Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/20/26
"Get Ready! 9% Mortgages and a
50% Home Price Crash?"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
"Alert! Not Normal - The Riots Are Preparation for Martial Law and WW3"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/20/26
"Alert! Not Normal - The Riots Are
Preparation for Martial Law and WW3"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "The Death Zone"
"The Death Zone"
by Bill Bonner
"Tariffs are paid by parents trying to provide for their families.
They are paid by students saving up to buy their first car.
They are paid by anyone who seeks to spend money on any conceivable product."
- Rand Paul
Ardmore, Ireland - "Two big surprises coming your way. But first, the news. Amidst the misery and mystery of last week came a report on tariffs. Washington Post: "The New York Federal Reserve released a study last week about the effects of tariffs on prices. As it turns out, by February this year the import taxes that Trump announced in 2025 “contributed 2.9 percentage points to goods price inflation,” the issue that remains the top concern among voters. Without the barrage of tariffs, the New York Fed says, “goods prices would have fallen slightly.”
Perhaps it is because tariffs hit businesses (who pay the levy directly to the feds) first, producers are being whacked by much more inflation than consumers. This from Wolf Richter: "Inflation in prices that businesses pay each other and charge each other – tracked by the Producer Price Index (PPI) – accelerated to 6.3% year-over-year in September, the worst inflation in the realm of businesses since December 2022.
Inflation has been far more aggressive for businesses than for consumers, though it has also been getting worse for consumers: The Consumer Price Index yesterday accelerated to +3.7% year-over-year. GDP tracks inflation that all economic participants face – consumers, businesses, non-profits, and governments."
Tariffs make a nice target. Partly because they are stupid and partly because they don’t work. Fox: "Manufacturing - the industry the tariffs were intended to help - fared particularly poorly, according to the damning report. Researchers estimate the sector lost roughly 75,000 positions during the policy’s first year, or about 6,250 jobs per month. “We can say with an over 90% confidence level that manufacturing lost jobs because of the tariffs,” Richard Stern, vice president of the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital.
No surprise there. Modern factories do not just sell to foreigners...they buy raw materials from them too. Tax their inputs and their outputs go up in price. That’s how producer prices rose 6.3% over the last twelve months. Nor did tariffs reduce the trade deficit. CEPR: "By December [2025], the deficit had risen back to $100 billion a month, roughly the same as the pre-election level. The deficits have increased sharply again in 2026, driven in large part by a surge in semiconductor chips due to the AI boom. The August level of $132.6 billion is the second-highest deficit on record, topped only by last year’s March deficit."
Tariffs are a self-imposed problem that is easy to fix. Just drop them. Tout de suite. Problem solved. Inflation itself is easily solved too. Just eliminate the tariffs and put the government on a pay-as-you-go basis...including paying down the debt. No borrowing. No funny money. Why not? Every farmer, widow, and half-wit voter can do it. But not if they can avoid doing it. And not when they still think they can ‘inflate the debt away.’ You might as well ask the wolf to give up meat for Lent.
This is where the first surprise comes in. The kind of inflation they see coming - slow, mild, house-trained inflation, at…say…the Fed’s 2% target rate - will work tolerably well...but only so long as the accumulated debt remains under control. The upward limit seems to be about 100% to 130% of GDP.
Thanks to Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who together added $20 trillion to US debt in the last ten years, we have reached the death zone. Now, even small increases in interest rates can spin out of control. Deficits cause borrowing, which causes higher interest rates, which raises the feds’ budget, which causes them to borrow more. As Tom points out, the “inflate” part of ‘inflate or die’ no longer rescues you...it finishes you off.
Investors and consumers are already alert to the swindle. They expect it - but at fairly civilized rates...certainly, less than 10% per year. Surprise number one is that inflation - that adorable pet curled up in front of the fire - will go feral. Maybe next year. Maybe ten years from now. It will eat your lunch. Your dinner. The furniture. Wolf-like...monstrous...and ravenous, it will devour your savings. ‘Hyperinflation!’ the press will shriek. ‘No one saw it coming.’
This will cue the Treasury for the second big surprise. The dollar will be devalued, perhaps 100 to 1. Or perhaps a new form of money will be inaugurated...invented by Elon Musk; it will do back-flips...and land in your bank account. AI-enhanced, crypto money - we will be happy to get it! The feds will declare your ‘old’ dollars void and worthless...an empty gesture, since it will have already become worthless. The president will make the announcement, crossing his heart and hoping to die if ever again we see such high inflation. Most surprising of all, many voters will believe him."
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/20/26
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart"
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Monday, October 19, 2026
"Another Round Against Iran Will Break What Is Left of the Gulf"
"Another Round Against Iran
Will Break What Is Left of the Gulf"
by Larry C. Johnson
"Washington and Israel are talking again about “finishing the job” in Iran. Before they do, someone should take a hard look at the bill for the jobs already done. My friend Karl Miller, who has called this region correctly more often than most of the people paid to do it, sent me his latest assessment on Monday. His conclusion is blunt: on the current course, another round of escalation is coming, and the countries paying for it will be the ones that never got a vote.
The Gulf is being bled dry: Start with the people who are supposed to be America’s partners. The IMF’s October outlook reads like a casualty report. Kuwait’s economy is forecast to shrink 16.7 percent this year. Qatar’s will shrink 15.6 percent, and Bahrain’s 11.3 percent. The UAE, long sold as the region’s safe haven, is now expected to contract 3.9 percent, a seven-point swing from the IMF’s April forecast. Saudi Arabia is forecast to shrink 3.3 percent. The only Gulf economy still growing is Oman, and that is because its ports sit outside the Strait of Hormuz.
These are not paper losses. Qatar lost two LNG trains at Ras Laffan in March, about 17 percent of its export capacity. QatarEnergy says the repairs will take three to five years and will cost it roughly $20 billion a year in revenue. Saudi Arabia’s escape route around Hormuz, the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu, is crippled. My sources tell me four of its 11 pumping stations are severely damaged and out of service. Riyadh now projects a deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP, is borrowing to cover it, and has frozen non-essential spending.
