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Was the JFK assassination a coup d'état?

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Author, activist, physician and retired politician Ron Paul is saying that America suffered a CIA-led coup d'état sixty years ago with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“I’m arguing the case that we’re in the middle of it and moving right along, that the revolution has been fought, there’s been a coup, we don’t have any resemblance to a government that believes in a Republic, we don’t have honest money, we don’t have integrity,” Paul said.

He continued, “But I do believe there has been a coup, and it’s been taken over, and if I want to, and if I can I want to just put the date in my mind, and anybody could pick probably any date in the last 100 years, but I have picked November 22nd 1963. That was the day Kennedy was murdered by our government, you know, by the CIA.”

 

Lawyer, author, 2024 Democrat Party presidential candidate and nephew of JFK, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been saying the same things.

https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1604139690629730304

 

Edited by Jon Letendre
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50 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Perhaps we can get honest money after an O'ist gets some juice at the Fed.

Haha, yeah lots of good Greenspan turned out to do.

Paul is right -- we have to go at least all the way back to 1913 and dismantle the privately owned central bank cartel known deceptively as the the Fed (listen free: https://bookaudiobooks.com/the-creature-from-jekyll-island-audiobook/

There is simply no such thing as the prudent or pro-capitalist management of a fake money cartel.

Edited by Jon Letendre
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2 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Haha, yeah lots of good Greenspan turned out to do.

Paul is right -- we have to go at least all the way back to 1913 and dismantle

There is simply no such thing as the prudent or pro-capitalist management of a fake money cartel.

Twitter, Google, FaceBorg and the Fed , all private entities, quick bitchin and capitalism the shit out of it and build your own, whiner.

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1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

Twitter, Google, FaceBorg and the Fed , all private entities, quick bitchin and capitalism the shit out of it and build your own, whiner.

Combing this for some semblance of substance... do I take it you are in support of central banking, the existence of the FED as well as fiat money... that these should exist in a proper Republic?

and are you suggesting that Jon build his own...

..

..

Republic?

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1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Combing this for some semblance of substance... do I take it you are in support of central banking, the existence of the FED as well as fiat money... that these should exist in a proper Republic?

and are you suggesting that Jon build his own...

..

..

Republic?

It was meant as sarcasm , a parody of an argument one might hear from those who refuse to see the level of corruption in practically all of our institutions. Corporations or private entities that cooperate with government, for ‘good or bad’ cease to be private entities. It’s a little fascistic, unless as an argument goes they are cooperating with the regime to investigate and curtail dissent er I mean criminality. 
 

I’m starting to think western culture needs to reconsider the idea of corporations and corporate governance.

Edited by tadmjones
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38 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

I’m starting to think western culture needs to reconsider the idea of corporations and corporate governance.

What we need to do is recognize the corrupting effect of mixed-economy statism.  Eventually, when we can, we need to eliminate this effect by establishing laissez-faire capitalism.

 

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9 hours ago, tadmjones said:

It was meant as sarcasm , a parody of an argument one might hear from those who refuse to see the level of corruption in practically all of our institutions. Corporations or private entities that cooperate with government, for ‘good or bad’ cease to be private entities. It’s a little fascistic, unless as an argument goes they are cooperating with the regime to investigate and curtail dissent er I mean criminality. 
 

I’m starting to think western culture needs to reconsider the idea of corporations and corporate governance.

Shareholder rights via ownership should be paramount.  The obligation of the company is to make a profit for the shareholder… not to waste resources on anyone else or for any other cause.

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48 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Shareholder rights via ownership should be paramount.  The obligation of the company is to make a profit for the shareholder… not to waste resources on anyone else or for any other cause.

Aside from fiduciary duties and legal instruments describing ownership, I’m more interested in assigning responsibility to individuals for ‘corporate’ actions.

Take for example a pharmaceutical corporation that develops a product known to cause harm but distributes the product regardless based on the calculation that revenue from sales will compensate for any lawsuits related to harm and still generate an overall profit. If ‘the corporate’ entity was not recognized as a separate legal entity the owner(s) should be held personally responsible for the actions. Would not incentives more based on individual responsibility work to create a market that develops products with less negative unintended consequences? 
 

The corporate structure is a fantastic mechanism for raising and organizing capital, but it seems it also works to shield individuals from responsibility associated with things like known harms and or fraud.

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38 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

Aside from fiduciary duties and legal instruments describing ownership, I’m more interested in assigning responsibility to individuals for ‘corporate’ actions.

Take for example a pharmaceutical corporation that develops a product known to cause harm but distributes the product regardless based on the calculation that revenue from sales will compensate for any lawsuits related to harm and still generate an overall profit. If ‘the corporate’ entity was not recognized as a separate legal entity the owner(s) should be held personally responsible for the actions. Would not incentives more based on individual responsibility work to create a market that develops products with less negative unintended consequences? 
 

