Lennon's Conviction: You Can Change The World

Film avoids assassination conspiracy questions but Yoko Ono's cryptic quote lets suspicions linger
By Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Dec. 20, 2006

The U.S. vs John Lennon is an ultimately uplifting story of how one man put his hard earned fame, fortune and adulation on the line, neutralized the nagging voice of ego and gave up everything including eventually his life to affect change and take on the behemoth of the criminal Nixon administration.

The newly released documentary film charts Lennon's progression from outspoken Beatle to iconic rallying figurehead for the Vietnam peace movement of the late sixties and early seventies. The U.S. government's attempt to deport Lennon and derail the political juggernaut that at one point threatened to organize a road show of protests leading up to the 1972 Republican Convention is presented with an implicit knowing wink to contemporary events.

The most interesting aspects of the documentary revolve around Lennon and Yoko Ono's efforts to find innovative and avant garde ways to reach people with the message of peace in a time of rampant militarism. Lennon's strained conversations and debates with a stuffy snobbish female New York Times writer, a sardonic British newspaperman and fellow downbeat seemingly defeated artists provide telling insights into how Lennon knew that the process of even beginning to think one could change the world is half the battle.

The uptight, elitist Times hack scoffs at his efforts to organize protests against the war, attempting to lecture Lennon that his motivation is misguided and his impact minute. The Brit newspaper writer is similarly unimpressed by his "bed peace" PR stunt and even sympathetic fellow culture kingpins despair at the hopelessness of it all.

In each case Lennon is unrepentant, his convictions remain strong even after his admission that "flower power didn't work," and he continues to jettison the idle luxuries that his fame insistently attempted to bribe his ego with to devote himself to making a difference.

It is at this point that the surveillance and harassment machine of the frenzied Nixon administration targeted Lennon for "neutralization" and kept him from concentrating on political goals by embroiling him in a three year deportation fight, all for the crime of a single charge for marijuana possession (which Lennon claims the police planted on him in the first place) from when he lived back in England.

The saga was perhaps the fore bearer for what was to come in August 1974, when Nixon was forced to resign after his incessant paranoid lust to target his perceived enemies crossed the boundary of the law into high crime and treason with the Watergate scandal. John Lennon meanwhile won his immigration case and temporarily went into a period of isolation to spend time with his young family.



Not covered in the film are conspiracy theories surrounding Lennon's murderer Mark Chapman who is often characterized by the media as a nobody who killed Lennon to become a somebody, yet is also a man whose activities led many to link him with the CIA's clandestine assassination mind control program known as MK Ultra.

Lennon's decision to return to the forefront of popular culture and start work on new material shortly preceded his death. Was Chapman used as a surrogate to neutralize Lennon's political bandwagon before it could start rolling again? Judging from some of Lennon's final lyrics before his death it was obvious that he had woken up to how the political spectrum could be easily manipulated using the false left-right paradigm. Was Lennon's imminent rallying call about to hit far too close to home for some?

Consider Lennon's urge for listeners to join a "revolution" for "human rights" as he slammed then Governor Nelson Rockefeller for "pulling the trigger," during the infamous inmate uprising known as Attica State. This unreleased song features on the movie soundtrack album.

Mack White's excellent cartoon "Dead Silence In The Brain," graphically illustrates many of the themes covered in the documentary film and also points out Mark Chapman's work with the World Vision charity at a Laotian refugee camp. Many researchers have claimed World Vision has direct ties to the CIA or is an outright CIA front that provided cover for their MK Ultra mind control assassination program.

The fact that the U.S. intelligence establishment poured millions of dollars into a mind control project that exploited innocent volunteers and aimed to brainwash them into becoming automated assassins for the state is no conspiracy theory. President Bill Clinton had to publicly apologize for the program in October 1995.

Though the documentary avoids a discussion of Lennon's assassination altogether, besides the emotional aftermath of the worldwide tributes, a three word summation from Yoko Ono in the final moments of the film is sure to let the speculation linger.

"They killed him," she says.












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