Miller explains why this is worse than the headline oil price suggests. A damaged plant produces nothing to sell, but the payroll, the debt payments and the repair bills keep coming. A plant that is still standing but cannot get parts in or cargo out is in almost the same position. A $108 barrel of oil is worth nothing if you cannot ship it. And the cash the Gulf states used to invest at home and abroad is vanishing fast. If a government takes in 100 and must spend 70, it has 30 left over. Cut income to 80 and that cushion drops to 10. A 20 percent hit to revenue wipes out two-thirds of the money for everything else.
The Gulf states bought American protection to safeguard exactly this wealth. Instead, as Miller puts it, they have ended up paying for the costs of American strategy. That is a bargain they will not keep making forever.
A new round means a deeper shortage: Now consider what another round of American and Israeli strikes would do to a world that is already short of energy. Oil flows through Hormuz are running around 11.6 to 11.9 million barrels a day, against a pre-war level of about 17 million. Middle Eastern fuel exports are below half of what they were before the war. The International Energy Agency says diesel will stay tight well into 2027, and that the diesel stocks already burned will not be rebuilt before the second half of that year. Brent is around $108, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.
Every escalation so far has followed the same pattern. Iran answers by tightening its grip on Hormuz. Its allies in Yemen widen their target list. Gulf facilities that were patched together get hit again before they earn back the cost of repairing them. That is the cruelest part of Miller’s analysis: repeated attacks make repairs pointless, because nobody will spend billions restoring a plant that may be destroyed again next month. A new campaign will not reopen the Strait. It will close it further, take more Gulf capacity offline, and push diesel back toward September’s record of more than $200 a barrel, just as Europe heads into winter. France and Italy are already rioting over the cost of living. Imagine them in February.
Israel’s dark future: Miller’s harshest judgment is reserved for Israel, and it deserves a full hearing. He believes Israel will never recover from what it has done in Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry concluded last year was genocide. In his words, the state is “done economically. It is done politically. It is done morally.” That is strong language, but the argument behind it is not hysteria. It is about how a state wears itself out.
His reasoning runs like this. Israel’s leadership has bet everything on military domination: hit every opponent hard enough that no one dares resist. Force can win battles, but it cannot make anyone accept the result. Every campaign therefore creates the need for the next one. Opponents rebuild, resentment grows, and the circle of countries willing to stand with Israel gets smaller. So the government doubles down with more force, because the alternative, accepting real limits on occupation and on its treatment of the Palestinians, threatens the political project it is defending. War becomes a way to postpone the reckoning, not avoid it.
The cost is already showing. The IMF says Israel’s economy is about 9 percent smaller than it would have been without the war. The budget deficit is heading to 6.2 percent of GDP, and public debt is on track to reach about 74 percent of GDP by 2031. Reservists are pulled from their jobs again and again. Israelis are already fighting over who carries the burden, with ultra-Orthodox men still far less likely to work or serve than everyone else. Foreign investors and partners grow more cautious with each campaign. Miller’s warning is that Israel’s project could become unsustainable long before its military power runs out. A country can keep its tanks and jets and still lose the economy, the alliances and the legitimacy it needs to survive. That is the dark and uncertain future he sees, and I find it hard to argue with.
Trump says Russia is doing nothing. Lavrov says otherwise: Which brings me to the President’s latest reassurance. On October 13, Donald Trump said he does not believe Russia or China is helping Iran. On Sunday he went further on social media, insisting that “Russia is doing very little to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared with what it could be doing,” if it is doing anything at all, and that he wants it to stay that way “unless some stupid people get in the way.”
Less than a day later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood next to Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran and said the opposite. “I am confident that Iran’s cause, like Russia’s, is a just cause,” Lavrov declared. He said Russia “has no intention of abandoning the implementation of agreements with Iran in the economic and investment spheres,” and recommitted Moscow to the 20-year strategic partnership that formally took effect on October 2. He announced that Russian specialists will return to the Bushehr nuclear plant. He called for Hormuz to return to pre-war conditions, and tied that to protecting Iran from renewed attacks. Before landing in Tehran, he called Trump’s approach “wrong.”
To be fair to the President, Russia has not gone to war for Iran, and the partnership treaty does not require it to. There is no mutual-defense clause. But that is a lawyer’s distinction. Russia’s foreign minister does not fly into a capital under threat of attack to call its cause just by accident. Add the reported Russian satellite data reaching Iran’s allies and the steady improvement in the accuracy of Iranian and Houthi missiles, and the picture is of a partner that is careful, deniable and very much engaged. Moscow does not need to fire a shot. It only needs to keep Iran standing while America bleeds its Gulf allies and Europe’s economy.
The bill comes due: If Washington and Israel launch another round, they will be betting that this time force produces a settlement. Three years of evidence says it will not. What it will produce is deeper Gulf recessions, a longer energy shortage, more anger in Europe’s streets, and a bigger bill for an Israel that is already running out of room. Miller’s forecast is that the next round is coming anyway. I hope he is wrong this time. I doubt it."
o
I discussed the Houthi military capability with Judge Napolitano:
Larry C. Johnson, "How The Houthis Fight"
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Code 100 Activated In Iran!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/19/26
"Alert! Code 100 Activated In Iran!"
Iranian insider has informed us that Iran is at maximum readiness and expects sh!t will hit the fan in the next couple weeks. Code 100 indicates the highest level of readiness as Israeli jets fly around Syria. Hegseth has met with Netanyahu and Israel has suspended leave for IDF as of Thursday."
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Adventures With Danno, "Brace For Impact, Prices Are Skyrocketing"
Adventures With Danno, 10/19/26
"Brace For Impact, Prices Are Skyrocketing"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this remarkably deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast.
The sharp picture spans about 3/4 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 6 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe. "
"Where the Pearl Palace Glows Beneath the Moon"
Full screen recommended.
