Bob Dylan’s Midnight Message to JFK’s Ghost
Edward Curtin
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”
Hamlet
On May 1, 1962, President John Kennedy was meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Quakers who were urging him to do more for peace and disarmament. As he kept explaining, the great political opposition he was facing within his own government, they kept urging him to do more.
He listened very closely to their words and finally said, “You believe in redemption don’t you.”
By the next spring he had turned decisively toward the peacemaking the Quakers had urged upon him, resulting in his murder in the fall by treacherous government forces, led by the CIA, that opposed him all along.
Now that Dylan has burst forth from behind his many masks and gifted the world with his incandescent new song about the assassination, with a title taken from Hamlet, from the mouth of the ghost of the dead King of Denmark – “Murder Most Foul” – we have entered a new day in an odd way.
For those who have wondered over the years if Dylan had “sold out,” here is their answer. For those who have wondered if he would go to his grave reciting the words of T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock – “I am no Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be” – here is Hamlet’s booming response.
Not only does this song lay bare the truth of the most foundational event in modern American history, but it does so in such a powerfully poetic way and at such an opportune time that it should redeem Dylan in the eyes of those who ever doubted him.
I say “should,” but while the song’s release has garnered massive publicity from the mainstream media, it hasn’t taken long for that media to bury the truth of his words about the assassination under a spectacle of verbiage meant to damn with faint praise. As the media in a celebrity culture of the spectacle tend to do, the emphasis on the song’s pop cultural references is their focus, with platitudes about the assassination and “conspiracy theories,” as well as various shameful and gratuitous digs at Dylan for being weird, obsessed, or old.
As the song says, “they killed him once and they killed him twice,” so now they can kill him a third time, and then a fourth ad infinitum. And now the messenger of the very bad news must be dispatched along with the dead president.
The media like their Hamlets impotent and enervated, but Dylan has come out roaring like a bull intent on avenging his dead president.
He has the poet’s touch, of course, a hyperbolic sense of the fantastic that draws you into his magical web in the pursuit of deeper truth. In many ways he’s like the Latin American magical realist writers who move from fact to dream to the fantastic in a puff of wind.
Dylan is our Emerson. His artistic philosophy has always been about movement in space and time through song. Always moving, always restless, always seeking a way back home through song, even when, or perhaps because, there are no directions. “An artist has got to be careful never to arrive at a place where he thinks he’s at somewhere,” he’s said. “You always have to realize that you are constantly in a state of becoming and as long as you can stay in that realm, you’ll be alright.”
Sounds like living, right.
Sounds like Emerson, also.
“Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. Thus one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes.”
“Murder Most Foul” is Dylan’s soul becoming.
“A song is like a dream, and you try to make it come true. They’re like strange countries that you have to enter. You can write a song anywhere …. It helps to be moving. Sometimes people who have the greatest talent for writing songs never write any because they are not moving,” he wrote in Chronicles.
“Murder Most Foul” is a moving song in every sense of the word – a trip to truth.
Dylan has long been accused of abandoning his youthful idealism and protest music. I think this is a bum rap. He was never a protester, though his songs became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements. There is no doubt that those songs were inspirational and gave people hope to carry on the good fight. But in turning in a more oblique and circumspect musical direction, following his need to change as the spirit of inspiration moved him, Dylan’s songs came to inspire in a new way.
You could always tell his sympathies lay with the oppressed and downtrodden, but for decades he didn’t shout it, with perhaps the one exception being the powerful, hard-hitting, and mesmeric Hurricane in 1975. With that one he stepped into the ring to brawl.
But for the most part over the years, a listener has had to catch his drift. If you go to the music, and dip into his various stylistic changes over the decades, however, you will find a consistency of themes. He deals with essentials like all great poets. Nothing is excluded. His work is paradoxical.
Yes, he’s been singing about death since twelve, but it has always been countered by life and rebirth. There is joy and sadness; faith and doubt; happiness and suffering; injustice and justice; romance and its discontents; despair and hope. His music possesses a bit of a Taoist quality mixed with a Biblical sensibility conveyed by a hopelessly romantic American.
He has fused his themes into an incantatory delivery that casts a moving spell of hope upon the listener. He is nothing if not a spiritual spell-binder; similar in many ways to that other quintessential American – the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose best work was a poetic quest for an inspired salvific poetry.
While speaking the unspeakable truth about President John Kennedy’s murder might seem hopeless, it is actually a sign of great hope. For our only hope is in telling the truth, which Bob has done.
This is art, not theory, and art of a special kind since Dylan is an artist at war with his art. His songs demand that the listener’s mind and spirit be moving as the spirit of creative inspiration moved Dylan. A close listening will force one to jump from line to line, verse to verse – to shoot the gulf – since there are no bridges to cross, no connecting links. The sound carries you over and keeps you moving forward. If you’re not moving, you’ll miss the meaning.
I have no wish to explicate the poet’s brilliant work. It speaks for itself. It says far more than it actually says about a system rotten to the core, a country where everything went wrong since “The day the killers blew out the brains of the king/Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing.”
If you listen to Dylan’s piercing voice and follow the lyrics closely, you might be startled to be told, not from someone who can be dismissed as some sort of disgruntled “conspiracy nut,” but by the most famous musician in the world, that there was a government conspiracy to kill JFK, that Oswald didn’t do it, and that the killers then went for the president’s brothers.
Your brothers are comin’, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming,” we’ll get them as well
This is an in-your-face tale, set to music with a barely tinkling piano, a violin, and a soupçon of percussion, whose lightest words, as Hamlet’s father’s ghost said to him:
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotty and combinèd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
“Murder Most Foul” truly startles. It is a redemptive song. Dylan holds the mirror up for us. He unlocks the door to the painful and sickening truth. He shoves the listener in, and, as he writes in Chronicles, “your head has to go into a different place. Sometimes it takes a certain somebody to make you realize it.”
Bob is our certain somebody. In these dark times he has offered us his voice.
You believe in redemption, don’t you?
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Seems to me Bobs song is gloating over kennedy’s Death. Fuck him.
Dylan was despised by Pete Seeger for going electric and changing the protest movement away from Woody Guthrie’s hard knocks grass roots organized Socialism towards commercial Capitalistic noise pollution & inebriated drug counterculture that was expressed best with LSD & Timothy Leary who was a garden variety CIA text book Psychopath.
Dylan sold out to commercialism & big entertainment profit making. In 2020 we can be sure that old Bob is likely having flashbacks of his lost youth & purpose post-1963.
Bob Dylan singlehandedly destroyed the folk protest 50s & 60s grass roots unamplified hootenanny movement to change social conditions through folk music and song.
Aside from the fact that ‘he ain’t working Maggie’s Farm no more’ he was really not of service to Seeger or Guthrie’s legacy of socialist protest and labour movement solidarity.
Dylan sold out for fame & fortune from the man.
He was the bard of the 60s & 70s.
He was not a good hippie in his wife beating days, eh.
He is a great poet that sold out to the man for fame & fortune.
MOU
‘Judas!’.
Well for all its fine talk about being morally superior to the MSM the off-G just censored me for no good reason I can see.
I came here to get away from censorship, but I see it’s still here.
So I’m off now, best wishes to all here, and I hope you all live to see a better world someday.
Goodbye.
