It was perhaps unintentionally significant that the film watched over the past two days has the word assassination in its title, The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford. Later in the day I watched the assassination of a football club, Not significant in terms of the damage caused by the speculations of the money lenders although the self destruction of uncontrolled market capitalism may be some compensation of all those lives ruined.
First the film . This is a long and at times incoherent , mostly boring film, based on historical material and artistic licence. Sometimes I find that I live in a different dimension to the critics who hated Mama Mia and adored this film.
I can understand that in prison and among the criminal fraternity there is a hierarchy where those who use physical violence are held in greater esteem than those who do not and that even among the prison officer population there are those who hold criminals in esteem and give them preferential treatment over others because of the violent power which some men hold over others. I can also understand why there is more interest, sometimes obsessive interest with those who become violent killers who are high born or come from educated and cultured backgrounds.
Jessie James was the son of financially successful Baptist Minister who was also a hemp farmer and who helped found the Liberty College of Liberty Missouri. He travelled to California during the Gold rush and died when Jesse was three years old laving his widow with an older son and a younger daughter. Jesse's mother back in Missouri remarried, twice, secondly to a doctor with whom she had four other children and she brought up all seven on the family estate which was assisted by six slaves which became seven for the tobacco crop produced on the farm. They lived in a area where there was strong division of opinion and open conflict over the question of racist slave owning and it is said that it was in the neighbouring Kansas territory that the greatest conflicts boiled up over the issue leading to the American Civil war. Hollywood has tended to divide its portrayal of these times between films about the conventional army forces who had some sense of discipline, codes of behaviour and respect for the enemy who were after all fellow Americans, and the militia who behaved a ruthlessly as any other such group in the history of the world murdering, with the pro slavers establishing a reputation for murdering Unionist sympathisers, including scalping the dead, while the Unionist militia's are said to have held summary executions and imposing banishment with both sides take properties, burnings and some raping. Frank James joined in on the side of the separatists and at one point Unionist torture their step father buy a partial hanging. Legend has it that this was turning point in the life of Jesse. Who is said to have joined the Quantril Raiders although there is no evidence that this was so. However it is correct that Jesse and older brother Frank did join in the civil war gangs, including one led by Bloody Bill Anderson and they were involved with the massacre of 22 unarmed Unionist troops one point, dismembering the dead. Jesse was also show in the chest at one point, The penalty for this horror was to be exiled from their home state.
The ending of the civil war left Missouri in shambles and three continuing opposed factions and interesting given the present impression that the Republicans are the conservative party of the right and the Democrats, the political party of the left, it was the pro slavery conservative Unionists who founded the Democratic party (Mr Obama to note) and the anti Slavery radical unionists who founded the Republicans and the secessionists. In Britain there is still a totalitarian right wing conservative force within the British Labour party and some trade union leaders, and a Liberal Libertarian force within the Conservative Party.
Jesse, still no more than a boy, bedridden with his chest was cared for by a first cousin as his mother had been exiled to Nebraska, and he married the young woman nine years later. The militia gang which Frank and Jesse had been members then set on various robberies which also involved killings but which were also sectarian and political motivated, situations which are all too familiar here in post world war Europe, including in recent times in Ireland and the Balkans. There is no evidence however that Jesse and James were involved. It was not until 1867 when Jesse was 22 that he and his brother became involved with a robbery and the killing of a man, the cashier who it was said they mistakenly believed had shot their original militia gang leader, Bloody Bill. Newspaper publicity resulted in Jesse quickly becoming the most famous of the former Guerrillas turned outlaw. I was fascinated to learn from the interview with John Le Carre, the other day that there is a code which means that former agents remain silent on the names and activities of former comrades who turn traitors or become common killers and robbers, and I continue assume that this is so for the CIA as well as Special Forces personnel on both sides of the Atlantic. Some state made killers live the rest of their lives quietly in guilt and regret, some continue what they have been trained but for their own interests and those of their families o just to settle old scores. Few I suspect can live ordinary, respectable lives as if their former lives never happened.
