JFK & history as fiction
by Catte
just some of the innumerable books claiming to tell “the truth” about JFK’s life and death
Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtueMaximilien Robespierre, 1792
Fifty-three years ago on November 22, President John F Kennedy was shot to death in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Sixteen years after the fact the House Select Committee on Assassinations found a “probable conspiracy” to have been behind his death, though it was also careful to exonerate all the popular candidates for the source of such a conspiracy.
It’s an interesting reflection on the nature of consensus reality that, even with this official endorsement of the dreaded “c” word, still the mere idea that more than one person fired shots that day, or that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act entirely alone, is media cryptonite. It’s as if even acknowledging the bare possibility that Oswald may have had help, in any form, even if it was just some buddy from the Book Depository holding the spare bullets, is something that must remain inadmissible. There’s a reason, after all, the intelligence community worked so hard to make “conspiracy” a dirty – and risible – word.
If the simple reality – that conspiracies do happen and have happened for as long as humanity has existed – is acknowledged by the media then the possibility that any outrage or terror event or assassination might involve elements of conspiracy will also have to be discussed. This will lead to all manner of confusion and untidiness, and will result in people who consider themselves beyond the reach of law and justice, having to answer for their conduct. We don’t need to invoke a grand multi-layered conspiracy network to realise that this kind of accountability is not welcome or acceptable.
Governments and their agents and their agents’ agents’ agents conspire to do grubby, gruesome and possibly evil things every day, all the time, simply in pursuit of maintenance of power and control. Whether or not the CIA was responsible wholly or in part for offing JFK, it doesn’t want some jumped up and informed populace demanding to see its files on the case or on anything else, because those files will be crammed with evidence of the state’s own perpetual “conspiracy” of everything. Far better just to keep that door locked and barred.
Not surprising at all that rational analysis of what happened that day in Dallas remains almost non-existent in the mainstream, which is given over to Apologies for the lone-nut narrative and mockery of anyone questioning it. But sections of the alternative media are little better. Hysteria, rampant and crazed claims that have no basis in fact, wild goose chases after French hit men and guys shooting from the sewers, uncritical acceptance of any narrative, however ludicrous, that isn’t the official one, have combined to make it virtually impossible now for anyone to uncover the truth.
All we can say at this point, after fifty-three years of suppression, false leads, lies and destruction of evidence, is that the official version on JFK’s death remains in place because it is convenient and not because it is true. Exactly how false it is we can’t easily determine, and perhaps we don’t even need to. It’s possible no one knows the entire truth any more, even if anyone ever did. And maybe that’s not even necessary for the real lesson to be learned. The event and the story created around it tell us about the nature of historical narrative and its always tenuous connection to veridical reality.
The point is that the need for tidiness, knotted loose ends and satisfying story arcs always trump the search for truth. Always. Even if no well-defined vested interests are there manipulating things. Maximilien Robespierre was largely correct, history is almost always fiction. In that confused human interactions are sieved and sorted by human minds into story-forms with beginnings, middles and ends. This is as true of generations long past as it is today. When we read Erasmus on his observations of English social life in the 16th Century, or the Croyland Chronicle on Richard III, we aren’t dealing simply with facts or even with interpretations of facts. We are dealing with human mind and imagination, human self-delusion and self-interest. We are reading what the writers thought, or wanted to think, or wanted their readers to think.
Replacing one narrative with another can seem like achieving greater truth. Maybe it is sometimes. Let’s not fall down the Postmodern rabbit hole and start claiming history is over or that truth is an unknowable illusion. Truth is. It exists. Some things happen. Other things don’t happen. To pretend this isn’t so is to lose touch with reality. The pursuit of truth will always be supremely important. We may even find it sometimes, and even if not, the search is what matters. But certitude should be sparingly used and scepticism is eternally appropriate. Because history is written by people, and people always have an agenda.
So, our brief dip into the swirling madness of the JFK debate is not intended to pull up some nugget of infallible truth. It’s simply – and true to our remit – an exploration of some of the storylines/facts/claims that, for whatever reason, rarely make it into the mainstream.
Enjoy, but caveat emptor.
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What occurred, happened. At least the records and evidences and memories and accounts witness that this event happened, and if it was someone being shot in the USA it would be one event and account among how many? Very many. And significant only to those directly affected or involved.
But this man was the President of his nation and that nation was both shocked and split as to who carried this out and why, because the official account was unconvincing unless willing to turn off one’s mind to conform to a directed but untrue or distorted narrative – or even have enough sense to take in the incongruities of the story.
This opened the doors to a self on self attack – at the highest levels of government agencies – which itself is a shock that fragmented into ways of accounting everyone involved as to complicity and motive.
Beliefs are the building blocks of reality-perception and everyone defends and thinks along the lines of their beliefs excepting the beliefs are re-examined and released for replacements. Beliefs are not exclusive to outer events or phenomena, but always witnessing some relationship of meaning for the perceiver – as an example of their world. Beliefs inform perceptions from the ‘mind’ from which actions and ideas communicate, as the group reality, which is never a precise focus so much as a composite of many elements – with different versions in private and public communications – because the personal and social issues involved in shared shock of the event itself are then opening into powerlessness, betrayal, anger and fear – along different lines of reaction – all of which is officially ‘managed’ by the Establishment through the Media but not altogether trusted or believed and so causing or magnifying a dissociation of belief and identity from the Establishment or powerful elements within it.
