Monday, September 28, 2015

60 Years Ago James Dean Was Killed & It Wasn't His Fault

Yes, believe it or not, James Dean was killed in a two car crash 60 years ago on September 30th. His Hollywood career was just beginning it's meteoric rise after appearing on dozens of television shows, six films and starring in three films in a row. Only one of those films was released in his lifetime, "East Of Eden" (1955); but he had the big buzz, ya dig daddy-o?

After finishing his part of the principle photography in "Giant" (1956) in September, 1955, Dean was ready to go do some racing. He had recently purchased a Porche Spyder, which he nicknamed 'Little Bastard', and wanted to race it for the first time. Dean had entered the Salinas Road Race scheduled to be held in Salinas, California on October 1st and 2nd. On September 30th Dean left Los Angeles for the event with his mechanic, Rolf Wutherich, friend and stunt man Bill Hickman and photographer Sanford H. Roth. Originally, Dean was going to tow the Spyder on a trailer hooked to his new station wagon, but Wutherich suggested Dean drive the Spyder to Salinas because it had low break-in miles. Dean, with Wutherich as his passenger, drove the Spyder, while Hickman, with Roth as his passenger, drove the station wagon towing it's now empty trailer.

(James Dean with the Porche Spyder at Blackwell's Corner. The station wagon and trailer can be seen in the background. Dean would be killed in about 30 minutes. Photo by Sanford H. Roth; Fair Use)

At 3:30pm, near Wheeler's Ridge, Dean was pulled over by a CHP officer (as was Hickman) and given a written citation for speeding, 10mph over the 55mph posted limit. After going over the Grapevine, the group stopped at Blackwell's Corner before going on the next leg to Paso Robles for dinner. Once back on the road, Roth took the final picture of a living James Dean before the station wagon fell behind the faster roadster. About thirty minutes later, Dean would be killed.

(Last photo of James Dean. Photo by Sanford H. Roth; Fair Use)

The "Y" intersection of then highways 466 and 41 is where the auto accident occurred. In some accounts that began to appear only 40 or more years after the event, one could be forgiven for believing the highway was packed with cars. It's sort of like the stories that began circulating in the days immediately following Dean's death. One would think that half of Hollywood warned Dean his new car was "cursed", "evil" or "haunted". There's even an 'account' that cars were three abreast across the highway as Dean was madly speeding and passing cars with no regard for safety. Yep, dead men can't defend themselves after the fact.

It was approximately 5:45pm when the accident happened as Dean's Spyder approached the "Y" intersection and a 1950 Ford Tudor Coupe driven by 23 year old Cal Poly student, with the odd name (considering) of Donald Turnupseed, coming in the opposite direction, began to turn left onto highway 41. The resulting crash was a violent one, with Turnupseed's car spinning about 45 feet and Dean's car spinning about 35 feet and into a ditch next the highway. The damage to both vehicles was significant, but of the three people involved, only Dean's injuries were fatal. Turnupseed had facial lacerations and a bloody nose and Wutherich, after being thrown from the car, had several broken bones that required immediate care.

(Turnupseed's car, note the heavily damaged left side. There is also a spider break in the windshield indicating Turnupseed smacked his head against it. Photo by Sanford H. Roth; Fair Use.) 

(Dean's car. It should be noted that there are no released photos of the car before Dean was removed, so there is some damage attributed to getting him out of the car. Considering the car he hit, the Spyder is in better condition than it should be because it bounced off after the initial impact. Photo by Sanford H. Roth; Fair Use.)

According to a crash recreation, estimates are that Turnupseed was traveling about 55mph and Dean was going about 70mph. The left side of the Coupe hit the left side of the Spyder as Turnupseed inexplicably decided to turn left onto highway 41. James Dean's head bounced off the left headlight of the Coupe and he remained trapped by the legs in the Spyder as it spun to stop. The initial injuries were certainly the fatal ones. However, the accident was not his fault as is, to this day, commonly believed.