Your comment was in the spam folder. The system sometimes misfires and drops real comments in there. I restored it for you.
As my own comment seems to have got deleted here’s one from Noam Chomsky from a short interview about the Great Hero:
“Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam – Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm. Also laid the basis for the huge wave of repression that spread over Latin America with the installation of Neo-Nazi gangsters that were always supported directly by the United States. That went on and in fact picked up under Johnson.”
***
Daniel Falcone: Do you find it odd that the country is focusing on a 50th anniversary remembrance of the Kennedy assassination?
Noam Chomsky: Worship of leaders is a technique of indoctrination that goes back to the crazed George Washington cult of the 18th century and on to the truly lunatic Reagan cult of today, both of which would impress Kim Il-sung. The JFK cult is similar.
DF: What does it mean that popular media treat such a date with such unusual honor?
NC: Simply that we live in a deeply indoctrinated society.”
The rest of the 2013 interview is here:
https://chomsky.info/20131122/
Yep. Kennedy was an asshole. Dylan is too, and he doesn’t even have Kennedy’s premier redeeming feature as an asshole, that of being dead. He even managed to troll the whole world by scoring the Nobel for Literature! Is there no God?
I appreciate Dylan’s re-opening of the subject, but this is a god awful song. In the same amount of time you can read Jim Marr’s Crossfire for amore accurate account.
FBI/Secret Service: Yeah, cause they love JFK in Dallas, we are gonna play lefty/righty in Dealey Plaza so his adouring fans get get an up close look at him and the first lady, but well make sure crowds are reduced in the kill zone.
lets do it…..
Who is Bob saying did it ?
Is Bob saying Jackie did it ?
No
Thankyou Don.
Keep hearing “Timberwolf” wouldn’t it be great if we finally got some justice!
The list of suspects involved in the Kennedy Assassination is quite long and may have involved a confluence of interests as suggested by the late Fletcher Prouty. Some those same interests were involved in 9/11 and other false flag terrorist attacks.
Also one of those interests may have been Israel according to the late Michael Collins Piper:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/File:Final_Judgment.pdf
JFK intended ending the private banking cabal’s so-called ‘Federal Reserve’s’ hold over the US economy. He intended forcing Israel to give up its nukes. He wished to shatter the CIA into fragments. He was certainly asking for it.
Way too little and way too late. Sadly.
Very good article, thanks. Yes, JFK was working for peace, together with Khruschev, (secretly from militarists in their own governments) after the Cuban Missile Crisis, including working to end the Cold War and planning a joint manned moon mission. This is what led to JFK’s assassination by the powers that be. All this is Very thoroughly documented in the tremendously important book, JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass.
As for Bob Dylan, though it has been thought that he abandoned “protest” when he went electric, Not true. He has indeed been singing against oppression, inequality, and masters of war ever since and up to the present. See my article “Bob Dylan’s Ongoing Critique of Social Injustice and Masters of War” (greatly expanded version of my talk at last year’s Tulsa Symposium). See:
https://www.ancientdragon.org/bob-dylans-ongoing-critique-of-social-injustice-and-masters-of-war/
Thanks to Charlotte Russe below for quoting the song lyrics, which I found very entertaining, and probably wouldn’t have sought out myself if she hadn’t done that.
As I don’t think Bob will mind, I’ll tag on a few verses of my own, though on the current topic of COVID-19, though as I don’t know the tune, they’ll just have to stand or fall in their own right:
“It looks like Donald has just got into his car
Without a face mask on and a big cigar
He’s cruisin down the highway doin’ 99
Watchin’ dead people in the COVID-19 line
Or maybe they’re still livin’ or the livin’ dead
Cos you can’t trust the stats what the scientists said
Some are a preachin’ that we’re all gonna die
While others are a saying we should walk on by
And break out of the prison that the clowns have put us in
Cos COVID-19 ain’t so deadly but they still locked us in
Or at least it ain’t no worse than the annual flu
And that just ain’t worth, a whole nation that’s blue
Depressed and in fear, not able to see their friend
While the guys on the hill drive us all round the bend
For Forrest Gump has got it, and he ain’t dead yet
And though cats can also get it, I ain’t nobody’s pet
Now Martin King is turnin’ in his freedom loving grave
For though the blacks are all free, now the whites are all slaves
For Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and all of those guys
Have slapped us all in prison, under clear blue skies
All the old are in chains, living out their hard lives
All the children are not learning, all the husbands fear their wives
Cos this virus has made us crazy, but it’s the government we fear
We don’t want this mad lockdown, we want to travel far and near
We don’t get no satisfaction, we don’t get to drink and dance
We don’t want no masks nor tyrants, neither here nor in France
We don’t know know if this lockdown, will ever really end
But we still want to thank Bob Zimmerman, for bein’ our friend…”
“And though cats can also get it, I ain’t nobody’s pet”
While two dogs in Hong Kong and two cats, one in Belgium and one in Hong Kong, living with people diagnosed with COVID-19 have been reported to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, other dogs and cats living with infected COVID-19 pet owners have not succumbed to the virus.
.
Thanks for the reply Charlotte
I am not sure you’ve got evidence to claim that no other dogs or cats have got it, as just like humans, I suspect very few have been tested, and just like humans, even if they carry it 50% or more may show no symptoms.
However, I think it’s a non-issue anyway, except in terms of if a large number of cats/dogs were shown to have it, *and could transmit it to humans* (which again, I don’t think has been proven one way or the other, after all we are told we got if off pigs, so why not cats/dogs?), because as cats/dogs have not been quarantined to my knowledge, but allowed to roam free, it would render the lockdown and social distancing between humans pointless, if people could have (and therefore likely already had) got the virus from their pets in large numbers.
What I mean by “non-issue” is that the authorities were apparently worried about disclosing that some pets had it, for fear of a mass dumping of pets. But in fact, that would have been pointless anyway, because if a pet had the virus, the odds are the owner already had it, so there would have been little point in dumping the defenceless pet.
As hopefully there are signs from abroad with decreasing deaths and cases number in some European countries this lockdown madness will soon (meaning in the next month or so) be over anyway, so those in charge are likely to let us all out of our “cages” and “kennels”, very kindly they will no doubt imagine, after this totally unacceptable tyranny, only justifiable in the case of something like a genuine bubonic plague, which incidentally it appears from history was carried by rats and not cats.
So to put a final verse to my little ditty:
“Now moggies and doggies…
Need have no fear….
For to save them…
Charlotte Russe is here!”
Correlating pets in cages to humans in quarantine certainly has some merit. We are all now the “state’s caged animals.” Mindless apparatchiks are the ones who will adjudicate our release.
Now getting back to the pet pooch– these days, especially in the US they’re not caged, but are given free reign of the house. In fact, many a lucky dog are treated like vertible prince or princess. These fortunate canines ride in elegant pet strollers donning adorable hip jackets or sweaters. And many only dine on gourmet organic meals and treats. It’s been determined by “civilized societies” that no expense should be spared when it comes to beloved fido or the adored slinky feline.
In days when just a few have cash,
Betsy the Pomeranian is treated like royalty,
No expense is spared to groom her lush and golden hair,
Her master is delighted to trot her about,
The extravagances lavashed on this little critter,
Conceals the pet owners true animus and bitter…..