Narrative reality is both personal and collective as the sense of continuity of personal and shared meanings that hold or seek to hold order or stability amidst a sense of believed or actual chaos and disorder – associated with conflict, pain and loss. Psychological survival can and does operate as if it were physical survival – drawing on the same instinctual or deeply conditioned reactions of fight or flight – and all the associated bio-chemistry that fear and conflict operate as the ‘survival mind’ which once triggered, will usurp and suppress other facets of being fro the purpose of staying alive through unexpected threat. But the psychological usurping of this subconscious reflex – does not clear immediately after the danger is passed but persists as the ongoing basis of identity – of fragmented and shocked identity in narrative dissociation from the whole of its being. A version of PTSD – that finds significant social reinforcement as if a switch had shifted ‘reality’ from one world to another – that ‘They’ have or are the power to operate and yet as a loveless and deceitful power – and not as the guide or protector of a genuine sense of shared worth. Those who seek to find out who ‘They’ are either to restore justice or ground a sense of unreality or both – are looking from a sense of grievance and distrust that is magnified by not being met in genuine communication of listening or response by those who are held suspect – yet cannot be held to account because they are the authority of state – or are so inextricably bound in the authority of state as to be protected from exposure – perhaps not only from this specific charge – but from exposure of the underbelly of how the networks and identities of a power class actually operate relative to the presented narrative version.
Narrative identity operates self justification for everyone in every instant – or rather immediately after the instant.
What happens is rendered into terms of a self acting or being acted upon in which that self is asserted as justified reaction to perceived/believed reality. There are layers of presentation for such justification because the actual reality and motive may be unacceptable to the more social levels of presentation. One’s story will thus adapt and modify to operate within changing conditions and its sense of psychological survival operates a distortion filter seeking validation and reinforcement or seeking to invalidate and undermine competing narratives. The complexity of the identity arising from the human personality structure is itself an obfuscation defence to that it is an identity within persona or mask for the desire to persist in such identification because it is gratifying. This is part of who ‘They’ are.
Opportunism, does not look a gift horse in the mouth – but grabs it and takes it or uses it, perhaps after strategic deliberation – and often as automatic reaction along an already established pattern of actual or surrogate identity-fulfilment. Actual fulfilment is a shared appreciation of providence or good fortune – but identity fulfilment is more of the nature of an addictive relationship to getting from ‘outside’ what the identity operates as the lack of, as well as acting to prevent anyone else getting it first, or causing the loss of what is already gotten.
Fear-directed opportunism is a fragmented and fragmenting sense of identity, definition and desire that operates with heightened senses relative to its defence – but no capacity to recognize or communicate other than as such defence.
This is a state of isolation or believed disconnection in which power is assigned to the mind of definition, prediction and control in such terms of separate and competing interests – and at expense of recognition and operation of the field of relationship – which is Mind – at a level of consciousness that has in effect if not in truth – been shot and replaced with a sense of autonomy under threat – and forever justified in assigning the energies of life to power of filter, distortion, and denial of true communication as life.
‘They’ are every instant of private self-gratification operating in everyone as the fear-driven opportunism and justified sense of equal and opposite reaction that a sense of being overridden, coerced, deceived or denied provokes. And ‘They’ will seem to be the agencies through which such identity is perceived and believed to be operating – along with a sense of justified hate, hurt and fear. Because hate is from hurt and hurt is a sense of love in life betrayed – and anger rises to seek to prevent this feeling ever being so viscerally exposed.
The focus of our narrative reality is symbolic. Its function is not to lord it over life in fear of rival – but to hold a focus of alignment and balance within a diversity and richness of life more abundant.
The symbol of the Crucifixion was flipped to reveal a Resurrection – because the awakening of inner responsibility and connection arose from the apparent loss of the living symbol or exemplar of such consciousness. The explicate experience is the projection of an implicate order – through the lens of a distorting filter of denied feelings that then operate a false sense of self and reality. False yet experienced and suffered as real – with all the power of our feared true assigned to the effects of that which wanted power for itself alone.
There is no self alone but the wish makes it seem so – and the mutual reinforcement makes it real.
So the belief is really invested in and defended – in every identity assertion of inflation or loss of power. But can the belief itself be looked at directly – without triggering the defences and offences of a breakdown of communication such as war operates to effect?
The answering or undoing of the errors of the past is in their recurrence as our present. Sufficient unto the day be the evils thereof – because within a day truly lived – what arises to attention as a need for deeper honesty of communication will shift our quality of being to connected presence in which an expanded perspective and a sense of balance within what is presently arising allows and supports a practical step.
The step at a time – from a sense of connected worth – way of living is not the continuity of an identity narrative, so much as a renewal of experience and participance that shares or meets in, rather than strategize towards attaining in some future moment or some other place.
