Public Citizen Global Vaccines Access Campaign Director Liza Barrie issued the following statement:

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reported decision to cut off support for Gavi is reckless and deadly. The Trump administration is turning its back on a program that has helped vaccinate more than a billion children and save over 17 million lives—while Kennedy spreads lies about science, safety and one of the world’s most effective public health efforts.The facts are clear. Gavi exists to get vaccines to children who need them most. It works with governments in lower-income countries, health workers and communities to stop deadly diseases. Because of Gavi, millions of children who would have died are alive today.

Kennedy claims that Gavi ignored science are entirely false. Gavi’s recommendations—are grounded in global evidence and reviewed by independent experts. His suggestion otherwise fuels the same disinformation that has already led to deadly measles outbreaks and the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio.

Gavi has publicly refuted Kennedy’s claims, reaffirming its commitment to vaccine safety and evidence-based decisions.

“This isn’t about protecting children. It’s about abandoning them. Choosing to walk away from a program that saves lives—knowing full well what the consequences will be—isn’t just reckless. It’s cruel.

“Public Citizen urges Congress to act—starting with protecting the Gavi funding already allocated in the FY25 budget, which the Trump administration is now trying to claw back through its rescissions proposal. Lawmakers must also protect Gavi funding in the FY26 budget. The United States must not walk away from global vaccine access. Not now, not ever. Turning away would be a choice to let disease spread and let children die.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The proposed HHS budget would effectively shutter SAMHSA, radically slash NIH support for biomedical research, cut certain preschool and community services programs and dilute critical research into women and marginalized community’s health among other major changes.

Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert issued the following statement:

“It’s impossible to understand Secretary Kennedy’s mental gymnastics in simultaneously telling Americans he will improve their health while supporting a proposed White House budget that guts crucial existing health services but funnels $500 million into his vague, imaginary “MAHA” initiative.

“While Kennedy tries to distract the American people with slogans and pseudoscience, hospitals are scrambling to stay afloat and millions of Medicaid patients are bracing for the potential loss of their healthcare coverage in service of tax cuts for the wealthy if the MAGA reconciliation package moves.

“Meanwhile, Kennedy remains avoidant in taking accountability for his ongoing responsibilities and defends the firing of 10,000 HHS workers and dismantling of NIOSH and the NIH. His time in his position as HHS secretary indicates he is not prioritizing Americans’ health. Instead, he’s pushing through his bizarre personal agenda with reckless abandon.

“Kennedy said ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’ Congress should take those words to heart and reject the 2026 White House budget that further guts public health programs and could sicken millions of Americans.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

It’s now clear to the whole world that China is the main target of Trump’s trade wars. The U.S. has slapped massive tariffs—up to 245%—on Chinese goods. China hit back with 125% tariffs of its own and refuses even to negotiate until U.S. tariffs are lifted.

Ever since President Obama announced a U.S. “pivot to Asia” in 2011, both U.S. political parties have seen China as the main global competitor, or even as a target for U.S. military force. China is now encircled by a staggering 100,000 U.S. military personnel in Japan, South Korea and Guam (plus 73,000 in Hawaii and 415,000 on the U.S. West coast) and enough nuclear and conventional weapons to completely destroy China, and the rest of us along with it.

To put the trade war between the U.S. and China in context, we need to take a step back and look at their relative economic strength and international trading relations with other countries. There are two ways to measure a country’s economy: nominal GDP (based only on currency exchange rates) and “purchasing power parity” (PPP), which adjusts for the real cost of goods and services. PPP is now the preferred method for economists at the IMF and OECD.

Measured by PPP, China overtook the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 2016. Today, its economy is 33% larger than America’s—$40.7 trillion compared to $30.5 trillion.

And China isn’t alone. The U.S. is just 14.7% of the world economy, while China is 19.7%. The EU makes up another 14.1%, while India, Russia, Brazil, Japan, and the rest of the world account for the other 51.5%. The world is now multipolar, whether Washington likes it or not.

So when Malaysia’s trade minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz was asked whether he’d side with China or the U.S., his answer was clear: “We can’t choose—and we won’t.” Trump would like to adopt President Bush’s “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” posture, but that makes no sense when China and the U.S. together account for only 34% of the global economy.

China saw this coming. As a result of Trump’s trade war with China during his first term in office, it turned to new markets across Asia, Africa, and Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative. Southeast Asia is now China’s biggest export market. It no longer depends on American soybeans—it grows more of its own and buys most of the rest from Brazil, cutting the U.S. share of that market by half.

Meanwhile, many Americans cling to the idea that military power makes up for shrinking economic clout. Yes, the U.S. outspends the next ten militaries combined—but it hasn’t won a major war since 1945. From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the U.S. has spent trillions, killed millions, and suffered humiliating defeats.

Today in Ukraine, Russia is grinding down U.S.-backed forces in a brutal war of attrition, producing more shells than the U.S. and its allies can at a fraction of our cost. The U.S.’s bloated, for-profit arms industry can’t keep up, and our trillion dollar military budget is crowding out new investments in education, healthcare and civilian infrastructure on which our economic future depends.

None of this should be a surprise. Historian Paul Kennedy saw it coming in his 1987 classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Every dominant empire, from Spain to Britain to Russia, eventually confronted relative decline as the tides of economic history moved on and it had to find a new place in a world it no longer dominated. Military overextension and overspending always accelerated the fall.

“It has been a common dilemma facing previous ‘number one’ countries that even as their relative economic strength is ebbing, the growing foreign challenges to their position have compelled them to allocate more and more of their resources into the military sector, which in turn squeezes out productive investment…,” Kennedy wrote.

He found that no society remains permanently ahead of all others, but that the loss of empire is not the end of the road for former great powers, who can often find new, prosperous positions in a world they no longer dominate. Even the total destruction suffered by Germany and Japan in the Second World War, which ended their imperial ambitions, was also a new beginning, as they turned their considerable skills and resources from weapons development to peaceful civilian production, and soon produced the best cars and consumer electronics in the world.

Paul Kennedy reminded Americans that the decline in U.S. leadership “is relative not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order…”

And that is exactly how our leaders have failed us. Instead of judiciously adapting to America’s relative decline and carving out a new place for the United States in the emerging multipolar world, they doubled down—on wars, on threats, on the fantasy of endless dominance. Under the influence of the neocons, Democrats and Republicans alike have marched America into one disaster after another, in a vain effort to defy the economic tides by which all great powers rise and fall.

Since 1987, against all the historical evidence, seven U.S. presidents, Democrats and Republicans, have blindly subscribed to the simplistic notion peddled by the neocons that the United States can halt or reverse the tides of economic history by the threat and use of military force.

Trump and his team are no exception. They know the old policies have failed. They know radically different policies are needed. Yet they keep playing from the same broken record—economic coercion, threats, wars, proxy wars, and now genocide—violating international law and exhausting the goodwill of our friends and neighbors around the world.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. It took the two most deadly and destructive wars in human history to put an end to the British Empire and the age of European colonialism.

In a nuclear-armed world, another great-power war wouldn’t just be catastrophic—it would very likely be final. If the U.S. keeps trying to bully its way back to the top, we could all lose everything.

The future instead demands a peaceful transition to international cooperation in a multipolar world. This is not a question of politics, right or left, or of being pro- or anti-American. It’s about whether humanity has any future at all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

After Trump used presidential authority to purge his opposition from the Kennedy Center board, and the newly appointed board voted unanimously to elect him as its new chairperson, self-cancellation culture came into effect. In response to the changes, administrators, stars, and artists, including Board Treasurer Shonda Rhimes, National Symphony Orchestra Artistic Advisor Ben Folds, Artistic Advisor-at-Large Renée Fleming, and Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter severed connections with the Kennedy Center. Performances have been cancelled.

The abrupt changes in the social and cultural atmosphere parallel the political changes ─ the public has become wary of a liberal establishment that shapes its customs, habits, and lives. Not unique and chilling ─ the German populace of 1932 expressed similar attitudes to the Weimar Republic and, because the leaders of the Weimar Republic would not recognize their growing detachment with the populace, the totalitarian Nazis accommodated citizen wishes.

I suspect the rearrangements that Donald Trump prepares for the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts and The U.S. Institute of Peace will highlight American exceptionalism, clean and wholesome living, and a superior American culture. Nothing controversial on the stages. Too bad! I have several arguments with both institutions and looked forward to a day my arguments could be resolved. Doubtful the Trump contingent will fulfill the expectations, which makes me wonder what they will accomplish. Unlike the decimated federal government bureaus that consist of personnel and office space, these institutions are housed in buildings of architectural merit and on prime real estate that cannot be easily disposed.

Before I describe my arguments with the operation of the Kennedy Center, I’ll mention one captivating aspect of the Kennedy Center ─ walkways around the building.

Surrounding two floors of the cavernous building are a lower walkway and rooftop terrace that provide captivating views of Washington D.C., the Potomac River, and Northern Virginia. It is worth a trip to Foggy Bottom, just to take a walk around the building.

My gripes with the Kennedy Center are personal reflections, to which many will not agree. Nevertheless, I consider it relevant to expose another example of a small cadre of pseudo intellectuals imposing their persuasions on the public and arousing the wrath of those who sense a liberal imposition, one of several that unknowingly paved the road to Trump’s victory.

(1) The Kennedy Center is a clean looking, well proportioned, and architecturally sound building on the outside that is mismatched by a solemn and confusing overkill of unapparent cultural activity on the inside.

The building has six large, and hidden theaters, dozens of unused rooms, and several smaller theater spaces somewhere in the cavernous building, if you can find them and reach them before you run out of breath. It is attractive from afar, overwhelming up close, and bewildering inside; nothing to see but carpets, walls, chandeliers, and ceilings; a false elegance that makes the patron feel impoverished and insignificant; no feeling of a center for performing arts.

Much nicer to have richly decorated and stand-alone theaters for each cultural activity, similar to New York’s Lincoln Center. Stand in the outside court of the Lincoln Center and have the feeling you are somewhere.

Stand in the corridors of the Kennedy Center and just keep walking until you find one of the outside walkways and start breathing again.

(2) Started out as a National Center for the Performing Arts and gravitated to becoming “a living memorial for President John F. Kennedy.”

John F. Kennedy (JFK) served as president for less than four years. His administration had its “ups” and “downs,” and a proper discussion of its merits needs more than can be contained in this article. I trust a neutral opinion can objectively conclude that Kennedy was not one of our greatest presidents and does not warrant more attention than the large number of less than great presidents. However, for some strange reason, JFK has been honored with identification to a massive amount of memorials, schools, roadways, plazas, avenues, statues, stadiums, transit facilities, buildings, and institutions. Similar to public relations efforts that keep Rudolf Valentino, Greta Garbo, and George Gershwin alive, the public relations effort that created a “Camelot” for Kennedy’s administration extends to eternity. I recognize that JFK was assassinated and deserves a sympathetic look, which he can and should have in memorials. More than a few memorials for a less than great president is bewildering.

New York’s Idlewild airport was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport; Cape Canaveral Space center was renamed JFK Space enter; and Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy, before a referendum passed by Florida voters in 1973 reverted it to its original name. The John F. Kennedy Expressway in Chicago is one of many roadways named after the former president.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating a National Cultural Center in the nation’s capital. Two months after Kennedy’s assassination, an Act of Congress designated the National Cultural Center as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The JFK Center opened its doors in 1971.

Recognized as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy did not mean The Center for the Performing Arts operates to popularize the Kennedy name and the Kennedy presidency. For decades, I found minor references to President Kennedy within the building and only recently have I been alerted that the building, as an institution for the performing arts, has been reconstituted as a living testimony to President John F. Kennedy and his presidency. In the huge entranceway, known as the Hall of States, photos of JFK, plastered to the walls in a haphazard and awkward manner ruin the quiet elegance the hall attempted to achieve.

On the top floor, a space has been dedicated for a Kennedy museum. The museum consists of a collection of photographs, sound recordings, newspaper clippings, posters, and video presentations, has no coherence, provides little insight into the Kennedy mystique, and resembles an arcade.

Lacking information, artefacts, and research, it is a poor tribute to the thirty-fifth president of the USA and a dud when compared to The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum at Columbia Point, on the UMass campus, Boston, MA. With coherent information, artefacts, and extensive research, the latter records Kennedy’s history, his rise in politics, his successes and failures, his rivalry with Lyndon Johnson, and the ultimate reversal in fortunes for the two major politicians of their times.

(3) Has disagreeable sculptures that may fit other public places but do not have a place in a building that houses a National Center for the Performing Arts.

In a plaza facing the two entrances to the Kennedy Center are bas-reliefs by the German sculptor, Jurgen Weber — “Amerika” and “War or Peace,” both gifts by the Goethe Institute to the Kennedy Center.

“Amerika” with a “K’ is fashionable with those who are not raptured with America. Add an angry “statue of liberty” and know the artist is not partisan to American life. I don’t understand how the unrelated juxtaposition of naked people, lips without faces, faces without bodies, objects without meaning, and non-descript buildings describes Amerika, at least it is not clear.

An angry and masculine statue of Liberty, one of America’s most treasured possessions, does not resonate with the public. An artist can be excused for challenging many of the U.S. hypocritical symbols, but nobody extinguishes the lady’s torch.

The tableau is gruesome, disturbing, unimaginative, and without composition or balance. Any comment on Amerikan society is only recognizable by the title. Nor is it original; paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, circa 1500, had similar motifs.

The sculpted “War or Peace” is more incomprehensible. Some indications of violence, no indications of war, unpleasantly whimsical, and nothing peaceful. One positive quality ─ the performing arts are represented.

A preferred tittle is “Apollo and Pan,” a variation of the musical contest between the god, Phoebus Apollo, competing in a music competition against the satyr-god, Pan, a derivation of a painting by Hendrik de Clerck, circa 1600. Major variation is the emphasis on the sexes — masculine in Jurgen Weber’s rendition; feminine in Hendrik de Clerck’s interpretation.

Give the bas-relief a name that better identifies the import of the artistic work and I can understand having a renamed and whimsical “War or Peace” on the grounds of a performing arts institution. With little artistic merit, is there a reason for “Amerika and its modern rendition of a previous painting being situated on the grounds of a Center for Performing Arts? More baffling is that neither have been placed in areas where much of the audience walks. “Amerika” is in a plaza that few pass through before entering the building. “War or Peace,” is on a wall that cars pass by before entering the garage. Nobody walks there. There is no reason to walk there and no walk that goes there. I may be the only person who has carefully observed the bas-relief and found a spot to take a picture.

A preview of the cleansed and sanitized Kennedy Center has appeared. Enter the Hall of States and you are welcomed by our majesties, a grim presidente, an archaic black and white photo of Mrs. Trump, and photos of VP JD Vance and his wife; all set in cheap frames from a Michaels store.

What happens next is a mystery. The Kennedy Center will lose much of its audience, the Washington DC area citizens who are the most liberal in the nation, some of its grants from philanthropists, a part of its $46 million federal contribution, and many of the artists and programs that filled up its spaces. Fiscal year 2023 showed revenue of $286,438,548, with the main sources being $140,861,307 in contributions — grants and donations, which made up 49.2 percent of the total revenue) and $129,917,134 from program services — ticket sales and subscriptions, making up 45.4 percent of revenue.

Programs, contributions, and audience will slide, which means revenue will slide. Losses will increase dramatically (claims are made by Interim executive director Ric Grenell that the Kennedy center is already broke) and to where? Will artistic spaces remain empty, and if so, why will they be needed? Not easy to disassemble without demolishing parts of the building; similar to chopping off an arm to gain weight.

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Writing about the USIP may be similar to writing about the pyramids ─ past history. In a short time, the Trump administration removed George E. Moose, the organization’s president, fired most of the USIP board, and left Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Defense University President Peter Garvin as three remaining board members. The unholy trinity appointed Kenneth Jackson as acting USIP president, who fired almost the entire staff of the crumbling U.S. Institute of Peace. Since then, access to website usip.org receives a notice, “Sorry, you have been blocked.”

Established in 1984 by congressional legislation and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Congress funds the USIP and governs it “by a bipartisan board of directors with 15 members, which must include the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the president of the National Defense University. The remaining 12 members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.” Purpose — an independent, nonprofit, national institute tasked with promoting conflict resolution and prevention worldwide.

From my perspective, the USIP contains some eager and valiant persons, working diligently to achieve a peaceful word. Unfortunately, powers to be have prevented the efforts in achieving peace. The Board of Directors who frame the agenda are those who receive the recommendations that shape the government’s legislative and executive agendas. They are not independent and talk to themselves. Similar to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial museum, which has shown no effort in preventing holocausts, both institutions exist to delude the public into believing they represent the better nature of an America that promotes war and genocide.

This was confirmed in 2008, when the U.S. Institute of Peace, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the American Academy of Diplomacy jointly convened the Genocide Prevention Task Force to “spotlight genocide prevention as a national priority and to develop practical policy recommendations to enhance the capacity of the U.S. government to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.” Since then, we have had the Rwanda genocide, the Rohingya genocide, and the ongoing, most severe and most obvious Palestinian genocide. The latter exposes the hypocrisy of the USIP and its cronies.

Where goeth USIP has big problems. Congress authorized $100 million for construction of its headquarters, and private donors raised another $86 million to satisfy its construction. Who owns the building and what will be its new charter are unclear. How, or will the private donors be repaid? A war will be raging at the Institute of Peace.

What and who are next on the chopping block of the 21st century “reign of terror?” Careful, Miss Statue of Liberty, who has the effrontery to welcome those lazy, dirty, and criminal immigrants to our vibrant, antiseptic, and uncorrupted shores.

Watch out, you may be next.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to take over cultural institutions and attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs has centered on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the venerable arts institution in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center was established by Congress and has been run by a bipartisan board since it opened in 1971, but Trump upended that in February when he moved to install his loyalists in key positions and make himself chair. Last week, the Kennedy Center’s new leadership fired at least seven members of its social impact team that worked to reach more diverse audiences and artists, including vice president and artistic director of social impact Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The acclaimed artist and playwright joins Democracy Now! to discuss Trump’s changes at the Kennedy Center, which he criticizes for destroying a “sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression.” Joseph notes that while the Kennedy Center has not yet made drastic programming changes, the rhetoric from Trump and others “severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has fired at least five members of its social impact team, including its artistic director, the renowned artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The team aimed to expand the art center’s reach to diverse audiences and to commission new works by Black composers.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

One of President Donald Trump’s most intense fixations since returning to the White House has been to take over and overhaul the Kennedy Center, the national arts and culture institution in Washington, D.C. Trump fired the president of the Kennedy Center, replaced the bipartisan board of trustees with loyalists and made himself chairman of the organization, vowing to shift programming away from “woke” art and toward more patriotic themes. On Monday, he visited the Kennedy Center to personally preside over a board meeting. Numerous artists have cut ties with the Kennedy Center since Trump’s takeover, but folk musicians Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman performed a concert at the Kennedy Center last week and used the opportunity to protest Trump’s policies from the stage. “We were considering what the most effective method of protest was” and decided “our voices would be loudest on the stage,” says Brown. “The arts are a fundamental way for people to express ourselves and for us to recognize other people’s stories and experiences and struggles,” adds Coleman.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As Senate confirmation hearings begin Wednesday for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, his cousin Caroline Kennedy has published a video slamming him as holding “dangerous and willfully misinformed” views on vaccines and other public health issues. Caroline Kennedy is the former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia and daughter of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s uncle.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Next year, Donald Trump will have the chance to reshape the American public health system with his nomination of anti-vaccine crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary for health and human services. While corporate media haven’t necessarily endorsed this choice, many commentators have worked hard to downplay the danger Kennedy poses to the US public.

Dr. Rachael Bedard (New York Times, 11/15/24) says of Robert Kennedy Jr., “We can’t spend four years simply fighting his agenda.”

On one of the most influential platforms, the New York Times op-ed page (11/15/24), geriatric physician Rachael Bedard wrote that Kennedy has “seeds of truth” in his agenda: “There’s a health care agenda that finds common ground between people like myself—medical researchers and clinicians—and Mr. Kennedy.”

We shouldn’t fret too much about RFK Jr.’s vaccine positions, Bedard assured us, because “Mr. Kennedy’s skepticism on this topic may counterintuitively be an advantage.” His “statements on vaccinations are more complex than they’re often caricatured to be,” she insisted. “He’s said he was not categorically opposed to them or, as an official in the new Trump administration, planning to pull them from the market.”

Similarly, physician and media personality Drew Pinsky, aka Dr. Drew, downplayed Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance in The Hill (11/25/24):

I know Bobby Kennedy—I’ve had him on my show—and I have talked at length with him about these issues. Kennedy isn’t a vaccine-denier or a vaccine conspiracy theorist…. Kennedy isn’t attempting to deny access to vaccines to anyone.

In Newsweek (11/27/24), Brandon Novick of the Center for Economic and Policy Research acknowledged “legitimate concern about his vaccine skepticism” but went on to argue that those concerns are “overblown”: “He promises not to prevent Americans from accessing any vaccine,” Novick wrote. “Kennedy mainly wants to require more and higher quality studies of vaccine safety and increase transparency.”

‘Better not get them vaccinated’

Seth Mnookin (Scientific American, 1/11/17): “For more than a decade, Kennedy has promoted anti-vaccine propaganda completely unconnected to reality.”

A review of RFK Jr.’s record by the AP (7/31/23) clearly documents that he opposes vaccines generally, especially when talking to right-wing audiences: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated,” he told a podcast in 2021. (He also said, in 2023, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” but claims the podcaster cut him off before he could say something…more complex.) He has also peddled the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism (Scientific American, 1/11/17).

Of course, his dangerous anti-science views go far beyond vaccines. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (11/22/24) laid out the extent of Kennedy’s maddening ideas:

His opposition to life-saving vaccines, his belief that HIV may not cause AIDS, his desire to increase the use of quack autism “treatments,” and his comments about putting people taking psychiatric medication in labor camps should all be immediately disqualifying. Autistic people, the disability community and the nation’s public health will all suffer if he is confirmed.

Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (11/18/24), sees a direct threat public health under Kennedy:

Unfortunately, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has demonstrated a consistent lack of willingness to listen, learn and act in the best interest of the health of the American people. He was identified in 2021 as a member of the “Disinformation Dozen” that produced 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms that contributed to the public’s mistrust in science, and likely led to morbidity and mortality.

Nowhere do Bedard, Pinksy or Novick take any of this into account when categorizing Kennedy’s views on vaccines as “more complex” or “overblown.” Unmentioned in all three pieces, for example, is that Kennedy and his anti-vax nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, helped spread misinformation in American Samoa, where vaccination rates plummeted and a measles outbreak subsequently killed dozens of children (Mother Jones, 7/2/24). Derek Lowe of Science (8/28/24) wrote: “As far as I’m concerned, he and Children’s Health Defense have blood on their hands.”

And Novick’s blithe dismissal of health experts’ concerns misrepresents Kennedy’s promise: He did not promise “not to prevent Americans from accessing any vaccine”; he promised not to “take away anybody’s vaccines.” It’s a crucial distinction. Banning vaccines would actually be fairly difficult for a health secretary to do by fiat, so it’s an easy promise to make. But many rightly fear he would work to make vaccines less accessible—not by “pulling them from the market,” as Bedard assures readers he won’t do, but by, for instance, making decisions that would mean vaccines would in many cases no longer be covered by insurance.

And by changing vaccination recommendations, Kennedy could strongly influence vaccination rates, which would increase the possibility of deadly disease outbreaks impacting far more people than only those able to choose whether they want to be vaccinated—again, whether or not he “takes away anybody’s vaccines.”

‘Best chance of reining in corruption’

Brandon Novick (Newsweek, 11/27/24): “Kennedy represents a unique shift away from the corporate capture that has pervaded the public health agencies.”

Many of these corporate media pieces try to frame Kennedy’s position as populist outrage against the status quo, portraying Kennedy as some anti-corporate crusader  looking out for regular folks against parasitic healthcare profiteers.

Novick wrote:

Within the context of a Trump administration, Americans should strongly support Kennedy’s nomination as he is the best chance of reining in corruption and corporate power while prioritizing public health over profits.

“Kennedy has railed against price gouging, and he supports the ability for Medicare to negotiate drug prices like other nations who pay far less,” he argued. Novick added that Kennedy “seeks to stop the pervasive poisoning of Americans by large drug and food companies,” and points “to European nations which have stronger regulations.”

It’s hard to imagine the Trump White House, dedicated to destroying the administrative state, creating more federal regulations on commerce. As Greg Sargent (New Republic, 11/15/24) noted, Trump

didn’t disguise his promises to govern in the direct interests of some of the wealthiest executives and investors in the country…. Trump is basically declaring that his administration will be open for business to those who boost and assist him politically.

The notion that you can pick through an agenda like Kennedy’s and join with him on just the sensible parts is a fundamental misunderstanding of how right-wing “populism” works. Its very purpose is to deflect legitimate concerns and grievances onto imaginary conspiracies and scapegoats, in order to neutralize struggles for real change.

When the far right talks about genuine problems, your response should not be, we can work together because we share the same issues. Those issues are just the bait that’s necessary for the switch.

‘Casualty of the culture wars’

Laurie Ochoa (LA Times, 11/23/24): “Many in the food community would love to see someone break the status quo.”

But this is a mistake that commentators, eager for compromise and common ground, make again and again. Asking if there’s a “silver lining” to RFK Jr.’s appointment, Laurie Ochoa at the LA Times (11/23/24) said that while scrutiny has

rightly been on [Kennedy’s] anti-vaccine and anti-fluoride positions, some have taken note of his strong language against food additives in the processed foods so many of us consume and that are making so many Americans sick.

Houston Chronicle (11/22/24) editorial writer Regina Lankenau used her column space to ask Jerold Mande, an adjunct professor of nutrition at Harvard University, “So is there any chance that RFK Jr. under a Trump administration will be the one to disrupt Big Food?” He answered, “Yes, and I’m hopeful,” saying that Kennedy’s potential oversight of “federal nutrition programs, including school meal programs” could help him tackle processed food intake.

At the Boston Globe (11/20/24), Jennifer Block argued that “When It Comes to Food, RFK and the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Crew Have a Point.” Block touted the right-wing pseudo-science “wellness” panel that launched the MAHA movement, writing that while it’s true that Biden-Harris have done much more for public health than Trump did in terms of nutrition and regulation of the food industry, “Yet the community voicing concerns about food and contaminants—like the people who showed up at Vani Hari’s rally in Michigan — feel as if they’ve gotten a warmer reception on the political right.”

Her evidence is that Democrats and the left have been critical of the pseudo-science wellness crowd. “But it would be a grave mistake if necessary conversations about chronic illness and our medical and food systems became another casualty of the culture wars,” she wrote.

The medical world just isn’t being open-minded enough, she wrote, arguing that the “debunkers’ credo is that anyone who’s critical of medicine or offers alternatives to pharmaceuticals will send you on a slippery slope to anti-vaccine, anti-science woo.” The problem, of course, is not that Kennedy is at the top of that slope, but that he’s already at the bottom of the hill.

‘A national disgrace’

Neil Barsky (Guardian, 11/21/24): “Should RFK Jr. be able to abandon his numerous conspiracy theories about vaccines, he can be the most transformative health secretary in our country’s history.”

Neil Barsky, founder of the Marshall Project, admitted in the Guardian (11/21/24) that Kennedy’s “anti-vaccine views are beyond the pale,” but said he understood that “our healthcare system is a national disgrace hiding in plain sight.” Barsky added, “He recognizes the inordinate control the pharmaceutical and food industries [have] over healthcare policy.”

But Kennedy does not actually propose to replace that “national disgrace”; asked whether he supported a Medicare for All system, which would be a real step toward curbing the power of the pharmaceutical industry, his response was incoherent (Jacobin, 6/9/23):

My highest ambition would be to have a single-payer program . . . where people who want to have private programs can go ahead and do that, but to have a single program that is available to everybody.

In other words, he thinks “single payer” should be one of the payers!

So it is questionable how much Kennedy really wants to address these issues. But even if one were to give him the benefit of the doubt, the pro-business, anti-regulation nature of the rest of the incoming administration suggests there is scant hope any of Kennedy’s health food talk would ever become meaningful policy.

For example, Mande’s answer that Trump would allow Kennedy to make school lunches more nutritious appears naive in view of Trump’s first term, in which he rolled “back healthier standards for school lunches in America championed by [former First Lady] Michelle Obama,” moving to “allow more pizza, meat and potatoes over fresh vegetables, fruits and whole grains” (Guardian, 1/17/22).

In fact, Kennedy already seems at odds with Trump’s pick for agriculture secretary (Politico, 11/29/24), who will be his main influence over US food policy. Big Pharma already has Trump’s ear (Reuters, 11/27/24). And Kennedy has already felt the pressure of his new boss’s love of fast food when he threw out his ideals and posed with a Big Mac and a Coke (New York Post, 11/7/24).

As SEIU President April Verrett (11/15/24) explained, none of Kennedy’s pseudo-populist sloganeering can really outweigh the danger he poses if he becomes a part of state power:

SEIU members know that healthcare must be grounded in science and evidence-based medicine. Our healthcare workers put their lives on the line to protect patients during the darkest days of the pandemic, and we would have lost many more members and loved ones if it weren’t for lifesaving vaccines. We will not stand silent as an outspoken anti-vaxxer who spread misinformation about autism and widespread public health interventions is poised to take control of one of our most consequential government agencies.

‘Legitimating his extremist positions’

Beatrice Adler-Bolton: “Media have allowed this anti-science and ableist rhetoric to be normalized at a mass scale.”

Pundits in the New York Times and elsewhere taking Kennedy at his word are part of a broader problem in the media, according to Beatrice Adler-Bolton, co-host of the podcast Death Panel. Media frame his MAHA movement to sound “like a health-focused initiative,” she told FAIR in an email, but it’s actually a “platform for dangerous rhetoric and fake science that directly undermines public health research”:

By framing RFK Jr. as a semi-legitimate voice on health issues at all, not only does it bolster the credibility of the MAHA agenda, the media have allowed this anti-science and ableist rhetoric to be normalized at a mass scale, effectively legitimating his extremist positions on vaccines, climate change and chronic disease without sufficient scrutiny, right before his appointment will be up for debate in the Senate. Truly scary stuff.

Rather than critically examining his stances, mainstream outlets often frame his views as “alternative” or “controversial,” which not only normalizes them but implicitly elevates them to the level of mainstream discourse, or further bolsters his reputation among the wellness community as a class warrior/truth teller.

This is particularly problematic in the context of his potential role at HHS, where his views could directly influence policy, research and local health department budgets, drug approvals, healthcare safety guidelines, disability determinations, disease surveillance, health statistics, public health disaster and epidemic preparedness, and so much more, making the media’s soft treatment of him even more dangerous.

‘Failures of the pandemic response’

“Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy claimed (New York Post, 7/23/23), citing this as evidence that the virus “is ethnically targeted.”

