November 22 1963 Was Not the Last Day of the Republic

[Octafish]

It could be, without your help.

Did your newspaper or television station broadcast anything about yesterday being the 44th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy?

Mine here in Detroit didn’t. Neither did the GOOGLE.

It seems there are some things Corporate McPravda doesn’t want people to think about. The Truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy, for one. To me it seems there is even less available to help people remember what President Kennedy was like and what he was about.

Here’s a bit of what President Kennedy was like, he appointed former Michigan Governor Soapy Williams, a true Liberal and progressive, to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs:

G. Mennen Williams

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Post gubernatorial years

After leaving office in 1961, Williams was quickly appointed to the new post of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs by President John F. Kennedy, where Williams became known for his frequent refrain, "Africa for the Africans!" He served in this post until early 1966, when he resigned to unsuccessfully challenge Republican United States Senator Robert P. Griffin.

Two years later, he was named by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, where he served less than a year. Williams was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1970 and was named Chief Justice in 1983.

Source: http://www.reference.com/search?q=g.%20mennen%20williams

So, JFK employed the U.S. Government to assist, rather than exploit, the nations of Africa.

From the January-February 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 2)

Dodd and Dulles vs. Kennedy in Africa

“In assessing the central character ...
Gibbon’s description of the Byzantine general
Belisarius may suggest a comparison:
‘His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times;
his virtues were his own.’”
— Richard Mahoney on President Kennedy

By Jim DiEugenio

EXCERPT…

The Self-Education of John F. Kennedy

During Kennedy’s six years in the House, 1947-1952, he concentrated on domestic affairs, bread and butter issues that helped his middle class Massachusetts constituents. As Henry Gonzalez noted in his blurb for Donald Gibson’s Battling Wall Street, he met Kennedy at a housing conference in 1951 and got the impression that young Kennedy was genuinely interested in the role that government could play in helping most Americans. But when Kennedy, his father, and his advisers decided to run for the upper house in 1952, they knew that young Jack would have to educate himself in the field of foreign affairs and gain a higher cosmopolitan profile. After all, he was running against that effete, urbane, Boston Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge. So Kennedy decided to take two seven-week-long trips. The first was to Europe. The second was a little unusual in that his itinerary consisted of places like the Middle East, India, and Indochina. (While in India, he made the acquaintance of Prime Minister Nehru who would end up being a lifelong friend and adviser.)

Another unusual thing about the second trip was his schedule after he got to his stops. In Saigon, he ditched his French military guides and sought out the names of the best reporters and State Department officials so he would not get the standard boilerplate on the French colonial predicament in Indochina. After finding these sources, he would show up at their homes and apartments unannounced. His hosts were often surprised that such a youthful looking young man could be a congressman. Kennedy would then pick their minds at length as to the true political conditions in that country.

If there is a real turning point in Kennedy’s political career it is this trip. There is little doubt that what he saw and learned deeply affected and altered his world view and he expressed his developing new ideas in a speech he made upon his return on November 14, 1951. Speaking of French Indochina he said: "This is an area of human conflict between civilizations striving to be born and those desperately trying to retain what they have held for so long." He later added that "the fires of nationalism so long dormant have been kindled and are now ablaze....Here colonialism is not a topic for tea-talk discussion; it is the daily fare of millions of men." He then criticized the U. S. State Department for its laid back and lackadaisical approach to this problem:

One finds too many of our representatives toadying to the shorter aims of other Western nations with no eagerness to understand the real hopes and desires of the people to which they are accredited.

The basic idea that Kennedy brought back from this trip was that, in the Third World, the colonial or imperial powers were bound to lose in the long run since the force of nationalism in those nascent countries was so powerful, so volcanic, that no extended empire could contain it indefinitely. This did not mean that Kennedy would back any revolutionary force fighting an imperial power. Although he understood the appeal of communism to the revolutionaries, he was against it. He wanted to establish relations and cooperate with leaders of the developing world who wished to find a "third way," one that was neither Marxist nor necessarily pro-Western. He was trying to evolve a policy that considered the particular history and circumstances of the nations now trying to break the shackles of poverty and ignorance inflicted upon them by the attachments of empire. Kennedy understood and sympathized with the temperaments of those leaders of the Third World who wished to be nonaligned with either the Russians or the Americans and this explains his relationships with men like Nehru and Sukarno of Indonesia. So, for Kennedy, Nixon’s opposition toward Ho Chi Minh’s upcoming victory over the French in Vietnam was not so much a matter of Cold War ideology, but one of cool and measured pragmatism. As he stated in 1953, the year before the French fell:

The war would never be successful ... unless large numbers of the people of Vietnam were won over from their sullen neutrality and open hostility. This could never be done ... unless they were assured beyond doubt that complete independence would be theirs at the conclusion of the war.

To say the least, this is not what the Dulles brothers John Foster and Allen had in mind. Once the French empire fell, they tried to urge upon Eisenhower an overt American intervention in the area. When Eisenhower said no, Allen Dulles sent in a massive CIA covert operation headed by Air Force officer Edward Lansdale. In other words, the French form of foreign domination was replaced by the American version.

CONTINUED…

http://www.ctka.net/pr199-africa.html

Well, judging by the general level of disinterest, the traitors who killed President Kennedy may think they have gotten away with murder and hijacked a country. They haven’t and we won’t let them. As JFK said, “You can’t kill an idea.” Nor can they kill the Constitution and the ideas and laws it represents.

Please remember that. And don't forget to spread the news.

[libnnc]

1. K&R

:kick:

[Octafish]

2. JFK: The Undelivered Speech

What follows is the text of the speech President John F. Kennedy was to deliver in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

JFK: The Undelivered Speech

I am honored to have this invitation to address the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council joined by the members of the Dallas Assembly --- and pleased to have this opportunity to salute the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest.

It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting. For they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city --- and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial and political support, and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities --- from MIT to Cal Tech --- tend to attract the new and growing industries. I congratulate those of you here in Dallas who have recognized these basic facts through the creation of the unique and forward-looking Graduate Research Center.

This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason --- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.



There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land --- voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness. At a time when the national debt is steadily being reduced in terms of its burden on our economy, they see that debt as the greatest single threat to our security. At a time when we are steadily reducing the number of Federal employees serving every thousand citizens, they fear those supposed hordes of civil servants far more than the actual hordes of opposing armies.

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will "talk sense to the American people." But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.

I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this Nation's strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion. Displays of material wealth cannot stop the disillusionment of diplomats subjected to discrimination.

Above all, words alone are not enough. The United States is a peaceful nation. And where our strength and determination are clear, our words need merely to convey conviction, not belligerence. If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.

I realize that this Nation often tends to identify turning-points in world affairs with the major addresses which preceded them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere --- it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall's speech at Harvard which kept communism out of Western Europe --- it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.

In this administration also it has been necessary at times to issue specific warnings --- warnings that we could not stand by and watch the Communists conquer Laos by force, or intervene in the Congo, or swallow West Berlin, or maintain offensive missiles on Cuba. But while our goals were at least temporarily obtained in these and other instances, our succcssful defense of freedom was due not to the words we used, but to the strength we stood ready to use on behalf of the principles we stand ready to defend.

This strength is composed of many different elements, ranging from the most massive deterrents to the most subtle influences. And all types of strength are needed --- no one kind could do the job alone. Let us take a moment, therefore, to review this Nation's progress in each major area of strength.

First, as Secretary McNamara made clear in his address last Monday, the strategic nuclear power of the United States has been so greatly modernized and expanded in the last 1,000 days, by the rapid production and deployment of the most modern missile systems, that any and all potential aggressors are clearly confronted now with the impossibility of strategic victory --- and the certainty total destruction --- if by reckless attack they should ever force upon us the necessity of a strategic reply.

In less than 3 years, we have increased by 50 percent the number of Polaris submarines scheduled to be in force by the next fiscal year, increased by more than 70 percent our total Polaris purchase program, increased by more than 75 percent our Minuteman purchase program, increased by 50 percent the portion of our strategic bombers on 15-minute alert, and increased by 100 percent the total number of nuclear weapons avalable in our strategic alert forces. Our security is further enhanced by the steps we have taken regarding these weapons to improve the speed and certainty of their response, their readiness at all times to respond, their ability to survive an attack, and their ability to be carefully controlled and directed through secure command operations.

But the lessons of the last decade have taught us that freedom cannot be defended by strategic nuclear power alone. We have, therefore, in the last 3 years accelerated the development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, and increased by 60 percent the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe.

Nor can Europe or any other continent rely on nuclear forces alone, whether they are strategic or tactical. We have radically improved the readiness of our conventional forces --- increased by 45 percent the number of combat-ready Army divisions, increased by 100 percent the procurement of modern Army weapons and equipment, increased by 100 percent our ship construction, conversion and modernization program, increased by 100 percent our procurement of tactical aircraft, increased by 30 percent the number of tactical air squadrons, and increased the strength of the Marines. As last month's "Operation Big Lift" --- which originated here in Texas --- showed so clearly, this Nation is prepared as never before to move substantial numbers of men in surprisingly little time to advanced positions anywhere in the world. We have increased by 175 percent the procurement of airlift aircraft, and we have already achieved a 75 percent increase in our existing strategic airlift capability. Finally, moving beyond the traditional roles of our military forces, we have achieved an increase of nearly 600 percent in our special forces --- those forces that are prepared to work with our allies and friends against the guerrillas, saboteurs, insurgents and assassins who threaten freedom in a less direct but equaIly dangerous manner.

But American military might should not and need not stand alone against the ambitions of international communism. Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others, and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. For our assistance makes possible the stationing of 3-5 million allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining a comparable number of American soldiers. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas, necessitating direct United States intervention, would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program, and might cost us heavily in American lives as well.

About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc --- nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression --- Viet Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result. In short, the $50 billion we spend each year on our own defense could well be ineffective without the $4 billion required for military and economic assistance.