Whatever ‘history’ we uncover or accept as true or probable or possible – the contextual meaning is provided by what we use it for. What purpose it serves. The idea that history or reality exists ‘alone and of itself’ apart from and outside your own participance is the exchange of your life for the futility of fitting into and adapting to something that by definition denies you – and thus operates identity in opposition to a sense of being denied.
The power of definition as the focusing through Idea in Mind – is without limit – but logical to its premises.
Self-contradicting idea inherently generates limiting opposition, depletion and dysfunction and destructive outcomes. A truly coherent reality rises from a fresh take rather than struggle within the terms of a mis-take.
I cannot add anything about the crime – but I do have some thoughts about the cover up – cui bono?
According to Peter Dale Scott – the real force behind the Commission was not Chief Justice Warren (who was still an active Supreme Court judge) – but Allen Dulles. That was the man who JFK had sacked as Director of the CIA – the very agency that was implicated in the crime – then investigated the crime. Like Phillip Zelikow after him – they proceeded a posteriori from the conclusion to the fact – already established by Dulles – that LHO was a ‘loner.’
Another man who should have been a suspect – not an investigator – was Lyman Lemnitzer. Like Dulles – he held JFK in contempt. Like Dulles – he had also recently locked horns with JFK and been sacked – demoted from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to run NATO. Also like Dulles – he was a Nazi sympathiser and was heavily involved in organisation of the Nazi/Italian Fascist/Mafia/Vatican paramilitary operation known as Gladio. He was also responsible for the Northwoods document – the one we all point to to say that false flags are real.
According to Richard Cotrell – under Lemnitzers overall command – the Gladio operations included the assassination of Olof Palme, Aldo Morro and the attempted assassinations of Pope John Paul II and Charles de Gaulle -with a rap sheet like that this man should have been a prime suspect.
Yet under Gerald Ford (who did a pretty good job of shepherding the Warren Ommission himself) he was called back to investigate the CIA’s involvement in the crime. I kid you not.
http://www.progressivepress.com/blog-entry/50-years-after-jfk-murder-finger-finally-points-pentagon-chief-lemnitzer
Finally, Catte mentioned the House Select Committee on Assassinations – chaired by Sen. Frank Church. This unremarkable exoneration was kept unremarkable – but it could have been very different.
Giving evidence for the CIA was the then Director, William Colby – but he was rather too open and he knew too much – the powers that be were afraid he may expose the ‘Family Jewels’ (a rather sanitised list of all of the agencies off the book black ops) drawn up by his former director, James Schlesinger. They had to be replaced – as part of an event known as the ‘Halloween Massacre’ – you’ll never guess who by?
Colby was replaced by George Herbert Walker Bush – and Schlesinger (who was by then Secretary of Defence) was replaced by a young Donald Rumsfeld. Case closed!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Jewels_(Central_Intelligence_Agency)
Operation Gladio (there were two; original and present day) is something I was unfamiliar with until I started visiting Sibel Edmond’s website, Newsbud. She wrote a ‘novel’ about Gladio, apparently. But folks should be able to find info there, including video presentations where she talks about it in connection with Fethullah Gulen.
As Hersh points out, and I already knew from reading (mostly Chomsky), the Kennedys were black ops addicts. When JFK was stung by Krushchev’s tongue-lashing at the Vienna Summit, he determined, and was encouraged by (forget), to take it out on Vietnam, which he did, with a vengeance and that included enormous, ongoing experimental counterinsurgency operations. The calculation was political and personal, together at once, for this true Cold War warrior. Fighting the ideology was certainly not in his blood. He could craft a fine 1%-pleasing speech for sure (They are all online.), but you begin to understand what all of the anti-commie talk really meant to JFK when you stop to consider that he and his merry band of psychopaths in the ad-hoc ExComm meetings (designed, Hersh contends, plausibly, to corral and control all those who could hurt his power, with the exception of his main defender RFK) didn’t mention the evil commie running Cuba, at all, when the missile crisis was going down in October of ’62. Wrap your head around that!
Without Kennedy´s assassination People will hardly understand Nine Eleven and the totally unscrupulous behaviour of the US Power Elite!
„Today 53 years ago on the 22th of November: Kennedy´s Assassination!“: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/today-53-years-ago-on-the-22th-of-november-kennedys-assassination/
Regards
The best explanation is in this documentary on YouTube
Yes, this is what got me to realise that 9/11 was an inside job and then now only just in the last few weeks understand that so many of the alleged mass shootings over recent years and the Boston Bombing were, in fact, “augmented” Full-Scale Exercises. http://laverite.weebly.com/
This film suggests the bullet that killed JFK was from a sewer – I’m not so sure that’s unbelievable but as Catte says we’ll never know the whole truth.
As Catte intimates, while we may never know the whole truth on certain events we can often know for sure if they were an inside job or not and people fence-sitting when certain facts are very clear annoys me. So for any fence-sitters out there on 9/11 or those who support the official narrative (hardly any on these pages surely?) I invite you to do the Hypothetical I’ve devised in this 3 minute video using the short film by Anthony Lawson, This is an Orange. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8gMOJwfzRk&t=92s
Reblogged this on Taking Sides.
Someone told me that she killed him, and I have always wondered if she delivered the kill shot.
Who? Hillary?