Oh please the jew dylan and his other cryptos and their dirty music, but ok british-israel website that suspiciously has been one of the only ones not censored in google searchs about the crown virus psyop. Guess what dylan and gates have in common along with ginzberg and others? The hexagram.
Admins are sleeping?
Maybe you can risk the virus to go out later and spray paint some fake swastikas on a few synagogues.
Brother, racism does not become a real man. I implore you to read the Protocols of Zion. It explicitly explains how THEY will pretend, PRETEND to be Jews, until the day the world decides to go to war over it. Then you and I will kill each other, and destroy everything our forefathers built. Then the ones PRETENDING to be Jews, the Jew-ish, will walk away with ownership of earth. Those of us left, will be “allowed to graze in peace” their holiest books say.
Antonym, censorship is not education, or even helpful. Get over yourself!
Jim Marrs, in his book “Crossfire” speculates that 103 people with documented knowledge about JFK’s assassination died under mysterious circumstances between 1963 and 1976.
Having said that, it’s my belief that JFK’s assassination was not purely a CIA hit, but a joint operation between two longtime sidekicks–the CIA and organized crime–the Mafia. Both sordid organizations despised “old man” Joe Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and JFK for numerous but dissimilar reasons.
One must understand, that no one gets to sit in the Oval Office unless they agree to a “devil’s bargain”– a vile deal sacrificing everything for self-glorification and power. It was ambitious Joe Kennedy, who was this kind of guy. He’s the one who accepted the Faustian bargain, Joe Kennedy, the anti-semitic Ambassador to England appointed and then removed by FDR. “Kennedy ruffled feathers in Washington when he met secretly with German diplomats and made few friends with his anti-Semitic remarks. In the end, his opposition to America’s anti-Nazi policies led to his resignation in disgrace from his coveted ambassadorship and, for all intents and purposes, ended whatever political career he harbored for himself.”
In any case, Joe Kennedy was not unfamiliar with organized crime, inasmuch, as he made his fortune bootlegging liquor during the 1920’s prohibition. No surprise there–as a side note– many noteworthy Americans, especially the 19th Century robber barons secured fortunes through the opium trade in China. No one becomes wealthy working in the post office, or as Balzac said: “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
At any rate, shrewd Joe Kennedy, knew that considerable surreptitious wheeling and dealings were needed to obtain that coveted Oval Office seat for his son Jack. States like Illinois and Texas were “must wins.” So Joe, contacted his old mob friends and cut a few deals. They pulled all the right levers to ensure a victory. After that big win, many at the time believed Kennedy benefited from voter fraud, especially in Texas, where his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was senator, and Illinois, home of corrupt Mayor Daley. These two states were important because if Nixon carried both, he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269. How Ironic, that Texas elevated JFK to the White House, and it was also the state where he was murdered……
So aged Joe, made his devilish deals, but for some peculiar reason thought he did not have to live up to his end of the bargain. Was Joe a bit too cocky, or perhaps senility was affecting his judgment. Either way, Joe did not deter Jack from decisions which ultimately cost him his life . “The sins of the father were brought to bear on the son.” The particulars of this double-crossing are evident–it starts with the appointment of RFK as Attorney General pursuing relentless investigations and hearings into mob and union activities, and it further extends into pre-Castro Cuba entrenched in organized crime–businesses the mob wanted back.
The CIA had their own “JFK bones to pick,” after all, Kennedy fired Dulles. This creature headed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, oversaw the 1953 Iranian coup d’état; the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état; the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program; the Project MKUltra mind control program; and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Dulles was dismissed by Kennedy over that debacle. Kennedy supposedly said: “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.” So you get the picture, Johnny boy had very few fans at the spy agency.
Bearing all this in mind, it’s not so far-fetched to believe JFK’s assassination was a joint operation between the CIA and the mob. In order, to pull off a crime of such magnitude one must have the means. In the case of JFK’s murder the motives are obvious, and the resources to carry out the crime were abundant.
The CIA’s role was to “construct” a figure like Lee Harvey Oswald. In other words, create a manufactured person with a manufactured bio who could be “fingered for the crime.” You can review Oswald’s unusual US Military record…..that in itself, should give everyone pause. CIA sharpshooters pulled the actual trigger, Oswald lacked the equipment and the skills to pull-off that task. The mob did what it does best–it attended to the immediate dirty details like using small time gangster, Jack Ruby, to murder Oswald, and then procure Mafia lawyer Melvin Belli as Ruby’s attorney. After the urgent business at hand was taken care numerous other “pieces of human evidence” slowly and systematically were disposed of as needed over the subsequent years. Those are the 103 suspicion deaths mentioned earlier occurring between 1963 and 1976……
It might be nice to slowly digest Dylan’s new song, by slowly reading his poetic symbolic lyrics:
Murder Most Foul
Bob Dylan
Twas a dark day in Dallas, November ’63
A day that will live on in infamy
President Kennedy was a-ridin’ high
Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die
Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb
He said, “Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am?”
“Of course we do, we know who you are”
Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car
Shot down like a dog in broad daylight
Was a matter of timing and the timing was right
You gotta pay debts, we’ve come to collect
We’re gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect
We’ll mock you and shock you and we’ll put it in your face
We’ve already got someone here to take your place
The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone’s eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done
Wolfman, oh wolfman, oh wolfman howl
Rub-a-dub-dub, it’s a murder most foul
Hush, little children, you’ll understand
The Beatles are comin’, they’re gonna hold your hand
Slide down the banister, go get your coat
Ferry ‘cross the Mersey and go for the throat
There’s three bums comin’ all dressed in rags
Pick up the pieces and lower the flags
I’m going to Woodstock, it’s the Aquarian Age
Then I’ll go to Altamont and sit near the stage
Put your head out the window, let the good times roll
There’s a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll
Stack up the bricks, pour the cement
Don’t say Dallas don’t love you, Mr. President
Put your foot in the tank and step on the gas
Try to make it to the triple underpass
Blackface singer, whiteface clown
Better not show your faces after the sun goes down
Up in the red light district, they’ve got cop on the beat
Living in a nightmare on Elm Street
When you’re down in Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe
Don’t ask what your country can do for you
Cash on the ballot, money to burn
Dealey Plaza, make a left-hand turn
I’m going down to the crossroads, gonna flag a ride
The place where faith, hope, and charity died
Shoot him while he runs, boy
Shoot him while you can
See if you can shoot the invisible man
Goodbye, Charlie
Goodbye, Uncle Sam
Frankly, my Scarlet, I don’t give a damn
What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth, ” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul
Tommy, can you hear me?
I’m the Acid Queen
I’m riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine
Riding in the backseat next to my wife
Heading straight on in to the afterlife
I’m leaning to the left, got my head in her lap
Hold on, I’ve been led into some kind of a trap
Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give
We’re right down the street from the street where you live
They mutilated his body, and they took out his brain
What more could they do?
