James DiEugenio

Oh no, someone just mentioned Ira Stoll re JFK.

That is it for me.

Mathew just went on ignore.

Bye bye.

I should ask, how many people have been banned or suspended over this argument?

Calling Kennedy an America First guy is inexplicable.

The America First movement was an isolationist kind of group.

JFK was not like that at all. He had an activist foreign policy.

I know this since I studied it for years.  And it was especially prevalent in the Third World.

I did a talk about this in Pittsburgh last November, and I will be doing a two part substack article on it soon.

Right out of the gate, Kennedy broke with Eisenhower/Foster Dulles in places like Congo, the Middle East and Indonesia.  He was very big on foreign aid, and people in congress tried to rebel against him on this perceived extravagance.

Kennedy was an internationalist in his scope, as he even wanted to establish relations with our enemies, like Cuba, Russia and China.

If you take a look at the annual defense build ups  either in size or part of GDP, Kennedy did not at all increase the expenditures in any radical way.

These dramatic post WW 2 increases took place under Reagan and W.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget

Matt, I just explained in detail what I meant by the reference to BRICS.

I do not think I can get much more clear than that.

If you do not understand it, please read it again.

David Neal sent this message out today:

And using the Berlin speech is really another case of missing the point.

The Pentagon--Lemnitzer and LeMay-- wanted to provoke a war in Berlin.  And Nikita K had threatened as much at the Vienna summit.

Nikita decided to build the Berlin Wall instead.  To which Kennedy replied, better a wall and not a war. But that was not good enough for the Pentagon. Lucius Clay, commander in West Berlin, decided to begin secret maneuvers to tear down the wall. So he built a duplicate in the forest and used tanks with bulldozer attachments to simulate tearing down the wall. General Bruce Clarke heard about this and put an end to it and told him if it did not stop, he would call JFK.  Clay stopped it. (Douglass, pp. 109-10). Nikita thought, and he was right, that this idea was not Kennedy's. (ibid, p. 111)

Without knowing what Clay had done, Kennedy was now informed of the whole CheckPoint Charlie crisis that Clay had provoked. The tank confrontation at the Brandenburg Gate. This came very close to being a tank battle in the streets since the Russians now called out their tank detail to confront Clay's. 

Kennedy immediately got on the phone to Khrushchev. RFK called Bolshakov.  Through this negotiation a mutual withdrawal plan was arranged and both sides abided by it.  The tanks were withdrawn. Berlin was very important symbolically to Kennedy.  Because to him it was the key to holding together the Atlantic Alliance. And that is what that speech was about. But as anyone objective can see, Kennedy accepted the building of the wall, and then he snuffed out any kind of shooting war over the city.  

This was a similar reaction to Kennedy not escalating the Bay of Pigs, when Nixon told him he should declare a beachhead and send in the Marines. It was also like drawing the line at advisors in Vietnam-and then withdrawing those, when almost everyone else wanted to insert combat troops.. And also similar to his refusal to bomb the missile silos for fear of killing innocent civilians--when again not only did many want that, some even wanted a fulls scale invasion.

There is very much a discernible pattern to Kennedy's foreign policy actions, once one examines it in detail using the right sources.  And his gestalt was much different than those who came before him and right after.

Matt, are you getting desperate?

That does not align with BRICS at all! 

Anyone who reads what I wrote will understand that I never said that about Kennedy.

What I said about JFK was that he maintained that, as long as the USA backed imperialist/colonial powers or acted as one, they would be on the wrong side of history.  This was made manifestly clear in his Algeria speech and his Foreign Policy article which he wrote the following year.  After which he became the unofficial ambassador for Africa in the senate.

Another example would be Congo, and his reaction to Lumumba's death. Also, his reliance on the UN as a fulcrum for Congo, and not using NATO, a distinct difference between him and HIllary Clinton in Africa.  What he was doing was showing there was another way for the USA to react to nationalism in the Third World one that lessened the appeal of communism.  As the book he so admired The Ugly American said, if all America had to offer in the Third World was anti communism, we might as well fold up our chairs and go home.

By reverting back to militarism after his death, that gave rise to things like BRICS and the Road and Beltway effort.

The whole Missile Gap mess was caused by Stu Symington who had been secretary of the Air Force.  And advised Kennedy with this false information.

Once in office, Kennedy had McNamara examine it and it turned  out to be false.

The better example that Matt did not use, was the whole snafu about Dulles and Lemnitzer wanting a nuclear strike on Russia for the fall of 1963. Kennedy walked out of the meeting, and told Rusk, and we call ourselves the human race.

I must have forgotten that it was Estabrooks who did that one.