It was at this point after the first publicity that the James brothers joined up with the Youngers and after a series of successful robberies from Iowa to Texas and |Kansas to West Virginia, they turned to trains and it was with trains that they began to be popular because on the while they restricted their robberies to the train safe rather than robbing the passengers, although they did this now and again.
It was at this point that the feud commenced between the James and Youngers and the Pinkerton Detective agency. This led to the Pinkertons who were just as ruthless and lawless murders as the James Youngers to raiding the family home, murdering a half brother and blowing off the arm of the Frank and Jesse's mother. This changed public opinion and led to a Bill offering them boys amnesty being narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Jesse married and led a normal family life with one of his sons growing up to become a respected lawyer. Two years later there was a politically and sectarian motivated bank robbery at Northfield's Minnesota which led to the killing of everyone in the gang except Frank and Jesse although the extent to which the James brother participated in this robbery, if all is in question. Frank is said to have settled down in the Nashville area after they escaped but for Jesse settling down never appears to have been a option. During he day I also watched the Bonnie Parker story were it is alleged that her downfall came because the thrill, the fear, the get away with it became an addiction and she could not stop and this resulted in an informant alerting the authorities and an ambush and to her death.
The film, the Assassination, concentrates on this period in the life of Jesse when he recruited new gang members who did not have the experience or the trust as former guerrillas, so he became suspicious, introverted and cautious. If you enjoy a couple of hours watching his and nothing much else then this is the film for you.. The film lasts in total two hours and fort minutes. It ends as he takes in the two Ford brothers into his home so he can keep an eye on them, and on a hot day removes his guns leaving one who as done a financial deal with the state governor to shoot him in the back of the head. The brothers were charged and convicted of murder but given a pardon. The general; belief is that the Governor knew they would kill rather than capture. They and law enforcement officers involved received the bounty and the killer brothers fled with their loot to Missouri. One of the brothers committed suicide and the other was himself shot and the killer sentenced to death and then had the sentence commuted. The mother of Jesse and the following inscription placed on he tomb. In loving memory of my beloved son Murdered by the traitor and Coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.
After the death it was rumoured that the he had not died and the killing of someone else was an elaborate state plot. Such were the continuing rumours that in 1995 the body was exhumed fro DNA tests which were reported to be consistent with those other members of his family. His wife died in poverty
Films were made in 1921(2) ,1927, 1939 (2) 1941, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1957, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1980,, 1986,, 1994, 1999,, 2001., 2005 (2), 2007. There have been TV films and references, books and music which have helped create the legend.
There was a different kind of association later in the evening
19.00 Sky show the Newcastle Tottenham Carling cup game. Will the focus be the game, the size of the crowd, protests, the manager? Can it get any worse? And what of Tottenham with Jonathan Wood gate. John Beresford played some 200 games under Kevin Keegan. Latest rumour is Terry Venerable as temporary manager to steady the club until everything is sorted out.
19.05 Having had four anchovies halves on plain crackers with a glass of wine, a some pasta with cheese sauce I eat farmed sea bass which sounds a contradiction.
19.15 The programme presenter Simon Bates reads our sad human interest stories in agony aunt format and Sky borrowed him this evening to tell the recently Newcastle story
19.25 a small apple pie and a mince and custard end the meal with coffee to follow at the interval is a subdued and sombre and desolate St James Park about a third full I would guess.
20.30 It is a boring game with few opportunities given to either side to score. John Beresford says her expects to comment on game goals and excitement but there is nothing the pace of the game is unbelievable slow as if being played in slow motion, such is the fear and lack of confidence among the players of both teams. Never experienced a ground that in such eerily silent.
20.30-21.30 Newcastle had one good and one commendable attempt to score a goal before Spurs score first and then again after an atrocious defending mistake and woe piles up upon woe. It was a very sad night. It could be argued that the owner, Managing Director and Director of Football will go down as the assassins of the club unless there is a dramatic change in fortunes.
