(Which probably explains this weblog's approach as much as Your Correspondent--somewhat far-fetched, yet eclectic with the occasional overtures towards the Monty Pythonic, historic--or even alluding to old-time radio.
(Yet, through it all, creating a healing time and space beyond reality for you--or trying to.)
Now with FREE webmail!
Yes, you can actually have your very own e-mail address @exaggerator.zzn.com, accessible anytime, anywhere you access the Information Stuporbahn!
(Or, if you already have a website, add free web-based e-mail to your website!)
Just click the button of your choice to learn more:
I love the likes of:
N.B. Voting for the 2008 edition will close on 15 October; hence, your vote now in the four categories where this blog has been nominate would be welcome and appreciated.
Thanks again for your support, or reasonable facsimilie thereof.
In the interest of saving you time, Your Correspondent has elected to offer feed subscriptions through these "one-stop" resources, allowing you to sign up for subscriptions in multiple RSS feed readers which you may be using, including some for mobile phones, from one website:
For bloggers like myself, dependent for the most part on disability benefit from Social Security, such can only go so far month after month. That, and the obvious fact that blogging per se not exactly enough to put food on the table.
As well, I receive no outside monies of any sort to help with blogging-related activities or expenses (notwithstanding what Fox Prolefeed accuses bloggers like ourselves of being from time to time).
Hence, the need to raise money to help with the costs of blogging, over and above one's own (usually limited) resources--especially if one is on disability benefit such as Your Correspondent.
For starters, your donations (howbeit not tax-deductible) would be welcome into my Virtual Tip Jar:
You might also want to check out my new e-boutique, The Exaggerator Collection by name:
...or any of these fine e-tailers with whom The Exaggerator is an affiliate:
(Just so you know: Your purchases are a show of support for this weblog and the blogger behind it. Not to mention A Few Good Causes, details of which are available on request.)
(part 2):
Think of these as "win-win" solutions, not just for those among you webmasters or bloggers looking for extra income (so long as the host's Terms of Service allow you to participate in affiliate programmes) ... but also for Your Correspondent:
Memo to online businesses wanting to become established by taking orders online: See what PayPal can offer you. (But please: Use it for good. Not for fraud.)
So much for "giv[ing] you fresh breath, and strong wind"!
THE ALLUSION IN THE SUBJECT LINE, IN CASE ANY OF YOU READERS ASK, is to the blurb used on packaging a few years back for a Japanese brand of breath mints.
In English, mind you!
As a matter of fact, things are rather windy here in the Minnwissippi as I prepare this--so windy, in fact, that it can blow over the recycling bins of a neighbour in "the projects" where I live, who chooses to keep said bins outside rather than inside. Not to mention the occasional peek of sunshine in the bargain.
Things, it seems, can only get worse weather wise before they can get better.
*************
THE BLOG OF WAKEUPWALMART.COM DESERVES KUDOS FOR RECOMMENDING THE FOLLOWING VIDEO of a recent item off HDNet's Dan Rather Reports programme revealing the extent of power and intrusion Wally World will go to for the cause of Realpolitik according to Wally World.
Equally worthy of note is that it used actual videos from the Flagler Production archives as were made under informal agreements with Wally World, thus making the case all the more brazen. See it for yourself, boys and girls, and don't come crying to meme:
=============
AS IF THAT WEREN'T ENOUGH, IT'S EMERGED THAT WALLY WORLD EXECUTIVES may have been some of the biggest cheerleaders for the Latest Grand Delusion of His Fraudulency's Great Within--as in those sham Economic Stimulus Payments starting @ $300 in the hope of encouraging wasteful and frivolous consumer spending with little or no real regard for value for money.
Again, we turn to WakeUpWalMart's blog:
Jack Shewmaker, Wal-Mart Stores director, has confirmed what we've been saying for quite some time. He said that President Bush's economic stimulus plan, which will send $600 checks to millions of Americans will give Wal-Mart a "real boost." He also talked about the 2008 economic forecast, suggesting that Wal-Mart will have a strong year as it 'repositions' itself. This all just backs up what we've been saying for quite some time. Wal-Mart profits from the country's poverty, and Wal-Mart desperately wants your rebate check. We think its rather disgusting that Wal-Mart is all giddy about the shaky economy, but then again, Wal-Mart has always profited off the backs of their associates, so why shouldn't they do the same with all of America?