The corporate structure is a fantastic mechanism for raising and organizing capital, but it seems it also works to shield individuals from responsibility associated with things like known harms and or fraud.

Indeed individuals directing or managing the corporation should never be shielded from responsibility … after all they are the decision makers directly responsible for the corporation’s actions. 

 

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Indeed individuals directing or managing the corporation should never be shielded from responsibility … after all they are the decision makers directly responsible for the corporation’s actions. 

 

This brings to my thoughts a parallel to a mind/body dichotomy. The individuals as the minds that bring about the corporate body actions.

By extension, the spirit (mind) is willing, but the body (corporation) is weak - the body is considered stronger than the will, and the corporation, thus, is viewed as a strong 'evil'. 

Not that the above excuses the actors actions, although the intentions may play a consideration in some verdicts.

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36 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

This brings to my thoughts a parallel to a mind/body dichotomy. The individuals as the minds that bring about the corporate body actions.

By extension, the spirit (mind) is willing, but the body (corporation) is weak - the body is considered stronger than the will, and the corporation, thus, is viewed as a strong 'evil'. 

Not that the above excuses the actors actions, although the intentions may play a consideration in some verdicts.

It can raise further issues. Like, if I privately think that Alice and Bob are frauds, and I refuse to deal with them, that's fine, I'm within my rights. But what does it mean for the XYZ corporation to "think" that Alice and Bob are frauds and refuse to deal with them? A corporation cannot "think," it cannot "know" things except by keeping records in a database and having policies and procedures that cause those records to be honored by the employees. So one wonders, what if Alice and Bob aren't really frauds? I can't commit slander or libel by privately thinking that they are, or by refusing to do business with them. Alice and Bob can't sue me merely for having false beliefs and acting on them. They could sue me if I told anyone else that they were frauds, if they weren't, because that would be slander. But wouldn't it also be libel for a corporation to store in its databases the "fact" that Alice and Bob are frauds, if they really aren't, and thus cause their employees and associates to refuse to do business with Alice and Bob, on a false basis? A database is, after all, a form of written communication, and a corporation is a group of people, not a person.

Edited by necrovore
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1 hour ago, necrovore said:

I can't commit slander or libel by privately thinking that they are, or by refusing to do business with them

There is no general "duty" to do business with anyone in a proper society.

The duty a CEO owes to the shareholders is to make a profit, and if they, in discharging to the best of their abilities that duty decide that Alice and Bob are financial risks they should not deal with Alice and Bob.

 

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

But wouldn't it also be libel for a corporation to store in its databases the "fact" that Alice and Bob are frauds, if they really aren't, and thus cause their employees and associates to refuse to do business with Alice and Bob, on a false basis? A database is, after all, a form of written communication, and a corporation is a group of people, not a person.

Libel is very specific and generally requires a publication of falsehoods.  One of the defences to libel is that what is claimed is true.  IF Alice and Bob represent economic risks the corporation is not willing to take (i.e. the CEO has reasons not to deal with them) then the facts constituting those risks do not in any way create libel.  Documentation within a corporation should never knowingly be false, as that would be a breach of the duty or loyalty owed the corporation by its officers and employees.  An internal memo may not qualify as a publication, although it might depend upon the circumstances.


 

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Libel protection will not necessarily protect a CEO. When a corporation loses a legal case, the shareholders suffer and they, in turn, react to the CEO.

Any legal protection that is given to a CEO is known. It is not sprung on us, it is not a fraud. A bank will not lend money to a corporation or LLC without collateral. You can choose to do or avoid doing business with any corporation. If you are forced to do business with a corporation, the "forcing" must be stopped. But more importantly, you have to make the case that you are being "forced" to do business with it. Are we being forced by corporations to do business with them?

When we do business with a corporation, a "country", or a partnership, the entire entity should be held responsible. The problem is "they" usually are a large group of people that can vote and that will finance voting which causes governmental collusion. Not the business entity concept itself.

The crony capitalism we have right now allows for harmful decisions because of illegitimate protection obtained by collusion with the government. It's not the idea of "government" or "corporation" that is at fault. Collusion or legal corruption or corporate welfare via the government is due to the morality of collectivism and utilitarianism that permeates the culture.

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On 4/13/2023 at 6:51 PM, tadmjones said:

I’m starting to think western culture needs to reconsider the idea of corporations and corporate governance.

The corporate structure is a fantastic mechanism for raising and organizing capital, but it seems it also works to shield individuals from responsibility associated with things like known harms and or fraud.