They piled on the pain
But his soul’s not there where it was supposed to be at
For the last fifty years they’ve been searchin’ for that
Freedom, oh freedom
Freedom above me
I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free
Send me some lovin’, tell me no lies
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
Wake up, little Suzie, let’s go for a drive
Cross the Trinity River, let’s keep hope alive
Turn the radio on, don’t touch the dials
Parkland hospital, only six more miles
You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy
You filled me with lead
That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head
I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline
Never shot anyone from in front or behind
I’ve blood in my eye, got blood in my ear
I’m never gonna make it to the new frontier
Zapruder’s film I’ve seen that before
Seen it 33 times, maybe more
It’s vile and deceitful
It’s cruel and it’s mean
Ugliest thing that you ever have seen
They killed him once and they killed him twice
Killed him like a human sacrifice
The day that they killed him, someone said to me, “Son
The age of the Antichrist has just only begun”
Air Force One coming in through the gate
Johnson sworn in at 2:38
Let me know when you decide to thrown in the towel
It is what it is, and it’s murder most foul
What’s new, pussycat?
What’d I say?
I said the soul of a nation been torn away
And it’s beginning to go into a slow decay
And that it’s 36 hours past Judgment Day
Wolfman Jack, he’s speaking in tongues
He’s going on and on at the top of his lungs
Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack
Play it for me in my long Cadillac
Play me that “Only the Good Die Young”
Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung
Play “St. James Infirmary” and “The Port of King James”
If you want to remember, you better write down the names
Play Etta James, too
Play “I’d Rather Go Blind”
Play it for the man with the telepathic mind
Play John Lee Hooker
Play “Scratch My Back”
Play it for that strip club owner named Jack
Guitar Slim going down slow
Play it for me and for Marilyn Monroe
Play “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
Play it for the First Lady, she ain’t feeling any good
Play Don Henley
Play Glenn Frey
Take it to the limit and let it go by
Play it for Karl Wirsum, too
Looking far, far away at Down Gallow Avenue
Play tragedy, play “Twilight Time”
Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime
Play another one and “Another One Bites the Dust”
Play “The Old Rugged Cross” and “In God We Trust”
Ride the pink horse down that long, lonesome road
Stand there and wait for his head to explode
Play “Mystery Train” for Mr. Mystery
The man who fell down dead like a rootless tree
Play it for the Reverend
Play it for the Pastor
Play it for the dog that got no master
Play Oscar Peterson
Play Stan Getz
Play “Blue Sky”
Play Dickey Betts
Play Hot Pepper, Thelonious Monk
Charlie Parker and all that junk
All that junk and “All That Jazz”
Play something for the Birdman of Alcatraz
Play Buster Keaton
Play Harold Lloyd
Play Bugsy Siegel
Play Pretty Boy Floyd
Play the numbers
Play the odds
Play “Cry Me A River” for the Lord of the gods
Play Number 9
Play Number 6
Play it for Lindsey and Stevie Nicks
Play Nat King Cole
Play “Nature Boy”
Play “Down In The Boondocks” for Terry Malloy
Play “It Happened One Night” and “One Night of Sin”
There’s 12 Million souls that are listening in
Play “Merchant to Venice”
Play “Merchants of Death”
Play “Stella by Starlight” for Lady Macbeth
Don’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as well
Love Field is where his plane touched down
But it never did get back up off the ground
Was a hard act to follow, second to none
They killed him on the altar of the rising sun
Play “Misty” for me and “That Old Devil Moon”
Play “Anything Goes” and “Memphis in June”
Play “Lonely At the Top” and “Lonely Are the Brave”
Play it for Houdini spinning around his grave
Play Jelly Roll Morton
Play “Lucille”
Play “Deep In a Dream”
And play “Driving Wheel”
Play “Moonlight Sonata” in F-sharp
And “A Key to the Highway” for the king on the harp
Play “Marching Through Georgia” and “Dumbaroton’s Drums”
Play darkness and death will come when it comes
Play “Love Me Or Leave Me” by the great Bud Powell
Play “The Blood-stained Banner”
Play “Murder Most Foul”
I printed out a copy of this yesterday . As to the assassination within weeks those politically aware knew Alan Dulles ordered it . The agent who put the thing in motion made a deathbed confession some years back on DVD his son tried to get it aired no one would touch it. Now that most of us born in the 1940s are on our way out , I imagine Dylan’s poem won’t cause much of a backlash either. Put the lie to him being a victim of dementia though ?
Have you read “The Devil’s Chessboard”? I wonder what our world would look like if the Dulles Brothers had never existed. They were truly evil, if there is such a thing.
“Kennedy supposedly said: “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind.” So you get the picture, Johnny boy had very few fans at the spy agency”.
And there in lies the Motive for the CIA to not only “Rub Kennedy Out”, but to also turn it into a live Execution for absolutely MAXIMUM Impact on the public psyche.(in the USA anyway.) The Destruction of the Twin Towers was able, with modern Technology, to be broadcast ‘LIVE’ all over the Planet.
“WHO is the CIA answerable to”?…… No one seems to be able to answer that question. It appears to be a “Rogue State” on its own, completely removed from the USA Government.
When you license an Agency to perform Black Ops undercover, they will tell you that the only way to do it is absolute secrecy, so almost no-one knows much and only a handful know a significant amount.
It means there will be a whole load of viruses swimming around the world that the CIA can call on when needed, but no US President will ever be able to round ’em up.
If the US Treasury cut all funding for the CIA, they would just become a private black ops corporation, raising ‘capital’ through drug crimes, gunrunning, illicit diamond smuggling etc etc before fencing the proceeds to clean the money up.
Corporations would start hiring them to overthrow governments, then give them the sweetheart contracts they want in a world of cartels.
Nor is the CIA alone in this. There are literally tens of thousands of highly trained killers swimming in the swamps of the world and almost none of them actually have any real accountability to anyone in public office.
Thanks Rhys, I always respect your opinions…..
They seem to be quite aware that they are accountable to no earthly power, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find a direct link to “you-know-who” if I were to dig into that cesspit.
And I would, indeed, dig, if I thought there was the faintest chance of cleaning up anything I might find down there.
But if JFK failed, then nothing I could do would make even a tiny dent. You need to know these people if you’re going to put a spanner in their sickening works.
Nevertheless, “every dog will have his day”, and the Book of Revelation speaks of an allotted period of time when “the animal” is allowed to have its way with us. What decent soul could fail to see the parallel with our present world situation?
I know that reading scriptures is not popular today, and I even rely myself largely upon the memory of what I fortunately picked up from a mixture of natural curiosity and regular discussion of religious subjects while I was at school (long ago, of course).
We need to stay in touch with what the wise men of the distant past saw coming, and not dismiss everything they said as mere devices for manipulating us due to a lust for power. That motivation certainly exists today, but back then you had to meet certain criteria to qualify as “wise”, and such wisdom was only won through great self-discipline and humility. I venture to say that nobody in today’s political west qualifies in the slightest.
I would hesitate to mention that, except for the fact that such scriptures contain rather specific prophecies, and therefore address a future beyond the confines of life as it was a couple of thousand years ago. That should be of interest to us.
You mean to say that the CIA would be just like Blackrock if they were a private corporate hedge fund.
MOU
The CIA is the US ruling class’s heavy squad. Its first, last and only loyalty is to the owners and rulers of the country.
See Paranoid Goy’s take on it, the poor thing is obsessed with “hijacking the Protocols for public good” or something.
There be a difference between the CIA and the Mafia? Do Tell! Ah, but you were under the impression the CIA is a governmental institution? Really? The CIA? The one that is a division of the Fed? You know, that big bank in the Undeclared Soviets of America? That one with PRIVATE shareholders and private PROFIT MOTIVE? That one? The one that directly pays CIA salaries? That Mafia?