Here's the story from the Bloomburg News Service via Asbury Park Press:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. director Jack Shewmaker said a U.S. economic stimulus plan that includes tax rebates for 130 million households will give a "real boost'' to sales at the world's biggest retailer.
Customers who cash rebate checks at the discount chain will probably spend them there, Shewmaker said in an interview in Barcelona Thursday. He joined Wal-Mart's board in 1977 and is a retired vice chairman of the company.
The rebates start in May, part of a $168 billion government package to spur the economy. Sales at many U.S. retailers have slowed as consumers grapple with fuel prices, and soaring oil costs will make the industry "reconsider its model," Shewmaker said in a speech today. Wal-Mart raised its profit forecast Thursday after its price cuts lured cash-strapped shoppers.
"I think Wal-Mart has repositioned well," Shewmaker said in the interview, adding that 2008 will be a "strong year."
[***]
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said yesterday that March sales at stores open at least a year increased 0.7 percent, while clothing retailers Limited Brands Inc., Gap Inc. and American Eagle Outfitters Inc. posted sales declines that exceeded analysts' estimates.
Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley declined to comment on Shewmaker's remarks.
Wal-Mart fell 12 cents to $54.54 in early New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares gained 15 percent this year through Thursday, compared with the 3.5 percent drop by the Standard & Poor's 500 Retailing Index.
Spending by U.S. consumers, which has sustained the economy during housing's worst slump in a generation, rose at the slowest pace in more than a year in February, stoking concern the country will enter a recession.
A close relationship with suppliers and daily sales updates for store managers enable Wal-Mart to adapt quickly to changes in demand, Shewmaker said.
"Partnership with suppliers is more important during these times," he said in the interview. "If your suppliers are negative or inefficient, then guess what you're going to be."
Retailers' same-store sales fell 0.5 percent last month, the biggest decline in almost a year and the worst March since 1995, the International Council of Shopping Centers said, based on a survey of 37 chains. The trade group had predicted sales would be little changed.
There are "hundreds of things" Wal-Mart should consider doing differently to cut costs, Shewmaker said in a speech at the World Retail Congress in Barcelona today. Soaring oil prices will be a "huge factor" for all retailers, he said.
The earliest Easter in almost a century may have brought forward seasonal spring sales, distorting revenue figures Wal-Mart reported Thursday, Shewmaker said.
Easter has "kicked off the spring season early" and April sales data will bring a "clearer picture," he said.
*************
SOMETHING COULD GET ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA HEADING INTO INDECISION 2008--as in the Secretary of State certifying petitions authorising a second go-round for a plebiscite seeking to impose a "complete and final" blanket ban on abortions.
Which, you will recall, was rejected back in 2006.
Known officially on the ballot paper as Measure 11, the campaigning therefor is no doubt expected to get emotionally down and dirty, what with the emphasis behind the plebiscite suggesting that abortion is as much about the murder of human life (which, the anti-abortionist crowd is forever contending, "begins @ conception") as it is about psychological and emotional harm for the materfamilias who undergoes same.
Especially when the weird and unwholesome element from interstate seeks to exploit the Vote Yes campaign vis-a-vis Measure 11 for no useful purpose save to attract attention.
That, and perhaps the likelihood of supporters for Measure 11 as collected the signatures in question using subcontractors from interstate, which could raise questions of the measure's legality and, in the right circumstances, be enough to remove same from the final ballot paper (cf. a trio of Montana ballot plebiscites sponsored by Wise Use Movement sympathisers stricken from the 2004 ballot paper after irregularities in signature collection were uncovered).
And let's not forget the possibility of invoking Luddite articles of faith in certain weird and unwholesome circles to justify banning abortion (cf. the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceauçescu in Romania--about as "pro-life" as it got, and then some, enough to inspire some closet adoration among anti-abortionists, no?).
*************
AND TALK ABOUT GOING INTO FULL-ON BALLISTIC "WINNING OF HEARTS AND MINDS" MODE over to a highly-controversial cause, and its defence: Such seems to be the case of late with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) in response to the removal to care of 429 girls from their Texas compound.
Which, to the FLDS, amounts to nothing short of that "Christian Persecution! Christian Persecution!" meme being repeated to pathetically ridiculous effect, especially their invoking the suggestion that a hoax call from interstate using VoIP technology may have actually been responsible for the intervention.
Hopefully, the DNA testing of all the principals should sort out just how complex the FLDS bloodlines can get, even considering where FLDS articles of faith tacitly excused the preening of youngsters as nothing less than sex machines serving not so much Christian as racial duty.
And still, though, how many others on the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right have been playing along with the "Christian Persecution!" meme that the FLDS is playing so eloquently all this time?
For those of you wondering who Al Cohol and the like are, as used in this blog--
THERE ARE PROBABLY SOME OF YOU REGULAR READERS TO THIS BLOG AS ARE ASKING THEMSELVES WHO I'M TALKING ABOUT when I allude to the likes of Al Cohol, Mary Jane, Auntie Em and Old Lady Snow.
To answer any such questions on your mind, they are the colloquial personifications for, respectively, alcohol, marijuana, morphine and cocaine.
Even if they do sound rather like the targets of Bart Simpson's crank calls to Moe's Tavern from time to time.
In any case, it's just my way of making this blog "stand out" through the agency of colourful language, challenging the convention suggesting that "mental defectives" should have no opinions of any kind lest their welfare benefits suddenly be cut off or sharply reduced, or their names wind up on blacklists discreetly circulated to employers.
=============
BUT THEN AGAIN, THERE ARE OTHER INTERESTING AND YET COLOURFUL PERSONIFICATIONS for illicit substances in the English language:
When it comes to liquor, "John Barleycorn" is perhaps the best known, made infamous by the prohibitionist and temperance movements to personify the evils of strong drink. "Al K. Hall" is a close variation on "Al Cohol."
Personifying marijuana are "Mary Warner" and "Mary Weaver," along with "Mary Jane."
Cocaine's personified guises include those of "Dr. Snow," "Dr. White" and "Old Lady White."
I hope, reader, that I have answered your question.
AS IF THE FACT OF MANY GAZETTAS NOW PUBLISHING THEIR SATURDAY EDITIONS IN THE MORNING WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH, Your Correspondent has been thinking about the notion of someone launching a weekend gazetta as would come out on Saturday evening, the better to give a few hours' lead on the Sunday papers when it comes to breaking stories.
Which would make Saturday evening a little less boring in contrast to Sunday mornings, traditional time for the paper over coffee and brunch.
Especially with the TV getting all the more predictably boring, and people looking for alternatives to the vidiot's box.
Finally(?!), a charge of "Christian Persecution!" vis-a-vis the FLDS
ON NO LESS THAN THREE PREVIOUS OCCASIONS IN THIS WEBLOG--as in here, here and here--Your Correspondent was wondering how much longer it would take before the Religiopolitical Right would start playing their singsong "Christian Persecution! Christian Persecution!" meme towards the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) in the wake of Texas child-welfare agents removing no less than 425 women and girls from their Yearning for Zion compound in west Texas after charges were raised of Indecent Assault and Forced Marriage of Minors.
Now, it appears as if I have my answer, thanks to ConWebBlog, which is linked to ConWebWatch:
In his April 19 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah offers a somewhat convoluted quasi-defense of the polygamist cult whose children have been taken into custody by the state as part of a child abuse investigation.
While he repeatedly claims that "I don't like polygamy. And I don't like child abuse," he seems willing to tolerate both in the name of religious freedom and to serve as a poke in the eye to what he considers to be overreaching government officials.
Because the raid on the cult semmed from an "anonymous call" made by someone who has yet to be identified, Farah claims he is "left wondering if the action by the state was excessive." He adds:
I don't doubt that some horrendous abuses took place within the walls of the YZR Ranch. Please don't label me as an apologist for this false religion, which I detest.
What I do doubt is that it was appropriate and legal to seize more than 400 children on such skimpy and non-specific evidence of real criminal abuse.
Is there a community in America where child abuse is not taking place?
Don't we normally arrest individual suspects and try them for their crimes?
Do we normally and preemptively round up all the children in a community where it is suspected abuse is taking place without specific evidence?
When a government school teacher is arrested for abusing one student, are all the students in that school assumed to be victims?
That last point is a laugher, since WND arguably makes a similar claim about "government schools"--better known to the rest of us as public schools--on a regular basis by regularly and falsely portraying something as innocuous as showing students that homosexuals merely exist as irrefutable evidence of "indoctrination."
Farah essentially admits that. After claiming that "neither do I want to see children abused at the hands of the state," he immediately adds, "It happens in government-run schools." He then follows with the usual litany of liberal-and government bashing, concluding with "It happens when officials in states such as California actively try to ban homeschooling."
Two points:
1) Farah distorts the California court ruling to which he is referring. There was no "active ban" of homeschooling; it merely pointed out that California has no provision for homeschooling.
2) Farah ignores the fact that there was, in fact, child abuse happening in the family at the center of the California homeschooling lawsuit. As we've detailed, courts have found that the father, Phillip Long, "has a long history of physically abusing the children and mother has a long history of not protecting them from father."
But WND has virtually ignored the abuse aspect of the Long case. Why? Because it has decided that promotion of homeschooling is more important than the welfare of the Longs' children.
In the Longs, we have a perfect example of what Farah described as "crimes that need to be prosecuted individually." But he won't call for that to happen because Phillip Long is more useful to him as a homeschooling poster boy.
Instead, Farah complains: "But cults aren't illegal, and polygamy and sexual abuse are crimes that need to be prosecuted individually, not collectively on a community that may have allowed them to happen." Farah ignores the closed, insular society in which the polygamist cult operated, making it nearly impossible to gain knowledge about individual cases of abuse. When an entire society is based on that abuse, a collective approach may be the better one.
Thus, like the abuse of the Longs' children, Farah is willing to condone the abuse of the cult's children to prove a larger point. Which seems to put the lie to his claim that he doesn't like child abuse.
Which, no doubt, brings to mind a favourite patsy the Religiopolitical Right will love to use in answering to charges of child abuse tending to overzealous spankings:
None other than "Christian love."
As if that weren't enough, how many families as engage in homeschooling based on apartheid South Africa's Nasionale Christen Opverdoing syllabus actually resort to using incest as an agency of maintaining power and authority?
TRY TELLING THAT TO THE CLERK OF THE WEATHER, boys and girls: The forecast for northern parts of Minnesota into eastern North Dakota (as in the Red River Valley) calls for Snow Advisories or Winter Storm Watches, depending on the region.
With between 8-12" of snow (you read that right--snow!) likely in such areas as have already been saturated from previous snow melts, meaning that any snow melt ensuing from this fresh batch could translate into flooding later on along the Red River of the North and tributaries such as the Red Lake and Wild Rice rivers. And also the headwaters of the Mississippi as it issues forth from Lake Itasca.
As if that weren't enough, flood advisories or warnings have been issued for much of Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin thanks to flooding aggravated by recent rainfall already making saturated ground all the more so, in its turn delaying (and seriously) spring field work among farmers and planters alike.
All this, and April about to segue into May!
*************
IT'S HARD TO DISCERN A SERIOUS INTERRELATIONSHIP HERE, but when you get right down to it, Iraqi Shi'a firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr is urging his groupies to continue supporting an ongoing ceasefire in the continuing misadventures in ur-RAHOWA officially packaged as a War on Terrorism.
Meanwhile, Baghdad's Sadr City district, a major base of support for al-Sadr-affiliated groups, is being reduced to nothing less than Third World slum status, thanks to lack of decent power, water and sewerage service, want of proper trash collection and deteriorating infrastructure--and Sadr City's residents, in the main poor, undereducated and easily-influenced, will no doubt be quick to blame the United States Occupation Forces for making the situation in Sadr City worse.
