New JFK assassination bombshells
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Bombshells in the new trade paperback of a good JFK assassination book are featured in a new Discovery Channel special, “Did the Mob kill JFK?” produced by NBC. It premieres Sunday, November 22, 2009, on the Discovery Channel (US) at 8pm and again at 11pm. Authors of the book, Legacy of Secrecy, Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, are extensively interviewed in the documentary, which will continue to air in the coming months.
The updated trade paperback’s new information completes the story of how the top secret plan of John and Robert Kennedy to stage a coup against Fidel Castro on December 1, 1963 — with the help of Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida — was used by three powerful Mafia bosses to murder JFK.
Documented from the National Archives for the first time is Watergate burglar Bernard Barker’s decades-long work for the Mafia, even as Barker aided the CIA with the coup plan. This let Barker sell out the coup plan to his mob bosses and help to assassinate JFK in a way that forced top US officials to withhold key information from the Warren Commission and the press, to prevent a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
This legacy of secrecy also allowed two men who confessed their roles in JFK’s murder to be involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1968. The trade paperback also contains important new information about the FBI informant who obtained the JFK assassination confession of godfather Carlos Marcello, which the Bureau kept secret for twenty years.
The rifle fire in Dallas that killed John F. Kennedy didn’t just start a frantic effort to find his assassins. JFK’s murder also launched a flurry of covert actions by officials like Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Helms to hide the fact that, at the time of the assassination, the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba as part of a JFK-authorized coup only ten days away. The plan’s exposure would have cost the life of JFK’s coup leader, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, and could have led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the cover-ups by these top officials also had the tragic effect of preventing a full investigation of JFK’s assassination, spawning a legacy of secrecy that would impact Presidents, Congress, and U.S. foreign policy for the next forty-five years.
Legacy of Secrecy details the secret attempts of Robert F. Kennedy and his aides to expose his brother’s killers, while protecting Commander Almeida. It shows how RFK continued his war against the Mafia by focusing increased attention on the Mafia bosses behind JFK’s assassination, until his own murder. RFK’s associates continued his quest, almost exposing the truth several times. But like a deadly, high-stakes chess game—at the height of the Cold War—they were blocked each time by three Mafia chiefs and a handful of CIA operatives. Legacy of Secrecy details each step taken by mob bosses Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Rosselli to hide their involvement in JFK’s murder, and depicts the tragic results that followed. The long shadow of secrecy surrounding both JFK’s murder and the coup plan set the stage for the murder of Martin Luther King, ultimately driving two Presidents from office, and bringing about the murders of five Congressional witnesses in the mid-1970s.
This is not just speculation. With an investigation that has lasted more than 20 years, authors Hartmann and Waldron have been able to back up their allegations with the testimony of witnesses plus corroborating evidence from the National Archives, some of it just recently released. In the course of their investigation, Waldron’s car was run off the road and flipped over by someone trying to discourage him from continuing. Hartmann’s car was smashed by someone using a sledge hammer and also had a few bullet holes put in it. All of the allegations in this 940-page book are supported by the documented evidence that fills every room in Waldron’s house, all of it cited in the book.
Reviewing the main points:
1. Documented (from the National Archives) for the first time is Watergate burglar Bernard Barker’s decades-long work for the Mafia and the CIA, particularly his work on the CIA-JFK-planned coup in Cuba. (The planning for this coup started with Nixon when he was VP to Eisenhower.)
2. Bernard Barker sold out the coup plan to his mob bosses which led to the assassination of JFK. The plan was for coup leader, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, to “neutralize” the Russians in Cuba with the help of US forces that were to enter the country, to help him take over the country and become its president. The Mafia knew that this meant they would lose all their gambling operations in Cuba, and they also had good reason to believe that Bobby Kennedy was getting ready to push them out of Las Vegas, Chicago, and New Orleans. So they decided the Kennedy brothers had to go.
3. Two men who confessed their roles in JFK’s murder were involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1968.
4. An FBI informant obtained the JFK assassination confession of godfather Carlos Marcello, which the Bureau kept secret for twenty years.
5. Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Helms hid the fact that the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba as part of a JFK-authorized coup. The coup had been scheduled to take place in December of 1963. The plan’s exposure would have cost the life of the coup leader, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, and might well have led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis had barely been forestalled.
6. After his brother’s assassination, RFK continued his war against the Mafia by focusing ever more attention on the Mafia bosses that had been behind his brother’s assassination — which eventually led to murder. RFK’s associates then continued his quest, almost exposing the truth several times, despite the efforts of the CIA and Mafia to muddy the waters by floating plenty of bogus and confusing “information” and “evidence.”
Watch the presentation on TV Sunday night on the Discovery Channel.
