“If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be
Next.” Republican poster during Spanish
Civil War
“Open eyes,
closed hearts, trembling hands tear apart the chains,” White Storm of Teeth,
the Devil’s Blood
“Old stains,
but just as telling.” Jim Garrison
We’re coming
up on a full fifty years since the Dealey Plaza massacre, the celebrated
triangulated crossfire of David Ferrie, the original Nightmare on Elm Street,
and what’s changed? Well, not
much. An informed and respectable
two-thirds of Americans still think there was a conspiracy to assassinate John
F. Kennedy that went far beyond the scope (pardon the pun) of just one lone
nut, but that’s actually down from almost 75% some ten years ago. Just this past week seen darkening the
National Geographic channel, “Killing Kennedy” has been doing boffo box office,
garnering the highest ratings ever for that venue. Very alarming from the standpoint it was penned by none other than
Bill O’Reilly, one of the biggest shills for the powers-that-be that ever
slithered his way across your telescreens, and alarming from the standpoint
it’s one of the biggest whitewashes and examples of the elite covering their
reptilian asses since the Warren Commission itself.
Once upon a
time O’Reilly actually had some integrity, a bit of conscience, and a spine,
all of which were quickly jettisoned in his pell-mell flight to stardom on Fox
and quest to be seen as Roger Ailes number-one bootlicker. Few can now remember (was it another
lifetime?) when, working for ‘Inside Edition,’ O’Reilly actually championed the
meticulous work of assassination-researcher extraordinaire Gaeton Fonzi in a
number of pieces, going so far as to lobbying networks for an inside series
that would actually get to the bottom of the assassination cabal and all that
it encompassed in a wide-ranging investigation. Like so many before him, O’Reilly’s integrity proved far easier
to garner than to retain, and he morphed into today’s slimeball. Compromise, thy name is…but let’s spend no
more time on the utter inanity of O’Reilly, always keeping in mind however how
dangerous his ilk is for muddying the waters of truth for those that choose not
to remember or investigate. Or as JFK
himself said “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort
of thought.”
“Do not pray
for easy lives, pray to be stronger men.”
JFK
The numbers
of holes that can be driven through the official story of the assassination as
written by the Warren Commission almost beggars belief and is akin to shooting
fish in a barrel. So on this 50th
anniversary, and in keeping with the dark tableau established here, let’s look
at some esoteric, and some more straightforward. All airtight arguments.
As an adjunct, I’ll simply say watch Oliver Stone’s epic “JFK”
again. In tone, form and style a truer
Saturday-matinee “monster movie” was never made. Notice the shading in scenes, the coloring as it moves from cool
blue to sickly, claustrophobic, suffocating orange; even the hue of Garrison’s
attire moving from lights to darks mirroring his worldview and outlook, his
growing disenfranchisement, his disillusion with his government and his country
as his once-proud ideals get stomped into so much ominous background thunder. All of this works together like a gathering
storm to marshal a creeping sense of dread that is both unavoidable and
unstoppable. Forget that after this and
because of this, Stone was effectively de-fanged and de-balled by every
establishment station in the hemisphere, which he unfortunately and to his
detriment, took to heart, seemingly now for the rest of his career. But here he made mighty connections and
joined together disparate investigations in a force-of-nature way perhaps even
a younger Orson Welles couldn’t have summoned, coming up with a piece of Art
that can truly change the way you look at history and your world. There is what-you-thought-of-as-reality that
your eyes perceived before you saw this film, and what the truth is that they
will always perceive after. And they
are not the same. This film is
literally the dividing line, and switching yard, of a lifetime. It’ll put you
on a whole different track.
Often called
the Rosetta Stone of assassination studies, there is the strange case of J.D.
Tippit, the Dallas Police Dept. patrolman supposedly killed by Oswald after the
assassination and on his way to hiding out in the movie theatre. Oswald claims he was eating lunch in the
TSBD when the shooting of the President occurred and that he left shortly
thereafter believing there would be no further work that day. According to his landlady, he got to his
Dallas rooming house at 1 p.m., changed his shirt, and left at 1:03.
She also testified that while he was there, a police car
pulled up to the house and honked once.
Between 1:06 and 1:15 a mile away Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit was shot
dead next to his patrol car. 1:45 and
half a mile away from the Tippit slaying reports of a suspicious man sneaking
into a movie theatre are issued. Police
converge, there’s a short scuffle, and Oswald is taken in.
Four bullets
were removed from Tippit’s body: 3 copper coated Westerns and 1 lead Remington,
none traceable to Oswald’s gun. Four
shells that DID match his gun were sent to the FBI exactly 1 week later: 2
Westerns and 2 Remingtons, none bearing the telltale etchings in initial form
of the policeman-on-scene who booked them in as evidence.
