This is a song for Valentine's Day, and it's one of the greatest love songs ever written: Till There Was You by Meredith Willson. Most people recognize it from The Music Man, which came out in 1963, but Willson wrote the song in 1950 and played it with his orchestra throughout the 1950s. The Beatles loved this song and recorded it several times. They were inspired by Peggy Lee's version of it from 1961.   

But here now is the lovely and talented Hannah Vaughn singing it, with Paul Popa on guitar, and Yours Truly on piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_TtCV3cqpU&feature=youtu.be

This is Part 2 of my analysis of Twenty Six Seconds, the book by Zapruder's granddaughter Alexandra Zapruder. 

So, Abe went home with the film, even though three copies had been made for the government: two for the SS and one for the FBI. And late that night, he got a call from Dick Stolley of LIFE magazine, who wanted to buy the film. Zapruder had arranged to show the film to some federal agents the next day at his company, Jennifer Junior, and he told Stolley he could come.

Stolley did, and he said he was stunned, that it was the most dramatic moment of his career. 

Ms. Zapruder described it this way: "They watched the film in silence until the President's head exploded in a shower of red." 

But, it isn't a shower of red. It's more like a splotch of red, the kind that could be painted on, and it's not what a bullet would do. A bullet would enter the head. It might or might not go through it. And afterwards, there would be blood oozing from the entrance wound, but nothing like what we see in the Zapruder film with the big red explosion.

And think about it: if that was visible to Zapruder's camera, then it was visible to the eyes of the spectators, and nobody reported seeing such a thing. 

And what's so hard to watch about a red splotch? It isn't gore. It's not as though you're seeing exposed brain. That would be gore. And there was exposed brain. Officer Cheyney said he was soaked in JFK's brain matter. So, why don't we see JFK's brain actually exploding in the Zapruder film? I mean: actually being "blown off." 

Stolley, on behalf of LIFE, paid Zapruder $25,000 a year for the film for 6 years. So, $150,000 total. That's worth well over a million dollars today.  Zapruder donated the first payment to the Tippit family, but it wasn't his idea.  He was told that it would look good for PR.  It was his lawyer, Sam Passman, who urged Zapruder to donate it to Tippit's family. And I don't fault Zapruder a bit for any of this. It was nice of him to donate anything. I'm pointing this out because throughout the book, Ms. Zapruder defends her grandfather from the charge of being mercenary and exploitative, that right away he was out to make a buck off his film. She insists his primary motive was to find the right home for the film, where it would be presented with dignity, and showing respect for the dead, etc. 

But, the deal was that no copy remained with him, and that was smart. They should have done the same thing with Mary Moorman. They should have gotten someone to pay her a large sum for her photo and taken it off her hands completely. That way, they would not have had to keep going back to her. She claimed that authorities repeatedly borrowed her photo from her. But why? They made copies the first day. They even made a negative of it the first day. So, why did they have to see her original again and again for? Because: they were going to alter it. What good would it do to alter the copies if she still had the unaltered original? But, they didn't make that mistake with Zapruder. 

So, what did LIFE magazine do with the film? They published carefully selected frames on November 29, just a week later, and then again in Oct 2, 1964. I have the latter one, and I just ordered the former. In the latter, they published one attractive frame of JFK waving and smiling at the crowd before he disappears behind the freeway sign. I've shown you that if you look closely at the film, you can see that JFK stopped waving before he reached the sign, and he put his hand over his face. But, since no one reported that he did that, I have to think they painted the hand in, and it looks painted. 

The alteration of the Zapruder film must have been done progressively and not all at once. I'm sure they started messing with it right away, but there is no way they were finished by November 29, 1963. So, at that point, they were going to be very careful about which frames they allowed the public to see. Yes, to the smiling/waving one, and no to the ones which showed he stopped waving and looked distressed before he reached the sign.  

But, what LIFE magazine did with the Zapruder film mostly was keep other people from seeing it. CBS tried very hard to get it from them, but they wouldn't budge. Others tried too.

So why did LIFE buy it from Zapruder? Did they really do it with the goal of making money from it? No. They bought it mainly to get the film away from Zapruder and to make sure that no one else got it. LIFE magazine did it as an agent of the government. LIFE was in bed with the U.S. intelligence agencies. It looked a lot better if a private corporation bought the film from Zapruder rather than for the government to just demand that he forfeit it so that they could start altering it. And remember: he gave it to the government for free. So, it wasn't about getting the film; it was about getting it away from him so that they could alter it. 