Our foreign aid program is not growing in size; it is, on the contrary, smaller now than in previous years. It has had its weaknesses, but we have undertaken to correct them. And the proper way of treating weaknesses is to replace them with strength, not to increase those weaknesses by emasculating essential programs. Dollar for dollar, in or out of government, there is no better form of investment in our national security than our much-abused foreign aid program. We cannot afford to lose it. We can afford to maintain it. We can surely afford, for example, to do as much for our 19 needy neighbors of Latin America as the Communist bloc is sending to the island of Cuba alone.

I have spoken of strength largely in terms of the deterrence and resistance of aggression and attack. But, in today's world, freedom can be lost without a shot being fired, by ballots as well as bullets. The success of our leadership is dependent upon respect for our mission in the world as well as our missiles --- on a clearer recognition of the virtues of freedom as well as the evils of tyranny.

That is why our Information Agency has doubled the shortwave broadcasting power of the Voice of America and increased the number of broadcasting hours by 30 percent, increased Spanish language broadcasting to Cuba and Latin America from 1 to 9 hours a day, increased seven-foid to more than 35 million copies the number of American books being translated and published for Latin American readers, and taken a host of other steps to carry our message of truth and freedom to all the far corners of the earth.

And that is also why we have regained the initiative in the exploration of outer space, making an annual effort greater than the combined total of all space activities undertaken during the fifties, launching more than 130 vehicles into earth orbit, putting into actual operation valuable weather and communications satellites, and making it clear to all that the United States of America has no intention of finishing second in space.

This effort is expensive --- but it pays its own way, for freedom and for America. For there is no longer any fear in the free world that a Communist lead in space will become a permanent assertion of supremacy and the basis of military superiority. There is no longer any doubt about the strength and skill of American science, American industry, American education, and the American free enterprise system. In short, our national space effort represents a great gain in, and a great resource of our national strength --- and both Texas and Texans are contributing greatly to this strength.

Finally, it should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

It is clear, therefore, that we are strengthening our security as well as our economy by our recent record increases in national income and output --- by surging ahead of most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits, by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, to assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.

This Nation's total output --- which 3 years ago was at the $500 billion mark --- will soon pass $600 billion, for a record rise of over $100 billion in 3 years. For the first time in history we have 70 million men and women at work. For the first time in history average factory earnings have exceeded $100 a week. For the first time in history corporation profits after taxes --- which have risen 43 percent in less than 3 years --- have an annual level of $27.4 billion.

My friends and fellow citizens: I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.

That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions --- it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations --- it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.

We in this country, in this generation, are --- by destiny rather than choice --- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, "except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

SOURCE: http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/25th_Issue/jfk_spch.html

Thank you for caring, libnnc

[Old and In the Way]

3. What a speech...thanks for posting.

Truly a President for the American people. No wonder why the traitors had to kill him.

The American people today should read and grok on this line: "Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security."/b]

[Octafish]

11. Remarks Intended for Delivery to the Texas Democratic State Committee in Austin on 22 Nov 1963

That quote sounds like he was talking about the mess we are in today. It's hard to believe that President Kennedy could've imagined that such an ignoramus as George Walker Bush would occupy the Oval Office.

Something else from the Trade Mart speech that is so very relevant today:

That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions--it will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations--it will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes.

That is essentially American -- the belief that all men are created equal and enjoy the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

JFK was into unification, too. Here's what he was going to say later in his Texas trip:

Remarks Intended for Delivery to the Texas Democratic State Committee in the Municipal Auditorium in Austin

President John F. Kennedy
November 22, 1963

One hundred and eighteen years ago last March, President John Tyler signed the Joint Resolution of Congress providing statehood for Texas. And 118 years ago this month, President James Polk declared that Texas was a part of the Union. Both Tyler and Polk were Democratic Presidents. And from that day to this, Texas and the Democratic Party have been linked in an indestructible alliance--an alliance for the promotion of prosperity, growth, and greatness for Texas and for America.

Next year that alliance will sweep this State and Nation.

The historic bonds which link Texas and the Democratic Party are no temporary union of convenience. They are deeply embedded in the history and purpose of this State and party. For the Democratic Party is not a collection of diverse interests brought together only to win elections. We are united instead by a common history and heritage--by a respect for the deeds of the past and a recognition of the needs of the future. Never satisfied with today, we have always staked our fortunes on tomorrow. That is the kind of State which Texas has always been--that is the kind of vision and vitality which Texans have always possessed--and that is the reason why Texas will always be basically Democratic.

For 118 years, Texas and the Democratic Party have contributed to each other's success. This State's rise to prosperity and wealth came primarily from the policies and programs of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Those policies were shaped and enacted with the help of such men as the late Sam Rayburn and a host of other key Congressmen--by the former Texas Congressman and Senator who serves now as my strong right arm, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson--by your present United States Senator, Ralph Yarborough--and by an overwhelming proportion of Democratic leadership at the State and county level, led by your distinguished Governor, John Connally.

It was the policies and programs of the Democratic Party which helped bring income to your farmers, industries to your cities, employment to your workers, and the promotion and preservation of your natural resources. No one who remembers the days of 5-cent cotton and 30-cent oil will forget the ties between the success of this State and the success of our party.

Three years ago this fall I toured this State with Lyndon Johnson, Sam Rayburn, and Ralph Yarborough as your party's candidate for President. We pledged to increase America's strength against its enemies, its prestige among its friends, and the opportunities it offered to its citizens. Those pledges have been fulfilled. The words spoken in Texas have been transformed into action in Washington, and we have America moving again.

Here in Austin, I pledged in 1960 to restore world confidence in the vitality and energy of American society. That pledge has been fulfilled. We have won the respect of allies and adversaries alike through our determined stand on behalf of freedom around the world, from West Berlin to Southeast Asia--through our resistance to Communist intervention in the Congo and Communist missiles in Cuba--and through our initiative in obtaining the nuclear test ban treaty which can stop the pollution of our atmosphere and start us on the path to peace. In San José and Mexico City, in Bonn and West Berlin, in Rome and County Cork, I saw and heard and felt a new appreciation for an America on the move--an America which has shown that it cares about the needy of its own and other lands, an America which has shown that freedom is the way to the future, an America which is known to be first in the effort for peace as well as preparedness.

In Amarillo, I pledged in 1960 that the businessmen of this State and Nation--particularly the small businessman who is the backbone of our economy--would move ahead as our economy moved ahead. That pledge has been fulfilled. Business profits--having risen 43 percent in 2 years--now stand at a record high; and businessmen all over America are grateful for liberalized depreciation for the investment tax credit, and for our programs to increase their markets at home as well as abroad. We have proposed a massive tax reduction, with particular benefits for small business. We have stepped up the activities of the Small Business Administration, making available in the last 3 years almost $50 million to more than 1,000 Texas firms, and doubling their opportunity to share in Federal procurement contracts. Our party believes that what's good for the American people is good for American business, and the last 3 years have proven the validity of that proposition.

In Grand Prairie, I pledged in 1960 that this country would no longer tolerate the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrialized nation in the world. That pledge has been and is being fulfilled. In less than 3 years our national output will shortly have risen by a record $100 billion--industrial production is Up 22 percent, personal income is up 16 percent. And the Wall Street Journal pointed out a short time ago that the United States now leads most of Western Europe in the rate of business expansion and the margin of corporate profits. Here in Texas--where 3 years ago at the very time I was speaking, real per capita personal income was actually declining as the industrial recession spread to this State--more than 200,000 new jobs have been created, unemployment has declined, and personal income rose last year to an all time high. This growth must go on. Those not sharing in this prosperity must be helped. And that is why we have an accelerated public works program, an area redevelopment program, and a manpower training program, to keep this and other States moving ahead. And that is why we need a tax cut of $11 billion, as an assurance of future growth and insurance against an early recession. No period of economic recovery in the peacetime history of this Nation has been characterized by both the length and strength of our present expansion--and we intend to keep it going.

In Dallas, I pledged in 1960 to step up the development of both our natural and our human resources. That pledge has been fulfilled. The policy of "no new starts" has been reversed. The Canadian River project will provide water for 11 Texas cities. The San Angelo project will irrigate some 10,000 acres. We have launched 10 new watershed projects in Texas, completed 7 others, and laid plans for 6 more. A new national park, a new wildlife preserve, and other navigation, reclamation, and natural resource projects are all under way in this State. At the same time we have sought to develop the human resources of Texas and all the Nation, granting loans to 17,500 Texas college students, making more than $17 million available to 249 school districts, and expanding or providing rural library service to 600,000 Texas readers. And if this Congress passes, as now seems likely, pending bills to build college classrooms, increase student loans, build medical schools, provide more community libraries, and assist in the creation of graduate centers, then this Congress will have done more for the cause of education than has been done by any Congress in modern history. Civilization, it was once said, is a race between education and catastrophe--and we intend to win that race for education.

In Wichita Falls, I pledged in 1960 to increase farm income and reduce the burden of farm surpluses. That pledge has been fulfilled. Net farm income today is almost a billion dollars higher than in 1960. In Texas, net income per farm consistently averaged below the $4,000 mark under the Benson regime; it is now well above it. And we have raised this income while reducing grain surpluses by one billion bushels. We have, at the same time, tackled the problem of the entire rural economy, extending more than twice as much credit to Texas farmers under the Farmers Home Administration, and making more than 100 million dollars in REA loans. We have not solved all the problems of American agriculture, but we have offered hope and a helping hand in place of Mr. Benson's indifference.

In San Antonio, I pledged in 1960 that a new administration would strive to secure for every American his full constitutional rights. That pledge has been and is being fulfilled. We have not yet secured the objectives desired or the legislation required. But we have, in the last 3 years, by working through voluntary leadership as well as legal action, opened more new doors to members of minority groups--doors to transportation, voting, education, employment, and places of public accommodation--than had been opened in any 3-year or 30-year period in this century. There is no noncontroversial way to fulfill our constitutional pledge to establish justice and promote domestic tranquillity, but we intend to fulfill those obligations because they are right.

In Houston, I pledged in 1960 that we would set before the American people the unfinished business of our society. That pledge has been fulfilled. We have undertaken the first full-scale revision of our tax laws in 10 years. We have launched a bold new attack on mental illness, emphasizing treatment in the patient's own home community instead of some vast custodial institution. We have initiated a full-scale attack on mental retardation, emphasizing prevention instead of abandonment. We have revised our public welfare programs, emphasizing family rehabilitation instead of humiliation. And we have proposed a comprehensive realignment of our national transportation policy, emphasizing equal competition instead of regulation. Our agenda is still long, but this country is moving again.

