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via Glass Onion: Glass Onion welcomes James Corbett of corbettreport.com to discuss the 2006 documentary about John’s political activism and his fight against the Nixon administration to stay in the U.S. We also take some time to look at the political landscape of the time and the difference between then and now in terms of how much the public is shown about what is really happening in the world. Big thanks to Broc West for the video editing and slides.
CLICK HERE for the Glass Onion version of the podcast with added audio clips!
VIDEO COURTESY GLASS ONION: ODYSEE / YOUTUBE
SHOW NOTES:
Glass Onion podcast on Apple / Player.fm / Podbean / Soundcloud / Stitcher
Vinnie Caggiano and James Corbett dissect “She Loves You”
The U.S. vs. John Lennon (2006 documentary)
Everything I Know About Conspiracies I Learned From The Beatles
Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon
Rebuilding America’s Defenses (PNAC)
Rumsfeld warns of Pearl Harbor surprise attack at confirmation hearing
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Geraldo Rivera says Obama is Dead Instead of Osama
Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files
First post best post.
My three favorite Beatles songs, historically, have been 1. Rocky Racoon, 2. Baby, You’re A Rich Man (Before Social Network film popularized it) and 3. Across the Universe (so I guess 2 of those are John songs). I don’t listen to the Beatles, or even music generally, with the enthusiasm and almost all-encompassing interest like I did when I was younger. Nevertheless, it’s still a part of our larger cultures as well as our individual lives. I remember being blown away by the Winged Beatle documentary on the occult and ‘Paul Is Dead’ conspiracy evidence and speculation in my earlier redpilling days. I still don’t know what to think about the Paul/Faul debate (it’s a little internecine like the Twin Towers debate, as James says).
Should be a good interview and important relevant to government surveillance overreach/violation of privacy rights, etc.!
The marketers had the reigns of those boys, the magical mystery tour dollar was a rip-off of ken kesey & co’s “further” bus.
excellent historically relevant read:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7442.The_Electric_Kool_Aid_Acid_Test
No mention of the Tavistock Institute. Why is that? Don’t you believe what John Coleman says, namely that they had a hand in the rise and control of the Beatles?
Interesting comment. John Coleman who wrote “The Beatles and the Aquarian Conspiracy” https://educate-yourself.org/cn/colemanbeatlesandAquarianConspiracy01mar07.shtml
Based on my skimming, the author doesn’t enjoy the music of the 60s and the use of LSD and the rapid social changes that occurred and this is possibly influenced by the CIA and social engineers.
I read about “THE STRANGE BUT MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF LAUREL CANYON AND THE BIRTH OF THE HIPPIE GENERATION” By Dave McGowen https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/inside-the-lc-the-strange-but-mostly-true-story-of-laurel-canyon-and-the-birth-of-the-hippie-generation-part-xxi/
Though I find these associations interesting, I have a lot of doubt that The Beatles music was written by someone else, or that every popular artist came from the CIA. Certainly there may have been some influence on the music and the “New Left” but I don’t think the entire cultural phenomenon can be reduced to a psychological operation.
MK ultra’s use of LSD for mind control, in my opinion, was a huge failure and created the opposite of what their intention was. I don’t think psychedelics such as LSD or magic mushrooms are a very good mind control tool since they often expand creativity, introspection, and empathetic connection between fellow humans and the natural world. This is the opposite of what the controllers want. They want fear, division, hate, NOT love and connection and expansion of consciousness.
I’ll check out those documentaries you mentioned. It’s a fascinating topic, about the CIA influence in the music of the 1960s. I happen to like the Beatles music after they started dropping LSD more than the early stuff. My husband prefers the early stuff. He studied music and was into Jazz.
I really enjoy a lot of the late 1960s early 1970s American rock and roll, even if the CIA did attempt to subvert is. I think they couldn’t subvert the soul in the music. There is something in music that is special, even if an evil force attempts to corrupt it. I felt like John Lennons spirit was genuine in the music. It’s just a feeling I have. There’s something spiritual in the roots of rock and roll that I can’t describe in words.
I don’t think MK ultra was successful which is why they abandoned or seemed to abandon using LSD for mind control experiments. I don’t think psychedelics like LSD and similar compounds will give the desired result, based on experience with these substances. I also note that these are hard to obtain now.
You are right and I should clarify what I meant. What I meant to convey is that the use of LSD as a mass mind control substance like Aldous Huxley’s “soma” was not achieved, in my opinion. Anti depressants are a much more effective drug in this regard.
The social engineers who are masterminding our puppeteering past agendas and this current one are not of sound mind. The desire to eliminate ones own species is pathological, which is what they seem to want to do.
James, don’t you believe what John Coleman says, namely that the Tavistock Institute had a hand in the rise and control of the Beatles?
— Army Jacket —
At the 40 minute mark of “Interview 1672 – James Corbett on The US vs John Lennon”, they discuss John Lennon wearing an army jacket. Actually, I think it was a shirt.
But during that era, for years, I wore an army jacket. I loved it and wish that I still had it. It had the classic Vietnam Army-green color, cut longer like a sport coat with hip placed pockets on each side, along with other miscellaneous pockets inside and then outside at the breast. It was made of a heavy weight tight cotton weave. I had no insignia on my jacket, making sure of that when I bought it. It was light enough to wear on a Spring or Autumn day in Texas without breaking into a sweat. So, I wore it often.
When I got busted for pot, the security guy found my baggie and pipe in the side pocket. https://www.corbettreport.com/september-open-thread-2/#comment-117978
The near-west Texas town where I spent my High School years had a population of 10,000. However, it was home to the world’s largest primary helicopter training base for the Army during the Vietnam War, which was located on the outskirts of town. On any given weekday, there might be 500 to 1,000 choppers flying around the county. Fort Wolters had a population of around 10,000. Servicemen were constantly being shipped in and then transferred out following their training or assignment.
Financial perspectives change with transient men who soon will go to Nam.
On one occasion, I begged and pleaded with my Dad to loan me $600 so I could buy a ’63 Corvette which was for sale by a soldier who was headed out. I’m probably alive today, because my Dad firmly said “No! You are NOT getting that car.”
Downtown Mineral Wells wasn’t much. Mostly old buildings from a bygone period when tourists came for the water, baths and big band dances. The Crazy Water Hotel and Baker Hotel still stand, somewhat.
Anyway, during the Vietnam era, there were two “Army surplus resale” stores downtown in the old buildings. That’s where I bought my Army jacket. The place was packed with old, used uniforms. I searched for one without insignias, or where they would be easy to remove. I never could figure out how the place made money, because I always thought that the Army issued uniforms. Very few local citizens shopped for Army clothes.
I also bought some Army shirts. They were a thick, heavy weight cotton not unlike what John Lennon is wearing. The shirts felt almost “starched.” For me, they seemed tough to wear on a hot, humid day.
I don’t know anything about The Beatles but I loved this interview as it plunged me into an era that fascinates me. Though I’m particularly interested in the creation of the Warburg-funded Institute for Policy Studies and their role in creating and promoting the New Left, the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers along with their provocative affiliations with the likes of Noam Chomsky and Arthur Waskow (directly connected to Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago 7, of course) and “anarchical” activities around the world
I stumbled upon this (probably well-known) tidbit concerning John Lennon and Bob Dylan:
15: Bob Dylan
Dylan and The Beatles influenced each other throughout the 60s, each spurring the other on to making music that pushed boundaries and reshaped what was thought possible of the simple “pop song.” It was Dylan who convinced John Lennon (No.62) to write more personal songs in the shape of “Help!,” while The Beatles showed Bob what could be achieved with a full band behind him, helping the latter “go electric” in 1965. It was with George Harrison (No.65), however, that Dylan struck up the longest-lasting friendship; the two played together often in the years that followed, forming The Traveling Wilburys and guesting on each other’s projects.
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/whos-who-on-the-beatles-sgt-peppers-lonely-hearts-club-band-album-cover/
And of course, the other figures that appear on the album cover are extremely provocative as well including Aleister Crowley, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung, George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells among others.
To make the connection between John Lennon and the Institute for Policy Studies there’s Rennie Davis, who died this year on February 2: a very intriguing and provocative 10-minute testimony given by the man 8 years ago entitled: John Lennon and Rennie Davis: Making of the song Imagine
“Social change is an inside job…You are the pivot point…The world is a psychological construct whose origin is ourself…We have to have a complete rescripting of ourself and out of ourself, rescript the entire human future…”
along with a few interesting extracts about the Institute for Policy Studies taken from a 1977 Larouche publication:
First, sections of the U.S. intelligence community (including the CIA) associated with Kennedy Administration NSC director McGeorge Bundy, then Columbia University Russian Studies professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and the Institute for Policy Studies’ Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet were conducting an international destabilization program characterized by the simultaneous, predominantly student-based uprisings in France, West Germany, Czechoslovakia and the United States. Material released by the 1975 Rockefeller Blue Ribbon Panel, the 1976 Church Committee and other official U.S. and foreign government sources fully documents this fact…
…The immediate circumstances around the Ford Foundation’s creation of the Weathermen are the following.
As the result of the intervention of the tiny SDS Labor Committees faction (the precursor of today’s National Caucus of Labor Committees) into the Columbia University student strike in May, 1968, the very real danger emerged that the strike would take on the character of a genuine citywide movement for economic development at the expense of the major New York banks. Under such circumstances, which posed an immediate threat to the community control pilot project, the Ford Foundation, in conjunction with the FBI, moved to break the strike through anarchist provocations. ..
…Material based on Internal Revenue Service files and released through reports of the Illinois State Crime Commission and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee revealed the following funding of the Chicago riots:
$194,888 in federal Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) funds was cond·
uited through the Institute for Policy Studies into the National Mobilization Committee (NMC), which organized and coordinated the disruptions. Among the steering committee members of the NMC were Tom Hayden, Arthur Waskow, Jerry Rubin, Rennie Davis. With the exception of IPS co-director Waskow, all the others had participated in the Columbia disruptions and all were publicly associated with the creation of the Weathermen.
arouchepub.com/eiw/public/1977/eirv04n26-19770628/eirv04n26-19770628_040-three_case_studies_in_ips_interp.pdf
https://soundcloud.com/betribe/john-lennon-and-rennie-davis
Check out Scott Freeman’s work, Deconstructing the Beatles. Excellent stuff. https://shop.culturesonar.com/collections/deconstructing-the-beatles
@58:28 on that DOB
October 9, 1940 = 10/09/1940 in the USA. The rest of the world would write that 09/10/1940.
September 10, 1940 = 09/10/1940 in the USA. The rest of the world would write that 10/09/1940.
So in the USA,
Oct 9 =10/09
Sept 10 =09/10
I’d bet my bottom federal reserve note that whoever wrote that memo had seen his passport (presumably) with his Date Of Birth in British numeric style and transcribed it as Americans do.
For example:
Strom Thurmond’s birthday is said to be December 5, 1902.
I’d write that as 12-05-1902.
In most other countries, it’d be written 05-12-1902.
From “Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11…” by Mark Riebling
And how could these students or occupational radicals
afford to travel so much?…
…Some activists were “red-diaper babies,” whose parents had
gone to New York’s City College and organized garment
workers and talked social justice at the breakfast table, but
being a professional socialist was not like running
Standard Oil. People like Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin
or Mark Rudd were not preppy WASPs or trust-fund
brats, but working-class Jewish kids from places like
Queens, New York. Yet, when they went to Prague for
two weeks and stopped over in Paris, they weren’t doing
it on bicycles, and they weren’t staying in hostels at $2.00
a night. Whence came the cash?
And after 1963, it seemed, a large number of
young and radical political leaders had been associated
with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a Washington-
based think tank heavily endowed by de-facto Soviet
influence agent Samuel Rubin. After emigrating from the
USSR in the 1920s, Rubin became a member of the
Communist Party of the U.S. A., and despite being a
communist, he made a fortune in Faberge, Inc., which he
founded in 1936. Rubin sold the lucrative family business
in 1963, the same year that IPS was established with his
money, and by the mid-1960s the institute had brought
together such militants as Stokely Carmichael, Tom
Hayden, Jerry Rubin, H. Rap Brown, and many other
representatives from SNCC and SDS. When seven black
militant groups, including the Panthers, met in December
1966 to form a black-power alliance, they did so at IPS
headquarters. Rubin’s daughter, Cora Weiss, led Women
Strike for Peace, and had mobilized thousands of women
from thirty- five states in a march on the Pentagon on
February 15, 1967. When American radicals met with
foreign counter-parts in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in
September 1967, to coordinate a massive international
“day of action” on October 1, IPS fellow Christopher
Jencks was there to meet with North Vietnamese and
Vietcong representatives. There was no evidence that IPS
was serving as a “paymaster” for the Panthers or Yippies,
and there would have been nothing illegal about it if it
had been. But given the Rubin connection, the pattern of
IPS involvement in radical action did seem significant
from the Cl perspective.
https://archive.org/stream/WedgeFromPearlHarborTo911HowTheSecretWarBetweenTheFBIAndCIAHasEndangeredNationalSecurity/Wedge+-+From+Pearl+Harbor+to+9:11+-+How+the+Secret+War+between+the+FBI+and+CIA+Has+Endangered+National+Security_djvu.txt
The link between Lennon, Davis, Hoffman the IPS and today’s man-made Climate Change activism? Arthur Waskow, co-founder of the IPS, a witness for the defense at the Chicago 7 trial, who according to wiki had “Other activities that included the Green Menorah organizing project of The Shalom Center, the Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth and climate-focused public actions drawing on traditional liturgies for Tu B’Shvat, Passover, Tisha B’Av, Sukkot, and Hanukkah,[3] and running as a candidate for the World Zionist Congress on the Green Zionist Alliance slate.”
Fascinating little doc:
https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/chaos/c00018008.pdf
As is this one: https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2019&context=etd
As Raskin and Waskow wrote “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” in 1967, they attempted to gather a group of influential intellectuals together in support of young draft resisters.
“Through March 1964, IPS received funds totaling $167,577.74, which included large grants from the Stern Family Fund, the Ford Foundation, the EDO Foundation and James Warburg. Three years later, Warburg donated $400,000 to IPS. The next largest donation in 1967, $25,000, came from the Samuel Rubin Foundation, followed by smaller contributions from Philip Stern and Irving Laucks of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The largest
contributions in 1968 came from Philip Stern, who gave IPS just over $91,000, in addition to another $11,000 from the Stern Family Fund. $30,000 came from the Samuel Rubin Foundation. The D.J. Bernstein Foundation contributed $50,000; donations of $17,000 came from the Carnegie Corporation; and the Field Foundation provided IPS with funds totaling $15,000.
IPS received $1,066,350 in assets from the estate of Daniel J. Bernstein, a wealthy Wall Street investor…The Samuel Rubin Foundation gave IPS over $300,000 in 1974-1975, but $255,000 of that went to helping IPS create the Transnational Institute. By the time of the 1975-1976 budget, IPS had reduced its budget shortfall to $110,000, which the board considered “manageable.”
Along with this one:
Resist has always been a different type of foundation.
Other signers and founding members include Grace Paley, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Robert Lowell, Barbara Guest, and Allen Ginsberg.
https://resist.org/about/
In 1963 Marcus Raskin co-founded IPS with Richard Barnett and in 1967 he wrote Resist’s founding document, “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority.”
and last but not least:
https://wpmigration.resist.org/latest/a-message-from-noam-chomsky-resist-co-founder/
A Message from Noam Chomsky, Resist Co-Founder
Today we are living through a health and economic crisis…We also feel a collective sorrow as the pandemic disproportionately ravages through Black and brown communities. And yet, these same communities are taking the helm and continuing the centuries-long resistance against white supremacy and police violence that has been with us since our country’s inception. These community leaders are essential.
COVID-19 and the mass uprisings across the country highlight the need to maintain justice as essential. Resist grantees have always known this to be true and have been on the frontlines, responding to the communities forgotten by the national response to COVID-19 and brutalized by the police…
In Solidarity,
Noam Chomsky
To conclude
The composer and singer of the song linked below testified as a witness for the defense of the Chicago 7 just before Arthur Waskow was berated by the Judge Julius Hoffman for not removing his kippah:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
“a typical case of American blind justice and there was nothin’ he could do about it…
where you get injected inspected detected infected neglected and selected…”
nothin’s changed since then…
OBSERVATIONS ON 1972 I was a freshman in high school in 1972 — a month after JL’s MSG concert — and I remember that a lot of military jackets began appearing as every-day clothing amongst a (small) percentage of the student body. I had never thought about it until this interview because I was not a Beatles fan at that time. But now I wonder if, in fact, JL’s jacket had had such a huge influence in a matter of weeks? Or was it the other way around, and the fact that I had JUST entered a high school that didn’t enforce any dress codes the reason that I had just noticed such fashion statements? So, then did JL latch on to a trend or create it. I don’t know the answer to this fascinating little bit of history. All I can observe was that in 1972 and onward in my school, the anti-war sentiment (teenage virtue signaling?) seemed to adopt military garb as deliberate disrespect and scorn of the uniform; by using the jacket as one would use a grubby sweatshirt, whilst your hair cascaded downward, it sends a statement of rebellion.
Arby,
People make mistakes including acting violently. But they can “redeem” themselves (often) by correcting the behavior and trying to do good for the world.
