by William Skink
By showing what Allen Dulles did with the CIA, David Talbot builds a strong argument with The Devil’s Chessboard that Dulles was the perfect player to checkmate the king of Camelot with assassination.
I haven’t read deeply into the conspiracy lore regarding JFK’s public execution to say anything about how this account stacks up with other dives into the JFK rabbit hole, but I will say the historical context of the Dulles/CIA lens is very helpful, at least for me, in understanding the opposing forces that came to see removing Kennedy as a necessary evil in order to maintain a lucrative, aggressive position of non-appeasement to Communism.
The reason this topic won’t go away is because we never stopped living the consequence of what died with Kennedy, and that was the chance to avert the direction that has taken us to where we are today: terminal imperial overreach with no political path out.
If you had the stomach to watch the political debates Norman Pollack’s depiction of what he describes as Reptilian politics may resonate, especially if you are realistic about the stunted range of rhetoric when it comes to foreign policy. From the link:
As of this writing, the Democrats still have their upcoming debate, with Sanders by all reports spurting ahead of Clinton in Iowa and a presumed slugfest in the making. Yet, nothing has really changed, with respect to the fundamental question of the direction of US foreign policy, of determinative importance for the structuring and democratization of American society. Clinton has proven herself a trusted warhorse on national security, with intervention and regime change in her DNA, along with maintaining Obama’s Cold War policies of confrontation with China and Russia. As Secretary of State she did not question or even seek to moderate the Pacific-first strategy and related Trans-Pacific Partnership, nor lessen the EU-NATO potential engagement of forces via deployment to the Russian border, all other constants of foreign policy also left largely unchanged with respect to Iran, North Korea, and of course the Middle East, with one-sided preferential treatment of Israel. Sanders here has nothing to offer except more of the same, thus vitiating whatever possibilities of differences he has with her on domestic policy.
Domestic policy is important, but what does it say of a nation that provides better health care at home while destroying the lives of innocent peoples abroad? What does it say, of more stringent corporate regulation at home while actively pursuing market and financial penetration abroad—another false dichotomization of reality in which the forces of wealth-concentration are assisted and continue? Sanders seems a Left-Donald Trump in that he refuses to cut away from American imperialism, and on gun control, Hillary is right (although she is no better) in calling attention to his record. So, we await the Democratic debate, but I suggest that we remain faced with a constipated dialogue between the two major parties; not only are Cruz and Clinton snakelike in their conduct, boa constrictors squashing the life and vitality out of democracy, thereby removing the air from public policy capable of addressing vast inequalities of wealth and power, the continued exacerbation of climate change, and escalating hegemonic claims to global supervision of the political-economic order. Of Trump and Sanders, we can expect if not a carbon copy of their opponents, then replication of the systemic universe which has established ideological boundaries to human creativity in nation-building, leaving us the same problems of international conflict and a social order dependent on expansion to avert stagnation. Trump would militarize capitalism; Sanders would soften the impact. In all four cases, Cruz, Clinton, Trump, Sanders, varying degrees of the law of the jungle would apply, each in readiness to strike at prey deemed harmful to America, Bernie’s democratic socialism, to his credit, perhaps narrowing the target-list, but not changing the overall picture of America’s combative mental set.
Is anything capable of changing the overall picture of America’s combative mental set? Some would say that ship sailed half a century ago. After reading Talbot’s tome on Dulles, I would tend to agree.
JC
Speaking of reptilian debates, this is a classic:
http://images.sodahead.com/polls/000172816/polls_2947179816_aec701f2b3_o_3542_347039_answer_1_xlarge.jpeg
As to the Dulles/JFK connection, Russ Baker does a good job of connecting Dulles and Bush with the whole mess. Just another piece of the puzzle.
JFK Jr. Clinton connection.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton had her political game plan mapped out. First, she would win election as U.S. Senator from the heavily populated state of New York, the “Empire State.” Then, in the year 2005, Hillary would ascend the throne as the first woman ever to be inaugurated President of the United States. From that lofty vantage point, husband by her side, like the ancient Jezebel she would rule the world as High Priestess and Queen of a triumphant New World Order.
