Opinion

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently recounted to an audience at Texas A&M University that when he was head of the Central Intelligence Agency he was responsible for “lying, cheating and stealing” to benefit the United States. “Like we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

The Secretary made the comment with a grin, noting that when he was a cadet at West Point he subscribed to the Academy honor code, which stated that “You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do.” The largely student audience clearly appreciated and irony and laughed and applauded, though it is not clear what they made of the “glory of the American experiment.” The normally humorless Pompeo was suggesting ironically that yesterday’s Pompeo would be required to turn today’s Pompeo into the appropriate authorities for lying and also conniving at high crimes and misdemeanors while at the Agency.

I have followed the films of Michael Moore since "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x;" target="_blank">Roger & Me came out while I was in grad school. "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x;" target="_blank">Fahrenheit 9/11 looked at what happened to civil liberties in this country after 9/11, and "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px); background-repeat: repeat-x;" target="_blank">Fahrenheit 11/9 looked

Well, it's mostly nonsense---17 minutes of it---Bob Dylan rasping pleasingly over a simple rolling piano figure, relaxed, but often tastelessly and grotesquely describing JFK's gruesome assassination November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

'Murder Most Foul' could've been groundbreaking. It could've been a golden ager's autumnal 'Sympathy For The Devil.'

But instead the casualness of the rhyming patterns, the bloody references to bullets hitting the Kennedy noggin and the President slumping into Jackie's lap and THEN the autopsy at the hospital in a bit of gory detail---well, it's all a bit much.

It does get interesting when Dylan brings legendary '60s radio d.j. Wolfman Jack into the picture and then spends the last third of the song making requests for him to play a Who's Who of r'n'b and blues favorites while mention Marilyn Monroe.

Sort of Dylan's way of waxing nostalgic about the America he loved, gone and not being taught. Talk about an untapped cultural goldmine.

The Free Press Network presents; Harvey Wasserman The Other Side Of The News With Dr. Robert Fitrakis 

The Other Side Of The News With Dr. Robert Fitrakis

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At a time when the president wants to reopen the economy — but not the borders! — it’s time to grab ahold of the moment and start groping in our minds beyond what’s politically possible and start envisioning serious social change.

Life is fervid chaos right now for those who are on the front lines of the pandemic, from hospital workers to grocery store clerks, not to mention those who are sick and dying — and those who are helpless and vulnerable, such as immigrants and prisoners — but for most people life has slowed down to a matter of staring out the window . . . or into the future.

Many of the life-shattering issues people are facing right now are manmade, and often result from an allegiance to the worst of who we are. How can this change? This is certainly the time to begin asking this question — and I mean globally, not just nationally.

As the effects of coronavirus still ravage the globe, many people have noted that this is the fourth major crisis of the 21st century. Some even say that coronavirus is a composition of all our most recent crises combined. After all, the 2000s began with a good deal of tragedy -- 9/11 occurred only a year in and was followed by Hurricane Katrina shortly after. Both showcased a lack of preparedness by the U.S. government for such major emergencies, whether they were created by nature or man-made. Things would eventually turn for the worse economically right as the country started to recover, as the financial crisis of 2008 -- created by the pure greed and deregulation on Wall Street -- wreaked havoc across the country, more so than any natural or manufactured tragedy had up until that point.
 

1] Here are links to a number of important developments about “COVID” that are intentionally never mentioned on the mainstream media, all members of which are turning out to be propaganda mouthpieces for whomever or whatever entities have gotten together an decided what narrative is to be the accepted one. https://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/default.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art3ReadMore&cid=20200426Z1&et_cid=DM521257&et_rid=859224961

The Columbus Dispatch appears bound and determined to break the daily newspaper reading habit in central Ohio.

First, management keeps jacking up the price of home delivery and single copies of the print product.

Second, the newspaper keeps getting thinner and thinner as less news and information is provided compared to the past.

Third, the deadline for the next day's paper keeps getting earlier and earlier. It was around 9 or 10 o'clock at night for the early edition until the printing plant in Columbus was closed and moved to Indianapolis in January. Then the deadline was moved up to 7 p.m., ostensibly because it takes nearly three hours to truck the papers to Columbus.

I did some checking and found out that 7 p.m. was also the deadline for the Indianapolis Star, a sister newspaper of the Dispatch under the new merged company called Gannett.

What?

Why would the Star be stuck with such an early deadline when there is no 3-hour trucking imperative?

A reasonable deadline for the Star would be 2 a.m. Allowing for trucking time, a reasonable deadline for the Dispatch would be 3 hours earlier, at 11 p.m.

World BEYOND War, April 26, 2020

David Swanson was to speak at a conference in Florence, Italy, on April 25, 2020. The conference became a video instead. Below is the video and text of Swanson’s portion. As soon as we receive the video or text of the whole, in Italian or English, we will post it at worldbeyondwar.org. The video aired on April 25 on PandoraTV and on ByoBlu. Details on the full conference are here.

Sadly, Giulietto Chiesa, director of Pandora TV, died a few hours after attending this conference on live-streaming. Giulietto’s last public participation was his presenting the portion of the conference that concerned Julian Assange and his father John Shipton’s interview.

Swanson’s remarks follow.

Text of this video: