Site Ed. Note: Here, incidentally, is an elucidative issue of Life, the issue dated November 1, 1963, remembering that this weekly magazine, as with others of the time, hit the newsstands a couple of days before the date of the issue, with subscription versions going out a little before that. We have commented on that issue and this issue of November 8, before.

You might also wish to peruse this issue, from October 11, as well as this one, of November 22.

We acquired our own hardcopy versions of the first two in 1993. Whether we ever saw those or the others contemporaneous with their original publication, we could not say for sure. Our school's library carried them, and we sometimes perused them there, but not regularly, and we do not recall particularly seeing any issue of that period prior to the November 29 issue, which we did read at the time. We do know that we did not see them in the home as there was no subscription to Life then, in the home. We only saw them sometimes at school, Life, that is.

Anyway, we recommend that you pore through those issues, including the advertisements, carefully, slowly, at your leisure. Study the automobile ads, the liquor ads, the Polaroid Land Camera ad, for instance, the Bulova ads for November 1 and 8, as well as the more substantive copy, and consider, mindful, of course, of the time of publication and the terrible event which immediately followed.

Also consider this one, of November 15.

They are, we suggest, quite interconnected, quite manipulatively so, and toxically so, when in the hands of manipulative creatures unable to understand and comprehend the English language, unable to read, unable to consider the source of the prints, especially when seeking to manipulate Madame Nhu and her daughter, Le Thuy, understandably in a state of grief, making them believe that it was President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy who were responsible for the deaths of Madame Nhu's husband and brother-in-law, as they received the news during their visit in Los Angeles.

Then study carefully the woman who is stepping apace across the open field in frames 296 to 318, especially as more clearly shown at 310, carrying something in both her hands.

Who was she, really? What did she have in her hands? Was it an instrument of death, a switchbox designed to trigger a remote weapon?

The death card, we suggest, appears over the radio antenna at frame 300. Else, what is it? Wherefrom does that reflection come?

Who arranged the assassinations of the Diem brothers? Who was Ambassador to South Vietnam?

Do you really believe for one moment that this assassination was planned and carried forth by little Lee Harvey Oswald, defector to the Soviet Union, returned to become ostensibly a pro-Castro propaganda distributor in New Orleans in summer 1963, only then to acquire a job in mid-October at the Book Depository which the President's motorcade just happened to pass on the way to the Trade Mart that day in November such that he had the perfect opportunity, with a $19.95 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in hand, purchased in March from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago, under the alias A. Hidell, having a bent sight, having allegedly missed in broad daylight at much closer range a stationary target in April, ultra-rightwing, unstable racist, dismissed, disgraced General Edwin Walker, even if attempting to shoot him through the bending prismic properties inherent in glass, and accomplished this feat alone in six or seven seconds?

Who is in denial?

Of Mr. Dudley Dougherty, Texas oilman whose nephew, Bruce Baxter III, became enamored of Le Thuy, as he showed her how to shoot in Beeville, Texas, as featured in the November 8 issue referenced above, you may read much more here and here.

By the way, in one of those establishing shots in the Christmas Eve episode of our favorite tv series of the 1960's, the episode titled "The Girl from Little Egypt", the St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, located at Hyde and Bush, is shown. There are five circular objects in the windows, probably part of air conditioning units, though not discernible as such in the brief establishing shot. So what? you may ask. After the fact, you may say. But when was it made? Who saw it before Christmas Eve, 1963?

We stress again, as we have previously, turn a photo of the Depository Building, as it was that day, to the left by 90 degrees and read what is on the building. "Coo Co Coo", one attempting to turn the country 90 degrees to the right. Why were the circles there?

We do not suggest of course that the cast and crew, writers, directors, producer, of the tv series had anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy. But manipulation of scenery, of scripts, of presentation, can occur, quite apart from the creative side of the ledger, manipulation deliberately to place in the minds of those not too swift, not too well-equipped with reading skills, the subliminalized motivation to do all sorts of untoward acts--all in the name "decency", "censorship", even "art". And then the act follows.

As we have suggested before, be careful of that which you see on tv, in movies, hear on your record player, on your radio. It does seed your subconscious mind. Check yourself against reality--and history--before acting in response.

Don't play the cat chasing the ball of Twinings, trying to discover the secret of Life itself. For, we posit, it was they, who chased one block too far up that double-helixed spiral staircase to Heaven, trying to leap some of the missing steps along the way, who did it.

The only way to find out for sure what life is all about is to die. Until then, one must simply consider a dream, sometimes bad, sometimes good, mostly in between.