This magazine touted Hillary Clinton as “Empress of the Empire State.” Only one man stood in Hillary’s way blocking her path to political stardom: John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Only one major obstacle stood in her way: a handsome and popular celebrity named John F. Kennedy, Jr. Sources have revealed to Power of Prophecy that John F. Kennedy, Jr. fully intended to directly challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat Party’s nomination as U.S. Senator from New York. He was to announce his candidacy this coming Labor Day, to signify his connection with the working man and woman.
Almost all the top politicos in the Empire State had privately agreed to ditch Hillary Clinton and throw their full support to John F. Kennedy, Jr. The ambitious Hillary Clinton was to be politically cut off at the knees!
Apparently, the Kennedy clan had its own master plan for political supremacy. They envisioned the charismatic JFK, Jr. first as U.S. Senator from New York, and then, in 2005, as President of the United States. Upon taking charge of the White House, John, Jr. would have been 44 years old, exactly the age of his assassinated father, President John F. Kennedy, when he took the oath of office.
So, the heated race was on. Who was to be the dominant political force in the New Millennium—the Kennedy Dynasty or the Clinton Dynasty?
Enter the new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, political stooge of the Clintons, puppet of the New World Order. Barak owes his political fortunes to Bill Clinton, who almost single-handedly deposed Barak’s chief political opponent, former Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Enter also, according to Barry Chamish, noted Israeli investigative journalist, the murderous Israeli Secret Service and the Israeli spy agency, the Mossad.
Exit John F. Kennedy, Jr., who, according to Chamish, committed the cardinal sin of seeking the truth about the Israeli Secret Service’s assassination of the late Prime Minister Rabin. Chamish says that JFK, Jr. intended to expose the killers in his magazine, George. Would the names “Bill and Hillary Clinton” also have surfaced in JFK, Jr.’s stunning expos‚ report?”-Texe Marrs.
The “rabbit hole,” for me anyway, turned out to be more of a portal to reality. JFK has been lionized these past years, his few good deeds excised from his whole presidency and made to appear as they were the totality of his time in office. Such is the power of those who rewrite our history.
Here is an interesting footnote: looking at JFK Jr., it became easily apparent to me that he was not the son of the president, but rather the son of a certain shipping magnate. JFK and Jackie were not married in any real sense, just as Bill and Hillary only pretend to be married because people expect that they behave normally that way. It is an illusion for public benefit. That is but one small detail, but an important one in trying to understand who and what JFK was. Saint ain’t the word. And it was not just that he was a philanderer.
It is complicated.
You’re buddy Noam supports Hillary.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/noam-chomsky-supports-hillary-clinton-218192#ixzz3yHWCJHYN
You’re an erudite mix of presumption and stereotype. Don’t ever change.
Oh wait, nine years now, you haven’t changed an iota.
If Noam is worried we must be doing some thing right.
“Noam Chomsky, the noted radical and MIT professor emeritus, said the Republican Party has become so extreme in its rhetoric and policies that it poses a “serious danger to human survival.”
“Today, the Republican Party has drifted off the rails,” Chomsky, a frequent critic of both parties, said in an interview Monday with The Huffington Post. “It’s become what the respected conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein call ‘a radical insurgency’ that has pretty much abandoned parliamentary politics.”
Chomsky cited a 2013 article by Mann and Ornstein published in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, analyzing the polarization of the parties. The authors write that the GOP has become “ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.””-Huffington Post.
I would venture that you don’t know Noam like I know Noam, or that Noam lost a lot of support and confused a lot of people when he insisted after 9/11 that the government story was the only correct one and no one should question it. His fans tend to be very smart people, and since that is obviously a false statement, and Noam is smart enough to know it is a false statement, it opens the door into his motives. What is he if not a gatekeeper of a very high degree? If Bernie Sanders is there to hornswaggle progressives with low IQ’s, Noam is probably there to catch the more thoughtful ones, leading them and then, when critical, letting them down.
Anyway, Swede, some of us are not authority-driven, that is, you assume because I have read and cited Chomsky, that I must think as he thinks, automatically. He’s pretty good on Israel and markets, somewhat good on media, and excellent on economics, but he sucks when it comes to false flag events.
Yes, I agree, Talbot’s treatment of the murder of JFK is fairly good, but incomplete. Understandable given the book is about Allen Dulles and focuses (rightly enough) on his part.