It has rarely been mentioned in the lore, history or mystique surrounding James Dean's death, but a CHP diagram of the accident shows two different sets of skid marks for the Ford Tudor. Lore has it that Dean's last words were about the car up ahead, "That guy'll stop. He's gotta see us." Whether the utterance was true or not, Turnupseed did see him as the first set of skid marks indicate. Then, he decided to make his turn and again, he saw the Spyder and braked once again producing the second set of skid marks which ended with the impact.


Why, if Turnupseed saw the car that caused him to locked his brakes the first time, did he decide to go ahead and make the turn anyway? Dean did try an evasive maneuver to the right but there just wasn't enough time. Turnupseed's decision to make the left turn means the accident was not Dean's fault. As to the why, there is not enough evidence to make even an educated guess. Turnupseed never talked about the accident publicly and all that exists is a mention of it in a letter to a friend. All he does is mention the accident in passing and spends most of time talking about what it will take to fix his car!

I suppose the belief that Dean was reckless and was the cause of his own death feeds into the mystique of such a bright star meeting a sudden and violent end. Perhaps the strange behavior of Turnupseed just prior to the accident and his subsequent closed-mouth publicly simply isn't as mysterious or ghostly for the usual narrative. Regardless, a brilliant actor was killed before he could use all his true talent or grow old into a tiresome actor who wound up co-starring in a soap opera or a combination of both.


 

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Of Popes And Blind Eyes

There ain't no Jesus gonna come from the sky. Now that I found out I know I can cry.
- John Lennon


The arrival of Pope Francis to the United States this month has caused the country to go absolutely ape shit. The major television networks might as well rebrand their initials thusly: American Broadcasting Catholics, National Broadcasting Catholics, Catholic Broadcasting System, Catholic News Network and Fatima Over Xenophobia.

Throughout it's history, the United States of America has routinely turned the blind eye, even if it means strained neck muscles. A classic example of turning the blind eye is the amazing number of our very own saintly Presidents who owned slaves! A history class blind eye. Yet, the Pope's visit may expose this blind eye as the festering puss hole it really is.

Leading the blind eye brigade (with more and more frequency as this century of horror continues) are people who otherwise identify themselves as progressives and/or free thinkers. Did the Catholic Church suddenly come out for abortion rights? Did the Pope marry a stadium full of same-sex couples? Well, one would think so as the country turns that blind eye to the obvious hatred of the Catholic Church toward gays and women in these cases alone. Hello? Even evangelical Republicans are pissing their pants because President Obama has invoked the names of Jesus, Lord and dammit, God, more times in the last 48 hours than the top ten Republican candidates have in the last four months combined. On top of that, John Boehner must be bawling his eyes out, chain smoking cigarettes and downing pints of booze because everyone has turned a blind eye to the fact that he was the one who invited the Pope to speak before Congress in the first place.

A couple of Pope Francis' more overt actions while in the United States include a canonizing and riding around in a Fiat. I guess Fiat needed some serious god-like intervention rebranding. Ever checked the history of Fiat? Do so, it is quite illuminating. The word fiat itself might also be something worth looking into, because, well, the Pope.

More egregious is the canonizing of Father Junipero Serra, or in Catholic Church parlance, the guy is now a Saint. Serra, working for the ever popular Inquisition, arrived in Mexico in 1749 and it wasn't long before he settled up north near present day Monterey, California. He established missions so he and his sadists could covert natives he said were guilty of, "...the most detestable and horrible crimes of sorcery, witchcraft and devil worship." Guilty of torture and murder is a saintly pursuit of course and defenders have actually used language to excuse the priest's savagery by claiming all the native peoples were voluntarily led to the word. To top it off, Serra has been rebranded as well, he now has been, in a Church/Orwellian revisionism, labeled "evangelizer of the West" by Pope Francis. Native Americans have used different and certainly more accurate descriptions such as "monster" and "for the pope to accord sainthood is such an obscene gesture on the part of the Catholic Church." It's all turning one big blind eye to old and new atrocities.


Lest we forget, Argentina's "Dirty War", propagated by a military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 1980s. Supported of course by the United States Government because of, well, communism! There's some question of then Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio's (now Pope Francis) involvement in helping the dictators round up "undesirables". But, where there is white smoke there's a Pope.