He means Jackie. I have watched the film and there is a flurry of hand movements on her part just after the fatal shot. However, I believe these movements were her trying to catch and scoop back into his skull fragments of his brain. It sounds awful but people do odd things under conditions of great stress. One person who claimed to be the grassy knoll shooter said he had used a special fragmentary bullet packed with mercury, designed to explode on contact with JFK’s head – and you can see the spray of blood, brains and vapourised skull fragments as the bullet struck the left side of JFK’s head. I think he is a distraction from the real culvert shooter, who might well have used the same type o gun and bullet. As always with the murder of JFK, very little is what it actually appears to be and everyone has to think or themselves. Even today, deliberate attempts are being made to obfuscate and manipulate the truth. Maybe the death of Castro will start to throw up even more misleading material? !!!
If we only focus on Dealey Plaza, we can conclude conspiracy but be no further towards the who dunnit bit. That, it seems to me, is the main reason we see people throwing their hands up: “Mafia? CIA? Castro? Military-Industrial Complex? Who can tell?”
Look less at the crime, more at the coverup. Could the Mafia arrange for a sham autopsy, a Warren Commission, a patsy with numerous ties to the intelligence community, and 50 years of media blackout? Could Castro?
Whatever the mafia was responsible for they were certainly involved big time. Jack Ruby was tied up with the mafia and it would have been pressure from it that made him shoot LHO, otherwise why would he have done it, knowing that he would be caught and sent to jail. But, of course, it wasn’t just the mafia.
Don’t agree with David Otness’s condescending tone to the always-estimable Catte. But have to agree that physics trumps speculation. ‘Back and to the left’ remains the rock on which all windy theorising founders. The kill shot to Kennedy’s head came from in front, and from the right. That’s to say, not remotely from where Oswald was supposed to be; from the general direction of the grassy knoll, in fact.
Just as certain technical aspects of the continuing 11/9 citizens’ investigation make it physically undeniable that the three WTC building collapses were controlled demolitions (with the equally-inescapable conclusion that only a conspiracy of powerful actors within the USraeli ruling ‘elites’ could have had the means and the access to set up the whole scam), so the established fact – as I assert that it now is – of ‘back and to the left’ insists on the clear fact of at least one, pretty certainly several, extra shooters nowhere near the Book Depository.
That means that there had to have been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, with a whole list of people involved. Lone nutter, indeed! For heaven’s sake! Of course there was a conspiracy. Who? Don’t know. Maybe we never will know for sure. But – you know – cui bono…? Rational, intellectually-honest and meticulous investigation is always possible, even long after the event. And good, reasonably-reliable historiography demands that, always. Does anyone now deny, for example, that the Reichstag Fire was a nazi false-flag? It was alleged at the time, of course, to be something quite other. That correction of an original political lie was the result of honest historical research. Eventually, we’re going to have to reach the same level of honesty with 11/9 and the Kennedy assassination. Truth, indeed, just is. And often that awkward existential determination defies the human desire for a neat, satisfying, prejudice-massaging story-line.
And BTW, I too refuse to buy the legend that Kennedy was some sort of lillywhite boy crusader for the just and the good. Romantic BS! He was just a standard-issue venal US politician who became a victim of a rival strand of the various, always-jockeying WealthPowerStatus-mafias which make up the US ruling ‘elites’; a strand who disagreed lethally with his proposed policies. So he was assassinated because of urgent realpolitik; “It was just business.” What’s new?
I agree with everything you say except for the suggestion that the Reichstag Fire was a Nazi false flag operation.
I studied the circumstances in quite some depth some years ago, reading English translations of the testimonies of the fire officers who attended the scene, as well as police officers who were involved.
My overall conclusion was that the fire was set by a single Dutch extremist communist.
He did so in the expectation that the fire would lead to a mass uprising against the Nazis.
What he never foresaw was the extent to which Hitler would realise that he could use the event to shut down his political opponents and grab supreme power for himself and the Nazi party.
The fire represented a lucky break for Hitler, who – at the time – was – politically speaking – in a weak position.
He did not have an overall majority in the Reichstag and he was one of only two Nazis in the government.
He was not yet the Fuhrer and he had to persuade von Hindenburg – the Reich President – to allow him to adopt measures under the Enabling Acts he introduced. By outlawing the Communists and – later – other parties, he gradually accumulated more and power, peaking with him becoming President after von Hindenburg died.
Hitler was a very smart operator and opportunist who simply turned the Reichstag Fire to his advantage.
You saved me the trouble.
So it was a semi-false flag like Pearl Harbour?
No. The Dutch man who set the Reichstag on fire had previously carried out two acts of arson before torching the Reichstag. Security in those days was much less stringent than it is these days and it was relatively easy for the arsonist to gain solo entry to the building through a side window. He was eventually caught in the act setting further interior fires by firemen and police officers well before anyone else arrived at the scene.
Hitler was incredibly opportunistic and after he arrived on the scene immediately blamed the act on the Communists – which the identity of the arsonist bore out – so Hitler was able to go to the Reich President and gain emergency powers. Communists had previously attempted to stage armed uprisings so it was not too hard to persuade the President to give the Chancellor emergency powers, which Hitler then used to eradicate all political opposition to him and the Nazis.