These efforts to find a silver lining in the Kennedy appointment, strenuously searching for common ground on which progressives and medical professionals can work with him, necessarily involved distorting the record in order to create a potential good-faith ally who doesn’t exist. Bedard’s piece in the Times, for example, twisted the facts in writing about the context for Kennedy’s rise:

There’s been no meaningful, public reckoning from the federal government on the successes and failures of the nation’s pandemic response. Americans dealt with a patchwork of measures—school closings, mask requirements, limits on gatherings, travel bans—with variable successes and trade-offs. Many felt pressured into accepting recently developed, rapidly tested vaccines that were often required to attend school, keep one’s job or spend time in public spaces.

The Biden administration did, in fact, reflect on the Covid pandemic to better plan for upcoming pandemics (NPR, 4/16/24; STAT, 4/16/24; PBS, 4/16/24), as scientific journals and government agencies have looked at the last pandemic to come up with planning for the future. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (11/14/24) recently held a hearing on the subject, and the Government Accountability Office (7/11/23) offered nearly 400 recommendations on improving pandemic planning. It might be fair to evaluate how well this effort is going, but that’s not what Bedard wrote.

And the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates were popular when they were being rolled out (Gallup, 9/24/21)—as one might expect when an effective preventive measure is introduced to combat a contagious virus killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Meanwhile, the fresh face that Bedard hopes will give us a meaningful reckoning, the one that the Biden administration supposedly failed to give us, endorsed a xenophobic, antisemitic conspiracy theory to explain the coronavirus (New York Post, 7/23/23): “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Bedard sanewashed this lunacy, saying that RFK Jr. “is right that vaccine mandates are a place where community safety and individual liberties collide.” “Official communication about vaccine safety can be more alienating to skeptics than reassuring,” she declared.

If someone wrote that traffic lights are a place where road safety and drivers’ liberties collide, and that traffic enforcement was alienating to red light skeptics, the Times would laugh it off. Yet the Times let a doctor give oxygen to such nonsense, even as she admitted that vaccines are only effective when an overwhelming majority of the population gets them.

Places like the Times have also published criticism of Kennedy (New York Times, 11/18/24), including a thorough look at his role in the American Samoa crisis (New York Times, 11/25/24). But corporate media have no obligation to bend the truth to offer the “other side” of an anti-vaccine extremist who is only taken seriously because his last name happens to be Kennedy.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

Public health officials are decrying President-elect Donald Trump for selecting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, Kennedy would head a sprawling agency that oversees drug, vaccine and food safety, as well as medical research. Kennedy is one of the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptics and has spread numerous public health conspiracy theories. Kennedy has claimed HIV may not cause AIDS. He claimed COVID-19 was designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. He has claimed chemicals in the nation’s water supply are leading more children to be gay and transgender, and he’s publicly spoken about removing fluoride from drinking water. “I can’t think of a darker time for public health in America and globally than now,” says Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “He has no fidelity to truth, to science. … He will make America sick, certainly not healthier again.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

For example, although the present Ukrainian Government has been shelling Donbas since 2014, killing civilians including children. When Russia evacuates children to safety, hegemonic West media broadcasts and telecasts Ukraine accusing Russia of kidnapping.

One exception to the silence regarding Ukrainians killing their own dissidents was heard during a CBS 60 Minutes segment mainly about the Russian invasion in which a Ukrainian woman was asked what she thought could be done about the secessionists when she answered in a determined sounding voice, “We must kill them!” (One can assume this is not the attitude of the average Ukrainian) [Sorry I was unable to document which episode of 60 Minutes about Ukraine was shown this year]

On the other hand, hegemonic West media reporting has in the case of the now made famous Bucha massacre been affluent in regarding uncorroborated ‘evidence’ of atrocities. Might it be enough to note here that the mayor of Bucha happily announcing the withdrawal of Russian troops made no mention of anything disastrous let alone the atrocities and massacres that were announced by the Ukrainian military four days later and that the Russian call for an immediate Security Council investigation was blocked by the presiding member delegate of Britain.

In April 2022, Russia requested that the Security Council hold a meeting to investigate the Bucha massacre, where Ukrainian civilians were found dead in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv. Russia claimed that the deaths were staged and sought to challenge the narrative presented by Ukraine and other countries. The investigation into the Bucha massacre by the United Nations Security Council, was indeed blocked due to the action of the British delegate.

One can note the lack of motive on the part of the withdrawing Russian military while Ukrainians might well want to see invading Russians further condemned and/or sought to ‘settle scores’ with insufficiently ‘patriotic’ Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity.

CIA-overseen Western Media Has Intentionally Blacked Out All Mention of the U.S. Backed 2014 Ukrainian Neo-Fascist Orchestrated Bloody Overthrow of Ukrainian Democracy, the Ongoing  Purge of All Russian Culture and an Immediate War on Ukraine’s Own Ethnic Russian Seceding Citizens that is still ongoing.

The events that led to the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of the Ukraine began in November 2013 and culminated in February 2014. The core issue was whether Ukraine should strengthen ties with the European Union or maintain closer relations with Russia.

Ukraine was facing a significant decision: to sign a costly association agreement with the European Union, which would have integrated the country more closely with European markets and political institutions, or to accept a financial package from Russia, which included a $15 billion loan and a reduction in gas prices.

However, the association agreement with the European Union came with significant financial and structural reform demands, which were seen as costly and challenging.

On the other hand, Russia’s offer provided immediate economic relief without the stringent requirements of the EU, but despite the better immediate financial deal from Russia, a large segment of the Ukrainian population, particularly in the western part of the country, favored closer ties with the EU. The Ukrainian government’s decision in late November 2013 to suspend the signing of the EU agreement sparked mass protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).

People’s revolution or coup d’état?

With the active support of the United States and EU member states, preparations for launching and organizing the protests, as well as deploying the media, began long before Viktor Yanukovich’s decision to postpone signing the agreement with the EU. The most notable outlet covering the Euromaidan was an internet channel called Hromadske.tv (Public TV), which received a $50,000 grant from the US Embassy in September 2013. Another $95,000 was added by the Embassy of the Netherlands. 

The Coup

A violent overthrow of a democratic government resulting in war, poverty and the rise of the neo-Nazis.

U.S. Senator John McCain went to Ukraine and stood on stage with a known anti-Semitic neo-Nazi. McCain was repeatedly photographed with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right wing nationalist party Svoboda.

The West made no effort to hide its interest. Western politicians spoke openly on the Maidan, and EU diplomats attended speeches. Victoria Nuland, an official representative of the US State Department, was not only personally in the Maidan, but also discussed the appointment of the future rulers of Ukraine. She later acknowledged that the US had allocated $5 billion to Ukraine to “promote democracy.”

On February 20, 2014, events entered a decisive stage. In the morning, firearms began to be used on the Maidan, which led to the deaths of both protesters and police officers. Those deaths have never been investigated.

Research conducted by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski on the Maidan “Snipers’ massacre” of February 2014 has shown that the killings of 49 protesters were organized by far right paramilitary groups and allied political parties, not the former government’s Berkut riot police, as claimed by the current Kiev government and repeated by Western media

A study of the February 20, 2014 “Snipers’ massacre” in Kiev, where scores of protesters were killed by shots fired from surrounding buildings, has proved that it was carried out by Western-backed opposition groups.The research found that the Berkut special police force, which was loyal to the Ukrainian government, was not responsible, contrary to the narrative which was created by the post-Maidan coup government in Kiev, and consequently accepted by Western governments and media.

Ivan Katchanovski, a teacher of political science at the University of Ottawa, studied eyewitness reports, estimates of ballistic trajectories, 30 gigabytes of security forces’ radio intercepts, 5,000 photos and 1,500 videos and broadcast recordings of the protesters’ deaths.

Katchanovski in his study, called ‘The “Snipers’ Massacre” on the Maidan in Ukraine,’ wrote:

“This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power.

I found various evidence proving the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas.

The deaths of 49 protesters on February 20 have been attributed by Kiev’s current government to the Berkut special police force, loyal to then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s government. Western governments and media, which have represented the massacre and the Maidan protests as a democratic, peaceful mass —protest movement and a revolution led by pro-Western parties,”

• Night of February 21-22: Euromaidan activists occupy government buildings and the parliament.
• 22 February 2014, 12:29pm: The head of the Verkhovna Rada, Vladimir Rybak, is removed from office.
• 12:34pm: Alexander Turchinov is elected as chairman in his place.
• 5:11pm: The resolution ‘On the self-removal of the president of Ukraine from the exercise of constitutional powers’ is adopted.
• 23 February 2014, 12:36pm: A resolution is passed to assign the duties of the president to the chair of the Verkhovna Rada.

Though the deadline stipulated in the agreement for amending the constitution had not yet been reached, the EU recognized as legitimate the appointment of the chair of the Verkhovna Rada to be the acting president of Ukraine.

(February 2014, Kiev Maidan Snipers: Western-Backed Opposition’s False Flag? Study By Sputnik,  January 2015)

Officially, the war in the Donbass began on April 13, 2014, when Acting President Turchinov announced the launch of an “antiterrorist operation,” following the Donetsk People’s Republic’s declaration of independence on April 7. The Lugansk People’s Republic declared independence on April 27.

Meanwhile, people living in the pro-Russian southeastern regions of Ukraine simply organized protests at the weekend, hoping the new government would listen to them. Unlike their opponents, the 30 protesters who were burned alive in the Trade Unions Building in Odessa were not armed. It all came to light in The Masks of the Revolution – a French documentary by Canal+ that the Ukrainian Embassy demanded be banned in Europe.

On May 9, 2014, Ukrainian tanks entered Mariupol city center, where unarmed people were marching in celebration of Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War.

This writer was amazed to find over a hundred videos on YouTube on the subject of Ukrainian Nazis, most all of which appear well documented.

E.g., ‘Leaked Pics Show Ukrainian Soldiers Wearing Nazi Symbols In France;’ ‘Germany expelled seven Ukrainian troops for wearing Nazi symbols.’

A Concluding Synopsis By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Below is a transcription of highlights of RFKjr’s review of the tragedy in the Ukraine.

“The war is the predictable response of Russia to the neocon project to expand NATO and encircle Russia. The U.S. unilaterally walked away from two intermediate nuclear weapons treaties with Russia and then put nuclear weapons systems in Romania and Poland. This was an extremely hostile act, and the Biden White House repeatedly spurned Russia’s offers to settle this confrontation peacefully.

“The Ukraine war began in 2014 when US agencies overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installed a hand-picked pro-Western government that launched a deadly civil war against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. In 2019, America walked away from a peace treaty, the Minsk Agreement, that had been negotiated between Ukraine and Russia and the European nations. In April 2022, we wanted the war. President Biden sent [then UK prime minister] Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to tear up a peace agreement that he and the Russians had already signed, and the Russians were already withdrawing troops.”

“That peace agreement,” Kennedy added, “would have brought peace to the region and allowed Donbass to remain part of Ukraine.”

Biden’s “objective in the war is regime change in Russia.” “His Defense Secretary [Lloyd] Austin…explained that the purpose of the war was to exhaust the Russian army and degrade its capacity to fight fighting anywhere else in the world.”

“These objectives had nothing to do with what they were telling Americans about protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty. Ukraine is a victim in this war and it’s a victim of the West…We’ve squandered the flower of Ukrainian youth, as many as 600,000 Ukrainian kids, and over 100,000 Russian kids, all of whom we should be mourning.… Ukraine’s infrastructure has been destroyed…The war has been a disaster for our country, too. We’ve squandered nearly US$200 billion already that was badly needed in our communities.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jay Janson.

I am sitting on the beach at the National Seashore, a forty-mile long stretch of the Atlantic Ocean seashore on Outer Cape Cod, established in 1961 by President Kennedy.  The wind is whipping hard and the waves are running wildly high against the shore, and, to paraphrase Thoreau – the sand is rapidly drinking up the last wave that wets it.  I am looking far out to the horizon where the sun shimmers on what seems to be the world’s watery edge, creating a strange mirage that I wonder at but find hard to describe.  Earlier, I was rereading Thoreau’s Cape Cod in which he mentioned this phenomenon 150 years ago, not just the mirages across the water but those here along the great stretches of sand.  Now I am confused and my mind wanders to other mirages that make me shake my head in wonderment.  It is hard to grasp what one is seeing these days.

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a presidential aspirant, folded his cards and conceded the current pot to Donald Trump – what he euphemistically called suspending his campaign for the presidency – he let his justifiable hatred of the Democratic Party, their undermining of his campaign, and their pro-war and genocidal agenda get the best of him.  His trust in Trump is naïve in the extreme.  With the issue that Kennedy has made central to his work in recent years – Covid and the “vaccines” – Trump is in the opposite camp.

The investigative journalist Whitney Webb has said:

The inevitable embrace of the Trump campaign by RFK Jr. will see one of the Covid-era’s most prominent (+ promoted) skeptics embrace the man whose administration established the early Covid policies and Military-run Op Warp Speed. What a world and what a disappointment.

Furthermore, Trump’s campaign is backed by a host of people – Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, and Trump’s vice-president sidekick, JD Vance, among others – who are big promoters and investors in mRNA and DNA vaccine technology.  Thiel and Lonsdale are cofounders of Palantir, a company that collects American’s health data while it also works with the CIA.

Mirages?

And the independent journalist Vaness Beeley, while being equally scathing of the Democratic Party’s masters of war, has said the following of this odd coupling:

With Trump and Kennedy you have a combination that is 100 times more likely to lead us to Armageddon and idiots are saying Trump supplied less weapons to Israel. Of course he did because he was destroying Syria through unilateral collective punishment economic sanctions, assassinating Resistance leadership and paving the way for greater Israel, Clean Break through Abraham Accords and Jerusalem, giving Golan to Zionist occupation. He didn’t NEED to start wars, he certainly didn’t end them, he increased the hybrid war strategy to pave the way for the final solution and Kennedy is fully on board, whatever his title. It’s astonishing to watch people whitewash the Trump role in the empowerment of the Zionist entity which has led to the genocide we are witnessing. There is no one or the other (Trump or Harris) they work as a tag team, oligarchs and deep dark state create the road map. We are already in WW3 and Trump will go to war with Iran, effectively with Russia and China. Why continue supporting a putrid corpse of a US political system? And, by the way, Kennedy support base is not anti-Zionist. They are generally apathetic and prepared to excuse Kennedy’s criminal genocide denial and defence of Zionist apartheid and ethnosupremacism because “America first”. Genocide is the Red line that Trump and Kennedy will erase and normalisation of genocide is a clandestine policy of this partnership. We are already in WW3. Trump will not end any wars, he never has. Iran and China are in his crosshair.

This too is true, and it runs counter to RFK, Jr.’s pledge to end all foreign wars.  One may have noticed that in his speech suspending his campaign Kennedy said that he disagreed with Trump on certain matters, but he did not conveniently mention that they were in accord with each other and the Democrats in supporting the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and its push for war with Iran and therefore Iran’s ally Russia.  That sounds like one big foreign war to this observer.

While the mainstream media relish ripping Kennedy, they rarely if ever mention his unequivocal support for Israel, for to do so would bind them to him (and Biden/ Harris, and Trump/Vance) in being full-fledged supporters of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.  Indeed, there is one taboo that the mainstream corporate media, mouthpieces for the warfare state, assiduously maintain: it is to never report the truth about the power Israel maintains over U.S. Mideast policy through its Israel lobby, and their own complicity in Israel propaganda.  Politicians of both parties are venal reprobates who parade with American flags on their chests as they betray their country.  They can only be described as traitors, as the current Biden/Harris administration’s full-fledged proud military backing for Israel’s ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians substantiates.  The recent Democratic Convention was a Hollywood spectacle directed by an American version of Nazi Germany’s Leni Riefenstahl, replete with shouts for the destruction of Russia as well as the Palestinians.  (The Biden-Harris administration has just approved its 100th arms shipment to Israel since October 7, 2023.)  That they are pushing the world toward nuclear war didn’t disturb them in the least, as they sang and laughed and acted out for a fan base deluded by mirages and auditory delusions produced Tinseltown style.

So American voters are offered a choice of a political alliance of an odd couple in Kennedy and Trump, along with Vance, and a conventional one in Harris and Walz, based on the fallacious assumption that a choice is being offered between the war parties whose raisons d’être are to wage foreign wars for the teetering American empire.  Hovering over and behind this pathetic travesty lies the controlling power of the national security state and its corporate media propaganda for these endless wars and corrupt politicians.  Only a skeptically acute mental knife, constantly sharpened, can cut through the propaganda campaign aimed, not at a foreign audience, but at the American people by its own government.  Mind control is the name of its game.

What would Thoreau, a man who didn’t vote and refused to his pay poll tax to support war and slavery, think of these strange alliances hiding behind glittering mirages?  Though written more than 150 years ago, his words are more than apropos today:

Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts ‘all aboard’ when the smoke blows away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over – and it will be called, and will be, ‘a melancholy accident.’

He made it very clear that one should not lend oneself to the wrongs which one condemns, such as the Israeli genocide of Palestinians or the US/NATO war against Russia through Ukraine that is leading toward nuclear war.  By voting for the so-called “lesser of two evils,” one is voting for evil and lending oneself to the wrongs one condemns.  It is blatant hypocrisy and a vote for the warfare state.

As synchronicity would have it, down the winding road a short walk from where we are staying, sits tiny Rock Harbor in Orleans where a fleet of fishing boats are docked on Cape Cod Bay.  Directly across the road rises a massive tower and huge stone basilica that is part of the compound for The Church of the Transfiguration.  It describes itself simply as the Community of Jesus and across its front is a long large sign in red, white, and blue emblazoned with a star and the word JOY.

Since I first saw this anomalous place a few of years ago, it struck me as more than strange and out of place, a ritzy “religious” enclave to a capitalist God.  I wondered how it was financed.  Intuition told me it was something more than a community of 275 members who claim to be an ecumenical Christian community in the Benedictine monastic tradition, but I didn’t take time to investigate.  From the little that I did learn, I was reminded of the American Orthodox Catholic Church in the Little Italy section of the northern Bronx.  As Peter Levenda has reported in his trilogy, Sinister Forces, this church was a front for U.S. intelligence agencies in the Cold War with the U.S.S.R.  He says,

As it turns out, the AOCC was a front for American intelligence, specifically anti-communist activities in the United States and abroad. It was created by a Ukrainian Orthodox priest with impeccable credentials who ran anti-communist crusades in the States in the 1940s-1960s. Suspected Kennedy assassination conspirators David Ferrie and Jack Martin were members.

It was not until earlier this year when I was contemplating and mourning the self-immolation of Adam Bushnell, the US airman who burnt himself to death outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. protesting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, that I thought again of The Church of the Transfiguration.  Bushnell, who was once a member of this church, left these words:

Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.

His powerful words and tragic death moved me deeply.  I thought of Roger LaPorte, a former seminarian and a Catholic Worker who in 1965 immolated himself in front of the United Nations building in New York City protesting the U.S. war against Vietnam, while the Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Spellman of New York supported the war with the vigor of John Wayne in The Green Berets.  Ruthless jingoism then and now, the lust for killing “others,” such as Vietnamese and Palestinians over the decades.  Worthless people to the War Party.  And two young men whose consciences drove them to extreme acts of protest.

Yesterday I remembered what I read in The New York Post and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation in February about Adam Bushnell and The Church of the Transfiguration.  These reports assert that the church is a cult and that Bushnell grew up here in the Rock Harbor community where his parents still live. The reports claim that members are mind-controlled and abused, and they are raised to strictly obey and follow some secret agenda.  The church says it stands with Israel, which is what Bushnell emphatically came to reject, for he stood with the Palestinians, even literally standing as he courageously took his life in flames.  Like all cults, money doesn’t seem a problem for this strange community.  One thinks also of Jim Jones and the People’s Temple and its strange intelligence connections.  As John Judge has documented in “The Black Hole of Guyana”:

The connection of intelligence agencies to cults is nothing new. A simple but revealing example is the Unification Church, tied to both the Korean CIA (i.e., American CIA in Korea), and the international fascist network known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The Moonies hosted WACL’s first international conference.[217] What distinguished Jonestown was both the level of control and the openly sinister involvement. It was imperative that they cover their tracks.[218]

The sky and ocean here on Cape Cod are very restless and constantly changing, even as people come here to rest, to be still for a while.  The movement of the waves and clouds, the shore birds flitting and floating before and above one, the constant breaking of the waves on the shore, and the long looks far out to where the ocean seems to disappear, create dreamy minds, if one allows it.  I am no exception, and this place no doubt increases my tendency to mental vagabonding.  Yet I am one with Thoreau when he says, “I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough.”  For I began with mirages and will drift back to them.  They come in many forms, but all contain the sense of being deluded.  This is the lesson of Plato’s Cave and Eastern philosophy’s idea of maya, among many ancient warnings. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous,” Thoreau said truly.  Yet when we turn to the realm of politics in our times, as we must when vacations cease, we are forced back to contemplate the insidious nature of the scoundrel politicians and leaders of all sorts who capture so many minds with lies and mirages of false hope on the horizon.

Most people don’t like to see the summer end, but another Fall is approaching.  A different reality beckons.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

As the American Prospect (1/19/24) reports, Dollar General has also been fined by New York and sued by Ohio and Missouri for business practices that harm consumers.

Janine Jackson: Some listeners may have seen the story of Dollar General stores in Missouri being caught cheating customers by listing one price on the shelf, then charging a higher price at checkout. It’s a crummy thing to do to folks just trying to meet household needs. And yet it’s just one of many harms dollar stores—some call them deal destinations—are doing to communities across the country. What’s the nature of the problem, and what can we do about it? 

Our guest has been tracking the various impacts of chain dollar stores and their proliferation, as well as what can happen when communities and policymakers fight back. Kennedy Smith is a senior researcher with the Independent Business Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. She joins us now by phone from Arlington, Virginia. Welcome to Counterspin, Kennedy Smith.

Kennedy Smith: Thank you.

JJ: Well, dollar stores are sort of like fancy restaurants. If they aren’t part of your life, you might not even physically notice them. But they’ve been proliferating wildly in recent years. In 2021, as the Institute’s report, “The Dollar Store Invasion,” begins, nearly half of new stores that opened in the US were chain dollar stores, a degree of momentum with no parallel in the history of the retail industry. 

Now, I want to talk through specific problems, but could you maybe start by talking about where these stores are and what’s giving rise to them, which connects directly to what they do?

KS: Basically, they are everywhere. They are in 48 states now. They haven’t quite made the leap yet to Hawaii and Alaska, but they began—the two major chains, Dollar General, which is headquartered in Tennessee, and Dollar Tree/Family Dollar, which is now in Virginia Beach, Virginia—began by radiating out from their headquarters. And so we see heavy concentrations of them sort of in the east and the southeast. They are now marching across the country and entering all kinds of markets. 

And they have slightly different profiles. Dollar General tends to be a little more rural. They tend to go into smaller rural communities. Dollar Tree tends to be more suburban, and Family Dollar tends to be located primarily in urban neighborhoods. 

And they are being fueled by a variety of factors, including consolidation in the grocery industry and people’s desire to find more affordable food and products in general are driving people to believe that dollar stores are offering them a better value. 

And in fact, that’s one of the tricks that the dollar stores play on people, is that they actually are getting poor value and usually paying more in a per ounce or per pound basis than they might be if they were shopping at a traditional, independently owned grocery store or hardware store or office supply store, whatever it might be.

JJ: It sounds like they’re filling a need, like they’re reaching to an overlooked group of people. And it reminds me a little of check-cashing stores, where folks who are oppressed economically in terms of their wages, so they don’t get to bank in a regular way, and then these fill-in spots show up and it’s perverse, you know. 

But it’s also just not how a lot of folks think things work. They see these things, oh, these are cheap stores. These are for folks who can’t afford as much as, you know, maybe some others. And this is filling their need. That’s exactly what it’s not doing. 

So let’s start on this “17 problems” that you engage in a pullout piece of the Institute’s work on this. What are some of the big things you lift up as the harmful impacts?

ILSR’s report on dollar store impacts

KS: Well, I should mention, to begin, that these are 17 of the problems that we hear mentioned most frequently, but there are plenty of others. And there are slight variations around the country. For example, in areas of the country that are susceptible to flooding and to hurricanes, there’s a lot more concern about the environmental impact of these stores and what it might mean in terms of stormwater runoff, because one of the problems with dollar stores in general is that they tend to have a very thin operating model. They’re thinly staffed. They look for inexpensive land. They build cheap buildings if they’re building new buildings. And so they’re not likely to want to afford to put in stormwater retention basins and things like that. So there’s some regional variations. 

But in general, the things that we find to be the biggest problems are, one, their economic impact on the community, and two, their sort of social impact on a community. In terms of the economy, they are a direct threat to independent grocery stores. And there are a number of studies now that have come out that have looked at what that impact is. 

There’s one that the USDA did last year, which found that basically grocery store sales will decline by 10 percent when a dollar store enters the market. There was one that was done by the University of Toronto and UCLA in 2022 that found after looking at 800-some dollar stores, that when you have three dollar stores within a two mile radius of one another, they’re likely to kill a grocery store that’s there. 

And that has a huge impact on a community because grocery stores are really community anchors in many ways and are responsible for providing their community members with healthy food as opposed to the sort of overly preserved things that you’re likely to get at a dollar store, like a box of macaroni and cheese or a box of sugary cereal or something like that. When a community loses its grocery store, it can be devastating. 

And the same thing can be true for some of the other categories, industry categories on which dollar stores tend to compete, like hardware and like office supplies and school supplies. Those are important anchor businesses for communities that people don’t want to lose. 

On the sort of social side of things, there are a number of problems and probably first and foremost is crime. Because they are so thinly staffed, dollar stores are easy targets for robberies. It’s very easy for someone to come in and just reach into the cash register, grab cash and leave. And communities complain about this all the time. I have literally hundreds of news articles that I’ve clipped about dollar store crime. 

They also have poor labor practices. They pay their workers less than the independently owned grocery stores that they’re threatening. They tend to promote workers to assistant manager relatively quickly, which means that they’re then exempt from overtime, and they make them work 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They’ve been sued several times, both of the major chains, successfully by groups of workers or former workers for wage theft for exactly that. 

There are other things, too. One of the things that we have observed and a researcher actually at the University of Georgia in the Geography Department has reported on and written about is that they tend to target black and brown neighborhoods. Dollar General, for example, 79 percent of its stores tend to be located in majority minority neighborhoods. And we think this is a little bit parasitic. And we also think that they’re looking for places where the community is likely not to have as much influence at City Hall as somebody in another neighborhood. And we think that’s just despicable.

JJ: Well, if I could just bring you back to that economic impact for a second, because it’s not that they are able to deliver better things cheaper, just to spell that out. That’s not what they’re doing.

A More Perfect Union investigation found that Dollar General frequently charges more than its competitors for staple goods but “masks the high cost from consumers by stocking smaller pack sizes.”

KS: Correct. No, they’re selling similar products, but the packaging that they’ll sell them in tends to be smaller. And therefore, on an ounce-by-ounce basis, we find that the products are often actually more expensive for consumers to buy. It’s a practice called “shrinkflation.” There are a couple of other names that it goes by—”cheater sizes.”

JJ: So it’s not, well, they just build a better mousetrap. That’s how capitalism works. That’s not what’s going on.

KS: Yeah. You know, it’s funny that you mention capitalism because in communities that are where a dollar store has been proposed to be built and the community kind of comes out and opposes it, the people who tend to support the idea of the dollar store coming in tend to say, well, that’s just capitalism. That’s just free market economics.

It isn’t. Free market economics are based on having a level playing field. And that’s why all of our major antitrust laws were developed a century ago, because we wanted for small businesses to be able to compete on the same playing field as bigger businesses. One of the things that dollar store chains often do is that they will go to their suppliers, their wholesalers, and say, we want you to offer this product to us, but not offer it to our competitors, do not offer it to grocery stores. Or we want you to make a special size for us of a package that no one else can get. And we can price it the way we want. 

Those are blatant violations of federal antitrust laws. And I think that on a federal level, we need to begin paying attention to that. And the same thing at the state level, while communities themselves are doing what they can to fight dollars for proliferation at the local level.

JJ: OK, I don’t shop at dollar stores. I’m just a taxpayer. Why should I care about the issue of dollar store proliferation as a taxpayer?

KS: Well, I think there are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons I would think as a taxpayer is that tax revenue that would normally accrue to the community, and wages that would normally accrue to the community, are now leaving the community, and they’re going to a corporate headquarters where they’re being either reinvested in corporate expansion, or they’re being distributed to shareholders or being used to pay off their investors. 

There’s an example that we cite in one of our reports about Haven, Kansas, which had a local grocery store that was there that was paying $75,000 a year in property taxes. So the city was getting that revenue. A dollar store came in, a Dollar General store came in, and within a couple of years, the grocery store couldn’t hold on anymore. The dollar store had eked away just enough of its sales that it couldn’t hold on. And so it closed. The dollar store was paying $60,000 a year in property tax. So the city right off the bat is losing $15,000 a year in property tax revenue that it had before. 

But not only that, as a concession to attract the dollar store, the city council had agreed to basically rebate half of the municipal utility taxes that the dollar store developer would have paid for two years. That was $36,000. So now all of a sudden the grocery store is gone and the city is losing $51,000 a year in property tax revenue. 

And that’s just an example of tax revenue. We’re not even talking about the wage differential and the fact that dollar stores typically only have one or two staff employed at a time, whereas a grocery store might have 30 or 40 people employed. And the dollar store, Dollar General, is at the rock bottom of the 66 largest corporations in terms of hourly wages. So the community is just losing right and left.

JJ: Right. Well, what happens when communities recognize that, and they resist these dollar stores? I know that the Institute tracks that as well.

KS: Dollar General tends to work with developers who build buildings for them that they then lease for 15 years, usually with three five-year expansion options. And the developer is going to try to minimize costs. And so the developer tends to look for inexpensive land, which tends to be land that is often zoned for agricultural use, or on a scenic byway, or in some kind of rural area, or maybe on the edge of a residential neighborhood. 

And to do that, they have to go to the city generally and request a zoning variance. And that’s where the battles tend to develop, is people come out and say, no, we want this area to remain zoned like it is, because there was a reason for that, that we wanted it zoned that way. And we don’t want to change that. I’ve tracked 140 communities now that have defeated dollar stores. And in 138 of those, all but two, they’ve been defeated based on the city denying a zoning variance request. 

The other two—it’s something pretty exciting that’s happened recently. In Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana—which is where Hammond and Ponchatoula is, if you know Louisiana—last spring, a developer came to the Planning Commission and submitted plans to build a Dollar General store. It was an unzoned parcel of land. There was no zoning, so he wasn’t requesting a zoning variance. He simply had to have his building plans approved. 

The Planning Commission turned him down. And they turned him down based on their police power to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community, which is a completely novel approach. We had not seen that happen before. The developer appealed that to the parish council. The parish council supported the Planning Commission. 

The developer then sued. And last September, the trial took place. And then in November, the judge—in a, you know, this is a pretty conservative part of the country—the judge ruled in favor of the parish and said that they were completely correct in using their police power to protect the health and safety of the community by denying that developer the right to build a dollar store there.

JJ: Wow.