Crystal Heaven,
"Where the Pearl Palace Glows Beneath the Moon"
"Welcome to a magical world where pearl palaces glow beneath the moon, crystal waterfalls flow into turquoise waters, and enchanted gardens bloom beneath a sky filled with stars. Let this peaceful fantasy journey carry you through a dreamlike kingdom of crystal castles, luminous waterfalls, sparkling rivers, elegant gardens, magical flowers, and heavenly moonlight. Soft, sweet ambient music with gentle piano, delicate harp, warm acoustic guitar, soft trumpet, airy melodies, and distant angelic vocals creates a calm atmosphere perfect for deep sleep, relaxation, meditation, studying, reading, stress relief, and peaceful dreaming. Relax, breathe slowly, and imagine yourself wandering through this beautiful Pearl Palace beneath the moon. Let the music wash away the noise of the day and guide you into a peaceful dream."
Native American Elder, "Why Happiness Was Easier 40 Years Ago"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"Why Happiness Was Easier 40 Years Ago"
Delta King's Blues, "Bite Me, I'm Busy"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues, "Bite Me, I'm Busy"
"Sometimes you’ve got your own problems, your own plans, and absolutely no patience for anybody else’s nonsense. This bold Delta King’s Blues tune is about setting boundaries, minding your business, and living life on your own terms. Gritty acoustic guitar and soulful harmonica bring a raw, laid-back blues groove full of attitude, humor, and hard-earned wisdom. I ain’t ignoring the world. I’m just busy enjoying my peace."
"We Are Facing A Global Energy Crisis, A Global Food Crisis, A European Financial Crisis, The End Of The AI Bubble And A Super El Niño All At Once"
by Michael Snyder
"We have never seen a year quite like 2026, and we are certainly not prepared for what is coming in 2027. There has never been a time when we haven’t had problems, but now we have entered an era when we are just getting hammered by crisis after crisis after crisis. At the moment, we are simultaneously facing an unprecedented global energy crisis, an unprecedented global food crisis, an epic meltdown in Europe, the end of the biggest financial bubble in history and the most powerful Super El Niño ever recorded. To say that we have a lot on our plate would be a massive understatement, and what we have experienced so far is only just the beginning.
For a few months a decent amount of oil was sneaking through the Strait of Hormuz, but now Iran is trying to slam the door shut. The Iranians have been attacking more oil tankers than ever before this month, and earlier today yet another oil tanker hit an Iranian naval mine…A violating oil tanker struck a naval mine in the southern Strait of Hormuz, causing an explosion and a fire in its engine room, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Navy said in a statement.
The vessel, which was trying to exit the Strait of Hormuz, had switched off all its positioning and navigation systems from the start of its voyage and was attempting to cross the unauthorized southern route of the strait in disregard of its regulations when the incident occurred. The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Navy said any ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf that turn off their navigation and identification systems will be dealt with severely and decisively.
The southern route through the Strait of Hormuz near the coast of Oman used to be clear of mines. Not anymore. Every time a single oil tanker is put out of commission that is a major loss. A new oil tanker costs somewhere between $60 million and $140 million, and once an order is placed it takes 9 to 15 months to build it.
Investors are starting to realize that the global energy crisis is not going to end any time soon, and on Monday the price of Brent crude nearly hit 110 dollars a barrel…Brent crude futures briefly tagged $109.99 a barrel in overnight trading before retreating from five-month highs during the Asian session and into European trading, as signs of recovering Middle Eastern supply offset renewed attacks on energy infrastructure and critical maritime shipping lanes.
Of course Iran is not able to export much oil either, because the U.S. naval blockade is having a devastating impact on their economy…In a video message posted on Friday, U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper said the naval blockade has prevented Iran from exporting at least $25 billion worth of crude oil. The U.S. and its partners have also frozen nearly $350 million cryptocurrency assets, he added.
The effects have rippled throughout Iran’s economy, forcing the regime to withhold salaries, pensions, and benefits to workers in the energy, manufacturing, construction and security sectors, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Cooper said.
“The financial strain on Iran’s military has become so significant that there are reports of Iran-aligned militia groups across the region withholding payments to their soldiers in order to funnel money back to the IRGC, which also is not paying its troops,” he explained. “The Islamic regime is clearly feeling the economic pain, and the IRGC is increasingly showing signs of greater desperation as a result.”
What we really need is for the war in the Middle East to end. But that isn’t going to happen. In fact, it appears that it could soon greatly escalate. The fighting in the Middle East has also really driven up fertilizer prices. Farmers all over the world are paying far more for fertilizer and far more for fuel, and those costs are going to get passed along to everyone else.
Global food prices increased by 13 percent during the third quarter of 2026, and we are being warned that even higher prices are ahead… Global agricultural prices jumped 13 percent in the third quarter of the year, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which warned a “global food crisis is looming”. The surge in energy prices due to conflict in the Middle East has sparked a sharp increase in the cost of fertilisers and fuel this year, driving up agricultural production and transport costs. “Over the next six to nine months, we will see continued increases related to food prices, but also I would say even inflation in terms of food, which will impact most of the populations that actually can afford it less,” IFAD President Alvaro Lario told AFP in an interview on Tuesday.
When food prices go up, more people go hungry. That is just the way that it works. The outlook for 2027 is extremely grim, and we are already at a point where the number of people in the world experiencing acute hunger has doubled over the past ten years…Acute hunger has doubled over the last ten years and now affects 266 million people across 47 countries and territories, according to a new report from Action Against Hunger.
But at least the wealthy countries will be fine, right? Actually, they won’t be fine at all. We have been witnessing horrifying riots in France, Belgium, Italy and Albania in recent days. The rioting has been particularly intense in France, and on Monday French stocks were way down…French markets tumbled on Monday, with bonds, Paris-listed stocks and even the euro falling after widespread protests across France underscored difficulties the government faces in reducing its large deficit.
Already contending with weak growth and ballooning debt, the euro zone’s second-biggest economy witnessed some of its worst unrest in years over the weekend. Thousands of people were arrested and shops were looted during protests over high prices and declining public services. France just kept borrowing gigantic amounts of money year after year, and currently they are absolutely drowning in debt.