With regard to Pearl Harbour, there are still unknown elements where that is concerned. Did no one other than the Japanese know of the impending attack? Did the British know of the Japanese plans and did they try to warn FDR – or not? Did FDR and/or his advisers know and decide not to warn Pearl Harbour or to send a warning which would arrive too late to be effective?
I would say we still do not really know the answers to any of these questions .
Where there is a potential linkage between Pearl Harbour and 9/11 is in the fact that British intelligence may have known about the imminent attack on Pearl Harbour but kept it to themselves, knowing it would bring the US into the war. Might not Israel have acted similarly where the 9/11 WTC and Pentagon attacks are concerned?
We all know about the high-fiving Mossad agents, don’t we?………….
It similarly brought the US into a war, this time against so-called “terror” – which still continues raging 15 years later; no mean achievement for the Israelis to keep the US embroiled in conflicts that primarily benefit Israel.
Thank you. But I’m not sure what you mean about 9/11- all the countries knew about it cos they were all involved in it – the US (obviously air defense wasn’t doing its job apart from many other anomalies), Pakistan (meetings between US intelligence from 4 to 13 Sep with ISI chief, Mahmoud Ahmad – Ahmad gave money to Mohammad Atta), Israel, Saudi Arabia and possibly other governments – it was so head-spinningly huge.
I can answer your question about Pearl Harbour, “With regard to Pearl Harbour, there are still unknown elements where that is concerned. Did no one other than the Japanese know of the impending attack?”
the simple fact is the US Government knew about the attack before it happened, because they had broken the Japanese codes with a special operation called ‘Operation Magic’ (http://www.faqs.org/espionage/Nt-Pa/Operation-Magic.html).
Don’t believe me? That’s OK- you can hear it from the mouth of Paul Wolfowitz himself- a self professed expert on Pearl Harbour, PNAC signatory and Iraq war criminal- as he lectures graduates from West Point in the year 2001- as he psychologically prepares them for the upcoming 9/11 events:
What is truly unbelievable about Wolfowitz’s comments in the video above- is the reason he gives that the prior warning of the Pearl Harbour attacks was not passed on to the military personnel on the ground:
Wolfowitz: “An ultra secret code breaking operation, one of the most remarkable achievements in code breaking history, an operation called Magic had unlocked the most private Japanese communications, but the operation was considered so secret, and so vulnerable to compromise that the distribution of it’s product was restricted to the point that our filed commanders didn’t make the need to know list…”
According to him Operation Magic was so highly compartmentalized, and top-secret- that the information it found was not disseminated to those that needed to know. This is utterly farcical and absurd. What’s the point of cracking the Japanese codes if you cannot use the information gleaned to stop the greatest ‘surprise’ attack on American naval forces in history?
The next thing to ponder about this remarkable speech at West Point is the timing- and the context: here is Paul Wolfowitz- who signed the PNAC RAD document calling for a ‘catalyzing and catastrophic event like a New Pearl Harbour ‘ in the year 2000, now talking at West Point in June 2001- the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbour and just months before 9/11. Read the full transcript of his speech and one would either have to assume he was prescient- or knew 9/11 was coming- just look at how he closed his remarks:
“Yours will not be a life of personal gain, but it is noble work. You will man the walls behind which democracy and freedom flourish. Your presence will reassure our allies and deter the enemies of freedom around the world. Be prepared to be surprised. Have courage. And remember what General Eisenhower said to those American and Allied troops before they were about to land on the beaches of Normandy. “You are about to embark on a great crusade,” he told them. “The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you.”
Be prepared to be surprised… Indeed.
Interesting that George W Bush first called the War on Terror a ‘Crusade’, no?
http://www.usma.edu/classes/sitepages/gradspeech01.aspx
another point to be taken from Wolfowitz’ speech at West Point is his comments concerning the many warnings of the impending Pearl Harbor Attacks that were ignored- it reads almost exactly the same as the post 9/11 talk of ‘ignored warnings’. The man is truly shameless- a war criminal and undoubtedly one of the masterminds of the 9/11 false flag mass murder- the Big Lie that started the 21st century. Wolfowitz has the blood of millions on his hands. No doubt he is very proud of it too.
and one final comment about this mess: Pearl Harbor is the key to understanding 9/11- and I for one do not think it was any coincidence that 9/11 occurred on the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. History tells us that prior to Pearl Harbor Franklin D Roosevelt wanted the US to get involved in the war in Europe- and Churchill had been pressing him to urgently do so. However in the US public sentiment was strongly opposed to getting involved in ‘another European war’.
From memory opposition to the war was around 80%. THE VERY DAY after Pearl Harbor public support for entering the war rocketed to +95%- and over the next few days over 1 Million men enlisted in the army. Only Pearl Harbor could have caused such a massive change in public sentiment overnight- in the same was as the PNAC authors understood that only another new ‘Pearl Harbor’ could ever shift the public to support the PNAC doctrine of US hegemony, military expansion and pre-emptive war.
And that’s exactly what happened post 9/11. Over 80% of US soldiers polled in Iraq stated that they were there in retaliation for 9/11. We know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11- but we don’t matter- what matters is that those soldiers on the ground believed it.