I implore the few remaining actual progressives and/or free thinkers to rise up and open their blind eyes. When some critical thought is applied, President Obama and Pope Francis are a perfect match, perhaps made in heaven as it were. Obama was ordained with the Nobel Peace Prize and has wage the Endless Wars which continue to kill thousands of civilians every year. He has openly bragged about extra-judicially murdering American citizens and kisses the asses of corporate America and the military/industrial complex. But, because he tosses out a few bromides about climate change, health care and the war on women he is drooled over by the blind eye left. Is it just too difficult to reconcile images of burned, crushed children with the peace president? Is it simply a road not traveled because once trod upon there is never going back to that misperceived comfort of constantly turning a blind eye?

One thing, beyond mindless Pope fawning and massive turning of the blind eye, is that there will be NO press coverage of dissenting viewpoints. No long interviews with agnostics or atheists will be condoned or allowed. I only hope that the constant turning of the blind eye has not led us so far down the slippery slope that we can not as a country ever climb back up.

(Obama meets the Pope at a military airport and they laugh and laugh how people still haven't figured out they're Bankster puppets. Image from Getty Images under Fair Use.)

 

Saturday, September 5, 2015

False Flag Hoax News Story With No Apologies

AUTHOR'S NOTE
As usual with stories such as this, there is a high likelihood that the linked articles and especially videos will simply disappear from the internet. Therefore, I have included relevant screenshots at the end of the article just in case.

UPDATE
The cop involved in this hoax has 'suicided' himself.

---------------------------------------------------------

The last few weeks has seen seemingly one news story after another about either cops shooting unarmed people or cops being ambushed and shot. Social media has been more active over these stories than a school of piranhas fighting over the carcass a blue whale. It's like open season, but it seems some agencies have tried to not let a good crisis go to waste. This time, the false flag was spoiled and the backup plan had to be initiated. Unfortunately, this backup plan was more crappy than the recent live TV shooting.

Originally, in the midst of all these shootings back and forth between police and civilians, this story appeared, apparently showing the dastardly depths that evil perps were willing to go in their mass slaughter of cops. Millis, Massachusetts police went positively shelter-in-place with this event and a massive manhunt was underway. The TV news dutifully reported the story complete with witnesses who were very descriptive with what they saw.


Well, before you could print out a thousand signs reading, "police lives matter", the story became one complete clusterfuck. By admitting to a hoax perpetrated by the police officer involved, the inner workings of a false flag event and the corresponding fake news has become glaringly apparent, hopefully to even the most sheep of sheeple.

Instead of chasing a truck which shot at his cruiser, which he then crashed and which then caught on fire, the officer actually crashed his car for some reason and then shot it up himself. I write "some reason", for although the police department is calling this a hoax by the cop, no reason for it has been forwarded. Maybe that part of the script is still being written. For initially, the police response was massive and local TV news were interviewing not one, but three witnesses who described seeing the police car chasing a maroon truck. Was this originally a false flag event to further foment the narrative of police being in perpetual danger of ambush and such that went wrong? So wrong that a Plan B was quickly trotted out to be consumed by the masses? And the three witnesses who were interviewed by the TV news were just terribly, horribly mistaken by what they claimed to have seen?


The big question here is: what precipitated exposing this as a false flag and the trotting out of Plan B? Because Plan B means that there was never any maroon truck being chased by a police cruiser regardless of what have happened. Therefore, the witnesses interviewed were either lying or actually saw that part of the false flag being played out. Either way, it looks as though hoax news was right there to perpetuate the "story". Let that sink in for a moment.

Perhaps some intrepid local citizen filmed or took a picture of the cop blasting away at his patrol car. Perhaps said citizen then called local authorities about what he/she saw and then, dammit to hell, Plan B was hastily implemented. Just a few of many questions this bizarre story has generated and, oh, by the way, nary a retraction of the original "story" has been offered by the 'news'. Certainly, no re-interviewing of those witnesses has been conducted. And no apologies.







(One of three witnesses to the police cruiser chasing a maroon truck.)

(One of three witnesses to the police cruiser chasing a maroon truck.)