Now French bond prices are crashing hard and everyone is freaking out…A slide in bond prices on Monday pushed France’s 10-year yield up 13 basis points to 4.9%, on track for its largest one-day rise since late September, while the German 10-year yield, the benchmark for the euro zone, rose 4 bps to 3.45%. The difference between those two yields, which is a reflection of the premium investors demand to lend to France rather than Germany, was 146 bps, its highest in two weeks, though it has eased from the nearly 160 bps hit in early October.
French banks are facing nightmarish unrealized losses on the French bonds that they are holding. If there is a run on the banks, we are being warned that many of them could start collapsing as a result of this crisis. I certainly wouldn’t want my money in French banks at this stage.
Germany is in a lot of trouble too. The German economy has been in stall mode for years, bond yields have been rising, and even Volkswagen has fallen on hard times… In another episode of the “death of Europe,” a new report from Germany brings more troubling news for struggling automaker Volkswagen, suggesting to us that globalists in the bloc have squandered not just their inheritance but their economic future through a failing progressive experiment that has neutered Europe’s industrial base.
German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reports that Volkswagen plans to freeze salaries through the end of the decade as it expands its cost-cutting push after lowering its outlook and doubling its job-reduction target. “Internal documents reveal that hundreds of thousands of employees are to forgo pay raises. These latest plans represent a further escalation in the conflict between management and employee representatives,” SZ wrote in the article.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain are supposed to be the pillars of the European Union. Unfortunately, all of them are currently on shaky ground. This is a story that is still in the early chapters, and I am convinced that the whole world will be shocked by what is about to happen to Europe.
Meanwhile, the AI bubble in the U.S. is beginning to burst. Many AI stocks have fallen substantially this month. Investors are starting to realize that AI will never be the income-generating miracle that it was touted to be at one time. So now there is a lot more hesitancy to fund new data center projects, and some projects are either being delayed or canceled…
More than three years into the AI boom, these ambitious data centre plans are running into reality. At least 47 large projects have been delayed, withdrawn or blocked in 2026, according to data shared by RegLayer, a regulatory intelligence company, which described it as a “conservative estimate” focused on the largest sites. When there is a stock market bubble, you only get rich if you get out at the top. Those that hold their AI stocks all the way to the bitter end are going to end up deeply, deeply disappointed.
On top of everything else that I have discussed in this article, we are also facing a Super El Niño. According to the NOAA, there is an 83 percent chance that this will be the most powerful El Niño ever recorded… As of October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts there is an 83 per cent chance that this will be the strongest El Niño since records began in 1950.
Meanwhile, NASA’s satellite measurements show that sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific are currently 1.7°C (3°F) above the long–term average, and could jump another fraction of a degree higher in the coming months. This band of warm water expanded throughout the spring and now covers millions of square miles in an area stretching from the coast of South America to the heart of the Pacific.
In some parts of the world, this Super El Niño has caused monster storms. In other parts of the world, this Super El Niño has caused crippling droughts and widespread crop failures. Sadly, this Super El Niño is expected to persist well into 2027. That is not good news at all.
At the same time, the global energy crisis and the global food crisis are both going to continue to intensify as we roll into next year. We really are in the midst of a “perfect storm”, and I anticipate that global financial markets will go totally nuts in the months ahead."
The Poet: James Kavanaugh, “Searchers”
“Searchers”
“Some people do not have to search -
they find their niche early in life and rest there,
seemingly contented and resigned.
They do not seem to ask much of life,
sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously.
At times I envy them,
but usually I do not understand them -
seldom do they understand me.
I am one of the searchers.
There are, I believe, millions of us.
We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content.
We continue to explore life,
hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.
We continue to explore ourselves,
hoping to understand.
We like to walk along the beach -
we are drawn by the ocean,
taken by its power, its unceasing motion,
its mystery and unspeakable beauty.
We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers,
and the lonely cities as well.
Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.
To share our sadness with the one we love is
perhaps as great a joy as we can know -
unless it is to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself,
for everything beautiful it can provide.
Most of all we want to love and be loved.
We want to live in a relationship that will not impede
our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls.
We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
We are wanderers, dreamers and lovers,
lonely souls who dare ask of life everything good and beautiful.”
- James Kavanaugh
"Knowing..."
“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
- Sue Monk Kidd
“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
- Arundhati Roy, "The Cost of Living"
"What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination"
"What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination"
by Jacob Hornberger
"One of the fascinating phenomena in the JFK assassination is the fear of some Americans to consider the possibility that the assassination was actually a regime-change operation carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment rather than simply a murder carried out by a supposed lone-nut assassin. The mountain of evidence that has surfaced, especially since the 1990s, when the JFK Records Act mandated the release of top-secret assassination-related records within the national-security establishment, has been in the nature of circumstantial evidence, as compared to direct evidence. Thus, I can understand that someone who places little faith in the power of circumstantial evidence might study and review that evidence and decide to embrace the “lone-nut theory” of the case."
○
Part 1:
Part 2:
"Coup d'État"
What Americans fear most? The Truth...
"Martyrs To The Unspeakable"
by Edward Curtin
"To weave a magnificent tapestry like the one James W. Douglass has created with "Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK "takes a steady hand, a hopeful heart, and a steadfast dedication to seeking truth and telling it through factually based and interwoven stories.
Because of its brilliant complexity and documented details, it is difficult to review, but I will say at the outset that it is a masterpiece, the culmination of Douglass’s life of writing about and fighting for peace and justice for our human family.
It is a book that could only be written by a man sustained by a spiritual faith that inspired his four subjects to face their own deaths without flinching, so that others might be saved. It is a testament to four leaders violently gunned down, written by a man whose faith in nonviolence is unshakeable.
Douglass grasps the prophet and artist’s secret that we all live by stories, and the martyred heroes’ tales he recounts in this book are sorely needed in this darkest of times when the death of our planet is at stake and the spiritual sustenance to prevent it is desperately needed.