=============
STAYING WITH THE "MORALLY SUPERIOR" AMERICANS AND ITS MISADVENTURES IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR A MOMENT, Your Correspondent understands where the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expressing reservations @ claims from His Fraudulency's Great Within about the North Koreans providing assistance, technical and otherwise, to the Syrians in developing a super-secretive facility for compounding and developing atomic weapons.
Until the Zahal (as in the Israeli Defence Forces, using their Hebrew acronym) came along and destroyed the compound in a super-secret air raid last summer.
In particular the excesses of paranoia being used by we "morally superior" Americans to whip up hatred for the North Koreans.
*************
EXPECT THIS KIND OF STUFF TO PREDOMINATE AMONG "RETIREMENT SAVINGS FUNDS" SUPPLANTING STATE SOCIAL SECURITY as target the working poor and other unable to find work without assistance from targeted programmes:
Several share issues on the Shanghai bourse have attracted the attention of what the official media dismisses as "gamblers" seeking a quick profit in the manner of pre-Great Depression "bucket shops" as were no better than thinly-disguised gaming houses taking wagers on share prices.
Case in point, per the BBC: Xijin Mining, a Chinese gold-mining company which released a new issue of shares in Shanghai as were snapped up so quickly by "gamblers" that the price rose 200% on the offering such, prompting market supervisors to briefly suspend trading.
And once trading was allowed to resume, the net gain in Xijin Mining's Shanghai issue would be 90% on the initial offer. (BTW, Xijin Mining is also traded in Hong Kong.)
*************
AS IF HIGH FUEL PRICES, INFLATION AND HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GRAND DELUSION OF "ECONOMIC STIMULATION" PAYMENTS perhaps encouraging wasteful and non-essential consumer spending weren't good enough reasons to consider online shopping ... then what will?
Especially among the cybermallrat crowd.
Which is prompting Your Correspondent to offer the following suggestions for your online shopping when it comes to office supplies (and yes, he would appreciate your patronage):
=============
AND SPEAKING OF THE ONLINE SHOPPING @ THIS WEBLOG, Your Correspondent has started thinking about making the situation a little easier by launching a separate and dedicated "online mall" through another free webpage host, the better to accomodate more online e-tailers and offer a wider selection without needlessly delaying the weblog download.
Which would still have designs on donating a part of the proceeds Your Correspondent can collect to Some Good Causes, in case you needed a reason to shop online in the first place (especially the kind of social consciousness). And the motivation therefor, no doubt, being as I have mentioned before: Viz., to supplement what I get in disability benefit from Social Security, inasmuch as I have Serious Psychoemotional Conditions precluding more traditional employment (in case any of you get any ideas).
After all, I am not the kind to take too easily for disreputable "make-money-fast" scams as serve to exploit the vulnerable like myself through formula-written "turnkey" webpages heavy on glowing generalities via suspiciously-glowing-sounding testimonials.
In any case, your thoughts on the idea would be appreciated, and can be left in the comments section or otherwise by e-mailing moi.
Don't expect to find these remarks in Wisconsin Dells motel or resort brochures
WITH THE WATERPARK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD STILL HOME TO A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF INDEPENDENT, "MON-AND-POP" MOTELS AND RESORTS to accomodate the nearly three million shoobies visiting every year (and this includes all the major waterpark resorts, a concept which Wisconsin Dells gave the world), you could just imagine the likelihood of the following hilarious-sounding "Engrish" blurb (originally found in a resort hotel brochure from somewhere in Europe) appearing in a Dells-area motel brochure (and the owners actually managing to attract tourist business in the process):
Having freshly taken over the propriety of this notorious house, I am wishful that you remove to me your esteemed costume. Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a french widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects. I give personal look to the interior wants of each guest. Here, you shall be well fed-up and agreeably drunk. Our charges for weekly visitors are scarcely creditable. Peculiar arrangements for gross parties, our motto is ever serve you right!
