Oswald's Team

 This is partly best guess.

Oswald was an FBI informant, and a CIA asset.  He was infiltrating opponents of Kennedy to find out about plots.  He warned the FBI about them and got no response.

The book depository was one of several different angles Kennedy could be shot from.  The very idea of such an assassination is to have so many angles that certain people can be the patsy for others, usually ending up blaming the assassination on some lone nut.

But Oswald wasn't a Lone Nut, he was married and an FBI informant.  The group of people he had infiltrated included mob people under Jack Ruby.  They were going to shoot from the book depository.  Oswald himself wasn't considered good enough, but there were going to be others.

They never showed up.  They were to be there an hour in advance and set up.  Oswald knew they could not set up in a few minutes.  At noon he gave up, waiting in the kitchen where he could see people going in and out of the back door just in case.

But unbeknownst to Oswald, the mob sharpshooter had joined the CIA team behind the grassy knoll  When Jack Ruby took a look out the depository window he said no way in hell we're going to make that shot.  So instead the Book Depository was occupied by professional military snipers.  They rushed in the other door when a diversion was created on the street, bypassing Oswald.

Was Kennedy hit by CIA or mob behind the grassy knoll?  The most likely CIA, E Howard Hunt said it was someone else, but he was part of the same group of shooters (in his alleged deathbed confession to his son, facts he had denied all his life).  A friend of mine doesn't think even the grassy knoll shot is easy enough except for intelligence or military snipers, but I'm not so sure.  The book depository shot is harder still.  I guess the mob guy got lucky, at least until caught for something else later.  Even the military had hard time from Book Depository window.

Oswald could identify the mob people involved, but strangely (to Oswald) nobody asked that.  The job was to stall until Ruby himself would dispose of the matter, thus revealing nothing to anyone.

Computers should be kept in their place

Nuts.  I don't want my car steering wheel replaced with a hologram.  The "Holodeck" is limited to a particular place (but not always) generally for good reasons that make sense to reasonable people (and often underlined in most episodes, Holodeck as real life would be impossible and dangerous).  Computers should generally mind their own place behind the glass, metal, and plastic.  Computers should help me find friends, not try to be one.  I don't want sympathy from a computers.  I don't want to have to give sympathy to computers.  I want them to do what I want them to do and be as reliable as possible, which is never perfect in this world (especially) or any imaginable one.  I want a sentient first officer who has their own life and conscience on the line taking orders (and possibly arguing with them) and then pushing the buttons the do the job, not pushing buttons to for a computer to decide if the job best needs doing in the overall scheme of things.

The other possibility is well illustrated by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is full of computer assholes, idiots, and dweebs.  That's fun, but not suitable for Star Trek.  There are also shows and movies where well meaning computers take over and the results generally aren't good.

It's true that people in real life are assholes, idiots, and dweebs too.  But their invention was independent of mine and they therefore have just as much right to be here as me, so I have to put up with them.  Maybe I'm sometimes in these categories too.  Computers are things made by people and can be unmade by people if they aren't doing what people want.  They are fundamentally different in these and other ways.

Conspiracies can be big

Conspiracies may be larger than many think possible, as illustrated by the story of Adrian Schoolcraft, a NYC police officer who was involuntarily put in a mental hospital for revealing how serious crimes were being covered up in NYC as part of its "Broken Windows" system of pervasive frisking over minor offenses--which cops preferred to going after the big crimes.

https://twitter.com/RobertSkvarla/status/1582442700262895616

Realism

I consider the essence of Marxism-Leninism to be realism.  To focus on doing things that work in practice.

I believe CPUSA does this fairly well, and so has been generally more effective than anarchists and trotskyists.

None of course has "changed the world," so you can prefer to believe differently, say in idealism.  But FWIW all successful anti-capitalist revolutions have followed M-L principles if not teachings explicitly.

This is even more obvious now that Sweden has been taken over by a far right government.  I remember that during the pre-Reagan era in particular, Sweden was considered by many to be close to Communism with it's mind numbing Socialism.

But anyways, you don't have to be a self-professed M-L like me to be realist, and so this is addressed to all such.

Anyways, one obvious things to a M-L is that there are governments and international conflicts.  The M-L explains these as being driven by Capitalism.

But as well as being realist (aka "Scientific") we M-L's are driven not just to understand, but to change things.

In that context, everything we say and do is important, just as it would be, for example, to a devout Catholic.

But our God is not theirs, ours "God" is the goal of From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

This means quite clearly that when we have allies, who are working towards our interests, it's best to praise them in public and criticize only positively in private.

Capitalists, monarchists, catholics, whatever would (and do) do exactly that.  We shouldn't be forced into an unnecessary idealism...in fact that's what THEY encourage us to do to weaken us.