I’m not persuaded that any culture needs to reconsider the concept of corporations, but rational discussion is always a good thing. The standard left-wing “argument” against corporations is that it encourages people to operate businesses at a profit and not for the benefit of the workers (what laborers receive is not called “profit”). I find it to be pointless to discuss the merits of corporations with communists. The only argument of merit against corporations that I have ever heard is exactly based on the problem of shielding individuals from the legal consequences of their actions. Hence the second quote is essential to this question.

One problem with the claim is that it isn’t exactly true, indeed there is a name for it when you go after evil corporate miscreants – piercing the corporate veil. But don’t go there yet, the first question should be ‘what should happen if a business markets a product “known” to cause harm?’ (I said business, not corporation). Under the current regime, the business gets sued, and if found liable damages may be awarded. I should point out that under an Objectivist regime, a company will not be held liable for marketing a product that can be argued to have some detectable relation to “harm”. A company that sells cyanide capsules as cyanide capsules should not be held liable, even though the company should know of the potential for harm. Caveat emptor! When they sell cyanide as ibuprofen, that’s where true liability arises.

Cyanide as ibuprofen is exactly the kind of case where the corporate veil will be pierced, and where criminal prosecution will arise. The question is, which persons should be held personally liable? Some candidates are “the CEO”, “the board of directors”, “the manager in charge of product development”, “the employees of the company” and “everybody with a direct or indirect interest in the company” (such as a bank which makes loans to the business, or your grandmother whose retirement plan invested in the company).

In the case of criminal prosecution, the law already has an answer, because you don’t prosecute people for bad outcomes, you prosecute them for evil actions – knowingly violating the rights of another. Whether or not the CEO, board of directors, or guy on the assembly line is held criminally responsible, and sent to jail, depends on that person’s knowledge state and the nature of their actions. One does not gain immunity from prosecution from the fact that you work for a corporation.

Unlike criminal law, civil liability for damages is not centered around a person’s mental state, and to the extent that mental state enters into the equation, it is often very subjective – was the person negligent in their actions? There is a venerable but questionable legal doctrine, respondeat superior, which says that an employee is not to be held responsible for their actions in the course of the job, responsibility shifts to the boss. Why in the world should an employee be sheltered from responsibility for their actions? The two main reasons are philosophically repugnant: that with great power comes create responsibility, and that inferiors in a business context are mindless drones, lacking free will. Rather than determining liability based on analysis in terms of power relations, liability should be based on individual knowledge and actions – one’s choices.

Corporate structure is pretty much orthogonal to these notions of responsibility, except when it comes to determining whose pockets to pick in awarding damages. The corporate veil means that a plaintiff can only go after the assets of the corporation, and not the assets of the individuals who make up the corporation. Therefore, if Dow Corporation negligently harms a half million people, claims against the corporation are limited to the corporation but not the managers, supervisors, line-employees or shareholders who directly or indirectly bought an interest in the company.

If the corporate entity is not recognized as a separate legal entity, your grandmother qua part-owner of the company would be held personally responsible for those actions. I conclude that whatever problem exists, it’s not about corporations, it’s about “responsibility”. Who should be held responsible for what choices? Why should an employee be relieved of responsibility, and why should a CEO be assigned all of the liability?

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The big issue with corporations is that bad actors get into power, boards of directors CEOs etc. and pursue causes which lose money or dilute shareholder value.  So called woke corporations chasing ESG are directly stealing from public shareholders through weird voting proxy procedures… enabling those with pull to populate the boards, officers, and benefit themselves and their causes at the price of the shareholders and if it comes to it the taxpayers.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The big issue with corporations is that bad actors get into power, boards of directors CEOs etc. and pursue causes which lose money or dilute shareholder value.  So called woke corporations chasing ESG are directly stealing from public shareholders through weird voting proxy procedures… enabling those with pull to populate the boards, officers, and benefit themselves and their causes at the price of the shareholders and if it comes to it the taxpayers.

Actually, the government is the cause of this one, both because it has control of various pension funds, which it can preferentially invest in ESG companies regardless of whether the investments make money or not -- and because it has control of the banks, which it can require to treat ESG companies favorably when considering loans and so forth, again regardless of whether it makes money or not.

So companies compete to be ESG, because if they don't, they find themselves less able to get investors and loans.

If we had sound money, such as gold, it would be impossible to keep this sort of scam up, because the ESG companies would still have to compete to provide returns on these investments and loans. But when the government prints money, it can decide who gets it, and returns are a lot less important.

p.s. we are a long way from the original topic of the Kennedy assassination...