Come to think of it, it might be interesting to ask just how many motels and resorts in the Dells region (including such particiating in the Superior Small Lodging and Lake Delton Family Lodging schemes) could be considered "notorious houses" for the sake of the above.
On the other hand, expect there to be plenty of "notorious houses" in and around Branson and the Tri-Lakes (as in Taneycomo, Table Rock and Bull Shoals) in the guise of motels and resorts, "notorious" all the more thanks to their attracting especially the weird and unwholesome element attracted to Branson's "nutritious patriotism" in "music show" form--and especially so neo-Nazis, Ku Kluxers, "citizen militia" Zealots and True Believers (including such acting in a "lone wolf" mode, so to speak); in short, the Archie Bunker/Alf Garnett element whose notions of Amerikanischer Realkultur see Branson as its Acme and Perfection not unlike Nazi Germany's use of folk-culture festivals for propaganda ends.
Was selfish greed behind Martin Luther King, Jnr.'s assaination?
THE CLARION-LEDGER OF JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI, LEGENDARY IN RECENT YEARS FOR LIFTING THE VEIL OF THE INFAMOUS MISSISSIPPI SOVERIGNTY COMMISSION and its racist agenda in the name of "states' rights," has revealed where a $100,000 bounty offered by the Ku Klux Klan for Martin Luther King, Jnr.'s assaination may have motivated James Earl Ray to carry out the act of martyrdom.
Read on:
Before escaping from prison in 1967, James Earl Ray talked repeatedly about getting a bounty from the Ku Klux Klan to assassinate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., FBI documents show.
Word of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi offering a $100,000 bounty made it into a Missouri prison where Ray was, according to FBI records.
A month after King's April 4, 1968, assassination, the FBI interviewed one of Ray's former cellmates, Raymond Louis Curtis, who told the agent Ray discussed a bounty from the Klan in the South to kill King.
Curtis said Ray told him that if he got out in time and King was still alive, he "would like to get the bounty on King."
King's friends are now asking the Justice Department to review his assassination after emerging evidence involving the Klan, and researchers want the department to make public all records from the investigation in hopes of answering remaining questions.
In 1968, Ray pleaded guilty to killing King and got life in prison. He recanted days later.
In the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded there was "a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a result of a conspiracy." One area the committee explored was whether Ray thought he would be paid for killing King.
The committee examined a $50,000 bounty on King's head, supposedly put up by a St. Louis businessman.
But little attention was paid to the $100,000 bounty FBI documents say the Klan offered.
Curtis told the FBI the subject of killing King came up during a discussion of the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.
Ray never mentioned whom he would contact to get this bounty but did say he would demand the bounty be placed in a foreign bank, according to Curtis. After assassinating King, Ray fled the U.S. but was captured in London before he could travel to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
"Curtis was of the opinion that not over three people would have been involved in the actual assassination," a May 3, 1968, FBI report says. "It would have been well planned with diversionary measures, and in the opinion of Curtis a second individual, not Ray, would have driven the getaway car to Atlanta as a diversionary measure."
The inmate, however, told the FBI he would never testify, saying he feared for his life.
David Garrow, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the belief Ray was motivated to shoot King to collect a bounty "can be credited above and beyond ... what Curtis remembers."
Gerald Posner has penned what is regarded as the most definitive book on the King assassination, Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., concluding Ray shot King but that there may have been a conspiracy.
"Racism makes it easier to take on a bounty like that," Posner said. "It's like a neo-Nazi businessman being paid to shoot a prominent Jewish businessman. Money is like a bonus."
Despite his work, he believes there is more to learn about the assassination. "I'm the eternal optimist when it comes to investigating," he said. "It can always be explored. It's not impossible."
He was confident enough to call his book on the Kennedy assassination Case Closed, he said, "but I didn't do that with the King assassination."
Klansman-turned-FBI-informant Delmar Dennis told The Clarion-Ledger before his death that the White Knights regarded itself as a national organization and King as the ultimate enemy.