Rhisiart: Can I suggest that you read Sherry Fiester’s excellent book Enemy of the Truth. She is a former prosecutor and ballistics expert. For reasons she sets out at length, the fatal shot that blew out the back of Kennedy’s head came from the overpass, not the Grassy Knoll, although a shot was almost certainly fired from the latter. There were other shots fired as well, including from the Dal-Tex building and possibly from the Texas School Depository building, although most certainly not by the unfortunate Oswald.
“All we can say at this point, after fifty-three years of suppression, false leads, lies and destruction of evidence, is that the official version on JFK’s death remains in place because it is convenient and not because it is true. Exactly how false it is we can’t easily determine, and perhaps we don’t even need to. It’s possible no one knows the entire truth any more, even if anyone ever did.” Doug Hornes remarkable 5 volume review of the medical evidence as supported by Dr Mantiks recent conclusive work on the Harper Fragment does in fact fully unpick what happened, so why it happened and what happened and who was involved have long ceased to be mysteries,or even indeed vague, and in fact never were even years before this, for many many people. The suppression has only one key aim- to keep the US people disinterested , confused, uninformed and feeling entirely powerless over the true state of their democracy and in thrall to fake news.It has been so far virtually entirely successful,despite the many brave efforts of true patriots.
“All we can say at this point, after fifty-three years of suppression, false leads, lies and destruction of evidence, is that the official version on JFK’s death remains in place because it is convenient and not because it is true. Exactly how false it is we can’t easily determine …”
Indeed. Good post.
substitute 9/11 for JFK assasination and the piece makes the same (good) sense. Be cynical about what you are told, but never imagine you have the “truth”, or waste too much energy trying to get it.
One should ask ifthe majority of Americans wanted theirchoice ofpresident to be assassinated? Did they do you think? I can’t believe so. For one thing removing asitting president during his term of office destroys democracy by destroying the results of the popular vote! If an agency of the American government itself does the evil deed and the Fourth Estate refuses to investigate, then you know that you are no longer living in a democracy or anything even remotely related to one!
It was not guys – in the plural – shooting from sewers – in the plural – but one single guy shooting from a roadside culvert who fired the final and fatal shot, which entered JFK’s jaw from a below-right direction, with the bullet exiting through the top-left of his skull, blasting away most of the back of his skull in the process and blowing out most of his still living brain.
Catt may think she is indulging herself in some sort of airy-fairy sophistication writing the piece she has above but what I have described is the truth and the reality of what happened when a man was murdered 53 years ago.
I do not think any of us should be sanguine about his death or the deaths of anyone at all.
As John Donne put it “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”.
As for why JFK was murdered: take your pick. I read – I think – a recent report here that JFK had begun a process of introducing a new form of silver-backed currency, which would have meant most of the private bankers who controlled the Fed would have lost out significantly. JFK was pressurising the Israelis to stop their nuclear development program – they would kill anyone who got in their way. It was also suggested that the then Vietnamese regime were behind it, as were Hoover, the CIA and LBJ too. Even the mob figured in it for they had helped JFK’s father to get JFK elected and may have felt that his brother has betrayed them. By removing the President, they effectively removed Bobby Kennedy. Ruby’s assassination of Oswald suggests this is true.
Even Oswald – the self-declared patsy – may have had his own crazy reasons for being involved in the plot.
Ultimately, it seems there were a whole host of candidates for involvement in the murdering of a President and it may be that their conspiracy was one of the largest of all times. Death did not end that day in Dealey Plaza.
Many crucial witnesses died in a relatively short space of time after the assassination of JFK.
The Kennedys most certainly betrayed the mob, without whom JFK would not have been elected. Even with Bobby’s bribes and Sam Giancana’s help, JFK – who never did anything useful as a politician – did not win by a landslide. I’d have to consult my copy of “The Dark Side Of Camelot” to give you details. That’s packed away while I’m in the middle of moving. The Kennedys screwed EVERYONE. Good luck determining exactly who offed him.
Bevan, you might like to read James Douglass’ seminal study of JFK in which he demonstrates with precision and scholarship that JFK was turning in a radically different direction and that is precisely the reason he was killed. No serious scholar believes the Oswald myth and any attempt to justify that scenario should immediately be dismissed as disinformation.
That’s not a unique idea. That’s the commonly held idea that the establishment has always pushed. Compare JFK’s final NSAM (highest level government memos) with LBJ’s. They are almost identical. Where’s the evidence for JFK being different, let alone better, than other presidents?
I mean to say JFK’ last NSAM and LBJ’s first NSAM. (from “Rethinking Camelot” by Noam Chomsky)
If you’re referring to JFK’s NSAM 263 as compared to LBJ’s NSAM 273, you’re undermining your own case. The former states unequivocally that the withdrawal of the US presence is a done deal. The latter says we’re in it to win it. It manifestly reverses JFK’s intentions, and indeed the war only escalated under LBJ.
See for example:
http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html
I have as little interest in romanticizing JFK as I have in demonizing him. I’m interested in drawing reasonable conclusions from the documentary and historical records. Chomsky is notoriously unreliable in JFK matters: he has made his lack of interest very clear. He doesn’t think it matters.