In El Paso, I pledged in 1960 that we would give the highest and earliest priority to the reestablishment of good relations with the people of Latin America. We are working to fulfill that pledge. An area long neglected has not solved all its problems. The Communist foothold which had already been established has not yet been eliminated. But the trend of Communist expansion has been reversed. The name of Fidel Castro is no longer feared or cheered by substantial numbers in every country. And contrary to the prevailing predictions of 3 years ago, not another inch of Latin American territory has fallen prey to Communist control. Meanwhile, the work of reform and reconciliation goes on. I can testify from my trips to Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Costa Rica that American officials are no longer booed and spat upon south of the border. Historic fences and friendships are being maintained. Latin America, once the forgotten stepchild of our aid programs, now receives more economic assistance per capita than any other area of the world. In short, the United States is once more identified with the needs and aspirations of the people to the south, and we intend to meet those needs and aspirations.

In Texarkana, I pledged in 1960 that our country would no longer engage in a lagging space effort. That pledge has been fulfilled. We are not yet first in every field of space endeavor, but we have regained worldwide respect for our scientists, our industry, our education, and our free initiative.

In the last 3 years, we have increased our annual space effort to a greater level than the combined total of all space activities undertaken in the 1950's. We have launched into earth orbit more than 4 times as many space vehicles as had been launched in the previous 3 years. We have focused our wide-ranging efforts around a landing on the moon in this decade. We have put valuable weather and communications satellites into actual operation. We will fire this December the most powerful rocket ever developed anywhere in the world. And we have made it clear to all that the United States of America has no intention of finishing second in outer space. Texas will play a major role in this effort. The Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston will be the cornerstone of our lunar landing project, with a billion dollars already allocated to that center this year. Even though space is an infant industry, more than 3,000 people are already employed in space activities here in Texas, more than $100 million of space contracts are now being worked on in this State, and more than 50 space-related firms have announced the opening of Texas offices. This is still a daring and dangerous frontier; and there are those who would prefer to turn back or to take a more timid stance. But Texans have stood their ground on embattled frontiers before, and I know you will help us see this battle through.

In Fort Worth, I pledged in 1960 to build a national defense which was second to none--a position I said, which is not "first, but," not "first, if," not "first, when," but first--period. That pledge has been fulfilled. In the past 3 years we have increased our defense budget by over 20 percent; increased the program for acquisition of Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minuteman missile purchase program by more than 75 percent; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by 60 percent; added 5 combat ready divisions and 5 tactical fighter wings to our Armed Forces; increased our strategic airlift capabilities by 75 percent; and increased our special counter-insurgency forces by 600 percent. We can truly say today, with pride in our voices and peace in our hearts, that the defensive forces of the United States are, without a doubt, the most powerful and resourceful forces anywhere in the world.

Finally, I said in Lubbock in 1960, as I said in every other speech in this State, that if Lyndon Johnson and I were elected, we would get this country moving again. That pledge has been fulfilled. In nearly every field of national activity, this country is moving again--and Texas is moving with it. From public works to public health, wherever Government programs operate, the past 3 years have seen a new burst of action and progress--in Texas and all over America. We have stepped up the fight against crime and slums and poverty in our cities, against the pollution of our streams, against unemployment in our industry, and against waste in the Federal Government. We have built hospitals and clinics and nursing homes. We have launched a broad new attack on mental illness and mental retardation. We have initiated the training of more physicians and dentists. We have provided 4 times as much housing for our elderly citizens, and we have increased benefits for those on social security.

Almost everywhere we look, the story is the same. In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, in the councils of the world and in the jungles of far-off nations, there is now renewed confidence in our country and our convictions.

For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed., to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.

So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation's future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause--united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future--and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.

SOURCE: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03IntendedMunicipalAuditorium11221963.htm

Really appreciate you giving a damn, my Friend. Great thinks grok alike, Never-Old and Showing the Way.

[H2O Man]

5. "We in this country,

in this generation, are -- by destiny eather than choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom."


Nominated.

[CJCRANE]

7. Wow. What might have been...

Any Hollywood scriptwriters out there...this speech could be used in a sci-fi "what if" scenario...it would be good to see someone like Martin Sheen (or similar charismatic actor) deliver it.

[whistle]

15. Thank you for posting this, so much may very well have been different had

...JFK not been murdered that day in Dallas.

Ir makes me very sad to think about what America has lost because of that treasonous event and the later murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and what ultimately resulted in the coup by BushCo.

Americans needs to take back their country and restore the U.S. Constitution and become once again the example of truth, freedom and democracy in the world. America needs Dennis Kucinich as its next president!

[Baby Snooks]

16. An echo of Eisenhower

This speech would have been an echo of Eisenhower and his warning about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex" and the danger it represented to us as a nation and as a people. Both clearly warned of the danger of empowering the few and taking away the power of the many.

[jeff30997]

20. "fewer people will listen to nonsense."

JFK must be spinning in his grave.Spinning real fast!:banghead:

[truedelphi]

23. This man will always be one of my heroes.

His speech is just another demonstration of how the man intended to put this country on a course that would EXALT the common man.

Instead, under the New Reign of Terror, we had a war in Vietnam that desicrated both the country of Vietnam and the dreams of many young Americans.

A war that led (possibly) to the recessions of the late seventies.

And with John, Martin and Bobby killed, we of the Progressive Left were without real leadership -
a fact that still affects us today.

[annabanana]

27. "vituperation is as good as victory "

He had these vipers nailed, even then.

[L. Coyote]

30. Bush wishes he could read someting like this on a teleprompter!

[ancient_nomad]

4. KnR! Thank you for posting. n/t

[Octafish]

22. JFK AND THE PROMISE OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN (A remembrance of the 35th president)

Something more on the subject from a wise person, written 14 years ago:

The following were among the hundreds of stories David Pitts filed during
his fifteen-year career at the U.S. Information Agency/Voice of America.

Title: "JFK--And the Promise of What Might Have Been." Had he lived, John Fitzgerald Kennedy would now be 76, a sobering thought for a generation that came of age during his New Frontier and now is middle-aged or older. It is a generation that cannot forget him even though it will be 30 years this November since that bad day in Dallas. (1993)

Author: PITTS DAVID (USIA STAFF WRITER)

Date: 19931102

JFK AND THE PROMISE OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN (A remembrance of the 35th president)

By David Pitts, USIA Staff Writer
(The author lived the Kennedy years as a young boy growing up in England. He wrote this article to mark the 30th anniversary of the president's death, which will occur November 22.)

Washington -- Had he lived, John Fitzgerald Kennedy would now be 76, a sobering thought for a generation that came of age during his New Frontier and now is middle-aged or older. It is a generation that cannot forget him even though it will be 30 years this November since that bad day in Dallas.

SNIP...

But it is not the achievements, or the failures, of the Kennedy years that we remember, nor even the contradictions in this most complicated of men. What we remember is that John F. Kennedy made us feel we could remake the world, that we are the masters of our own destiny on this planet, that mankind is not doomed, that "on earth," as he said, "God's work must truly be our own." That is no mean accomplishment, despite falling short of his promise as we all do.

SNIP...

To Europe's wily old leaders -- DeGaulle in France, Adenauer in West Germany, MacMillan in England -- Kennedy's New Frontier seemed naive. But Europeans were entranced. Lord Harlech, the British ambassador in Washington, said, "Everybody liked being led by the United States at that time. They liked to have President Kennedy as leader of the Western world."

It is a tribute to Kennedy's remarkable foresight that, despite the end of the Cold War, many of the issues he articulated so vigorously in the early 1960s are still at issue 30 years later -- the need to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons, the fight for racial justice, the worldwide chasm between poverty and plenty.

SNIP...

On one occasion, he spoke of his hopes for America, words still relevant in 1993:

"I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will protect the great old American houses, squares, and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future. I look forward to an America, which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America, which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world that will be safe not only for democracy and diversity, but also for personal distinction."

SOURCE:

http://www.jackandlem.com/articles.html

You're welcome, my Friend. Thank you for caring, ancient_nomad! Really appreciate you giving a damn.

[Swamp Rat]

6. *ahem*

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

8. Our bloodless coup d' etat. nt

[mod mom]

29. not bloodless-think of all the blood shed in bush's war-FOR OIL & PROFITEERING!

Florida in 2000, Ohio (and elsewhere) in 2004 and we still haven't confronted the issue. No wonder they want a Dem candidate that is divisive. Sadly, with the help of corporate media, it's looking like we can expect more of the same.

:mad:

The silence by many within the Dem Party has been shameful.

[BlueEyedSon]

9. Yes, that would be my pick for the day America ended.

[Octafish]

13. Pingvin!

¿A giant 40-foot-tall penguin with tentacles isn't so far out of the question, is it, Compay?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3249092711709225962&q=scott-of-the-sahara&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Keen. Greeeet!

[Swamp Rat]

25. nope

see H. P. Lovecraft. ;)





:hi:

[Trailrider1951]

10. Thank you Octafish for keeping the hard questions concerning

John Kennedy's murder in our awareness. I look forward to all your informative posts on the subject. But I'm afraid we will not know the truth because those that orchestrated this horror are still carrying on the agenda that made his murder necessary.......


edited for clarity.

[Octafish]

37. Joan Mellen - THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND THE CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT

Prof. Joan Mellen helps us understand

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND THE CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT

Talk at the 92nd Street Y,
JANUARY 28, 2007
by Joan Mellen

It happened going on forty-four years ago, and yet the murder of President Kennedy remains simultaneously a subject of fascination and yet is still taboo within mainstream discourse. You will not find a free exchange of views on the Kennedy assassination in the “New York Times” nor, to date, an acknowledgement of the unanswered questions arising from 9/11. This past November, I spoke at a Jewish Senior Center on the Upper West Side where the director, Sara Tornay, remarked that the “Times” had listed the lecture the week before mine, and the lecture the week after. My talk on the Kennedy assassination had slipped down the memory hole. How come? she wondered.