You probably know that in 1968, Jim Garrison forced LIFE magazine to show the Zapruder film to the grand jury in the Clay Shaw case, and "back and to the left" became a household term. But, stop thinking that there was any loss of control. They knew exactly what they were doing. BY LEAVING IN THE BACKWARD MOTION OF JFK'S HEAD, THEY WERE AUTHETICATING THE ENTIRE ZAPRUDER FILM. That was like the stamp of authenticity on the grounds that, "If we were going to alter anything, we would have altered that, and since we didn't, it means we altered nothing." That's what they got for letting the world see "back and to the left." 

And then, they just did a few experiments with watermelons and whatnot to claim that, shot from the rear, a head could still go back and to the left. But, stop thinking about what they lost, and start thinking about what they gained: which is everyone believing that JFK wasn't shot until he got behind the sign. 

Ms. Zapruder went through the story of how Robert Groden got involved in the public release of the film. The story goes that he was working at an imaging company with a guy named Moses Weitzman who had been hired by LIFE to convert the Z-film to 16 mm and then 32 mm. And that resulted in more copies being made, one of which he kept "as a sample of his expertise." The way Ms. Zapruder put it is that Groden just accessed it himself, that it was there, and he just helped himself to it. I don't know what Groden claims.   

This is where the story gets weird because LIFE magazine started feeling antsy about owning the film, and they wanted to get rid of it. Their first thought was to donate it to the National Archives. Zapruder was dead by then, but they had to run it by his family. LIFE wanted to get rid of the film because "there was no way to use it in a tasteful way." Are you buying that? 

Robert Groden was going around showing the Zapruder film to groups, large and small. Then, he was invited on the Geraldo Rivera program, where it was shown to  the whole country. I think it's interesting that LIFE had copyrighted the Zapruder film. So, why didn't they sue Groden and Rivera for copyright infringement?  

Instead, LIFE felt compelled to unload the film. They offered to sell it back to the Zapruder family for $60,000, and if they wouldn't pay, they would just give it to the National Archives. But, the Zapruder family was represented by Henry Zapruder, Abe's son, who was a Harvard-educated tax attorney. But, according to the author, it wasn't Henry's desire to drive a hard bargain with LIFE. She put the blame on her grandmother, Lil, Abe's widow. She said that she was the money grubber. And she gave marching orders to her son Henry to deal and haggle but get that film back at the lowest price possible. 

According to Ms. Zapruder, her family was prepared to pay the $60,000 to LIFE for the film, but then LIFE said they wanted the price to be $1. I'm going to quote her now: "I never understood why LIFE gave the film back to our family for $1."

But, she went on to say that NBC newscaster Tom Snyder was badmouthing both LIFE and the Zapruder family. So, LIFE, wanting to smash all claims that they were being mercenary about this national treasure, just gave it back to the Zapruders for a buck. 

OK, now, I am going to finish this section by telling you what I think happened. I think LIFE magazine wanted to unload the Zapruder film because they knew it was altered, highly altered, and they were involved in altering it. But, the public would never suspect the Zapruder family of altering it. So, if the Zapruder family owned it and vouched for it, and said that they got it back in the same condition it was in when they turned it over, that would legitimize it. It would look better.  It would sell better. The story of the Zapruder film, that JFK wasn't hit until he was hidden behind the sign, would sell better. And that was worth much more than $60,000 or $600,000 or $6,000,000.

It wasn't about profit. It was about history, and what the history of what happened on November 22, 1963 would be. 

   

 

I haven't commented about Afghanistan in a long time, and with everything that's happened; the disputed election, the turmoil that followed, plus Covid, it's no wonder Afghanistan isn't front page news.

However, as I expected, the Biden administration has announced that they don't feel obliged to abide by the terms of the peace accord that Trump signed with the Taliban, and it's very likely that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan- indefinitely. 

First, note something of great importance: The whole world should realize now: that signing an accord with the United States only applies to the current administration. Trump did it too, of course. The first thing he did was denounce the peace accord that Obama had with Iran. His doing that, and other provocations, almost took us to war with Iran. It got very close, and it very easily could have happened.

So, Biden is just doing the same thing that Trump did, except he's doing it to Trump.

