The Independent News Source
NCR on Kindle - NCR classifieds - YouTube - Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
Printer-friendly version
PDF versionThe assassination of JFK: A parable for our times
by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy on Oct. 21, 2010
The major character in the [JFK]story…is God (or to put it in different terms: Enlightenment, or the Power of the Universe that Bends toward Justice as Dr. King put it).
Writer Jim Douglass says it is “no secret” John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a government job, CIA coordinated but involving people in other federal agencies.
The JFK Records Act passed in 1992 made it a crime to withhold information on the former president’s death. Anyone can consult files on the topic that are now stored in a huge building in Columbus Park, Maryland.
Douglass, a theologian, long-time peace activist and Catholic Worker, pored over these records while working on JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters (Orbis 2008), a heavily-researched tome with a hundred pages of endnotes.
This month Douglass has been lecturing throughout the northeast. On Wednesday he spoke at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His talk “JFK, Obama, and the Unspeakable” will be published in the next issue of Tikkun magazine.
Those of you worried about being subjected to another “who-shot-JFK” wacko, keep reading. The evil doings of the CIA are not Douglass’ preoccupation. Instead he regards the Kennedy presidency, despite its violent end, as a tale of hope -- relevant for our day -- in which God is the primary character.
According to Douglass, Kennedy’s turn toward peacemaking during his presidency -- his implementation of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, his initiation of a secret dialogue with Fidel Castro to normalize US-Cuban relations, his signing of a memorandum calling for troop withdrawal from Vietnam, and most significantly, his communication with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev -- put him violently at odds with the Joint Chief of Staffs and the CIA.
Amidst a Cold War that was rapidly heating up, the American and Soviet leaders secretly corresponded.
Khrushchev, the atheist, compared their predicament in a nuclear-saturated world to being on Noah’s Ark. It mattered not whether “clean” or “unclean” boarded. All were committed to keeping the boat afloat.
Kennedy, the Catholic, agreed. “Whatever our differences, our collaboration to keep the peace is as urgent -- if not more urgent -- than our collaboration to win the last world war,” he wrote to Khrushchev.
The two men’s common belief that the world was worth saving helped avert the Cuban Missile crisis, argues Douglass.
At the peak of the conflict Kennedy rejected pressure to retaliate for the Soviet downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over Cuba and turned to Moscow for help. His brother Robert secretly met with the Soviet Ambassador to, as Robert puts it, “personally convey the president’s great concern.”
Subscribe to NCR
Want to read more about important issues in the life of the Church? A subscription to NCR will keep you up to date and informed.
“We have to let Kennedy know we want to help him,” was Khrushchev’s reply.
“Neither John Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev was a saint,” says Douglass. “Each was deeply complicit in policies that brought humankind to the brink of nuclear war. Yet, when they encountered the void, they turned to each for help. In doing so, they turned humanity toward the hope of a peaceful planet.”
Both men paid high prices for their choice. Kennedy was killed and Khrushchev removed from office in 1964, never to serve again.
Kennedy’s assassination is a history many writers have already dissected. So what is new here? Perspective.
Douglass views the JFK story as “a parable of turning” and like any good parable this one instructs. Kennedy’s assassination reveals the dark quandary looming over the highest office in American government.
“Can a peacemaking president survive a warmaking state?” wonders Douglass, who finds parallels between the Kennedy and Obama administrations. “The president’s vulnerability, while he tries to turn a massive Washington warship toward peace and disarmament, is the unspeakable fact of our politics.”
Yet even here Douglass finds hope. During his recent interview with The Catholic Agitator, a publication of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, he said:
An absolute miracle occurred. Here we find the two most powerful men in the world -- engaged in a titanic struggle on behalf of irreconcilable ideologies, as they saw it at the time -- both holding the power to destroy the entire world.
One of these men reaches out to the other and says: ‘I need your help,’ and the other says: ‘We need to help him.’
They come together fulfilling the teaching of Jesus in the gospel: Love your enemies.
And that is not a sentimental kind of love. It is the kind of love Gandhi understood Jesus to be talking about -- recognizing the truth in your enemies.
