December 8, 2002
Days of Remembrance
Yesterday was the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I didn't see much hoopla about it this time. Maybe it was because an examination of the historical record shows that the incident that catalyzed US involvement in World War II, like the ones that ignited World War I and the Vietnam War, were not entirely genuine. With all the pressure against investigating the lapses that led to 9-11, maybe the implications were better left alone by the corporate media.The Gulf of Tonkin incident that caused Congress to give President Johnson the power to escalate US involvement in Vietnam was a fake. The Lusitania incident that was used to pull a reluctant US into World War I was a fake. And evidence suggests that Pearl Harbor was at least manipulated. Roosevelt pushed the Japanese into a position where the attack was nearly inevitable, and allowed US defenses to lapse enough to let the attack go forward. The comparisons with September 11 are perhaps too pointed, so the corporate media didn't venture there much.
December 8 is the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon, which came right after the election of Ronald Reagan, before his inauguration and before the Iranians completed their arrangement to release the US hostages in perfectly stage-managed coordination with Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
There is a great deal of political significance to the death of Lennon as well, though little of it ever surfaced in the mass culture. After the killer, Mark David Chapman, plead guilty, little more was heard about it. But Chapman had a large amount of money that was not consistent with the story of him being a loser security guard. In the days preceding the killing he traveled to Hawaii, Chicago, sold some art from his collection. The security guard world traveler art collector was an incongruous combination of attributes.
When Chapman killed Lennon, he dropped into a military stance and pumped several bullets into Lennon. He was trained. He had been in the Middle East, involved in an organization called World Vision, which was headed by John Hinckley Sr., family friend of the Bushes and father of the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan.
This was all examined thoroughly in a book called Who Killed John Lennon?, which is now out of print, but may be available as a used book. It's much creepier than I imagined for years after it happened, but for today, let's just remember the good times and give peace a chance.