But, let's look at the situation in Afghanistan. It's a disaster. The war has continued. The Taliban has not let up its violence against the Afghan government. But, they never said they would. They said that the peace accord was between them and the U.S. They never said they were going to stop fighting the Afghan government, although they did say they would engage in talks with them, which they have.

But, nothing good has come of it. Progress has been zero. And the Taliban have made it clear that, basically, the Afghan government has to dissolve. They want a new government, and one that is properly Islamic. They want a theocracy- something as theocratic as the government of Iran.  

But, the Biden administration is in a spot because if they don't get out by May, then the Taliban may very well start attacking Americans again. And there are only 2500 of them there. So, their ability to defend themselves is limited. Therefore, if Biden is really bent on breaking the treaty (and he'll say that the Taliban broke it) he is probably going to have to increase the troop levels again. 

So, as we approach the 20th anniversary of this disastrous war (on October 7)  it may be that escalation is what is going to mark it. 

So, we are at a crucial turning point, a fork in the road. Are we going to get out, or are we going to inflame and enlarge the war? I regret to say that I think it's going to be the latter. 

  

I'd like to point something out about the Corona virus vaccine, if you're considering getting it. They're admitting that 36 people have developed severe immune thombocytopenia after getting it. One of them, a 56 year old male obstetrician, developed symptoms 3 days later and died two weeks after that. 

Thombocytes are another term for platelets, which are blood cells that enable your blood to clot. And really, they are just cellular fragments. Clots form because of "platelet aggregation." 

We hear so many bad things about "blood clots" that it's easy to forget sometimes that without the ability clot your blood, you're dead. 

And it's been known for a long time that platelets are very vulnerable to drug toxicity. If you get out the PDR and start reading about the adverse effects of drugs, you'll see that "thrombocytopenia" is one of the most common effects of drug toxicity. 

Thrombocytopenia means a deficiency of platelets, where the number falls below and outside of the normal range. Obviously, there can be all different degrees of thrombocytopenia, and mild cases may go either unnoticed or otherwise have very mild symptoms, such as the person bruises a little more easily.

But, in this case, we're talking about a severe thrombocytopenia. The male obstetrician who died died of a brain hemorrhage. 

But, here is what the government said about it:

"Officials with the FDA and CDC said that they were looking into the reports, but that so far, rates of the condition in vaccinated people did not appear higher than the rates normally found in the U.S. population, so the cases could be coincidental."

So, they are saying that out of 31 million people who were vaccinated as of the end of January, that only 37 developed this severe, life-threatening reaction, and that if you looked at 31 million unvaccinated people, that you're likely to find as many as 37 cases of severe immune thrombocytopenia. 

I don't know if that's true, but let's just assume that it is. There is still a big difference. If we looked at 31 million people from the general population, none of whom were injected with the Covid vaccine, and we found 37 who had severe immune thrombocytopenia, we would find that they developed it at different times and under different circumstances. It would not be that all 37 suddenly developed the condition right after getting a vaccine. To my mind, the temporal association with the vaccine makes the likelihood of it being a coincidence about zero.

I'll give you the link to the article, so you can read it yourself.  It's a free country, and you can do what you want. But, this is Dr. Cinque telling you that I am NOT going to get that Covid vaccine. I am much more afraid of the vaccine than I am of the virus. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/few-covid-vaccine-recipients-developed-133911410.html

 

  

This is going to be a multi-part discussion of the book Twenty-Six Seconds, A Personal History of the Zapruder Film, by Alexandra Zapruder, the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder. It was published in 2016. 

First, let me point out that it was surreal for me to read this book because the most important thing anyone can say about the Zapruder film is that it was highly altered. And she wrote practically nothing about that. She did say that there were four frames that went notoriously missing. But, she said it was no mystery, that LIFE magazine, who became the owner of the film, accidentally destroyed those frames. And, she pointed out that since there are 18.3 frames per second, it represented just a small fraction of a second that went missing. And actually, according to her, it was Abraham Zapruder, himself, who said that. 

And by the way, she doesn't have any memory of him because he died when she was very young. And it's the same for me concerning my paternal grandfather, Ralph Cinque. He died when I was two, and I don't have any memory of him. 

Alexandra Zapruder's background is in education. She has a Master's degree in it from Harvard. And she is on the staff of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington and has been since it was founded. 