So I'm grateful to the 92nd Street Y for the liberalism of outlook and independence of mind that made this evening possible. The Kennedy assassination will not go away, and I'll try to explain why, heartened as I am by the fact that the former governor of Minnesota, Arne Carlson, gave a speech in November entitled “The JFK Assassination: Its Impact on America's History.” That's my subject as well: How the Kennedy assassination illuminates the present political moment.

The Kennedy assassination is present even in its absence in the recent film, “The Good Shepherd,” a movie about the CIA. Its central character, played by Matt Damon, is based largely on the late head of CIA Counter Intelligence, James Jesus Angleton. The distortions of “The Good Shepherd” return us to the meaning of the Kennedy assassination. James Angleton in real life was the mastermind not, as the film suggests, of the Bay of Pigs (that was Richard Bissell), but of a false defector program that sent spies into the Soviet Union. Among them was one Lee Harvey Oswald. I am basing this talk either on interviews I conducted for “A Farewell to Justice,” or on new interviews I've done since its publication a year or so ago. I am referring as well to some of the more than four million documents released under the JFK Records Collection Act and now residing in Maryland at the National Archives.

It was actually an FBI document that demonstrates that Oswald, indeed one of Angleton's assets in the Soviet Union, communicated back to the CIA through a CIA asset at American Express named Michael Jelisavcic. One of my discoveries for “A Farewell to Justice” was the original of a note that Oswald, arrested in New Orleans for a street fight, handed to the police lieutenant who was questioning him, Francis Martello. One CIA document refers to an FBI "65" file, an espionage file, for Jelisavic, a reference inadvertently unredacted when CIA declassified the document.

This number clearly directs CIA to an espionage file. Oswald also had Jelisavcic's name and room number in his possession. Angleton's false defector program, not mentioned in “The Good Shepherd,” remains among CIA's most closely guarded secrets, a secret necessary to preserve the fiction of the Warren Report.

CONTINUED...

http://www.joanmellen.net/truth.html

Hear Prof. Mellen's address:

http://nysoundposse.com/2006/01/event-who-planned-murder-of-jfk-who.html

You're welcome, Trailrider1951. Thank you for understanding.



Spreading the truth about these gangsters hastens the day of their irreverance.

[FogerRox]

46. Good word, Gangsters

[spanone]

12. Not a peep.

[Octafish]

38. DUer Rhiannon12866 reported the Abraham Bolden story reported on CNN International...

...yesterday. I'd bet it's not a coincidence it wasn't reported here.

Rhiannon12866 (1000+ posts) Fri Nov-23-07 03:57 PM
Response to Reply #11
13. K&R. This story was on CNN International non-stop yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2333658&mesg_id=2335153

A Report on CIA Infiltration and Manipulation of the Mass Media

By Ashley Overbeck
September 1999

Should CIA agents be allowed to pose as journalists to further the aims of their clandestine activities?

Members of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on the future of U.S. intelligence in the post-Cold War world say yes, and a CIA official recently came forward to admit that the Agency already occasionally does so despite regulations barring the practice. But is this a breaking story or just the latest chapter in a spy story that traces its roots back to the 1950’s? While they may act like strangers in public, the press and the CIA have a sordid past that spans more than four decades.


The CIA-Press Connection in the 1950s and 60s

The CIA-press connection traces its roots back to the early days of the Cold War, when Allen Dulles (who became CIA director in 1953) began courting the nation’s most prestigious journalistic institutions for Agency operations. The mood of the day precluded the need for secretive infiltration, as Carl Bernstein points out in his 1977 expose on the topic. “American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing to commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against global Communism,” he writes. “Accordingly, the line separating the American press corps was often indistinguishable.”

That’s not to say that reporters acted as spies in the James Bond sense. Media outlets offered services that fell into the broad categories of providing “cover” for CIA operatives (i.e. jobs and credentials) or sharing information gathered by reporters on staff.

While the Agency ran a formal training program in the 50’s that attempted to teach rank-and-file agents to be reporters, this was among the least common of the more than 400 relationships with the press described in CIA files. Most involved were journalists before their involvement with the CIA began.

Reporters, especially foreign correspondents, typically served as “eyes and ears” for the CIA. Often they were briefed by agents before a trip and debriefed when they returned; they shared their notebooks, relayed things that they had seen or overheard and offered their impressions. More complex arrangements found reporters planting misinformation for the Agency or serving as liaisons between agents and foreign contacts, often in return for information or access.

“In return for our giving them information, we’d ask them to do things that fit their roles as journalists but that they wouldn’t have thought of unless we put it in their minds,” one agent told Bernstein. “For instance, a reporter in Vienna would say to our man, ‘I met an interesting second secretary at the Czech Embassy.’ We’d say, ‘Can you get to know him? And after you get to know him, can you assess him? And then, could you put him in touch with us -- would you mind us using your apartment?’“

Another senior CIA official offered the following description of “reporting” by cooperating journalists: “We would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor? We understand that you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right.”

It was a symbiotic relationship: reporters got the scoop and the spooks got the dirt. Correspondents with Agency ties were highly valued by their bosses for the stories they brought home. And agents saw in the press a perfect vehicle for information gathering: who else besides a reporter enjoyed such free access in a foreign country, could cultivate so many sources among foreign governments and elites and ask lots of probing questions without arousing suspicion?

CIA-press operations in the 50’s and 60’s relied heavily on journalists working in Latin America and Western Europe. Members of the press were used as go-betweens to deliver messages and money to European Christian Democrats and also helped the Agency track the movements of people coming from Eastern Europe. Additionally, the CIA owned 40 percent of the Rome Daily American, a now-defunct English-language newspaper in Italy.

Reporters funneled CIA dollars to opponents of Salvador Allende in Chile and wrote anti-Allende propaganda stories for CIA proprietary publications in that country. By Bernstein’s account, two of the Agency’s most valuable relationships in the 60’s were with reporters who covered Latin America: Hal Hendrix, a Pulitzer Prize winner from the Miami News, and Jerry O’Leary of the Washington Star. CIA files on Hendrix (who went on to become a high-ranking official at ITT) detail information that he provided agents about Cuban exiles in Miami. O’Leary’s file lists him as a valued asset in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, although he denies having a formal relationship with the Agency. “I might call them up and say something like, “Papa Doc has the clap, did you know that? and they’d put it in the file,” O’Leary told Bernstein. “I don’t consider that reporting for them. It’s useful to be friendly to them, and generally I felt friendly to them. But I think that they were more helpful to me than I was to them.”

SNIP...

The Church Committee Investigation

A flurry of public attention began to cast doubts upon the ethics of a press wedded to the Central Intelligence Agency after a Washington Star-News story by Oswald Johnson reported that the CIA had three dozen American newsmen on its payroll at that time (November 1973). Then-CIA director William Colby (CFR) leaked this information to Johnson, fearing an embarrassing fallout after both the Star-News and New York Times approached him to ask if any of their staff members were receiving payments from the Agency. (A Times investigation four years later showed the number of CIA-funded journalists to be closer to 50; Bernstein’s expose in Rolling Stone that same year claimed it was more like 400.)

By now, the times they had a-changed: In a 1974 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, former reporter Stuart Loory chastised fellow journalists for their history of chumming it up with the CIA and for their lax coverage of the issue once it came to light. “There is little question that if even one American overseas carrying a press card is paid by the CIA, then all Americans with those credentials are suspect,” he wrote. “We automatically... consider Soviet and Chinese newsmen as mouthpieces and informants for their governments, while at the same time congratulating ourselves for our independence. Now we know that some of that independence has, with the stealth required of clandestine operations, been taken away from us -- or given away.”

In 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence headed by Frank Church (the Church Committee) focused its attention on the Agency’s use of American news outlets. The CIA went to great lengths to curtail this part of the committee’s investigation, though, and some members of the committee later admitted that the Agency was able to get the upper hand. Colby and his successor, George Bush (CFR, TC), were able to convince the Senate that a full inquiry would cripple their intelligence-gathering capabilities and would unleash a “witch-hunt” on the nation’s reporters, editors and publishers.

“The Agency was extremely clever about it and the committee played right into its hands,” one congressional source told Carl Bernstein. “Church and some of the other members were much more interested in making headlines than in doing serious, tough investigating. The Agency pretended to be giving up a lot whenever it was asked about the flashy stuff -- assassinations and secret weapons and James Bond operations. Then, when it came to things they didn’t want to give away, that were much more important to the Agency, Colby in particular called in his chits. And the committee bought it.”

Former intelligence officer William Bader (who returned to the Agency as a deputy to Stansfield Turner) and David Aaron (who later served as deputy to President Carter’s national security advisor) supervised the committee’s investigation of the CIA-press angle. CIA director Bush balked at all of Bader’s requests for specific information about the scope of the Agency’s media activities. Under pressure from the entire committee, Bush finally agreed to pull records on journalists and have his deputies condense them into one-paragraph summaries. The Agency would not make the raw files available, and neither the names of journalists nor their affiliations would be included. More than 400 summaries were compiled (a number that officials acknowledge was probably on the low side) in an attempt to give committee members “a broad, representative picture.”

“We never pretended it was a total description of the range of activities over 25 years, or the number of journalists that have done things for us,” one official conceded. Still, even these sketchy details were enough for the committee to conclude that the CIA’s relationships with the press were of a far greater magnitude than they had expected -- and that they needed to know more.

But Bush was intransigent. Heated confrontations produced a bizarre agreement: Bader and director of the committee staff William Miller (CFR) could have access to 25 “sanitized” files from among the 400 (still without journalists’ identities). Church and committee vice-chairman John Tower would see five unsanitized files to verify that the CIA had included all but the names. No information on current CIA-press relationships would be divulged, and the whole deal was contingent upon Bader, Miller, Church and Tower’s promises not to reveal the files’ contents to the other committee members.