CIA employees get federal job benefits. 😁
The CIA influence foreign policy. Organized crime networks are often used to implement plots, schemes, or operations to ensure those policies will take effect. Gangsters are infused in the drug running operations in Afghanistan, and for that matter throughout the world. The revenue secured from numerous gangster-style activities are forwarded to secret operations–like funding terrorists, bribing crooked despot governments, etc…
Well, that explains why/how the “Rebels” in Syria seem to have unlimited arms, ordinance, Ammunition, Chemical weapons and, fleets of Toyota vehicles, and God only knows what else(an army marches on its stomach…Napoleon)
“Ratbag” Rebels wouldn’t last 5 minutes without a supply chain.
Well, we also can’t forget the Saudis, they generously funded numerous insidious operations.
Crossfire is a great book. I have it in my library along with many other Jim Marr’s books. The figures are even higher now in the JFK assassination ‘sketchy related murder’ count. A statistician did a calculation that the odds of all of those people dying by natural causes were 1: all of the grains of sand on planet earth.
Aliens from Outer Space……buzzz
Did you hear–it was certified by the Medical Examiner’s Office that, Jeffrey Epstein, strangled himself with toilet paper. Evidently, he was taking a shit and mistook his neck for his ass……..😆
Epstein is very likely alive, and living on his Island, or in Israel. These people have friends in high places……
Someone saw him with Elvis in a Cadillac going 55 on Route 66.
MOU
So Bob brought a new song out, yippedy doo da.
Personally , I never saw what all the fuss was about. I have tried a few times and still don’t get him.
You’re not alone.
Way back, my room mate described Dylan as “vermin”, and he was really into the “pop” music of that time.
I was not into it at all, (classical career) so Dylan was just another name to me, and I certainly can’t say I “liked” the noise he made.
But perhaps I misjudged him. I should give him another try, since I don’t want to dismiss out-of-hand something which might turn out to be worthwhile. From the lyrics, it looks as if it could be quite hard to “get him” though …
Thanks for this article , I was not aware that Dylan was still working . Bob Dylan’s issue originally as I recall in the early 1960s was racism/Apartheid in America , a fight where he enjoyed some success . As the inventor of what became the “rap” genre with The Subterranean Homesick Blues , many Afro-American owe their good fortune to him . He turned away from the Anti-war crowd when he went “electric” after Newport, a move that was good for him but bad for the country.
Dylan basically recast “pop” music to create a more serious genre. That was his fundamental achievement. He didn’t invent “rap” music. His “Subterranean Homesick Blues” stands in a tradition of “talk/list” songs e.g. from the past Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” and from the (then) future Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up”.
I don’t believe Dylan ever did “pop” or attempted to recast it he leveraged “folk” to get his poetry read and went electric as “folk” took their eye off the ball after the Kennedy assassination and tried to sell “pop” , Puff the Magic Dragon anyone? .
I was thinking of a remark made by Dylan specialist Michael Gray. That it was Dylan who elevated what was previously thought of as disposable kiddy stuff so that the term “pop” was no longer suitable and the term “rock” had to be invented.
mcdonagh4. Rap did not begin with Dylan but was founded on street corners in the black areas of America in the 50’s. Kids would gather in groups and sing Acapella style, bouncing lines off one another, making it up as they went along. That was called ‘Rap’ and was then reinvented around the 80’s into what we know today.
What it is today? Sound like stroke victims mumbling.
Disagree , Dylan made it commercially viable/acceptable even though the subject matter became brutal for a time , and the advent of video made it sexual and gave us ABBA/disco during the 1980s . As Eminem a pretty good poet himself showed at the start of the 21st century in 8 Mile. .
Your original post said that Dylan invented rap. No, no. Now your saying he made it commercially viable and that African American rap artistes should be grateful for his contribution. What pap.
We could argue that the Beatles owed their success to Motown, having their first chart successes with cover versions. But that would be contentious and a fruitless argument.
How about “Dylan is a poet and so are the rap stars” The similarity ends there.
Poetry and rhyming, one of my favourite things to go all weird about. But the end of their sentences tend to rhyme. Sometimes. Let that stand as the only similarity.
On the subject of ‘superstars’ both Wayne Rooney and Gary Lineker, according to the beeb, are moaning about the pressure being applied to extortionately overpaid footballers by the government to cut their ‘wages’ – we all should feel really sorry for these guys – all that money and nobody’s even playing the game – sounds much like MPs who are idling away on their taxpayer funded salaries … nevermind the airports being open for the elites to travel the world – whilst loads of people are losing their jobs, taking unpaid leave and being under house arrest – do we have enough lampposts or do we need to manufacture somemore??
The government won’t be paying these salaries, it is down to clubs…so who cares.
Balloon Kicking, phah!
All businesses with powerful lobbying mechanisms are queuing up , cap in hand , at the chancellors door for ‘ the great handout ‘ .
Large sporting businesses and organisations will be represented by their city representatives.
Your grandchildren will be paying back that borrowed money long after you have kicked the bucket. Phah !
To be fair to Rooney, he is arguing that some of the younger players at Derby County do not get paid very much and one of them lives at home with his mother in a council flat. He is saying that those on the lowest wages should not be taking a 30% hit, he is calling for some kind of tapering scale of pay cuts with the highest paid getting the largest percentage reductions.
The players are also keen to ensure that their pay cuts go to the non-playing staff made redundant, not to the pockets of the owners.
As we’re talking about music with and for messages:
The Queen is at economic war with the British people
Investigating the JFK ramifications up to the present day. Dr. Joseph Farrell – JFK Reloaded: The Spider & The Deep State. Starts nine minutes in (after preamble).
Bob Dylan to be found dead after commiting suicide after hearing he contracted COVID-19.
It wasn’t just the murder of the President that shocked/shocks, it was the open air, made-for-TV manner of it. There were easier ways to kill him away from the cameras but the whole production was meant to send a message to all and sundry that a greater power, a cabal, was in control and everybody just needed to wise up.
The absurd loopholes in the official story wouldn’t have concerned the conspirators, they might even have been deliberate. On one level, short of it being proven, they probably wanted everyone to suspect it was a coup d’etat, it would help concentrate minds.
Really excellent observation.
They shot him in the street like the Mafia punk he was. He hobnobbed with the Cosa Nostra (having accepted their help in the election) while his suicidal brother declared war on them.
‘Sam Giancana: Chicago Godfather, CIA Collaborator, And The Man Who May Have Put JFK In The White House
https://allthatsinteresting.com/sam-giancana
The mafia is just another secret society all connected to Masonry…
Just another part of the control structure.
Kabbalah = cabbal
That was my point in showing the Giancana CIA link. The CIA and their Mafia partners both wanted him dead.
“it was the open air, made-for-TV manner of it…….” Although, in the early ’60’s the World had to wait one or two days to actually see it, on TV….….”9/11″ was like it too……although, with modern technology it was broadcast “live”, right on Prime TV time…….For Billions of people to see……
I have to say I posted this here last week – well done for catching up ;0)
Is Allen Ginsberg someone you really want to be praising (if “the quintessential American” is meant as praise)?