But, when I talk about the alteration of the Zapuder film, I am not talking about 4 missing frames. I am talking about the complete revamping of the film.  Because, as she says herself throughout the book, the story of the Zapruder film is that everything happened behind the sign, the Stemmons Freeway sign, that JFK was fine- he was smiling and waving- until he reached that sign. And then, behind the sign, everything happened.  Everything, that is, except the fatal head shot. 

So, the story of the Zapruder film is that the sign was transforming, that JFK not only underwent horrific physical trauma behind that sign, but that he emerged a completely different person, in which his consciousness, his awareness, and his ability to react and respond were radically altered. It all happened behind the sign.

And I want to stress that, unfortunately, no one other than me, talks about the change in JFK's mental status, pre-sign and post-sign. He emerges from behind that sign not only physically traumatized but mentally impaired. WHY IS IT THAT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT HIS OBVIOUS MENTAL IMPAIRMENT? 

JFK passes behind that sign a man and emerges from it a child. Jackie is like his mother- not his wife. JFK is rendered childlike and helpless- to the extreme. He is a different person than he was before the sign. 

And, the fact is that it's not exactly true that he was smiling and waving  until he passed behind the sign. If you look closely, you can see in the Zapruder film that he stopped smiling and waving and put his hand over his face. Nobody talks about that- except me. And to put it mildly, it pisses me off. 

Nobody, but nobody, reported that he did that. And I don't believe he did. I think it was painted on, and believe me, they had photo artists who could do it. I have been told that by modern-day photo editors, who use Photoshop.  So, why did they do it? They did it because he was already shot, in the back, and the look on his face showed it. That's why they had to cover up his face with his hand.

So, the "story" of the Zapruder film is a lie. It is NOT true that JFK reached that sign intact. He was shot in the back high on the hill. It happened just a little past the Depository, right before the Croft photo was taken.

This photo, too, underwent massive alteration to hide the fact that Kennedy was shot. But, I won't go into that here. 

So, in the extant Zapruder film, the Stemmons freeway sign is like the magician's curtain, and everything that happens, happens behind that sign. Keep in mind that JFK was shot in the throat behind that sign. There can be no doubt about that. But, the shot to his back was a separate shot that occurred much higher on the hill. 

So, the purpose of the Zapruder film is to sell the Single Bullet Theory, and a tremendous amount of altering and excising was done to get to that. 

 

But, getting back to Ms. Zapruder's book, she claims that, from the beginning, Abraham Zapruder wanted to get the film into federal hands, either the Secret Service or the FBI, that his first instinct was NOT to sell it, but to give it to the government. And by the way, he was a very patriotic American who appreciated this country because he was an immigrant from Ukraine, where his family was persecuted for being Jewish in Tsarist Russia. And then, life in Soviet-dominated, Ukraine was no picnic either. It isn't talked about much in this country, but Stalin sought to and did starve Ukrainians in the 1930s in what is known as the Holodomor. The most widely accepted death toll is about 4 million, but some claim that it was 12 million. You know, Joe Stalin? Uncle Joe? Our buddy from World War 2? He did that. 

But, I digress. Many times, I have pointed out that all amateur images from the JFK assassination were confiscated by the government. Nobody just went home with their film. Supposedly, Babushka Lady did, you know I don't believe that either. BL was an insider, cloaked in her long coat and scarf to hide her identity- it was her disguise- and it was one of her pictures that was converted into the picture that we have always known as the Moorman photo. But again, I digress. 

But, in Zapruder's case, it was none other than Secret Service Agent Forest Sorrels that took Zapruder's film, and he's the one who got it developed at Kodak. I tell you, Forrest Sorrels was like the Forrest Gump of the JFK assassination because he always showed up at crucial times. He got to ride in the car that went ahead of the Presidential limo. He got to take the Zapruder film from Zapruder, and he was the first to interview Jack Ruby up on the 5th floor of the DPD. 

So, Sorrell got to Kodak, where it took an hour to develop it. So, what did they see? 

The first thing I have to discuss is the quality of the film. One of the first people to see it was Kodak staff supervisor Jack Harrison, and he said that the film was "needle sharp." Erwin Schwartz, who as Zapruder's business partner in the dress manufacturing business,  said that the images were "the clearest, most beautiful you ever saw." "That last shot, you see his head come off, I mean you could see it so clear."

Well, the images in Zapruder film are certainly not "needle sharp" but I believe that they were. But, we don't see JFK's head come off.