The truths he recounts through these stories are sad and joyous, for they convey both the agony of terrible deaths but also the ecstasy of the hope that is resurrected through grasping the courage of four great men who defiantly dared to confront the unspeakable lies of their government and society. Four men who died trying to open others’ eyes to terrible truths hard to swallow.
The Tapestry: All tapestries take patience and a meditative eye to discern the deepest possible meanings that are woven into their intricate designs. I remember once standing for ten minutes in front of a series of very famous and confusing medieval tapestries at The Met Cloisters in NYC – The Hunt of the Unicorn – puzzling over their meaning. Ten minutes left me stumped.
The same is true of a review of this book, which can barely scratch the surface of its cumulative spiritual and political power and relevance; nor the thousands of threaded details that make it whole. But I will nevertheless scratch away to induce you to enter the ways of justice and compassion Douglass tells through the lives of these martyrs for truth. It takes time, but the spent time will tell you a story that is beyond time – it is eternal.
It is imperative, moreover, that one do something very unusual in these days of Internet skimming where manifold specious claims about who killed these four men, and why, are bandied about like Halloween candy for childish masked minds: One must slowly and carefully immerse oneself in the entire book with an open heart and mind and let the tales enter you.
It is commonly known that John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated long ago; but it is the intricacies of their personal and political tales, how they dealt with betrayals, threats, and lies, and how their lives and missions intersected, where the meaning manifests itself.
The facts are essential, but they are lumps of inert clay until the spirit moves them. These men, despite all their frailties, were moved by the spirit of compassion for others; they were men for others despite the risks to themselves. If this sounds too gushy to you, it could be because you are confusing them with most public figures whose primary concern is power, prestige, and self-survival at all costs.
Douglass’s genius is to cut to the heart of the matter – to find redemptive meaning in the great mishmash of facts and awaken this compassionate spirit in the reader, just as his subjects had to discover it in the circumstances into which life had tossed them. Just as we do. Life is always what comes next.
One Story Out of Four: Douglass creates one story out of four – or more – and it is a story of hope despite the near despair the deaths of these men brought. As one who lived through them as a young man, I can attest to that despair, as I recall the time, place, even the weather and smaller details when first hearing the news, and how my heart sank into a dark pit. Deaths at mid-day, late afternoon, evening, and late at night, alarm bells to shatter the spirit. Angelus bells in reverse, or as Edgar Allen Poe puts it in “The Bells”:
"Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
[…]
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the sobbing of the bells."
Yet despite the tolling of the devil’s bells, Douglass tells a tale of hope rooted in the similarities between kindred souls who lived their lives so courageously in full awareness that they would probably be killed for trying to bring peace on earth and good will to people everywhere.
It was courage rooted in a faith most real, seeding for us the challenge that love can conquer hate if, as Douglass puts it, we “discern a way to walk with our martyrs out of the darkness.” That is a very hard task, rooted in the heart but dependent on a commitment to political non-violent resistance.
Because he is a theologian as well as an historian, it is important that I point out that this work is not a hagiography or a mythic creation, for the stories, while extraordinary, are factual, not fictional, and Douglass supports all his textual claims with extensive footnotes that source and clarify.
The reader, when wondering, need just look down the page for elucidation and sources. The fact that he and his editor at Orbis Books, Robert Ellsberg, have returned to this esteemed and crucial – but largely abandoned – publishing tradition of footnotes on nearly every page, not endnotes, is most commendable and an example of their transparency and dedication to the truth.
So challenge this, if you dare, the notes say! We are not putting these at the end of the book where you will have to go back and forth, working to connect them to the text. Just look down, and follow the factual trail yourself.
No, this is not a hagiography; it is a book about human transformation, the ways these men changed over time. For example, Douglass makes it clear that in the early 1960s John and Robert Kennedy were supporters of counterinsurgency policies in Vietnam and around the world. But they grew to see that they were wrong. They grew to see their earlier inclinations were right and they had taken a wrong path. So they changed.
By 1965, with his brother dead as a result of such changes, Robert Kennedy gave a speech to the International Police Academy (IPA) on the occasion of the graduation of 146 CIA (AID)-recruited police trainees in which he rejected the Johnson administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam. He was subjected to harsh criticism for this and was soon called a traitor for his opposition to the escalation of the war. When he was assassinated in 1968, he was adamantly opposed to the war.
Douglass, beside being a fastidious researcher, is an astute psychologist. He knows that human change is hard, halting, and complex, but it happens.
"Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK" is a companion volume to Douglass’s bestselling "JFK and the Unspeakable," a book (first published in 2008) that made it very clear that JFK was assassinated by the CIA because he had turned redemptively toward peacemaking, not war.
That book, so meticulously documented and told so compellingly, showed why his life and death matter today because a message was sent from the streets of Dallas to every president since. They have all bowed to the message’s threat: You must support the nuclear warfare state – or else. Those who have read that groundbreaking volume have been waiting for a sequel for a long time. "Martyrs to the Unspeakable" is it.
The End Is Our Beginning: So let me begin at the end with Douglass’s Epilogue that is not an afterthought, where in a few pages he tells the story of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swede, who during WW II had led a Swedish Red Cross expedition that freed thousands of Jews and other prisoners from Nazi concentration camps.
In 1948 he was appointed the United Nations Mediator in Palestine. Because he was attempting to fairly resolve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, he was assassinated by the Zionist Stern Gang, also known as LEHI, at a roadblock in Jerusalem. The Stern Gang’s command included Yitzhak Shamir, a future prime minister of Israel. The assassin was Yehoshua Cohen, who would become the closest friend and security guard for the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion.
Douglass clearly wants the reader to know that there are other great courageous souls whose names are barely known and have been erased from history, unlike JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK, whose stories he is resurrecting. These unknown martyrs to the unspeakable are a latent stream of hidden hope once one learns their stories.
