Robert Howard

[Robert Howard]

Robert Howard has always maintained a fascination with the political assassinations of the 1960's era, which was in large part, a result of growing up in the city where Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated. While maintaining an inordinate interest in the topic of assassination's in general, it was, in fact the assassination of Benito Aquino Jr., on the tarmac at then Manila Int'l Airport in August of 1983, which rekindled interest in the subject of assassinations itself.

For those who read this biography, it is suggested that one read the initial accounts of Benito Aquino's assassination, and compare them with the actual events themselves, in retrospect, to realize the almost perverse similarities to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy some 20 years earlier.

To summarize, there were conflicting accounts, concerning the direction from which the shots were fired, the alleged assassin Rolando Galman, was slain a short period of time after Aquino's death, in a fashion similar to that of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, the Fernando Commission, established by then Dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, was not unlike the Warren Report in maintaining the government version of events in accounting for how the late husband of Corazon Aquino had been assassinated.

Eventually, the fairy-tale version of Aquino's assassination was proven to be as such, by the subsequent, arrest and imprisonment of the soldiers on the tarmac at the time of Aquino's assassination, as well as some of the rank-and-file of Marcos' military, who also were found guilty.

It is my perception that the Aquino assassination is something of a microcosm of the assassination of our 35th President, John F. Kennedy, in case one wonders why so much attention is given to the subject.

The funeral procession of Benito Aquino Jr, is estimated to have had over 2 million Filipino's in attendance, and Corazon "Cory" Aquino would later become the successor to Ferdinand Marcos, in one of the most non-violent transistions of power in geopolitical history.

While Santayana wrote that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," it is a fact that the history of the world is littered with the remains of "once great civilizations." In the year 2007, for all of its technological progress, American's are discovering that a thriving culture of democracy can only exist when actual and historical truths are known and understood. America, is a country in which truth is becoming subject to political realities and a populace that is so enthralled with materialism and escapism, that it is in danger of losing it's geopolitical status as a democracy, but is on the road to becoming, a shell of it's former self, unless checks and balances are restored to the American political process and mass media reforms itself.

Edited October 18, 2007 by Robert Howard