← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kevin_O'Keeffe
Thread ID: 19666 | Posts: 15 | Started: 2005-08-16
2005-08-16 03:54 | User Profile
Our new apartment is spacious enough that I now have an office-we're-hoping-the-fertility-doctors-will-help-us-transform-into-a-nursery. Until that happens, I wish to decorate my office (while I still have it) in part through the display of numerous patriotic bumperstickers. My local AOBS had an EXCELLENT selection of such stickers, but it closed a few years ago, and the AOBS website has about six stickers total (as opposed to like 200 at my local, now-defunct store). Does anyone know where I can see a list of AOBS locations? Or just know of some site where I can purchase right-wing bumperstickers, preferably one with a large selection? Thanks.
2005-08-16 03:59 | User Profile
Kevin,
There is this guy I listen to that occasionally gives out the number for an AO bookstore in N. Hollywood, I believe. Next time I hear it, I'll send it to you.
2005-08-16 05:50 | User Profile
Kevin,
Here's the remaining ones in California.
[url="http://www.welchreport.com/home.cfm"]www.welchreport.com [/url](They're down near the bottom on the left.)
They're no longer involved with the JBS after the SoCal schism et al. I used to help out at the one in O.C. during college and we had some slick ones. Alas, like the shop in San Diego, it's now closed, too.
2005-08-16 12:06 | User Profile
Intrepid,
Can you enlighten me on what this CoCal schism was about?
2005-08-16 17:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Intrepid,
Can you enlighten me on what this CoCal schism was about?[/QUOTE] Sure, Sertorius, I'll try to. Most of the information came to me via the elderly lady who ran the AOBS in O.C., who was also very close friends with the gal from the N. Hollywood store. With regard to the handling of the bookstores, this is probably the best explaination I've seen from Alan Stang's site:
I can recall when American Opinion Bookstores covered the landscape like buffalo before the coming of the railroad. Not only did they sell books, they were meeting places for local members. Today, Pat Dixon, who runs the bookstore in North Hollywood, tells me that only a few stores remain. Appleton has actually been competing with the bookstores--no doubt a reason for their decline--and has even taken steps to prevent Pat and the Orange County store from getting Society books, even through third parties. [url="http://www.alanstang.com/dixon1.htm"]Here is a letter from Mrs. Dixon[/url] explaining how she was kicked out.
There was also this comment by the CEO of the society, that sent steam out of everyone's ears I've talked to about it.
"There's good news and bad news. The bad news is, our members are getting old and dying. The good news is, we're in their wills. Those wills are my retirement."
Most of the people I knew involved with the JBS had given the majority of their adult lives to it. To hear this, other than angering them to no end, broke their hearts. (There was also a case on Stang's site, which I can't find now, dealing with a fairly substantial estate of a former member who had passed away. The verdict against the JBS, as well as the commentary of those involved, sent me through the roof. In short, it perfectly fit the above statement. Thinking about my grandparent's longtime financial support, and sweat-equity given to the society, made my stomach turn.)
Here's the letter that lays it out best, about SoCal specifically:
Also in this department, the situation in southern California, long a Birch stronghold, became so tense that some members put together a petition demanding that Mr. CEO be removed. [url="http://www.alanstang.com/petition1.htm"]Here it is[/url].
There's some other angles to it, e.g., Mormon leadership, no rosary allowed at Birch camps, etc, but that's it in a nutshell. Were you involved with the society previously, Sertorius?
2005-08-16 18:16 | User Profile
Intrepid,
Thanks for the reply. I've heard Stang before and sensed that something had changed here.
I have never been a member of the Society, but have had the pleasure to have known many Birchers, the vast majority I consider to be intelligent, level headed folks. If anything, I'm grateful to a JBS neighbor for introducing me to some of the forces that are trying to destroy the country back when I first entered high school and had to do a report on the JBS. She didn't get the report she expected, but nonetheless, gave me an A.
While some of my views about the JBS have drifted apart, primarily the role of Zionism in this destruction, I credit them with giving me a fine education in political science. We had an AOBS located on Peachtree Street I used to go to all the time. I'm sorry they are not there anymore and I am equally sorry to hear of the Society's demise.