CONTINUED...

http://www.geocities.com/cpa_blacktown/20000318mediaoverb.htm

My wife's most Republican girlfriend works for mass media in Detroit.
She frequently is in Europe. Five years ago, after her first trip there post-9-11,
she said she was amazed at how different the coverage is.
CNN in the USA has near-ZERO real news, she said.
And she doesn't trust her Republic ditship radio no more.



GOOGLE showed only 23 news items from yesterday. Guess it's no surprise, considering who controls Corporate McPravda.

Thanks for giving a damn, spanone! Really appreciate your understanding.

[dailykoff]

14. No, you can't kill an idea

and all the ill-gotten gains in the world can't keep a criminal out of the docket. Ken Lay was the canary in the coal mine.

:dem:

[Octafish]

39. To keep Kanary Ken safe, they 'suicided' Cliff Baxter.

For those new to the subject of ENRON and ripping billions off the consumers and shipping it ASAFP to Switzerland via Grand Cayman: Kenny Boy Lay's right-hand Baxter knew where the bodies were buried. So, it appears he had to go.

The strange and convenient death of J. Clifford Baxter—Enron executive found shot to death

By Patrick Martin
28 January 2002
WSWS.org

Without anything that can be called a serious investigation, local authorities in a wealthy Houston suburb have whitewashed the death of former Enron vice chairman J. Clifford Baxter, calling it a suicide. Baxter, 43, was found shot to death in his Mercedes Benz in the early hours of Friday morning, January 25, near his home in Sugar Land.

Baxter’s body was discovered inside his Mercedes Benz, which was parked in a turnaround on a street near his home. Officials in Sugar Land moved swiftly to label Baxter’s death a suicide. Local Justice of the Peace Jim Richard initially declared that Baxter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and no further inquiry was required. But within hours he reversed himself, citing the intense public interest in the death, and ordered an autopsy.

Harris County Medical Examiner Joye Carter conducted the autopsy and found the cause of death to be suicide by a “penetrating gunshot to the head.” The weapon was a .38 caliber revolver which was found in Baxter’s car, next to his body.

Neither the perfunctory official probe nor the media coverage has addressed the obvious suspicions aroused by the death of a critically important witness in the investigation into the criminal activities at Enron, the biggest corporate fraud in American history. Baxter quit as vice chairman of the company last May, after reportedly come into conflict with other top executives over the phony accounting gimmicks used to plunder billions of dollars.

The most disturbing account of Baxter’s last days comes from a former business associate who spoke to the New York Times but was not identified by the newspaper. This person spoke with the former Enron vice chairman two days before his death and congratulated him “for being named among those people who complained about Enron.”

According to the Times account, the unnamed associate added that Baxter “was talking about perhaps needing a bodyguard, though I’m not sure where that idea came from.”

That a man only two days away from suicide would be considering hiring a bodyguard defies belief. But neither the Times nor any other media outlet has raised the possibility that Baxter felt his life to be in danger because of what he knew and could divulge about the internal affairs of Enron. Men have been killed for much less.

Baxter was named in a memorandum submitted by Enron Vice President Sheron Watkins last August to Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay. Watkins warned Lay that dubious off-the-books transactions with private partnerships set up by top Enron officials might cause the company to “collapse in a welter of accounting scandals.” She cited Baxter’s opposition to one of these partnerships, set up by then-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, writing, “Cliff Baxter complained mightily to Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM.”

Baxter received a subpoena from the Senate Government Affairs Subcommittee on Permanent Oversight and Investigation, along with 48 other people linked to Enron and Andersen. Investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee had told Baxter’s lawyer that they wished to interview him, but had not yet issued a subpoena.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/enro-j28.shtml

Unka Dick, no one talks about Cliff anymore. Why is that?



Courtesy of the Bartcop Collection

[dailykoff]

47. Thanks Octafish

I'd forgotten about that. Seems neither canary made it out of that particular shaft. Hmm..

[Baby Snooks]

17. This day in the news...

It is amazing that the major media really did nothing to acknowledge the anniversary of the assassination. And perhaps revealing. Our media, really, is no longer our media. It is their media.

When speaking of the Dulles brothers, too many forget the connection of Prescott Bush. When speaking of their CIA, too many forget the connection of the CIA of George HW Bush with their CIA.

Reality is the Dulles brothers profited from the financing of the Nazis and the laundering of Thyssen's very dirty money. The agenda. In full view. That no one saw. Or saw and was silenced when they saw it.

[Octafish]

40. W Bush Fulfills His Grandfather Prescott's Dream

Agree whole-heartedly.

W Bush Fulfills His Grandfather Prescott's Dream



Sen. Prescott Bush straightens out Sen. Richard Nixon's hat.

From David Swanson and our friends at Smirking Chimp:

Bush Fulfills His Grandfather's Dream

by David Swanson | Jul 28 2007 - 2:01pm |

It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George W. Bush's grandfather's involvement in a 1933 plot to overthrow the U.S. government and install a fascist dictatorship. I knew the story, but had not considered the possibility that the grandson was trying to accomplish what his grandfather had failed to achieve.

Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895 to 1972) attended Yale University and joined the secret society known as Skull and Bones. Prescott is widely reported to have stolen the skull of Native American leader Geronimo. As far as I know, this has not actually been confirmed. In fact, Prescott seems to have had a habit of making things up. He sent letters home from World War I claiming he'd received medals for heroism. After the letters were printed in newspapers, he had to retract his claims.

If this does not yet sound like the life of a George W. Bush ancestor, try this on for size: Prescott Bush's early business efforts tended to fail. He married the daughter of a very rich man named George Herbert Walker (the guy with the compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, that now belongs to the Bush family, and the origin of Dubya's middle initial). Walker installed Prescott Bush as an executive in Thyssen and Flick. From then on, Prescott's business dealings went better, and he entered politics.

Now, the name Thyssen comes from a German named Fritz Thyssen, major financial backer of the rise of Adolph Hitler. Thyssen was referred to in the New York Herald-Tribune as "Hitler's Angel." During the 1930s and early 1940s, and even as late as 1951, Prescott Bush was involved in business dealings with Thyssen, and was inevitably aware of both Thyssen's political activities and the fact that the companies involved were financially benefiting the nation of Germany. In addition, the companies Prescott Bush profited from included one engaged in mining operations in Poland using slave labor from Auschwitz. Two former slave laborers have sued the U.S. government and the heirs of Prescott Bush for $40 billion.

Until the United States entered World War II it was legal for Americans to do business with Germany, but in late 1942 Prescott Bush's businesses interests were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Among those businesses involved was the Hamburg America Lines, for which Prescott Bush served as a manager. A Congressional committee, in a report called the McCormack-Dickstein Report, found that Hamburg America Lines had offered free passage to Germany for journalists willing to write favorably about the Nazis, and had brought Nazi sympathizers to America. (Is this starting to remind anyone of our current president's relationship to the freedom of the press?)

The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate a homegrown American fascist plot hatched in 1933. Here's how the BBC promoted its recent story:

"Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American democracy."

CONTINUED...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9012

Thank you for understanding, Baby Snooks.



Great to see these particular cockroaches exposed to the light of day. Finally.

[donkeyotay]

18. Thanks for the reminder, Octafish. I had forgotten.

Guess they don't want us to compare and contrast - to reflect on how dumbed down we are, to remember what a real president sounded like, and to recall when our nation pledged to use our nuclear weapons only in response, in kind. I'm always amazed by how hawkish Kennedy was, and yet he was too liberal for the rabid right. Maybe they could have accepted him if it weren't for civil rights and going after organized crime. What ever happened to organized crime, anyway? Rhetorical question. Thank you Octafish for helping keep us informed.

[Octafish]

41. JFK wanted smart commanders, ordering his generals to read a variety of sources of info...

From The President Wants to Know: Memos from the President's office, 1961-1963 by Edward B. Claflin (pp. 281-284):

President In November 1963, after Paul nitze took over as secretary of the navy, Kennedy sent a detailed memo describing what he viewed as the military and political responsibilities of the chiefs of the armed forces, the importance of education and languate training, and the role of Special Forces units. The memo was also addressed to Admiral David L. mcDonald, chief of naval operations.

7 November 1963

MEMORANDUM FOR:
Secretary Nitze
Admiral McDonald

I recently sent to the Senate the nomination of (Rear) Admiral (Charles C.) Kirkpatrick (Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy) as Chief of Naval Personnel. When I did so I was reminded that I have transmitted to the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chief of Naval Operations a number of thoughts during the last two and one-half years, many relating to personnel matters. It might e well to summarize them for your information.

I believe that military and political factors are so interwoven that they cannot be separated into clear, well-defined categories, and that both must be mastered as a prerequisite to sound military and naval concepts. High ranking officers who hold positions of responsibility in the military departments must be thoroughly aware of the delicate sensitivities involved throughout the broad spectrum of international policy. The education, outside reading, duty patterns, and promotion processes of the officer corps must be designed to achieve this result.

It seems to me that service as an attaché is extremely valuable for preparing officers for high command positions. It gives them much of the political breadth so necessary in senior officers if our military and political policies are to form an integrated national policy. Furthermore, attaches can make both short- and long-term contributions of major significance. In the short term, a valuable assessment of the political and military situation in a country can be made by attaches because of their access to information resulting from respect held by most foreigners for our military power. This will be particularly true where the military of the country have a prominent role.

To exploit this advantage they must be bilingual to verify what they hear. Otherwise they will be merely an information channel for what the government to which they are accredited wants us to believe In the long term, the admiration attaches earn for the United States and the bonds of friendship they forge with the coming leaders of these countries can be of inestimable value to this country. For these reasons, I believe that only our best officers should be assigned as attaches, that they and their staffs must be language qualified, and htat their creditable performance in this billet must carry added weight in the promotion process.

In August and September of 1961 I had an exchange of correspondence with the Secretary of the Navy concerning an officer whom the Secretary called “the finest scientist in uniform”; yet this officer had been passed over by the selection board for the grade of Rear Admiral. At the time I inquired if there were not values other than technical achievement which carried greater weight with selection boards. I was advised that there was in process a reorientation of thought throughout the Navy relative to the demands of the times for greater education and specialization in science, technology, and other fields. I said then that I would be glad to write a letter to selection boards, or take any other course of action you deem necessary, to emphasize this need. I still stand ready to do so. I would like to assure that officers who devote the time and energy to improving their capabilities through study do not lose promotion opportunity. Not only would such losses waste the resources that such trained officers represent, but they would discourage our bright young officers from so applying themselves.