Bernadotte’s companion in the car when he was assassinated was also killed. He was Colonel Andre Serot, a French observer for the U.N. team, who was in the car by chance since Ralph Bunche, Bernadotte’s close American assistant, had been delayed, and Bernadotte asked Serot, who was talking to him from the outside, to join him in the car. The assassins assumed Serot, who was dark complexioned, was Bunche, who was African-American and whom they had targeted with Bernadotte.
In a simple twist of fate that presaged today’s role-reversals with the genocide of Palestinians being carried out by Israel, Serot’s wife was one of the people Bernadotte had saved from a Nazi concentration camp.
“What we call the beginning is often the end /And to make an end is to make a beginning. /The end is where we start from,” wrote TS Eliot.
The Start: So let me now return to the ostensible beginning. The book, like Gaul, but unlike Caesar’s militaristic usage since it concerns the ways a modern empire murders its prophets of peace, is divided into three parts (est omnis divisa in partes tres): The Witness, The Way, and The Why, comprised of nine chapters, with the first and last containing important material about JFK, Israel, Russia, and nuclear weapons, much of which supplements what was provided in "JFK and the Unspeakable."
There is little new detail provided about the CIA’s assassination of John since that was covered extensively and proven definitively in the first book, but there is much about the CIA/FBI assassinations of Malcolm, Martin, and Bobby, thereby creating a trinity of shorter Unspeakables within this present longer volume. Douglass begins unequivocally:
"When a modern empire murders hope, it acts with the same resolve the Roman Empire did with roadside crucifixions to deter rebellion and thievery. Crucified with slaves and prophets who resisted the empire were common criminals…In our day, the slaves and criminals are merged and said to have killed the prophets. We are given enslaved scapegoats with criminal backgrounds so we can feel like we have accused and punished someone for our government-led assassinations…Lee Harvey Oswald….‘Black Muslims’…James Earl Ray…Sirhan….The scapegoats, set up by government agencies to take the onus off the empire, are an odd bunch. Yet, through compliant media, they are filtered into our consciousness as marginal culprits. A mighty movement for change has been derailed at crucial moments of our history, yet without credible motivations by the apparent perpetrators.”
JFK, RFK, and Israel: The stunning opening chapter recounts JFK’s fierce battle with David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Perez, and other Israelis to prevent Israel from developing nuclear weapons – nuclear disarmament being Kennedy’s obsession after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 nearly led to full-scale nuclear annihilation – and sets the stage for all that follows.
Douglass documents the ways John and Bobby Kennedy, united in purpose, tried assiduously to derail Israel’s development of nuclear weapons at its Dimona nuclear reactor, but, in the end, were defeated by Israel’s lies, deceptions, and delaying tactics. And as Douglass points out, they were ably assisted by the CIA’s treacherous counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who provided Israel with covert assistance in acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Kennedys were seeking a non-nuclear and neutralist Israel in opposition to Cold War Washington, as they pursued an Arab-Israeli peace within a larger U.S.-Soviet one. One aspect of this was their efforts to create a relationship with Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Israelis thwarted them in all their efforts. JFK knew the Israelis were lying to him – as he told the journalist Charles Bartlett – “The sons of-bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability.”
Additionally, his Justice Department, led by RFK, was trying to enforce the Foreign Agency Registration Act against the American Zionist Council (AZC) whose influence in the U.S. was enormous (as the Israel Lobby is more so today). But that effort also failed, as the AZC fought the Justice Department until JFK had been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson had replaced him, when the AZC prevailed. We are living with the consequences.
The chapter follows the CIA’s Allen Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, and Richard Helm’s plot to kill JFK and cover it up, and after that to assassinate RFK. Elected a Senator from New York State in 1964, Senator Robert Kennedy gave a maiden speech in the U.S. Senate on June 23, 1965 that was a direct challenge to Israel’s secret nuclear program and caused great consternation in Israel. A year later, despite RFK’s efforts, Israel secretly attained nuclear capability on November 6, 1966.
Dedicated to the same peaceful pursuits as his brother and to fully investigate his brother’s assassination if he could get elected president and have the power to do so, RFK was marked out for death. After MLK, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 and Bobby was running for the presidency, he responded to the Rev. Walter Fauntroy telling him that he’d be the nominee of the Democratic Party. “Kennedy said, ‘Yes, that’s possible.’ He paused, then added, ‘But there are guns between me and the White House.’ Fauntroy was shocked.” Two months later the guns did their job – Bobby lay dead.
Chapter One also includes extensive interviews with his alleged assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, the hypnotized real Manchurian Candidate (see Shane O’Sullivan’s brilliant documentary, "The Real Manchurian Candidate)", concluding by drawing the threads together to show how they picture a beautiful dream of peace deferred as it exploded in violent protest clashes in many U.S. cities in the summer of 1968.
And that, dear reader, is just Chapter 1, but it should give you a sense of how deep into the darkness Douglass goes, contrary to so many writers who go not too far in but just far enough to say they’ve been there and who never pin the tail on the donkey, or if they do, it’s the wrong donkey. They play the jackass’s game and take those who follow them on a trip to nowhere on one of the CIA’s false trails.
Douglass knows that in order to find truth and hope, one must penetrate all the way to hell if one is ever to reach heaven. He has nothing to do with those who claim we will never know the truth, that we must endlessly debate the minutiae, and that in any case it doesn’t matter anymore. To those, he says: Here it is, and it damn well does matter today, for the U.S. intelligence forces that assassinated JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and Bobby are still at it.
To those who claim it was not the CIA, but Israel who was the culprit, he reminds us of Angleton’s (who was the head of the CIA’s counterintelligence and held the Israel desk) revelation of the CIA’s method of creating diversionary false trails in many directions, “the intent [of which] is to draw us more deeply into the false layers of the official story, each sending us farther into the intelligence world’s wilderness of mirrors…all have the trappings of a CIA scenario with implications of possible Israeli involvement and other trapdoors for investigators to fall through.” He adds: “The CIA controls its assassination plots and cover-ups. The clues the Agency dispenses tempt us into a boundless wilderness of false trails.”