Ginsberg tore the arse [sic] out of the ”quintessential America”: and handed it back as a visionary countercultural ”Howl”. He excoriated contemporary Amerika with the fixed altered-imagistic ”Moloch, Moloch, Moloch”. So yeah; ripping the American Dream into the shredded insanity ward for the underclass and the outcasts it was and is – at great personal risk (given the era) – stands to be commended.
And if the only place for the sane was an asylum room in the 1950s: look what it has gone on to become? ”Moloch, Moloch, Moloch” …history seems to have vindicated Ginsberg as a mind-altered visionary …at least on my reading. No ”Howl”: no Dylan: no Patti Smith:
Allen Ginsberg would have been a perfect fit in Plato’s Athens the oft claimed font of American Democracy.
Surely you mean American republicanism? Plato was famously anti-democratic …on account of the degeneracy of Athenian politics. In no small amount due to the fact that the democrats murdered his mentor – Socrates. And surely your comment is closeted homophobia?
Each to his own. Ginsberg was a huge formative influence on the Beat Generation and the anti-war peace activism opposing Vietnam. He walked his bop and nearly changed the world. The world would have been a duller, less livable place if he had not flashed across the firmament …making holy cock, ass, balls, and bum as he went!
When I first heard this astonishing new Dylan song, I thought – Oh God the media are going to tear this apart. But a few more sobering seconds and I realised that they would do what they always do i.e. neuter all radical potential with dwelling on irrelevancies (“Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence/After poisoning him with words”) And when I read a Guardian article on the song, my fears were confirmed. And in the spirit of “Let us not talk falsely now/The hour is getting late”, I just skipped all the other articles.
I also see that it didn’t take long for the Dylan bashers here to get their oar in. So here is my take on the whole thing:
Dylan started out as a rock ‘n roll fan. But by the time he had left shool, that entire musical form had lapsed into the old crooner mode only with an added “groovy” beat. (“That dumb vanilla phase” as Joni Mitchell called it.)
So Dylan went folky. This wasn’t a cynical manoeuvre on his part – he was genuinely fascinated by that whole new world he discovered. And his great hero, by his own admission was Woody Guthrie. But it wasn’t so much Guthrie’s political side that attracted Dylan as the image of the romantic nomad who could constantly re-invent himself.
But he was tremendously gifted and furthermore had an uncanny talent for, as somebody once put it, saying what everyone else wanted to say and saying it better than anyone else knew how. And his political songs showed a deepening awareness from early stirring but conveniently metaphorical songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “Only A Pawn In Their Game” where instead of the patronising liberal finger wagging he suggests that the racist killer is himself a tool being used to divide and rule.
And “Desolation Row” is, for me, the most precise summary of the way the Western propaganda system works. Dylan imagines our society as a vast never ending carnival. Everyone is encouraged to participate or at least watch. Meanwhile sinister figures patrol the periphery to ensure that no-one wanders off too far. Those who do are treated harshly (“the heart attack machine”).
Now consider that vision, think about the assassinations taking place and note that they were all figures considered to be “on the left”. (Admittedly some of those assassinations were yet to take place but I think Dylan was astute enough to sense the danger.) In any case, Dylan, at that time, was considered a “left” figure, he was appearing before vast crowds and – yes – he was stoned out of his face mostly. So, he has a convenient motorcycle accident, disappears for a while and then turns up with a religiously flavoured album before going all country and western.
As Samir Amin says in “The Liberal “Virus”:
“The ruling class of the United States has developed …. a complete cynicism, disguised by a degree of hypocrisy that every foreigner notes, but that the American people never see! The use of violence, in extreme forms, is implemented every time it is necessary. All the radical American militants know it: to sell out or be murdered is the only choice left to them.”
In America first comes the shunning ,then the sliming , then the fatal accident or assassination.
Many revered propagandists saw the light and published a mea culpa and redemptive works just before they ‘expired’ – Wells& Blair (Orwell) amongst them when they finally realised that the imperial Dream they believed they were working for for the advancement of civilisation and the human condition, were infact puppets of a greater Empire which only ever had its own interest to persue and has done for centuries. Creating shielding States, Philosophies, Economics, Wars, and fake Histories through literature, film and yes pop!
(& Now of course through the internet).
So Zimmerman – who took the 30 pieces in his youth and felt the need for redemption and the need to be remembered kindly must have wavering for quite a time now – he was offered the Noble Literature Laureate! 30 more bits. He didn’t seem keen to receive it at the time if I remember correctly.
So Robert wants to leave with a clearer conscience!
Bully for him. As noted above many greats had their Damascene convering pangs. That other popsters last has a message too, whether it is as revelatory is still unknown -David Jones (Bowie).
So Ed thanks for confirming the status of the state balladeer behind the tebel persona.
While groping to understand the last (?) poem – you say you don’t want to expound – but I’m trying to understand the listing of the many pop artistes at the end of the ballad, its a lot!
Is it code? Is it people he knows are part of the racket? Do i have to ho listen to all their stuff and track all their histories?
Care to give a clue?
The news of the song garnered just 225 words in The Grauniad. A new low.
I’ve heard it twice on R6 music, which is worrying.
But well over a thousand words to tell us that Kim Kardashian doesn’t like Taylor Swift very much.
So stop buying it then!!
Off-topic but another leader who was recently assassinated (in the English way) was Jeremy Corbyn. Peter Oborne writes an interesting obituary in the Middle East Eye.
It read quite well until it got up to this bit:
Now, a new Labour leader is set to take over in the shape of Keir Starmer. He’s unproven, but I like the look of him. Many are advising Starmer to eradicate the legacy of Corbyn – to write him out of history, just as Tony Blair did to his predecessor, John Smith. But if Starmer has any sense, he will honour Corbyn and praise his legacy
At this point I stopped reading. The writer is usually quite astute in his grasp of politics, but this is poppycock. The Labour party is a machine, a conditioning system, which turns good men into obedient little captains of the second eleven. Failure to conform, means ejection. It’s that simple.
Perhaps Smith was assassinated
One time I would have laughed at that. Now I don’t.
MOSSAD wet job.
Corbyn was a sell out, he wasn’t even true to his own life long euroscepticism, the one thing the blairites were right about is he isn’t/wasn’t ever a leader. He was clearly compromised long before the election took place.
True but I take issue with Blairite views on leadership qualities.
I take issue with blairites, i was of course referring to PLP & their attempted early revolt. No matter they clearly found a way to castrate Corbyn, but will we ever find out how?
Just ask the Israeli embassy in London.
What dirt do the Israelis have on him?
Are you joking? Didn’t you read the MSM? They made up the ‘dirt’. They LIED and lied and lied again. His real sin was thinking that the Palestinian ‘two-legged animals’ were human beings on a level with Israelis. That and cowardice in not fronting them, but, then again, no Mafia has a greater record of killing those who ‘…get in our way’ than the Zionists.
So why didn’t he NOT defend himself & his lifelong held political values, on e.g. Euroscepticism, Zionism? Tom Watson stabbed him in the back repeatedly but he still kept turning away.
They had some dirt on him to muzzle him, its the only conclusion. He simply caved at every fight & failed disastrously to lead. He even allowed the Israeli lobby to shaft him (& the Palestinians) without hardly a word.
I was an avid supporter of Corbyn at first, but eternally grateful he never won an election, following the madness & rise of identity politics in the labour party under his watch.