Too bad the late Larry McDonald couldn't have been Speaker of the House instead of the despicable Newt Gingrich.
2005-08-16 18:32 | User Profile
Sertorius,
I'm probably on the same page with you, that is, with your thoughts on the character and patriotism of most of the folks that were involved with the society.
Speaking of Larry McDonald: do you have an opinion on the KAL007 crash and him potentially surviving and being placed in confinement for years in the Soviet penal system? I think Senator Helms eventually got involved in this matter, if my memory serves me.
2005-08-16 19:14 | User Profile
Kevin_O'Keeffe,
American Opinion Book Services [url]http://www.aobs-store.com/[/url]
[QUOTE]American Opinion Bookstore
420 S Bascom Ave San Jose, Ca 95128-2209
Contact: Phone: (408) 292-9343[/QUOTE]
2005-08-17 00:29 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Intrepid]There's some other angles to it, e.g., Mormon leadership, no rosary allowed at Birch camps, etc, but that's it in a nutshell.[/QUOTE]
Rosary beads were explicitly banned at JBS camps? If so, and if that means what I think it means, I don't imagine one would have to be of Irish descent (or some other traditionally Roman Catholic-professing ethnicity) to conclude there probably couldn't be a much more counterproductive policy than for patriotic American Protestants to engage in formal discrimination (as is their right, of course; no one should ever question that, merely the wisdom of exercising that right) against patriotic American Roman Catholics (or vice-versa, for that matter, and extending the notion to American patriots of Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, and agnostic viewpoints; a case could be made in favor of formal discrimination against patriotic Americans who profess Atheism, Judaism, Islam, "Wicca," Odinism, Cosmotheism, the religions of India & China, etc., but its not one I'm particularly interested in making - although when an otherwise serious adult tells me she actually claims to literally believe in the tenents of "Wicca," "Scientology," or one of the other more blatantly false "New Agey" pseudo-faiths, I tend to find it very difficult not to break into guffawing, knee-slappin' laughter - other than with regard to the notion that one can never truly trust a Jew, due to statistical realities being what they are, despite the fact that a very small number of Jews are no doubt our sincere allies i.e., such good, sincere, and worthy Jews no doubt exist, albeit in very small numbers, but one can never know for certain when one has encountered one of these rarities, so one should probably always assume one is beeing snookered, rather than encountering a patriotic American of Jewish descent/practice).*
*Such a policy, by definition, is unfair and unjust with respect to the no doubt miniscule community of sincere Jews who really are American patriots despite their ethno-religious background. That is unfortunate, surely, as are many things we need to do in this world, if we are to meaningfully secure our physical survival, our liberties, and a realistic chance for our children to hold onto and pass down such to our grandchildren.
2005-08-17 00:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Intrepid]Speaking of Larry McDonald: do you have an opinion on the KAL007 crash and him potentially surviving and being placed in confinement for years in the Soviet penal system? I think Senator Helms eventually got involved in this matter, if my memory serves me.[/QUOTE]
Airline crashes (leaving aside the MIG-launched warhead issue) into frigid, oceanic waters rarely yield much in the way of survivors, and I'd never heard of their being any. A source on this would be of interest to me.
I have no idea whether this is true (and it comes from a left-wing Jew, so its probably not, but the man is very smart and well-informed, and apparently not without connections in the intelligence community, so I can't completely disregard its potential for authenticity), but it sure is interesting: According to S.F. Bay Area "anti-fascist researcher" Dave Emory (whom I've met, by the way; despite his claim never to have been employed by any domestic or foreign security forces, he has a very military bearing, if you know what I mean, and I thus got the very distinct impression he was affiliated with the CIA, Mossad, or some equivalent organization in a very direct and embedded way, but that's really just speculation on my part) reports that the shooting down of flight KAL 007 was in retaliation for a Reagan administration covert operation. This covert operation was allegedly undertaken largely by U.S.-allied elements within the KGB and/or the Soviet security apparatus generally, i.e. the men who were the proteges of the Third Reich espionage ring within the Soviet Union which was presided over by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, and apparently delivered more-or-less intact to the USA in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender by Admiral Dunnitz in the late spring of 1945. Gen. Gehlen was the director of military intelligence (although Admiral Canaris also led a military intelligence apparatus of some seemingly over-lapping nature of which I am not totally familiar, in so far as it pertains to the no doubt byzantine structure of the German national bureaucracy at the time), and it has been alleged that during the 1950s and early 1960s, he served as the de facto Deputy Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency (while some frontman formally held the title, as it wasn't politique for a former member of the Nazi Party to be holding such a high position in the U.S. government, obviously).