Edited by necrovore
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During a speech, this weekend at Hillsdale College, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about the PATRIOT Act and the 2001 Anthrax attacks: 

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: As soon as 9/11 happened, the neocons, which were working on all this [bioweapons preparedness] stuff with the CIA, pulled out the PATRIOT Act, a 350-page statute from a shelf where it had been hidden away for a while, and said they want to pass this in a week. 

There's only one member of Congress who read it, Dennis Kucinich, and he went crazy and said you have no idea, this is the end of American democracy if you do this. It allows the CIA to spy on Americans. One of the things the PATRIOT Act did was -- it did not get rid of the Geneva Convention or the bioweapons treaty -- but it said no federal official can be prosecuted for violating those two statutes. So it re-opened the bioweapons arms race, globally. 

And the week after, when the Patriot Act was being debated, and it was being held up by two Senators, there was an Anthrax attack on the U.S. Capitol. It was blamed on Saddam Hussein and the neocons all said, "See, we were right." And the pandemic simulation where Saddam Hussein attacked us. And we used that as justification to go to war against Saddam Hussein and within two days we passed the PATRIOT Act. 

Who got the Anthrax? Two Senate offices. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, the two Senators who were blocking the PATRIOT Act.

The FBI did a one-year investigation and said this anthrax was unique... and there's only one place in the world it could have come from: Fort Detrick, the CIA lab. 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/04/11/robert_f_kennedy_jr_suggests_2001_anthrax_attack_was_done_by_cia_to_pass_the_patriot_act.html#!

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  • 3 weeks later...

CIA in the news again.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pimped underage girls to clients around the world. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison for grooming and trafficking underage girls with Epstein.

Yet, to this day not one of their clients has been charged with any crime.

If said clients were ordinary people with ordinary lives do you think they would still be walking free?

 

"A review of the private calendar of Jeffrey Epstein has revealed that the convicted sex offender and financier had meetings not previously reported on with several prominent Americans, including the current CIA director."

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-cia-director-met-jeffrey-165326094.html

 

The director is not the first person to claim they didn't know anything about Epstein when they spent time with him in his home or visited his private island. (Epstein had already spent time in prison in 2008 for trafficking girls, but gosh, the then deputy secretary of state and future CIA director just didn't know anything about that.)

MIT and Harvard also claimed for years that they didn't know anything about Epstein's activities, but note how careful they were to hide the source when documenting his millions in donations:

 

"The GP report identified Executive Vice President Israel Ruiz and former Vice President and General Counsel Greg Morgan as the members of the senior leadership team most culpable in allowing the donations from Jeffrey Epstein. Not only were both senior administrators aware of Epstein’s prior conviction as a sex offender, but in 2013 they developed a framework for allowing donations from Epstein so long as they were recorded as anonymous and were under 10M dollars."

https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/default/files/202001-02Epstein_and_MIT-The_Unanswered_Questions.pdf

A couple years ago Harvard too acknowledged the same practice of hiding the source of his millions in donations, but I couldn't find those links online today.

As George Carlin would say, "It's a big club and you ain't in it."

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"Former prime minister Ehud Barak met with the late disgraced financier and child sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein dozens of times beginning in 2013, according to a new report on Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.

"According to the WSJ’s Wednesday report on the calendar’s contents, Barak visited Epstein about 30 times between 2013 and 2017 at his estates in Florida and New York, including a time in 2014 when the former Israeli premier flew with Epstein on his private aircraft from Palm Beach to Tampa, after which Epstein went on to New York. Barak said his wife and an Israeli security guard were also on that flight.

[The best part ... wait for it ... ]

"The meetings came well after Epstein’s 2008-2009 conviction and sentencing, but Barak has maintained that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s activities."

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ehud-barak-met-with-jeffrey-epstein-dozens-of-times-flew-on-private-plane-report/

 

The former Israeli defense minster and prime minister gets on private jets with his wife and dozens of times visits the homes of people whose background neither he nor his security services bother to check. That's a good one.

Edited by Jon Letendre
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Article from 2019:

  • In photos obtained by DailyMail.com, Ehud Barak is seen hiding his face as he entered Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan mansion in January 2016
  • The 77-year-old, Israel's former prime minister, has long had business ties to Epstein, which current PM Benjamin Netanyahu's team is now trying to exploit 
  • Barak was wearing a camo-style neck gaiter which he pulled high over his face almost to his glasses and later, he was wearing it as a hat
  • Barak admitted the photos are of him, blaming his bizarre attire on being cold, but claims he has 'never met Epstein in the company of women or young girls'
  • However, a bevy of young women were also seen going into the multi-millionaire's lavish home on the same day that married Barak was snapped 
  • Epstein, 66, was arrested last week and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7250009/Netanyahu-challenger-Ehud-Barak-hides-face-enters-entering-Jeffrey-Epsteins-mansion.html

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