One of the best ways for one to expand his horizons is through a regular reading program. That is why I have been so interested in the Service programs. The books proposed, and provided, must cover the full range of national security policy—not just professional military subjects.

I know that much weight is placed on military assignments for developing the decision-making processes and sense of responsibility of our officers. Equally important is the need to serve in a staff capacity—particularly joint staffs—where the officer will be required to analyze, study, and prepare position papers on acute problems. I, therefore, support the present requirement that an officer must have served on a joint staff or an equivalent billet to be eligible for flag rank.

When I was in Norfolk in 1962 I noted particularly the members of the Seal Team. I was impressed by them as individuals and with the capability they possess as a group. As missiles assume more and more of the nuclear deterrent role and as your limited war mission grows, the need for special forces in the Navy and Marine Corps will increase.

I could summarize my thoughts by saying that an officer’s career must not consist of four years’ education and thirty years of experience. Throughout his career her must continue to study and to grow mentally if he is to provide the base upon which balanced decisions can be made. Personnel policies must be specifically pointed and administered to this end.

Since many of these points were raised with your predecessors as much as two years ago, I would appreciate your views on the following:

1. Has the quality of our attaches increased during this time? As a group how would you compare them with their contemporaries?

2. What percent of naval personnel assigned to attaché staffs are bilingual?

3. To what degree has there been a reorientation of thought on the need for special training for officers? Is this reflected in their promotion success?

4. Do you have any quantitative measure of the success of th reading program?

5. What is the status of your Special Forces?

/s/ John F. Kennedy

The United States once had an intelligent, compassionate, well-traveled, well-read and charismatic leader for President.

[FogerRox]

19. Thats right... you cant kill an idea, our country is based on an idea

KnR

[Octafish]

42. Tony the Fixer Scalia thinks the Constitution is dead...

...not a "living document," just a "legal document."

From before 9-11, when large chunks of same were considered mute by the neocons and Federalist Society turds:

Justice draws overflow crowd, protesters at Marquette

By TOM KERTSCHER
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: March 13, 2001

The Constitution is an enduring document but not a "living" one, and its meaning must be protected and not repeatedly altered to suit the whims of society, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in Milwaukee on Tuesday.

Scalia, often reviled as an arch-conservative who would do the nation harm, admitted to a respectful crowd of more than 1,000 people at Marquette University that his "originalist" judicial philosophy is not popular.

In contrast, the idea of a "living Constitution" in which the meaning can be interpreted as society changes is "seductive," he said.

But Scalia also insisted that only his approach - interpreting the Constitution based on the Framers' precise words and the meaning they intended at the time - can preserve the Constitution's guiding principles.

"The Constitution is not an organism," the justice said, "it is a legal document."

SNIP...

During a half-hour question-and-answer session that followed his half-hour speech, Scalia dismissed one questioner who asked why the Supreme Court decided to hear the voting case, saying the high court generally takes important cases. But Scalia was also glib, joking that with backers of the "living Constitution," "I am left to defend the 'dead' Constitution."

Scalia's clear aim, however, was to get his audience to care about how judges interpret the Constitution. "Originalists" such as him, he said, are in the minority throughout the legal system.

Scalia began by saying that an originalist or a textualist takes meaning from the Constitution "from its text, and that meaning does not change." The text itself is augmented only by examining what the Framers of the Constitution intended at the time - not by what a majority in society might prefer today, he said.

Scalia said that by adopting this judicial philosophy, he is often treated as if he were "eating little babies." But the originalist approach in fact is orthodox, widely held by jurists throughout most of the nation's history, he said.

CONTINUED...

http://www2.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar01/scalia14031301a.asp

Thanks to Scalia and the rest of the Felonious Five,
there have been millions of new dead people.



Some ideas need to be spread.
Thanks for understanding, FogerRox.

[Kurovski]

21. K&R. (nt)

[Octafish]

43. Familiar Faces in Dealey Plaza

Here's some information I wish Corporate McPravda would add to the news environment, the story of Joseph Milteer, a guy recorded describing the assassination attempt on JFK in Miami and possibly photographed in Dealey Plaza a short time later:

Familiar Faces in Dealey Plaza

by Allan Eaglesham and Martha Schallhorn

(Originally published in JFK Deep Politics Quarterly, October 2000)

One of the more bizarre sub-plots of the Kennedy-assassination saga is the story of Joseph Milteer. A wealthy activist who belonged to several right-wing and racist groups, Milteer was a member of the National States Rights Party, which had close anti-Castro links <1>. Less than two weeks before President Kennedy's visit to Dallas, Mr. Milteer was recorded on audiotape by Miami-police informant William Somerset, predicting that the president would soon be assassinated by a sniper in an office or hotel <2>. Somerset also made the claim that Milteer telephoned him from Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, with the prediction that President Kennedy would never visit Miami again. Although Milteer was interviewed by the FBI on November 27 and information was passed to the Warren Commission, neither Milteer nor Somerset was called to testify <3>.

If, indeed, Milteer was in Dallas on that day and knew of a plot to kill the president, it is likely that he would have known where it was to occur: in Dealey Plaza. Researcher Robert Groden carefully examined photographs taken there, and discovered one of a portly individual on Houston Street resembling Milteer <4>, taken by Associated Press photographer James Altgens.

(After <4>)
In this article, we present and discuss others who were captured in photographs--in and around Dealey Plaza immediately before and after the assassination--and who, at least "on face," resemble certain notable individuals often linked to the "crime of the century."

There was at least one other visitor from out-of-town in Dealey Plaza on that fateful Friday afternoon, whose career was even more checkered than Joseph Milteer's: Jim Braden. Approximately thirty minutes after the assassination, Mr. Braden's presence in the Dal-Tex Building, directly across Houston Street from the Texas School Book Depository, aroused suspicion and led to his being taken into police custody. After providing a statement, he was allowed to leave. In fact, Mr. Braden had changed the name on his driver's license just 10 weeks before, from Eugene Hale Brading <5>; if the police had checked their records for that name, they might have held him for further questioning. Brading's lengthy police record included arrests in Dallas, and he had complex ties with Mafiosi <6, 7>.

On parole at the time, permission to travel from Los Angeles was contingent upon his reporting to the Federal Parole Office in Dallas, which he did on November 21. The Parole Officer's report states that Brading's plans included seeing tycoon Lamar Hunt on oil business <8>. Although Brading subsequently denied visiting Mr. Hunt <9>, it is noteworthy that Jack Ruby, on November 21, visited the building that housed the corporate offices of the Hunt Oil Company <10>. Furthermore, Brading lodged at the Cabana motel, on the Stemmons Freeway close to Dealey Plaza, which was visited by Ruby late in the evening of November 21 <11>.

Larry Florer was taken into police custody also as a result of being a stranger in the Dal-Tex Building. In his statement, he claimed not to have been in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, but made his way there after hearing a radio broadcast in a café <12>. Braden, in his statement, made no mention of his location at the time of the shooting <13>, which is odd inasmuch as he was taken in for questioning, presumably, with reference to what he had observed of the shooting of the president:

"I am here on business (oil business) and was walking down Elm Street trying to get a cab and there wasn't any. I heard people talking saying, "My God the President has been shot."

From this point, Braden's statement is strangely similar to Florer's.

Braden: "I moved on up to the building across the street from the building that was surrounded and I asked one of the girls if there was a telephone that I could use and she said, "Yes, there is one on the third floor of the building where I work."

Florer: "I stopped on east side of Houston Street across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. I stood there for a few minutes and then a lady that was standing next to me, I asked her where there was a telephone, and she said that the only pay phone that she knew of was the County Records building. She said that there were a lot of phones on the third floor of this building that I was standing in front of. She said that she worked on the third floor and that there was probably a phone up there that I could use."

Braden: "I walked through a passage to the elevator they were all getting on (freight elevator) and I got off on the third floor with all the other people and there was a lady using the pay telephone and I ask her if I could use it when she hung up and she said it was out of order and I tried to use it but with no success."

Florer: "So I rode up the elevator with this lady and got off on the third floor with this lady and we walked to the information desk and this lady went on back to her department, to her spot. So then I, there was a lady at the information desk and I asked her if I could borrow her phone and she said that all the lines were busy or something to that effect." Braden: "I ask her how I can get out of the building and she said that there is an exit right there and then she said wait a minute here is an elevator now. I got on the elevator and returned to the ground floor and the colored man who ran the elevator said you are a stranger in this building and I am not supposed to let you up and he ran outside to an officer and said to the officer that he had just taken me up and down in the elevator and the officer said for me to identify myself and I presented him with a credit card and he said we'll have to check out everything and took me to his superior and said for me to wait and we will check it out."

Florer: "So I stood there for a minute and a fellow walked up to me. He asked me what I wanted and he told me that I couldn't use the phone. So I walked back down to the elevator and rode it back down to the lobby. As soon as I got to the lobby I walked back outside and the fellow I had talked to about using the phone was pointing out the window, pointing toward me and said that I was the man that was on the third floor. At this time two officers walked up and said for me to come with them."

All indications are, then, that Braden and Florer were considered to be suspicious merely as a result of their presence in the Dal-Tex Building. It stretches credibility that the similarities in their police statements resulted from chance; their encounters with a lady in front of the Dal-Tex Building suggest that Braden and Florer were standing together, or in close juxtaposition, when one or both of them approached her. Alternatively, this was a shared cover story to explain their presence in that building. Several researchers have discussed the possibility that shots were fired from there .

In his book Triangle of Fire, Bob Goodman stated that the west side of the Dal-Tex building, i.e. facing Dealey Plaza, housed the offices of the Dallas Uranium and Oil company on the third floor <17>. Although believed to be owned by H.L. Hunt, Dallas Uranium and Oil was not a registered company and appears to have been a "front" <17>.