Anyway, the covert operation allegedly retaliated via the murder of Rep. McDonald and the other passengers & crew of flight KAL 007, in which the Gehlen Org proteges played the leading role, was the blowing up of a major Siberian oil pipeline which was considered critical for future Soviet energy needs (particularly in the event of the Soviet Union needing to gas up a great many westward-facing tanks, trucks, etc.)
Could all be crap, but it might not be, and its high-grade crap, at least.
2005-08-17 01:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]American Opinion Book Services [url]http://www.aobs-store.com/[/url][/QUOTE]
Thank you, although the AOBS I used to go to was indeed located on S. Bascom Avenue (the longest north-south running street in all of Santa Clara County - unless you count Monterey Highway, originally built when California was part of Spain, but I don't consider that a street - and one of the very few streets I am most familiar with, more so than nearly all others I have ever encountered in my life, I'll note here as a sort of coincidence) and thus that info is almost certainly an out-of-date reference to the now-defunct store of my relative youth, alas. I do appreciate the effort, however (and I suppose there's a chance they moved down the street, to what would almost have to be a better neighborhood than the strip-clup, porno shop, and pot hole haven known as "the Burbank district," where my good friend Dave has the misfortune to live at the present).
2005-08-17 01:11 | User Profile
While I have yet to entirely verify this, I suspect the following location:
Walnut Creek 1930 Montclair Drive Walnut Creek, CA 94596 925.937.1405 fax: 925.937.0149
is the sole and final AOBS location in all of Northern California. I'll bet there used to be at least a half dozen. This one probably won't be around long either. Assuming it is still around (and that the San Jose store really is closed, as I'm almost certain it is), it'd take me about 75-90 minutes to get there when the traffic was light (rarely, if ever). I'd like to go, but I suspect I won't make it anytime too soon. Perhaps they'll turn out to have a website (not the awful AOBS national website, but an independent one of their own). If not, well, if anyone would care to recommend an on-line source for patriotic/right-wing bumper stickers, please feel more than free to do so. Thanks.
2005-08-17 06:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe]Rosary beads were explicitly banned at JBS camps? If so, and if that means what I think it means, I don't imagine one would have to be of Irish descent (or some other traditionally Roman Catholic-professing ethnicity) to conclude there probably couldn't be a much more counterproductive policy than for patriotic American Protestants to engage in formal discrimination (as is their right, of course; no one should ever question that, merely the wisdom of exercising that right) against patriotic American Roman Catholics (or vice-versa, for that matter, and extending the notion to American patriots of Eastern Orthodox, Mormon, and agnostic viewpoints; a case could be made in favor of formal discrimination against patriotic Americans who profess Atheism, Judaism, Islam, "Wicca," Odinism, Cosmotheism, the religions of India & China, etc., but its not one I'm particularly interested in making - although when an otherwise serious adult tells me she actually claims to literally believe in the tenents of "Wicca," "Scientology," or one of the other more blatantly false "New Agey" pseudo-faiths, I tend to find it very difficult not to break into guffawing, knee-slappin' laughter - other than with regard to the notion that one can never truly trust a Jew, due to statistical realities being what they are, despite the fact that a very small number of Jews are no doubt our sincere allies i.e., such good, sincere, and worthy Jews no doubt exist, albeit in very small numbers, but one can never know for certain when one has encountered one of these rarities, so one should probably always assume one is beeing snookered, rather than encountering a patriotic American of Jewish descent/practice).*
*Such a policy, by definition, is unfair and unjust with respect to the no doubt miniscule community of sincere Jews who really are American patriots despite their ethno-religious background. That is unfortunate, surely, as are many things we need to do in this world, if we are to meaningfully secure our physical survival, our liberties, and a realistic chance for our children to hold onto and pass down such to our grandchildren.[/QUOTE] Actually, the insinuation was that it was the Mormon CEO behind it. My friend is an uber-devout Catholic, and this got her going, so to speak.