I think that president
I think that president kennedy was the best and he didn't take no bull from no one he stood in what he believed in and I haven't been happy with the other presidents if I had to say if any of them it would be Clinton.thank you for letting me comment.
All U.S. Presidents have been
All U.S. Presidents have been puppets for the banking elite since JFK. He signed executive order 11,110 in June of 1963 effectively ending the non Federal Federal Reserve and taking away their right to control the money. The 1963 red seal notes that said United States Notes instead of Federal reserve notes were then put in circulation. These notes were backed by silver and uninflatable. They were also debt free as they did not have to be borrowed into existence. We would have had no inflation since then and no national debt to speak of. The earmark in that bill would have had all troops out of Vietnam by Jan. 1965 as well. The money laundering and war machine profiteering would have ended right then and there. The Clintons and Bushes are close associates so please don't even go there. The Patriot act was written during Bill's first term and he is a shills shill.
Thank you very much for this
Thank you very much for this serious and important insight which we must each receive and read without rejection according to our preset prejudices but in truth.
How does this article help us more to fulfill the courageous law of Christ to love our enemies?
Such unpreconceivable love saves us all.
May this also give us greater insight into the seeming impotence of the Obama administration to turn us quickly back fomr the war into which the prior administration entrenched us so deeply and so quickly and perhaps so irreparably as a nation
Fight for peace.
your topics are relevant and
your topics are relevant and practical, kudos brothers and sisters in Christ.
Here is the real reason JFK
Here is the real reason JFK was assassinated. A deranged man was able to buy a cheap, mail-order rifle and perch himself in a place where he could blow off the top of the head of the President of the United States.
As much as we would like to believe the Oliver Stone narrative that Kennedy was just about to dismantle the entire military-industrial complex, thus the far-flung "conspiracy" to kill him, JFK was a cold warrior of the top rank.
Please read his remarks of the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
Anyone who still believes
Anyone who still believes Oswald killed JFK is a dupe. The CIA removed the president's motorcade guards, put the limo out front so it was easily targeted then pulled off the hit. First JFK was shot by assassins hiding at several locating hitting the president in the throat. While everybody was looking at Kennedy when he was first shot, his driver Secret Service agent William Greer turned in his seat and fire an exploding pellet filled with shell fish toxin at point blank range into JFK's brain.
That's what happened. These traitors are still in charge today. The truth is there easy to see but not if you listen to the liars who murdered JFK or the network media who still aid and abet in the cover up till this very day.
i dont believe the oliver
i dont believe the oliver stone version either, but if you believe the oswald ,one gunman theory you are either a fool or a shill for the people that id it. i guess that would make you a fool either way. sorry i overlooked that.
You are wrong: Order and
You are wrong: Order and read this book by Oswald's wife, and you will never feel that way again: "Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald" You can get at a discount from amazon.com
"Here is the real reason
"Here is the real reason JFK"
It goes without saying that you have the Magic Bullet theory hook firmly emplanted in your lip. Never mind that the laws of physics would have had to have been violated multiple times within 1 second.
Deliberate blindness and hard headedness to avoid viewing facts as what they are;facts. Unfortunately, thats where you are now.
Kennedy was going to shut down the military industrial complex, and the Federal Reserve, almost at the same time. These two reasons alone were what got him killed. See the executive orders to this end.
Oliver Stones movie aside, which agreed has a few issues, there are other documentaries that provide hard evidence of his assassination.
I'm sorry, but there are too
I'm sorry, but there are too many coincidences related to the "deranged man" with a mail order rifle and all the other characters in the play of that horrible afternoon in Dallas. There are conspiracy theories that are quite laughable. Stone's theory is comparable to the one I've held for nearly 50 years. I'll bet you are for gun control, too, as a means to stop these "deranged" people. Sad.
Oswald was nothing but a
Oswald was nothing but a patsy which is why he never made it to trial. Another main reason for his death was his Executive Order 11110 allowing Congress to print money.
It would be wise to read the
It would be wise to read the book before shooting off one's mouth, as Mr. Douglass has anticipated these paltry objections.
