Just over a year from now will be the 50th anniversary of the shooting of JFK. I know where I was at the time. I wasn’t - not anywhere for ten years.
Now I’m not a conspiracy nut but for my sins I did once watch the Oliver Stone movie on TV and it was dire rubbish that transfixed me with it’s awfulness. Needless to say I always believed Oswald was a lone nutcase acting in a quixotic manner (just as you’d imagine from a former US Marine who once moved to the Soviet Union and then moved back to the USA). I have tendency to think that people invent conspiracies for things like the shooting of JFK or 9/11 or whatever because these are (or seem) macrohistorical events so they simply can’t be the work of unhinged lunatics. They have to be squeezed into some narrative because of their importance or perceived importance. The Oliver Stone movie is exhibit #1 here. Stone had to square a circle. JFK was his hero but JFK escalated US involvement in Vietnam which doesn’t fit the mythology Stone sees the World through. Hence a whole new mythology of the Military-Industrial complex and Grassy Knolls and all the rest. Others still go on about Diana as well. In Paris the monument to the Resistance is near the Alma tunnel. Diana fans have almost co-opted it with posies and teddys and mawk. Diana was of course more important and braver than all those folks. She once touched someone with AIDS you know?
But let’s look at two other shootings. It is very clear why Pope John-Paul II was shot and by whom and upon who’s say-so and why. But what about Ronald Reagan? He was shot by a nutcase who was stalking Jody Foster. He thought because Ms Foster was a Democrat shooting a Republican Prez would make her love him. Yes, massive historical events can occur from the most weird of motives. Or they can be utterly rational such as the shooting of John Paul II. In the absurd demonology of the USSR no two people ranked higher (or lower?) than Ronnie and J-P II. So taking them out seems rational from their point of view. But it wasn’t the KGB that had Reagan shot and though they did have a crack at the Pope using a Turk as their patsy (via the Bulgarians - the trash-men of the Warsaw Pact - umbrellas and all that*). Here’s an interesting counter-factual. The Pope was very critically wounded and very nearly died. What if he had? Polish Catholics would have been in uproar. Perhaps communism would have collapsed earlier? I said it was a rational act from a certain point of view but no view is a panopticon and the Soviets never counted on the pure raw power of emotion about a martyrdom - not that I wish to get all Obi Kenobi on you over that but you’ve all seen the movie. The Catholics on the other hand have understood that one since time immemorial. Anyway, that is an aside.
So I’m a sceptic and of course some of these conspiracy theories are positively Ptolomaic. Epicycles within epicycles. Kepler writes down three laws and epicycles vanish like mist on a spring morning (after much kicking and moaning). Most things don’t fit neatly with a grand narrative. Some do. Let’s have another example. The IRA was at war with Britain. They tried to kill Margaret Thatcher. Minutes before the bomb in the Brighton Hotel went off Mrs Thatcher was in the bathroom. Her Bedroom was relatively undamaged. The bathroom was totalled. That is the essential tension of history. In the context of their view the IRA killing the British Prime Minister made narrative sense and they came within a whisker of it. If she’d taken a couple of minutes longer in the bathroom they would have done it and that doesn’t fit in narrative sense - perhaps she was merely too tired after a heavy day at conference to clean her teeth and this saved her life. In the context the KGB killing President Reagan made sense too but for whatever reason a total mentalist got there first. Essentially the problem is that the cause of a great many events of significant importance makes sense and many others don’t. Sorting these is the curse of the historian. And the challenge and the fascination of the subject.
So here is a JFK conspiracy I can believe in. Note I don’t say I do but it is not ridiculous. It explains a lot and especially the actions of Jack Ruby. And I am impressed by the author claiming it to be plausible but not almost divinely revealed truth as too many conspiricists claim they have incontrovertible evidence. See anything on David Icke’s website. He believes the Queen is a 7′ tall reptile from outer-space.
Note here the shooting of Reagan isn’t ridiculous because it isn’t a conspiracy of the monumental dimensions some have conjured up and it is so weird it’s in the couldn’t make it up territory. The US Secret Service acknowledged this. Obviously they have plans but this fell very firmly in the Don Rumsfeldt area of “unknown unknowns”. Bolt from the blue territory.