KS: This is a kind of groundbreaking thing. There’s another community that we found, Newton County, Georgia, used essentially the same approach. So we’re getting to have now sort of a body of case law that provides a precedent for a community saying, wait a minute, forget, I mean, zoning is one thing, but these stores are unhealthy for our community. They’re not good for the economy. They’re not good for jobs. They’re not good for the environment. They’re not good for crime. And we’ve had enough.

JJ: Well, it sounds as though that community involvement relies a lot on information and on advance information. They have to know that this is in the planning process to know about the points that they could intervene, which is wonderful. But it also suggests, as I know the work does, that there could be interventions from a higher level, including from the federal level. What do you see as potentially useful that could happen there?

KS: Well, at the federal level, we would, of course, like to see stronger and more vigorous enforcement of the antitrust laws that we already have on the books. The Robinson-Patman Act, the Sherman Act are all laws that are there to prevent exactly what’s happening with dollar store proliferation. And states can also adopt those same laws at the state level to provide some protection there. And that may be, in some instances, easier than getting federal attention. 

States also are being pretty aggressive in looking at things like scanner errors, which you mentioned. In fact, the former attorney general of Ohio—well, first of all, the current attorney general of Ohio has investigated and fined Dollar General a million dollars for scanner violations. Basically, the price someone sees on the shelf is not the price they’re being charged by the scanner when they check out. The former attorney general of Ohio, a guy named Marc Dann, is now putting together a class action lawsuit against the dollar store chains for scanner errors, which he’s estimating Dollar General loan is making hundreds of millions of dollars annually in scanner errors because they’re so huge and they’re almost always in favor of the company and not the consumer. 

The adage is, “the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago.” And often communities don’t think about protecting themselves from this sort of proliferation, this kind of predatory business expansion until it’s too late. But for those who are seeing this happening around them in other communities and thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense to put some protection in place right away. 

And some of the things that communities are doing are things like what we call dispersal ordinances, which basically say you cannot build a new dollar store within X distance, two miles, five miles of an existing store so that we don’t have the market crowded with them. Or they’re putting in place ordinances like just happened in a town in Oregon that I saw that has put in place a formula business ordinance saying we want to have retail diversity in the community. We don’t want to have 10 identical pizza places. We don’t want to have five identical grocery stores. We want to have diversity. So therefore, we are fine with one dollar store, but not with five.

JJ: Well, finally, information seems key to all of this—information of the actual impacts of dollar stores and then about the possible levers of potential resistance. And that brings me back to news media and reporting. The report itself on the dollar store invasion got coverage, absolutely. But of course, the implications go well beyond covering the report itself as an event. What would you like to see finally more of or less of from news media on this set of issues?

Kennedy Smith: “I would like to see more in-depth coverage of the impact of dollar stores once they’ve been in a community for a while…. I don’t see much looking back and saying, oh, yeah, we lost Ford’s grocery store and we lost the Haven grocery store, and these are the breadcrumbs that led to that outcome.”

KS: That’s a great question. I think I would like to see more in-depth coverage of the impact of dollar stores once they’ve been in a community for a while. I don’t see much on that. I don’t see much sort of looking back and saying, oh, yeah, we lost Ford’s grocery store and we lost the Haven grocery store, and these are the breadcrumbs that led to that outcome. 

I’d also like to see more news media tying this to threats to democracy, because if we have major corporations that are able to basically extract this kind of money, this vast volume of money from communities and make it difficult for independently owned businesses to compete, then we’ve changed what the nature of capitalism is. And we need to get back to the roots of what democracy is about. And that really is about having a level playing field for small businesses, for every American to basically have the opportunity to create a business enterprise and thrive and reinvest in their community. And that’s being taken away from us.

JJ: Well, we’ll end it there for now. Kennedy Smith is a senior researcher with the Independent Business Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. You can find a lot of work on dollar stores, along with much else on their site, ILSR.org. Kennedy Smith thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

KS: Thank you so much, Janine.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Rolling Stone (6/10/24)

This week on CounterSpin: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote dozens of pages justifying his decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, stating the Constitution does not confer the right to determine whether or when to give birth. None of those pages mention his intention to make the United States “a place of godliness,” or his belief that there can be no compromise on such concerns, because “one side or the other is going to win.” Yet those are thoughts Alito freely expressed with a woman he thought was just a stranger at a public event. So: Will elite news media now suggest we just go back to considering the Supreme Court a neutral body, deserving of life terms because they’re above the fray of politics? How long until we see news media take on this pretend naivete, and how much it’s costing us? Jim Naureckas is editor of FAIR.org and the newsletter Extra!. We talk to him about that.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance (2/28/24)

Also on the show: The news that “the economy” is doing great on paper doesn’t square with the tone-deaf messaging from food companies about mysteriously stubborn high prices: Kellogg’s says, sure, cereal’s weirdly expensive, so why not eat it for dinner! Chipotle’s head honcho says you are not, in fact, getting a smaller portion for the same price—but, you know, if you are, just nod your head a certain way. None of this indicates a media universe that takes seriously the widespread struggle to meet basic needs. Which may explain the failure to find the story in the upsurge in dollar stores, supposedly filling a void for low-income people, but actually just another avenue for ripping them off. We talk about that with Kennedy Smith from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

• Trump hush money trial seats 12 jurors, six alternates to be selected next.
• President Biden picks up the endorsement of more than a dozen members of the Kennedy family, dismissing the RFK Jr. candidacy.
• Maine lawmakers pass tough new gun restriction six months after state’s worst mass shooting.
• Governor Newsom calls for stronger oversight of local government’s use of state homeless funds.
• Starbucks to lessen the amount of its plastic waste.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – April 18, 2024 President Biden picks up the endorsement of more than a dozen members of the Kennedy family, bypassing the RFK Jr. candidacy. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

The fabricated illusions that muddled the past elections remain; Trump constructs illusion as his principal political tool and Biden proceeds with perpetrated illusions that he is in total command and apartheid Israel is worth defending. Include presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the crowd, a candidate whose illusions are his main appeal. Illusion has replaced reality and guided domestic policy, foreign policy, and politics. Before examining the present, demolish the illusions perpetrated in the previous elections and ask why they remain when reality proves they did not exist.

The Russians interfered in the 2016 election

The calculating and repetitious forces that implanted the accusation of Russian interference in the American psyche made it difficult to refute the charge. Debate on Russian interference was not accepted and was silenced with derision. Reality shows it was an illusion.

The most quoted proof of Russian interference in the 2106 presidential election contained several elements:

Seventeen United States (US) intelligence agencies certified Russian interference.
Acceptance of the charges came from the belief that 17 US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the US election. Former Director of National Intelligence Chief, James Clapper, testified to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that no US intelligence agency researched the supposed interference. Clapper revealed that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA, and FBI, “a coordinated product from the three agencies and not by all 17 components of the intelligence community.” There was no specific intelligence agency involved. A few analysts from various agencies made an assessment far from definite proof, and 17 intelligence agencies accepted the assessment without adding any of their intelligence.

The Mueller report described the Russian government’s interference.
Employees of Internet Research Agency (IRA), a dubious Russian public relations company, were indicted, but no Russian officials were cited for election interference. Soviet intelligence officers were indicted for illegal phishing and cyber-attacks, “with intention to interfere,” and not directly for election interference.

Eleven Russian intelligence personnel have been indicted.
What do intelligence agencies do? They gather intelligence 24 hours each day and by any means. Cyber warfare is a favored means for all intelligence agencies to gather information and confuse the adversary with misinformation. At campaign election time, when computers buzz with finger tapping from wide-eyed volunteers, eager idealists, and networking individuals, the campaigners become big fish for the “phishers.” Russia’s military intelligence dumped all its findings into contrived websites and WikiLeaks and let the American public digest the information. (1) The Democratic National Committee Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, framed activities to assist Hillary Clinton and undermine Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign; (2) DNC fundraising staff discussed and compiled a list of people (mainly donors) who might be appointed to federal boards and commission; and (3) Former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, claimed France was concerned that Libya’s large gold reserves might pose a threat to the value of the Central African Franc and displace French influence in Africa.

Revealing that the DNC, which should be an impartial arm of the Democratic Party and not committed to assisting any candidate, was helping Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and deriding Bernie Sanders’ campaign is a worthwhile exposure of corrupt practices and distortion of the political process. The DNC is the culprit that interfered in the Democratic process.

The Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) has been indicted.
For what reason and with what proof was the IRA indicted? Election Interference was only a supposition; there might have been other reasons for IRA’s operations. The only Russian organization involved in the US election activity does the same activities worldwide, mostly in Russia, and has done it for years. Why conclude that its activities were meant to interfere in the election? Isn’t that a conspiracy theory? Being a public relations company, is it more likely that it was data mining – placing ads, and learning by feedback their effectiveness and the public pulse, data that could be useful for other activities in Russia, which might include minor information for the Russian government? Widely predicted, and even conceded, that Hillary Clinton would win the election, why would any foreign entity support wasting resources and leave itself open to criticism in a futile effort?

The Russians engaged in a massive interference operation.
Despite the intention to inflate figures and characterize the “interference” as massive, the activity was trivial and had trivial impact. According to New York Magazine, about 3,000 ads were purchased on Facebook for $100,000. Compare this to a Facebook audience in the United States of 214 million users, and more than 1.8 billion monthly active users, millions of electioneering Twitter accounts, hundreds of mass demonstrations in the United States, and spending for the 2016 elections (presidential and congressional) estimated at $6.5 billion by campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Facebook’s General Counsel, Colin Stretch stated that Clinton and Trump spent $81 million on pre-election day Facebook ads. IRA’s efforts could not compete for eyeballs of the American electorate.

From USA Today:

We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians (ED: Not Russian government and only 3,517 of many millions by others during the election). Here’s what we found. Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton. A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.

Accusing the Russian government of a massive conspiracy of interference in the 2016 US election, in which only one private agency, the Internet Research Agency, spent a trivial amount of money ($100,000) and did nothing to influence the election, is an illusion.

Democrats stole the election

Two features of the election certified the implausibility of Trump’s charges.

(1) Polls indicated a decisive Biden victory by several percentage points, Why would Democrats, expecting victory, jeopardize themselves and the anticipated election result by engaging in nefarious activities and risk being caught?

(2) Some irregularities and attempted fraud may have occurred, but It is impossible to fix a national election. A conspiracy to fix a national election requires an organization with a central administration and hundreds of people in key states who work in several well-coordinated actions. It is difficult to gain hundreds of adherents, have them agree to a central authority, and for them to be able to operate without disclosure. Can these activities — printing millions of false ballots, posting and mailing these false ballots, forging signatures, researching obituaries and voter registration lists — be performed without notice and remain hidden from extensive intelligent investigation?

Only one ballot can be obtained by a registered voter. Using false names and dead people gathers few ballots. Collecting a multitude of ballots requires counterfeiting, which is a difficult task, logistically and artistically. Ballots feature particular design elements that are difficult to copy. “They are printed on special card stock, with exact page size, color, and thickness varying by state, or even county or town.”

Let a host of geniuses manage to print the ballots with names of real or deceased people who would not be voting. How does the conspirator get the fraudulent ballots past the signature identification? Even if there were not 100 percent accurate signature identification, well-trained signature analysts will spot an unusual number of dubious ballots and, afterward, every ballot will be rigorously analyzed.

To bypass signature recognition, conspirators would have had to improvise devious means to bring fraudulent ballots into the secure center, navigate past security personnel, and hope the 360-degree cameras did not spot their illegal entries. Once inside, they would need co-conspirators to stow the ballots in a known location, and, at an opportune moment, have the co-conspirators retrieve and scan them.

Media should have confronted Trump and his followers on Day 1 and shown that it was impossible to fix the national election. This “election fraud killer” is still not publicized. No rational person can believe the 2020 election was rigged, and, weirdly, a huge component of the population embraces the illusion.

The new illusion

Because truths do not serve him and illusions preserve him, Trump prefers creating outlandish illusions rather than reciting basic truths. His principal defense in the criminal trial of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results is that he honestly believed the illusion that he won and the election was stolen.

Knowing he has no issues that will shake the electorate and defeat Biden, Trump has made Illegal immigration the inflammatory and principal issue. Rather than regarding immigration from the legal, economic, and statistical approach, Trump reaches for illusory images that captivate the mind, such as accusing Biden of “causing a border ‘bloodbath.’” He has also accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in the nation’s history if he wins a second term. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump said:

Under Crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state. Every town is now a border town because Joe Biden has brought the carnage and chaos and killing from all over world and dumped it straight into our backyards.

How many times a day, and in how many different presentations, has Donald Trump departed from script to exclaim, “This was the greatest economy we ever had, the greatest in the world, the greatest ever, and it all went down because of a pandemic?” Time to burst the bubble he has created around himself and let him know his ego-building statement is an illusion.

Trump does not describe the criteria by which he created the illusion that his economy was the greatest ever. He mentions the words GDP, stock market, and employment. Research the U.S. economy and learn that since 1891, the United States (US) has always had, except for some recessions, the best economy in the world. During the Roaring Twenties, the US had half of world production and had only 1/8 of the same during the Trump administration.

Almost every one of the U.S. presidents has seen a substantial rise in the stock market and GDP during their administration. The Trump administration only added to an existing trend — nothing unusual or extraordinary. Real GDP grew at a paltry average of 2-3 %/annum during his administration, so what is he talking about? He should not be talking; the more accepted ratings of economic power are GDP/PPP, the GDP that includes purchasing parity between nations, and industrial production. In the former, during Trump’s term in office, China led the United States by $27.3 trillion to $21.4 trillion. In industrial production, China produced $5.652 trillion in goods and the US. produced $3.436 trillion in goods.

Trump behaves as if he commands the world theater. He imagines seducing Kim Jung Un into halting nuclear and missile developments while Kim developed nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, claims he would have prevented Putin from waging war in the Ukraine, insists he has disoriented Iran that glides ahead with its nuclear developments and finds means to overcome the sanctions, blames Biden for a rash withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan after he had ordered a rapid withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Somalia in the wake of his 2020 election loss, and maintains he solved a Middle East crisis that has exploded into its most aggressive since the world’s leading statesman made his utterances. All Illusions.

Biden

The present U.S. president is an illusion ─ is he the scrappy, thoughtful, and vital person he portrays or is he an aged and worn warrior dependent upon others for voice and conviction? Will the real Joe Biden, please not be propped up, and stand up? Biden is not the worn and withered character of Trump’s exaggeration but he is undoubtedly more frail in body and mind than presented before the camera and, from his appearance, might rapidly decline.

Joe’s most prominent illusion is his belief he can fool the electorate into thinking he is tough on Israel and can move Israel into a conciliatory position. Xios reports the president laid out an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” If Israel doesn’t change course in Gaza, we won’t be able to support you.” Changing course means not making it obvious that Israel is committing genocide and better to pause and go slower. Joe is fooling many but he does not realize he is still a “war criminal” and a sufficient number of voters recognize his hypocrisy and they will not vote for him.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy is an unknown to most of the electorate and an unknown in his effect on the presidential race. His agenda consists entirely of contradicting standard beliefs, which resonates with Trump followers or maybe, with those who approve of the Trump maverick and not of the Trump person, those who would have preferred to vote for the successful businessman and won’t vote for a man perceived as lying, swindling, and only interested in himself.

RFKjr. subscribes to Mark Twain’s advice, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.” He does not exactly convey illusions; some of his conspiracy theories, of which there are many, emerge as illusions, but within their frameworks are rational thoughts.

Briefly, he is allied with one of the country’s largest anti-vaccination advocacy groups; claims that a variety of childhood illnesses are being caused by the ingredients in vaccines; proposes that the 2004 election had been stolen from John Kerry; asserts that the CIA played  a role in the killing of his uncle (JFK) and his father (RFK); charges that 5G has been set up “to harvest data and control behavior,” accuses Anthony Fauci’s actions during the Covid-19 crisis  of orchestrating “a historic coup d’état against Western democracy,” and cites the presence of atrazine in the water supply as a contributor to “depression and gender dysphoria among boys since atrazine is known to clinically castrate frogs when dumped into their tanks.”

There may be partial truths in some of RFK jr’s ramblings but there are only illusions in several of them and these illusions attract voters.

Each of the candidates may have attributes that attract the electorate; each of the candidates has attributes that contradict their ability to hold the highest office in the land. Each professes illusions; each fails from the illusions.

Having three unwanted individuals competing for president of the United States of America exposes the most serious illusion, that the USA is a thriving democracy with a free press, where the people have a voice and a choice, a choice of choosing between illusions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods.  There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes.  No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase.  No credit card bills that come due in the new year.  No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.

Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life.  That hope was improbable but possible with faith.

These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories.  They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected.  They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.”  They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age.  They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.

Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .

To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washinton, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.

Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.

A few days ago my wife and I were caring for our son’s two dogs.  Down the hill as night came on, the town set off fireworks – those bombs bursting in air (Oh how lovely is war!) – to celebrate and encourage people to buy holiday gifts, what can only fairly be described as acquisitive consumer madness that many realize yet have accepted as an essential part of the Christmas message.  As the fireworks exploded loudly, the dogs started to quake uncontrollably and we had to hold them tight to comfort them.

Yes, they are animals, but sentient animals with deep feelings; and yes, they are not children in Gaza quivering in fear as the Israelis bomb them night and day in savage attacks.  But as we held those frightened dogs, feeling their hearts beat fast as they gasped for breath, the visceral sense of what those Palestinians must be feeling, as they hold their trembling children who are butchered as useless objects, overwhelmed me.  As they are “thinned out,” as Netanyahu is reported to have said, I felt sick at heart to be living safely in a country that finances and supports such slaughter.  A country in which buying and selling is the real religion, people have become commodities, and Christmas has become the celebration of such grotesqueries.

I keep thinking of the difference between human beings and things; life and death; money and power; acquisitiveness and poverty; and, as Norman O. Brown puts it in Life Against Death, “an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption.”

In his classic study, Brown makes clear that it is erroneous to think that the secular and the sacred are exclusive opposites, as if the secular has replaced the “irrational” beliefs of religion with clean science and logical thinking; has banished irrational superstitions with abstract, objective, quantitative, and impersonal thinking.  On the contrary, he argues that the whole modern secular money complex – the spirit of capitalism – is rooted in the psychology of guilt and the secular sacred.  He writes:

The psychological realities here are best grasped in terms of theology, and were already grasped by Luther. Modern secularism, and its companion Protestantism, do not usher in an era in which human consciousness is liberated from supernatural manifestations; the essence of the Protestant (or capitalist) era is that the power over this world has passed from God to God’s negation, God’s ape, the Devil. And already Luther had seen in money the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic. The money complex is the demonic, and the demonic is God’s ape; the money complex is therefore the heir to and substitute for the religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.

Things, just like money, beyond a certain minimum necessary for a simple life of use, do not, as everyone knows, bring happiness.  This is because they are dead – excrement – the Devil’s favorite toy.

Take all those useless and superfluous objects people exchange during the holiday season.  The disposable gifts that are purchased to ease the guilt of giving and receiving.  Or such “objects” as an autograph of a famous person, an art work such as Andy Warhol’s Shot Sage Blue Marilyn that sold at auction last year for $195 million, Babe Ruth’s bat, Princess Diana’s evening dress ($1,148 million at auction), antlers over a fireplace and trophies of all sorts – the examples are manifold – they serve to confer on their owners a sacred prestige (etymology = deception, illusion) that is pure magic.  Like vast piles of money, they are talismanic protectors against death.  Their magical properties are irrational and rarely acknowledged, for to do so would reveal the absurdity of their acquisition and the pathetic nihilistic core of their owners.  They are outward signs of inward barrenness, yet for those who possess these useless objects they are magic ordure.

The more expensive the objects the more social power they mystically confer, since the message is that the owner can always give it up for a pot of gold but doesn’t have to since they are sitting on a lot more gold, which is really a pot of shit.  In other words, wealth, its possession and the avid desire for it, signifies power over people and that power includes using them in many ways, including their labor, and killing them if one chooses, quickly or slowly, overtly or deviously, directly or indirectly, for some people are useless objects, inferior people.

Such power is central to politics and warfare, as a quick glance at the wealth of war-promoting politicians will reveal.

It is central to the widespread thinking today that the world is filled with useless people who must be disposed of one way or the other.

It is a fundamental tenet of the World Economic Forum, the Gates-Rockefeller et al. crowd, and the racist eugenics promoters today and yesterday.

It is behind the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) biological weapons gain-of-function research, the Covid-19 propaganda, and the CIA’s and Defense Department’s distribution of the mRNA countermeasures (“vaccines”).

It is central to the hideously obscene profits of the medical military-industrial complex and the world-wide arms industry.

It is central to the genocide taking place in Gaza.  For the Israeli rulers, the problem is that the Palestinians exist, so they must be exterminated.

It’s still the same old story told differently down through the ages.

Hitler enacted it against the Jews.

Once long ago, it was a Palestinian Jewish boy born in a manger destined to make trouble for the rulers of the empire who had to be eliminated one way or another.  Today that child of God is any Palestinian child, destined, we are told by the rulers of Israel, to grow into a terrorist animal.

Christmas is about a birth, the birth of a boy who would become a man who sided with the outcasts, the poor, the forsaken, the gentle, and the peacemakers.  His birth and life was a rebuke to the powerful and the rich who lord it over the innocent, the killers, those who profit at the expense of others, who amass wealth and useless possessions to parade their power, a show of power which, unknown to their self-obsessed minds, is a sign of their spiritual nullity.

I have nothing against Santa.  I once sat on his lap and he seemed nice to my four year-old mind.  He was fat and jolly.  He told me I would get what I wanted for Christmas.  But he forgot to tell me what Christmas was really about.

That is what I want.  To remember.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

Photograph Source: State Library and Archives of Florida – Public Domain

Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record.  With its effacing tendencies, its soppily loyal hagiographers, its ghastly, moist worshippers, anniversaries are the best occasions to shine.  Six decades have passed since President John F. Kennedy was slain in Dallas, and the miasma of psychic doubt and veneration has only slightly abated.

As with each decade, the conspiracy behind the death of the Republic’s youngest Caesar is always revisited with a pilgrim’s myrrh perfumed dedication.  The energy with which this is pursued has as much to say about the cloying romance of Camelot rather than its reality: the bullets did not merely kill a man but a dream, a project yet to be realised in glorious bloom.  The disputed mechanics of the killing also make their reappearance at each turn: the implausible “magic” bullet that could never have done the dreadful damage it did; the unwarranted certitude of the Warren Commission on Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone eagle-eyed gunman; the sinister role, alleged or otherwise, played by the security services, including the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are notions that US involvement in the Vietnam War would have been halted, if not suspended altogether.  The Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union would have been, not just eased but thawed by the handsome wonder in the White House who was, rather fittingly, known as the President Erect.  Civil rights legislation would have passed, miraculously, despite an obstructive Congress.  In essence, what was achieved by his almost brutally pragmatic successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, would have taken place – at least on the domestic front – while ignoring the bloody cockup in the paddy fields of Asia.

Much of this yields a body of custard clinging work that is, at best, hagiographical, at worst, hysterical.  The material firstly issued from the Kennedy court historians, including Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., their work floating in a permanent celestial orbit that came to be called “The Camelot School”.  “The JFK White House was a hagiography factory from the get-go,” remarks Thomas Meaney with incontestable accuracy.

Schlesinger admired JFK and his brother, Robert, so much so that studied omissions on character were not only entertained but automatic.  No reference to bedroom acrobatics, for instance.  It prompted a famous assessment by Gore Vidal of A Thousand Days as a work of novelistic fiction, “the best political novel since Coningsby”.

Later works also fail to escape the courtiers’ grip.  In 2003, Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life gives us a study that is almost embarrassing. We struggle to find, even at the end of such a text, a figure to admire, be it his bogus literary exploits behind the Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles of Courage (he would do well in the charlatan filled groves of the modern university), or whether his addition of being on the job constantly distracted him from his actual job.

Regarding the latter, Dallek has the cringeworthy remark: “the supposition that he was too busy chasing women or satisfying his sexual passions to attend to important presidential business is not borne out by the record of his daily activities.” Then comes the throwaway line, true gem: “And, according to Richard Reeves, another Kennedy historian, the womanizing generally ‘took less time than tennis.’”

The pharmacological smorgasbord Kennedy consumed, despite being described in considerable detail by Dallek, is sniffed at as a minor irrelevance to presidential duties.  “Judging from tape recordings of conversations made during the [Cuban Missile] crisis, the medications were no impediment to long delays and lucid thought; to the contrary, Kennedy would have been significantly less effective without them and might not have been able to function.”

Just last year, Mark K. Updegrove also added his bit to the Kennedy canon of worship with Incomparable Grace, doing little to tarnish his icon.  Familiar themes are recycled.  At least Updegrove takes note of the sexual proclivities (“rampant and reckless” no less) and the efforts by the president, the family, his aides and doctors to conceal “illnesses and medical remedies from the press”.  That he refuses to even consider that the pharmacopeia diet might have at least raised a question of compromising the office is telling.  It goes to show that, whatever reservations are shown, Updegrove cannot get away from the Camelot allure that grants Kennedy higher powers even as he shows evidence of distinct failure.  Yes, he made mistakes, but he noted the lessons.

Other efforts focus on the “What would have happened” school of crystal ball gazing with near delusionary fervour.  They are characterised by such efforts as Jeffrey Sachs, whose 2013 tract on the president’s 1963 speeches about war and peace are meant to reveal an extraordinary visionary cut down in his prime.  He makes much of the June 10, 1963 oration regarding what is said to be a less belligerent approach towards Moscow.

In June this year, Sachs would even dream about what his hero would do regarding the Ukraine War, the sort of tea leaf reading that is nothing less than prophecy.  He would embrace a different route to peace taken by the Biden administration.  He would not denigrate Russian President Vladimir Putin.  He would keep the communications open with Moscow.  We shall never know.

Camelot’s cerebral retardation continues to exert its force in such serious efforts as those of Stephen F. Knott of the United States Naval War College.  Published in October last year as Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy, Knott’s way of doing so is unsatisfactory.  He is found praising Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act of 1963 and defending him about his dubious role in the Bay of Pigs disaster.  He encourages Kennedy’s public utterances to be “read with caution”, though still believes that “the ones that support the thesis that he would have prevented Vietnam from becoming an American quagmire” remains credible.  Regarding the latter, it would surely be more credible to suggest that Kennedy salted the earth that would eventually yield the terrible harvest of Indochina policy under the Johnson administration.

The JFK legacy now has now moved beyond the textual teasing of biographies to celluloid realisations.  Netflix, for instance, promises a limited series on the president’s life.  Oliver Stone continues his crusade through screen and interview, focusing in macroscale on the killing.  It is not hard to imagine that the modern President Kennedy would have happily dived into (and onto) every known social media platform and cinematic medium to prosecute and shape Camelot’s legacy.  But nothing gets away from the icy realisation that the man, even as he was felled, did not cut the mustard.  The rest is hagiographic musing.

The post Refreshing the Camelot School: Kennedy Hagiography at Sixty appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

As with each decade, the conspiracy behind the death of the Republic’s youngest Caesar is always revisited with a pilgrim’s myrrh perfumed dedication.  The energy with which this is pursued has as much to say about the cloying romance of Camelot rather than its reality: the bullets did not merely kill a man but a dream, a project yet to be realised in glorious bloom.  The disputed mechanics of the killing also make their reappearance at each turn: the implausible “magic” bullet that could never have done the dreadful damage it did; the unwarranted certitude of the Warren Commission on Lee Harvey Oswald being the lone eagle-eyed gunman; the sinister role, alleged or otherwise, played by the security services, including the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are notions that US involvement in the Vietnam War would have been halted, if not suspended altogether.  The Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union would have been, not just eased but thawed by the handsome wonder in the White House who was, rather fittingly, known as the President Erect.  Civil rights legislation would have passed, miraculously, despite an obstructive Congress.  In essence, what was achieved by his almost brutally pragmatic successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, would have taken place – at least on the domestic front – while ignoring the bloody cockup in the paddy fields of Asia.

Much of this yields a body of custard clinging work that is, at best, hagiographical, at worst, hysterical.  The material firstly issued from the Kennedy court historians, including Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., their work floating in a permanent celestial orbit that came to be called “The Camelot School”.  “The JFK White House was a hagiography factory from the get-go,” remarks Thomas Meaney with incontestable accuracy.

Schlesinger admired JFK and his brother, Robert, so much so that studied omissions on character were not only entertained but automatic.  No reference to bedroom acrobatics, for instance.  It prompted a famous assessment by Gore Vidal of A Thousand Days as a work of novelistic fiction, “the best political novel since Coningsby”.

Later works also fail to escape the courtiers’ grip.  In 2003, Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life gives us a study that is almost embarrassing. We struggle to find, even at the end of such a text, a figure to admire, be it his bogus literary exploits behind the Pulitzer Prize winning Profiles of Courage (he would do well in the charlatan filled groves of the modern university), or whether his addition of being on the job constantly distracted him from his actual job.

Regarding the latter, Dallek has the cringeworthy remark: “the supposition that he was too busy chasing women or satisfying his sexual passions to attend to important presidential business is not borne out by the record of his daily activities.” Then comes the throwaway line, true gem: “And, according to Richard Reeves, another Kennedy historian, the womanizing generally ‘took less time than tennis.’”

The pharmacological smorgasbord Kennedy consumed, despite being described in considerable detail by Dallek, is sniffed at as a minor irrelevance to presidential duties.  “Judging from tape recordings of conversations made during the [Cuban Missile] crisis, the medications were no impediment to long delays and lucid thought; to the contrary, Kennedy would have been significantly less effective without them and might not have been able to function.”

Just last year, Mark K. Updegrove also added his bit to the Kennedy canon of worship with Incomparable Grace, doing little to tarnish his icon.  Familiar themes are recycled.  At least Updegrove takes note of the sexual proclivities (“rampant and reckless” no less) and the efforts by the president, the family, his aides and doctors to conceal “illnesses and medical remedies from the press”.  That he refuses to even consider that the pharmacopeia diet might have at least raised a question of compromising the office is telling.  It goes to show that, whatever reservations are shown, Updegrove cannot get away from the Camelot allure that grants Kennedy higher powers even as he shows evidence of distinct failure.  Yes, he made mistakes, but he noted the lessons.

Other efforts focus on the “What would have happened” school of crystal ball gazing with near delusionary fervour.  They are characterised by such efforts as Jeffrey Sachs, whose 2013 tract on the president’s 1963 speeches about war and peace are meant to reveal an extraordinary visionary cut down in his prime.  He makes much of the June 10, 1963 oration regarding what is said to be a less belligerent approach towards Moscow.

In June this year, Sachs would even dream about what his hero would do regarding the Ukraine War, the sort of tea leaf reading that is nothing less than prophecy.  He would embrace a different route to peace taken by the Biden administration.  He would not denigrate Russian President Vladimir Putin.  He would keep the communications open with Moscow.  We shall never know.