I then watched a disgraceful exchange on Newsnight with Jeremy I can play the bastard Paxman. It is evident to anyone with half a brain that that the Republican candidate was playing a political game in suggesting that the role of both Presidential candidate should be to mix it back on the Hill appearing to sort out the national financial crisis rather than hold a TV debate on the issues before the electorate on their governor ship. The Republican face an uphill battle to convince the hard core of their supporters that adopting socialist anti free market measures is the only way to prevent the whole system collapsing and western capitalist democracies and their allies being propelled into a financial and stock market collapse worse than 1929. While the Democrats are in favour in principle they want strings, especially to punish those responsible.. Obama's agent was asked why he had refused to stop campaigning and cancel the debate returning to work as a Senator. He pointed out that as President elect he was keeping in close contact with his political colleagues to ensure the nation was saved and the maximum political advantage was obtained. It was evident to those with the other half of the rest of the brain that the Republicans were in a panic given the polls and the decision they were forced to take and wanted a halt to the election campaign in order to try and salvage something of their position. Paxman and his editorial staff appeared to be pro Republican and ant Obama by the stance they took thus making fools of themselves and destroying whatever credibility this bankrupt format and personality still clings. The same applied to the Politics show, the Tonight Programme and other media analysts and commentators as they desperately tried to undermine the great speech and conference management of the Prime Minister, Who leaked that the Transport Minister and former Education Secretary was leaving in the reshuffle so she could start to give time to her children and husband after 15 years in politics and nearly a decade in government. Why she did not take the opportunity of going with Tony Blair and goes now or at the next election is extraordinary and no amount of spin will; convince that there is more to it than anyone in Government is saying. It just shows the gulf between the world in which the politicians and top civil servants, international finance and business operators now live and the rest of us has widened beyond bridging. It is no different to that which has developed between football supporters and their club owners and managements. The lesson which I hope the supporters at Newcastle have sent out lighting a torch which others will take into eve very aspect of life, is that if you are going to continue to treat us as you have, then even if we cannot reverse we will bring you down with us and make you pay for the rest of your lives. The assassination of people's hopes and dreams can have as lasting consequence as the assassination of a life. When politicians understand that they begin to have a chance and realise that clever speeches, expresses of regret, admittance of mistakes is only the beginning and the period of probation and community service will need to be long before there is forgiveness and redemption.
First the film . This is a long and at times incoherent , mostly boring film, based on historical material and artistic licence. Sometimes I find that I live in a different dimension to the critics who hated Mama Mia and adored this film.
I can understand that in prison and among the criminal fraternity there is a hierarchy where those who use physical violence are held in greater esteem than those who do not and that even among the prison officer population there are those who hold criminals in esteem and give them preferential treatment over others because of the violent power which some men hold over others. I can also understand why there is more interest, sometimes obsessive interest with those who become violent killers who are high born or come from educated and cultured backgrounds.
Jessie James was the son of financially successful Baptist Minister who was also a hemp farmer and who helped found the Liberty College of Liberty Missouri. He travelled to California during the Gold rush and died when Jesse was three years old laving his widow with an older son and a younger daughter. Jesse's mother back in Missouri remarried, twice, secondly to a doctor with whom she had four other children and she brought up all seven on the family estate which was assisted by six slaves which became seven for the tobacco crop produced on the farm. They lived in a area where there was strong division of opinion and open conflict over the question of racist slave owning and it is said that it was in the neighbouring Kansas territory that the greatest conflicts boiled up over the issue leading to the American Civil war. Hollywood has tended to divide its portrayal of these times between films about the conventional army forces who had some sense of discipline, codes of behaviour and respect for the enemy who were after all fellow Americans, and the militia who behaved a ruthlessly as any other such group in the history of the world murdering, with the pro slavers establishing a reputation for murdering Unionist sympathisers, including scalping the dead, while the Unionist militia's are said to have held summary executions and imposing banishment with both sides take properties, burnings and some raping. Frank James joined in on the side of the separatists and at one point Unionist torture their step father buy a partial hanging. Legend has it that this was turning point in the life of Jesse. Who is said to have joined the Quantril Raiders although there is no evidence that this was so. However it is correct that Jesse and older brother Frank did join in the civil war gangs, including one led by Bloody Bill Anderson and they were involved with the massacre of 22 unarmed Unionist troops one point, dismembering the dead. Jesse was also show in the chest at one point, The penalty for this horror was to be exiled from their home state.
