Electronic Intifada joins Jeff Morley, Tim Shorrock, Sam Husseini, and other JFK conspiracy theorists

This new piece would be laughable if not sad. And it is sad, because it's conspiracy theorizing. And, as I now see, Jim DeBrosse, "book" and all, is one of the leading pushers of the "Israel did it" conspiracy.

I think JFK assassination conspiracy theories in general are illogical on the rational side and fail Ockham's Razor on the empirical side. But, for one additional reason, the "Israel did it" is even worse. I'll get to that below. 

First, Jefferson Morley is NOT a "respected JFK researcher." He's a conspiracy theorist, even if he claims he's a former one. More on that below. (I've written more than once about him.)

And, Electronic Intifada is suddenly less respected by me than it was a couple of days earlier. 

But, before we go there, we have this:

Signs of Israel’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination have been ignored for more than 60 years by a mainstream media that still clings to the lies and omissions of the Warren Report, the official, but widely discredited, US government investigation into the assassination.

Well, the Intifada is officially in conspiracy theory land. 

Then we jump here: 

For those willing to look at all the facts, there is evidence of a broad conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, led by rogue elements of the CIA, Israel’s leaders and intelligence officials, the national crime syndicate under the leadership of Zionist gangster Meyer Lansky, and the French underground army of assassins known as the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS).

Then we have the allegedly Jewish connection.

A document released in 2023 from the JFK archive reveals that Reuben Efron, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army and a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, was reading purported triggerman Lee Harvey Oswald’s private mail years prior to the JFK assassination as part of a closely-held CIA surveillance program.

In reality, per the Times of Israel linked at "document," while he might have been ethnically Jewish, nothing ever says he was working for Mossad or any other Israeli agency. And, if Jeff Morley had the goods on that, he would have said so. 

And, from there, we loop in the CIA's top nutbar, which itself shows how uninformed this piece is:

The program was led by James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s counterterrorism chief and its liaison to the Mossad, Israel’s overseas spy agency. Efron, a Zionist whose mother died in the Holocaust, later emigrated from the US to live in Jerusalem. 

JFK assassination documents released in 2025 show that Angleton used Mossad operatives to spy on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

There you go. 

But, the stupidity doesn't stop there. It continues:

There were certainly motives other than the Zionist ones at play in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. He withheld air support during the infamous “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba in 1961, embittering the defeated anti-Castro rebels. There are also indications, in at least one National Security Action Memo, 263, that JFK wanted to withdraw American troops from Vietnam after his likely reelection in 1964.

Wrong, wrong and Not.Even.Wrong.

Here's the reality, as I've written, about NSAM-263. And more here, if that's not enough.

But, that's not enough for Jim DeBrosse at the Electronic Intifada, because now he gives us the "sekrut real world" of Jack Ruby:

Ruby – Oswald’s killer – was by no means the small-time pawn of organized crime dismissed by the Warren Commission. By way of the Teamsters Union and the Chicago underworld, he rose to the top of the Dallas area mob. In the early 1950s, Ruby – who used his original surname Rubenstein at the time – befriended Lewis McWillie, the manager of Lansky’s casino operation in Havana. Several months after Castro’s takeover in 1959, Ruby made an unexplained six-day visit to Cuba, where some believe he secured the release of mob boss Santos Trafficante from a Cuban detention camp.

There's no fucking way the Mob would ever have actually trusted wannabe, and Andy Warhol 15-minutes-of-fame seeker Jack Ruby that much. So, I consider that a flat lie, because it IS a flat lie. "Conveniently," DeBrosse has no links, not even to a less than fully reputable site, to try to substantiate that.

But, me? I have Gerald Posner, who explains the reality behind the increase in Ruby's phone calls in mid to late 1963. He also notes the obvious — if Oswald were the actual shooter but a "controlled" patsy, he wouldn't have been allowed to stay alive to three days and possibly spill some beans. 

And, don't go into plagiarism claims. If everything he plagiarized is factual, he still wrote facts. Second, I've never heard that claim laid against "Case Closed." That said, it IS funny that Mark Lane, yes, THAT Mark Lane, was his plagiarism attorney. 

But why stop there? Let's go into Bobby Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory too!

Lansky was connected to two gangsters closely involved in the JFK assassination plot. The first of these was Jack Ruby, who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald before the supposed killer of JFK could testify. “I’m just a patsy,” Oswald had famously said after his arrest. 

The second was Eugene Hale Brading (aka Jim Braden). An ex-convict with known ties to a group of hitmen, Brading was also a suspected courier for Lansky. He was stopped by Dallas police for suspicious behavior in a Dealey Plaza office building minutes after the JFK assassination. Brading, who used numerous aliases and had a long criminal history, was taken in for questioning but released. 