It was simply very odd, in the sense that most in the JBS were/are conservative Christians, after all. Tell folks with a penchant for conspiracies to begin with, and they'll come up with some good ones. :)
**And let's begin with the latest extrusion. Prayer was certainly an important element of the summer camps I first attended almost thirty years ago. Wherever in the country the Society ran a camp, from Pennsylvania to California, students would gather voluntarily during free time in the afternoon, or after the campfire, to say the Rosary, or to read Scripture, or to do whatever else their respective church, or synagogue, or other religious organization, called worship. Adults at the camp--Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, etc.--participated. Again, this was not required; it was certainly not sectarian. Participation in one's own religion was one of the things the camps tried to encourage. **
**No more. Pursuant to an Executive Order issued by Mr. CEO, such voluntary prayer at JBS summer camps no longer is permitted. It would be easy to speculate about his reasons. I am not going to do that. Whatever his reasons, that is the fact. At about the same time, in Boston, the federal government forbade all religious activity at a church summer camp, because seven of the camp's teenage counselors were participants in a federally funded summer-jobs program. The church camp had won praise from everyone in the area, but the government is now trying to shut it down.**
**Our next witness is Tom Foltz. Tom has been a member of the Society since 1964. [url="http://www.alanstang.com/f1.htm"]His letter[/url] needs no help from me. Don Julius for about twenty years was a Coordinator in Ohio. We'll hear more from Don later. He complained about the prohibition of voluntary prayer at the camp and was fired. [url="http://www.alanstang.com/jul21.htm"]Here is the letter he wrote on the subject[/url]. As you can see, he fully backs Tom Foltz up.** **And our final witness in the matter is [url="http://alanstang.com/rice.htm"]Dr. Charles Rice[/url]. Dr. Rice is Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, and has written for the magazine. For many years, he spoke at the Indiana camp. No more. As you saw in the Foltz letter, Society management apparently backdated documents and crawfished temporarily when they got wind that Dr. Rice had quit. How many such celebrities can the Society afford to lose? The Society in that part of the country has been decimated.**
**It is important to see this disaster in context. If it stood alone, reason would tell us it was a mistake, a misunderstanding. But it does not stand alone. It is merely the latest in a long train of abuses. A pattern emerges. **
2005-08-17 06:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe]Airline crashes (leaving aside the MIG-launched warhead issue) into frigid, oceanic waters rarely yield much in the way of survivors, and I'd never heard of their being any. A source on this would be of interest to me.
I have no idea whether this is true (and it comes from a left-wing Jew, so its probably not, but the man is very smart and well-informed, and apparently not without connections in the intelligence community, so I can't completely disregard its potential for authenticity), but it sure is interesting: According to S.F. Bay Area "anti-fascist researcher" Dave Emory (whom I've met, by the way; despite his claim never to have been employed by any domestic or foreign security forces, he has a very military bearing, if you know what I mean, and I thus got the very distinct impression he was affiliated with the CIA, Mossad, or some equivalent organization in a very direct and embedded way, but that's really just speculation on my part) reports that the shooting down of flight KAL 007 was in retaliation for a Reagan administration covert operation. This covert operation was allegedly undertaken largely by U.S.-allied elements within the KGB and/or the Soviet security apparatus generally, i.e. the men who were the proteges of the Third Reich espionage ring within the Soviet Union which was presided over by Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, and apparently delivered more-or-less intact to the USA in the immediate aftermath of the German surrender by Admiral Dunnitz in the late spring of 1945. Gen. Gehlen was the director of military intelligence (although Admiral Canaris also led a military intelligence apparatus of some seemingly over-lapping nature of which I am not totally familiar, in so far as it pertains to the no doubt byzantine structure of the German national bureaucracy at the time), and it has been alleged that during the 1950s and early 1960s, he served as the de facto Deputy Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency (while some frontman formally held the title, as it wasn't politique for a former member of the Nazi Party to be holding such a high position in the U.S. government, obviously).