Camelot’s cerebral retardation continues to exert its force in such serious efforts as those of Stephen F. Knott of the United States Naval War College.  Published in October last year as Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy, Knott’s way of doing so is unsatisfactory.  He is found praising Kennedy’s Civil Rights Act of 1963 and defending him about his dubious role in the Bay of Pigs disaster.  He encourages Kennedy’s public utterances to be “read with caution”, though still believes that “the ones that support the thesis that he would have prevented Vietnam from becoming an American quagmire” remains credible.  Regarding the latter, it would surely be more credible to suggest that Kennedy salted the earth that would eventually yield the terrible harvest of Indochina policy under the Johnson administration.

The JFK legacy now has moved beyond the textual teasing of biographies to celluloid realisations.  Netflix, for instance, promises a limited series on the president’s life.  Oliver Stone continues his crusade through screen and interview, focusing in macroscale on the killing.  It is not hard to imagine that the modern President Kennedy would have happily dived into (and onto) every known social media platform and cinematic medium to prosecute and shape Camelot’s legacy.  But nothing gets away from the icy realisation that the man, even as he was felled, did not cut the mustard.  The rest is hagiographic musing.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The United States government exists to wage war.  In its present form, it would crumble without it; and in its present form, it will crumble with it.  Only a radical structural change will prevent this.  For war-making is at the core of its budget, its raison d’être – 816.7 billion for the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act alone – a deficit-financed sum that tells only part of the story.  This amount that finances the military-industrial complex and its blood money is for a country that has never been invaded, is bordered by friendly neighbors, and is oceans away from the multitude of countries its leaders attack and call our enemies.  The U.S. wages wars around the world because killing is its lifeblood, its structural essence.

In writing of the misuse of language, George Orwell wrote, “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”  So with these words Orwell slyly places us within the enigma of the chicken and the egg, a conundrum or paradox that relates to my theme in a weird way, but which I will directly ignore.

By radical I do not mean the widespread political usage as in radical-right or radical-left or radical meaning one who plays the role through dress or demeanor.  I am using the word in its primary meaning – a radical is one who is rooted in the earth, which means everyone.  Everyone therefore is mortal, human not a god, and comes from the earth and returns to it.  Everyone is radical in this sense, although they may try to deny it.  And the more one feels alive the more one senses one will die and doesn’t like the thought, therefore many tamp down their aliveness in order to reduce their fear of death.  The best way to do this is to disappear into the crowd, to become a conventional person.  To act as if one didn’t know that one’s political leaders were in love with death and killing and were not obedient cogs in a vast systemic killing machine.  Maybe the unconscious assumption is that these “leaders” can kill death for you by killing vast numbers of people and make you feel someone has control of this thing called death.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who stood strongly against the Vietnam War and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put the basic sense of radical well when he said:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

To be radically amazed that we exist is to be equally amazed that we will die.  And there’s the rub.

Yesterday I got in our car and drove away to meet a journalist friend.  It was evening and my wife had previously used the car.  I had just spent time following all the dreadful news about the massive slaughter by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza, including the death of more than 3,000 children whose numbers are climbing fast.  Visions of those children and babies played havoc with my spirits, and I kept thinking of my own children and the love and tenderness that comes with being a  parent.  A musical cd that my wife had been listening to started playing.  The case was on the console.  It was Sacred Arias by Andrea Bocelli.  He of the majestic voice was singing Silent Night.  I was overwhelmed with tears by his passionate words:

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
round yon Virgin Mother and Child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
sleep in Heavenly peace!
sleep in Heavenly peace!

I saw nights in Gaza as Israeli bombs burst and shattered everyone and everything to bits, all the holy infants, the children and adults.

I felt beside myself with grief, a U.S. citizen driving down a safe country road contemplating the savagery of my nation and its support for the Israeli government’s brutality and mass killings of Palestinians for all the world to see on screens everywhere.

I felt ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game reserved for rhetoric alone as it joins in the massacre of the innocent, as it always has, now together with the apartheid Israeli regime.

I thought of all the compromised politicians who pledge their allegiance to the killers, Biden and all his presidential predecessors, now including the aspirant Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man with a conscience on many important issues whom I have supported in his quest for the presidency, but a man whose conscience has abandoned him when it comes to the Palestinians, as Scott Ritter has recently documented.  I have privately urged Kennedy to reconsider his “unwavering, resolute, and practical” support for the Israeli government following the Gaza breakout of October 7, but to no avail.  In fact, I have been trying to get him to withdraw his unconditional support for Israel since the summer when he withdrew his support for Roger Waters, marched with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Israel parade in NYC, and allowed Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirah had killed his father without correcting him since he knew it was an egregious lie.  My failure in this regard deeply saddens me.

I felt betrayed again – perhaps you will call me naïve – as when I was young and last put my trust in voting for a US presidential candidate in 1972.  I thought I had learned to radically grasp the systematically corrupt nature of the U.S. warfare state.  Now more than three weeks have passed and Bobby Kennedy has remained silent, only to ask for our prayers for the victims of the mass shooting in Maine.  For the Palestinians, not a word. Although he considers the Israeli-Palestinian situation complicated, there is nothing complicated about genocide; it doesn’t necessitate long analyses and discussions with advisers.  The facts of the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza are evident for all to see, if they wish.  Bobby Kennedy has turned away.  And I have now sadly turned away from him.

I remembered the Gospel words I heard long ago about the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loudly lamenting: it was Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.”  But this time it is not the Jewish Rachel, for Herod has assumed the name Netanyahu and his U.S. allies, and the weeping ones are Palestinian mothers and fathers.  Nothing can justify such slaughter, not the terrible killings of innocent Israelis on October 7 that I denounce; not the fear that the birth of messengers of peace might strike into Herod/Netanyahu’s heart – nothing!  Seventy-five years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues apace. The Jewish child Jesus, the radical preacher of love and peace for all people, didn’t die on a private cross, nor do the Palestinians.  So it goes.

I thought of the indescribable sweet wonder of holding your baby in your arms while realizing how many Palestinian parents have been holding their dead children in theirs.  Rage welled up in me at the obscenity of those who support this and those who shut their eyes to it and those who remain silent.

I realized that as a Christian I am baptized into the human family, not some special in-group, which is the opposite of Jesus’s message.  Every child is holy and innocent and to massacre them is evil.  And to remain silent as it happens is to be complicit in evil.

I remembered how these many ongoing weeks of terror started and thought of a poem that is succinctly apposite: Harlem by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

And I thought that he could have omitted that final question mark because we have our answer, then and now.

Then the music stopped and I arrived at my destination to meet my friend.

Yes, to be radical is to be rooted in the earth and to realize all people are part of the human family, each of us made of flesh and blood and therefore sisters and brothers deserving of justice, peace, and dignity.  But this is just a first step in the grasping of the full dimension of the radical vision.  It can end in fluff if a second step is not taken: to use our freedom to uproot ourselves from the conventional government and mass media propaganda and mind control that clouds our understanding of how the world works. This takes study and work and an understanding of the historical and systemic roots of all the alleged “unprovoked” violence that ravages our world.

Thus the existential and socio-historical merge in the radical vision that allows us to grasp the structures of evil and our personal responsibility.

Today that obligation is clear: To oppose the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

Otherwise we are guilty bystanders.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

With the US stymied in Ukraine, failing to slow the BRICS and getting no traction on Taiwan, it appears that it’s going to fire up the war on/of terror again using the Israeli fuse. RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard are all in.

The Israelification of the white west motors along: pro-Palestinian protests are illegal now in France and the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” will now get you arrested in Germany. Independent journalist Eva Bartlett just had 15 years of reporting taken down from YouTube. Sixty members of Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested today in New York for, apparently, standing around. That malodorous garbage dump of traitors called the US Congress would rather make Israel happy than preserve the 1st Amendment.

Some of my friends keep making excuses for western working classes about how busy they are and how brainwashed they are and how uninterested they are in all the millions of people that our tax dollars kill. I say colonial and imperial working classes have always been pretty detestable.

I ask: will you be so uninterested in the world when there are nuclear bombs falling on our heads? It’s not hyperbole. There have been many close nuclear calls. How might this come about?

One way: Israel pursues its second Nakba of Palestinians, Hezbollah and Iran step in, Israel and the US attack Iran – Israel’s already attacking Syria and Lebanon – and Russia and China do something more than talk at the UN coffee klatch. (Or will Russia and China let Gaza be erased like they did Libya on March 19, 2011?) Another way: clog up the Mediterranean with US ships, and Israel repeats the USS Liberty massacre with some replicas of Iranian drones.

Some members of the US working class who have solidarity with the poor, the dispossessed and the oppressed are in the following photos.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Randy Shields.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/17/israel-is-your-god-dammit/feed/ 0 434964 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/electing-a-kennedy-congress/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/electing-a-kennedy-congress/#respond Tue, 26 Sep 2023 03:34:17 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=144293 At this stage of the game, it looks like one of these folks will be our next President:

Or … DONALD J. TRUMP!

Now, if one of the “good guys” wins the presidential race — an individual who reports to the “people”, truly puts the the welfare of all citizens ahead of Wall Street, the big banks, the military-industrial complex, the ruling elite and other powerful special interests, thus serves the needs of the all citizens, not just the wealthy elite — then he or she will need a Congress that supports and promotes the “people’s agenda”.

And if one of the “bad guys” wins — as has happened for decades, subjecting our nation to economic plunder, endless war, corporate welfare, pay-to-play politics, divide-and-conquer tyranny, thus cheating everyday citizens out of their fair share of our vast national wealth — we need a Congress that will stop the decline and keep the worst from happening. We’ll need a Congress that will stop the looting of our economy, the wanton destruction of the environment, the promotion of militarization, the marginalization of everyday citizens, the attack on privacy and human rights, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.

Either way we need a “people’s Congress”, one that truly represents the people, reports to the people, works for the people, not Wall Street, not the MIC, not the Deep State, not the rich and powerful.

Congress creates and passes the laws that shape everything about our nation: how we treat our citizens, our freedoms, our responsibilities, our relations with every other country on the planet, how we treat the planet itself, war and peace, our economy, our politics, our infrastructure, our monetary and banking system … EVERYTHING!

What would a “people’s Congress” look like?

Currently there is an exemplary human being seeking election for president in 2024. He’s the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of John F Kennedy, both of whom gave their lives fighting the good fight for everyday citizens.

Let me be absolutely clear. While Robert F Kennedy, Jr represents a vast improvement over the current crop of swamp creatures seeking the presidency in 2024, my latest book is not per se an endorsement of RFK Jr for President. Realistically, there isn’t now and never will be a perfect person for the job. RFK Jr certainly means well but has some very indefensible and unevolved views, e.g. blind support for Israel, muddled thinking on health care. But in his defense and offering a solid justification for supporting his candidacy, he’s a thinking man, a good decent human being, and most importantly for the survival of the human race, he’s calling the endless US wars a fraud, and our entire foreign policy an abomination. He wants peace and cooperation, honesty and transparency, both here in America and abroad. He believes that government should work to the benefit of all citizens, not just the rich and powerful.

What my new book is saying is that WE DESPERATELY NEED A CONGRESS which embraces those values and that framework for governance, whether RFK Jr gets elected or not.

Many seem unable to wrap their heads around this simple, straightforward call to action. 

I’ll unpack it.

If RFK Jr. is elected in 2024, THEN HE  WILL NEED A CONGRESS THAT SUPPORTS AND PROMOTES AGENDA.

But if one of the “bad guys” wins, we will need a Congress that will prevent things from getting even worse.

So either way … WE NEED A “PEOPLE’S CONGRESS”!

Alternate iteration … WE NEED A KENNEDY CONGRESS! 

It’s obvious, wouldn’t you agree?

My new book is short but intense and offers specifics on what a grassroots campaign must do to identify and support “good guys” to replace the current crooks, liars and lapdogs in Congress.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Rachel.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/09/26/electing-a-kennedy-congress/feed/ 0 429784 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/03/john-f-kennedy-on-ending-the-us-war-on-vietnam-his-own-words/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/03/john-f-kennedy-on-ending-the-us-war-on-vietnam-his-own-words/#respond Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:42:27 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=142768 With the advent of a new Kennedy running for president, new life was given to JFK’s World Peace speech on June 10, 1963, both among some progressives, and even the LaRouche Schiller Institute. Their thesis is that Kennedy was planning on making peace with the Soviet Union and was going to withdraw US troops from South Vietnam. They allege that JFK had undergone a profound change since the near nuclear war he provoked with the Soviet Union the previous October, and had transformed into a genuine liberal, who would fight for peace and social justice. JFK had morphed into the shining example of what the US and its ideals could represent to the world. Some also considered a mortal threat to the CIA and national police agencies, resulting in their complicity in the assassination of Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which amounted to a coup against the people of the United States.

According to this story, Kennedy gave reality to the undying dream of the progressive movement that a genuinely progressive Democrat could become president and turn the country around to represent the US people. Underlying their dream is the assumption that Kennedy symbolized the exceptional nature of the US and its ennobling principles – a view held not only by progressives, but also by conservatives.

JFK was not the only Democrat conjured up as an embodiment of the example the US could be for the world. There were others: Henry Wallace, Robert F. Kennedy, Barack Obama (in 2007-2008), and Bernie. All were thought, if given a chance, to bring an end to US wars and hundreds of billions in war spending, bring national health care, racial justice, curtail the power of the national security state, of  the ruling rich, and so on.

I will review the June 10 speech in a subsequent article. Here I look at Kennedy’s position on the US war in Vietnam, which dramatically escalated to genocidal proportions after his assassination. Oliver Stone, in his film JFK, did much to popularize the view that Kennedy was assassinated because the Pentagon and CIA chiefs were opposed to ending US escalation in Vietnam.

What were Kennedy’s views on Vietnam after his June 10 World Peace speech?

In a press conference on July 17, 1963, JFK said: “for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Viet-Nam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there.”

Oliver Stone in JFK had excerpts of Kennedy’s September 2 TV interview with Walter Cronkite. But the film did not include this: “But these people who say we ought to withdraw from Vietnam are wholly wrong because if we withdrew from Vietnam the Communists would control Vietnam, pretty soon Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya, all of Southeast Asia… So I think we should stay… I don’t agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. That would be a great mistake.… We are in a desperate struggle against the Communist system…. It doesn’t do us any good to say, ‘Well, why don’t we all just go home and leave the world to those who are our enemies’… We are going to meet our responsibility.”

In his September 9, 1963 Huntley-Brinkley interview: “What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient with the government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay…we should not withdraw.”

In his September 12, 1963 press conference, JFK said, “we are for those things and those policies which help win the war there. That is why some 25,000 Americans have traveled 10,000 miles to participate in that struggle. What helps to win the war we support. What interferes with the war effort we oppose. I have already made it clear that any action by either government which may handicap the winning of the war is inconsistent with our policy or our objectives. This is the test which I think every agency and official of the United States Government must apply to all of our actions, and we shall be applying that test in various ways in the coming months…. We want the war to be won, the Communists to be contained and the Americans to go home…. We will follow the policy which I have indicated today of advancing those causes and issues which help win the war.”

These are repeated statements by Kennedy that the US would not leave Vietnam until the war – one against the Vietnamese people – had been won. There is more:

Oliver Stone’s JFK referred to Kennedy’s approval of the military recommendations of the National Security Action Memorandum 263 (October 11, 1963). The film alleges it would bring home all US troops in Vietnam in 1965.

NSAM 263 stated:

At a meeting on October 5, 1963, the President considered the recommendations contained in the report of Secretary McNamara and General Taylor on their mission to South Vietnam.

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.

After discussion of the remaining recommendations of the report, the President approved the instruction to Ambassador Lodge which is set forth in State Department telegram No. 534 to Saigon. McGeorge Bundy

The military recommendations in Section I B (1-3) of the report?

We recommend that:

1. General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas (I, II, and III Corps) by the end of 1964, and in the Delta (IV Corps) by the end of 1965….
2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
3. In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.

In NSAM 263, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national Security advisor, added:

The President has reviewed the discussions of South Vietnam which occurred in Honolulu, and has discussed the matter further with Ambassador Lodge. He directs that the following guidance be issued to all concerned:

1. It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all decisions and U.S. actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contributions to this purpose.”
2. The objectives of the United States with respect to the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel remain as stated in the White House statement of October 2, 1963.

That White House statement declared the US would stay at least until 1965 when the National Liberation Front was expected to be “suppressed.”

There is not even a hint that JFK was to withdraw US troops prior to an assured victory.

On October 31, 1963, JFK spoke of his plan to pull 1,000 troops from South Vietnam by end of 1963, though none had been pulled out when he spoke these words. The next day, the Kennedy administration engineered a coup that overthrew and executed South Vietnam President Diem, considered an obstacle to winning the war.

In his November 12, 1963 press conference Kennedy did say, “our object, to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country,” but added, “when the manipulation from the North is ended.”

Finally, from a second speech he was to give in Dallas the day he was shot:

“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.

“nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression – Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran…. 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.”

To his dying day, Kennedy stayed committed to continuing the war on Vietnam until victory by the neo-colonial regime in the South was assured. So why does the mythology that Kennedy vowed to end the US war in Vietnam persist in spite of the evidence? Because the US progressive movement remains dominated by the feeling the US can be redeemed by electing some progressive Democrat. It could have happened, it almost happened, and it is claimed it was happening under JFK. If only … this hope for change by somehow using the Democratic Party never dies. In reality, fundamental change becomes more real only when this milieu awakens from this dream, or else when they lose their powerful social weight. It requires some looking in the mirror by those inculcated since birth with the mythology that the US was – could have been – or could be the exceptional nation, a “shining city on a hill.” This American chauvinism, held by many in the left as much as the right, is a major roadblock in organizing a movement to build a working people’s political alternative to the two corporate-owned parties we have long endured.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stansfield Smith.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/08/03/john-f-kennedy-on-ending-the-us-war-on-vietnam-his-own-words/feed/ 0 416557 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/who-is-national-security-adviser-jake-sullivan-and-why-he-should-debate-rfk-jr/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/who-is-national-security-adviser-jake-sullivan-and-why-he-should-debate-rfk-jr/#respond Tue, 27 Jun 2023 18:23:58 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=141469 National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is one of the key people driving US foreign policy. He was mentored by Hillary Clinton with regime changes in Honduras, Libya and Syria. He was the link between Nuland and Biden during the 2014 coup in Ukraine. As reported by Seymour Hersh, Sullivan led the planning of the Nord Stream pipelines destruction in September 2022. Sullivan guides or makes many large and small foreign policy decisions.  This article will describe Jake Sullivan’s background, what he says, what he has been doing, where the US is headed and why this should be debated.

Background

Jake Sullivan was born in November 1976.  He describes his formative years like this:

I was raised in Minnesota in the 1980s, a child of the later Cold War – of Rocky IV, the Miracle on Ice, and ‘Tear down this wall’. The 90s were my high school and college years. The Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain disappeared. Germany was reunified. An American-led alliance ended a genocide in Bosnia and prevented one in Kosovo. I went to graduate school in England and gave fiery speeches on the floor of the Oxford Union about how the United States was a force for good in the world.

Sullivan’s education includes Yale (BA), Oxford (MA) and Yale again (JD). He went quickly from academic studies and legal work to political campaigning and government.

Sullivan made important contacts during his college years at elite institutions. For example, he worked with former Deputy Secretary of State and future Brookings Institution president, Strobe Talbott. After a few years clerking for judges, Sullivan transitioned to a law firm in his hometown of Minneapolis. He soon became chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar who connected him to the rising Senator Hillary Clinton.

Mentored by Hillary

Sullivan became a key adviser to Hillary Clinton in her campaign to be Democratic party nominee in 2008. At age 32, Jake Sullivan became deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning when she became secretary of state. He was her constant companion, travelling with her to 112 countries.

The Clinton/Sullivan foreign policy was soon evident. In Honduras, Clinton clashed with progressive Honduras President Manuel Zelaya over whether to re-admit Cuba to the OAS. Seven weeks later, on June 28, Honduran soldiers invaded the president’s home and kidnapped him out of the country, stopping en route at the US Air Base. The coup was so outrageous that even the US ambassador to Honduras denounced it. This was quickly over-ruled as the Clinton/Sullivan team played semantics games to say it was a coup but not a “military coup.” Thus the Honduran coup regime continued to receive US support. They quickly held a dubious election to make the restoration of President Zelaya “moot”. Clinton is proud of this success in her book “Hard Choices.”

Two years later the target was Libya. With Victoria Nuland as State Department spokesperson, the Clinton/Sullivan team promoted sensational claims of a pending massacre and urged intervention in Libya under the “responsibility to protect.”  When the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the US, Qatar and other NATO members distorted that and started air attacks on Libyan government forces. Today, 12 years later, Libya is still in chaos and war. The sensational claims of 2011 were later found  to be false.

When the Libyan government was overthrown in Fall 2011, the Clinton/Sullivan State Department and CIA plotted to seize the Libyan weapons arsenal. Weapons were transferred to the Syrian opposition. US Ambassador Stevens and other Americans were killed in an internecine conflict over control of the weapons cache.

Undeterred, Clinton and Sullivan stepped up their attempts to overthrow the Syrian government. They formed a club of western nations and allies called the “Friends of Syria.” The “Friends” divided tasks who would do what in the campaign to topple the sovereign state.  Former policy planner at the Clinton/Sullivan State Department, Ann Marie Slaughter, called for “foreign military intervention.”  Sullivan knew they were arming violent sectarian fanatics to overthrow the Syrian government. In an email to Hillary released by Wikileaks, Sullivan noted “AQ is on our side in Syria.”

Biden’s adviser during the 2014 Ukraine Coup

After being Clinton’s policy planner, Sullivan  became President Obama’s director of policy planning (Feb 2011 to Feb 2013) then national security adviser to Vice President Biden (Feb 2013 to August 2014).

In his position with Biden, Sullivan had a close-up view of the February 2014 Ukraine coup. He was a key contact between Victoria Nuland, overseeing the coup, and Biden. In the secretly recorded conversation where Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine discuss how to manage the coup, Nuland remarks that Jake Sullivan told her “you need Biden.” Biden gave the “attaboy” and the coup was “midwifed” following a massacre of  police AND protesters on the Maidan plaza.

Sullivan must have observed Biden’s use of the vice president’s position for personal family gain. He would have been aware of  Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board of the Burisima Ukrainian energy company, and the reason Joe Biden demanded that the Ukrainian special prosecutor who was investigating Burisima to be fired. Biden later bragged and joked about this.

In December 2013, at a conference hosted by Chevron Corporation, Victoria Nuland said the US has spent five BILLION dollars to bring “democracy” to Ukraine.

Sullivan helped create Russiagate

 Jake Sullivan was a leading member of the 2016 Hillary Clinton team which  promoted Russiagate.  The false claim that Trump was secretly contacting Russia was promoted initially to distract from negative news about Hillary Clinton and to smear Trump as a puppet of  Putin.  Both the Mueller and Durham investigations officially discredited the main claims of Russiagate. There was no collusion. The accusations were untrue, and the FBI gave them unjustified credence for political reasons.

Sullivan played a major role in the deception as shown by his “Statement from Jake Sullivan on New Report Exposing Trump’s Secret Line of Communication to Russia.”

 Sullivan’s misinformation

 Jake Sullivan is a good speaker, persuasive and with a dry sense of humor. At the same time, he can be disingenuous. Some of his statements are false. For example, in June 2017 Jake Sullivan was interviewed by Frontline television program about US foreign policy and especially US-Russia relations. Regarding NATO’s overthrow of the Libyan government, Sullivan says, “Putin came to believe that the United States had taken Russia for a ride in the UN Security Council that authorized the use of force in Libya…. He thought he was authorizing a purely defensive mission…. Now on the actual language of the resolution, it’s plain as day that Putin was wrong about that.”  Contrary to what Sullivan claims, the UN Security Council resolution clearly authorizes a no-fly zone for the protection of civilians, no more. It’s plain as day there was NOT authorization for NATO’s offensive attacks and “regime change.”

Planning the Nord Stream Pipeline destruction

The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, filled with 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas, was a monstrous environmental disaster. The destruction also caused huge economic damage to Germany and other European countries. It has been a boon for US liquefied natural gas exports which have surged to fill the gap, but at a high price. Many European factories dependent on cheap gas have closed down.  Tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs.

Seymour Hersh reported details of  How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline. He says, “Biden authorized Jake Sullivan to bring together an interagency group to come up with a plan.” A sabotage plan was prepared and officials in Norway and Denmark included in the plot. The day after the sabotage, Jake Sullivan tweeted

I spoke to my counterpart Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe of Denmark about the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines. The U.S. is supporting efforts to investigate and we will continue our work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.

Ellerman-Kingombe may have been one of the Danes informed in advance of the bombing. He is close to the US military and NATO command.

Since then, the Swedish investigation of Nord Stream bombing has made little progress. Contrary to Sullivan’s promise in the tweet, the US has not supported other efforts to investigate. When Russia proposed an independent international investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage at the UN Security Council, the resolution failed due to lack of support from the US and US allies. Hungary’s foreign minister recently asked,

How on earth is it possible that someone blows up critical infrastructure on the territory of Europe and no one has a say, no one condemns, no one carries out an investigation?

 Economic Plans devoid of reality

 Ten weeks ago Jake Sullivan delivered a major speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. He explains how the Biden administration is pursuing a “modern industrial and innovation strategy.” They are trying to implement a “foreign policy for the middle class” which better integrates domestic and foreign policies. The substance of their plan is to increase investments in semiconductors, clean energy minerals and manufacturing. However the new strategy is very unlikely to achieve the stated goal to “lift up all of America’s people, communities, and industries.”  Sullivan’s speech completely ignores the elephant in the room: the costly US Empire including wars and 800 foreign military bases which consume about 60% of the total discretionary budget. Under Biden and Sullivan’s foreign policy, there is no intention to rein in the extremely costly military industrial complex. It is not even mentioned.

US exceptionalism 2.0

In December 2018 Jake Sullivan wrote an essay titled “American Exceptionalism, Reclaimed.” It shows his foundational beliefs and philosophy. He separates himself from the “arrogant brand of exceptionalism” demonstrated by Dick Cheney.  He also criticizes the “American first” policies of Donald Trump.  Sullivan advocates for “a new American exceptionalism” and “American leadership in the 21^st Century.”

Sullivan has a shallow Hollywood understanding of history: “The United States stopped Hitler’s Germany, saved Western Europe from economic ruin, stood firm against the Soviet Union, and supported the spread of democracy worldwide.”  He believes “The fact that the major powers have not returned to war with one another since 1945 is a remarkable achievement of American statecraft.”

Jake Sullivan is young in age but his ideas are old. The United States is no longer dominant economically or politically. It is certainly not “indispensable.” More and more countries are objecting to US bullying and defying Washington’s demands. Even key allies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are ignoring US requests.  The trend  toward a multipolar world is escalating. Jake Sullivan is trying to reverse the trend but reality and history are working against him.  Over the past four or five decades, the US has gone from being an investment, engineering and manufacturing powerhouse to a deficit spending consumer economy waging perpetual war with a bloated military industrial complex.

Instead of reforming and rebuilding the US, the national security state expends much of its energy and resources trying to destabilize countries deemed to be “adversaries”.

Conclusion

Previous national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbignew Brzezinski were very  influential.

Kissinger is famous for wooing China and dividing the communist bloc.  Jake Sullivan is now wooing India in hopes of dividing that country from China and the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

Brzezinski is famous for plotting the Afghanistan trap. By destabilizing Afghanistan with foreign terrorists beginning 1978, the US induced the Soviet Union to send troops to Afghanistan at the Afghan government’s request. The result was the collapse of the progressive Afghan government, the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and 40 years of war and chaos.

On 28 February 2022, just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine, Jake Sullivan’s mentor, Hillary Clinton, was explicit: “Afghanistan is the model.” It appears the US intentionally escalated the provocations in Ukraine to induce Russia to intervene. The goal is to “weaken Russia.” This explains why the US has spent over $100 billion sending weapons and other support to Ukraine. This explains why the US and UK undermined negotiations which could have ended the conflict early on.

The Americans who oversaw the 2014 coup in Kiev, are the same ones running US foreign policy today:  Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan.  Prospects for ending the Ukraine war are very poor as long as they are in power.

The Democratic Party constantly emphasizes “democracy” yet there is no debate or discussion over US foreign policy. What kind of “democracy” is this where crucial matters of life and death are not discussed?

Robert F Kennedy Jr is now running in the Democratic Party primary. He has a well informed and critical perspective on US foreign policy including the never ending wars, the intelligence agencies and the conflict in Ukraine.

Jake Sullivan is a skilled debater. Why doesn’t he debate Democratic Party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr over US foreign policy and national security?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rick Sterling.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/27/who-is-national-security-adviser-jake-sullivan-and-why-he-should-debate-rfk-jr/feed/ 0 407555 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/26/the-fall-of-the-west/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/26/the-fall-of-the-west/#respond Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:00:50 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=141444 In his bestselling book of 1987, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy chronicles the rise of western power and its world dominance from 1500 to the present. He reports that the rise was not due to any particular event, nor even an unusual series of events. It was, in fact, neither foreseen nor even recognized until it was already well under way, although it may be accurately ascribed to multiple factors, which Kennedy discusses. The same may be said of the ongoing fall of western power.

Although the decline of the West is rapidly becoming more evident to informed observers of current events, the start of that decline is less easy to pinpoint, in part because it seemed less inevitable and more reversible until quite recently. Was the high point the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Victorian England? The U.S. Eisenhower administration? Some might date it from the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, marking the beginning of the truncated “New American Century.”

That “century” appears to be ending in the manner of so many other powers that fill the pages of Kennedy’s book – through imperial overreach, excessive military spending, lagging economic productivity and competitiveness, and failure to invest in the physical, technical and human resources necessary to remain a dominant power. In short, the West is flagging.

The signs for this are too evident to ignore. The industrial base of the West is withering. Post-WWII, the U.S. dominated because it was the only major industrial power to survive unscathed, and its investment in western Europe and Japan increased the wealth of all three. Over the last half of the 20th century, however, these economies began to shift much of their industry to countries with cheaper labor and more efficient production, such that by the 21st century much of their manufacturing capability had vanished, and they became mainly consumer societies.

2023 has become a watershed year for the power shift, due to dramatic western weaknesses exposed by the Ukraine war. The war revealed that a relatively modest economy (Russia) had the capability to outproduce the U.S. and all the NATO countries combined in war materiel. The U.S. “arsenal of democracy” and its European partners proved unable to provide more than a fraction of the weapons and ammunition that Russia’s factories produced. Ukrainian soldiers supplied by NATO countries found themselves vastly outnumbered in tanks, artillery, missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft, and even the latest hypersonic and electronic weapons that were arrayed against them in seemingly limitless supply. The U.S. and European NATO partners could only cobble together small numbers of incompatible weapons from their diminishing inventories, and make promises of future deliveries after months or years.

But the U.S. and its allies were not counting on physical weapons alone. They weaponized the U.S. dollar, through seizures of Russian accounts in U.S., European and other banks totaling more than $300 billion, and through application of economic sanctions, including expulsion of Russian banks from the SWIFT dollar trading system. This also backfired.