The physical evidence is reviewed in detail, and strongly suggests that JFK could not have been shot from behind and above, but must have been shot from the front, where Oswald was not. So even if there was only one shooter (hard to conclude this from the evidence), it was someone other than who "they" said it was.
The more important objection, though, that JFK was a cold warrior of the top rank, is also dealt with. In sum, Douglass admits it, and gives examples of his cold war rhetoric right up to his death. This does not preclude JFK being in the process of changing his mind. Nor does Douglass assert or offer any evidence that he wanted to "dismantle the entire military-industrial complex." That is vastly overstating the case.
Douglass relates, as another example of his committment to backing out of the Cold War, that JFK was planning to end US involvement in Vietnam. This part of the story also makes a fine illustration of the contradictions inherent in the thinking of most politicians (and JFK was surely a politician, first and foremost). JFK clearly regarded our growing Vietnam involvement as a matter of great importance, and the entanglement that had already occurred to that point as a matter of great danger to peace and to the country. And as it worked out, it seems he was correct.
On the other hand, he felt he could not dare end it until after the 1964 presidential election, which of course, he didn't live to see. He believed, Douglass recounts, that he needed the mandate of reelection to accomplish this goal. Yet he certainly had the authority to bring about a disengagement. So it's hard for me not to question whether he was in fact more concerned about getting re-elected, and keeping his party in power, than he was about avoiding the dangers to the nation of continued Vietnam intervention. He was satisfied to let the chaos continue in Vietnam until 1965, chaos that American policy exacerbated. In hindsight, he probably should have done more.
But then, JFK was not "the best" as a previous commenter said. He was a politico; he had various items on his agenda, and not all of them involved saving the country or saving the world. He had to make decisions to pursue some ends rather than others. If he had been entirely a man of principal, perhaps he would have pursued certain ends with more vigor, but if he had been entirely a man of principal, would he have been in power in the first place?
The point of the book is that there was a coup. The government that was ostensibly put in place by the American people was overthrown by certain of its own agents. (Douglass is not able to name names. This shouldn't be held against him.) And this coup throws light on American policy since that time. That is what Douglass wants people to see, and I think he makes his case very well. The "lone nut" hypothesis plays into the hands of the people who pulled off the coup; it covers over the deed and distracts the people (that few of them care any more is a different problem) from the criminality at the heart of our history since that time.
You are wrong: Get this
You are wrong: Get this book: "Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald" by Oswald's wife, and you will no longer feel as you do, ever again. Discounted @ amazon.com.
in response to: Here is the
in response to: Here is the real reason JFK----
The fact is, that you watch too much television! He was not murdered by Lee Harvey.... and if you have to watch 1 program on the tv let it be conspiracy theory by jesse vetura (on true tv friday nights at 10 pm eastern time)
E Howard Hunt admitted on his deathbed over a year ago, that he was involved with JFK's Murder. E.Howard Hunt was CIA!
perhaps you should start reading more about the following topics:
the USS Liberty, the Lucitania, the Gulf of Tonkin - these were all events to bring us into war ----
and the quickest read that there is: War is a Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, a two time Congressional Medal of Honor recipiant.
and in our Congresional Records, you will also find that a group of our wealthy industrailists and one Prescott Bush in the 1930's tried to use SMedley Butler to be involved in a coup, to take over our goverment,and remove FDR from office....
Stop believing the Propaganda, and star thinking for yourself....
in response to: Here is the
in response to: Here is the real reason JFK....
perhaps you watch too much tv, or the wrong shows on tv. I only watch one show every week and its on true tv, called conspiracy theory, by former governor, Jesse Ventura..(friday night 10 pm eastern time)
Lee Harvey didn't kill Jfk, he was a patsy, just like he said. Factions in our own government did it. They murdered him if front of us.
A little over a year ago, E.Howard Hunt admitted to it on his deathbed to his son. They have his confession recorded on tape. E.Howard Hunt was in the CIA.
There have been many False Flag Events throughout history....
please take the time to read about them, here are just a few:
The USS Liberty - http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/margolis12.html
The Gulf of Tonkin - http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261
Of these few listed, they were meant to bring us into war.
There was also a booklet written by Major General Smedley Butler called
War Is A Racket. Maj.Gen.Butler won two Congressional Medals of Honor.