The ending of the civil war left Missouri in shambles and three continuing opposed factions and interesting given the present impression that the Republicans are the conservative party of the right and the Democrats, the political party of the left, it was the pro slavery conservative Unionists who founded the Democratic party (Mr Obama to note) and the anti Slavery radical unionists who founded the Republicans and the secessionists. In Britain there is still a totalitarian right wing conservative force within the British Labour party and some trade union leaders, and a Liberal Libertarian force within the Conservative Party.
Jesse, still no more than a boy, bedridden with his chest was cared for by a first cousin as his mother had been exiled to Nebraska, and he married the young woman nine years later. The militia gang which Frank and Jesse had been members then set on various robberies which also involved killings but which were also sectarian and political motivated, situations which are all too familiar here in post world war Europe, including in recent times in Ireland and the Balkans. There is no evidence however that Jesse and James were involved. It was not until 1867 when Jesse was 22 that he and his brother became involved with a robbery and the killing of a man, the cashier who it was said they mistakenly believed had shot their original militia gang leader, Bloody Bill. Newspaper publicity resulted in Jesse quickly becoming the most famous of the former Guerrillas turned outlaw. I was fascinated to learn from the interview with John Le Carre, the other day that there is a code which means that former agents remain silent on the names and activities of former comrades who turn traitors or become common killers and robbers, and I continue assume that this is so for the CIA as well as Special Forces personnel on both sides of the Atlantic. Some state made killers live the rest of their lives quietly in guilt and regret, some continue what they have been trained but for their own interests and those of their families o just to settle old scores. Few I suspect can live ordinary, respectable lives as if their former lives never happened.
It was at this point after the first publicity that the James brothers joined up with the Youngers and after a series of successful robberies from Iowa to Texas and |Kansas to West Virginia, they turned to trains and it was with trains that they began to be popular because on the while they restricted their robberies to the train safe rather than robbing the passengers, although they did this now and again.
It was at this point that the feud commenced between the James and Youngers and the Pinkerton Detective agency. This led to the Pinkertons who were just as ruthless and lawless murders as the James Youngers to raiding the family home, murdering a half brother and blowing off the arm of the Frank and Jesse's mother. This changed public opinion and led to a Bill offering them boys amnesty being narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Jesse married and led a normal family life with one of his sons growing up to become a respected lawyer. Two years later there was a politically and sectarian motivated bank robbery at Northfield's Minnesota which led to the killing of everyone in the gang except Frank and Jesse although the extent to which the James brother participated in this robbery, if all is in question. Frank is said to have settled down in the Nashville area after they escaped but for Jesse settling down never appears to have been a option. During he day I also watched the Bonnie Parker story were it is alleged that her downfall came because the thrill, the fear, the get away with it became an addiction and she could not stop and this resulted in an informant alerting the authorities and an ambush and to her death.
The film, the Assassination, concentrates on this period in the life of Jesse when he recruited new gang members who did not have the experience or the trust as former guerrillas, so he became suspicious, introverted and cautious. If you enjoy a couple of hours watching his and nothing much else then this is the film for you.. The film lasts in total two hours and fort minutes. It ends as he takes in the two Ford brothers into his home so he can keep an eye on them, and on a hot day removes his guns leaving one who as done a financial deal with the state governor to shoot him in the back of the head. The brothers were charged and convicted of murder but given a pardon. The general; belief is that the Governor knew they would kill rather than capture. They and law enforcement officers involved received the bounty and the killer brothers fled with their loot to Missouri. One of the brothers committed suicide and the other was himself shot and the killer sentenced to death and then had the sentence commuted. The mother of Jesse and the following inscription placed on he tomb. In loving memory of my beloved son Murdered by the traitor and Coward whose name is not worthy to appear here.