First, Russia retaliated by seizing U.S. and European assets within Russia, in equal or greater amounts. Second, they “pivoted east,” negotiating new trading partnerships with China, India and other countries. Third, they and their new partners, including other targets of U.S. sanctions, began to develop financial agreements to displace or reduce the use of SWIFT. Even countries that had heretofore not been threatened with asset seizure or economic sanctions, like Brazil, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia, joined these agreements, in order to expand their trading base, and as insurance against use of the USD for financial pressure or threats. The result was that the Russian economy proved astonishingly resilient – moreso even than many of the NATO countries. The Russian GDP fell by less than 2% in 2022 and is expected to rise by up to 2% in 2023, despite the war and sanctions. Russia has opted for a sustainable but inexorable war with less than 1/6 the casualties of Ukraine. Visitors report that it hardly feels like a country at war. The annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum attracted 17,000 participants from 130 countries and concluded 900 deals and contracts worth 3.9 trillion rubles ($46 billion).

The decline of Europe was further illustrated by the consequences of the US bombing of the Nordstream gas pipelines in September, 2022, and the sanctions on Russian natural gas and petroleum products imposed by NATO. Together, these ended the competitiveness of the European economies, which had hitherto thrived on accessibility to cheap Russian fuel. As predicted by Radek Sikorsky, MEP, this meant

… double-digit inflation, skyrocketing energy prices, and electricity shortage, … Germany will be deindustrialized, … German industries, scientists and engineers will move to the US, who will generously accept them.

And Europe will be set back a couple of decades. Already, most European countries — France, Italy, Spain etc. — have had zero growth in GDP-per-capita for more than a decade. Add in inflation, the standard of living will soon be down 30-40%.

In effect, the U.S. had defeated its NATO “partners” (mainly Germany) and cannibalized their industries for the sake of its own benefit, potentially short-lived.

But the United States believed that its mighty dollar could offset its faded industry and increasingly toothless military – that it could be printed in unlimited amounts without losing value, and could become its most powerful weapon. The history of this dollar began in 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that, in effect, the U.S. dollar would no longer be backed by gold, but rather by whatever the dollar could purchase in the U.S., i.e. by the U.S. economy itself. This became widely accepted because a) the U.S. was the world’s largest economy, b) the two great international regulatory financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were also based on the dollar, and c) nearly all the world’s countries outside of the Soviet Union and other socialist societies used the dollar as the reserve currency for their own money. In addition, the world shed fixed exchange rates, with their troublesome periodic revaluations, for floating rates, which generally made the changes more gradual and more stable for the major currencies, and especially the dollar.

The effect of so many dollars circulating so widely was to invest most of the world in protecting its value. The more a country’s non-dollar currency became based on the dollar as its reserve currency, the more the incentive for that country to defend the dollar. Later, as the U.S. began to lose its industry, it came to depend on this value to maintain its economy. It marketed its debt to other countries and “persuaded” other countries to fund U.S. bases on their territories for the purpose of “mutual defense.” This is part of the reason the U.S. now has more than 800 military bases worldwide. Although the U.S. national debt is, at time of writing, more than $33 trillion, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board seem to think that they can continue to unload it without limit onto other countries.

Decision makers in the U.S. seem to think that they have found the goose that lays the golden egg: when they need more money, they have only to borrow indefinitely and market their IOUs to buyers, many of whom don’t really have the option of saying no. Thus, for example, it used unlimited borrowing to fund without hesitation a very costly Ukraine war by more than $100 billion in 2022 alone, while denying basic services to its own citizens.

But borrowing is not the only way that the U.S. raises funds. Given the stability of the dollar, many countries store or invest them in the U.S. But when a country has a disagreement with the U.S., or chooses a leadership or policies not approved by the U.S., the U.S. is not above confiscating those funds. In 2011, this is what it did with $32 billion of Libyan funds, the largest but by no means the only such confiscation of another nation’s funds at that time. Since then, similar confiscations have occurred with Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and other nations. Eclipsing Libya, however, was the confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion by the U.S and its mostly NATO allies, an estimated $100 billion of it by the U.S. alone.

Recently, however, other countries are becoming wary of the U.S. and choosing other options that reduce their participation in what they view as a Mafia-style protection racket as well as their placement of assets in places where they could be confiscated in case of disagreement. As noted earlier, a growing number of countries are opting to either bypass the dollar-based SWIFT system, or to complement it with new agreements where goods are paid in another currency or with multiple currencies. Even Saudi Arabia has begun accepting payment in Chinese Yuan and paying Russia in rubles. In addition, China and other countries have decided to limit or reduce their USD exposure. So far, this has had no appreciable effect on the value of the USD. But if the dollar starts to become less desirable, it may become a questionable investment, in which case the U.S. risks losing its status as a world power – even a modest one. At that point, having demolished German and other European access to cheap fuel, the U.S. will join the rest of the west in its decline, leaving the rising economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia and other countries in Asia, Latin America and possibly Africa to displace them.

Is the Dollar overvalued? By the laws of supply and demand, one could argue that it is not. But it is a fair question when the supply is enormous and growing, and the demand is artificial and coerced. What will happen when the dollar’s near monopoly as an exchange medium ends? The dollar has not always been the preeminent tool for pricing international transactions. At the turn of the 20th century, the British pound sterling was literally the gold standard. But the British economy was fading, and the pound continued to fall against both gold and the USD. Now, although it is still a major currency, it is a mere shadow of its former self. If or when the many dollars worldwide come home to claim their true value, we may discover that they buy little more than castles of sand.

When world power has shifted elsewhere, the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, France and the entire West may come to depend for glory upon their historical and cultural treasures, like the ones of other bygone civilizations that western tourists once visited so widely.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/26/the-fall-of-the-west/feed/ 0 407093 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/19/png-court-finds-boship-kaiwi-guilty-over-death-of-jenelyn-kennedy/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/19/png-court-finds-boship-kaiwi-guilty-over-death-of-jenelyn-kennedy/#respond Mon, 19 Jun 2023 05:11:37 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=89941 PNG Post-Courier

The Waigani National Court has finally handed down a ruling finding Boship Kaiwi guilty of causing the death of his wife Jenelyn Kennedy three years ago.

Despite persistent denials by Kaiwi that he had caused the death of Kennedy, he admitted to the court during the trial that he had elbowed and punched Kennedy around 18 June 2020.

Kaiwi’s defence lawyer had also argued that there was no direct evidence by the state to prove that Kaiwi had caused the death of Kennedy.

• READ MORE: Tragic life and death of Jenelyn — babysitter tells of PNG torture case
• Other Jenelyn Kennedy case reports

However, acting judge Justice Laura Wawun-Kuvi, when handing down the verdict on Thursday, ruled that the court was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Kaiwi had caused the death of Kennedy.

Justice Wawun-Kuvi was satisfied with the witness statements that Kaiwi actually had an abusive relationship with Kennedy and he did cause the injuries that led to the death of Kennedy.

“I’m satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant (Kaiwi) had caused the death of Kennedy,” Justice Wawun-Kuvi said in her ruling.

The judge therefore found Kaiwi guilty.

A decision on sentence will follow in the coming weeks once the pre-sentence report and other documents are presented to court recommending the type of penalty to be imposed on Kaiwi.

Kaiwi was accused of torturing and assaulting his 19-year-old wife Jenelyn Kennedy between June 18 and 23, 2020, leading to her death.

Her case became a major issue and sparked public outrage and demands for tougher action over domestic violence in Papua New Guinea.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/19/png-court-finds-boship-kaiwi-guilty-over-death-of-jenelyn-kennedy/feed/ 0 404956 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/billionaire-harlan-crow-also-bankrolled-gop-lawmakers-blocking-scotus-ethics-reform/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/billionaire-harlan-crow-also-bankrolled-gop-lawmakers-blocking-scotus-ethics-reform/#respond Tue, 09 May 2023 21:31:37 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/harlan-crow-senate-judiciary-committee-republicans-supreme-court-reforms

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday sent a letter asking Harlan Crow—the billionaire GOP megadonor who has secretly showered U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts since the mid-1990s—to provide a full accounting of his financial ties to Thomas and any other judges on the high court.

It comes as "no surprise" that none of the panel's nine Republicans signed the letter, Accountable.US declared Tuesday, because they have collectively accepted nearly half a million dollars in campaign cash from Crow since the turn of the century, as a new analysis from the watchdog group shows.

Last month, one day after ProPublica published its bombshell report on Crow's under-the-table funding of near-annual luxury vacations for Thomas—the first of what would become many revelations about the two men's financial relationship—Accountable.US calculated that the current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee received $453,300 from Crow between 2001 and 2022. The group revised that figure up to $457,000 on Tuesday in light of a $3,700 donation Crow made to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) earlier this year.

The following is a list of Crow's total contributions to the nine GOP lawmakers on the panel as well as their affiliated PACs and joint fundraising committees, in descending order:

• Cornyn: $294,800
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa): $46,600
• Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.): $23,900
• Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas): $23,500
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.): $20,600
• Sen. Mike Lee (Utah): $19,500
• Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.): $13,400
• Sen. John Kennedy (La.): $8,300
• Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.): $6,400

"There should be bipartisan outrage about the undisclosed gifts and travel billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow has given Justice Thomas," Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig said last month. "Senate Judiciary Republicans should join their Democratic colleagues to act. However, their silence so far may be because they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Crow as well."

"The highest court in the land should have the highest ethical standards," he added. "When it doesn't, Congress should exert its oversight authority."

Not only have Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee with apparent conflicts of interest refused to join their Democratic colleagues in trying to establish enforceable ethics rules for the Supreme Court, but they have attempted to downplay the seriousness of the court's growing crisis of legitimacy.

Several of the panel's GOP members used last week's hearing on proposed Supreme Court ethics reforms—a hearing Chief Justice John Roberts refused to testify at despite mounting evidence of possible corruption involving Thomas and others, including Roberts himself as well as Justice Neil Gorsuch—as "an opportunity for political grandstanding and performative outrage," Accountable.US noted Tuesday.

\u201cNEW BLOG: The Supreme Court is facing a full-blown legitimacy crisis thanks to the corruption of three of its conservative justices.\n\nWithout reform, public trust in one of our core American institutions will continue to plummet \ud83d\udc47\nhttps://t.co/cygCcY8TsJ\u201d

— Accountable.US (@Accountable.US) 1683654643

"Cornyn claimed Congress did not have the authority to regulate the courts due to separation of powers—a claim that was disproven by an expert witness that testified at the hearing," Accountable.US pointed out. "Cruz claimed the hearing was not about judicial ethics, but instead, was an attempt to attack Justice Thomas for having rich friends."

Lee went so far as to say that "when this chapter of American history is written, those who attack Justice Thomas today will be justly dismissed as intolerant bigots."

Meanwhile, Graham, the ranking member, accused the left of trying to "delegitimize the court and cherry-pick examples to make a point." Echoing his right-wing ally, Grassley argued that recent revelations are part of a long-term effort to "cast doubt on certain judges and justices, all because the left is opposed to recent court rulings."

Kennedy, for his part, denounced "attacks on conservative justices" as "targeted" and "exaggerated" and dismissed proposed Supreme Court ethics rules as "unnecessary."

Two days after right-wing senators accused reform advocates of launching what Cruz called a "smear campaign" against Thomas, ProPublica revealed that Crow also paid tens of thousands of dollars for the jurist's grandnephew to attend a pair of elite private schools. This came after earlier exposés about Crow footing the bill for yacht trips, buying and remodeling Thomas' mother's home, and more.

Given the mounting evidence of potential connections between Crow's gifts, which Thomas sought to keep hidden, and Thomas' inclination to rule in ways favorable to his superrich benefactor, calls for the judge to resign or face impeachment are growing.

Not only does Crow have links to numerous right-wing groups involved in Supreme Court cases since Thomas was first confirmed to the bench in 1991, but his own real estate company, Crow Holdings, was directly implicated in a 2021 case before the court.

As The Lever reported last month, Thomas voted to end the Covid-era federal eviction moratorium after Crow Holdings called the lifesaving policy a threat to its "profit margins." Now, as a group of New York City landlords prepares to ask the high court to overturn local rent control laws condemned by Crow Holdings—a move that would endanger rent stabilization efforts nationwide—"there is no indication" Thomas would recuse himself, the outlet noted.

Moreover, as Common Dreams reported last week, an Americans for Tax Fairness analysis of campaign finance data shows that after Thomas provided a deciding vote in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, the Crow family's average annual campaign contributions soared by 862%, from $163,241 before 2010 to $1.57 million since.

This massive increase, which is partly reflected in Crow's donations to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, underscores how the 5-4 ruling that effectively legalized unlimited political spending has strengthened the wealthy's ability to shape electoral outcomes, further undermining U.S. democracy.

On Tuesday, The Lever argued that the main goal of Crow and other billionaires who provide gifts and outside money to members of the Supreme Court is not to obtain certain decisions in specific cases, given that the court's right-wing ideologues would likely rule conservatively anyway, but to prevent GOP appointees from becoming more liberal over time—a phenomenon that has occurred in the past.

Alluding to Monday's letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), The Washington Post reported that "if Crow ignores the request for information by the committee's May 22 deadline, it's unclear what Durbin's next move would be."

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is returning to Capitol Hill after an illness kept her away from the Senate since February. Feinstein's absence has left Durbin without a majority on the panel, enabling the GOP minority to impede action, but her return would open up options.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Durbin did not rule out the possibility of a subpoena, saying that "everything is on the table."

In addition to the implementation of robust ethics rules, progressives have called for other far-reaching changes to disempower the country's "rogue" Supreme Court justices, including expanding the court. Seats have been added seven times throughout U.S. history.

Polling data shows that public approval of the nation's chief judicial body has decreased sharply in the months since its reactionary supermajority eliminated the constitutional right to abortion care, among other harmful and unpopular decisions. According to a survey conducted last month, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults no longer have confidence in the high court.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/billionaire-harlan-crow-also-bankrolled-gop-lawmakers-blocking-scotus-ethics-reform/feed/ 0 393616 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/04/can-the-u-s-adjust-sensibly-to-a-multipolar-world/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/04/can-the-u-s-adjust-sensibly-to-a-multipolar-world/#respond Thu, 04 May 2023 14:23:38 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=139900
In his 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, historian Paul Kennedy reassured Americans that the decline the United States was facing after a century of international dominance was “relative and not absolute, and is therefore perfectly natural; and that the only serious threat to the real interests of the United States can come from a failure to adjust sensibly to the newer world order.”

Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant violation of the UN Charter in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony.

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While U.S. leaders have been losing wars and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching:

De-dollarizing global trade

For decades, the U.S. dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan.

Illegal, unilateral U.S. sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to U.S. financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to only 58% by 2022.

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that U.S. sanctions against Russia risk undermining the role of the dollar as the world’s global reserve currency.

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio lamented that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7s

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is now higher than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Now the growth of the Global South will be boosted by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil. 

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

Movement towards “strategic autonomy” for Europe

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “strategic autonomy” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published. 

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side, insisting that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.” 

The rise of progressive governments in Latin America

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for U.S. domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with U.S. demands. The entire region rejects the U.S. embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, and largely doomed the gathering. 

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States. 

To reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar, South America’s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to create a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur — South America’s major trade bloc. While U.S. influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade increasing from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has raised the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

Peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia 

One of the false premises of U.S. foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has achieved what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity. 

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have visited each others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies backed al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011. 

At a meeting in Jordan on May 1, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and U.S. occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped evacuate Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate peace talks, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and other countries. 

Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to U.S. war-making

The proposal by President Lula of Brazil for a “peace club” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people out of poverty, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of U.S. and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for U.S. politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.

Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs has grave misgivings about the U.S. ability to adjust. As he recently warned, “Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/04/can-the-u-s-adjust-sensibly-to-a-multipolar-world/feed/ 0 392468 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/memo-reveals-how-sandra-day-oconnor-helped-get-george-w-bush-to-the-white-house/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/memo-reveals-how-sandra-day-oconnor-helped-get-george-w-bush-to-the-white-house/#respond Wed, 03 May 2023 19:41:12 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/sandra-day-o-connor

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor played a greater role than previously known in handing the highly contentious 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, a document released Tuesday by the Library of Congress revealed.

It has long been known that O'Connor—who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan and was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court—wanted Bush to win the 2000 election, at least in part because of her right-wing views; her admiration for his father, former President George H. W. Bush; and because she wanted to retire after a Republican president nominated her replacement.

However, the newly released documents—part of a trove of former Justice John Paul Stevens' papers—include a four-page memo O'Connor sent to her colleagues on December 10, 2000, even before they heard arguments in Bush v. Gore. Her memo laid the groundwork for the controversial 5-4 ruling that stopped Florida's court-ordered recount in a too-close-to-call contest between Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore and gave the presidency to the Republican Texas governor.

In her memo, O'Connor attacked the unanimous November 21, 2000 Florida Supreme Court decision that the results of manual ballot recounts in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties must be included in the final state tally, while giving the three counties five days to certify their results.

"Before there was 2020 there was 2000."

During that period, Bush's legal team appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court while self-described "dirty trickster" Matt Schlapp and future seven-count felon Roger Stone led an effort to fly hundreds of paid operatives to Florida to harass and intimidate Miami-Dade officials—the so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot"—in a bid to thwart their court-ordered work.

"I am concerned that the Florida Supreme Court transgressed the lines of authority drawn by Article II of the federal Constitution in substantially changing the state Legislature's statutory scheme for the appointment of presidential electors," O'Connor wrote.

"The Florida Supreme Court provided no uniform, statewide method for identifying and separating the undervotes," she noted, a reference to instances when voting machines could not read ballots.

\u201cBefore there was 2020 there was 2000 ....\n\nhttps://t.co/8gHDBXXdgK\u201d

— Jocelyn Benson (@Jocelyn Benson) 1683072858

"Accordingly, there was no guarantee that those ballots deemed undervotes had not been previously tabulated," O'Connor asserted. "More importantly, the court failed to provide any standard more specific than the 'intent of the voter' standard to govern this statewide undervote recount. Therefore, each individual county was left to devise its own standards."

O'Connor noted that the Florida Legislature "has created a detailed, if not perfectly crafted statutory scheme that provides for the appointment of presidential electors by direct election," and that "the Legislature has designated the secretary of state as the 'chief election officer.'"

Florida's secretary of state at the time, Katherine Harris, was not only a Republican, she also co-chaired Bush's campaign in the state. On November 26, 2000 Harris declared Bush the winner in Florida by 537 votes, even though there were counties still tallying ballots.

Ignoring this obvious conflict of interest, O'Connor said the Florida Supreme Court "disregarded the secretary of state's delegated duty to exercise her discretion to determine whether to accept the state's late returns" and whether a manual recount requested by Gore was warranted.

Gore had asked for recounts in four heavily Democratic counties amid drama over dimpled, pregnant, and hanging chads; butterfly and caterpillar ballots; write-in votes; overcounts; undercounts; and a bewildering barrage of strange new terms. Some political commentators have argued that Gore's failure to request a statewide manual recount may have been a fatal miscalculation.

\u201cA reminder that the Republicans successfully stole a presidential election 23 years ago...and their hackish Justices on the Supreme Court played a key role in their doing so. https://t.co/2qkSr2svmt\u201d

— @Ben_Alpers@mastodon.online \ud83d\uddfd (@@Ben_Alpers@mastodon.online \ud83d\uddfd) 1683070110

The day after O'Connor circulated her memo, Justice Anthony Kennedy, another Reagan appointee and frequent swing vote, wrote to right-wing Chief Justice William Rehnquist endorsing her "very sound approach."

Rehnquist—who was appointed by Republican former President Richard Nixon—was a proponent of what is now called the independent state legislature theory (ISLT), the fringe right-wing notion that state lawmakers alone can regulate federal elections. Hard-right Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the five votes for Bush, also embraced the dubious theory.

Prominent purveyors of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" have cited ISLT when pushing state lawmakers to help overturn President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. Thomas' wife Ginni Thomas—who in 2000 solicited resumes for positions in the presumptive Bush administration before her husband cast his decisive vote in Bush v. Gore—unsuccessfully pressed Arizona state lawmakers to invoke ISLT in service of Trump's ill-fated effort to reverse his 2020 loss.

Notably, Bush's legal team in Bush v. Gore included current right-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina voting rights case currently before the court, could decide the legal validity of ISLT.

\u201cOne member of George W. Bush's legal team was especially enthusiastic about the "independent state legislature" theory: Brett Kavanaugh. \n\nHere he is endorsing it in 2000. \n\nNow Kavanaugh gets a chance to write it into law. Talk about a long game. https://t.co/VlnfRdeCy6\u201d

— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern) 1670424929

On December 12, 2000 the justices ruled in a 7-2 per curiam opinion that Florida's court-ordered recount must be stopped on equal protection grounds, and 5-4 that there was no other way to recount all of the contested votes in a timely manner. Rehnquist, Kennedy, O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas voted in favor of Bush, while Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, and Stevens dissented.

In his stirring dissent, Stevens presciently noted that "although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judges as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Four out of the five justices who sided with Bush were accused of conflicts of interest: Rehnquist and O'Connor were septuagenarians who had stated their desire to retire during a Republican presidency—the latter reportedly exclaimed "this is terrible" in response to a TV news report showing Gore leading on election night; Thomas' wife was headhunting personnel for a potential Bush administration; and two of Scalia's sons worked for law firms representing Bush. None of the four justices recused themselves from Bush v. Gore. Bush later nominated Eugene Scalia for U.S. labor solicitor.

\u201cWhen I was a kid I really really looked up to the Supreme Court justices. We all learned how they get lifetime appointments to make sure they can\u2019t be influenced etc\u2026with Thomas, Alito, O\u2019Connor, Kavanaugh, and all\u2026I definitely don\u2019t feel the same way.\n\nhttps://t.co/6YZYqMFvAM\u201d

— Yuh-Line Niou (@Yuh-Line Niou) 1683092690

O'Connor—who is now 93 years old—would come to have regrets, which she expressed years after her 2006 retirement. In 2013, she told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that Bush v. Gore "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation."

"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," she said. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"

There were other reasons why some commentators refer to the 2000 presidential election as "stolen." Chiefly, massive voter disenfranchisement resulting from racist policies of Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—the GOP candidate's brother—played what one federal civil rights official called an "outcome-determinative" role in the state's, and therefore the nation's, results.

Scalia infamously dismissed his friend Bader Ginsburg's concerns over Black disenfranchisement as the "Al Sharpton Footnote," and habitually advised Americans disturbed by Bush v. Gore to "get over it."

\u201cThe article included extensive evidence that Ginsburg was right to be concerned. When Scalia died 2 years later, his obnoxious & dismissive Sharpton remark - which said a great deal about who he was - didn\u2019t make it into the many think pieces about his tenure on the Court.\u201d

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sherrilyn Ifill) 1683083845

However, it was ultimately the Supreme Court's cessation of the unfinished Florida recounts, and Gore's subsequent meek acquiescence "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy," that handed victory to Bush.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/03/memo-reveals-how-sandra-day-oconnor-helped-get-george-w-bush-to-the-white-house/feed/ 0 392369 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/22/robert-kennedy-ill-close-all-the-military-bases-and-bring-the-troops-home/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/22/robert-kennedy-ill-close-all-the-military-bases-and-bring-the-troops-home/#respond Sat, 22 Apr 2023 15:40:54 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=139515 Robert F Kennedy kicked off his bid for the Presidency proving he is for pretty much everything present-day politicians are against: He is against military expansion, he is against censorship, against the CIA, against authoritarianism. He’ll get no mainstream media coverage for this! So we’ll give him some air time and discuss his ideas on Redacted. What do you think? Has he got a chance?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Redacted.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/22/robert-kennedy-ill-close-all-the-military-bases-and-bring-the-troops-home/feed/ 0 389728 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/17/robert-f-kennedy-jr-to-heal-the-great-divide/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/17/robert-f-kennedy-jr-to-heal-the-great-divide/#respond Mon, 17 Apr 2023 23:34:21 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=139391 It has been fifty-five years since Senator Robert F. Kennedy stepped onto the presidential nominating stage to try to mend the massive breach that had opened in American society.  The country was torn asunder by the Vietnam War, racism, poverty, the assassination of President Kennedy and the soon-to-be assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Chaos reigned as Lyndon Johnson lied and Richard Nixon matched him in verbal and actual treachery.  A war between Middle America and the elites running the government was breaking out across the country.  A great divide between whites and blacks, rich and poor, the working class and the upper class was opening wide.  The Tet Offensive had just ripped the face off the official lies about the course of the war in Vietnam and the emperor, Lyndon Jonson, stood naked and would soon announce that he would not run again.

On March 16, 1968, Senator Kennedy declared his candidacy with these words:

I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I’m obliged to do all that I can.

I run to seek new policies – policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.

By the end of 1968, a plague year if there ever were one, Richard Nixon, together with his goon squad, prepared to occupy the White House, Vietnam raged on, and everything King and Kennedy stood for seemed lost.  Ignorance, vituperation, and the divide-and-conquer technique long practiced by the power elites set into the body politic like a deadly cancer.  Something died, all hope seemed lost, and the perilous course RFK spoke of was never stopped.  Jackals with polished faces have sat in the White House ever since.

Today hope is resurrected.  Enter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. center stage who will declare his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president on Wednesday, April 19, in Boston, Massachusetts.

The wheel of history has turned and 2023 resembles 1968 in many ways while getting worse in others.  The divide in the country remains but has greatly widened.  The CIA and the intelligence agencies totally control the mainstream media now.  The Pentagon’s budget has increased exponentially.  The U.S. wages a savage war against Russia in Ukraine under the blatant lie of defending freedom while supporting Nazis and greatly risking nuclear war.  It provokes war with China.  Permanent war is government policy with military bases and CIA and special forces all over the world, waging semi-clandestine wars, or maybe just wars that people don’t want to know about.  The gap between the rich and the poor has widened while the elites mock working class people as moronic deplorables.  The Department of Defense controls the development, manufacturing, clinical testing, supply, production, and distribution of the mRNA vaccines, while the criminal pharmaceutical companies reap obscene profits.  Lies are piled upon lies in what amounts to an Orwellian nightmare.  And while LBJ and Nixon have been replaced by Joe Biden, the warfare state roll on.

Some things have changed, of course.  In 1968, liberals were turning against the U.S. war against Vietnam and were growing wary of the CIA.  Today they support all the Democratic-led wars and love the CIA.  They trust the obvious media lies and those of a proven liar such as Anthony Fauci.  Nowhere is this sadly truer than with the extended Kennedy family, who in their support for Biden, Fauci, the CIA, etc. have betrayed JFK and RFK.  Their smugness and support for Biden against their brother who is carrying on his uncle’s and father’s legacy is betrayal of the worst kind.

Despite a family actively opposed to his candidacy, despite all the media lies about him, and despite the odds makers giving him little chance, RFK, Jr. is entering the race.  It is an act of supreme moral courage.

Like his father in ’68, he is the only candidate who can heal this nation’s great divide.

That he is opposed by a huge array of people who will lie about him because he is a truthteller does not deter him.  Those lies immediately started up again as soon as word got out that he might run.  It’s an old story.

Trash will be thrown at him.  Every blemish of his nearly seventy years will be dredged up to paint him as a villain, a flawed man, a hypocrite – name all the negative terms you can think of and the real hypocrites, in their self-righteous rage, will use them against him.  They will bounce off him.  He is ready.

When Bobby, Jr. was young, his father handed him a book and said with urgency, “I want you to read this.”  It was Albert Camus’s The Plague.  He read it and it has informed his life ever since.  Just as in 1968, we live in plague times, and the plague is US, it runs through all our institutions and, as in Camus’s books, the rats are running wild, devouring truth and the values that can redeem us.  As he has written in his beautiful and important book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, Camus’s analysis of Sisyphus and the ancient Greeks has taught him an important lesson:

It is neither our position nor our circumstances that define us, according to the Stoics, but our response to those circumstance; when destiny crushes us, small heroic gestures of courage and service can bring us peace and fulfillment. In applying our shoulder to the stone, we give order to a chaotic universe. Of the many wonderful things my father left me, this philosophical truth was perhaps the most useful. In many ways, it has defined my life, and has allowed me to find serenity and purpose even in the most trying and tragic circumstances. (p.287)

Despite its brilliance, American Values (see this) was completely ignored by the mainstream press.  Why?  Because it revolves around “Chapter 9, Senator Robert F. Kennedy” and the long war between the Kennedys and the CIA that resulted in the deaths of JFK and RFK.  In this chapter, RFK, Jr. brilliantly shows that he fully grasps the CIA’s evil history.  All the other chapters, while very interesting personal and family history, pale in importance.   No member of the Kennedy family since JFK or RFK has dared to say what RFK, Jr. does in this book.  He indicts the CIA.  This is probably not a small part of his extended family’s animosity toward him.  Family taboos must be protected, as if they were state secrets.

But his indictment of the CIA is the fundamental reason why it and the media will at all costs try to prevent him from getting the nomination.  The character assassination will be intense.

Kennedy knows he faces an uphill battle for the presidency, but no matter what forces are aligned against him, political and familial, he will not back down.

He will surprise all the pundits, for his appeal crosses party lines.  He is tough and very smart.  He has been so hated and falsely maligned by the mainstream media for so long that he is skilled at keeping to his message, which I think will be positive and inspirational, something that this country is desperate for after so many years of lies and treachery.

Even Biden’s supporters in the Democratic party know he is a flawed candidate on his last legs, laboring to keep his words straight and his steps solid.  While he may have long served as the establishment’s war puppet, there are many nervous Democrats who want to finally cut their strings with him.  And the Republicans are a party in disarray, internally torn and tired of the Trump saga which will not end.

Two clowns don’t make for a pretty picture running the country and the world into the ground.  Biden and Trump and their predecessors are naked now and not just does one boy see it and shout it only to be ignored.  There is a growing feeling throughout the country that truth and goodness spoken clearly are desperately needed to unite the country through common values. Bob Dylan got it right back a few years:

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

Every day Americans are bombarded with bad news: the U.S. war against Russia via Ukraine, the lies about the “threats” from Russia and China, the collapsing economy, toxic spills, gun violence, corporate gangsters ripping off the average American and funneling those monies to the politicians who pimp for them, the egregious Covid-19 and “vaccine” lies that are daily being exposed as deadly frauds, the growing threat of nuclear war, etc.

Bad bad news, and with it a growing public sense of hopelessness.  A pall of unacknowledged depression smothers the country.  People are dying for hope, as they were in 1968.  In their inner hearts there is this desperate yearning for one brave soul to stand up and tell Americans the truth about what has happened to their country.  Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is the only one who can move Americans to hope again.

For years he has been telling harsh truths that many who profit from the lies do not want to hear. That our waters are polluted and the chemical companies are criminals; that the pharmaceutical companies are criminal enterprises polluting people’s bodies; that the CIA is organized crime polluting people’s minds and assassinating its anti-war leaders; that the Pentagon is a criminal enterprise not defending but risking American’s lives and their livelihood; that the U.S. government has joined with mega-corporations to run a Mob-like fleecing of the American people; that not one of Sirhan Sirhan’s bullets killed his father, Senator Robert Kennedy, who was shot from behind at close range by a CIA hit man; that the so-called Covid vaccines are very dangerous and have never been appropriately tested and many people are dying and being injured as a result; that Anthony Fauci is a liar and fraud who fronts for Big Pharma (see this) in the Covid-19 crisis that is an intelligence-run operation controlled by spooks working with medical technocrats; and that we are close to losing our country and any semblance of its democratic ideals.