In a photograph of the crowd in Dealey Plaza minutes after the shooting, snapped by Dallas Times Herald photographer William Allen, an individual is visible in a trench coat, wide-brimmed hat and dark glasses. Dallas Chief Criminal Deputy Alan Sweatt, who assisted in processing Dealey-Plaza witnesses, identified him as Jim Braden <18>. Indeed, comparison with an earlier mug-shot of Eugene Hale Brading reveals a likeness.

CONTINUED...

http://www.manuscriptservice.com/FFiDP/

Something else ABCNNBCBSFoxNoiseNutwork should get out there:

SUMMARY: Several men, captured in photographs in and around Dealey Plaza immediately before and after the assassination of President Kennedy, at least "on face," resemble certain notable individuals often linked to the "crime of the century."
In addition to right-wing activist Joseph Milteer, Mafia-linked Eugene Hale Brading, and Air Force/CIA General Edward Lansdale -- whose presence in Dealey Plaza has been suggested before -- we present resemblances of CIA agents Theodore Shackley, David Sanchez Morales and Lucien Conein, and anti-Castro soldier-of-fortune Gerald Patrick Hemming.

We make no solid claims about the identities of the men shown in these pictures and leave it to the reader to surmise on the implications, or lack thereof, of these observations.

SOURCE:


http://www.manuscriptservice.com/FFiDP/

Familiar Faces in Dealey Plaza II

Sorry I couldn't find the blow-up of the image on the left above. It is in Jim Marss' Crossfire and clearly shows a guy with a similar (and highly unusual wavey) hair-do and facial features of Milteer in Dealey Plaza.

Thank you for understanding, Kurovski. Thanks also for giving a damn, my Friend.

[Kurovski]

45. Thank you for giving us so much to think about, Octafish. (nt)

[seemslikeadream]

24. Within the sound of silence....In restless dreams I walked alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dySZpw4JJC4




Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left it's seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said I,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out it's warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisperd in the sounds of silence.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqxCJJiUvZg


I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I'm walkin down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
And know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
Til then I walk alone .

[Octafish]

48. DESTINY BETRAYED: THE CIA, OSWALD, AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

In times of war, the truth has many enemies.

DESTINY BETRAYED:
THE CIA, OSWALD, AND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Donald E. Wilkes
University of Georgia School of Law

Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 8 (Dec. 7, 2005).

In place of the strong sense of faith in man and mankind, we now have a heavy feeling of a failed mission, of destiny betrayed and unfulfilled. – Rav Alex Israel

The deepest cover story of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization. – Bulletin of the Federation of American Scientists

Today, 42 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, few responsible researchers who have studied JFK’s murder accept the Warren Commission’s main conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, committed the crime. (The Warren Commission was the body appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the Kennedy assassination; it released its Report in September 1964.) As these researchers have shown again and again in scores of books and articles, evidence available to the Commission but improperly evaluated, erroneously rejected, or simply not pursued by that body, together with new evidence unavailable to the Commission, discredits the principal finding of the Warren Report. JFK’s death was, these researchers believe, carried out by a conspiracy; it was not the act of a lone assassin. Different researchers, however, have different conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists also disagree about Oswald: some maintain that he was simply one of the conspirators; others claim that, while he was a member of the conspiracy, he was also unknowingly a dupe of the other conspirators who intended for him to be the fall guy; and still other theorists think that Oswald was a wholly innocent person set up by the conspirators as the patsy. Furthermore, the theorists who regard Oswald as a conspirator disagree as to whether he fired any of the shots in Dealey Plaza.

Currently, the conspiracy theories most worthy of consideration are these: (1) the Mafia did it; (2) the CIA did it; (3) the anti-Castro Cubans–that is, opponents of Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro–did it; (4) white-supremacist racists and right-wing extremists did it; and (5) the conspiracy consisted of persons who were affiliated with the Mafia, the CIA, or various anti-Castro or extreme rightist groups, but who were acting as individuals (albeit perhaps with some connivance from the organizations with which they had affiliations). Although still the subject of lively discussion in JFK assassination literature, conspiracy theories that the assassination was attributable to the FBI or the Secret Service, to the Soviet Union, to Fidel Castro’s Cuba and pro-Castroites, or to Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson (and Johnson’s supporters), appear less credible with the passing of each year.

The theory that JFK’s murder was engineered by the CIA (or by persons affiliated with the CIA), and that the CIA covered up its connections to the murder, warrants serious consideration and should not be peremptorily rejected. In the 1960’s the CIA more resembled an untouchable crime syndicate than a legitimate government entity. Lavishly but secretly funded, unrestrained by public opinion, cloaked in secrecy, conducting whatever foreign or domestic clandestine operations it wished without regard to laws or morals, and specializing in deception, falsification, and mystification, the CIA was riddled at all levels with ruthless, cynical officials and employees who believed that they were above the law, that any means were justified to accomplish the goals they set for themselves, and that insofar as their surreptitious activities were concerned it was justifiable to lie with impunity to anyone, even presidents and legislators. Many of these individuals, thinking he was soft on communism, that he would reduce the size of the military industrial complex, and that he was to blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba in 1961), hated and despised Kennedy. The CIA routinely circumvented and defied attempts by the executive and legislative branches to monitor its activities. It was involved in innumerable unlawful or outrageous activities. It illegally opened the mail of Americans. It interfered with free elections in foreign countries and arranged to destabilize or overthrow the governments of other countries. It plotted the murder of various foreign leaders. It arranged to hire the Mafia to help with some of these proposed murder plots. It unlawfully stored–in quantities, UGA political science professor Loch K. Johnson notes, sufficient “to destroy the population of a small city”–exotic toxic agents, including cobra venom and shellfish , for the purpose of committing murders. It manufactured and used sinister lethal weaponry, including what Prof. Johnson calls “the ultimate murder weapon,” an electric handgun (the CIA called it a “noise-free disseminator”) with a telescopic sight which could noiselessly and accurately fire poison-tipped darts (the CIA called them “nondiscernible microbioinoculators”) up to a distance of 250 feet. It undoubtedly carried out multiple secret murders and other heinous crimes which it successfully kept hidden. Furthermore, it is now firmly established that after the JFK assassination the CIA simultaneously lied to, and withheld important information from, the Warren Commission.

One of the first serious investigators to raise credible claims that CIA operatives or ex-CIA operatives were involved in the JFK assassination was Jim Garrison, who served as the district attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1962 to 1974. (A brief chronology of Garrison’s life and investigation is set forth at the end of this article.) Garrison and his office investigated the assassination for about five years, from late 1966 until early 1971. His investigation led Garrison to believe that, regardless of whoever actually fired the shots in Dealey Plaza, the assassination was the result of a plot hatched in New Orleans by persons with CIA connections. Furthermore, Garrison concluded, following the assassination the CIA engaged in a coverup to protect itself and the assassins. Garrison brought to trial the only criminal proceeding in which someone was actually charged with involvement in the JFK assassination. Garrison wrote two important books, the first published in 1970, the second in 1988, in which he recounted his investigation and shared the important new facts he had discovered.

In the words of journalist Fred Powledge, who wrote a magazine article on Garrison published in 1967, Garrison thought that “the assassins were CIA employees who were angered at President Kennedy’s posture on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and that the CIA was frustrating his investigation, although the agency knew the whereabouts of the assassins.” Philosophy professor Richard H. Popkin, in another magazine article published in 1967, summarized Garrison’s views on the assassination as follows: “The thesis Garrison has set forth is that a group of New Orleans-based, anti-Castroites, supported and/or encouraged by the CIA in their anti-Castro activities, in the late summer or early fall of 1963 conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy. This group, according to Garrison, included Shaw, Ferrie, Oswald, ... and others, including Cuban exiles and American anti-Castroites.... heir plan was executed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. At least part of their motivation ... was their reaction to Kennedy’s decisions at the Bay of Pigs and the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba following the missiles crisis of 1962.”

In a 1967 interview, Garrison himself phrased his basic conclusions this way: “ number of the men who killed the President were former employees of the CIA involved in its anti-Castro underground activities in and around New Orleans.... We must assume that the plotters were acting on their own rather than on CIA orders when they killed the President. As far as we been able to determine, they were not on the pay of the CIA at the time of the assassination.... The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President, so from the moment Kennedy’s heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug.... In this respect, it has become an accessory after the fact in the assassination.”

Jim Garrison’s theory of the assassination clashed with that of the Warren Commission, which denied there had been a conspiracy. According to the Warren Report, 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald, supposedly a twisted, embittered, discontented, hate-filled Marxist and ex-Marine who had once defected to the Soviet Union, assassinated JFK, acting alone and without assistance. Using an old, flimsy, cheap, second-hand bolt-action 6.5 mm Italian carbine, Oswald allegedly fired three shots in less than 10 seconds from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository at the president’s open limousine, which was moving at an angle, downhill, and away from the Depository. The fatal head shot occurred when Kennedy was 265 feet from the window. (Two days later Oswald, a handcuffed prisoner surrounded by dozens of police officers inside a police station, was shot dead by Jack Ruby, an organized crime figure who operated a Dallas night club and strip joint. Oswald’s murder occurred on live TV and was witnessed by millions.)

CONTINUED...

http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/jfk_22destiny.html

Gangsters is right.



Truth.

[bonito]

26. K&R

[Octafish]

49. At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party

Know your BFEE: At every turn, JFK was opposed by War Party


During the Bay of Pigs Invasion, both the CIA and the Pentagon lied to President Kennedy and said the crazy idea would work. The anti-Castro Cuban people would rise up and greet the invaders as “liberators” with flowers and kisses. Wrong. The reality was, the operation had been compromised. Castro’s spies in Miami even knew D-Day and the landing site.



"(Peter) Kornbluh said there is no indication that Esterline or anyone else at the
CIA warned President Kennedy of the leak before the invasion took place."

Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04

Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA
official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had
somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance,
according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.

Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and
went ahead with the invasion anyway.

CONTINUED…

http://www.jfklancer.com/jfk1bop.html

Gee. It’s not all that great a mystery why Gen. Charles Cabell, E Howard Hunt and the rest of the right-wingers would call JFK “traitor” for not calling in the air strikes in support of the invaders. I call such bastards “hypocritical sons-of-bitches” for saying so.