In 1965, the White Knights learned King's route across a bridge in east Mississippi. They planned to plant dynamite and station snipers nearby. Dennis tipped off the FBI, and King traveled a different route.
In 1966, when King took part in the Meredith March through Mississippi, members of the White Knights killed a black man to lure King to the Natchez area. That plot failed.
Claims of the White Knights' involvement emerged in the wake of King's assassination. Three months later, Margot Capomacchia, the mother of Jackson schoolteacher Kathy Ainsworth, told an FBI informant her late daughter and others played a role.
She said her daughter and four men were involved in King's death and "used radio equipment ... in jamming police calls."
The FBI discounted her claim, saying she was "believed to be mentally disturbed."
Eight years later, a similar allegation surfaced in Miami Magazine, claiming members of the White Knights, including Ainsworth and Tommy Tarrants, were involved in jamming police radios that day.
The FBI blamed Tarrants for the bombings of synagogues, civil rights leaders' homes and other targets in Mississippi.
In 1968, he was sentenced to 30 years for attempted murder but was released eight years later after a Christian conversion. He since has denounced his racism and violent acts.
He has denied any role in the King assassination but said it's possible the White Knights were involved without his knowledge.
Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr., are exploring evidence related to the White Knights.
One area the authors are exploring is the identity of the man supposedly seen with Ray in Los Angeles in March 1968.
Ray supposedly received calls from New Orleans and Atlanta.
The manager of the hotel where Ray was staying told the FBI the caller had a light Southern accent and identified himself as John Hardin. The manager also told agents a man who later appeared at the hotel sounded the same as Hardin.
Wexler said Hardin appears to have been an alias.
FBI documents contain an artist's rendering of the white man, identified as between 35 and 45 years old, 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-8, weighing between 140 and 150 pounds, with dark hair and dark eyes.
Wexler said he can't determine from FBI documents whether agents ever identified this man.
But agents appear to have linked him to an unknown racial provocateur connected to the 1962 riot at the University of Mississippi and the 1967 bombing of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum's house, Wexler said.
The provocateur's name remains unknown because it's blacked out.
The only way to get the name revealed is to prove the blacked-out name belongs to someone who has since died, Wexler said. "How do you do that when you don't know what the name is?"
Up until March 1968 in Los Angeles, Ray appears to be wandering, getting his bartending license, dabbling in the pornography business and taking dance lessons, Wexler said. "It's only in mid-March that he starts going whole hog after King, stalking him. The question becomes, 'What triggered the change?' "
In the early 1990s, the Justice Department began making public all of the records surrounding President Kennedy's assassination, but the opposite is true of the records surrounding King's assassination, which remain largely redacted and, in some cases, sealed. (An estimated 600,000 pages studied by the House Committee on Assassinations remain secret.)
If the FBI would make all its files public, "it would make amends for the unseemly things that (longtime FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover did to Dr. King," Wexler said. "This would give them an opportunity at redemption."
But then again, there raises an interesting likelihood, if unlikely:
With J. Edgar Hoover known to have a strong dislike for Dr. King, even to the extent of suggesting that his movement was "Communist-influenced" or otherwise had Communist Party connexions, you have to wonder if Il Capo di Tutti Capi (as in Hoover) bankrolled part of the Klan's bounty on Dr. King's head, hoping to control the civil rights movement enough before such spiralled into full-blown Communist Revolution.
And did so secretly to avoid attracting suspicions.
Especially considering where Hoover was a reputed closet queen with narcisstic tendencies about Law and Order, preferably of the "iron heel" model, same being seen as "necessary" to maintain the White Male Christian Power Structure as one with "the antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" of the United States, and the defence thereof.
Said Power Structure obviously dominated by alcoholics, drug addicts, sex maniacs and pervertos, the emotionally disturbed and others weird and/or unwholesome, drawn from the Dregs of Society for the most part.
(Thanks to the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Centre for the hat tip--which is something maybe the Secular-Progressive Blogosphere ought to follow, even if it means driving Bill "No-Spin Zone" O'Reilly all the closer to Al Cohol.)