On the night Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was killed, Brading was once again found in Los Angeles just a mile from the hotel where the younger Kennedy was gunned down. RFK was not only JFK’s brother, but his attorney general.

Oof. 

It's me, boys, I did it, even if I lied, denied and waved my hands later. 

First, Oswald lied as much as Sirhan Sirhan, to get at both conspiracy theories. 

Second, to get at the reality of Sirhan Sirhan, in this case, Zionism IS involved, namely that Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy because he rightfully thought RFK was a Zionist. THAT is the "one additional reason." And, yes, Sirhan Sirhan did it, period and end of story.

Second, Brading is so nuts he doesn't even get his own Wiki page. See the Wikipedia entry for the document "Gemstone File." 

The article goes on to call Jim Garrison a "hero" while at the same time, in referring to CIA and other documents, use the word "imply" regularly.

Jean Souetre? His actual name would be Jean-Jacques Susini, I think. Under the first name, his alleged involvement comes from the febrile mind of E. Howard Hunt.

OK, Shorrock is dealt with in that NSAM-263 link. He's great on Korean Peninsula issues, wrong and a Camelot true believer wrong, on JFK. He's not specifically, AFAIK, a Zionist conspiracy theorist.

Jeff Morley? I didn't believe him when he claimed he was no longer a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Sam Husseini, referenced above? Anti-Zionist conspiracy theorist.

Angleton? Paranoid about CIA infiltration, especially the Nosenko case, which badly damaged the Agency. 

The rest of the piece is the usual "throw shit at the wall and see if it sticks." 

Not.Even.Wrong., per my 2023 thoughts on the 60th anniversary of the assassination. 

The worst part, beyond the conspiracy theory itself, is that it actually gives reputable ammo to Zionists trying to morph anti-Zionism into antisemitism. 

And with that, I have removed Electronic Intifada from my blogroll. 

And been banned by Libertarian Meme on Reddit for calling the last paragraph of their post on this idiocy full-on antisemitism. (They're Mises Mice fucktards, including openly calling for an end to democracy.)

==

Update, Nov. 4, 2025: Asa Winstanley and compadres at Palestine is Still the Issue have joined Electronic Intifada in "platforming" Jim DeBrosse's nutbar conspiracy theory.

I have unfollowed it on Substack after calling it out, including the issue that Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby for being a Zionist! 

 

Texas Progressives talk Texas Democrats, more

Off the Kuff notes the candidacy of Rep. Jon Rosenthal for Railroad Commissioner, and the potential candidacy of Rep. Gina Hinojosa for Governor. 

SocraticGadfly looks at Kendall Scudder moving the Texas Democratic Party to Dallas, including wondering if/when many will start tiring of him, then looks at Andrew White's gubernatorial announcement and seeing something that looked like dogwhistling.

TACO? As in Texas always chickens out? UT is looking at caving to Trump's offer of additional federal money in exchange for cutting its academic freedom nuts off. 

Six months actual time on a 10-year suspended sentence for child sex abuse charges against a wingnut Baptist preacher? Fucking ridiculous.

The Monthly writes about WallDestroyers' David Barton having an advisory role on Texas K-12 social studies curriculum. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project wrote about the At-Large 4 Houston Council Debate sponsored by the Houston Progressive Caucus & Spring Branch Democrats Club. Salinas, Thomas & Boykins took part.

G. Elliott Morris rates our democracy.

The Fort Worth Report asks what kind of free speech teachers really have.

Evil MoPac warns against believing the hate about Austin not being great.

Your Local Epidemiologist notes that measles is still going strong out there.

Law Dork finds a judge that knows how to treat the Trump administration.

The Observer talks to an activist who wants to make resistance sexy.

Colorado River Compact states up deep shit creek

 

Above: Lies from the Bureau of Reclamation, posted in the visitor center at Glen Canyon Dam. Flood control was already fine with Hoover Dam; it worsened conditions for fish. Author photo. 

Inside Climate News has the details, citing experts saying water consumption needs to be cut "immediately."

How bad is it?

Many of my environmentally minded readers know what "dead pool" is:

The report is stark in its assessment of the situation: Current Colorado River levels require “immediate and substantial reductions in consumptive use across the Basin” or Lake Powell by 2027 would have no storage left and “would have to be operated as a ‘run of river” facility” in which only the inflow from the river could be released downstream.

That bad.

By next year, not even 2027, the river's two main reservoirs, Powell and Lake Mead, may be down to just 9 percent of capacity. 

Not that national, or most state-level, Democrats are THAT environmentally minded, but compared to the Trump Administration? Trump himself probably thinks he can write an executive order ordering one of the other of Glen Canyon and Hoover dams, or both, to simply store more water.