Similarly the leader of the 7/7 bombers in London is mythologised to fit the grand narrative of blow-back. His video testament can (could?) be seen on Youtube. The TV showed the five minutes of “truth” that fitted their pre-existing theory that it was all about Iraq and Afghanistan. The other and more complicated truth is the other forty minutes of his video had nothing to do with British foreign policy. He spent a lot of it lambasting British Muslims for laxity and especially imams entranced by the material riches of the West - four bedroom houses with a Merc on the block-paved drive etc. Of course this is typically austere Salafi behaviour. And is that not the crux of our problems with Islam? The supposed purity of the austere life crashing head-long into oil-riches beyond the dreams of Croesus. Look at bin Laden? The son of a billionaire but frequently photographed playing Saladin on a horse and wearing white flowing robes looking like something from a Fry’s Turkish Delight TV or cinema ad from the ’80s. “Full of Eastern Promise” was the tag-line.
Yes, there are some who take history and twist it knowingly for malevolent purposes for usually utterly extreme socio-economic-politico-religious ends**. But there are many more for whom it is the “sin of stupity” to blame. It is fitting facts into a grand narrative that to those who do this believe in far stronger than mere facts. Because people seem to need grand narratives. Because life making sense is more important than it being true.
I have a feory (he has a feory!!!) that tonight is going to be a good good night. No!!! That is that numptie and alleged Cheryl Cole shagger Wiil.i.am. Anyway history is made up of an attempt to reconcile the random, the bizarre and the individual (for good or ill) with the massive forces - the dialectic (if I dare use the term here) between the individual and the mass). The big battalions or the magic BB if you see what I mean. The WWII battle that fascinates me most is Midway. And this all comes from a TV interview I saw with a USN dive bomber pilot who was one of a squadron of 18 aircraft. All other aircraft in his squadron were lost to Zeroes or AAA but he got back and he’d sunk a carrier. One bomb right in the pickle turned a war that given the USA’s industrial and resources they would have won anyway, eventually. John Keegan (sadly missed) called Midway, “The most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” And that Dauntless pilot, the lads who got the critically damaged Yorktown (in a Kirk/Scotty moment) jury-rigged in 72 hours (not months as estimated) and the PBY captain who discovered the Japanese fleet on a “hunch” and flying on vapour deserve credit for this. As of course does the architect of his own defeat, Admiral Yamamoto (to lose one carrier might be considered a misfortune… to lose four is a catastrophe beyond Oscar) and the architect of victory Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. There is a reason most of the current USN carriers (they have their own ZIP codes!) are the Nimitz Class.
But just imagine. Without the victory at Midway the awesome power of the USA would have defeated Japan… eventually. Eventually would have meant Comrade Joe in the mix. Imagine a Cold War with a divided Japan like a divided Germany. Imagine how the Korean War would have panned out? Imagine a Checkpoint Charlie in Tokyo as well as Berlin?
Macroscopic events influenced (thank God and Chester!) by individuals. That is the essential tension.
*My wife has a Russian degree and spent a year in Moscow. They love Mr Bond over there. The movies are like documentaries to them (or instruction manuals). I mean some KGB/FSB plots are straight from Fleming. Polonium-210? Poisoned umbrellas?
**And no I don’t regard trad conservative or classical liberal as being extreme. They have been made to look extreme because of “the consensus” are intellectually threatened by them.
If there was a conspiracy to kill Jack Kennedy (”JFK” was a media spin thing) then it was a conspiracy of idiots.
President Kennedy had Addison’s disease - with the health care available in 1963 the is no way he could have successfully campaigned to be reelected in 1964.
Of course it could have been a “stop the Republicans winning in 64 by getting a new Dem in now” conspiracy - but I doubt that Mr Stone would make such a film.
There are a great many theories, but the best (and perhaps the most accurate) one of all is that there is no conspiracy, only cock-up, the randomness of chance and human nature.