These are not liberal or conservative positions.  They are self-evident conclusions of a patriot, as they should be for everyone.

And because they have become such to more and more Americans who can think without reacting, Kennedy’s voice and his candidacy will grow in strength across the great divide.

The media attacks will be intense and simply full of lies.  They love to call him an “anti-vaxxer,” when he is not opposed to all vaccines.  But no matter how many times he has explained this, the media twist it to serve their masters.

For example, The New York Post recently published a slimy piece that could serve as a template for all the propaganda aimed at Kennedy.  Let me quote:

Robert has said Sirhan did not actually participate in the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy during a Los Angeles presidential campaign stop in 1968.

This of course is a lie.  RFK, Jr. has said that Sirhan fired a pistol but none of his bullets hit the Senator.  He has said a CIA hit man shot his father at close range from behind as the official autopsy clearly showed, while Sirhan was standing in front of the Senator.

Lie number two.  The Post writes:

In it [a speech], he implied that those who oppose vaccines are being persecuted more severely than Anne Frank, the German teen who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before being sent to her death at Auschwitz.

He never implied that.  His point was clear: that in the coming digital surveillance state there will be nowhere to hide, not even in an attic, because the surveillance technology will track everyone everywhere, day and night.

These are but a few examples.  Look and you will find them everywhere now and in the coming days.

The hyenas with polished faces will try like hell to dismiss Robert f. Kennedy, Jr. as a flake, a fraud, and a conspiracy nut on an ego-trip.  Too many people can now see through such propaganda.  He is the real thing, our best hope to bridge the great divide that has been created by the elites to divide the American people.

He will not back down, and all people of good will who believe the U.S. can still find its way out of the morass we find ourselves in, should back him up.  He has warned us, he has given us his voice, and his moral courage should be followed by all who hope to hope.

The pundits who dismiss his chances will then be shocked.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/04/17/robert-f-kennedy-jr-to-heal-the-great-divide/feed/ 0 388362 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/19/victory-for-human-rights-and-academic-freedom-harvard-reverses-on-kenneth-roth/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/19/victory-for-human-rights-and-academic-freedom-harvard-reverses-on-kenneth-roth/#respond Thu, 19 Jan 2023 19:36:36 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/news/roth-harvard-reversal

Human rights and free expression advocates on Thursday said the Harvard Kennedy School finally made "the right decision" after the prestigious public policy school's dean announced he was reversing his opposition to a fellowship for longtime human rights campaigner Kenneth Roth.

Dean Douglas Elmendorf's earlier refusal to support the one-year fellowship—first reported by The Nation earlier this month—was met with condemnation from Roth, free speech advocacy groups, and more than 1,000 students, faculty, and alumni of the school who accused the dean of retaliating against Roth for his criticism of Israel's violent anti-Palestinian policies.

Elemendorf reportedly told colleagues that he was concerned about analyses by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international group led by Roth for three decades until his retirement last year, which concluded—as have other groups including the Israel-based B'Tselem and the United Nations—that Israel has imposed apartheid on Palestinians for decades.

"The problem of people penalized for criticizing Israel is not limited to me, and most scholars and students have no comparable capacity to mobilize public attention."

On Thursday, the dean sent a letter to the school community saying it had been "an error... not to appoint him as a fellow" at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Sunjeev Bery, executive director of global human rights group Freedom Forward, applauded the move as a "victory for human rights and academic freedom."

Roth released a statement saying he was "thrilled" that Elmendorf "rescinded his decision to block the fellowship" and expressed gratitude to students and faculty members who had shared their "overwhelming disapproval of Dean Elmendorf's original decision."

He called on Elmendorf to provide more transparency about his decision-making process. Roth earlier this month said he believed the decision to veto the fellowship offer stemmed from pressure from anti-Palestinian rights sentiments among Harvard donors.

Elmendorf "still has not said anything about the 'people who matter to him' whom he said were behind his original veto decision," Roth said Thursday.

Roth also said he still has concerns about the larger issue of academic freedom at Harvard, particularly for students and teachers who lack his international platform.

"Given my three decades leading Human Rights Watch, I was able to shine an intense spotlight on Dean Elmendorf's decision, but what about others?" he said. "The problem of people penalized for criticizing Israel is not limited to me, and most scholars and students have no comparable capacity to mobilize public attention."

"How is the Kennedy School, and Harvard," he asked, "going to ensure that this episode conveys a renewed commitment to academic freedom rather than just exceptional treatment for one well-known individual?"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The post Harvard’s Kennedy School: Key Part Of The Military-Industrial Complex appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Advocacy groups on Friday denounced a decision by a Harvard dean to deny a research fellowship to former longtime Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth, allegedly over the organization's criticism of Israeli apartheid and other crimes in Palestine.

For 29 years, Roth headed Human Rights Watch (HRW), one of a growing number of international and Israeli mainstream human rights advocates—including Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic—to call Israel's globally condemned policies and actions against Palestinians apartheid.

"There is no suggestion that Roth's criticisms of Israel are in any way based on racial or religious animus."

After stepping down from his HRW job last April, Roth was offered a position as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

"We thought he would be a terrific fellow," Kathryn Sikkink, a professor of human rights policy at the Kennedy School, told The Nation.

\u201cUnreal that the \u201cgodfather\u201d of human rights, Kenneth Roth, who is himself Jewish, is denied a \u2066@Harvard\u2069 fellowship over Human Rights Watch calling out Israel\u2019s human rights abuses.\n\nHRW former head denied Harvard fellowship over \u2018anti-Israel bias\u2019 https://t.co/X5y2uBkVxs\u201d

— Amie Wexler (@Amie Wexler) 1673017033

In a statement reacting to Harvard's decision, ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero said that "few people have done more to advance human rights than Kenneth Roth. If Harvard's decision was based on HRW's advocacy under Ken's leadership, this is profoundly troubling—from both a human rights and an academic freedom standpoint."

"Scholars and fellows have to be judged on their merits, not whether they please powerful political interests," Romero added. "We urge Harvard to reverse its decision."

In an interview with The Guardian, Roth recounted that he and Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf "had a perfectly pleasant chat for about half an hour or so, but toward the end he asked the question, 'Do you have any enemies?' And I said: 'I've got many. That's a hazard of the trade.'"

"But what he was clearly driving at was Israel," said Roth, who is Jewish. "He didn't want to hear about how I've been sanctioned by China, sanctioned by Russia, or attacked by Rwanda or Saudi Arabia. He wanted to know: what was my position on Israel?"

\u201cHarvard @Kennedy_School Dean Douglas Elmendorf doesn't seem to understand that it is NOT academic freedom when Israel is exempt from criticism. He shouldn't be soliciting donors to an academic institution who think otherwise. https://t.co/ZNEphF01Jh\u201d

— Kenneth Roth (@Kenneth Roth) 1673022509

Roth believes Elmendorf bowed to pressure from staunchly Zionist donors to the Kennedy School and withdrew his fellowship offer.

"I falsely assumed that the dean of the Kennedy School values academic freedom," he said. "Maybe I'm naïve in retrospect, but I assume that criticism of Israel, as criticism of any other government, is just par for the course. That's what a leading foreign policy center does."

Free expression advocate PEN America led criticism of Harvard's move.

"Over his decadeslong career as a leading global human rights advocate, Ken Roth has excoriated many dozens of governments for their abuses; this goes with the territory of building and leading a human rights organization credited with having advanced respect for rights and freedoms the world over," the group said in a statement. "It is the role of a human rights defender to call out governments harshly, to take positions that are unpopular in certain quarters, and to antagonize those who hold power and authority."

\u201c\ud83e\uddf5 PEN America expressed dismay today over the Harvard @Kennedy_School of Government\u2019s decision to deny a planned fellowship for former @hrw Executive Director Ken Roth, reportedly due to Roth\u2019s criticisms of Israel\u2019s human rights record. https://t.co/P4IExzJzSy\u201d

— PEN America (@PEN America) 1672972730

"There is no suggestion that Roth's criticisms of Israel are in any way based on racial or religious animus," the group added. "Withholding Roth's participation in a human rights program due to his own staunch critiques of human rights abuses by governments worldwide raises serious questions about the credibility of the Harvard program itself."

Writing for The Nation, Michael Massing contrasted Roth's treatment by Harvard with that of former Kennedy School nonresident senior fellow Michael Morrell, an ex-acting director of the CIA who advised then-President George W. Bush during the early years of the War on Terror and supported U.S. torture and drone strikes that killed at least hundreds of civilians.

Facing pressure from CIA officials, Elmendorf in 2017 also rescinded a visiting fellowship offer to Chelsea Manning—who blew the whistle on U.S. war crimes, including torture—by leaking classified documents, after she was released from prison.

Massing wrote that Harvard's disparate treatment of Morrell, Manning, and Roth suggests a "fundamental reality about the Kennedy School: the dominant presence of the U.S. national security community and its close ally Israel."

\u201cSo much for academic freedom at Harvard's @Kennedy_School: Dean Douglas Elmendorf was so fearful of @HRW's reporting on Israel (applying the same standards as HRW does everywhere else) that he vetoed a fellowship that the Kennedy @CarrCenter offered me. https://t.co/ZFL42AV3lj\u201d

— Kenneth Roth (@Kenneth Roth) 1672926415

That presence includes people from the military-industrial complex, including former Pentagon officials and executives from weapons manufacturers, whose policies and products have killed hundreds of thousands of people in numerous countries during the 21st century alone.

The Kennedy School has also received tens of millions of dollars from Israel supporters including billionaire Les Wexner, who, as Massing noted, played a key role in bringing members of Israel's military and intelligence services to study at the school.

Another major Kennedy School donor, Robert Belfer, "is also closely involved with the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, which have sought to discredit human rights groups over their criticism of Israel," wrote The Guardian's Chris McGreal. "Belfer is a member of the dean's executive board of major donors who advise Elmendorf."

As recognition and condemnation of Israeli crimes including occupation, colonization, torture, extrajudicial killing, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid grow around the world, so too does the backlash from U.S. supporters in the form of laws banning boycotts of Israel and firing or refusing to hire academics, journalists, and others for speaking out against the oppression of Palestinians.

"America's most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world's leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews."

"Over the past 18 months, America's most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world's leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews," wrote columnist Peter Beinart in an August 2022 New York Times opinion piece.

While "for most of the 20th century, leading American Jewish organizations argued that the struggle against antisemitism and the struggle for universal human rights were intertwined," Beinart noted, there was "an ideological transformation" beginning with Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Egyptian Sinai, and Syria's Golan Heights in 1967.

The result—"largely as a result of lobbying by Jewish organizations," wrote Beinart—has been an attempt to redefine antisemitism to include legitimate criticism of Israel.

Beinart continued:

In a terrible irony, the campaign against "antisemitism," as waged by influential Jewish groups and the U.S. government, has become a threat to freedom. It is wielded as a weapon against the world's most respected human rights organizations and a shield for some of the world's most repressive regimes. We need a different struggle against antisemitism. It should pursue Jewish equality, not Jewish supremacy, and embed the cause of Jewish rights in a movement for the human rights of all. In its effort to defend the indefensible in Israel, the American Jewish establishment has abandoned these principles.

Roth rejected allegations that HRW singles out Israel for criticism, a common charge by Israel supporters against human rights groups.

"Israel is one of 100 countries that we cover. And even within the Israeli Palestinian context, we deal with Hamas, we deal with the Palestinian Authority, we deal with Hezbollah," he told The Guardian. "We are fair and objective, but we are critical, because the Israeli government deserves to be criticized. It is becoming increasingly repressive, and as we found in the occupied territories it is committing the crime against humanity of apartheid."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination.  It garnered a great deal of attention.

Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many more times.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man whom I hold in the highest esteem, tweeted that it was “the most courageous newscast in 60 years.  The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

While I completely agree with his second sentence, I was underwhelmed by Carlson’s words, to put it mildly.  I thought it was clearly “a limited hangout,” as described by the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

Or listens carefully.

Carlson surely said some things that were true, and, as my friends and many others have insisted, he was the first mainstream corporate journalist to say that “the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

But “involved” is a word worthy of a lawyer, a public relations expert, or the CIA itself because it can mean something significant or nothing.  Or a little of both.  It is a weasel word.

And the source for Carlson’s claim was an anonymous source, someone who he said “had access” to the JFK files that were never released.  We know, of course, that when the New York Times and its ilk cite “anonymous sources,” claiming that they have told them this or that, this raises eyebrows. Or should.  Anyone who closely follows that paper’s claims knows that it is a CIA conduit, but now, those who know this are embracing Tucker Carlson as if he were the prophet of truth, as if a Rupert Murdock-owned Fox TV host who is paid many millions of dollars, has become the Julian Assange of corporate journalism.

In a 2010 radio interview, Mr. Carlson said, “ I am 100 % his bitch.  Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”

The obvious question is: Why would Fox News allow Carlson to say now what many hear as shocking news about the JFK assassination?

So let me run down exactly what Carlson did say.

For five minutes of the 7:28 minute monologue, he said things that are obviously true: that Jack Ruby killed Oswald and that the claim that both acted alone is weird and beyond any odds; that the Warren Commission was shoddy; that the CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” in 1967 according to Lance De Haven-Smith’s book Conspiracy Theory in America; that the CIA’s brainwashing specialist psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in jail and declared him insane, contrary to all other assessments of Ruby’s mental state; and that the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the president’s assassination.

All of this is true but not news to those knowledgeable about the assassination.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps news to Carlson’s audience and therefore good to hear on a corporate news site.

But then, the next few minutes – the key part of his report, the part that drew all the attention – got tricky.

Carlson said that just that day – December 15, 2022 – when all the JFK documents were due to be released but many were withheld, “we spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents.”  Who would have such access, and how, is left unaddressed, but it is implied that it is a CIA source, but maybe not.  It is strange to say the least.

Carlson then said he asked this person, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”  And the answer was “I believe they were involved.”  Carlson goes on to say, “And the answer we received was unequivocal.  Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

Note the words “hand,” “believe,” “involved,” and then “unequivocal.”

“Hand” can mean many things and is very vague.  For example, in front of his wife, a man tells his friend, “I had a hand in preparing Christmas dinner.”  To which his wife, laughing, replies, “Yes, he did, he put the napkins on the table.”

To “believe” something is very different from knowing it, as Dr. Martin Schotz, one of the most perceptive JFK assassination researchers, has written in his book, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

On Belief Versus Knowledge

It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility. It is precisely in moving from belief to knowledge that the citizen moves from irresponsibility to responsibility, from helplessness and hopelessness to action, with the ultimate aim of being empowered and confident in one’s rational powers.

“Involved,” like the word “hand,” can mean many things; it is vague, slippery, not definitive, and is used by tabloid gossip columnists to suggest scandals that may or not be true.

“Unequivocal” does not accurately describe the source’s statement, which was: “I believe.” That is, unless you take someone’s belief as evidence of the truth, or you wish to make it sound so.

Note that nowhere in Carlson’s report does he or his alleged source say clearly and definitively that the CIA/National Security State murdered President Kennedy, for which there has long been overwhelming evidence.  Such beating-around-the-bush is quite common and tantalizes the audience to think the next explosive revelation will be dispositive.  Yet no release of documents is needed to confirm that the CIA killed Kennedy, as if the national security state would allow itself to be pinned for the murder.

Waiting for the documents is like waiting for Godot; and to promote some hidden smoking gun, some great revelation is to engage in a pseudo-debate without end.  It is to do the killers’ bidding for them.  And it is quite common. There are many well-known “dissident” writers who continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the CIA/national security state killed the president.  And this is so for those who question the official story.  Furthermore, there are many more pundits who maintain that Oswald did the deed alone, as the Warren Report concluded and the mainstream corporate media trumpet.  This group is led by Noam Chomsky, whose acolytes bow to their master’s ignorant conclusions.

Maybe we’ll know the truth in 2063.

While it is true that some people change dramatically, Tucker Carlson, the Fox Television celebrity, would be a very unlikely candidate.  He defended Eliot Abrams and praised Oliver North; supported the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; went to Nicaragua to support those Contras; smeared the great journalist Gary Webb while defending the CIA; supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and much more.  Alan MacLeod chronicled all this in February of this year for those who have known nothing of Carlson’s past, including his father’s work as a U.S. intelligence operative as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America – all U.S. propaganda outlets.

Now we are being asked to accept that Carlson is out to show how the CIA is “involved” in the murder of JFK.  Why would so many fall for such rhetoric?

No doubt any crumb of national news coverage about the CIA and the assassination by a major corporate player elicits an enthusiastic response from those who have tried for many years to tell the truth about JFK’s murder.  One’s first response is excitement. But such reactions need to tempered by sober analyses of exactly what has been said, which is what I am doing here. I, too, wish it were a breakthrough but think it is more of the same. Much ado about nothing. A way to continue to foster uncertainty, not knowledge, about the crime.

I see it as a game of false binaries in the same way the Democrats and Republicans are portrayed as mortal enemies.  Yes, there are some differences, but all-in-all they are one party, the War Party, who agree on the essential tenets of U.S. imperial policy. They both represent the interests of the upper classes and are financed by them. They both work within the same frame of reference. They both support what Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, rightly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).

If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of the New York Times Corporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan. This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR. Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges. But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear. This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is. Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. the New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama. See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio. Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

Lastly, let me mention an odd “coincidence.” On December 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., nine days before the partial JFK files release and Tucker Carlson’s monologue, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization devoted to JFK research, gave a presentation showcasing what was advertised as explosive new information about the Kennedy assassination. The key presenter was Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and prominent JFK assassination researcher who has sued the CIA for documents involving Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operative George Joannides.

On November 22 Morley had published an article titled “Yes, There is a JFK Smoking Gun.” It was subtitled: It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still “Denied in Full.” The documents he was referring to allegedly concern contacts between Oswald and Joannides in the summer and fall of 1963 in New Orleans and in Mexico City. “They [the CIA] were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year,” wrote Morley.

Well, the “smoking gun” documents were not released on Dec 15, although on November 20 and then again at The National Press Club on December 6, Morley spoke of them as proving his point about the CIA’s involvement with Oswald, which has been obvious for a long time.  Although he said he hadn’t seen these key documents but was awaiting their release, he added that even if they were not released that will still prove him correct.  In other words, with this bit of legerdemain, he was saying: What I don’t know, and may not soon not know, supports what I’m claiming even though I don’t know it.  And even if the files were released, he writes, “As for the conspiracy question, the massive withholding of documents makes it premature to draw any conclusions. The undisclosed Oswald operation was not necessarily part of a conspiracy. It might indicate CIA incompetence, not complicity. Again, only the CIA knows for sure.” So the smoking gun is not a smoking gun and the waters of uncertainty roll on and on into the receding future.

CIA incompetence, not complicity. Of course. It ain’t necessarily so. Or it is, or might be, or isn’t.

Morley is one of  many who still cannot say that the CIA killed the president. Tucker Carlson can speak of its “involvement” just like Morley. We need more information, more files, etc. But even if we get them, we still won’t know.  Maybe by 2063.

My question for Tucker Carlson: Who was your anonymous source? And did your source see the documents that were never disclosed? What specific documents are you referring to? And do they prove that the CIA killed Kennedy or just suggest “involvement”?

Finally, as I said before, even as there has long been a mountain of evidence for the CIA’s murder of JFK (and RFK as well, although that is never mentioned), many prominent people continue to play as if there is not.  Listen to this video interview between Chris Hedges and former CIA officer John Kiriakou.  It is all about the nefarious deeds of the CIA.  Right toward the end of the interview (see minutes 32:30-33:19), Hedges says, “So I have to ask [since he has to answer] this question since I know Oliver Stone is convinced the CIA killed JFK … I’ve never seen any evidence that backs it up …”  and they both share a mocking laugh at Stone as if he were the village idiot when he knows more about the JFK assassination than the two of them put together, and Kiriakou says he too has not seen such evidence. It’s a disgusting but typical display of arrogance and a “limited hangout.” Criticize the CIA only to make sure you whitewash them for one of their greatest achievements: the murder of President John F. Kennedy. This is straight from Chomsky’s playbook.

Beware double-talkers and the games they play. They come in different flavors.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination.  It garnered a great deal of attention.

Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many more times.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man whom I hold in the highest esteem, tweeted that it was “the most courageous newscast in 60 years.  The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

While I completely agree with his second sentence, I was underwhelmed by Carlson’s words, to put it mildly.  I thought it was clearly “a limited hangout,” as described by the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

Or listens carefully.

Carlson surely said some things that were true, and, as my friends and many others have insisted, he was the first mainstream corporate journalist to say that “the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

But “involved” is a word worthy of a lawyer, a public relations expert, or the CIA itself because it can mean something significant or nothing.  Or a little of both.  It is a weasel word.

And the source for Carlson’s claim was an anonymous source, someone who he said “had access” to the JFK files that were never released.  We know, of course, that when the New York Times and its ilk cite “anonymous sources,” claiming that they have told them this or that, this raises eyebrows. Or should.  Anyone who closely follows that paper’s claims knows that it is a CIA conduit, but now, those who know this are embracing Tucker Carlson as if he were the prophet of truth, as if a Rupert Murdock-owned Fox TV host who is paid many millions of dollars, has become the Julian Assange of corporate journalism.

In a 2010 radio interview, Mr. Carlson said, “ I am 100 % his bitch.  Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”

The obvious question is: Why would Fox News allow Carlson to say now what many hear as shocking news about the JFK assassination?

So let me run down exactly what Carlson did say.

For five minutes of the 7:28 minute monologue, he said things that are obviously true: that Jack Ruby killed Oswald and that the claim that both acted alone is weird and beyond any odds; that the Warren Commission was shoddy; that the CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” in 1967 according to Lance De Haven-Smith’s book Conspiracy Theory in America; that the CIA’s brainwashing specialist psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in jail and declared him insane, contrary to all other assessments of Ruby’s mental state; and that the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the president’s assassination.

All of this is true but not news to those knowledgeable about the assassination.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps news to Carlson’s audience and therefore good to hear on a corporate news site.

But then, the next few minutes – the key part of his report, the part that drew all the attention – got tricky.

Carlson said that just that day – December 15, 2022 – when all the JFK documents were due to be released but many were withheld, “we spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents.”  Who would have such access, and how, is left unaddressed, but it is implied that it is a CIA source, but maybe not.  It is strange to say the least.

Carlson then said he asked this person, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”  And the answer was “I believe they were involved.”  Carlson goes on to say, “And the answer we received was unequivocal.  Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

Note the words “hand,” “believe,” “involved,” and then “unequivocal.”

“Hand” can mean many things and is very vague.  For example, in front of his wife, a man tells his friend, “I had a hand in preparing Christmas dinner.”  To which his wife, laughing, replies, “Yes, he did, he put the napkins on the table.”

To “believe” something is very different from knowing it, as Dr. Martin Schotz, one of the most perceptive JFK assassination researchers, has written in his book, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

On Belief Versus Knowledge

It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility. It is precisely in moving from belief to knowledge that the citizen moves from irresponsibility to responsibility, from helplessness and hopelessness to action, with the ultimate aim of being empowered and confident in one’s rational powers.

“Involved,” like the word “hand,” can mean many things; it is vague, slippery, not definitive, and is used by tabloid gossip columnists to suggest scandals that may or not be true.

“Unequivocal” does not accurately describe the source’s statement, which was: “I believe.” That is, unless you take someone’s belief as evidence of the truth, or you wish to make it sound so.

Note that nowhere in Carlson’s report does he or his alleged source say clearly and definitively that the CIA/National Security State murdered President Kennedy, for which there has long been overwhelming evidence.  Such beating-around-the-bush is quite common and tantalizes the audience to think the next explosive revelation will be dispositive.  Yet no release of documents is needed to confirm that the CIA killed Kennedy, as if the national security state would allow itself to be pinned for the murder.

Waiting for the documents is like waiting for Godot; and to promote some hidden smoking gun, some great revelation is to engage in a pseudo-debate without end.  It is to do the killers’ bidding for them.  And it is quite common. There are many well-known “dissident” writers who continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the CIA/national security state killed the president.  And this is so for those who question the official story.  Furthermore, there are many more pundits who maintain that Oswald did the deed alone, as the Warren Report concluded and the mainstream corporate media trumpet.  This group is led by Noam Chomsky, whose acolytes bow to their master’s ignorant conclusions.

Maybe we’ll know the truth in 2063.

While it is true that some people change dramatically, Tucker Carlson, the Fox Television celebrity, would be a very unlikely candidate.  He defended Eliot Abrams and praised Oliver North; supported the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; went to Nicaragua to support those Contras; smeared the great journalist Gary Webb while defending the CIA; supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and much more.  Alan MacLeod chronicled all this in February of this year for those who have known nothing of Carlson’s past, including his father’s work as a U.S. intelligence operative as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America – all U.S. propaganda outlets.

Now we are being asked to accept that Carlson is out to show how the CIA is “involved” in the murder of JFK.  Why would so many fall for such rhetoric?

No doubt any crumb of national news coverage about the CIA and the assassination by a major corporate player elicits an enthusiastic response from those who have tried for many years to tell the truth about JFK’s murder.  One’s first response is excitement. But such reactions need to tempered by sober analyses of exactly what has been said, which is what I am doing here. I, too, wish it were a breakthrough but think it is more of the same. Much ado about nothing. A way to continue to foster uncertainty, not knowledge, about the crime.

I see it as a game of false binaries in the same way the Democrats and Republicans are portrayed as mortal enemies.  Yes, there are some differences, but all-in-all they are one party, the War Party, who agree on the essential tenets of U.S. imperial policy. They both represent the interests of the upper classes and are financed by them. They both work within the same frame of reference. They both support what Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, rightly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).

If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of the New York Times Corporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan. This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR. Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges. But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear. This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is. Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. the New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama. See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio. Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

Lastly, let me mention an odd “coincidence.” On December 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., nine days before the partial JFK files release and Tucker Carlson’s monologue, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization devoted to JFK research, gave a presentation showcasing what was advertised as explosive new information about the Kennedy assassination. The key presenter was Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and prominent JFK assassination researcher who has sued the CIA for documents involving Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operative George Joannides.

On November 22 Morley had published an article titled “Yes, There is a JFK Smoking Gun.” It was subtitled: It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still “Denied in Full.” The documents he was referring to allegedly concern contacts between Oswald and Joannides in the summer and fall of 1963 in New Orleans and in Mexico City. “They [the CIA] were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year,” wrote Morley.

Well, the “smoking gun” documents were not released on Dec 15, although on November 20 and then again at The National Press Club on December 6, Morley spoke of them as proving his point about the CIA’s involvement with Oswald, which has been obvious for a long time.  Although he said he hadn’t seen these key documents but was awaiting their release, he added that even if they were not released that will still prove him correct.  In other words, with this bit of legerdemain, he was saying: What I don’t know, and may not soon not know, supports what I’m claiming even though I don’t know it.  And even if the files were released, he writes, “As for the conspiracy question, the massive withholding of documents makes it premature to draw any conclusions. The undisclosed Oswald operation was not necessarily part of a conspiracy. It might indicate CIA incompetence, not complicity. Again, only the CIA knows for sure.” So the smoking gun is not a smoking gun and the waters of uncertainty roll on and on into the receding future.

CIA incompetence, not complicity. Of course. It ain’t necessarily so. Or it is, or might be, or isn’t.

Morley is one of  many who still cannot say that the CIA killed the president. Tucker Carlson can speak of its “involvement” just like Morley. We need more information, more files, etc. But even if we get them, we still won’t know.  Maybe by 2063.

My question for Tucker Carlson: Who was your anonymous source? And did your source see the documents that were never disclosed? What specific documents are you referring to? And do they prove that the CIA killed Kennedy or just suggest “involvement”?

Finally, as I said before, even as there has long been a mountain of evidence for the CIA’s murder of JFK (and RFK as well, although that is never mentioned), many prominent people continue to play as if there is not.  Listen to this video interview between Chris Hedges and former CIA officer John Kiriakou.  It is all about the nefarious deeds of the CIA.  Right toward the end of the interview (see minutes 32:30-33:19), Hedges says, “So I have to ask [since he has to answer] this question since I know Oliver Stone is convinced the CIA killed JFK … I’ve never seen any evidence that backs it up …”  and they both share a mocking laugh at Stone as if he were the village idiot when he knows more about the JFK assassination than the two of them put together, and Kiriakou says he too has not seen such evidence. It’s a disgusting but typical display of arrogance and a “limited hangout.” Criticize the CIA only to make sure you whitewash them for one of their greatest achievements: the murder of President John F. Kennedy. This is straight from Chomsky’s playbook.

Beware double-talkers and the games they play. They come in different flavors.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Don’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as well

– Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul

Why President Kennedy was publicly murdered by the CIA fifty-nine years ago has never been more important, not because there is another political leader of his courage and stature whose life is now threatened by the same forces, but because there is not.  The Cold War and nuclear threat that he worked so hard to end have today been inflamed to a fever pitch by U.S. leaders in thrall to the forces that killed the president. President Joseph Biden is Kennedy’s opposite, an unrepentant war-monger, not only in Ukraine with the U.S. war against Russia and the U.S. nuclear first-strike policy, but throughout the world – the Middle-East, Africa, Syria, Iran, and on and on, including the push for war with China.  The Biden administration is doing all in its power to undo the legacy of JFK’s last year in office when on every front he fought for peace, not war.  It is not hard to realize that all presidents since John Kennedy have been fully aware that a bullet in the head in broad daylight could be their fate if they bucked their bosses.  They knew this when they sought the office because they were run by the same bosses before election.  Small-souled men, cowards on the make, willing to sacrifice millions to their ambition.

I believe that the following article, which I published a year ago, is worth reading again if you have once done so, and even more important if you have never read it. It is not based on speculation but on well-sourced facts, and it will make clear the importance of President Kennedy and why his assassination lay the foundation for today’s dire events.  In this dark time, when the world is spinning out of control, the story of his great courage in the face of an assassination he expected, can inspire us to oppose the systemic forces of evil that control the United States and are leading the world into the abyss.

*****

• Pressured to Wage War
• A War Hero Who Was Appalled By War
• A Prescient Perspective
• Patrice Lumumba
• Dag Hammarskjöld, Indonesia, and Sukarno
• The Bay of Pigs
• Kennedy Responds After the Bay of Pigs Treachery
• The Fateful Year 1963
• The Assassination on November 22, 1963
• Who Killed Him?
• Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
• Who Had the Power to Withdraw the President’s Security?
• Oswald, The Preordained Patsy
• The Message to Air Force One
• Oswald’s Prepackaged Life Story
• Epilogue by James W. Douglass
• References

Despite a treasure trove of new research and information having emerged over the last fifty-eight years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. They have drunk what Dr. Martin Schotz has called “the waters of uncertainty” that results “in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.”¹

Then there are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission.

