the House vote NO on giving Bush and the telecom's permanent immunity.

I think you could get many, many people involved if they start seeing the whole facade of lies starting to crack. Keith Olberman's audience keeps growing. Jon Stewart's doing a better job of commenting on the news than anyone on the regular news networks. Since the Chicago Air America/Jones Network station boosted their signal, it's been great having Randi Rhodes, and the rest of those folks, in my car.

In most all of the primaries so far, total Democratic votes have swamped total Republican votes, or they've been way, way up from previous years. It's not just Northern Wisconsin.

...I started to type, "we could be ready to take back America," but who's "We?"

That whole "organizational" thing is a big mystery to me.

This afternoon, HBO showed Oliver Stone's film, "JFK", and I caught the second half. (I still haven't seen the movie, all the way through. Just bits and pieces, here and there.)

I was curious enough to google up the complete text of the screenplay, to re-read something the Donald Sutherland character says. He's a composite of several Black Ops types, and tells the Kevin Costner character:


In 1961...
...right after the Bay of Pigs, very few people know this...
...I participated in drawing up National Security Action Memos 55, 56, 57.
These are documents classified top secret.
In them, Kennedy told Gen. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs...
...that from here on, the Joint Chiefs would be wholly responsible...
...for all covert paramilitary action in peacetime.
This ended the reign of the CIA.
Splintered it into 1,000 pieces, as JFK promised he would.
And now he was ordering the military...
...to help him do it. Unprecedented!
I can't tell you the shock waves this sent along the corridors of power.

...Kennedy's directives weren't implemented because of...
...bureaucratic resistance.
But one of the results was...
...the Cuban operation was turned over to my department...
...as Operation Mongoose.
Mongoose was pure Black Ops.

Don't underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963.
Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states.
Twenty-one overseas bases.
Big money.
You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam?
Nearly 3,000 so far.
Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell?
Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA...
...to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-111 fighter?
General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that?
Find out the defense budget since the war began. $75 going on $100 billion.
Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it's over.
In 1949, it was $10 billion.
No war...no money.
The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison...
...is for war.
The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers.
Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term.
He wanted to call off the moon race and cooperate with the Soviets.
He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing.
He refused to invade Cuba in 1962.
He set out to withdraw from Vietnam.
But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963...

...No one said, "He must die." No vote. Nothing's on paper.
There's no one to blame.
It's as old as the crucifixion.
Or the military firing squad.
Five bullets, one blank. No one's guilty.
Everybody in the power structure...
...has a plausible deniability.
No compromising connections except at the most secret point.

...the perpetrators must be on the winning side...
...and never subject to prosecution for anything by anyone.
That is a coup d'état.
Kennedy announces the Texas trip in September.
At that moment, second Oswald's pop up all over Dallas...
...where they have the mayor and the cops in their pocket...

Does it matter who shot...
...from what rooftop?
Part of the scenery.
I keep thinking about that Tuesday...
...the 26th of November.
The day after they buried Kennedy.

'Gentlemen, I am not going to let Vietnam go like China did.
I'm committed...
...not to take our soldiers out of there till they know we mean business in Asia.'
Lyndon Johnson signs National Security Memo 273...
...which reverses Kennedy's withdrawal policy...
...and approves covert action against North Vietnam...
...provoking the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Just get me elected, I'll give you the damn war.
In that document...
...lay the Vietnam War.
I can't believe they killed him because he wanted to change things.
-ln our time, in our country! -They've done it throughout history.
Kings are killed. Politics is power, nothing more!
Don't take my word for it. Do your own thinking.
The size of this is...
...beyond me.
Testify.
-Me? -Testify.
No chance in hell.
No, I'd be arrested and gagged...

I can give you the background. You find the foreground, the little things.
Dig, you're the only one to bring a trial in Kennedy's murder.
That's important. It's historic.
I haven't yet.
I don't have much of a case.
You don't have a choice anymore.

..Be honest.
Your only chance is to come up with a case. Something. Anything.
Make arrests. Stir the shitstorm.
Hope to start...
...a chain reaction of people coming forward.
Then the government will crack.
Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth.
And the truth is on your side, bubba.

It's longer and more rambly than Ned Beatty's rant in Network, but those are the words that have been resonating, ringing in my head.

It's admittedly a little bogus from the jump. One side of Oliver Stone's head (a fictional "composite" character) talking to the other, (a fictionalized Jim "Everyman" Garrison), but the dynamic doesn't seem that unreal.

Nobody I know has been "arrested and gagged", but I'm kind of familiar with a few people who've lost jobs. For being Lib'ruls, trying to do their 9 to 5 reporting to Waukesha County Wingnut boss's.

We're all of us staring at the "foreground, the little things", every time we gas up the car.

Katherine Harris, Jeb Bush and Scalia steal an election from President Gore, and instead of Tonkin Gulf and Vietnam, we get the more up close and personal "WMD" threat.

Anyone paying attention knows it's a bogus crock, but the New York Times and Judith Miller (and most of the Senate and House) make sure that doesn't even matter. The WMD inspectors who'd been in Iraq, doing their jobs, for years, weren't pulled because of any threats from Saddam. They were withdrawn because the weapons verification process, itself, precluded military action.

Politics is power, nothing more!

Bell Helicopter was making a fortune in 1966?

Let's hear it for Blackwater's outsourced mercenaries, earning monthly salaries several multiples higher than their enlisted counterparts, in the regular military.

I have no idea how anyone "stirs the shitstorm", here, in an effective way, but the whole country is already aware that this coming election is already historic.

If there's "...a chain reaction of people coming forward.
Then the government will crack."

If the new leaders who are going to be elected know that people are on to the game, they're less likely to compromise their better natures.

(It would be the opposite of that line from "Lords of War", "Those who know, don't care. Those who care, don't know.") Not neglecting our fellow Americans, on the other side, who may also care, but are only too happy to believe the forumula half-truths and lies.

...I hacked and edited the pasted-in dialog quite a bit. Here's the link to the full text:

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/j/jfk-script-transcript-oliver-stone.html