He doesn’t see trying to accomplish the impossible as a useful exercise. He’s not against our interest in the death of JFK. What he has to say about that, however, is equally interesting and important, which is why time and time again he is attacked. By the way, For those who are interested, “Rethinking Camelot,” in it’s entirety, is online for free at: https://zcomm.org/rethinking-camelot/
An excerpt from the above linked-to book follows:
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McNamara and Taylor were encouraged by what they found. Taylor informed Diem that he was “convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency in the north and center can be reduced to little more than sporadic incidents by the end of 1964” and the war effort everywhere should be “completed by the end of 1965.” On October 2, Taylor and McNamara presented this analysis to the President, noting that “The military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress.” On these assumptions, they presented a series of recommendations, three of which were later authorized (watered down a bit) in NSAM 263:
Their report stressed again that the “overriding objective” is victory, a matter “vital to United States security.” They repeated that withdrawal could not be too long delayed: “any significant slowing in the rate of progress would surely have a serious effect on U.S. popular support for the U.S. effort.” They expressed their belief “that the U.S. part of the task can be completed by the end of 1965,” at which time military victory would have been assured. The withdrawal plans were crucially qualified in the usual way: “No further reductions should be made until the requirements of the 1964 campaign become firm,” that is, until battlefield success is assured.56
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For follow up in the book that looks at NSAM 273, see section 8 of chapter 1 titled “The Presidential Transition.”
Great post Catt!
Just a tiny response on a subject that will last forever.
Tubularsock agrees that, “Truth is. It exists. Some things happen. Other things don’t happen. To pretend this isn’t so is to lose touch with reality.” But it’s the observer and their observation …. there’s the rub!
Why is it that eye witnesses are NOT reliable?
“Reality”, Is real at the base level of everything BUT WE get in the way to the point that “reality” becomes relative and thereby not real.
As “reality” is bounced around from ever “point of view”, “REALITY” becomes pointless.
That is why whoever gets control of the narrative from the beginning runs the show.
And even as “facts and truth” are discovered they are disregarded because of the formation of the “original” narrative.
So Tubularsock has to agree with all people, Henry Ford, when he said, “History is bunk!”
Yes, by way of agreement and dipping a toe into the rabbit hole: losing touch with reality is indeed the entire point of skepticism re truth claims. For everyone who says “get a grip on reality” there is a surrealist or a critical theorist (or yes, a postmodernist) who says “not so fast: it’s reality that has a grip on you“.
But Catte’s point remains valid, as I think you’d also agree. Baudrillard might say that all the theories are simultaneously true, and he’d probably be right in a Baudrillardian sense, but in the ordinary sense of things there are those who pulled triggers and those who did not. Unfortunately there are many more opinion-offerers than there are researchers. People say a lot of things with a lot of certainty without showing the slightest sign of having done the requisite homework. For example, I have yet to see those who deny that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam and warm up the Cold War actually respond to the evidence as collated and persuasively presented by James Douglass, among others. What I do see a lot of are assertions, full of scorn and fury, resting on nothing but the heat of their own air.
Look at the record. He insisted on no withdrawal ‘without’ military victory. Interestinglyb Hersh points out that Kennedy mused about withdrawal, unconditionally, once he was re-elected (’64). He did not believe he could do it, politically, beforehand. All that JFK didb he did with a view to how it would impact his re-election prospects. He was awful. Because he dealt with serious matters in that manner, many American soldiers were killed in Cuba when he calculated that he couldn’t give them the promised air support. Or something like that. (My books are all packed away and my memory isn’t a steel trap.) Later, The cold blooded RFK (hated by almost everyone) took cash payments to those soldiers families. When an American airman (Or was it two?) was shot down over Cuba (where he had no business being), and it became known, RFK said something like ‘The son of a bitch had better be dead’ because they just didn’t need the hassle of dealing with it.
I’ve looked at the record rather closely as it happens. There’s a substantial amount of documentary evidence, in the form of NSAMs, communications with Khrushchev and Castro, statements to confidants. You’re wrong about him insisting on no withdrawal without military victory. He already ordered the first thousand men out, that was a done deal, the rest to follow after reelection. Read the Douglass if you’re interested. What’s your source?
And your description of the Bay of Pigs disaster is an old canard. There was no promised air support. It was specifically not promised, in fact. It was specifically ruled out. The evidence does suggest that the planners misled Kennedy into believing it could succeed without it, which is why he gave the go-ahead while insisting on no direct US military involvement, when they actually figured: a) they’d need support from the US military to make it work in reality, and b) they could basically blackmail JFK into providing it against his express wishes, when push came to shove and he could see it was failing. He called their bluff. They were livid, and so was JFK. Thus his vow to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces.
A crucial turning point in his thinking.
