If you had 1 message to save the world? - CIA=Media

[OP ED]

not one step backwards.

[Nordic]

What you think is "America" is a myth.

[compared2what?]

not one step backwards.

Seconded. In addition to which:

Agitate, educate, organize. Except in reverse order, given the point from which we're starting. Also, on a not entirely unrelated note:

What if IF was CIA???

I. F. Stone and the Assassination of JFK - The Education Forum

Isador Feinstein Stone was probably the best known left-wing journalist at the time of the assassination of JFK. After working for several left-wing journals he established I. F. Stone's Weekly in 1953. Over the next few years Stone led the attack on McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the United States. Stone once stated that: "There was nothing to the left of me but The Daily Worker."

However, Stone was a passionate supporter of the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. In the first issue of I. F. Stone Weekly after the assassination Stone wrote: "It is always dangerous to draw rational inferences from the behavior of a psychopath like Oswald."

On the publication of the The Warren Commission Report Stone led the attack on those people like Bertrand Russell, Thomas G. Buchanan, Joachim Joesten, Mark Lane and Carl Marzani, who had proposed that there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Stone wrote:

All my adult life as a newspaperman I have been fighting, in defense of the Left and of a sane politics, against conspiracy theories of history, character assassination, guilt by association and demonology. Now I see elements of the Left using these same tactics in the controversy over the Kennedy assassination and the Warren Commission Report. I believe the Commission has done a first-rate job, on a level that does our country proud and is worthy of so tragic an event. I regard the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer of the President as conclusive. By the nature of the case, absolute certainty will never be attained, and those still convinced of Oswald's innocence have a right to pursue the search for evidence which might exculpate him. But I want to suggest that this search be carried on in a sober manner and with full awareness of what is involved.

The Joesten book is rubbish, and Carl Marzani - whom I defended against loose charges in the worst days of the witch hunt - ought to have had more sense of public responsibility than to publish it. Thomas G. Buchanan, another victim of witch hunt days, has gone in for similar rubbish in his book, Who Killed Kennedy? You couldn't convict a chicken thief on the flimsy slap-together of surmise, half-fact and whole untruth in either book.

However, as John Kelin has pointed out in his book, Praise from a Future Generation, at the time Stone wrote this article: "the Warren Report had just been published and the twenty-six volumes of supporting evidence and testimony were still not available".

Is it possible that Stone was receiving funding for the I.F. Stone Weekly from the CIA? His defence of the Warren Report definitely helped shape the views of the left concerning the assassination of JFK.

To address the points raised above in ascending order of interest and importance:

(1) Anything's possible.

(2) Unless you arbitrarily and retroactively choose to imbue Stone with much greater levels of power and influence wrt the views favored by the various factions of the left as it was then constituted than he actually then -- or for that matter, ever -- had, while I suppose that you still might or might not be able to make a persuasive case for the assertion that his defense of The Warren Report definitely helped shape those views, I don't know what it would avail anyone to do so that would make it worth the effort. Because it would be both ludicrous and anachronistic to suggest that he definitively shaped those views. With or without the invisible assistance of the CIA, he neither had nor -- as far as I'm aware -- did he aim to have that kind of blunt-force-impact clout.

Furthermore, even if there is more evidence than I know of that decisive and commanding influence was the goal to which Stone aspired, I'd still be very fucking hard-put to imagine a style or method of writing and reporting that could conceivably have been any less well suited to achieving such a goal than Stone's were if (with the exception of whatever time I couldn't avoid using for sleep and nourishment), I did nothing apart from dedicate all my energies expressly to trying to concoct one for the next two weeks.

In short, I can't rate the reading comprehension skills of anyone who could come away from a reading of I.F. Stone under the impression that he had made a wholesale attack, let alone "led" one, on people whose views on the JFK assassination differed from his own as being good enough to regard any reading-comprehension-dependent argument made by that person as reliable on its own merits.

I mean, if Stone launched any vicious, savage and unqualified assaults on "people like Bertrand Russell" that were more actively vicious, savage, assaultive and unqualified (or any more capable of being most fairly described as concerning "people like Bertrand Russell") than...

• "I regard the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer of the President as conclusive. By the nature of the case, absolute certainty will never be attained, and those still convinced of Oswald's innocence have a right to pursue the search for evidence which might exculpate him. But I want to suggest that this search be carried on in a sober manner and with full awareness of what is involved.
  
  The Joesten book is rubbish, and Carl Marzani - whom I defended against loose charges in the worst days of the witch hunt - ought to have had more sense of public responsibility than to publish it. Thomas G. Buchanan, another victim of witch hunt days, has gone in for similar rubbish in his book, Who Killed Kennedy? You couldn't convict a chicken thief on the flimsy slap-together of surmise, half-fact and whole untruth in either book."

...I'm wide open to considering their implications.

However, if the quoted passage is either the sum total of the evidence or generally representative of it, it doesn't even come close to justifying the characterization of Stone that both precedes and follows it.

(3) If I.F. Stone was CIA, it would not reduce the transparency of his sourcing, or the clarity of his logic, or the consistency with which he effectively advocated for the positions and principles he explicitly owned himself an adherent of by a single degree more or a single degree less than it would if I.F. Stone was KGB, which he's also and and rather more prominently been charged with being. As, for example, here.