Certainly anti-Soviet and anti-Castro hysteria played a roll, but Super Patriotism also served as a cover for a lot of selfish motives. What else is new? Kennedy fired and humiliated Dulles; he humiliated LBJ daily and let it be known he was dumping LBJ as VP for the coming election (the ultimate humiliation;) LBJ was facing very serious criminal charges (Google Malcolm Wallace, who committed numerous murders for LBJ.) and LBJ could only hope to avoid prosecution by becoming president and getting Robert Kennedy out as attorney general.
Both the Jewish (Meyer Lansky, Jacob “Jack Ruby” Rubinstein) and Italian (Trafficante, Giancana, Roselli, Marcello) mobsters felt Kennedy double-crossed them after they helped fix his election. They saw he wasn’t going to help them recover their Cuban enterprises and were enraged at Robert Kennedy persecuting them.
Kennedy also let it be known that after the election he intended to replace Hoover as head of the FBI. Not only would that have deeply humiliated Hoover, but without his FBI position he too could have faced criminal charges from his Mob connects as well as from misappropriating Federal funds. He was also terribly distressed feeling that once out of the FBI secrets about his personal life, along with photos, would be made public. (JFK and Robert had joked about that, and Hoover most certainly had them bugged, knew, and found it anything but funny.)
Cord Meyer, in many ways second in command of the CIA, personally hated Kennedy and was not at all happy about Kennedy banging Meyer’s wife, who had recently divorced him. It was rumored that after leaving office Kennedy talked of divorcing Jackie and marrying Meyer’s ex-wife, whom he had been in love with since high school.
As Talbot points out, Dulles bungled the Bay of Pigs invasion and then put the blame on Kennedy, so of course the anti-Castro Cubans hated Kennedy.
Every single one of those enemies had proven they were willing to kill. Douglas Dillon, head of the Secret Service, was the one major accomplice with apparently no previous killings to his name, so was something of an exception. The criminal negligence of the Secret Service before the assassination however, and its violent obstruction of justice after seem to implicate Dillon, who detested the Kennedys.
I don’t recall Talbot mentioning that Dulles was chairman of the board of United Fruit, but a lot of very rich corporations were terrified Kennedy was going to allow countries besides Cuba to nationalize American corporate assets and wanted him out. Kennedy made it clear he planned to take apart the CIA, go after the Federal Reserve, and hit the Military-Industrial complex hard by working with the Soviets to do away with Cold-War hostilities. He refused to approve U.S. help for Israel in obtaining nuclear-weapons.
In other words, being “soft on the Commies” was about the last reason for shooting him. Lots of information is still leaking out after half a century and lots is now being published based on solid research and documentation. Russell Baker’s book is good, and Phillip Nelson and W.G. Tarpley are also good to read.
one of the tidbits I got from the book was how Kennedy took on US Steel. after hammering out a deal between labor and steel, US Steel brazenly raised its price 3% as a giant fuck you to Kennedy, who responded by sending in the FBI and bringing federal price-fixing charges.
It just occurred to me I left out James Douglass, whose book is also great.
Have several friends who teach high school, and they tell me most of their students have trouble remembering if Oswald shot Kennedy or if it was John Wilkes Booth. Of course neither is correct. That’s why it James Douglass is important.
Haven’t seen you at MoA lately, but not long ago someone asked how could the deep state hope to control Obama or whoever our next president will be. Susan Sunflower dryly answered with a link to the Zapruder film.
As someone posted here a few days ago, the United States as we knew it ended that day.
I would urge you fellas to beware of the “Golden Apple,” or planted information waiting to be “found.” Jim Garrison, I think, invented the term or used it to describe his journey down the rabbit whole, the Warren. CIA has been laying golden apples out there for decades, and those charged with it probably have a wonderful time doing it. I think sometimes they have written the entire script for the JFK death, including competing theories about everything. That is my take after having first decided to look into it in 1988.
Another thing I find curious is JFK’s 1961 statement that they should put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, which ended up freeing up billions for NASA to honor a fallen hero. I think JFK must have known that such a thing was impossible, as even in 1959 Werner von Braun was spelling out the details of why it could not be done. If they knew a moon landing was impossible, then JFK was deliberately (or stupidly) laying the groundwork for the fake moon landing, and hijacking of $35 billion (1960s dollars) for other purposes, most likely space-based weapons. (JFK was not stupid.)
I think James Douglass canonized him, and he had to ignore a whole lot to stuff to do it, and I wonder why. His book is syrupy, in my view.