After the death it was rumoured that the he had not died and the killing of someone else was an elaborate state plot. Such were the continuing rumours that in 1995 the body was exhumed fro DNA tests which were reported to be consistent with those other members of his family. His wife died in poverty
Films were made in 1921(2) ,1927, 1939 (2) 1941, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1957, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1980,, 1986,, 1994, 1999,, 2001., 2005 (2), 2007. There have been TV films and references, books and music which have helped create the legend.
There was a different kind of association later in the evening
19.00 Sky show the Newcastle Tottenham Carling cup game. Will the focus be the game, the size of the crowd, protests, the manager? Can it get any worse? And what of Tottenham with Jonathan Wood gate. John Beresford played some 200 games under Kevin Keegan. Latest rumour is Terry Venerable as temporary manager to steady the club until everything is sorted out.
19.05 Having had four anchovies halves on plain crackers with a glass of wine, a some pasta with cheese sauce I eat farmed sea bass which sounds a contradiction.
19.15 The programme presenter Simon Bates reads our sad human interest stories in agony aunt format and Sky borrowed him this evening to tell the recently Newcastle story
19.25 a small apple pie and a mince and custard end the meal with coffee to follow at the interval is a subdued and sombre and desolate St James Park about a third full I would guess.
20.30 It is a boring game with few opportunities given to either side to score. John Beresford says her expects to comment on game goals and excitement but there is nothing the pace of the game is unbelievable slow as if being played in slow motion, such is the fear and lack of confidence among the players of both teams. Never experienced a ground that in such eerily silent.
20.30-21.30 Newcastle had one good and one commendable attempt to score a goal before Spurs score first and then again after an atrocious defending mistake and woe piles up upon woe. It was a very sad night. It could be argued that the owner, Managing Director and Director of Football will go down as the assassins of the club unless there is a dramatic change in fortunes.
I then watched a disgraceful exchange on Newsnight with Jeremy I can play the bastard Paxman. It is evident to anyone with half a brain that that the Republican candidate was playing a political game in suggesting that the role of both Presidential candidate should be to mix it back on the Hill appearing to sort out the national financial crisis rather than hold a TV debate on the issues before the electorate on their governor ship. The Republican face an uphill battle to convince the hard core of their supporters that adopting socialist anti free market measures is the only way to prevent the whole system collapsing and western capitalist democracies and their allies being propelled into a financial and stock market collapse worse than 1929. While the Democrats are in favour in principle they want strings, especially to punish those responsible.. Obama's agent was asked why he had refused to stop campaigning and cancel the debate returning to work as a Senator. He pointed out that as President elect he was keeping in close contact with his political colleagues to ensure the nation was saved and the maximum political advantage was obtained. It was evident to those with the other half of the rest of the brain that the Republicans were in a panic given the polls and the decision they were forced to take and wanted a halt to the election campaign in order to try and salvage something of their position. Paxman and his editorial staff appeared to be pro Republican and ant Obama by the stance they took thus making fools of themselves and destroying whatever credibility this bankrupt format and personality still clings. The same applied to the Politics show, the Tonight Programme and other media analysts and commentators as they desperately tried to undermine the great speech and conference management of the Prime Minister, Who leaked that the Transport Minister and former Education Secretary was leaving in the reshuffle so she could start to give time to her children and husband after 15 years in politics and nearly a decade in government. Why she did not take the opportunity of going with Tony Blair and goes now or at the next election is extraordinary and no amount of spin will; convince that there is more to it than anyone in Government is saying. It just shows the gulf between the world in which the politicians and top civil servants, international finance and business operators now live and the rest of us has widened beyond bridging. It is no different to that which has developed between football supporters and their club owners and managements. The lesson which I hope the supporters at Newcastle have sent out lighting a torch which others will take into eve very aspect of life, is that if you are going to continue to treat us as you have, then even if we cannot reverse we will bring you down with us and make you pay for the rest of your lives. The assassination of people's hopes and dreams can have as lasting consequence as the assassination of a life. When politicians understand that they begin to have a chance and realise that clever speeches, expresses of regret, admittance of mistakes is only the beginning and the period of probation and community service will need to be long before there is forgiveness and redemption.
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