My sources are the best and they aren’t afraid to speak truth to power. I’ve read a number of books on JFK, some which I read long ago and forget. I’m not even sure I still have them I haven’t been able to unpack all of my boxes where I live, until next week. It’s a closet-sized room. Blame it on poverty. Recently, I’ve a read a few, good and bad. Patrick Sloyan’s treatment is light and not terribly useful. I also recently read Sheldon Stern’s “The Cuban Missile Crisis In American Memory.” Noam has good things to say about him, although I fear that he would be saddened by Sheldon’s Camelotism. (The establishment has done a real number on the people. As with the Rwandan genocide, what 99% of the people know about JFK is backwards.) Chomsky’s fine words about Sheldon were written ‘before’ Sheldon penned his informative account. Despite being infected (from my standpoint), Sheldon’s treatment is vital, simply because he was the JFK libary libararian and had access to all those recordings and, unlike even some of the most famous authors dealing with JFK and even some of the figures from around the table at ExComm meetings, Stern had listened to ‘all’ the recordings. Noam Chomsky’s “Rethinking Camelot” is good and he’s no slouch when it comes to diving into official (de-classified) documents. Seymour Hersh’s “The Dark Side Of Camelot” was an eye-opener. I’m no fan of ‘prizes’ that the world bestows on it’s own, but he is a winner of the Pulitzer and has broken some large stories. And then there’s Peter Dale Scott, a personal friend of Chomsky (who nevertheless is infected with Camelotism and who Chomsky said got him wrong in his book, “Deep Politics And The Death Of JFK”), who, as Chomsky informed me, knows as much about the death of JFK as anyone could. I read Dale’s book many years ago, which I mentioned in my letter to Chomsky, which is what led me to “Rethinking Camelot.” In his letter to me, He stated ‘I’ll bet the Toronto Star didn’t mention my book’. He was correct, and today, I can understand the ‘oversight’. I had read a Toronto Star article looking at the top ten JFK books and the bottom ten. At the top of the top ten was Scott’s book.
I know that I’m going to get LOT’s of pushback on just about anything I say about JFK. That can’t be helped. I’ve never caught Camelotism. All I can say is that I will endeavor to point readers to my sources, by quoting them, which, really, are mostly just found in my books. But because my books are packed away, I can’t do that – now. I can only return to this discussion some time after I’ve moved and unpacked all of my books and do so. Forgive me.
Very good.
The problem that I have always had with the JFK assassination is related to the legend of the JFK as the president who was about to do something (end the war in Vietnam eg) but didn’t.
The lost leader.
In fact a few months from the end of his (first) term he had done nothing very remarkable, nothing that Nixon could not have done. Not that that might not have escaped the attention of the likes of James J Angleton or Hoover or any of the many Strangelovean characters who were running the US at the time.
It is quite possible then that paranoid crypto fascists mistook the right wing Democrat President for a Communist sympathiser or even a believer in peace, but he wasn’t either. Not that that would have mattered….
Tubularsock is of the opinion that JFK was slipped in as a diversion much like Obama to show some possible change in the direction of the country. Both were lies. However Jack and Bobby might just have started to believe their own manufactured images. So they popped them!
But Tubularsock is an optimistic-cynic so that too has to be taken into consideration.
Even dedicated debunkers of the hokey Oswald/magic bullet myth continue to propagate the larger myth of JFK as a noble young crusader, battling against TPTB, when his father was one of the biggest 1%-ers of his time, sitting atop a pile got by any means necessary, a man whose immense wealth had not a little to do with JFK’s ascendancy. Yes, Reality exists but our greatest collective pleasure is substituting any possible knowledge of Reality with populist fantasy, hagiography, tall tales, quirky Apocrypha and self-serving narratives of stereotype and exceptionalism. One of my favorite (though least-likely) JFK myths is the wildly creative theory that JFK faked his death in order to rule in secrecy… ie: JFK was the “shadow government*! Laugh. But even the wildest theory can have a nugget of value buried in it, somewhere (well, except in the case of the horrifically preposterous “Flat Earth” meme, which Sunstein probably came up with himself), and this Hidden King theory helpfully reminds us that the sky’s the limit, when it comes to Very Real Conspiracies (and the infinitely proliferating Theories regarding them), because they all come from the same strange place in our heads. Which is to say that it’s not necessarily inevitable (Evil, I mean)… one day the Narrative(s) might change. And the battle for the sanity of our collective Imagination rages on.
Kee-rist!
Were you already filing your nails and congratulating yourself before the ink dried on this piece of self-indulgent know-it-allism?
Tidy, tidy, tidy.
Ms Einsten, the physics and physical evidence filmed of JFK’s brains, hair and skull fragments flying backwards INTO the magic bullet(s’) path is a bridge too far?
I love seeing such revisionism in the face of facts. You give me such faith in the potential of human logic applied to surrealism.
As long as you’re this smugly comfortable?
Well then. So am I. But for the fact I remember that day like yesterday and judging by your glibness, several (at a minimum) decades before you were plopped on the planet. Your erasure of pertinent history seems, er… contrived?
Stay comfy.
Why write like this? It’s ugly. Make your point as strongly as you see fit, but such ad hominem tones are not only offensive but get in the way of honest inquiry.
And as for you, Bevin:
https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/w6LJoSnW4UehkaH9Ip5IAA.aspx
You need to read Douglass’ Book. Kennedy was making the changes you deny and the proof is in that book–among many others.
Who’s the ‘you’ for goodness sake? And should he or she read just that one book?