But that is a milestone in the field.

Weird but kind of fascinating

First of all, the story about jets to Israel  appeared in Sirhan's notebooks BEFORE it was broadcast in the LA area.

Second, that video Ben posted about Sirhan and the Palestinians was done at the behest of his then lawyer for a parole hearing. Shortly after he was fired and Larry Teeter represented Sirhan and there went that.

Yes, the CIA and military intel did experiments in mind control and also assassinations, there is a famous case in the Philippinnes where the assassin was programmed. Also John Newman told me that the NSA used this on subjects traveling abroad to memorize certain details subconsciously under post hypnotic suggestion.  When they returned they would place them in a trance state to get the info out, and it worked.

These are the four best books to read, and Marks's is not one of them.

Journey into Madness by Gordon Thomas.

The Mind Manipulators by Alan Scheflin

The Control of Candy Jones by Donald Bain

Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart

Estabrooks was a recognized pioneer in the area.

Did i say anything about Sachs and the Russian economy?

I talked about his book, which evidently Matt had not read.  I read it and reviewed it.

Secondly, for anyone to use Kennedy's rhetoric in the 1960 race against Nixon as some kind of measuring stick, that person should read JFK and Vietnam, especially the second edition, Mahoney's JFK: Ordeal in Africa, Muehlenbeck's Betting on the Africans ,  Rakove's Kennedy, Johnson and the Non Aligned World and Brad Simpson's Economists with Guns.  Or watch the long version of JFK: Destiny Betrayed, which features all of them.

Using Kennedy's campaign rhetoric is what the likes of Chomsky and the late Alex Cockburn did. JFK was very aware of protecting himself in public from the right. When Hammarskjold was killed--and let us make no bones about that, he was killed--JFK called in the Swedish ambassador.  He told him that Dag was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He could never attain those heights since he had to worry so much about leaving an opening to the rightwing nuts.  Same thing with the March on Washington.  He was the first white politician to endorse it in public.  He then told his brother, you are going to take control of security for this thing.  Because if anything goes wrong, our enemies will use it to destroy us and our civil rights program.

The reason that Sachs is not a Clint Eastwood HA on China is the same reason he wrote that book about Kennedy.

A recurrent refrain of JFK was that the USA should not be on the wrong side of history.

That is, America should not be a colonialist/imperialist country nor should we back nations that are, even if they were once our allies.

This is manifest in his great Algeria speech in 1957.  Where he attacked Eisenhower, Nixon and Foster Dulles for not condemning France for its colonial war in Algeria.  In fact, they were actually supporting it.  He reminded the senate that this was the same thing America did three years earlier, and he  could not understand why everyone had forgotten what happened at DIen Bien Phu. He said the same thing is going to occur  in Algeria and again, America is going to be backing another failed attempt of France to maintain a lost imperial empire.  And when France loses, the Algerians will remember what America did and did not do. And the USA will again be on the wrong side of history.

When Kennedy made that speech, he was bitterly attacked by just about everyone, the press was against him by 2-1, and even Democrats like Stevenson said he was wrong.  Kennedy called up his father and asked, "Did I just make a mistake?"  His father said, "You don't know how lucky you are.  This is only getting worse.  And a year from now everyone will look back at you like you were a prophet."  Which is what happened.  Eight months later, he was on the cover of Time, the inside story was titled "Man out Front."

America has been on the wrong side of history in so many cases today that it would take a long essay to explain them all.  And this is what has left a huge opening for things like BRICS and the Road and Beltway Project. As many progressive economists have noted, those projects are going to mark the end of American hegemony.

As per Ukraine, I mean one has to be a little myopic not to see what happened there--I mean with McCain  and Biden and others cheerleading it on?  With Boris Johnson nixing the Minsk Accords.  To spend 100 billion on a war that Ukraine cannot win?  

As per Israel, the murder of Rabin, who was in favor of Oslo, was a bloody and irreversible turning point in modern history. Benji N. is a war mongering fruitcake.  And it was his propaganda tactics which got Rabin killed.  This is why John Kennedy Jr. wrote a very long essay on the Rabin case in George, in which he demanded no editorial interference, and he spent months on it.  If you have not seen the Al Jazeera documentary on the current war, made by two British journalists--who knew they could not get it made in UK or USA--you should.

PS: Kennedy told Hilsman he wanted an opening to China in his second term.

BTW, British hypnotist Derren Brown did  a really interesting experiment on this subject in which he demonstrated how one would do this, that is hypnotize somone through post hypnotic suggestion to shoot someone.

Its on You Tube if you would like to see it.  Fascinating.