So events in
Cliff Park 40 minutes after the JFK ambush obviously provide valuable clues and
heavily point to manipulation and orchestration by unknown parties. First reports coming in describe Tippit’s
killer as matching the exact description of Jack Ruby. The sole reliable witness became unclear,
then finally settled on Oswald months later, after being nearly beaten to death
by unknown assailants. Hmmm. Tippit looked so much like JFK that fellow
policemen called him “Mister President.”
Tippit was taken to the same hospital as JFK, with a bullet wound to the
head also the cause of death. Eerily
enough, his wounds matched identically the wounds in the JFK autopsy. Tippit was buried the following day in a
closed casket. He remains the only
Texas cop ever shot and killed on duty who was buried with no autopsy. The obvious question has to be was his body
used for forensics and x-rays posing as JFK’s?
With the kill shot coming from the front, and the School Book Depository
behind, they had a problem, especially with JFK’s body too mangled to be effectively
manipulated, although there is evidence they tried this also. When RFK looked at his brother in the open
casket for the last time his first words were “It doesn’t look like him at
all.” Finally he blurted out in a
controlled fury to aides, “You musn’t keep it open. It has no resemblance to the President.” Arthur Schlesinger said “Appalling; at first
glance it seemed all right, but I’m nearsighted. When I came closer it looked less and less like him.” And a sobbing Jackie: “That’s not my
husband. It’s not Jack.” And since a picture is worth a thousand
words, gaze upon the Tippit/JFK composite.
Along those
very same lines, David Ferrie himself, along with every other defender of the
official story, always maintained Oswald and Ferrie never knew each other or
had ever met. This unearthed (1993)
archive photo from the Civil Air Patrol of New Orleans proves that a lie. A lie repeated loudly by the way, by the
treasonous Warren Commission. Also
bizarrely telling: although 50 years dead, Oswald’s tax records still remain
classified. Why?
“One person
can make a difference and every person should try. A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
-- JFK
How exactly
does one bullet cause seven wounds in two people? How can it possibly gather enough velocity from a cheap
bolt-action rifle to do that? How can
our minds gather enough information, enough critical thinking, to gather the
velocity to escape the traps set for us long ago that we still find ourselves
ambered in? In this country, right now,
critical thinking is dead and censorship is king. Unless you hear it from CBS, Disney, Hearst, Time Warner, Viacom
or Comcast it doesn’t exist. And
although consolidation and deregulation originated in the pipeline from Reagan
to Clinton, before that workin’ for the clampdown wasn’t unheard of. The
following incriminating content was originally archived (now currently
scrubbed) from onlinejournal.com.
“On January
31, 1968, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison appeared on the Tonight
Show to discuss his investigation into U.S. government involvement in the
assassination of JFK. Over the course
of 90 minutes, the smiles and yucks went silent. Johnny Carson, America’s chuckling nighttime buddy, everybody’s
friend, was the assassin. He badgered,
belittled, and mocked Garrison, repeatedly interrupting him as he made an
impassioned plea to the American people to question the official story of the
assassination. When Garrison attempted
to show the photograph of the infamous “Three Tramps” (still unidentified
mystery men who were arrested behind the Grassy Knoll and marched through
Dealey Plaza, likely members of the assassination team), Carson made sure
America would not see it. He yanked
Garrison’s arm aside, and cut the cameras.
Garrison later mused:
“Why had I
been debriefed in advance so that Carson could be apprised of my likely
answers? Why had Carson pulled my arm
away so that the photographs were out of camera range? And why had the director and the control
room switched the camera so that the photographs could not be seen? The only reasonable, realistic explanation,
I found myself concluding, was control.
Some long cherished illusions of mine about the great free press in our
country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period. The restraint and respect for justice one
might expect from the press…did not exist.”
The unholy
alliance between the media and the government, in covering up government
crimes, was evident that night. “The
function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the
assassination had been looked into so that there would be no further
inquiries,” Garrison told an incredulous Carson. “I just can’t understand how you think that these men think they
can get away with it or for what reason they would do it,” Carson later
responded.
By 9 a.m.
the next morning, Garrison had received more than 2,000 telegrams from district
attorneys across America, who felt that Carson’s “nervous antagonism,” was a
sign that Garrison was onto something.
Feeling the need to apologize for Carson’s demeanor (which was
nevertheless polite and jovial by today’s shout-fest standards), NBC sent out
thousands of form letters saying “The Johnny seen on TV that night was not the
Johnny we all know and love. He had to
play the devil’s advocate, because that makes for a better program.”
Carson was
furious about the letter, and promised never to allow Garrison on his show
again.
It is no
surprise that today, as mainstream corporate media is flooded with “happy”
Carson memories and magnificent tomes about how the charming Carson “epitomized
the goodness of middle America,” the Garrison interview, the one glaring moment
that exposed Carson as a peevish, patronizing, gatekeeping servant of larger
forces continues to be studiously avoided.
Times, and the historical facts, have fully vindicated the late
Garrison.