The front page hails the arrival in the United States of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, asking for a blow against Japan. She urged to each house of the Congress, in separate speeches, immediate strikes to remove the "Sword of Damocles" which Japan held over the United Nations. In the extemporized Senate speech, she raised a defiant fist, saying that President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms were "a gong of freedom to the United Nations and a death-knell to their aggressors."

Unfortunately, the roving-eyed reporter, as appeared the custom with respect to all such female dignitaries of the day, paid more attention in the prints to her attire than to the substance of her speeches. But that is show business.

As she spoke, the Japanese launched a newly concerted offensive against southwest Yunnan Province in southern China from Lashio in Burma, along the old Burma Road. The major new offensive also extended into four sectors of the Yangtze Valley, an attempt to choke off and conquer Chungking.

Apparently, Hitler had ordered his Japanese puppets to move aggressively, in an effort, coinciding with Madame Chiang Kai-shek's visit, to induce the United States to pressure a commitment to provide more forces to China, reducing the forces available in North Africa, for a European invasion, as well as reducing the forces to defend and wage the fight for restoration of territory in the South Pacific.

Would such a strategy convince the eagle, Mr. Roosevelt, and his warhawk, Mr. Churchill, to bite the bait?

Seventeen light American tanks fought a delaying, rearguard action against heavier Panzer IV tanks, to enable the evacuation by U.S. and French forces from the plains of Thelepte near the Tunisian-Algerian border.

But as Sbeitla, reported besieged the day before, fell, so did Kasserine and Feriana, lengthening Rommel's advance from Faid Pass to 66 miles since Sunday, comprising territory of 4,000 square miles, forcing the retreat of American infantry troops and armored personnel to the mountains below Tebessa on the Algerian border, 12 miles inside Algeria, there to regroup and await reinforcement. The scene was quickly being set for the Allied defeat at Kasserine Pass, a battle beginning in the morning of this day and continuing through February 23.

Secretary of War Stimson, cautioning that while American forces had suffered severe setbacks in the previous four days to the Nazi tank columns of Rommel in central Tunisia, there was as yet no loud tocsin to be rung, for the fact that General Montgomery's Eighth Army was occupied in reorganizing before the Mareth Line while the British First Army was bogged down in mud in the northern sector of Tunisia. The central Tunisian plains, he explained, where the Rommel rout was taking place, were only lightly defended. He again asserted, as the previous day, that the action was intended only to broaden the avenue for Rommel's troops to achieve a defensive line around Tunis and Bizerte and not to form an offensive thrust against Algeria.

Thus, while the setback was severe and suggested on first blush harsh forebodings, as it was the first major clash between Rommel's forces and American tanks, being compared with Montgomery's loss of Tobruk the previous June, forced to retreat back into Egypt to the narrow line at El Alamein, between the sea and the Qattara Depression, this time the presence of the British armies flanking Rommel's positions on both the north and the south promised a different result than retreat inside Algeria. The British Eighth Army had the capability of sweeping around to the left of the Mareth Line and attacking Rommel from the south. Yet hard fighting lay ahead.

DeWitt MacKenzie, syndicated columnist, had just returned from a four and a half month trip, starting in Northern Ireland and England, proceeding to Lisbon, the west coast of Africa, to Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, India, and China. He reported his belief that Hitler was permanently embraced by the ropes, could not survive the count longer than the end of 1943, hedging his bets somewhat by adding that most military and civilian observers on the scene with whom he spoke were confident that the end would come by the end of 1944. The latter prediction, of course, was close to being accurate; his own intuitive interpretation had a ways to go.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved a bill to set taxation of salaries above $25,000 at pre-Pearl Harbor levels, ignoring the while the President's urged "super-tax" to cut after-tax income to $25,000, or to split the kitty, by providing a 50 percent tax on all income above $25,000.

The House committee was chaired by Representative "Farmer Bob" Doughton, also a banker, of North Carolina's western Allegheny County. Mr. Doughton never went to college, had, however, an honorary degree from the University (for his banking activity), and was the son of a Cap'n (perhaps a brevit Col'nel) in the Confed'racy.

Would you have expe'ted any diff'rent result?

--What y'all tryin' to do, impose Commonism down heya? You cain't limit a man's livin' like 'at. Spoils incentive to be Horatio Algeria. Don't ye know an'thing?