William, you should know more about this than anyone on the board. But from what I have read, and the interviews i have done, yes it is possible to hypnotize someone to do something completely evil and alien to their personality, and do it under post hypnotic suggestion.  I have talked to hypnosis experts and professionals.  I asked one guy how long would the post hypnotic suggestion be viable.  He said indefinitely.  And this guy was really good.

I believe the triggering device was the Girl in the Polka Dot Dress.

Bryan called in the night of the RFK murder to the Ray Briehm talk show in LA.

Briehm was a conservative, but he was not in any way a Rush Limbaugh clown.

Bryan said that night that the murder of Bobby Kennedy had all the earmarks of being the work of a Manchurian Candidate.

That is a truly remarkable statement for that early in the case.  Because no one could have possibly even suggested such a thing, unless it was the programmer.

But Bryan seemed to know what happened, and he likely knew about the key to the crime, the Dead Giveaway, which was the Girl in the Polka Dot dress. 

Then, Bill Turner sent a female undercover agent into his office under the guise of doing an article for a psychology magazine.  She started asking him questions about being able to program a person to do something he would never do in a waking state.  She said she had read that you can.  This sent Bryan into a rage, he started shouting and walking around the room denying it could be done.  But she stood her ground.  Finally, he walked out and slammed the door of his own office.

If you take a look at Cesar, he is the person who is in the best position to deliver the shots to RFK.  Sirhan was always out of position.  The shots to RFK came in from the rear, at upward angles, and at close range. The fatal shot to the skull was 1-3 inches away since it showed signs of tattoing on the head.  Noguchi was very careful to do experiments which would show where this effect would show up at. Cesar was so close he ended up with powder burns in his eyes. He then BS'd about not having a gun that would be a close match to what Sirhan did.  And the LAPD covered up his true feelings about the Kennedys. Finally, he was also deceptive about when he went to work for that private security company.

As RFK fell, he reportedly grabbed for Cesar's necktie.

This was a very sophisticated intel operation by a group that had studied operations like this for years.  It deceived tens of millions for a long time. Its why Helms got rid of thousands of pages on MK Ultra.

When Bobby showed up for his interview on the set for JFK Revisited, we went through the list of questions I had drawn up for him.

At the end, I tapped Oliver on the shoulder, and I gave him an unlisted question that I just thought up:

"Ask him if he thinks the assassination of his father is related to the assassination of his uncle."

That elicited the most compelling reply of any of the 54 hours of interviews we did.

Towards the end, he said there are definitely leads in both cases that would seem to connect, and my father's murder was, in reality, never really investigated at all. So yes, i think there are connections that have not been explored. 

The most obvious giveaways for CIA involvement in the RFK case are  1.) Thane Cesar, the actual killer, once worked for Hughes corporation, and as Peter Scott once said, its difficult to find where the CIA ends and Hughes begins, 2.) its pretty clear that Bryan was the programmer of Sirhan. And he has all the earmarks of an agent all around him.

Sachs wrote a book on JFK in 2013 called 'To move the World' has anyone read it?

Whenever you are not sure of something, go to Kennedysandking.com.  More often than not you will find it.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/book-review-to-move-the-world-by-jeffrey-sachs

From his current column at Common Dreams.

Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.

It was a very secretive witness for the HSCA and Fonzi talked about him but did not name him in his book.

I am pretty sure that he has been named since.  Dave can probably  tell you who he was.

Let us not forget how DeTorres was one of the first infiltrators into Garrison's inquiry.

To give just one example: he did not write his book on RFK.

About Heymann, it is not true that he did not make up books.

He did. 

He made up people who did not exist, and he created interviews that he never did. He made up police departments.  He put his name on books he did not write, forbidding the real authors to take credit for them.

Heymann represented all that was wrong about the publishing business and their lack of pre publication review.  Becuase Heymann manufactured so much salacious and sensational stuff, and he worked to sell the fabricated products, and the MSM bought into them since they have no standards also, his books sold.  And that is why they got published even though they were full of pernicious BS.  

I know someone who has done a lot of work on Heymann.  I mean a lot.  The guy was a skunk.  No one here should quote a man who was that amoral.

23 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

How does one do that? 

You hover over the picture and on the right the ignore option apepars.

Also, thanks William about my VIetnam commentary.  And understand when I say, I did not buy into the withdrawal thesis at first.  I was very skeptical about it when I first encountered it.  I can see now it was because I was brainwashed by all that Kennedy/Cold Warrior junk.  So I decided to make that a prime focus of my research for a very long time. I concluded that I was wrong, Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam.  And the guiding hand was Galbraith.

I think I will now put Matt on ignore.