Anyway, the covert operation allegedly retaliated via the murder of Rep. McDonald and the other passengers & crew of flight KAL 007, in which the Gehlen Org proteges played the leading role, was the blowing up of a major Siberian oil pipeline which was considered critical for future Soviet energy needs (particularly in the event of the Soviet Union needing to gas up a great many westward-facing tanks, trucks, etc.)
Could all be crap, but it might not be, and its high-grade crap, at least.[/QUOTE] That's a wild story, Kevin. I've read Gehlen's memoirs, and a couple other tracks that in regards to his operatives. In both Ukraine and the Baltic states, there were operatives and active resistance cells until the early to mid '50s, but that's as far as any reputable source will go. That story, at least in its far-out nature, reminds me of Carto's hack, Michael Collins Piper, and his story of the JBS, General John Singlaub and millions of Ferdinand Marcos' hidden gold in the Philippines funding some grand anti-communist blah, blah...
[url="http://www.rescue007.org/"]www.rescue007.org/ [/url]
This is the site that goes into the theories of a possible landing, etc. It doesn't sound as far fetched as it sounds. This Shifrin fellow wrote an extensive book on the entire gulag system. Alas, money now buys information in Russia, so you would assume something tangible would've surfaced by now. Interesting yarn, regardless. One thing to ponder: if the Soviets got thee Larry McDonald alive, imagine what they did to him.
Where Are They Now?
Our knowledge of the whereabouts of members of passengers and crew of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, shot down on August 31, 1983, is based on information received by the Research Centre for Prisons, Psychprisons and Forced Labor Concentration Camps of the USSR. This research center was established by the late Avraham Shifrin, an Israeli who had, himself, spent time in the Soviet prison camp system. Mr. Shifrin maintained an extensive network of contacts within the Soviet Union and its successor states. Much of the information that we have was obtained at great personal risk by his contacts.
** [img]http://www.rescue007.org/images/Avraham1990.jpg[/img] Avraham Shifrin with wife, Eleanora**
The Centreââ¬â¢s investigations in 1989 to 1991 determined that the passengers and crew of KAL 007 were taken, upon rescue, to the KGB Coast Guard base on Sakhalin. Within a few days (by September 4, 1983), everyone was taken to the KGB base at Soveteskaja Gavan on the Siberian mainland opposite Sakhalin, roughly 600 miles north of Vladivostok. Here the men, women and children were divided into separate groups. The men and women were taken by train to Tynda on the Baikal-Amur Railway about 800 miles inland where at least some were put to forced labor. The male adults were, at some point, distributed to a number of different camps throughout Siberia some of which were camps that also held American POWs and other foreign prisoners.
Congressman Lawrence P. McDonald, Democrat, 7th District, Georgia, was separated from the rest of the passengers and taken by special air transport to Moscow on or about Sept. 8, 1983. A special KGB guard unit brought from Khabarovsk to accompany him. The KGB had a fleet of special aircraft, the 910xx series, that was used exclusively for transporting high profile prisoners, VIPs, and others requiring the strictest security. These were used for even very short trips rather than using overland transportation.
The child passengers were kept in Sovetskaja Gavan in a specially established isolated temporary orphanage until the end of October. They were then gradually transferred to various orphanages in Vladivostock, Omsk, Barnaul and Kazakhstan based on their racial identity. The intent was to assimilate them into the predominant racial populations in these areas.
**Congressman McDonald**
Upon arrival in Moscow, McDonald was taken to the Lubyanka KGB prison where he was given the designation, ââ¬ÅPrisoner Number 3.ââ¬Â While at the Lubyanka, he was kept in isolation, taken from his cell only for questioning. He was interrogated several times by the head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov. (Kryuchkov was a member of the core group who sought to seize power from Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991. He was arrested when the coup failed but was later released. He attended the inauguration of President Vladimir Putinââ¬âat Mr. Putinââ¬â¢s personal invitationââ¬âin 2000. Mr. Kryuchkov is now an internationally known lecturer.)