I love conspiracy theories, not because I believe most of them, but for their sheer inventiveness and convoluted logic. And this is not to say that there are no conspiracies, there are, they happen all the time, but most of them we all get to find out about later. The invasion of poland by Germany and Russia simultaniously in 1939 didn’t happen by accident did it?
JFK though I believe there was one, and I’m for the Mafia doing an Honour Killing with rogue elements of the CIA who were humiliated in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, plus Hoover and his FBI turning a blind eye. Hoover and the Kennedy’s hated each other; he didn’t try very hard to find the truth.
Could the Soviets have taken Japan before theUS had Midway gone differently? The Kurile islands are one thing, but the Soviet Navy was relatively small until post-WWII. But, they had over a million parachutists in 1939, all set to go west until forestalled by a fortnight.
RAB’s been reading his James Ellroy again :/
A good novelist, but I fail to get the connection Bod. I think I have only read the Black Dahlia.
I too remember where I was when Kennedy was shot. Getting the front in (from our forecourt to the shop, general store, fruit and veg etc) when a neighbour came across and told us the President of the United States had been assassinated.
I was 11. I barely knew what the bloke looked like. There was no satellite TV then, no instantaneous communication globally. The film of events took 24 hours to arrive, and even then it was of a far off place of which we knew little.
We were shutting up early because we were going to see the new Bond Film, From Russia with Love, and we did, without a thought for the global consequences of this murderous act.
My personal scenario goes like this…
The Mafia won the election for JFK via bagloads of cash organised by big daddy Joe Kennedy ( a Nazi sympathiser and Brit hater and Bootlegger, and tee hee Ambassador to the UK till he got canned). Nixon would have won except for that. So the Mafia expected some kind of respect and consideration for their efforts.
But what did they get? Bobby Kennedy’s Organised Crime Commission. Getting shat on from a great height or what! They already had the cross-dressing gay as a Spring morning, Hoover in the bag. He flatly denied there was any such thing as the mafia or organised crime.
So the Mafia decided to kill JFK, to teach him and his clan a lesson. My scenario goes is that they recruited several expert shooters (plenty to choose from in 1963) from the aftermath of the Bay Of Pigs. Promise them a once in a lifetime gig; no money worries for the rest of their lives, re-location far away, and set them up on the Grassy Knoll and other places to triangulate the hit. They already had Oswald down for the patsy, who is by then already visible as a sore thumb with his Commie affections, and set him up with a mickey mouse rifle in the book depository. Now my father in law and I once tried to replicate the shots with a similar rifle at Bisley. Same distance and everything, the only difference was our target wasn’t moving and Oswald’s was. We both missed a static target with a crap rifle, and no suprise from my point of view, I’m a good but not great shot, but my father in law was a champion; 2 Para 6th of June 1944 etc and won many cups and prizes at Bisley in his day. If he couldn’t make the shot, I’m bloody sure Oswald didn’t.
As to the cover up… Well the shooters you guarantee a life of luxury to, only get to live it for a month or two before another hit team you have hired turn up at their door and take them out. All the second team know is you want them dead, they have no idea why, or who they are and are being paid big money for the hit.
Then the investigation gets underway and it’s down to J Edgar and his Motley Crew. Hoover and the Kennedy’s hated each other and he was probably dancing on their graves, a deeply creepy and unpleasant man, even if he had uncovered the truth he would never have told it.
That all sounds much more plausible to me than da Russians, how about you?
Ah, Ellroy has another series - ‘American Tabloid’, ‘The Cold 6000′ and ‘Blood’s a Rover’ which spans the mid 50’s thru’ the 70’s. Deals directly with DC, Vietnam, Cuba, Howard Hughes, the Mob, JFK, RFK, MLK and just about anything else that the tinfoil-hatters might have ever talked about.
If anything, a bit *more* “blood and cartilege ssmeared on the wall of the cell” than the LA Quartet, of which Black Dahlia was one of the four.