The credibility and relevance of both accusations is almost totally contingent on the assumption that there's no need to explain away the incompatibility of either supposition with the published writing of I.F. Stone when you can rely on the vast majority of the people you're addressing never having read enough of it to have any very stong or informed opinions on the matter.

Personally, I don't find either allegation very credible. Though neither would I argue that either is absolutely out of the question.

However, in view of the less-than-conclusive evidence for each, I can't see how it would do anything but damage the left not to avail itself of the considerable resource of I.F. Stone's work, both in itself, and -- more importantly -- as an exemplar of the inherent advantage that open-source reportage might still represent to the left, had the left not chosen to regard Izzy Stone's success with that method as some kind of sui generis and mysterious phenomenon the key to which died when he did. Which I haven't bothered emulating in the writing of this post, I should hasten humbly to add.

By which I mean, in case it's not clear, that I'm writing from a position informed only by what I already know rather than one I'm confident takes all relevant information into account.

So please let me know what, if anything, I'm overlooking.

[pepsified thinker]

What you think is "America" is a myth.

that's good,

but also--"question authority".

or, "beware 'convenient' atrocity stories".

[Occult Means Hidden]

My message would be the "time to get back to basics, worker control of industry!..." line found on my sig.

Also, Hugh, Could it be possible you put far too much stock into the whole CIA is the criminal culprit of everything bad meme?

The agency is a tool. Who is behind the the tool? What other tools are there to use? Hell, maybe the british royalty and vatican papals in conjunction with occultic tools beyond most's realization, really are the world's dominators?*

*(working in cahoots with extraplanetary beings)

[esotericmetal]

Smoke weed.

[Ben D]

Art is for a long time
Life is for a short time
So leave your mark
Its your art of life

[Truth4Youth]

You are NOT weak. You ARE capable of taking full responsibility of your life. Do NOT let your leaders tell you otherwise. Think for yourself, and question authority.

[Sweejak]

No words, it would have to be an image, a symbol or maybe music. Don't ask me what though.


...oh wait "Don't believe everything you think"

[jingofever]

I don't have any wisdom to give to the world, but Feynman asked a similar question and his answer was the atomic theory (maybe his question wasn't about saving the world, maybe it was what piece of knowledge would you pass on to a society that had to rebuild civilization, most likely after being destroyed in an atomic war). But if I really did have to give the world one message it would be that if you pray to the sky captain and tip your priest everything will be alright.

[lupercal]

After working for several left-wing journals he established I. F. Stone's Weekly in 1953.

1953 was a big year for the Company. The Korean War ended and there was that business about the confessions made by POWs to using germ warfare without realizing it, which had to be erased from their minds with their new MK tricks. Apparently Frank Olson wasn't on board and that's when they killed him.

A couple of other things about 1953 make me think resurrecting Stone as a mouthpiece, at least partly, for official stories would be just the kind of thing they'd do. It wouldn't necessarily mean the rest of it wasn't any good. Cockburn's Counterpunch serves much the same purpose today.

[Col. Quisp]

"Power to the People," a slogan being ridiculed by Progressive (hah) Insurance commercials spewed forth that hateful hag in the white outfit, looking nurse-like.

They are taking away the power of the phrase by using it in a commercial for car insurance. So evil!

[compared2what?]

After working for several left-wing journals he established I. F. Stone's Weekly in 1953.

1953 was a big year for the Company. The Korean War ended and there was that business about the confessions made by POWs to using germ warfare without realizing it, which had to be erased from their minds with their new MK tricks. Apparently Frank Olson wasn't on board and that's when they killed him.

A couple of other things about 1953 make me think resurrecting Stone as a mouthpiece, at least partly, for official stories would be just the kind of thing they'd do. It wouldn't necessarily mean the rest of it wasn't any good. Cockburn's Counterpunch serves much the same purpose today.

Well. If there was one iota of evidence that Stone was a mouthpiece of the CIA, or that he was resurrected by anyone in 1953, then I guess your musings would have some basis in fact and/or reason. I encourage you to read his work and return with what you find.

Cockburn and Stone are about as dissimilar as any two writers who self-identify as left could possibly be, wrt, among other things, their ideological, methodological, institutional, and personal characteristics. Which does make me wonder: Apart from the purpose you arbitrarily ascribe to the Weekly on the basis of the highly suspect year in which Stone started it, what else do ya got, lupercal?

[lupercal]

Apart from the purpose you arbitrarily ascribe to the Weekly on the basis of the highly suspect year in which Stone started it, what else do ya got, lupercal?

Well, there's this, from a highly skilled investigative journalist: "I regard the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer of the President as conclusive." Frankly what else do you need?

[compared2what?]

Apart from the purpose you arbitrarily ascribe to the Weekly on the basis of the highly suspect year in which Stone started it, what else do ya got, lupercal?

Well, there's this, from a highly skilled investigative journalist: "I regard the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer of the President as conclusive." Frankly what else do you need?

When I read it in the context of the several sentences surrounding it, and also when I recall the thousands and thousands of other sentences written by I.F. Stone, and -- most especially -- when I bear in mind that the publication of that one sentence not only had no fucking impact at all on anything, but also that only a socially handicapped person with very few communication skills who was living in a completely imaginary universe would ever even have expected it to at the time -- what I need is some basis in fact or reason to believe that Stone was CIA.

Frankly.