However, they all lead back, like the tentacles of an underwater monster, to the CIA with its military intelligence, and police allies. The monster is a military-industrial-intelligence system whose goal is to become total global control. The Kennedys, like Malcolm and Martin, are then murdered with systemic vengeance for their having presumably become Cold War traitors. In reality, they are martyrs committed to realizing the most unspeakable reality of all – a global vision of justice, peace, and unity.
Since Douglass’s opposition to Israeli’s long-time genocide of the Palestinians is adamantine (as is mine), no one can accuse him of being Israel’s defender. Yet today, with so many writers and commentators having fallen through a trapdoor and claiming Israel killed the Kennedys, one can expect them to criticize this book on that score.
It is best not to follow their lead. I would recommend that readers judge for themselves, for in this reviewer’s informed opinion, Douglass is clearly correct, and Martyrs to the Unspeakable, building upon JFK and the Unspeakable, makes an irrefutable case.
Since I am writing a book review, not a book about a book, I will simply touch on what I find most compelling in the rest of the book, whose heart I have yet to mention, although the book’s trinitarian construction suggests the heart must be connected to the head and soul.
Chapter Two, “Malcolm Dances with the Unspeakable,” by far the shortest in the book at thirty pages, introduces the reader to Malcolm X’s family background, his entry into the fray for racial justice, the CIA plot with the FBI and the New York Police Department to kill him, and his growing internationalism, including his friendship with Fidel Castro and other anti-colonial leaders.
Despite its brevity – intentional, I think, as Douglass shrewdly lures the reader deeper into his profound story – it is extremely important since many readers, especially Caucasians, probably know far less about Malcolm than they do about the other three, and what they do know is no doubt tinged with afterimages of Malcolm’s militancy, distorted by a media that lied about him because they feared him and were doing the government’s bidding, as usual, something I remember vividly from my youth in NYC.
Because he was so eloquent, justifiably angry, sartorially natty, and gave off a whiff of danger (celebrated by the culture at the time in famous rebel “angry white boy” film images, e.g. Marlon Brando, James Dean, et al.), they distorted his battle against white racism and violence. That he was Muslim was the coup de grâce (as today), and so Malcolm was crucified in the press.
The remainder of Part One, “The Witness,” is devoted to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover’s long harassment of MLK, Jr. and his family, the plot to kill him and assassinate his character, his support for and relationship with the Kennedy brothers, their growing involvement in the civil rights struggle, and Bobby Kennedy’s run for the presidency fueled by his trips through Latin America and Mississippi and his growing defense of the poor (“So a revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”), and his assassination in Los Angeles.
Of special note is the connection of the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department in his murder and coverup, as well as the courageous testimony of the witness, Sandra Serrano. All these threads are woven together, ending with the Kennedys’ turn toward dialogue with Fidel Castro.
Into the Heart: The middle section, “The Way,” about the ways Malcolm, Martin, and Bobby walked, despite knowing they would be killed, is, I would say, the heart of the book, its spiritual center. It is powerful and very moving. In the name of succinctness, let me quote a bit.
The Way of Malcolm: “J. Edgar Hoover’s solution to the problem [the international system of racial exploitation] – to pit the rising leaders of Black people against one another – was not new. They knew it as their master’s tactic. In the United States, it would mean selling guns to the ghetto, as brothers shot one another into emergency rooms and the grave, or ended up behind bars for the rest of their days.”
Returning from his transformative trip to Mecca, Malcolm wrote: “I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda. I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” (emphasis in the original)
Malcolm: “We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level – to the level of human rights.” In his struggle for human rights, he was undermined by treacherous lies, personal betrayals, government infiltration, spying, and paid informers, that led to his assassination, which he knew was coming as he walked his way to martyrdom. “Malcolm could confront the Unspeakable with courage because of his total faith in Allah.”
“Malcolm X, who spoke truth to power with his life, pushed the U.S. security state up against the wall with his human rights campaign to the United Nations. It struck back with vengeance. He accepted the consequences of his truth-telling with serenity, saying to a friend two days before he died, “It’s time for martyrs now. And if I’m to be one, it will be in the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”
The Way of Martin: “Martin King became a hard enemy of Washington on April 4, 1967, when he said in “Beyond Vietnam,” his Riverside Church Address, ‘I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.’”
“’Beyond Vietnam’ took the speaker beyond civil rights, beyond political calculation, and as a citizen of conscience, beyond protection from the violent system he lived in.” In this section on MLK, Douglass makes it very clear that this speech and his poor people’s campaign to follow – his revolutionary turn toward linking civil rights to war and economic justice for all – sealed his death warrant, and that he knew it. It did not, however, deter him. He knew his way, and where the way was leading him, but his deep religious faith led him on.
Many know this, but few know what Douglass writes in this section where through his interview with Glenda Grabow, a key witness in King’s assassination, he makes significant connections between the government’s assassinations of King and John Kennedy through the shadowy figure of a man named Raul, who was connected to Jack Ruby. The links Douglass makes, based on facts not conjecture, will make the reader’s head spin.
MLK to Harry Belafonte: “I made my peace with death.” Belafonte: “You made your peace with death?” King: “Yeah. It no longer preoccupies me. It doesn’t threaten me.”
As with all wonderful tapestries, this one is so multifaceted and deep, that when you turn a page and read closely, you are constantly startled by what you see through the pictures Douglass draws with his words. One after another, the connections he makes take your breath away.
The Way of RFK: “While Martin Luther King, Jr. was turning toward a way of life crowned by his death, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was on his halting journey of truth into the horror of the Vietnam War, the threatened nuclear destruction of the world, and his own murder.”
“As we have seen, the CIA was in covert control of the RFK murder investigation from the very morning of RFK’s shooting, June 5, 1968. Senior Los Angeles FBI official Roger LaJeunesse and the FBI were immediately elbowed aside by LAPD Chief of Detectives Robert Houghton with the support of the federal government. Houghton installed instead at the head of Special Unit Senator (SUS) an elite unit of his own officers. It was commanded by covert CIA operatives. LaJeunesse knew the detailed CIA history of his friend, Lieutenant Manuel Pena, who had become the SUS officer-in-charge.”