Here's 313.

That's not his head coming off. That's his head being shot. We're seeing a red thing over his head, and it doesn't make sense. Other people have been shot in the head, and you never see that effect. Show me one other photographic capture of a person being shot in the head that looks like that.

So, I don't buy the red splotch. Leastways, I have my doubts about it. But regardless, are we all agreed that we're not seeing his head come off? And note that this is not a "needle sharp" image or anything close to it. They deliberately blurred JFK assassination images.

So, in 314 the red splotch is smaller, but still we don't see his head coming off.

Let's jump next to 316.

Still no head coming off.

Let's jump to 320.

Finally 328.

The point is that we don't see Kennedy's head coming off in the Zapruder film, even though many people reported seeing it, including those who first saw the Zapruder film. 

After developing, exactly three duplicates of the film were made. None of the duplicates contained the visual information between the sprocket holes. After that, Abe and Erwin drove to the DPD with the original and 3 copies. Two copies went to the Secret Service; one staying with the Secret Service in Dallas and the other being put on a plane and sent to the Secret Service in Washington. The remaining copy went to the FBI. The original, as we'll discuss at length, wound up in the hands of LIFE magazine. Did Zapruder keep a copy for himself? No, he did not. And as you will find out, that was NOT going to be allowed. This ends Part 1. I'll continue soon.  

What a day! Spent at the recording studio laying down the vocals and electric guitar for You're Loving Me Lately, a song I wrote for The Pro Bono Watchman. Our vocalist Christy Mims sang beautifully to what is, admittedly, a difficult song to sing. And my good friend Paul Popa played the electric guitar with a lot of soul. I already have the MP3 of the three of us with me on piano. But, on Thursday, Rick McRae will add acoustic guitar and violin, and Terry Hale will add standing bass. And that will be it. I think we are going to have a very nice song.

 A supporter sent me this image of Jack Ruby at the Midnight Press Conference, but I don't believe it's legit. For one, he looks too young. Ruby was 53, but this guy in the upper left looks to be in his 30s.

Ruby definitely was at the PD on Friday night, but I don't believe he was in that basement room. There is footage of that press conference, and the camera swept the crowd thoroughly, and you don't see Ruby there. 

What an ordeal it was to put that thing on, and when it happened they only let Oswald speak to the press for 1 minute? It was almost exactly 1 minute. Why bother? I'm sure they aborted it because Oswald was making a good impression. He seemed intelligent and rational. There wasn't the slightest bit of mad dog killer in him. He seemed like the sanest person in the room. And you need to understand that Oswald being INSANE is part of the story, the official story. You would have to be insane to be eating your lunch one day at work, thinking about your new baby girl and needing to buy daughter Junie new shoes, and then see a motorcade route and decide to kill the President. Plus, the whole story of the Walker shooting has an insane quality to it, as well.  Then the bit about Oswald wanting to go out and shoot Nixon- more insanity. Then hijacking a plane to Cuba? It's all just bull shit, and he didn't come across like that at all at the MPP, which was a huge problem. 

But, I want you to think about the fact that giving a violent criminal a press conference on the night of his crime has never been done at any other time in annals of police history. Never before and never since. So, why did they do it then? 

I believe they hoped to be able to shoot Oswald then. And the reason they didn't may be because Ruby wasn't in the room. Ruby was armed that night, and he admitted that. So, they could have done the same thing on Friday night that they did on Sunday morning. But, it had to be aborted, and once they realized that it wasn't going to happen, they quickly dragged Oswald away. You see, they really weren't interested in giving Oswald a microphone to talk to the world. That had to be the last thing in the world they wanted. I sincerely believe that they hoped to be able to kill him. 

And remember that the first place they sought to kill him was in the Texas Theater. They really set the stage for that to happen, and it almost did. There were multiple guns trained on him. One itchier trigger finger, and it all would have been over for Oswald.  But it just didn't happen, and  Oswald got to live another 45 hours. And he did himself a lot of good during that time, declaring his innocence and broadcasting that he was being denied a lawyer.  

If you are inclined to doubt me, why do you want to believe their reason for "parading Oswald in front of the press?" Have you thought about it? It makes no sense. No other notorious criminal has ever been given such an opportunity. Was it given to Jeffry Epstein? How about Jeffry Dahmer? Scott Peterson?