Both these groups tend to agree, however, that whatever the truth, unknowable or allegedly known, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, ancient history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred more than a half-century ago, so let’s move on.

Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s box from which many decades of tragedy have sprung.

Pressured to Wage War

From the day he was sworn in as President on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was relentlessly pressured by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and by many of his own advisers to wage war – clandestine, conventional, and nuclear.

To understand why and by whom he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, one needs to apprehend this pressure and the reasons why President Kennedy consistently resisted it, as well as the consequences of that resistance.

It is a key to understanding the current state of our world today and why the United States has been waging endless foreign wars and creating a national security surveillance state at home since JFK’s death.

A War Hero Who Was Appalled By War

It is very important to remember that Lieutenant John Kennedy was a genuine Naval war hero in WW II, having risked his life and been badly injured while saving his men in the treacherous waters of the South Pacific after their PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. His older brother Joe and his brother-in-law Billy Hartington had died in the war, as had some of his boat’s crew members.

As a result, Kennedy was extremely sensitive to the horrors of war, and, when he first ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946, he made it explicitly clear that avoiding another war was his number one priority. This commitment remained with him and was intensely strengthened throughout his brief presidency until the day he died, fighting for peace.

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, this anti-war stance was unusual for a politician, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Kennedy was a remarkable man, for even though he assumed the presidency as somewhat of a cold warrior vis-à-vis the Soviet Union in particular, his experiences in office rapidly chastened that stance. He very quickly came to see that there were many people surrounding him who relished the thought of war, even nuclear war, and he came to consider them as very dangerous.

A Prescient Perspective

Yet even before he became president, in 1957, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. and around the world. ² He came out in support of Algerian independence from France and African liberation generally and against colonial imperialism. As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He believed that continued support of colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they be.

That speech caused an international uproar, and in the U.S.A. Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded in Africa and the Third World.

Yet JFK continued throughout his 1960 presidential campaign raising his voice against colonialism throughout the world and for free and independent African nations. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that President Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960; this juxtaposition revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had, and has, on sitting presidents, as the pressure for war became structurally systemized.

Patrice Lumumba

One of Africa’s anti-colonial and nationalist leaders was the charismatic Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. In June, 1960, he had become the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, a country savagely raped and plundered for more than half a century by Belgium’s King Leopold II for himself and multinational mining companies. Kennedy’s support for African independence was well-known and especially feared by the CIA, who, together with Brussels, considered Lumumba, and Kennedy for supporting him, as threats to their interests in the region.

So, three days before JFK’s inauguration, together with the Belgian government, the CIA had Lumumba brutally assassinated after torturing and beating him. According to Robert Johnson, a note taker at a National Security Council meeting in August 1960, Lumumba’s assassination had been approved by President Eisenhower when he gave Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, the approval to “eliminate” Lumumba. Johnson disclosed that in a 1975 interview that was discovered in 2000.³

On January 26, 1961, when Dulles briefed the new president on the Congo, he did not tell JFK that they already had Lumumba assassinated nine days before. This was meant to keep Kennedy on tenterhooks to teach him a lesson. On February 13, 1961, Kennedy received a phone call from his UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson informing him of Lumumba’s death. There is a photograph by White House photographer Jacques Lowe of the horror-stricken president sitting in the oval office answering that call that is harrowing to view. It was an unmistakable portent of things to come, a warning for the president.

Dag Hammarskjöld, Indonesia, and Sukarno

One of Kennedy’s crucial allies in his efforts to support third-world independence was United Nations’ Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. Hammarskjöld had been deeply involved in peacekeeping in the Congo as well as efforts to resolve disputes in Indonesia, both important countries central to JFK’s concerns. Hammarskjöld was killed on September 18, 1961 while on a peacekeeping mission to the Congo. Substantial evidence exists that he was assassinated and that the CIA and Allen Dulles were involved. Kennedy was devastated to lose such an important ally.⁴

Kennedy’s strategy involved befriending Indonesia as a Cold War ally as a crucial aspect of his Southeast Asian policy of dealing with Laos and Vietnam and finding peaceful resolutions to other smoldering Cold War conflicts. Hammarskjöld was also central to these efforts. The CIA, led by Dulles, strongly opposed Kennedy’s strategy in Indonesia. In fact, Dulles and the CIA had been involved in treacherous maneuverings in resource rich Indonesia for decades. President Kennedy supported the Indonesian President Sukarno, while Dulles opposed him since he stood for Indonesian independence.

Just two days before Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring. The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with non-military economic and development aid. His goal was to end conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assist the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.

Of course, JFK never made it to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles and the CIA.  And, Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal of American military advisers from Vietnam, which, in part, was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder and within a short time hundreds of thousand American combat troops were sent to Vietnam. In Indonesia, Sukarno would be forced out and replaced by General Suharto, who would rule with an iron fist for the next 30 years. Soon, both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon.⁵

The Bay of Pigs

In mid-April 1961, less than three months into his presidency, a trap was set for President Kennedy by the CIA and its director, Allen Dulles, who knew of Kennedy’s reluctance to invade Cuba. They assumed the new president would be forced by circumstances at the last minute to send in U.S. Navy and Marine forces to back the invasion that they had planned. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Fidel Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. This had started under President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon. Kennedy refused to go along with sending in American troops and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy.

But it was all a sham. Classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned the date of the invasion more than a week in advance and had informed Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, but—and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end—the CIA never told the President. The CIA knew the invasion was probably doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway.

Why? So, they could blame JFK for the failure afterwards.

Kennedy later said to his friends Dave Powell and Ken O’Donnell, “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the [Navy’s aircraft carrier] Essex. They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”⁶

This treachery set the stage for events to come. Sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (who, as in a bad joke, was later named to the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination) and his assistant, General Charles Cabell (whose brother, Earle Cabell, to make a bad joke absurd, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed.) It was later discovered that Earle Cabell was a CIA asset.⁷

JFK said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Not sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.⁸

Kennedy Responds After the Bay of Pigs Treachery

The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, now even more suspicious of the military-intelligence people around him, and in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.

In 1961, despite the Joint Chiefs’ demand to put combat troops into Laos – advising 140,000 by the end of April – Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”⁹   The president knew that Laos and Vietnam were linked issues, and since Laos came first on his agenda, he was determined to push for a neutral Laos.

Also in 1961, he refused to accede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in a dispute with the Soviet Union over Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with his top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.” ¹⁰

In March 1962, the CIA, in the person of legendary operative, Edward Lansdale, and with the approval of every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented the president with a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Code-named Operation Northwoods, the false-flag plan called for innocent people to be shot in the U.S., boats carrying Cuban refugees to be sunk and a terrorism campaign to be launched in Miami, Washington D.C., and other places, all to be blamed on the Castro government so that the public would be outraged and call for an invasion of Cuba. ¹¹  

Kennedy was appalled and rejected this pressure to manipulate him into agreeing to terrorist attacks on Americans that could later be used against him. He already knew that his life was in danger and that the CIA and military were tightening a noose around his neck. But he refused to yield.

As early as June 26, 1961, in a White House meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s spokesperson, Mikhail Kharlamov, and Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Alexei Adzhubei, when asked by Kharlamov why he wasn’t moving faster to advance relations between the two countries, JFK said “You don’t understand this country. If I move too fast on U.S.-Soviet relations, I’ll either be thrown into an insane asylum, or be killed.”¹²  

JFK refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. The Soviets had placed offensive nuclear missiles and more than 30,000 support troops in Cuba to prevent another U.S.-led invasion. American aerial photography had detected the missiles. This was understandably unacceptable to the U.S. government. While being urged by the Joint Chiefs and his trusted advisors to order a preemptive nuclear strike on Cuba, JFK knew that a diplomatic solution was the only way out as he wouldn’t accept the death of hundreds of millions of people that would likely follow a series of nuclear exchanges with the Soviet Union. Only his brother, Robert, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stood with him in opposing the use of nuclear weapons. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon and Rand Corporation analyst, reported a coup atmosphere in the Pentagon as Kennedy chose to settle rather than attack.¹³   In the end, after thirteen incredibly tense days of brinksmanship, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miraculously found a way to resolve the crisis and prevent the use of those weapons.

Afterwards, JFK told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”¹⁴

The Fateful Year 1963

In June, 1963, JFK gave a historic speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.” ¹⁵  

A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev. ¹⁶

In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and complete withdrawal by the end of 1965. ¹⁷

All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev via Saturday Evening Post editor and anti-nuclear weapon advocate, Norman Cousins, Soviet agent Georgi Bolshakov,¹⁸ and Pope John XXIII,¹⁹ as well as with Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. Of course, secret was not secret when the CIA was involved.

Kennedy, deeply disturbed by the near nuclear catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis, was determined to open back channel communications to make sure such a near miss never happened again. He knew fault lay on both sides, and that one slip-up or miscommunication could initiate a nuclear holocaust.  He was determined, therefore, to try to open lines of communications with his enemies.

Jean Daniel was going to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro, but before he did he interviewed Kennedy on October 24, 1963.  Kennedy, knowing Daniel would tell Castro what he said, asked Daniel if Castro realizes that “through his fault the world was on the verge of nuclear war in October 1962… .or even if he cares about it.”  But he also added, to soften the message:

I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear. ²⁰

Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top Pentagon generals. These clear refusals to go to war with Cuba, to emphasize peace and negotiated solutions to conflicts rather than war, to order the withdrawal of all military personnel from Vietnam, to call for an end to the Cold War, and his willingness to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course.

The Assassination on November 22, 1963

After going through the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis and many other military cliffhangers, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peacemaker. He came to regard the generals who advised him as devaluing human life and hell-bent on launching nuclear wars. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions, he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’état against him.

The night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.”²¹  

And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned his execution from multiple locations to assure its success.

Who Killed Him?

If the only things you read, watched, or listened to since 1963 were the mainstream corporate media (MSM), you would be convinced that the official explanation for JFK’s assassination, the Warren Commission, was correct in essentials. You would be wrong, because those corporate media have for all these years served as mouthpieces for the government, most notably the CIA that infiltrated and controlled them long ago under a secret program called Operation Mockingbird.²² In 1977, celebrated Watergate journalist, Carl Bernstein, published a 25,000-word cover story for Rolling Stone, “The CIA and the Media,” in which he published the names of many journalists and media, such as The New York Times, CBS, Time, Newsweek, etc., who worked hand in glove with the CIA for decades. Ironically, or as part of “a limited hangout” (spy talk for admitting some truths while concealing deeper ones), this article can be found at the CIA’s own website.

Total control of information requires media complicity, and with the JFK assassination, and in all matters they consider important, the CIA and the MSM are unified. ²³  Such control extends to literature, arts, and popular culture as well as news. Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively documents this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, ²⁴ and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity of the CIA and the famous literary journal The Paris Review.  Such revelations are retrospective, of course, but only the most naïve would conclude such operations are a thing of the past.

The Warren Commission claimed that the president was shot by an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, firing three bullets from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy’s car was already two hundred and fifty feet past and driving away from him. But this is patently false for many reasons, including the bizarre claim that one of these bullets, later termed “the magic bullet,” passed through Kennedy’s body and zigzagged up and down, left and right, striking Texas Governor John Connolly who was sitting in the front seat and causing seven wounds in all, only to be found later in pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital.²⁵  And, any lone assassin looking out the 6th floor window would have taken the perfect shot as the limousine approached within forty feet of the TSBD on Houston St.

The absurdity of the government’s claim, a ballistic fairy tale, was the key to its assertion that Oswald killed Kennedy. It was visually shattered and rendered ridiculous by the famous Zapruder film that clearly shows the president being shot from the front right, and, as the right front of his head explodes, he is violently thrown back and to his left as Jacqueline Kennedy climbs on to the car’s trunk to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull and brain.

This video evidence is clear and simple proof of a conspiracy.²⁶ 

Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?

But there is another way to examine it.

If Lee Harvey Oswald, the man The Warren Commission said killed JFK, was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin or not an assassin at all. There is a wealth of evidence to show how, from the very start, Oswald was moved around the globe by the CIA like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters by Jack Ruby two days later.

James W. Douglass, in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, the most important book on the matter, asks this question:

Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?

This is a key question.

After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret, a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission) and being trained in the Russian language, Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. ²⁷   After denouncing the U.S., rejecting his American citizenship, working at a Soviet factory in Minsk, and taking a Russian wife—during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union—he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey, by Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-Communist with extensive intelligence connections recommended by the State Department. ²⁸

Oswald passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where, at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a photography and graphic arts company that worked on top secret maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba.

Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt. In 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ investigator, Gaeton Fonzi, de Mohrenschildt allegedly committed suicide.

Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April, 1963 where he got a job at the Reily Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reily. The Reily Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Banister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying weapons, money, and training to anti-Castro paramilitaries. Oswald then went to work with Banister and the CIA paramilitaries.

From this time up until the assassination, Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Banister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was  enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin” or “patsy.”

James Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”²⁹

When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April, 1963, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did, but for which he was paid.³⁰

Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the scene on cue. Ruth had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September, 1963, Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to Dallas to live with her, where Lee also stayed on weekends. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently arranged a job for Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas Book Depository, where he began work on October 16, 1963.

Ruth, along with Marina Oswald, was the Warren Commission’s critically important witness against Oswald. Allen Dulles, despite his earlier firing by JFK, got appointed to a key position on the Warren Commission.  He questioned the Paines in front of it, studiously avoiding any revealing questions, especially ones that could disclose his personal connections to the Paines. For Michel Paine’s mother, therefore Ruth’s mother-in-law, Ruth Paine Forbes Young, was a close friend of his old mistress, Mary Bancroft, who worked as a spy with Dulles during WW II. Bancroft and he had been invited guests at Ruth Paine Forbes Young’s private island off Cape Cod.

Ruth and Michael Paine had extensive intelligence connections. Thirty years after the assassination, a document was declassified showing Ruth Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s step-father, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, a major military supplier for the Vietnam War, and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance.

From late September through November 22nd, various “Oswalds” were later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Mexico City to Dallas. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theater, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back.

As Douglass says:

There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.³¹

Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico . . . their (CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget. ³²

It was apparent to anyone paying close attention that a very intricate and deadly game was being played at high levels in the shadows.

We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime, it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass and others have amassed layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so.

Who Had the Power to Withdraw the President’s Security?

To answer this essential question is to finger the conspirators and to expose, in Vincent Salandria’s words, “the false mystery concealing state crimes.”³³

Neither Oswald, the mafia nor anti-Castro Cubans could have withdrawn most of the security that day. Sheriff Bill Decker ordered all his deputies “to take no part whatsoever in the security of that [presidential] motorcade.” ³⁴ Police Chief Jesse Curry did the same for Dallas police protection for the president in Dealey Plaza. Both “Chief Curry and Sheriff Decker gave their orders withdrawing security from the president in obedience to orders they had themselves received from the Secret Service.” The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been on previous presidential motorcades as well as the day before in Houston and removed agents from the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire.

The Secret Service admitted there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza to protect Kennedy. But we know from extensive witness testimony that, during and after the assassination, there were people in Dealey Plaza impersonating Secret Service agents who stopped policeman and the public from moving through the area on the Grassy Knoll where some of the shots appeared to come from. The Secret Service approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car, driven by Secret Service agent William Greer, moved at a snail’s pace and came almost to a halt before the final head shot, clear and blatant security violations.  The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded this, not some conspiracy theorist.³⁵

Who could have squelched the testimony of the many doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story?

Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2 is a story little known but extraordinary in its implications.)

The list of all the people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.

The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

But there is more from him and other researchers who have cut the Gordian knot of this false mystery with a few brief strokes.

Oswald, The Preordained Patsy

Three examples will suffice to show that Lee Harvey Oswald, working as part of a U.S. Intelligence operation, was set up to take the blame for the assassination of President Kennedy, and that when he said in police custody that he was “a patsy,” he was speaking truthfully. These examples make it clear that Oswald was deceived by his intelligence handlers and had been chosen without his knowledge, long before the murder, to take the blame as a lone, crazed killer.

First, Kennedy was shot at 12:30 P.M. CT. According to the Warren Report, at 12:45 P.M. a police report was issued for a suspect that perfectly fit Oswald’s description. This was based on the testimony of Howard Brennan, who said he was standing across from the Book Depository and saw a standing white man, about 5’10” and slender, fire a rifle at the president’s car from the sixth-floor window. This was blatantly false because photographs taken moments after the shooting show the window open only partially at the bottom about fourteen inches, and it would have been impossible for a standing assassin to be seen “resting against the left windowsill,” (the window sill was a foot from the floor), as Brennan is alleged to have said. He would have therefore had to have been shooting through the glass. The description of the suspect was clearly fabricated in advance to match Oswald’s.

Then between 1:06 and 1:15 P.M. in the quiet residential Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Police Officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed. Supposedly based on Brennan’s description broadcast over police radio, Tippit had stopped a man fitting the description and this man pulled a gun and shot the officer. Meanwhile, Oswald had returned to his rooming house where his landlady said he left at 1:03 P.M., went outside, and was standing at a northbound bus stop. The Tippet murder took place nine-tenths of a mile away to the south where a witness, Mrs. Higgins, said she heard a gunshot at 1:06 P.M., ran outside, saw Tippit lying in the street and a man running away with a handgun whom she said was not Oswald.

Oswald is reported to have entered the Texas Theater minutes before the Tippit murder. The concession stand operator, Warren Burroughs, has said he sold him popcorn at 1:15 P.M., which is the time the Warren Report claims Tippit was killed. At 1:50 P.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater and taken out the front door where a crowd and many police cars awaited him, while a few minutes later a second Oswald is secretly taken out the back door of the movie theater. (To read this story of the second Oswald and his movement by the CIA out of Dallas on a military aircraft on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, documented in great detail by James W. Douglass, is an eye-opener.)

The official narrative of Oswald and the Tippit murder begs credulity, but it serves to “show” that Oswald was a killer. ³⁶

Despite his denials, Oswald, set up for Kennedy’s murder based on a prepackaged description, is arraigned for Tippit’s murder at 7:10 PM. It was not until the next day that he was charged for Kennedy’s.

The Message to Air Force One

Secondly, while Oswald is being questioned about Tippit’s murder in the afternoon hours after his arrest, Air Force One has left Dallas for Washington with the newly sworn-in president Lyndon Johnson and the presidential party. Back in D.C., the White House Situation Room is under the personal and direct control of Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, a man with close CIA ties who had opposed JFK on many matters, including the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s order to withdraw from Vietnam.³⁷

As reported by Theodore White, in The Making of the President 1964, Johnson and the others were informed by the Bundy controlled Situation Room that “there was no conspiracy, learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest …”³⁸

Vincent Salandria, one of the earliest and most astute critics of the Warren Commission, put it this way in his book, False Mystery: ³⁹

This [announcement from the Situation Room to Air Force One in flight back to Washington, D.C] was the very first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin. In Dallas, Oswald was not even charged with assassinating the President until 1:30 A.M. the next morning. The plane landed at 5:59 P.M. on the 22nd. At that time  the District Attorney of Dallas, Henry Wade, was stating that “preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting … the electric chair is too good for the killers.” Can there be any doubt that for any government taken by surprise by the assassination — and legitimately seeking the truth concerning it — less than six hours after the time of the assassination was too soon to know there was no conspiracy? This announcement was the first which designated Oswald as the lone assassin….

I propose the thesis that McGeorge Bundy, when that announcement was issued from his Situation Room, had reason to know that the true meaning of such a message when conveyed to the Presidential party on Air Force One [and to a separate plane with the entire cabinet that had turned around and was headed back over the Pacific Ocean] was not the ostensible message which was being communicated. Rather, I submit that Bundy … was really conveying to the Presidential party the thought that Oswald was being designated the lone assassin before any evidence against him was ascertainable. As a central coordinator of intelligence services, Bundy in transmitting such a message through the Situation Room was really telling the Presidential party that an unholy marriage had taken place between the U.S. Governmental intelligence services and the lone-assassin doctrine. Was he not telling the Presidential party peremptorily, ‘Now, hear this! Oswald is the assassin, the sole assassin. Evidence is not available yet. Evidence will be obtained, or in lieu thereof evidence will be created. This is a crucial matter of state that cannot await evidence. The new rulers have spoken. You, there, Mr. New President, and therefore dispatchable stuff, and you the underlings of a deposed President, heed the message well.’ Was not Bundy’s Situation Room serving an Orwellian double-think function?⁴⁰

Oswald’s Prepackaged Life Story

Finally, Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty adds a third example of the CIA conspiracy for those who need more evidence that the government has lied from the start about the assassination.

Prouty was Chief of Special Operations in the Pentagon before and during the Kennedy years. He was the liaison between the Joint Chiefs and the CIA, working closely with Director Allen Dulles and others in supporting the clandestine operations of the CIA under military cover. He had been sent out of the country to the South Pole by the aforementioned CIA operative Edward Lansdale (Operation Northwoods) before the Kennedy assassination and was returning on November 22, 1963. On a stopover in Christchurch, New Zealand, he heard a radio report that the president had been killed but knew no details. He was having breakfast with a U.S Congressman at 7:30 AM on November 23, New Zealand time. A short time later, at approximately 4:30 PM Dallas time, November 22, he bought the Christchurch Star 23 November 1963 newspaper and read it together with the Congressman.

The newspaper reports from the scene said that Kennedy had been killed by bursts of automatic weapons fire, not a single shot rifle, firing three separate shots in 6.8 seconds, as was later claimed for Oswald. But the thing that really startled him was that at a time when Oswald had just been arrested and had not even been charged for the murder of Officer Tippit, there was elaborate background information on Oswald, his time in Russia, his association with Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, etc. “It’s almost like a book written five years later,” said Prouty. “Furthermore, there’s a picture of Oswald, well-dressed in a business suit, whereas, when he was picked up on the streets of Dallas after the President’s death, he had on some t-shirt or something…

Who had written that scenario?  Who wrote that script…So much news was already written ahead of time of the murder to say that Oswald killed the President and that he did it with three shots…Somebody had decided Oswald was going to be the patsy…Where did they get it, before the police had charged him with the crime?  Not so much ‘where,’ as ‘why’ Oswald?⁴¹

Prouty, an experienced military man working for the CIA in the Pentagon, accused the military-intelligence “High Cabal” of killing President Kennedy in an elaborate and sophisticated plot and blaming it on Oswald, whom they had begun setting up years in advance.

The evidence for a government plot to plan, assassinate, cover-up, and choose a patsy in the murder of President John Kennedy is overwhelming.⁴²

Five years after JFK’s assassination, we would learn, to our chagrin and his glory, that the president’s younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, equally brave and unintimidated, would take a bullet to the back of his head in 1968 as he was on his way to the presidency and the pursuit of his brother’s killers. The same cowards struck again.

Their successors still run the country and must be stopped.

Epilogue by James W. Douglass

John F. Kennedy was raised from the death of wealth, power, and privilege. The son of a millionaire ambassador, he was born, raised, and educated to rule the system. When he was elected President, Kennedy’s heritage of power corresponded to his position as head of the greatest national security state in history. But Kennedy, like Lazarus, was raised from the death of that system. In spite of all odds, he became a peacemaker and, thus, a traitor to the system….

Why? What raised Kennedy from the dead? Why did John Kennedy choose life in the midst of death and by continuing to choose life thus condemn himself to death? I have puzzled over that question while studying the various biographies of Kennedy. May I suggest one source of grace for his resurrection as a peacemaker? In reading his story, one is struck by his devotion to his children. There is no mistaking the depth of love he had for Caroline and John, and the overwhelming pain he and Jacqueline experienced at the death of their son Patrick. Robert Kennedy in his book Thirteen Days has described how his brother saw the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of the future of his children and all children. I believe John Kennedy was at least partially raised from the dead of the national security state by the life of his children. The heroic peacemaking of his final months, with his acceptance of its likely cost in his own death, was, I suspect, partly a result of the universal life he saw in and through them. I think he believed profoundly the words that he gave in his American University address as his foundation for rejecting the Cold War: ‘Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. ⁴³

1. History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy, E. Martin Schotz, Kurtz, Ulmer, & DeLucia Book Publishers, 1996. []
2. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, James W. Douglass, Orbis Books, 2008[1][2], p. 8 and p. 212; Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio, 2nd Edition, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, pp. 17-33. []
3. The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, David Talbot, Harper Collins, 2015, pp. 375–389. MORI DocID: 1451843 p. 464, p. 473 of “The CIA’s Family Jewels,” 16 May 1973, The National Security Archives. []
4. Investigation into the condition and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjold and of members of the party accompanying him (United Nations General Assembly document,) Judge Mohamed Chande Othman, September 5, 2017, p. 49 and 50, Dag Hammarskjöld Plane Crash Recent Developments, UN Association, Westminster Branch UK. []
5. Edward Curtin interviews Greg Poulgrain on The Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting Indonesian Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles, Global Research, July 22, 2016;  Chapter 2 – JFK, Dulles and Hammarskjöld of The Incubus of Intervention; Greg Poulgrain, JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia, Simon & Schuster, 2020. []
6. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., American Values, Harper Collins, 2018, p. 117. []
7. Dallas Mayor During JFK Assassination Was CIA Asset, Who.What.Why, August 2, 2017. []
8. Peter Kornbluh confirmed this in a phone conversation with the author in May 2000. See The ULTRASENSITIVE Bay of Pigs Newly Released Portions of Taylor Commission Report Provide Critical New Details on Operation Zapata, National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 29, May 3, 2000. []
9. Averell Harriman interviewed in Charles Stevenson, The End Of Nowhere; American Policy Toward Laos Since 1954, 1972, p. 154. []
10. Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 222. []
11. Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962, FOIA documents at National Security Archive. []
12. Pierre Salinger, P.S.: A Memoir, St. Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 253. []
13. Talbot, op. cit., p. 453. []
14. John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times, Houghton Mifflin, 1981, p. 388. []
15. American University Commencement Address, President Kennedy, June 10, 1963. []
16. President Kennedy Radio and TV Address to the American People on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July 26, 1963; Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water, signed at Moscow August 5, 1963, entered into force October 10, 1963. []
17. See James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy,” Boston Review, October/November 2003. []
18. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, Doubleday & Co., 1966, p. 198. []
19. See Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev – An Asterisk to the History of a Hopeful Year, 1962-1963, W.W. Norton & Co., 1972. []
20. Jean Daniel, “Unofficial Envoy – An Historic Report from Two Capitals,” The New Republic, December 14, 1963. []
21. Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye;” Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Little Brown, 1972, p. 25. []
22. See Operation Mockingbird, the only FOIA-released-by-CIA documents at The Black Vault.  Carl Bernstein, “THE CIA AND THE MEDIA – How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977. []
23. James F. Tracy, “The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know,” Global Research/ratical.org, 2018. []
24. Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, New Press. 1999.  See Also: James Petras, “The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited,” Monthly Review, November 1999. []
25. See Vincent J. Salandria, “The Warren Report?“ Liberation, March 1965. []
26. Zapruder Film in slow motion (1:33). []
27. Gerald D. McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, Univ. Of Kansas Press, 2005, review by Jim DiEugenio. []
28. Douglass, op. cit., p. 46. []
29. See James and Elsie Wilcott: CIA Profile in Courage, excerpt from JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 144-148, 421-422. []
30. Douglass, op. cit., p. 47-48. []
31. See Oswald’s Doubles: How Multiple Lookalikes Were Used to Craft One Lone Scapegoat, excerpt from JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 286-303, 350-355, 464-470, 481-483. []
32. Douglass, op. cit., p. 81. []
33. Vincent Salandria, The JFK Assassination: A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes, presentation at the Coalition on Political Assassinations, November 20, 1998. []
34. Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Dean Craig, When They Kill A President, 1971. []
35. Douglass, op. cit., pp. 270-277 and endnote 75 of James Douglass’ 2009 COPA Keynote Address.  Secret Service Final Survey Report for the November 21, 1963, visit by President Kennedy to Houston, cited in Appendix to Hearings before the HSCA, vol. 11, p. 529. []
36. Douglass, op. cit., pp. 287-304. []
37. Talbot, op.cit., pp. 407-8.  &  NSAM 263 (document 194), Foreign Relations of the United States, Vietnam v. IV, Aug-Dec’63. []
38. Theodore White, The Making of the President, 1964, Atheneum, 1965, p. 33.  See also Let Us Begin Anew: An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency, Gerald S. Strober, Debra Strober,  Perennial, 1993, pp. 450-451. []
39. False Mystery, Essays on the JFK Assassination by Vincent Salandria, rat haus reality press, 2017. []
40. Bundy Continued to Shape Hawkish Policies, in Vincent J. Salandria, “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: A Model of Explanation,” Computers and Automation, December 1971, pp. 32-40. []
41. David T. Ratcliffe, Understanding Special Operations: 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty, rat haus reality press, 1999, pp. 214-215. []
42. See The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at The National Archives. []
43. James Douglass, “The Assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy in the Light of the Fourth Gospel,” Sewanee Theological Review, 1998. []

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

Mercenaries, and now, we have a blue blood son, grandson to Robert Kennedy, heading out to Ukraine with some sad sack ideas about what he in the name of Hell is going to do in that country?

Yep, RFK Jr., let out the news recently, on Megyn Kelly. The newspapers picked it up:

“He felt that he shouldn’t be arguing about it unless he was willing to have skin in the game and take his own risk,” Kennedy said on “The Megyn Kelly Show” of his son’s decision to go to the war-torn country.

Kennedy said his son signed up for the Foreign Legion at the Ukrainian Embassy and was a drone pilot before he was promoted to a “machine gunner.”

“He didn’t have any military experience and kind of talked his way into the unit,” he added. “He’s been in firefights, mainly nighttime, and a lot of artillery fights with the Russians.”

“He had a job for a law firm, a really good law firm in Los Angeles, and I was looking forward to him living with me for the summer,” he said of his son’s initial plans.

When probing him further about Conor Kennedy’s plans, his son said, “I’m not going. I want to talk to you. I don’t want you to ask me what I’m doing.”

“I was like, ‘Um…,’” he explained. “And he said, ‘I will explain it to you at some point, but I do not want you to ask me now, and if you could just respect that it would mean a lot to me.’ So I did.”

We can discuss what the role of parenting has to do with bringing up children who might find it necessary to shoot at people to get skin in the game. Now, Conor is 28, that is, 28 years old, not months, yet as a teacher of many souls over four decades, I can say he is most certainly arrested developed (so many American men are), and this whole idea of having skin in the game is beyond insane. Kind reader, what were you doing at age 28? Wanting skin in the game? Which game? Hmm, I went to Central America before age 28, and I was working with refugees in Arizona in my 19 to 21 years of age time frame. I was involved in journalism, too, young, at 17, and then reporting on some things like El Salvadorans perishing in the desert near where I was headquartered, and some on the drug tunnels down also near Bisbee. Also, reporting on the military putting up aerostat balloons along the border to try and capture undocumented workers. I even did a story on some of those Posse Comitatus folk, the border patriots (sic) who went out there armed and lock ‘n’ loaded.