Douglass provides detailed evidence of the CIA’s assassination of RFK and its coverup, the former, as with all these assassinations, requiring the latter. He provides testimony of the coroner, Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, that Bobby was shot from behind his right ear from a distance of “one to one and a half inches,” ruling out Sirhan, who was feet in front of him, as his killer.
Douglass jumps to RFK and JFK’s relationship with French President Charles De Gaulle, who luckily escaped the CIA’s coup and assassination attempts, and whose advice on Vietnam Bobby sought on January 31, 1967 when they met in France. As befits his method, he intersects this strand into the big picture, as Penelope in The Odyssey describes the great fabric she weaves around a violent interruption – “fine of thread and very wide”.
“The most obvious, least spoken truth about the killing of John and Robert Kennedy, comes from looking at their assassinations side by side. Not only can their assassinations be seen as serial murders, but they are also linked by necessity. Killing JFK meant killing RFK…or else…Killing John Kennedy to keep the Cold War going meant killing Bobby Kennedy for the same reason.”
De Gaulle knew the CIA had killed JFK, and so did Bobby. “By making the crucial decision to run for president in 1968, RFK chose a still deeper way. The depth of his compassion compelled him to seek the office through which he could help most . . . those most in need . . . while knowing the risk in taking such a step. By embarking on his last campaign for the sake of the living, but at the risk of his own death, Bobby Kennedy chose to live out a way of compassion and justice for all—by living and taking his chances.”
Part Three: The Why is devoted to the convergence of an analysis with the martyrdom of Malcolm and Martin. They came to see all the connections between the genocide on which the U.S. was founded, its history of slavery, its racism, the capitalistic economic system of injustice affecting all races – the issue of human rights – and colonialism.
“The assassinations of Malcolm and Martin have close parallels, because they can be traced to the same source: their government’s covert action protocol. Both men were set up.” Both men were executed by the U.S. government.
Investigating the assassinations of Martin and Malcolm over the past six decades has been a pilgrimage in their lives of witnessing to the truth. From it, I have learned how naïve I was about systemic evil. While there is nothing new about prophets being murdered by the system, I was not aware how thoroughly our own system carries out such murders—and why. I believe the key to this untold history is the fact that our government was the first to develop and use nuclear weapons. The rise of our national security state after World War II, as justified by the Cold War that our nuclear weapons created, was the effective end of democracy in this country. It was climaxed by the execution of President Kennedy, which foreshadowed the state killings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., together with Robert Kennedy’s.
So it is fitting that Douglass’s final chapter – a tour de force – is “The Kennedys, the Russians, and the Bomb.” No one who lived through the near nuclear end of the world that occurred in the few weeks of mid-October 1962 – the Cuban Missile Crisis – will forget it. Or should.
As a young college freshman at the time, it is seared in my memory despite the beer, girls, and basketball that were my conscious pursuits. If today’s college students read just this chapter, they would immediately understand how tenuous a hold we all have on life because of nuclear weapons. And they would see how shallow and dangerous are the men who have assumed the presidency since then with their devotion to nuclear weapons.
Douglass opens Chapter Nine, as if it is the month for giving birth to all the gravid tales that led to it, with words that remind one of the poet TS Eliot’s question – “…were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” – as follows: The intertwined stories of John and Robert Kennedy take us into the depths of our human story. The president, with the support of his attorney general brother on behalf of the American people, risked committing the darkest evil one can imagine, initiating a nuclear war. [during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis]
In an enlightened reversal, the Kennedy brothers then turned toward peace with their Russian and Cuban enemies, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, who emerged from the nuclear darkness with them. As a result, JFK and RFK were assassinated as Cold War traitors by their own national security state, with RFK’s murder delayed until his last campaign turned him, at his California primary victory, June 4, 1968, toward the prospect of becoming president himself.
The moral consequences of our denial of the truth of their martyrdom for peace have included our country’s waging perpetual war around the world and the ever-more-likely extinction of our species. [my emphasis]
And between this beginning and his end, he gives a detailed history lesson – both wonderful and dreadful – of how the Kennedys, despite their advisers and maniacal generals such as Edward Lansdale, Curtis LeMay, and Lyman Lemnitzer, were able to make friends of their enemies and prevent nuclear war.
Douglass concludes as follows: We can see the hope of life in our valley of death through the testimony of our prophets. Because they asked why, kept turning, and were willing to die, JFK, Malcom, Martin, and RFK all had to go. That is our story now. We are on the same bloody, glorious path of humanity they blazed for our long night’s journey into light. May we learn on that way to bow to the light in every human personality on Earth until we see it in communion with the lives of all creatures.
"Martyrs to the Unspeakable" is a masterpiece, a tapestry of profound importance. It is a testament to the martyrs who died trying and to its author who has lived to tell their tales. It is a breathtaking and inspiring book."
Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press)
"How It Really Is"
“My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either. It happens to be my view, but it doesn't challenge any of the findings of Darwin or Huxley or Einstein or Hawking.” - Christopher Hitchens
"The Last Act: America Is Finished in the Middle East"
Col. Macgregor:
"The Last Act:
America Is Finished in the Middle East"
"Is this the final chapter of America's role in the Middle East? Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor argues that the Iran war has become a war without strategy, and therefore a war without end. The decapitation strikes failed, the air campaign is burning through expensive munitions, and Iran only has to survive to win. When it is over, he says, the U.S. will be finished in the region and every country there will want it gone. Speaking with Cyrus Janssen Macgregor explains why the worst may still be ahead: a global energy shock that could take a quarter of the world's oil offline, $8–10 gasoline, a fertilizer crisis, and the political fallout if Washington moves toward a ground invasion or a draft. He also covers the deadly strike on an Iranian school, dwindling interceptor stocks, the danger of nuclear escalation, and why Russia may be the biggest winner."
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