In response to criticism of Walter Winchell's remarks by Republican Congressman Clare Hoffman of Michigan, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox agreed to mollify the Congressman by placing Winchell on inactive duty from his status as Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve. Mr. Winchell had criticized isolationist-leaning Congressmen, as Hoffman, suggesting that some people were "damn fools" for voting for certain Congressmen--such as, we assume, Mr. Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman had a checkered career. Included in his carpetbag of tricks was his urging against systemic immunization against polio on the notion that the medical establishment in the country was rife with Russian-born doctors, Communist infiltrators.

He, likewise, probably suspected fluoridation of water as an infiltrator as well, but that is not indicated.

Mr. Winchell, nevertheless, continued as a well-known syndicated columnist, radio commentator, and narrator to the crime-fighting of Eliot Ness during Prohibition. But the latter was later.

Incidentally, while on the subject of columnists, we forgot to include two days ago this page from February 16. The Washington Merry-Go-Round column of Drew Pearson is worth a read, as well as the one by Tom Wolf, not to be confused with either the then deceased novelist or the contemporary novelist, both of whose names are spelled with an "e" on the end.

From Salt Lake City, two virgins in an embrace became something more innocuous, less promiscuous, to satisfy university officials, bringing it all back homespun for the innocent eyes of the little boys and girls of college life who, undoubtedly, were not ready for such vile pictorial stimulation of prurient interests.

Carnage on the front page, either by picture or print, of every newspaper and news magazine worth their salt, nearly everyday, was, however, quite alright.

Herr Doktor Goebbels addressed the people of Germany via Berlin radio, promising the "unvarnished truth", saying it was not the time for wondering how matters happened as they had on the Russian front. "There is no time for useless discussions. We must act, and this immediately and thoroughly." Said he.

He then went back to his hookah.

On the editorial page, Sam Grafton impales to the post the outrageous doctrines of Hitler's Germany by citing their complete failure to cure the ills which they were propagandized by Goebbels to remedy, then implemented, at Hitler's beck, by the kicking boot steel of the Gestapo. They had not only not proved cathartic to Germany's manifold illness, its collective insanity, but had exacerbated it. The retreats in Russia persisted, with more celerity than in France in 1918, points out Mr. Grafton, despite Jews having been exterminated by the millions. The people starved in the streets of Germany despite the compulsory labor, the acquisition of lebensraum to provide a new breadbasket out of the Ukraine, a new oil base out of the Caucasus, a new manufacturing base out of the urban centers, all to be in furtherance of the grand scheme of geopolitics, all accomplished through piracy of other lands' resources, enslavement of their people to the Nazi will.

The scheme, however, had, despite all the bogeys being eliminated from German life, nevertheless miserably fallen into decrepitude. Even the trains no longer ran on time in either Germany or Italy. So much for the grand experiment of Nazism and Fascism.

Mr. Grafton concludes by suggesting, ironically, that perhaps the West should be nevertheless grateful to the pathetic little idiots of Germany who bought into Hitler's hyperbolic bolshevism couched as anti-Bolshevism, totalitarianism, by any other name, always being the same thing, hedonism and plenty for the ruling class of the very few, nothing but idle words and dreams, crushed to dirt and dust, for the large remainder of society strung along.

Would it were that world society had already learned from times so recently past as the Civil War, as World War I, as the Franco-Prussian wars, the Napoleonic wars, the profound lesson being demonstrated yet again to the world by the Nazis. But the advent of new technology and new weapons gave to the little Hitlers and their minions the dream once again of ultimate conquest, of empire, and one which they lived in full, if incessantly during its duration in mortal terror for their lives, for twelve years in Germany until finally, with hands tied and forced by the sure death which would soon follow, they beat the hangman to the draw.

Was Hitler the product of bad genes? Was he the product of a sensitive soul being compelled into the service of his country in World War I, suffering the sight of too much death, becoming thereby unhinged from reality, irremediably so? Not seeing very much combat, nevertheless hauling the dead and wounded from the lines, thus an artist gone awry with battle fatigue, beset by that which we now commonly term post-traumatic stress syndrome, used then by Prussian Junkers to reach the masses, finding that reaching the dreary, war-weary masses of Germany, on the ropes economically in 1923, a difficult proposition until he discovered the convenient scapegoat, the Jew, already a longstanding bogey to many Europeans, an immutable object on which to blame all of society's manifold problems. Season it with an ephemerally gleaned study of the Old South plantation system, through viewing "Birth of a Nation", add Sir Halford Mackinder's theory of geopolitics, the Heartland Theory at the base of the "axis" concept, communicated directly to him, while in jail, by Karl Haushofer, and the tornadically swirling maelstrom of the mind to send via Herr Doktor Goebbels, playing drummer to all the little potential Nazis, too dumb or lazy to think for themselves, too willing to relegate to another speaking their language, voicing their concerns in platitudes to which they could relate, promising a new Volkswagen in every garage to drive on the grand new autobahn, cloaking the speakers finally with the mantle of mystical, deific qualities, would bind in the twinings to complete the irrational fervor, the responsibility for orchestrating the treacle-based circle of irrationality.