Cowardice, I reckon. And the almost totally Blairite PLP backstabbers like the LOATHSOME Watson, and people like you who welcome Tory rule because of ‘identity politics’.
You really have no clue..I welcome the truth..i am conservative with small socialist c, the tories have nothing to do with it or my politics.
Its always been about class, identity politics is a neo-liberal ruse to distract from the important issues.
Oh, I agree with that definition of Identity Politics, but they were irrelevant to Corbyn’s destruction and the reimposition of Sabbat Goy Blairism through Starmer. That, ie Zionist supremacism, is the one form of Identity Politics not just tolerated, but worshipped, compulsorily.
The PLP Blairites forced his hand. His one great sin was not to stand up to the lying Zionist thugs.
I agree but his other great sin was allowing the growth of the lunacy of identity politics, he was the labour party leader, he should have lead its direction in support of the labour parties loyal core, the “working class” not privileged, university indoctrinated, middle class, liberals.
Its a class war, its always been about class & always will be, identity politics is just a misdirection, distraction by parasitic neo-liberals. Now look what we are left with Blair mark 2, a multi millionaire, upper class, liberal with the charisma & principles of a turnip who has never stood for anything but the establishment.
He had NO control over the Blairite PLP and the Blairite and Zionist Fifth Columnists like Landsmann in the Party apparatus.
He simply wasn’t up to the job, simple as that.
I don’t often agree Galloway, but I think this article spells it out fairly.
3 nails in Corbyn’s leadership coffin
Yes and his abject crawling to the lobby was sickening. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a few of them in shadow ministerial positions.
Tory-affiliated Nick Robinson presented a sycophantic interview-based programme about “left wing” millionaire Sir Keir Starmer today. Unfortunately, it is not available on BBC Sounds, although this is where it should be:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h9r0
(It possibly might appear later).
And although I have mixed feelings about Gordon Dimmack, I can’t disagree with much here:
They like the look of the following:
1. He is a London man through and through.
2. He went to private school so ‘he is sound’.
3. He wants to reverse Brexit (thus guaranteeing the end of Democracy, very important to the PTB).
4. He is technologically illiterate so he will listen unquestioningly to science and medical ‘experts’.
If he is a Blairite, someone should ask him baldly if he thinks murdering 1 million people based on lies is ‘acceptable collateral damage’. No ifs, no buts, not answer longer than one word.
Lawyers who lie to kill people are far, far worse than witnesses perjuring themselves in court.
People should treat Starmer at all times as a witness in a courtroom, under oath and upon commitment to trial for perjury if he starts the usual political nonsense.
It might wake the man up to what scum like McTernan are really all about.
Apart from the “mainstream politician” bit, could you not say the same about Arthur Scargill? As my dearly departed (and NOT left wing) father-in-law said of Scargill: “No-one seems to like him but everything he said turned out to be true.
But then nobody cares about whether a political leader is telling truth or lies, it’s whether the media presents them as a jolly decent guy or a little rat bag.
Corbyn like Scargill suffered at the hands of MI5, lies and smears, maybe threats too..?
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-12-04-how-the-uk-military-and-intelligence-establishment-is-working-to-stop-jeremy-corbyn-from-becoming-prime-minister/
Wonderful music, 60 years too late. He was too frightened to say anything at the time going as far as to say he had never written a single political song. Something he repeated on 60 Minutes much more recently.
The JFK conspiracy is now a conspiracy itself
Saw one live concert of Bob, in Stockholm long ago. His contract was for one hour, and after 59 minutes and 59 seconds he pulled his plugs in the middle of a song.
Fake rebel.
Had your stop watch on, did you?
When your time is up there is no point hanging around. Don’t begrudge him for a mere second.
Bob was told/warned to pull his head in years ago.
He must be feeling his mortality and having one last dig at the Fat Controllers.
John Lennon’s ‘murder’ was a warning to any would be soothsayers.
The enlightened live a precarious existence.
Thanks OffG, Thanks Ed Curtin, but Special Thanks to Bob Dylan. Like all great art, there are many layers to this deeply spiritual lament for a lost Past, Present and Future. Musically, it strikes a deeply sorrowful chords of melancholy and loss, whilst lyrically there is no hint of maudlin or sentimentality. Sometimes the unspeakable truth can only be written in lyrics.
Dylan has set his stage like the play within a play in Hamlet: “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. The trouble is, his killers (past and present) have no conscience and are devoid of any moral compass. I would love to believe that this beautiful song helped some realise the awful truth of the 1963 Coup d’Etat. But it’s comforting to know that Bob is on our side.
The day they assassinated JFK was the day of the “official” takeover by the military/intelligence apparatus in America. It was a coup. I was only 12 years old at the time, but I sure as hell knew better than to credulously believe in the existence of the Warren Commission’s – “magic bullet.”
All the subsequent campaigns, all the many elections, all the fake battles and mudslinging between the two parties decade after decade amount to nothing but pathetic farce. An every four-years public spectacle devoid of any actual substance whatsoever -euphemistically referred to as – “American democracy.” The American political landscape has been one long “reality TV series” ever since. “Full of sound and fury,” and “signifying nothing.”
MalcolmX, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy would all meet the same fate as John Kennedy before I could finish high school. The entire top tier of progressive leadership in America were assassinated within the next five years, yet as Dylan writes – “no one saw a thing.”
How many people know that MLK’s family won a million dollar civil jury trial which found the U.S. government complicit in Dr. King’s murder? How many know that RFK’s official autopsy report shows that the fatal shot was fired from behind and within 1 1/2 inches of his skin making it impossible for Sirhan to have been the assassin? How many know that the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation intentionally fomented murderous warfare between groups like the Black Panthers and the United Slaves, claiming “success” in memos when members of one group would murder members of the other based upon the FBI’s complete fabrications and lies. It is only in this light that Malcolm’s relationship with the Nation of Islam and his assassination can be understood.
The rot at the center of America’s ruling establishment goes to the very heart. America is plain and simply an amoral ruthless criminal cabal as anyone familiar with U.S. foreign policy is well aware.
I Agree.
Than why does it take Bob Dylan 62 years to come with this song? Is he fearing his own death from corona or otherwise?
Previously he feared his death from assassins. What would you have done?
Or indeed the loss of someone dear to him.
To accept your own death is one thing, but the suffering of someone you love is quite another.
Only if you eschew human contact (and who wants to do that), do you leave no hostages to fortune.
They don’t just have them by the balls.
They have their icy hands ready to rip out hearts.
From memory(it was a long time ago) Malcolm X was portrayed(in the Murdoch dominated Australian Press as a “Black Muslim”(which, in America, is at least twice as bad as a ‘normal Muslim’). And as a young man I swallowed it whole(sorry Malcolm). Go and have a look at Malcom X’s quotes today. He was just a man who spoke the truth, about the USA at the time.
Brian – as you say: “He was just a man who spoke the truth, about the USA at the time.” Sadly here in America speaking the “truth” is the equivalent of – “treason.”
One thing about the Murdochites-they’re racists to their dead cores.
Not to mention a modern day Joseph Goebbels………
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of Public Opinion”….Joseph Goebbels.