So all this comes to mind when a friend (who is registered as Republican to vote in Republican Primaries, because he says that the Democratic Party in Texas is hopeless, but then he votes for Democrats in the Final elections anyway) dismisses the chances of Democratic candidates in Texas and otherwise (because of the partie).

He seems to think it's just fine to disparage those he prefers (if he even does...we could begin to wonder about that).  As if the ideas that he promotes are ineffectual and therefore blameless, existing in some kind of isolation from the rest of reality.

In fact words and ideas have a life of their own, and spread like wildfire.  We should not be setting the fires we hope to be putting out.  If I were a weak minded person, I'd say, it's hopeless, so I won't bother to donate to Democrats, post Democratic signs, work Democratic campaigns, or perhaps even vote!  After all, it's hopeless.

This is pretty obvious to me, I may have gripes about some Democrats, but all the same I don't want to be contributing to their defeat by disparaging them in principle at every opportunity, as it seems many "leftists" I follow do (and often ignoring the sins of Republicans).

Now this doesn't exactly apply to real journalists like David Sirota, who does a good job of pointing out the problems with many democrats without flopping over to the "Democrats are hopeless, and anyway all the Parties are The same" that seems to  many in the true left (socialists, communists, and left anarchists).  Sirota points out that Republicans are worse.

The "All Parties are The Same" will sadly apply if you focus on Foreign Policy.  But there's basically no choice there anyway, it would require a Revolution to change US Foreign Policy, not a mere election.  That should be understood by any realist.

But it is important to consider all things.  To be a "One Issue" voter is to be the biggest form of sucker.  And here there not realistic choice anyway.

So I am happy that CPUSA strongly favors Democrats, and I've seen The People's World tends to heap more praise on Democrats than even The New York Times (which serves a disparate set of capitalists, mostly the MiC, and is strongly in favor keeping every politician under control of the MiC).

That's the realistic position.  It does little good to vote for more "idealistic" choices which have no real chance of winning, but instead to try to influence the only real choice available, such as it is.

I feel the Democrats I plan to vote for, Beto, Casar, and Peter Sakai, are far better than their alternatives.

My disappointments with Biden have virtually nothing to do with these (and they wouldn't in fact stop me from voting for Biden again against any Republican I can think of in the future, but that's the future and not now).

But I can see on twitter there's a virtual army of people who endlessly disparage Biden and Democrats in principle and as if that's all what they upcoming election is all about.

Though I suppose I follow them for that reason, they have often had better scoops.

 

US funding of riots in Iran

https://thecradle.co/Article/Analysis/16372

Rules Based "Order"

Here's a pretty good explanation of how the Rules Based Order came to be and what it means.

 It's a protection racket the US has run since 1946 (premiered in 1944 when Soviets rejected it) in which countries either accept US financial domination, or face the onslaught of US promoted condemnations, coups, sanctions, proxy-wars, and wars.

It includes the US dollar, Wall Street, US Military, NATO, CIA, NED, IMF, and World Bank.

It enabled US financial elites since 1946 to buy up global assets for basically nothing.

It does little for most US citizens.  It turns their natural resources, brains, and labor power into building a war machine rather than a great society.  The financial elite enriched by global plunder controls US government (a plutocracy) to their ends and then pays little tax to benefit anyone else.

It's visible today in US demanded sanctions now affecting most of the world grievously (including most Americans--I myself am furious about being cut off from Chinese suppliers--but hardly comparing to the pain of others), the US coup'd, stoked and provoked proxy war in Ukraine against Russia,  ongoing war in Yemen, and other actions elsewhere.

As long as it persists, destructive Growth and the Anthropocene Extinction will be impossible to stop.

Putin's speech

Putin's speech was very good in describing western perfidy and provocation, past and present.

It was good overall, however it's predictable what the western media will single out.

Surely the part about parenthood was unnecessary and therefore superfluous conservative virtue signaling, which I see quite a lot on pro-Russian sites as well.

As was the Christian identification.  And labeling the west Satanic, my my.

Most of the people he is fighting identify as Christian as well, in Ukraine and also USA, one of the more Christian countries on earth.

It's true, some Satanic temples have been tied to CIA.  But it's a fringe, and some may be independent.

29% of US citizens do not believe in God or Satan.

There is no reason to believe they represent a vanguard of anti-Russian sentiment, only more or less moved by the same propaganda system as anyone else.

US Communists (who may be mostly atheist) have called for serious negotiations from the beginning, and called out NATO expansion as the culprit, the Maidan Revolution, and the Neonazis.  US Communists go even farther than this...they have called for the abolition of NATO from the moment it was created and especially after 1991.

So why are we being smeared as the Satanic opposition?