@RAB 4.02 the Soviets and Germans were allied, or rather, in a Pact, at the time, but the Soviets came in to Poland a few days after the Germans, and took a smaller portion of Poland. A cartoon from The Evening Standard September 1939:
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE2692
Victor Suvorov’s book Icebreaker points out that the Supreme Soviet met on 1st September 1939, and this unusual event took some time to organise, and Zhukov had destroyed a Japanese army in Mongolia at Khalkin Gol in August 1939, clearing the Soviets for a one front war.
Um shucks folks, I only mentioned it as an example of a bona fide Consipiracy, they do exist you know.
However, with the surprise signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August, the denouement of secret Nazi-Soviet talks held in Moscow, Germany neutralized the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and war became imminent. In fact, the Soviets agreed to aid Germany in the event of France or the UK going to war with Germany over Poland and, in a secret protocol of the pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed to divide Eastern Europe, including Poland, into two spheres of influence; the western ⅓ of the country was to go to Germany and the eastern ⅔ to the Soviet Union.
Government is a conspiracy against the people.
RAB,
Under the terms of Versailles the Germans were denied military aircraft building. The Germans built aircraft in Russia through the ’30s instead. That’s part of the skulldeggery that went on.
The Soviets had a terrible time taking south Sakhalin from the Japanese, even if you need to dig around a bit before you realise what the casualty figures were. The Soviets would have been asked to pay a colossal price to take the Japanese home islands, one they may not have been able to support.
Here’s a little experiment I suggest to anyone who thinks Oswald was a lone nut gunman..
Some years ago a controversial game came out called “JFK reloaded”.It puts you up there on the sixth floor with a rifle and you have to reproduce the injuries with 3 bullets.
It’s now available as abandonware - the makers put it in the public domain..google it,download it,and have a go..you don’t need a superdooper pc to run it.Its only a couple of meg in size.
Think like a lone nut - here’s JFK turning right into the plaza.
Ask yourself - as a lone nut,do you :
a)kill him right now,as the car essentially pivots around his virtually stationary head?
b)wait until his head gets ever bigger in your sights as he comes down the street towards you,slowing to a crawl as he approaches the corner underneath you?
c)wait until the car turns underneath you,presenting another virtually stationary target?
d)shoot as JFK is driving away from you,picking up speed and shrinking in size?
well it’s obviously D because Oswald was a loony commie conspiracy theorist taking orders from the lizardmen voices in his crazy brain but acting alone,simply in the right place to take advantage of a whole ocean of co-incidences.
Oswald was taught russian by the marines.They don’t do that for mere grunts.
His american co-workers in russia clocked him for intelligence straight away.
When you denounce your american citizenship,then get tired of the USSR,you don’t just walk back into America with your russian wife in tow,no questions asked.
The lone nut theory has to ignore all the damage done by the other bullets,you need to cling to the magic bullet,you ignore the guy in the signal box who saw the men behind the knoll,the crowds and cops running towards the knoll and a whole mess of evidence pointing away from Oswald.
The Mafia (and the alleged rogue stalinist russians) did not have the power to have the motorcade route altered;nor could they have the secret service removed from the route - fletcher prouty has a lot to say on that score - none of those windows should have been open..they would have had an agent up there in seconds to close it..similarly the SS were supposed to be on the presidents car - theres a famous clip of an agent throwing his hands in the air because he’s been ordered to get off and away from kennedys limo.Likewise the police bikes should have been at the sides of his limo.
As to Reagan - I’ll remind you that Hinkley the failed assassin was a family friend of George Bush,who essentially ran the presidency after Reagan was shot.
By all means attack conspiracy theories - its the only way to get to the truth of the matter - like how peer review is supposed to work, but do it with some knowledge of the subject.Please try to lay off the lizardmen slur..its so old and boring and lazy.
Our governments have lied about ufos for decades,how they aren’t interested,but release hundreds of case files,how they pose no threat,but document how these things buzz missile silos and military bases,allegedly switching off nuclear missiles,knocking missiles out of the air,taking the piss out of our most advanced aircraft..
What do you or I know about this subject?What really gives us the right to dismiss Ickes Lizardmen as obviously bollocks?What do we really know about the world apart from what we are allowed to know by these lying troughing murderous bastards with their hands in our wallets and a knife at our throats?