Following a number of questionings, Mr. McDonald was moved to the Lefortovo KGB prison also in Moscow for continued interrogation over a period of several months. He was then moved to a ââ¬Ådachaââ¬Â (summer house) in Sukhanova near Moscow where the interrogations continued. Mr. Shifrinââ¬â¢s sources indicated that they had strong reason to believe that McDonald was interrogated under drugs that may have eventually resulted in identity loss. He was brought eventually to a prison in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, the region where the Soviets had important nuclear missile test ranges and similar installations. He may have brought to this area to be interrogated by experts there as part of the effort to find out what he could say about the US nuclear program and what he knew about the Soviet program.
Early in 1987, former NSA agent, Jerry Mooney, testified before Congress about the ââ¬ÅMoscow Boundââ¬Â program and the importance of Karaganda as a center of the Soviet nuclear program and an area where certain highly-skilled American POWs with technical knowledge were brought. Following his testimony, the world press focused on this area. In an apparent attempt to keep McDonaldââ¬â¢s presence there secret, he was moved in mid-1987, by special transport, to a small prison near the town of Temir-Tau, also in Kazakhstan. Here he was given special treatment but was not allowed to communicate with anyone. In the summer of 1990, he was taken to the transportation prison in Karaganda. Here, as an unknown prisoner whose file is sealed by the KGB, he remained. As of 1995, all efforts to obtain additional information from the Karaganda prison have failed. Congressmanââ¬â¢s present location is unknownââ¬âit may be there or he may have been moved since then.
**Child Passengers**
Efforts to track down the children of KAL 007 have been very difficult. Many of the youngest ones may have been adopted into local families. Some information that is not very clear was obtained apparently about the Grenfell children, Stacey and Noelle, ages 3 and 5, of Rochester, NY. It appears that they were placed in an orphanage in Vladivostok until 1990. The older child, Noelle, now aged about 12, was sent to Medical School 3 associated with the city hospital in Khabarovsk for training. She was there for about a year then was taken elsewhere and her file removed from the school and hospital. At this point, her trail was lost.
**A Female Passenger**
Sources provided information on one young oriental woman who was set to work felling timber in the area of Tynda, Siberia. Prior to 1985, she lost her left arm below the elbow in a work accident. Subsequently, she was sent across the vast Siberian land mass to the village of Nachodka on the Tazovskaya Guba inlet above the Arctic Circle where she remained until sometime in the late summer of 1991 or 1992. The villagers there thought that she was of indigenous Nenets origin because of her Oriental features. She did not mix with the villagers and was generally unknown by them. They were aware that she had been removed by men in authority.
**Male Adult Passengers**
Sources indicate that most of the male passengers and crew were taken to a series of three ultra-secret prison camps in the dense taiga region along the Amur river near the village of Zapokrovsk not far from the Chinese border. These are the same camps where American POWs were known to have been located. Unfortunately, all efforts to get to the camps and identify passengers visually failed because of the intense security in the area.
Additional camps were in the area of Cita, headquarters of the Far East Theater of Operations of the Soviet military, at Nercinsk, Nercinski Zavod and other locations.
At the time, there were also three other ultra-secret camps for foreign prisoners on Rogerââ¬â¢s Bay, Wrangell Island in the Arctic Ocean. Mr. Shifrin had reason to believe that some of the passengers and, especially, the crew may have been taken to Wrangell because of their aeronautical training. These camps have since been abandoned and all inmates moved elsewhere.
This is the extent of our current knowledge concerning the locations where the passengers and crew of KAL 007 were taken after being rescued from the downed plane. We call for the Russian government to conduct a thorough investigation of their records and of the records of these camps so as to locate the present whereabouts of these men and women who were so tragically wrenched out of their private lives and the lives of those who loved them. We call for the return of our lost loved ones.
The International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors, Inc. February 14, 2002
2005-08-17 12:32 | User Profile
Intrepid,
I think he was assassinated. Incidently, Helms was supposed to be on the same flight, but, missed his connection in Alaska. Even taking into account Soviet paranoia still doesn't wash with me. If anything, their apologists could use that as an excuse.
I had the pleasure of meeting him on a number of occasions, a truly brilliant man and a patriot of the first order.