Here we find
something to truly mourn: Johnny Carson, on that night in 1968, had the power
to change the world. He chose to use
that power to destroy a courageous whistleblower, kill truth, and keep America
naïve and stupid.”
We see in
that piece describing 45 years ago how nothing has really changed, and keeping
the real truth of the JFK assassination from us remains just as important as
ever to those dark forces scuttling behind the scenes. As the field of play has expanded from 3
networks to 3,000, so have their mouthpieces of psychological operations and
propaganda. We’ve gone from a lone
Carson to multiple shills on multiple fronts:
O’Reilly, Vince Bugliosi, Gerald Posner, Norman Mailer, Stephen King,
and perhaps most odious of all, the officious Tom Hanks, America’s seemingly
self-appointed ‘historian-of-record.’
Why go to all this effort year after year? What remains so utterly poisonous to them about Kennedy’s life
and message? So poisonous they not only
had to execute him in public, but they have to go about killing what his life
meant in perpetuity ad infinitum?
Hmmm. I think I smell a clue:
“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open
society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret
societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted
concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to
justify it. Even today, there is little
value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary
restrictions. Even today, there is
little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not
survive with it. And there is very
grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon
by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of censorship and
concealment. That I do not intend to
permit to the extent that it is in my control.
And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low,
civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to
censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold
from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
For we are
opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on
covert means for expanding its sphere of influence – on infiltration instead of
invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free
choice, on guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast
human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly
efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic,
scientific and political operations.
Its
preparations are concealed, not published.
Its mistakes are buried, not headlined.
Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is
revealed.
No President
should fear public scrutiny of his program.
For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding
comes support or opposition. And both
are necessary. I am not asking your
newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the
tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the
response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
I not only
could not stifle controversy among your readers – I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid
about its errors; for as a wise man once said: “An error does not become a
mistake until you refuse to correct it.”
We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors, and we expect
you to point them out when we miss them.
Without
debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed – and
no republic can survive. That is why
the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from
controversy. And that is why our press
was protected by the First Amendment – the only business in America
specifically protected by the Constitution – not primarily to amuse and
entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and sentimental, not to simply “give
the public what it wants” – but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our
dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead,
mold, educate, and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means even greater coverage and
analysis of international news – for it is no longer far away and foreign but
close at hand and local. It means
greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved
transmission. And it means, finally,
that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the
fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national
security. And so it is to the printing
press – the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier
of his news – that we look to for strength and assistance, confident that with
your help man will be what he was born to be:
free and independent.”
Those words
came straight from JFK to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27, 1961.
I have no earthly idea if they are taught in the history classes of
today when the subject of Kennedy and the milieu of the early 1960s arises, but
they should be, if only for the stark irony and juxtaposition. Can anyone in their wildest dreams imagine
the forked tongues of George W. Bush, his father, or Obama coming up with such
profundity? Such brutal truth and depth
would rend the flesh from their bones.
Now that’s a miniseries I’d be willing to watch.
Assassination researcher Mary Ferrell in 1993 opened a symposium of
researchers in Dallas with these words:
“As the 30th anniversary of the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy descends on us, I am much concerned that we are on the
threshold of a failure from which there will be no forgiveness.
We must win
this struggle for truth, and do so quickly, lest the assassination of President
Kennedy flounder on some remote shoulder of highway, in a century whose history
is on the way to the printer. In the
next century, this case could be relegated to obscure questions on U.S. history
examinations. Time is our most
relentless and uncompromising enemy.”
When Kennedy
was killed Mary Ferrell was a 41-year-old Dallas legal secretary. She devoted the last 41 years of her life to
compiling research on the murder as her contributions to the cause of justice. Because of her tireless efforts, along with
other invaluable research from the utterly singular Mae Brussell, Stone was
inspired to include a woman in Garrison’s inner circle when filming ‘JFK’ as
both a tribute and homage. No such
female existed in real life.
The entire
JFK murder narrative has more absurd holes in it than anything until the 9/11
official fantasy and with good reason:
the same monsters are responsible for both. Behind every official pronouncement lies an assault on our common
sense, an augment on our suffering by these clubby demons-in-human-clothing. One bullet causing 7 wounds in 2
people? Jet fuel (kerosene) causing 2
skyscrapers to collapse? Listen
closely. Behind all the official,
by-the-script byplay from Dan Rather to John Chancellor and back again, you can
hear the cackling of the damned echoing down the years, mocking us, reveling in
our torment and anguish. The more
outlandish the lie the more exponential their giddy, in-your-face celebrations.
Amid all the
current surveillance and deception, the comets and catastrophe, the ghost of
JFK beckons to us from the wild blue yonder of yesterday; those sunny slopes of
long ago serving as either Cartesian coordinates of our destruction, or a dire
warning to wake up. Which one is up to us. Still.