Gary, I’m following your post in an attempt to show solidarity with Dylan, Edward Curtin, OffG,
the regulars here, and internationally… Many Thanks to All.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/bob-dylans-embrace-israels-war-crimes
It’s been that way from its inception. The very first line of the constitution was a hypocritical lie. Slave owners and Indian killers and land expropriators talking about equality and liberty. Everything is a rich man’s trick…it was all designed at birth and has remained true to its creators to protect and expand the ill gotten property and profits of the rich white man. The foundational myths are bullshit. The revolutionary, civil, and world wars were all fought for reasons of realpolitik and the material interests of the ruling class and never had anything to do with morality or ideals. Not about democracy. Not about slavery. Not about Nazism and fascism. Property and privilege. Always. Read what the founding fathers said about democracy. Or what Lincoln said about blacks and Indians. Or what the US capitalists of their day said about Hitler and more importantly what they did to finance, arm, and fuel the Nazi death machine. And look up operation paper clip while you’re at it.
What they truly feared and considered an existential threat was the Soviet Union and the spread of communism, which meant empowering the workers, the unwashed masses, and using the resources and productive capacity of a society to benefit the people, the plebs, while depriving the plutocrats of their private property and their monopoly profits and parasitic rents. And since the end of World War Two, under the guise of the Cold War, they went around the globe crushing every attempt by any nation to create an alternative, an independent, democratic, egalitarian system. That simply cannot stand. You see, the world belongs to our masters of mankind, owners of the earth. It is their divine right to be able to exploit every last resource on the planet, to commodity every living thing, and squeeze every last drop of lifeblood from our labor power. So anywhere this right is denied, they send in the assassins, they conduct coups, the impose sanctions, they drop freedom bombs, and bring democracy by installing dictators with torture chambers and deaths squads to instill terror in the population is they never attempt to do somehting so irresponsible as wanting a better life for their children ever again. We are all just means to an end, to maximized profits, higher share prices, bigger yachts. And they are destroying the ecosystems, disrupting the vital life cycles, destabilizing the relative stability of the climate, and driving our species to extinction in that momomanical pursuit.
They are a death cult. And they are the same necrophiliacs who are behind this latest pandemic. The CIA. Gates. Pharma. The MIC. Wall St. The mockingbird media. They’ve got us all in a irrational hysteria, isolated in our individual boxes, sitting in front of our TV sets, listenting to the fearmongering and watching the death counter tick, tick, tick ever upwards. While they wipe out jobs, savings, pensions, small business in order to plunder ever more for themselves. A controlled demolition of the everything bubble behind cover of corona, with the usual suspects notified in advance to short sell, and exploiting the fear and precarity to force through the bailouts, throwing crumbs at the desperate masses while funneling trillions to the same criminal enterprises that have steadily destroyed our living standards, impoverished our society, gutted our social programs and shredded our safety net, and drowned us all in unplayable debts, driving millions to early graves, from poverty, preventable disease, and deaths of despair. Theyve poisoned us for decades with processed frankenfoods, made with gmos smothered in toxic pesticides, loaded with sugar, salt, hormones, and additives. Plastics and heavy metals in our water supply. Polluted air. Extreme and chronic stress from paycheck to paycheck existences and suffocating debts. And then throwing a deadly cocktail of highly profitable Pharma drugs, cures worse than the disease, while telling us it’s all our fault for being sick and depressed, on top of leaving thirty million uninsured and millions more underinsured who can’t go to the doctor without going bankrupt, causing even more misery and illness and deaths of despair. And now they want us to believe they care about our health?! Our lives?!
Alas their system is in crisis. They need to do something extreme to solve it, or at least put it off for a while longer. And when they need to do something they wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do without mass resistence, they conspire to shock the masses into aqueisence and consent. Enter Pearl Harbor. Gulf of Tonkin. 9/11. WMD. Coronavirus. Enter fascism. And this is a fascist financial coup. A massive escalation of the class war and imperialist world war, targeting China, Iran, and Venezuela. This is just the beginning. The unemployment benefits will run out. The small businesses will close for good. The jobs will evaporate forever. Schools? How about remote learning provided by Silicon Valley? Social gatherings, a return to normal? Not before you get your vaccine and digital certificate. The central banks become the new treasury. Cash is eliminated. Behold the digital dollar. 5G is rolled out everywhere. Now every breath you take, every move you make, they’ll be watching you, recording the data, monetizing you’re very existence. Monetizing nature. All will be commodified, monetized, digitized, privatized, and bought and sold, traded, and speculated on in the brave new world. Their control will be complete. Their ownership total. Our enslavement inescapable.
In the name of global health and saving the planet, through depression and automation and digitization, billions will be made rendundant, their depopulation program will be carried out in the global south, consumption and pollution will be reduced dramatically, and the masters of mankind will live in abundant luxury, devouring what’s left, until they developed their private space programs and the technology to colonize other planets, and will do to those worlds what they did here. And don’t worry, they’ll need slave labor until then and then they’ll need us to build those ones, too, so some of us will survive the great culling.
That is, this is their psychotic wet dream, this is Bill Gates vision for the future. And doesn’t take into account our resistence. Fuck their social distancing and vaccines. Fuck their digital panopticon. Fuck their wars and fuck their green new deals. Don’t let the fear consume you. Don’t let them control your life, mold your minds, manipulate your behavior. Use your critical thinking skills, educate yourselves, warn others. Rather than distance and isolation, come closer together and connect more deeply than ever with each other. The earth belongs to all equally. The fruits of our collective labor should be ours to distribute as we decide, together, it should. We need to take back control of our lives, the future of our children and the fate of our species…it doesn’t have to be this way, or the way they conspire to make it, a dystopian hell on earth, and then on other planets after this one. A better world is possible. We know what constitutes good health and true happiness. It’s so simple. Only they stand in our way. And they use fear and lies to keep us from realizing it. To divide us and distract us and misdirect our energy and anger.
The truth is our best weapon. Let it spread more widely than this stupid virus.
What a great comment, great insight. Thanks.
Well said. Bravo! The big problem: If you posted this on the national news and every website and social media outlet on the planet, most people wouldn’t give a shit. I alway said this about 9/11 and JFK. If one put in the headlines of the NYC that the elite cabal was behind both, there would be nary a stir. I didn’t think this big push would come so soon, but the evil fucks have realized just how easy it is. How do you convince people about their enslavement, if they adore their chains?
A country born as a slave owning society enshrined in their founding declaration.
It never stopped slavery – millions of the worlds poorest were envouraged to come packed in the ships from Europe with promises of pavements full of gold – the Dream is indetured labour. Thr original Africans and their heirs got very little – Detroit car manufacturing which gave the world brand new sounds to mark the worlds special moments.
And rhe rest got ghettos and scant education and no voting rights
– right upto today.
The whole enterprise of the original states, their revolt against the Hanoverians, the civil war, the imperialism first against the Spanish and than the other European Empires broke out at the beginning of the twentieth century, the China adventures with the Europeans and the Opium wars , led to the Phillipines andthe formation of the Fed that financed and let loose the yankee troops into the trenches in 1917 as soon as the Balfour declaration was signed and published – a contract!
History is taught by the universities and they are controlled by the foundations set up to control that.
Gates’ Foundation is just the latest mutation of those powers – the ultimate movers snd shakers – the bankers and their extended family who get a seat at their table as a reward for services rendered to the ancient pathocracy.