A piece reports on the experience of Britain and Germany with extended work weeks, above the 48 hours just mandated by presidential order in the U. S. on February 10, with war industries subject to time-and-a-half overtime pay, those subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act, still therefore exempting such occupations as domestic workers, retail workers, and journalists from time-and-a-half, while still mandating 48 hours per week even for those occupations. The British and German experiments at extended hours above 56 in Britain and 60 in Germany had failed for increased accidents and absenteeism, lack of efficiency generally. In Britain, everyone belonged to a union voluntarily, different from the trade union concept in the United States.

Would the effort therefore succeed in the United States? Already certain industries had been working overtime up to 51 hours.

Time would tell.

Raymond Clapper, extending his remarks from the day before, suggests that while the issue of increased aid to China was one which should be undertaken for the sake of shortening the war with Japan, realistically, it would have to wait at least until the situation in North Africa was resolved.

He points out that had General Eisenhower been able to press the British and American forces onward, at the outset of the Operation Torch landings in November, the Allies could have taken Tunisia with little effort. But the forces by then had outrun their supply lines and by the time they caught up, winter rains had reduced the terrain to a muddy cauldron, capable of supporting only sporadic air raids on Tunis and Bizerte and across the water to the supply bases in Sicily. Now, he insists correctly, a bloody fight lay ahead.

A letter to the editor sets straight the respected "Everyday Counselor" of The News, Reverend Spaugh, who had adverted to General Giraud's enunciated reasons for the fall of France, too much unionization and a short work week, as equating in the perceptions of the Reverend to potential conditions in the United States. The letter writer astutely takes him to task, citing the advocacy, along with General Maurice Gamelin, by General Giraud, of the construction of the Maginot Line as a reasonable defense to future German aggression, the refusal to recognize De Gaulle's advocacy for building tanks and dive bombers to meet the modern demands of war, trying, in other words, to base defense policy on outmoded concepts proved valid during World War I, all while Hitler turned Germany into a military-industrial complexity, thus able to flank and overrun France’s comparatively minimal defense capability when the critical hour arrived. The perceptive, attentive letter writer was correct.

"The Drummer", probably again by Tom Jimison, tells of the renascence of the traditional traveling salesman you have heard about in the motorpsycho nitemare, not the Music Man, though the initial description would fit the latter as well the former of the old days. Now, he was on the landscape again, attests the author, for without the modern convenience of the automobile, for gas and rubber rationing, he was having to hoof it. His name: Dr. George Browning.

The editorial column praises first the organization which attracted U.S. Rubber to build a war production plant in Charlotte, thus dramatically reducing the outflow of wartime workers to other cities.

Second, it takes issue with the President's plan for curtailing income to $25,000 per year and urges Congress not to enact it, cites its origins from a Communist-led movement within CIO, picked up by Mrs. Roosevelt and transmitted to the President as another gimmick by which to move the country closer to a form of socialism endorsed in Britain.

Well, was it that simple, and was it so? We don’t think so. There was genuine need to curtail inflation and the President, having been in 1938 accused of eating grilled millionaire for breakfast, insisted in his visit to Chapel Hill that it wasn’t so, that he only ate scrambled eggs for breakfast.

There was a need to convey to the entire country, as he regularly reminded during the previous year, the requisition of equal and substantial sacrifice. If ordinary workers were being compelled to work 48 hours per week, many without overtime pay, then why, pray tell, should there be unimpinged millionaires, or even those earning $75,000 per annum? The ordinary worker took home usually less than $2,000 per year, most earning in the range of $1,000 to $1,500. And they, primarily, were the ones who most likely were also going to be sent to the fight on the frontlines, lambs to the slaughter. The News, we suggest, was wrong on this one.

Just why it so regularly editorialized, when no one who worked at the newspaper, probably not even its publisher and editor, carried home more than about $3,000 per year, passes understanding. Cash, for instance, had earned $2,400 per year as Associate Editor when he left in 1941.

Pulling the rope and cutting into the Herblock, we don't know the specie of tree depicted as being chopped down with the hammer and sickle by Premier Stalin, the Nazi tree.

But we have to ask whether some self-righteous idiots in 1963 decided that it was an oak. It wasn't, though it may well have been an Elm.

Framed Edition

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