No one knew it at the time, but things in Cuba were even worse than imagined. The Soviets already had nukes on the island. The missiles were armed with nukes. Thus, had the United States invaded, Castro or the Soviet commanders in the field would have used them on the invading American forces and thus bringing about an American nuclear response and that would have precipitated World War III and that would be it for civilization and most living things.

Our Men in Havana

In Havana this past October, Professor James Blight brought together old foes Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro for the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such meetings, part of Blight’s unconventional fifteen-year study of the crisis, have led McNamara and others to a startling conclusion: we were much closer to nuclear war than anyone thought.

By Norman Boucher

EXCERPT…

Over the past decade or so, it has become increasingly clear that the grown-ups may not have had much of an idea what was going on either. At least this has been the conclusion to emerge from a series of six conferences held over the past fifteen years on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, those thirteen days in October during which the world came the closest it has ever been to destroying itself. Orchestrated by Professor James Blight and Adjunct Associate Professor Janet Lang, both of the Watson Institute for International Studies, these conferences—along with two related ones on the disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion—have revealed that we were much closer to nuclear annihilation four decades ago than anyone had previously thought, and that the management of the crisis in Washington and Moscow was blessed with a far higher level of sheer dumb luck than analysts and historians had earlier been able to accept.

“I conclude from this discussion,” Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the missile crisis, said in Havana at the latest conference this past October, “that we’re damn lucky to be here.”

SNIP…

The alternative interpretation of those October 1962 events is messier. As McNamara explained to the students in the Blight-Lang class, no one in the White House in 1962 knew the number of nuclear warheads already in Cuba at the time of the crisis; nor did they know that the Soviets and Cubans had tactical nuclear warheads they were ready to use against U.S. troops. Had Khrushchev not agreed to withdraw the missiles on October 28, a military conflict might have easily broken out, with consequences no one in Washington had sufficient information to foresee, far less control.

CONTINUED…

http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/printerfriendly.cfm?...

But wait, there’s more. The War Party wanted was so bad with Cuba, they even had the Joint Chiefs – normally honorable men – float a plan to launch a terror attack against Americans in Miami and Washington, as well as shooting down a jetliner filled with American college students or two, as a pretext for war with Cuba.

Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962

In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled “Body of Secrets,” author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

Source (w/link to PDF of actual Operation NORTHWOODS document):

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430 /

Kennedy said, “No.” Then, a short time after the episode, didn’t renew Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer’s tour as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon, most of the Cabinet, and the Congressional leaders all were hell-bent for war. They told JFK the missiles were a danger and the only way to get rid of them was an immediate air attack, followed by an invasion. Air Force commander Curtis LeMay even tried to instigate war, ordering jets to intrude into Soviet airspace, hoping one would be shot down and form a pretext for all-out war.

Spy Flights of the Cold War

Review by Capt. Troy Thomas, USAF
Book by Paul Lashmar
Naval Institute Press, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Maryland 21402, 1996, 256 pages, $29.95.
Document created: 13 May 99

Perceptions of the cold war often focus on nuclear arsenals and Third World surrogate conflicts, overlooking a persistent war of aerial espionage in which hundreds of airmen lose their lives. Spy Flights of the Cold War offers an intriguing yet controversial historical record of US and British aerial reconnaissance against the communist bloc from 1946 to 1963. The author’s research reveals numerous harrowing missions by brave aircrews flying deep into hostile territory on missions previously declared “routine.” Overlaying this operational history is a political account that indicts the US Air Force (USAF) and, specifically, Gen Curtis E. LeMay for exceeding presidential authority, manipulating intelligence estimates, and using the spy flights in an attempt to instigate another world war. Although it is a tribute to individual airmen, the text openly criticizes USAF leadership.

SNIP…

Criticism of the USAF and LeMay is a prominent theme. In addition to questionable evidence that LeMay encouraged unauthorized overflight missions, Lashmar devotes an entire chapter to SAC’s aggressive use of reconnaissance missions as a political tool intent on provoking nuclear war. If successfully implemented, Project Control overflights would “demonstrate the Russians’ military impotency” and possibly create the conditions for a preventive war. In addition to attributing a prolonged cold war to General LeMay and other senior USAF leaders, Lashmar also contends that SAC and the USAF intelligence community inflated Soviet missile, and later bomber, strengths to justify inordinate spending on SAC. Although estimates by the intelligence community later proved high, evidence for a duplicitous USAF agenda is suspect.

CONTINUED…

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookre...

Unlike the selected current occupant of the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy truly understood what it means to serve as President and Commander in Chief. Kennedy believed he had the final say on executive decision making. Case in point, Vietnam.



Kennedy saw the situation on the ground to be a loser for America and had ordered Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to begin the withdrawal of American forces with the withdrawal of 1,000 advisors by the end of 1963. JFK planned to have ALL American troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1964. That was in writing:

Exit Strategy

In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam

By James K. Galbraith

Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam?

It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous way.

And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States faces another indefinite military commitment that might have been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of our own history in the eye.

SNIP…

A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam.1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald.

Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman:

(1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I(B) of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal.

(2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day:

The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.)
The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and (b) that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions.

(3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam.

CONTINUED…

http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html

Then came Dallas. A week later, the orders were signed committing the US to support the government of South Vietnam. A few months later, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was created and the US had their fig leaf for war. Today, decades later, we look back back and see a parade of Presidents, the majority of whom were only too eager to make war, mere enablers for the War Party.

[Karenina]

50. For those learning history

the FIRST time. :kick:

[bobthedrummer]

28. A handful gave 5 seconds to note the 44th year since his assassination

i.e. "44 years ago today President Kennedy was assassinated." then on to Sports or Weather especially those red-hot Dallas Cowboys winning over the Jets and facing the Packers next week...

[Cha]

31. Thanks for this, Octafish..

I don't watch m$$$m anymore for a long time now, so I couldn't tell ya. If it's anything to do with Democracy, though..you know they go in the other direction.

The corporatemediawhores need the equivalent of Impeaching cheney and the chimptard before we can exorcise the evil from the government's system.

And, I don't know how that's going to happen but I try and visualize it.

Imagine how Ted Kennedy feels. He has a lot of strength to keep fighting against all odds.

[Bolo Boffin]

32. "the traitors who killed President Kennedy may think they have gotten away with murder"?

Lee Harvey Oswald is dead.

[HamdenRice]

44. Because a fat, libertarian magician says so?

Because a fat, ugly, libertarian, conservative magician -- was it Penn or Teller you posted to "prove" the single gunman theory? -- can cock and pull the trigger on a rifle without aiming, without recoil, several times in a few seconds?

Can you spell "woo woo"?

[defendandprotect]

33. How right you are --- !!! The NY Times ran a "keep the Warren Commission Report alive" Op-Ed . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/opinion/22holland.html?em&ex=1195880400&en=757fca9766e953bf&ei=5070

Here's my reply . . .

Editor
NY Times
----------------

J.F.K.'s Death, Re-Framed by Holland + Rush

Of course, according to John Tunnheim who headed the 1992 JFK's Assassination Records Act: "Oswald was employed by the CIA working on high level assignments and probably also for the FBI." And, Oswald was trained by the CIA beginning in 1957 to spy in Russia according to CIA Director John McCone.

Gary Powers wrote of his suspicions that Oswald was instrumental in bringing down his U-2 flight -- an event which presumably fulfilled President Eisenhower's own conspiracy theories re the Military Industrial Complex. Note that TWICE Ike included "Intelligence" in his warnings re the Miliary Industrial Complex and twice it was deleted. Additionally, Ike had instructed that no U-2 flights be flown before the Paris peace talks.

Interesting that comments about Zapruder do not include the details of his questionable connections, nor the huge profit he has made from the film of the assassination. And while it was obvious from the very first days of the assassination that the film was being manipulated --- Life's Cover showed a sequence with two frames reversed, evidently by the FBI -- there is no acknowledgment on the part the "free press" to come to terms with the re-framed and photo-shopped Zapruder film.
See: James Fetzer

The majority of witnesses ran to the Grassy Knoll from where they knew the fatal head shots had been fired. Most witnesses reported a fusillade of shots; six or more. At least one shot hit the windshield of the car which was immediately and compeltely refitted by LBJ.

At the Texas School Depository more than one gun was found, the first clearly marked as a 'Mauser 7.65.' Three cartridges were found with no fingerprints on them and they were laid out neatly, not as they would have been had they been ejected from a rifle being fired.

Most interestingly, the sniper's "nest" revealed the fingerprints of Malcolm Wallace ---
LBJ's lifelong aide.

Let me repeat that name for you --- MALCOLM WALLACE ---

We also see the deep need for Holland + Rush to keep the lie of the magic bullet alive . . . however, as all doctors, surgeons and medical personel at Parkland Hospital testify the president was shot twice from the front --- once in the neck and once in the right temple.

JFK's "back" wound was actually in his right shoulder at a 45 degree DOWNWARD ANGLE and was below the neck area.

The Warren Report was in immediate "dispute" for the appointment of former CIA Director Allen Dulles --- fired by JFK --- and for its obvious lies and distortions and misinformation. It is, of course, unredeemable.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/opinion/22holland.html?em&ex=1195880400&en=757fca9766e953bf&ei=5070

[defendandprotect]

34. C-span also bailed as far as I can see --- having done a "remembering" program . . .

but not anything on the assassination that I saw --- ??????

[balantz]

35. Kennedy's challenge to us today

is that we take back our country.

Surely, with enough focus and teamwork it can't be more challenging than reaching the moon.

:patriot:

[defendandprotect]

36. Still can't imagine how by the time we got to MLK and RFK there wasn't a revolution --- ???

What's wrong with all of us??

What's wrong with America that we can't react --- ??

So much of our info seems to get converted to simple facts in our head ---
emotionless facts with no expected response. Why???


We see the unbelievable male emotion surrounding sports, however ---
what can possibly happen in the world of male sports which doesn't create a huge interest and reaction?

Maybe we need a BOUNCING BALL in the political arena ---

Perhaps too many of us do not understand that politics effects our lives ---
every moment of our lives -- ????