RAB: ” If he couldn’t make the shot, I’m bloody sure Oswald didn’t.”
And with his THIRD (some claim fourth) shot at that!
Yes Mr Ed - the Soviets were after Japan (and everything else). And had Nimitz and D.M. being less successful they would have got it.
But wrong thread my friend.
I apologize Mr Ed.
It is not the wrong thread - I forgot the other stuff in the post.
Paul is tired.
Another carrot to throw in the stew.
Abraham Lincoln, when asked his greatest achievement, said: “I killed the bank”
He’d got the US out of the clutches of the Central Bank.
He became shot.
JFK was looking into getting the US out of the clutches of the Central Bank
He became shot.
Who’s got the wherewithal to buy the Secret Service?
The people who print the money?
Most people think of the FED as part of the US govt. It is not.
It’s a for-profit consortium of private banks, making vast profits from the American people. No accounts are published, no auditing is carried out.
A YouTube video is instructive: ” The Money Masters. Rothchilds exposed”
It’s 3 1/2 hrs, & dated. (1996). But it’s an eyeopener.
Reagan was shot in 1981 - George Bush was elected President in 1988.
As for Jack Kennedy.
HE HAD ADDISON’S DISEASE.
Of course that does not mean there was not a conspiracy to get rid of him a few months before he would have had to go anyway.
But it seems a bit drastic.
Abraham Lincoln was a Henry Clay Whig.
He SUPPORTED the reestablishment of a National Bank (which had been got rid of by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren). He also supported “internal improvements” and a “protective tariff” (all corporate welfare - as it is now called).
What part of “Henry Clay Whig” do people not understand?
As for the Federal Reserve (created in 1913).
The Fed is controlled by THE GOVERNMENT.
If it was officially government owned (as the Bank of England has been since 1946) it would make no difference.
“JFK was looking into getting the US out of the clutches of the Central Bank” - Jack Kennedy was doing no such thing, and there was no such man as “JFK” (that is media bullshit).
As for the Rothschild family.
If anyone wants the truth about them - see Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews”.
Sadly the truth is less interesting than a YouTube video.
I could wine for ages about the Rothschilds!
Paul: “What part of “Henry Clay Whig” do people not understand?”
To paraphrase a celebrated Irish barrister.
In the streets of LA, they talk of little else.
Here’s a conspiracy theory for you:
Old Etonian Lefty appoints Old Etonian Lefty….???
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9662546/Bishop-of-Durham-to-be-Archbishop-of-Canterbury.html
Paul–
You say, ‘there was no such man as “JFK” (that is media bullshit).’
I am unsure how to interpret this. Do you mean, “no JFK=King Arthur the Ruler of Camelot and Great White Wha–err, Great White Hope of the Free World: John Fitzgerald Kennedy put his pants on one leg at a time like everybody else, and was not exactly history’s premier anti-statist”?
Apologies for being dense…. :>(
@ Julie: the late Mr Kennedy apparently took his pants off rather more often than almost everybody else, presumably that was where his priorities laid.
Lloyd Bentsen did refer to the man as ‘Jack Kennedy’ in that debate with Dan Quayle, when he reminded everyone how long his own thieving career was.
Mr. Ed,
A tradition well followed by one WJC, also lately of the WH.
It seems to me that in some cases it might be a waste of the Executive’s valuable time to bother putting his pants on at all.
Powerful Politician Screws Around…..
Hardly headline news.
Sorry Julie.
I mean the little plaster saint the leftist media present.
Actually I prefer the real Jack Kennedy to this “JFK” person (in spite of the drugs and the women chasing).
At least the real Jack Kennedy was not (repeat not) a “liberal” as the media “JFK” is.
Thanks, Paul. Understand perfectly. Agreed!
It does seem to me (maybe wrongly–I pay very little attention to MSM–that in the last few years there’s been somewhat of a decline in Official Worshipfulness.
Of course “JFK got us into that Awful War in Viet Nam,” don’tcha know. (Not that it wasn’t an awful war, of course. But it didn’t have to be anything like as awful as it was, and don’t get me started….)