Nope, no blue blood in my line. Yep, plenty of military around me with an old man in cryptology in the Air Force and then Army. Germany, France, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Yes, and I am named after a grandfather who was a WWI pilot in the Germany navy-air force, flying triple-wing planes. He was in post-WWI Germany, seeing the wheelbarrows of  Deutsche Marks for a loaf of bread. He also — before the German loss — in the Battle of Jutland, on a ship, the Rostock, that was hit and distressed with hundreds dead. He floated on the flotsam of war and watched the battle ensue and then the two sides with white flags came into the war theater to pick up the wounded and dead.

And, of course, I had Irish and Scottish and English and Canadian family in that war, but also in WWII. Uncle Ian was on a submarine for the British, and German family members on the Russian front, and alas, relatives who survived the bombing of Dresden.

Yeah, I heard stories about Paul Haeder’s exploits on a tall sail ship learning how to be a soldier, and listened intently his war experiences, and learned about his post-WWI life, and his life in Iowa and South Dakota (my grandfather ended up in Iowa and South Dakota as the last of seven brothers who hit Ellis Island before WWI). Paul found work as a former lieutenant impossible — coal mining and “working” the food trains with orders to shoot fellow Germans, per the Pinkerton outfit, if they rushed the trains for food, bread, foodstuffs. That wasn’t Paul Haeder’s ethos, so he never did the dirty deeds of shooting Germans hungrier than rabid dogs.

Now, of course, forgotten history of that putrid, Patton and MacArthur, and their dirty deeds killing their own veterans:

In 1932, 17,000 former soldiers marched on Washington, D.C. to demand wartime pay owed to them. The Great Depression ravaged the country, and a president took desperate measures to disperse the angry veterans.

Tanks rolled down the streets. Soldiers held people at bayonet-point. Veterans and their families took lungs full of tear gas. People died.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur — then the U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff — led the 12th Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment into the fray.

The cavalry regiment contained six Renault FT tanks commanded by Maj. George Patton. The Army troops, with bayonets affixed to their rifles, charged into the shanty town and launched tear gas into the crowds. (source)

Skin in the game? Hmm. So, growing up on air force bases, army posts and outside Paris, on SHAPE and NATO compounds, I was truly interested in the stories of men and women, and the accounts of dudes who were in Vietnam, or hanging onto my old man’s Korea stories and his recalling about what happened in Vietnam, though he was pretty much a zipped up mouth on those wars. He worked in NATO caves in France and Germany, as a signal corps warrant officer, and we all in the family had to have FBI-level background checks.

I wonder what a 13-year-old is doing learning about Black Panthers, Cesar Chavez, Che Guevara, and much much more? That was me. I learned about Ho Chi Minh from some of my older sister’s friends who had come back from Vietnam, mentally wounded, hooked on smack, some wounded physically, and most anti-American, anti-War.

No blue blood in my family.

Look, yes, I am trauma informed, and this image, or these two, are full of context and whatever this Conor believes in, in terms of killing humans, Russians, and some of them, if he was a drone operator, civilians, that would be an interesting discussion and debate.

So, listening to RFK, Junior, Conor’s dad, I stuck with him throughout the wide-ranging two-hour Megyn Kelly interview, which in my mind is less of a journalistic interview and more of the same old celebrity cultish thing a multimillionaire Kelly was doing (interviewing) with another multimillionaire, RFK, Jr.

I wrote this to a fellow writer I respect, and who publishes many amazing pieces. He’s a bit older than I am, I believe. Here:

Yeah, ECC, we have this fascination with blue blood, the Kennedys, Bush, those coming out of Ivy League schools, who are millionaires who hang with billionaires.

His son, well, has to be judged on what he was doing, and alas, Ukraine is the most corrupt nation in the world, in some sense. So, there are many issues tied to what the quality of his character is.

He’s a mercenary, and this is war porn. He wasn’t even in any military. He talked his way into the Mercenary Legions. Lied. Oh, he is an athlete, which is a big Kennedy thing.

The entire thing will give this kid a cleared pipeline to multi-millions, and his book will be coming out soon, Oprah-approved, soon.

The kid (man, age 28) wouldn’t even tell his parents where he was going, what he was up to. That is something deeply troubling to me because I have friends and a spouse who have been estranged by their children. There are Facebook groups with the title “Mothers of Estranged Children.” Many of these women were just hard working single mothers, and something snapped in the children. There are 70 year old women who have never met children’s children, and even great grandkids. This is pretty deeply ingrained in my own background in trauma informed case management with homeless civilians and veterans and those hooked on drugs and those just released from prison.

I’m 65, been to Central America as a journalist, covered the US-Mexico border, been with US military as a college instructor at the Sergeant Major Academy at Fort Bliss. My old man was in 32 years. Air Force and then Army. Clandestine stuff, crypto stuff. We ended up in the Azores and then Germany and France and UK. I got to see and hear a lot of stuff. I am, was early, anti-military on so many levels

Very young (13) I was already seeing the destruction of the world through the military state, through corporate malfeasance, through the professional managerial class, and the lawyer class.  This kid (man) at this age, 28, is really going to be part of the problem for socialists and social-environmental-cultural warriors like myself, and anyone who might come up as decent, smart and thoughtful adults in our current generation. We have a lot of work to do, and putting one’s effort into machismo, into this trip into a corrupt place, thinking Putin is a Gangster, well, what sort of upbringing did he have?

FYI: In the Megyn interview RFK admits he got the mRNA, and so did his children, 7.

Whew. Amazing, no, ECC.

Trauma, man. So much trauma in the Kennedy family. Epigenetic, and who the hell knows what kind of trauma is in Conor’s immediate family. I am trauma informed, so I can’t judge too much on that level.

Then, Aaron and Gabor Mate, an older interview, on the trauma, the mental illnesses and pain that propelled people to believe in Russia Gate.

Thanks, ECC. A real interview with you one of these days?

Here’s the show’s low down blurb:

Megyn Kelly is joined by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., author of “A Letter to Liberals,” to discuss COVID pandemic orthodoxy, the need for discussion and debate, the elimination of freedoms due to the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci demanding blind faith in authority, the important issue of whether the COVID vaccines prevent transmission, myocarditis risk from COVID and from vaccines, rise in “unexplained” deaths in a post-COVID vaccine world, the truth about how many lives COVID vaccines saved and lost, the lack of important data needed to understand the rise in deaths post-COVID, what Fauci said about vaccines that could have an adverse effect before the COVID vaccines were available, the absurdity of the new booster which was only tested on eight mice and no humans, Pfizer’s involvement in the Trump administration, Alex Berenson and tech censorship, RFK’s disbanded “vaccine safety” commission, Scott Gottlieb and our supposed medical elite, American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations, problems with the VAERS system, personal backlash from family and friends, his views of Donald Trump then and now, Herschel Walker and our politics today, the war in Ukraine, American imperialism, RFK’s personal connection to the war as his son Conor was fighting in the country, and more.

Look, these issues need to be discussed. In the interview, there is discussion about Trump, about politicians’ public lives versus private lives, and how we weigh the bad people perpetrate in their families, in their own house and jobs, their personal personas, against the good their policy and governance might come off as part of their public life. My writer friend was upset that RFK, Jr. calls Putin a thug and gangster, while at the same time, RFK JR does speak out against the cancel left, against the war drumming and against the endless pit of money and arms for nothing to ZioLensky. Kennedy laments that there is $7 a gallon of gasoline in California, equating that to the war/Putin (?), but really, the USA is (has been for decades) in a major free-fall, and, people are struggling with double-triple-quadruple cost of living; i.e., food, coffee, drugs, and now Pfizer, who got the jab approved by CDC for children’s yearly vaccination, well, they also announced the company will be upping the price of the dirty jab, to $110 a shot, which is four times the current price.

I wonder what these lawyers working for these outfits have in terms of skin in the game? Will they head to Yemen to see what it’s like to have USA-UK supplied bombs to Saudi Arabia. Skin in the game in Haiti stealing that country’s resources and stealing the coffers? Which skin in the game will the American put forth who wants to know what it is to take on a stand on any issue psychologically and intellectually without having to put one’s ass in the game?

It is a blue in the face routine now attempting to talk about Nuland and Maidan, about the Donbass and the ethnic cleansing? All of the history of Putin wanting diplomacy, wanting to be part of the Eurozone, to be on good terms with Germany, and to advance nuclear weapon decommissioning.

The thuggery and gansterism RFK Jr. and Conor Kennedy espouse about Putin, that’s way off, sort of brainwashed opinion. Putin is a million times more informed and sensible than Biden or Blinken. They have skin in the game, a la Raytheon et al.

Here, trauma, and what exactly is-was-continues to go on in the minds of Russia Gate freaks:

GABOR MATÉ: What does it say about American society that so many people are actually enrolled in believing that this man could be any kind of a savior? What does that say about the divisions and the conflicts and the contradictions and the genuine problems in this culture? And how do we address those issues?

You can look at that. Or you can say there must be a devil somewhere behind all this, and that devil is a foreign power, and his name is Putin, and his country is Russia. Now you’ve got a simple explanation that doesn’t invite you or necessitate that you explore your own pain and your own fear and your own trauma.

So I really believe that really this Russia gate narrative was, on the part of a lot of people, a sign of genuine upset at something genuinely upsetting. But rather than dealing with the upset, it was an easier way to in a sense draw off the energy of it in to some kind of a believable and comforting narrative. It’s much more comforting to believe that some enemy is doing this to us than to look at what does it say about us as a society.

I mean there was a massive denial of the actual dynamics in American society that led to the election of this traumatized and traumatizing individual as President, number one.

AARON MATÉ: Because you think Donald Trump himself is traumatized?

GABOR MATÉ: Oh, Donald Trump is a clearest example of a traumatized politician one could ever see. He’s in denial of reality all the time. He is self aggrandizing. His fundamental self concept is that of a nobody. So he has to make himself huge and big all the time and keep proving to the world how powerful and smart, what kind of degrees he’s got and how smart he is. It’s a compensation for terrible self image. He can’t pay attention to anything, which means that his brain is too scattered because it was too painful for him to pay attention.

What does this all come down to? The childhood that we know that he had in the home of a dictatorial child disparaging father, and a very weak

AARON MATÉ: Fred Trump, his father.

GABOR MATÉ: Who demeaned his children mercilessly. One of Trump’s brothers drank himself to death. And Trump compensates for all that by trying to make himself as big and powerful and successful as possible. And, of course, he makes up for his anger towards his mother for not protecting him by attacking women and exploiting women and boasting about it publicly. I mean, it’s a clear trauma example. I’m not saying this to invite sympathy for Trump’s politics. I’m just describing that that’s who the man is. And the fact that such a traumatized individual can be elected to the position of what they call the most powerful person in the world speaks to a traumatized society.

And like individuals can be in denial, a society can be in denial. So this society is deeply in denial about its own trauma, and particularly in this case about the trauma of that election. So one way to deal with trauma is denial of it. The other way is to project onto other people things that you don’t like about yourself.

Now, it’s only a matter of historical fact. And no serious person, no serious student of history can possibly deny how the United States has interfered in the internal politics of just about every nation on earth.

There is lots of skin in the game for all of us surviving in various stages and steps trauma. How many countries has the USA bombed, sanctioned, proxied, and stolen from? That is another fun thing, right, visiting those countries and donating some mutual aid support — skin in the game — by planting trees, feeding children, digging water systems. But putting on combat gear and playing tin soldier with live rounds and drones, hmm, that is an interesting skin in the game.

Here, Jim Chambers, from the rich and famous Cox news-cable family, he too went to Ukraine, Donbass, as a reporter:

When I asked him about his perspectives on the conflict now, versus when he made the decision to come over, his repeated emphasis was that he had been “extremely uninformed” when he was still in Alabama and relying on the narrative being spun by Western media. “I can tell you that I was very surprised to see most women and children still at home and living normally in all the major Ukrainian cities I went to. And when I was detained here in Donetsk, it was the first time I had been able to speak to any Russians or Russian-speakers from Donbass. There’s a side of the story that we’re not getting in America.” He noted that even from his cell in Donetsk, he had been hearing constant explosions, every day, coming from Ukrainian shelling of the city, something he had never anticipated. “Nothing in the Western media shows you that this is a civil war, and one that’s been going on a long time.” He didn’t go as far as disavowing the Ukrainian state, or endorsing the Russian “special military operation,” but he repeatedly said to me, “If I had known the truth about what was going on over here, I would never have made the decision to come. I regret it.”

Feelings of sympathy for a man in a life-and-death predicament, who at face value seems to have been duped into his decision, above all else, are completely understandable. But some on the Donetsk side of the conflict aren’t shedding many tears for him, or for similar detainees. Russell “Texas” Bentley is a U.S.-born veteran of the DPR armed forces, having served from 2014 to 2017, and he is a resident of Donetsk. Bentley shared with me his thoughts on Drueke and those like him.

“Yeah, a lot of these punks were just too big for their britches, and that’s almost forgivable. But what they wanted to do was come here to kill, and if the shoe had been on the other foot, they wouldn’t have hesitated. I was behind Ukrop [Ukrainian] lines twice, and didn’t fire a shot either time. Every single battle I was ever in was defensive. We held a position, and the Ukrops came to attack us, and they’d have killed us all if they could have. So, it will be an educational experience for them, hopefully give them a bit of a head start in their next life.” (source — ‘I Regret’ Being a Mercenary in Ukraine: Conversation with U.S. POW Detained in Donbass)

“Here is Texas Russell Bentley: From Texas to Donbass: Meet the American fighting Ukrainian fascists”

I used to show lots of movie clips to my students in Texas, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. Lots of controversial (sic) books, and tons of articles and professional journal studies. Controversial, in their face, and much of it was during Reagan’s illegal wars, Panama, Bush One and Kuwait and Iraq, Bush Two, Iraq, Clinton, even Obama. Many many complaints about exposing youth and older students to things that went boom in their heads. Everything was on-limits, no holds barred. We talked, debated and then I got students to research and think critically and with the right tools of rhetoric, a la centuries of clear thinking, proposing, comparing and contrasting, looking at causes and effects, all of the ways we classify, argue, persuade, define and connotate and how we engage in those techniques of propaganda, and how to get through with objectivity and then what powerful tools narrative writing can give us. Pat Tillman — Conor, ever see him?

Here, the full movie, free, on You Tube. The Pat Tillman Story.

Look, RFK Jr. did say that we are imperfect, that is, the human race. He was stating how Hershel Walker can be candidate X, antiabortion vis-à-vis policy, but in his own life, having been a part of abortions with his spouses and partners, that is just the contradictory way of politics. It all makes sense as a Catholic who believes in redemption. I am not going to knock that. Conor, becoming a high priced lawyer one day, well, maybe he will do great things for humankind.

Maybe doing the mercenary thing in Ukraine will give Conor better perspectives. Now, Russell Bentley, I have had email exchanges with him. Yes, he has hit some of the same places I have hit — El Paso, Tucson, etc. He went to Donbass, and he married a Ukrainian-Russian, and he lives in the Donbass and reports from the Donbass. Yes, he sent me his memoir:

Robert Kennedy said he is not doctrinaire or hard-headed, and that he learns and changes over time. He repeats how he was working as an environmental lawyer, and that he was part of Riverkeeper, for which there are over 350 rivers around the world with a keeper testing water, supporting the river life and acting as a pied piper for a healthy river. He was suing over poisons in the rivers, mercury. He stated that he was dogged by some women at one of his talks. One woman gave him a stack of briefs and reports on mercury preservatives in Vaccines and other issues tied to vaccine injuries. The vaccine fight he was not a part of for years, until persistent citizens and a medical doctor brought it to his attention. I understand that old saw, “No one is perfect . . . Homo Sapiens is a messy, troubled species.”

That’s a given And we all have skin in the game when it comes to peace, life, truth, and reconciling our own trauma with healing and loving thy neighbor. The whole Putin is a Gangster thing is interesting, for sure, and alas, Capitalists Are Gangsters, sure, I get to deploy that one all the time. Murder Incorporated, the Value of Nothing, the Sociopathic Rich, and so much more I can also utilize as descriptors of the USA, then and now. Did Conor take in that book, War is a Racket? Did he weigh Butler’s words with the reality of Russia wanting Minsk II to be abided by before signing up for weaponizing his idea of skin in the game? What was Nuland doing in Kiev? Biden and Hunter? Are we all going to default on redemption for any sin? That we are all imperfect souls? Did Conor have real deep talks with people outside the frame of Putin is a Gangster?

I recommend reading, All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). The book, and now, a 2022 German movie of the book:

“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Yes, banned.

Remarque’s novel saw censorship outside of Germany as well. In the United States, the English translation was banned in Boston on grounds of obscenity; and in Chicago, U.S. customs had seized any volumes which had not been expurgated. Austrian soldiers were forbidden to read the novel, Czech military libraries removed copies from their shelves, while Italy banned the novel entirely due to its anti-war, pacifist agenda. Despite its success, or perhaps because of it, Remarque had his German citizenship revoked and was forced into exile. Just before the onset of World War II in Europe, Remarque and his wife left Switzerland for the United States. They became official U.S. citizens in 1947. (source)

Now? The sides, that is, the many sides, to Ukraine and Nazis and Bandera and Zelensky and Coups and USA and CIA, and then, Putin and Russian demands for stopping the existential threat of NATO moving east with all their bombs bursting in air. John Pilger stated it correctly recently:

Much of this propaganda originates in the US, and is transmitted through proxies and ‘think-tanks’, such as the notorious Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the voice of the arms industry, and by zealous journalists such as Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, who labeled those spreading Chinese influence as ‘rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows’ and called for these ‘pests’ to be ‘eradicated’.

News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’.

Palestine has been misreported for as long as I can remember. To the BBC, there is the ‘conflict’ of ‘two narratives’. The longest, most brutal, lawless military occupation in modern times is unmentionable.

The stricken people of Yemen barely exist. They are media unpeople.  While the Saudis rain down their American cluster bombs with British advisors working alongside the Saudi targeting officers, more than half a million children face starvation.

This brainwashing by omission has a long history. The slaughter of the First World War was suppressed by reporters who were knighted for their compliance and confessed in their memoirs.  In 1917, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, C.P. Scott, confided to prime minister Lloyd George: ‘If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow, but they don’t know and can’t know.’ (‘Silencing the Lambs — How Propaganda Works‘)

Then, on a sad and inspiring (for some) note tied to other types of humans who might be coming to Donbass to fight what they believe is the good fight.

That’s Alex Castillo, who was a fighter in Donbass since 2014. From Spain, but born in Columbia. It’s a tough comparison, right, Kennedy and Castillo. This man had skin in the game, family in the game, was there to defend the people of Donbass being murdered by Ukraine, vis-a-vis USA material and training and NATO beefing up.

He was a communist, too, which is contrary to the bleeding heart liberals who are wrapped in blue and yellow and demand more more more for Zelensky, who has rounded up communists. Russia, by the way, isn’t communist, since so many Americans I will send this article to might need some reminding.

Russell Bentley is in Donbass and was in the fighting groups with Castillo. Bentley is a communist, colorful, sometimes bombastic, but not afraid to call a spade a spade, and he has that robust energy still in his older age days (63) of someone critical of USA, of Ukraine and of Russia’s decision makers who Russell believes have really messed up the fight against the AFU and Azov folk in Donbass region.

But he has tributes for Castillo, just recently killed in fighting:

Alexis was a true Communist, and a real Internationalist. He often spoke of going to Syria or Venezuela or Cuba after our victory here in Donbass, to defend the people and the socialism there. He did not love war, not by any means, he hated it, as we all do here, as all decent people do, but he was good at the job, and the job needed to be done. As all combat veterans know, we are all born with only so much luck, and the more time you spend in the places where the bullets fly, the closer you get to the day your luck runs out. Alexis spent 8 years as a front line soldier, a sniper in a Spetsnaz unit, and he never, ever hesitated when it was his turn to go. And when his time came to meet death, two weeks after our good friend Elia was killed, Alexis met it like a hero, advancing on the enemy with a weapon in his hand. Alexis was truly a Che Guevara of the 21st century, and Alexis had said, as did Che, “I do not care if I fall, as long as another ear hears my battle cry, and another hand picks up my gun.” (“Adios, Alex Castillo: A Donbas hero falls on Oct. 28″).

Any sort of tribute to a fighter like Castillo in the circles I intersect with is verboten, literally. Cancelled, called a traitor, called a Putin lover, called a Trumpster, called any number of names that are completely antithetical to who and what I am. Or, you might end up in a Michigan Democratic rally, with Obama stumping, and god forbid you confront Obama about his administration’s work in Ukraine in 2014, and not only will you get the swarmy and bs Obama folksy retort — “We are all friends here . . . you’ll have time to speak” — but you will get those blue democrats, men, women, children, old and young, hating on Russia and just not ready for any pushback against their multimillionaire-soon-to-be-a-pro-basketball-team-owner Obama. Yelling, “Down with Russia . . . Putin is our enemy.” You know, no antiwar chants, or chants of peace talks, or chants against escalation, of nuclear saber rattling by Biden. Obama is truly a stump. These are his rallies in Michigan, and he was in Oregon, stumping for the democratic candidate for governor. What’s that got to do with ex-President’s multimillionaire package?

I know it’s “only” Jimmy Dore below covering that Michigan event, but heck, no pushback from mainstream media, so here, watch Democratic Party rally with Obama pushed through the Dore seive: “Peace Activists Heckle Obama Over Nuclear War”

All those dead Ukrainians, and Russians, and fighters like Castillo, and this is the end result for so many of them — what they leave behind:

​We are in some very sick and strange times —

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

It’s an exquisite juxtaposition: Putin as Hitler and Kennedy as a junior demon, suggestive of the relationship between C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters.  Evil personified.

The Times is big into anguish these days, not only for Nazis in Ukraine and upper class apartment hunters who can’t find a place for less than a few million, but for Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s family and friends.  It’s very touching.  That his sister, Kerry Kennedy, would harshly criticize him once again is genuinely pathetic, but, of course, she has to add how much she loves him, ostensibly to take the sting out of her inability to remain sisterly silent.

If he is so wrong about his work with Children’s Health Defense and his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, rather than ripping him to the press, why doesn’t she or her siblings, who agree with her, write a comprehensive article or book refuting his facts?

They don’t because they can’t; so the next best thing is to criticize their brother to media glad for any way to disparage the Kennedys.  One senses a very weird masochistic family dynamic at work.

Kennedy’s siblings do not seem to understand why the media have been attacking him for years.  His stance on vaccines and Anthony Fauci are the cover story they use to criticize him, and his siblings don’t get it.  That their brother has become a major thorn in the side of the CIA escapes them, the CIA that has caused so much devastation to their family and the world.  The CIA that has been deeply involved in the global vaccine push, working with medical technocrats like Anthony Fauci, billionaires such as Bill Gates, the military, media, Big Pharma, the World Economic Forum, etc.  Calling your brother brilliant while ignoring his book’s searing, evidence-based indictment of the intelligence-run Covid-19 operation is more than sad, especially when doing so to The New York Times, the CIA’s paper of record together with The Washington Post.

Character assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is what the CIA and its media mouthpieces have been doing for years. This has become more and more necessary as they have realized the great growing danger he poses to their agenda. Calling him an anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist, and names far worse, is part of a concerted smear campaign to turn the public away from his message, which is multi-faceted and supported by deep research and impeccable logic. Like his father and uncle, he has become an irrepressibly eloquent opponent of the demonic forces intent on destroying the democratic dream.

The Times article by Adam Nagourney is a blatant hatchet job filled with sly jabs, innuendos, and ignorant lies.  As is par for the course, his hack piece completely avoids Kennedy’s arguments but relies on a form of social gossip that substitutes for logic and evidence.  He seems to have learned much from The National Enquirer and The New York Post’s “Page Six,” whose styles the NY Times has emulated.

Nagourney tells the reader that RFK, Jr.’s work as the face of the vaccine resistance movement, has “tested,” “rattled,” “anguished,” and “mystified”  family, friends and his Hollywood crowd; that this man “of the often troubled life” …. “has effectively used his talent and one of the most prominent names in American political history as a platform for fueling resistance to vaccines that could save countless lives.”

Translation: Kennedy, a Hollywood hobnobber and former drug addict, is so mentally unbalanced that he will betray his family and friends and kill people with medical advice that runs counter to the truth.

No evidence is required to establish this “truth,” just Nagourney’s word and those of those he can get to say the same thing, in other words.  Such as:

His conduct “undercuts 50 years of public health vaccine practice, and he’s done it in a way I’ve never see [sic] anyone else do it,”  said Michael T.   Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. ‘He is among the most dangerous because of the credibility of who he is and what his family name has brought to this issue.’

Notice the implication:  that these experimental mRNA so-called vaccines have been around 50 years and Kennedy is against all vaccines, both of which are false.

Furthermore, Nagourney says RFK, Jr. not only “inveighs” against vaccines, especially Covid vaccinations, but has adopted other weird “unorthodox” views (implication: orthodox views are good) over the years.

One is his claim that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill his father Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  Nagourney might do a smidgen of research and discover that Kennedy is correct; but doing so would disrupt the flow of his ad hominem attack.  All serious writers on the case know that the senator was not shot by Sirhan; they know there are deep CIA connections to the assassination. The evidence conclusively proves, as the autopsy has shown, that Sirhan was in front of the senator when he fired his pistol but RFK was shot from the rear at very close range with all bullets entering his body from the rear.  Nagourney either knows nothing about the assassination or is dissembling the facts, which must be “unorthodox.”

Sounding like a U.S. government spokesmen telling the press something is true without an iota of evidence, he writes the following sentence as if it were true simply because he wrote it, while making sure not to mention the book’s title – The Real Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy – a brilliant, deeply researched and sourced book The Times will not review:

In a best-selling new book, he claimed that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who is President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, were in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to profiteer off dangerous vaccines.

Notice Nagourney’s insidious method.  State RFK’s claim as if it’s false because Nagourney stated it, when, in fact, it is so abundantly true and backed up by massive evidence that if Nagourney dared to engage in actual journalism by checking Kennedy’s book he would discover it.  But his job is not to search for truth but to defile a man’s reputation. He accuses Kennedy of circulating false information on the coronavirus and the vaccines but, of course, doesn’t say what that is or why it is false.

His entire article is an ad hominem attack by statement with the author cunningly hidden behind deceitful objectivity.

He writes:

To the public distress of his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, Mr. Kennedy invoked Anne Frank, the young German-Dutch diarist who died in a Nazi  prison camp, as he compared government measures for containing the pandemic with the Holocaust at that rally in Washington.

However, that is not what he said.  He said that during the Holocaust Anne Frank could hide for a while and others could flee out of Germany, but with the new “turnkey totalitarianism” being introduced today, which is technological, it will be harder to escape, for every aspect of life will be monitored by the authorities in a digital dystopia. Such a perspective is in no way unusual, for it is shared by many scholars of technology and only the most naïve would consider it eccentric. His point and words were twisted to serve others’ purposes and to paint him as an insensitive Holocaust denier.  Here’s what he said:

What we’re seeing today is what I call turnkey totalitarianism. They are putting in place all of these technological mechanisms for control we’ve    never seen before. It’s been the ambition of every totalitarian state since the beginning of mankind to control every aspect of behavior, of conduct, of thought and to obliterate dissent. None of them have been able to do it. They didn’t have the technological capacity.

Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died … but it was possible.

Yet his sister Kerry also ripped him for making a statement that was clearly true if you accept his argument about the technological lockdowns in progress.  You can disagree (I don’t) but to impugn his intentions and his words is really despicable, but Nagourney adds it to his ad hominem attacks, making sure to include his sister Kerry’s Tweet:

Bobby’s lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and repulsive. I strongly condemn him for his hateful rhetoric.

Nagourney:

Even his most prominent critics say they do not doubt his sincerity, even as he has become one of the most prominent spreaders of misinformation on vaccines.

Translation: RFK, Jr. means well but he’s deluded.

Big Daddy Fauci is introduced to tell the young whippersnapper the following after Kennedy delivered a briefing at The National Institutes of Health:

When it was over, Dr. Fauci walked Mr. Kennedy out of the conference room.

“I said, ‘Bobby, I’m sorry we didn’t come to any agreement here,’” he said. “‘Although I disagree factually with everything you are saying, I do understand and I respect that deep down you are really concerned about the safety of children.’ I said that in a very sincere way.”

Condescension and sincerity overflow as the “conspiracy theorist” patient is told by the good doctor that he means well but needs help.

Then, making sure to include The New York Times endlessly repeated CIA talking point, our no-nothing author writes:

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his uncle, in 1963, when Robert was 9, helped foster a modern culture of conspiracy theories. Now, many of the arguments that Mr. Kennedy has embraced — including that Dr. Fauci is part of a “historic coup d’état against Western democracy” — recall the theories of a secret assassin helping Lee Harvey Oswald from the grassy knoll in Dallas.

That it was the CIA that weaponized the use of the term “conspiracy theory” in a 1967 dispatch – #1035-960 – in order to disparage those questioning The Warren Commission and it’s cover-up of the CIA’s role in JFK’s assassination is another fact that our fair-minded scribe conveniently omits while insidiously implying that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK.  Yes, there are magic bullets and magical tricks used to make sure RFK, Jr. is seen as a sincere nutcase.

RFK, Jr. has been, and is, an astute critic of the CIA and all its machinations, including its involvement in the assassinations of his uncle JFK, his father Senator Robert F. Kennedy, its involvement in the COVID propaganda, and in its extensive deadly deeds and disinformation at home and abroad.  His critical siblings praise him for his great intelligence and political acumen but seem clueless themselves.  So they ally with the same media that have been stenographers for the CIA.  The Kennedy family may be very well known, but in these ways they are very typical of American families that are divided by those who know and those who don’t know who the real devils are.

But let me make two final points about this sickening piece of character assassination.

RFK, Jr. has spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting the pollution of our air, earth, and water.  In other words, the pollution also of human beings who live in nature while nature lives in us. Some people know the outside and the inside are connected.  Yet Nagourney bemoans the tragic turn he took from such good work with the environment to such terrible work with Children’s Health Defense and vaccines. He writes:

The swerve in Mr. Kennedy’s career, from the environment to vaccines, is  particularly startling because for many family members and other Kennedy associates, Robert Kennedy Jr. is the sibling who most recalls the level of charisma and political appeal of his late father.

Startling?  No, very consistent for one who can think.  There is an obvious link between the major corporate polluters of the outside environment and the major polluters of human bodies.  Big pharmaceutical, oil, chemical, agribusiness, military, etc. are an interrelated lot of criminal enterprises despoiling all life on earth.  Kennedy’s lifetime work has followed a natural trajectory and underlying it all is his critique of the CIA and its media accomplices, such as The New York Times.

Yes, those family and friends who say he’s brilliant are right, and he is following in his father’s footsteps in ways they do not grasp; for he is able to connect the dots, diagnose the patterns, and expose with facts the criminal syndicates that are destroying democracy and so many lives.

The reason The New York Times publishes hit pieces like this and does not review his recent books is because his critique of these nefarious forces has gained a large audience and as a result many people are awakening to the truths concealed by the likes of “the paper of record” with its propaganda.

Hit pieces like Nagourney’s should cause anyone reading it intense “anguish.”  There is nothing “mystifying” about it.

It’s simply disgraceful and deceitful.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.