Sept 10 vs Oct 9. My guess is American confusion about how numeric dates are formatted in some European countries. 09/10/40 is Sept 10 in U.S., Oct 9 elsewhere.
My thoughts exactly! (see full comment above).
“..in the USA,
Oct 9 =10/09
Sept 10 =09/10
I’d bet my bottom federal reserve note that whoever wrote that memo had seen his passport (presumably) with his Date Of Birth in British (& most other countries) numeric style and transcribed it as Americans do.
At the 59 minute mark of “Interview 1672 – James Corbett on The US vs John Lennon”, they discussed the 18 year old vote.
In 1972, for President, I voted for Doctor Benjamin Spock who was running for President.
People who are familiar with William F. Pepper will have heard of Ramparts magazine.
— Documentary —
“Truth At Last: The Assassination of Martin Luther King”
(51 minutes by James Corbett)
https://odysee.com/@corbettreport:0/truth-at-last-the-assassination-of:2
EXCERPT from the following article
…In January 1967 Ramparts magazine published a photo essay on the impact of the war on Vietnamese children, with an introduction written by Spock. The essay deeply affected King; just three months later, he made his most public and comprehensive address against the war, “Beyond Vietnam,” at Riverside Church. Three weeks later, both men led a march to United Nations Plaza in New York. King and Spock collaborated on “Vietnam Summer,” a project to mobilize grassroots peace activists in preparation for the 1968 elections….
Spock, Benjamin
via Stanford University – The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/spock-benjamin
A significant portion of the SourceWatch article on Ramparts Magazine:
“The icons of the left wrote for Ramparts, including Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky, Seymour Hersh, James Ridgeway, Pete Hamill, Abbie Hoffman, and Stanley Scheinbaum. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner got his start there, as did Mother Jones founder Adam Hochschild.
“This magazine has reported in the past the story of Martin Peretz, who used inherited wealth to found Ramparts magazine. It became the voice of the ‘new left’ of the 1960s.
Everything was fair game for Ramparts except Israel, to which Peretz had a ‘passionate attachment.’A showdown came after Peretz ordered an article critical of Israel pulled out of an upcoming edition. Since Ramparts was conducted as a sort of journalistic commune, the staff voted to publish the article over the publisher’s objections. Peretz reacted by selling Ramparts and buying The New Republic, an old and respected liberal magazine.”
“Horowitz became an editor of the prestigious Ramparts magazine, literary flagship of the American student Left in the sixties.”
Frank Gardner recounts the following anecdote exactly 30 years ago:
“The phone rings and a guy in my office says, ‘it’s David Horowitz.’ I haven’t spoken to David Horowitz since the end of the ’60s, when we both worked at Ramparts. Since then, with another former Ramparts editor, Peter Collier, this little creep has written a series of best-selling portraits of ruling class families–The Rockefellers, The Fords, The Kennedys–and boasted in print about voting for Ronald Reagan. Horowitz and Collier say they once believed fervently in left causes and institutions (from the Soviet Union to the Black Panther Party), and when they discovered these institutions to be corrupt and murderous they had to denounce them and come out for the other side.
There are many flaws in this ‘logic.’ For openers, there aren’t just two sides in this world (the fake left and the cruel right). And sure it’s demoralizing to learn that the party that supposedly stands for equality is run by opportunists and actually stands for privilege. But that wouldn’t lead a real radical to endorse the all-out pursuit of privilege. It should lead you to call for a movement that’s serious about establishing equality. Horowitz and Collier were never radicals for a minute. Their goal was and is personal success. It’s no coincidence that they were ‘left’ in the ’60s and ‘right’ in the ’80s.”
Just like IPS collaborator and Chicago 7 personality Jerry Rubin. Among many others.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative/Gardner_Hollywood_1.html
Yet it must be born in mind that SourceWatch itself is funded by Soros, Schwab Charitable Fund, Tides Foundation etc… The progressive snake biting its own tail, constantly shedding its skin, changing its colours, growing a new coat to be turned, denouncing itself again…
ERRATUM!
FRED Gardner. NOT Frank Gardner (who, ironically, writes thrillers about pandemics and has worked for the BBC).