He would, of course, be wrong:

“The River recognizes no human laws or governance structures and follows only physical ones,” the report’s authors wrote. “There is a declining amount of water available in the Colorado River system, primarily caused by the effects of a warming climate—longer growing seasons, drier soils, and less efficient conversion of the winter snowpack into stream flow. Although American society has developed infrastructure to store the spring snowmelt and make that water available in other seasons to more completely utilize the variable runoff, the Colorado River watershed produces only a finite volume of water, regardless of how many dams exist.”

There you are.

Worse, the new report says that one or another of the two lakes don't have to actually fall to dead pool to start having problems:

Adding to the issue is the status of the infrastructure that enables the river to be diverted and stored for use. For example, the researchers write, it was thought that anything above what’s known as “dead pool”—a water level below the reservoirs’ lowest outlets that can pass water through the dams—was “active storage.” But testing last year from the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency overseeing the river and its dams, found that those outlets can only be safely used at water levels higher than previously thought and cannot be used for long durations.

And, that means that power generation becomes problematic even above dead pool.

I posted this on Hucksterman, tagging my sister who lives in Phoenix. She and her hubby are close enough to semi-retired that they're looking for new landing places. I suggested they speed up that process, and I think she doesn't really get it, either. She doesn't get that this is yet more reason for people to "Abandon hope and abandon the Desert Southwest."

"Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell," Cactus Ed said. But, none of the seven basin states wants to listen.

"We'll just pump more groundwater!" is the answer in general, and especially of Aridzona, the worst offender. 

Unfortunately, as that story notes, groundwater is not included in the Colorado River Compact negotiations. And, I highly doubt a solution to renegotiating the compact in general is found before its expiration next year. 

Gaza: Two years before the mast

The mast would be genocide and conquest, likely pre-planned, as per The Dissident, there's good reason to believe the government of Bibi Netanyahu knew at least some basics of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack in advance. It clearly was prepared in advance to invoke the Hannibal Directive.

At the same time, there's been levels of incompetence in this war. The hasbara, on things like the mass rapes claims, has been so bad it's been unofficially withdrawn. 

Read The Dissident at Substack for details on much of this.

Two things are my focus.

One is a piece of goy-written hasbara by a Clinton Tankersley on Ed Buckner's Substack. (I have since blocked Tankersley and unsubscribed from Buckner, in part because this is not secular humanism, beyond the support for genocide, beyond the lies and other things. It's a narrow, non-humanist worldview. Tankersley may well be an atheist, but he's a politically at least fairly conservative one, and he's not a secular humanist, and this is why I call myself one.) 

Tankersley repeats the lies about the mass rapes, about anti-Israel media, and more. Here's the reality of how the US media has propagated these lies, from Mondoweiss.

It ignores (Tankersley is probably ignorant of, or else in denial of) Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing even before the Nakba, and other things.

Beyond that, it's simply laughable to read Tankersley blame postmodernism and other things. And, it's high-grade ignorance, probably self-willed, to claim Salvador Dali is a postmodernist. It's why he's not a secular humanist, and if Ed willingly ran this, he's not so secular humanist as he claims, in my book. As for those rantings, I've read Derrick Bell's "Silent Covenants," a seminal book in critical racial theory.

On the matter at hand? 

My comments.

I should not and will not support genocide. Or Zionism like this in general. Or lies. Like the "mass rapes." Even Israel itself has, backhandedly, admitted these are lies. And lies they are. Read The Dissident, here on Substack. I've written about this occasionally, but he covers it in detail. Or read Mondoweiss. Or The Electronic Intifada. Or the lies of alleged anti-Israel media, even as Ellison fils has announced the leader of modern cancel culture, Bari Weiss, will run CBS News. I'll stand by Mondoweiss. And may just unsub from here. No, I'll almost certainly unsub. Ed may have some other good things, but I can't support hasbara lies. But I will share back the suggested reading of Mondoweiss as a website and the likes of Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe as authors.

That's the big one. Pappe? "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." Sand? "The Invention of the Jewish People." Zionists in Israel know both, though rejecting them. Zionists in the US generally don't even know who they are.

One respondent said they'd be looking to read Pappe for rebuttals. Well, THERE you go on reading with an open mind. He also claimed this wasn't a genocide or ethnic cleansing. Well, beyond Pappe, the UN, and the International Criminal Court, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch says it is too, as does Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss. He probably claims they're self-hating Jews. And, yes, I've seen that phrase used since Oct. 7, 2023.

Ed himself had been losing me off and on, and the last piece of his own before giving Tankersley the reins pretty much completed the job outside of secular humanism broadly defined. 