He was also selected by a group of industrialist, and one Prescott Bush, to pull off a coup d'etat, and remove FDR in the 1930's. However, our genius industrialist's didnt' know that the Maj.Gen. did indeed like FDR. Smedley Butler went to Congress about and they did have a hearing on this sublect.
Read more and understand... they don't care about you and your family.... they have not repealed Nafta and Gatt, they have not brought back our jobs, they lie to us everyday....our country is being murdered... Death by a Thousand Cuts....
You are right that a miracle
You are right that a miracle occurred, the hardest I have ever prayed in my life was begging the Lord not to let there be a nuclear war. I was installing sheet rock in a house in Camp Lejuene, NC on Wednesday October 24, 1962 and as plane loads of military would fly out, I was knocked flat off the bench and face down on the floor, tears streaming; the fever of impending war was so thick, one could cut it with a knife. The next hardest thing I prayed for was to baptized with the real Holy Ghost. I had both answered that very night. Kennedy reached out and the Russian President accepted, ships were turning back,and in less than three days the crisis was over. Thank you for the acknowledgment that the destruction of this whole world seemed to be in these two people's hands. I am forever thankful to the Lord that directed those two presidents. Just before those prayers were answered we were singing the song: 'He's got the Whole world in his hands'. This whole world has been living in a miracle now for 48 years. Thank you for trying to defend the cause of Kennedy's assassination. Bless you
america has not recovered its
america has not recovered its philosophical / emotional balance since the kennedy assassination. taht event, whether coincidence or conspiracy, broke the back of the wwii-win-euphoria. i mark everything that followed as leaking america;s substance from our over-inflated balloon. to lose the leadership of the two main competing systems, both of which ("when they encountered the void, they turned to each for help" [ed: i would have used "abyss."] had gained an otherwise unobtainable wisdom, is more of a tragedy than shakespeare could have imagined.
arising from these ashes of disaster is a struggle we, as the species homo sapien, must recognize as the challenge which we overcome with faith (not necessarily religion) that we actually are "capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving," "[o]ther higher-level thought processes of humans, such as self-awareness, rationality and sapience." [ed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human ]
JFK was murderedbecause he
JFK was murderedbecause he was setting up a system of National Socialism, as did the nazi's, to combat the bolsheviks. That which was guiding america at that time wanted no National Socialism to put down their prized communism.
I do not claim to know the
I do not claim to know the truth about JFK. We certainly DO know the Warren Commission members and virtually all other government officials were prepared to lie if it became necessary. For yet another example of a government cover-up, google "Vela Incident" and read about the nuclear test conducted on September 21, 1979 by South Africa and Israel in the South Atlantic. The lie put out to the public by our government claimed the signal was NOT from a nuclear test. At the same time, all scientists and engineers who actually knew the technical details said it was a real nuclear test. For a variety of political reasons it was considered necessary to lie. A lie was told with no shame or remorse. Perhaps government officials wrestle with their conscience; if so, they remain undefeated.
Parallels between Obama and
Parallels between Obama and Kennedy? O.K. they were both presidents. Kennedy stuck his neck out when he saw what was really happening with the military/industrial/congressional and yes, banker complex and it cost him his life.
Obama on the other hand embraces the MICB complex with open arms. What have they asked of him that he hasn't bent over backwards to kiss their butts and do?
Lets see. As the newly crowned Peace Laureate he left 50,000 combat troops in Iraq. He escalated the war in Afghanistan to about 130,000 troops in a war that is not winnable. He is pushing the envelope with Pakistan and Iran. I know what he must be thinking, "Boy this peace business isn't as easy as I thought. Nobody told me you had to have the strength of your convictions to stand up against all those generals, bankers, and lobbyist. Oh well, at least I get to have endless vacations, I'll make a fortune in speaking engagements when I leave, and since I have no conscience I don't have to lay awake at night thinking of all the death and destruction I'm responsible for. Screw our soldiers and all of the women and children who have been slaughtered in our mission to uh, bring democracy, and uh, oh yeah! get Al-Qaida!! Whew! Now its time to get a good nights sleep. Gotta get up in the morning and bring more peace to the world.