FRED GARDNER
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Gardner_(activist)
Benjamin McLane Spock was born May 2, 1903, in New Haven, Connecticut; his parents were Benjamin Ives Spock, a Yale graduate and long-time general counsel of the New Haven Railroad, and Mildred Louise (Stoughton) Spock.[3] …Spock was one of six children, including his younger sister environmentalist writer Marjorie Spock.[5]
As did his father before him, Spock attended Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University. … At Yale, he was inducted into the Eta chapter of the Zeta Psi fraternity and then into the senior society Scroll and Key. He attended the Yale School of Medicine for two years before shifting to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he graduated first in his class in 1929…
Whaaaat!! HRS!? You voted for a father-to-son Yalie!!?? (conveniently absent from the bio) Well, a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity AND the Scroll and Key senior society, at least he had no time for Skull and Bones!! And at least he got out of Columbia just 2 years before Technocrat Marion Hubbert arrived! 😉 Funny how those Yalies manage to get their men onto all sides of the battlefield though… While Mao Zedong was establishing his Yale-in-China affiliation, Dr. Spock was enjoying his Yale-in-Connecticut education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Spock
“…In January 1968, Spock, William Sloane Coffin, and three others were indicted for conspiring to counsel young men to violate the draft laws…”
Yea, alongside Marcus Raskin, (co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies), as part of the “Boston 5” aligned with Resist Inc’s co-founder Noam Chomsky and his “Call To Resist Illegitimate Authority”.
now I’m late for the hamsterwheel so
Live long and prosper HRS!
So all of those words cluttering this comments page to say
a cool Corbett report about the Institute for Policy Studies creeping up to where we find ourselves today could be mighty revealing indeed…
We Yale a lot down here in Texas.
That’s why the world makes fun of us.
This was a very interesting string which you posted.
I was enthralled.
Thanks so much NoSoapRadio.
This segment, just this phrase as a stand-alone seems to have great depth…
“there aren’t just two sides in this world”
I wrote it down on a sticky note for my stack of dusty papers.
New Party Trick: Inspired by Cannabis or Marshall McLuhan?
If I understand correctly this (small clip) was shot on one of two evenings of dialog that John and Yoko had with McLuhan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkARfaSrh6I
And following the second conversation, in private, McLuhan got John to realize in a more cynical way that he functioned as a product and an advertiser for industrial utility, or something on that order, thus making him more aware of his role and the potential that came with it. And it was on the heels of this conversation that the idea for the Bed-In was created and, then, executed in short order.
I forget where the story comes from, but folks in the McLuhan subcult may remember more clearly… If I can track down the story, I’ll report back…
A wonderful discussion, using a documentary and an analysis of a fascinating person (Lennon) to weave opinions of cultural and historical events.
I loved the summaries of the decades: 60’s innocence and awakening, 70’s skepticism and the Church Committee, 80’s deregulation and the Iran Contra affair (proving that nothing had changed), 90’s globalisation and the financialisation of the USA’s economy, and then we get two decades of the War of Terror with Bush, Obama with a little Trump. This demonstrates the meaningless of “left” and “right” when applied to USA politics.
My memory of the political Lennon is crystalized in “Grow your hair for peace”. It both says that the action is pointless, and that inaction is the solution. Wars stop when people stop acting war (fighting).
Thanks for the interview, James. It was a pleasure listening to it.
I was born in 52 so I lived through the end of the fifties who were very repressive and constrained. I was raised in MOntreal and in Quebec the Catholic Church had a big say into our society. The sixties were the beginning of a world wide liberation from the old institutions. So the Beatles with their long hair and their rock and roll songs were the symbol of this new liberation. Then in the seventies they evolved and so did we. Each new album was different and brought musical discovery. The war was omnipresent and the Nixon years were very repressive as well. But people mobilized and broke tons of rules. There was so many things going on and the hippy movement that came out of Berkley and Timothy Leary’s tune in, tune out and drop out movement. Of course the CIA and those in power were scared of the power these musicians had on the young people. Just take a look at what happened at Woodstock where thousands of people heard the US anthem played by Jimmi Hendrix. All Jimmi would have had to say to the young people is “Let’s go and let’s tear it down” and they would have followed and done it. The song express all the dysfunction of the US and the war it was in. Well worth listening to if you have never heard it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezI1uya213I
It was truly a world wide revolution that was going on. And like many other movement the capitalist then joined and marketed the ideas and the fashion and so on. Then came the 80’s that swing back to conformism. Lennon I believe was very aware of what was going on as he was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and I don’t think he ever forgot where he came from. So he realized later that he could use his status to try to change the world. He certainly left his mark. I remember when Nixon was elected for four more years. It was very depressing but then the Watergate scandal made him go away. Now after all the other scandal that has happened since, Watergate seems very moot.