The second piece, directly refuting one of Tankersley's lies? Not only has CBS/Paramount acquired Bari Weiss' Substack empire, "The Free Press," she will RUN CBS NEWS! Yeah, anti-Israel media my ass. Most the mainstream media has yet to report that the alleged mass rapes were lies. Update: Nepo Baby David Ellison also wants to buy the already wingnut New York Post. The Post's own piece about that also discusses the Free Press acquisition, noting he paid 10x over Free Press earnings. 10x over EARNINGS, not profit.

Is Hamas perfect? Absolutely not. Is it tied to Iranian influence? No shit.

Does that Iranian influence help it maintain the power it does? Absolutely. Should it let go of that, for that reason? Absolutely not.

Did Israel help, if not create, then install, Hamas in Gaza under the old "divida et impera" maxim? Absolutely.

Has the US been hypocritical on Hamas, as far as presidents of both parties, like Dear Leader? Yes. 

And, that's part of what irks me on this.

Hamas is the best option for Gazan Palestinians because Israel and the United States made it so, hoping it would be rejected. And, because it wasn't, and because Israeli apartheid made it an open-air prison, eventually something was going to "snap." 

And, Israel was ready and willing and waiting for that. 

On the Iran angle, this is not to justify Ayatollah Khamenei or the Revolutionary Guards, but why the hell would Iran trust the United States or Israel, let alone give up leverage in the Middle East, even as Turkish President Erdogan is a shit-faced liar playing one side, and half of the other, against the middle? 

Otherwise, per Open Democracy? If the Israeli man or woman in the street is worried about security, then boot Netanyahu out. 

And, otherwise? Stop lying about the mass rapes. Per the Dissident, linking to thorough refutation of that and a call for freelancers to boycott the New York Times opinion 

 

Viva Raunuq Alam! Fuck Brian Bolton, Phil Sorrells and a lesser fuck for Kuff

Thank doorknob a Tarrant County jury rejected a Zionist/religious right/general wingnut attempt to convict Raunaq Alam of a hate crime for graffiting a church with "Fuck Israel." (Said church was flying an Israeli flag as the main reason it was targeted during a random drive by Alam and two friends.) That said, fuck judge Brian Bolton for what at least verges on the spirit of false imprisonment. And fuck Charles Kuffner, nominal head cheese of what remains of the Texas Progressives Alliance, for not writing anything about Palestinian issues, not even here in Tex-ass. Kuff, you're a fellow traveler with the likes of Tarrant DA Phil Sorrells.

Top blogging of September

It's the usual roundup of the top 10 posts of last month, by readership.

Per that, not all of them were FROM last month; as normal, there's evergreen posts returning to life which will be so noted.

With that, starting the drumroll:

No. 10, from July: Trump is actually right on California's high-speed rail. By extension, he's also right on Texas' high-speed rail. You cannot let such stuff get politicized, whether here or the Chinese Communist Party Potemkin HSR. 

No. 9 is from May: "Three Dems on SCOTUS, no environmentalists." Now that you know the Rethuglicans, with partial exceptions of Roberts and Barrett will ignore precedent, you have to as well, while also admitting your own precedent for partially gutting the ESA was weak tea. 

No. 8? Don't go to Montreal in an MLB expansion, Rob Manfred! 

No. 7, from just 10 days or so ago, was the second half of a split Texas Progressives roundup, about things like book bans. 

No. 6 was from 2019. "Magnificent Monet" was my impression of a fabulous late-life Monet exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum, complete with photos of paintings. 

No. 5, also from 2019, was a slice of alt history. "Imagine No American Indians" was thinking about if the Western Hemisphere had nobody here before Europeans' entrada. 

No. 4, also from 2019, as I wonder about bot boosting for some nefarious reason. Unfortunately, because Libertarians ran crap in 2020 and Dems ran nobody, contra my piece, Drew Springer never was in election trouble. 

No. 3 was from 2018: "Goldy to the Cards?" Unfortunately, though he won an MVP, Paul Goldschmidt delivered little in the way of postseason success. 

No. 2 was from 2021. "More pressure on Texas to loosen pot rules" never happened. I know by know that as long as Dannie Goeb, aka Dan Patrick, is Lite Guv of Texas, no such lightening will ever happen. That said, as long as Strangeabbott is gov, no tightening will happen either. 

No. 1 was also 2019, and about my assessment of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. I foolishly had St. Bernard of Sanders at No. 1 on late 2019 odds; Kirsten Gillibrand (who?) and Kamala is a Zionist Cop were tied for second in my guesstimates, with Dementia Joe and R.F. Beto-Bob O'Rourke tied for fourth.