Kennedy and Khrushchev’s
Kennedy and Khrushchev’s mutual decision to cease atmospheric testing and to attempt to decrease the threat of nuclear weapons had little to nothing to do with loving one's enemies. The Soviet people were not America's enemies any more than American citizens were the enemies of the Soviet Union. The responsibility for the start and subsequent escalation of the cold war rests directly within their governments and the bureaucrats who comprised the respective regimes.
It is not so startling that Khrushchev may have turned to the Old Testament as a literary (not as a historical or religious) document in order to construct an allegory. No more astonishing than President Kennedy's pragmatic disagreement with words attributed to Jesus Christ. Kennedy delivered this contrarian viewpoint during his June 1963 commencement address to the graduates of American University. The speech, which many consider to be Kennedy's finest oration, centered around mankind's survival in a nuclear age. Kennedy, a Catholic, said: “World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”
It is vital for both believers and Brights to bear in mind that if god does not exist, at least in the manner which biblical scripture insists, peaceful coexistence, personal freedom and individual responsibility are no less critical to humanity’s survival. With or without a celestial deity these natural rights are by themselves, sacrosanct.
How is it that just a
How is it that just a thousand odd says earlier(before JFK's murder)President Eisenhower warned us all of the "Military-Industrial Complex" and no one looked past Lee Oswald? If you don't believe in a conspiracy theory, hell! any conspiracy theory, you're naive.
Too bad so many JFK conspiracy theories have muddied the water, perhaps intentionally, and take away from good scholarship. This book, so thoroughly footnoted, convinces me...It was an inside job. I want it out and those involved defamed and/or imprisoned. JBM
In his book, "JFK", former
In his book, "JFK", former USAF colonel, and US intelligence operative, Fletcher Prouty, suggests the historical narrative of Kennedy and Khrushchev backing away from the nuclear brink likely went much deeper than two heads of state cooperating in the way they did.
Prouty believes after the nuclear holocausts heaped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US, the "World Elites" came to the conclusion that all out nuclear war insured their destruction as well. Thus the decision from on "high" to avoid it forever. A more limited in scope engagement strategy with a never ending victory in sight could deliver two key components necessary to preserve their wealth and power: A constant growing of their wealth via the military industrial symbiosis and conflicts smaller in scale, that left them alive to enjoy it. Thus Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afganistan for the US.
Wars: Rich men start them, poor men finish them.
Kennedy's decisions to bust up the CIA and to leave Vietnam, if they were in fact real, would have been more than enough to have his presidency end prematurely via an assassin's bullet.
As other men have stated, "If
As other men have stated, "If the people ever discovered who and what is/are controlling the world there would be a massive rebellion!" I seriously doubt that statement. When a fraud, a phony, a non-qualified entity is elected the President of the US of A, it tells you just how stupid the masses-r-asses truly are. History has also shown/proven that mankind has to go through various cycles of existence to become free again and he is almost back to a slavery status. We have an income tax that does not apply to the laboring, non-licensed entity, we have a (non)federal (no)reserve that dictates how much paper can be printed and then charges interest on the digital numbers, we have a congress that is both above and beyond the will of the people. What is different that the animals in "Animal Farm"? Some ARE more equal than others!
The so-called catholic church
The so-called catholic church is just as guilty of the crime against the people by becoming a 501 religion. The church has become an agency of the government, the socialist, communist, collectivist, humanistic and one world government controllers and therefore it should not be preaching anything about religion since it is a part of the problem.
The two (2) major purchasers of think tank information is government and religion. Both want control and the money!
Jesus Christ did not walk the earth talking about the alleged contemporary catholic church, he talked about kindness and humility and neither are being preached at sermons; and it just isn't the catholic church that is a party to the control of the people, all so-called religions are equally guilty!
JFK....did what he believed
JFK....did what he believed was RIGHT
He didn't have to go to Dallas, but he fronted
up to them DAMN TEXAS LBJ scumbags !!!
The Cuban Missile Crisis...."CHANGED" JFK
he became a MAN & a damn GOOD President.
Post new comment