Take action — click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people: Reopen the investigation of the JFK assassination
The High Cost of Neglecting Manufacturing
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An article by Thomas Heffner, reposted from EconomyInCrisis.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in 2004. We tried to inform the country five years ago that our direction and priorities were not on the right track. Our erroneous ways continued unchanged, which have caused our present plight.
The United States is considered to be a rich country. We have accumulated much abundance through most of the twentieth century, as we were a very productive country whose wealth derived to a great extent from manufacturing. Our companies invented and produced many of the things we needed plus much of what the rest of the world needed.
Today, American owned corporations manufacture less and less each year and import more each year. This difference between the amount we import and export has created a huge balance of trade deficit. This has caused us to lose over 1 million high paying manufacturing jobs this year alone.
As our American owned companies produce less, they become inefficient, uncompetitive, and ultimately go out of business or are easily taken over by foreign owned corporations with huge supplies of our cash generated through their trade surplus with us.
Much of Wall Street, for instance, has been bought by Japanese, German, Swiss, Dutch, English and other foreign corporations in the last decade. Now no American owned companies make TV’s anymore and very few audio and other electronic products are produced here by American owned companies and many of those products that we say we manufacture are often only assembled from components that we import.
The American book publishing industry is now largely foreign-owned. German corporations alone are estimated to own a huge percentage of that industry. Our steel industry is in a disastrous condition and is headed for the slagheap. Much of our steel is now imported. Our movie industry is 69% foreign owned. Our cement industry is 81% foreign owned.
Another reason why Americans should be disturbed by the decline of U.S. Manufacturing is national security. As American’s manufacturing base has been whittled away in recent years, U.S. defense industries are becoming ever more dependent on foreign manufacturers for key components and materials. Here are just a few examples of vital defense-related goods that we now have to depend on foreigners for:
Laser diodes. These are essential in a variety of high-tech civilian and military applications. Virtually the world’s entire production comes from Japan.
Ceramic packaging. This is essential in making many high-performance chips used in weapons systems. Ceramic packaging was in critically short supply during the Gulf War a decade ago because of the reluctance of Japanese manufacturers to supply the U.S. War effort.
Ferrite. This is important in many high tech applications. TDK of Japan supplies the U.S. Defense Department.
Gallium Arsenide. This is a semi-conductor material that is crucial for making high-speed chips needed in certain military applications.
Titanium and carbon fiber. These materials are essential in many aerospace applications. Certain key stages in their production are dominated by foreign suppliers.
Charge coupled devices. These are the seeing eyes on U.S. missiles. Their function is to lock on to the target and guide the missiles to it. Foreign producers dominate the industry.
It should be noted that as with many other manufacturing industries now dominated by foreign producers, the United States pioneered the production of most of the devices and materials listed above. Unfortunately, as imports flooded our markets in the 1980’s and 1990’s, U.S. producers one by one exited these industries.
We call ourselves a superpower. How strong are we when we can’t produce needed products to maintain our strength? We must reverse this trend. We must develop an industrial policy to create incentives for American companies to manufacture in America. We must invigorate strategic industries and prevent their sale to foreign ownership. We should not allow ourselves to become vulnerable and depend on others.
Click here to contact your Representative in Congress.
The Century of the Self
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Ever wonder if propaganda has been used by anybody other than our enemies? Have you ever considered that maybe the corporations or government of the US might use it too? Have you ever wondered how we became such a consumerist society?
This four part documentary is a good start if you want to learn more about the manipulation of the public through propaganda. This is a well researched, entertaining use of archive footage and the cold hard facts about why it’s right to be cynical about the dis-information war against humanity.
Be warned, if you live in a comfortable bubble and are content to believe in the matrix, prepare yourself for a wake up call or ignore this post and go back to sleep. Consumerism, elitist agendas, and corporate greed can all be seen for what they are if the observer chooses to look for the truth instead of simply being told what to do and how to think.
Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man’s ultimate goal.
The Century Of The Self – By Adam Curtis
Even The Socialists Dislike Obama
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With so many on the right attacking Barrack Obama by calling him a socialist, among other things, I thought it would be interesting to hear what the socialists have to say about the 44th President of our Republic. In this video author and film maker John Pilger speaks at Socialism 2009 in San Francisco on Independence Day, 2009.
John Pilger – Obama and Empire
New evidence of the terrible social and personal costs of excessive income inequality
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Cross cultural evidence that excessive income inequality increases rates of death & sickness, infant mortality, imprisonment, mental illness, child abuse, teenage births, failure at school, family breakup and drug abuse
It has recently become possible to compare the scale of income differences in different societies and see how the social fabric of any given society is affected by how much inequality there is. Research using this data carried out since the early 1990s shows that many of the most pressing health and social problems are worse – sometimes much worse — in those societies that suffer the greatest inequality. Simply stated, those societies with the biggest income differences between rich and poor suffer a much larger range of health and social problems. The web pages that are found at the link below outline the latest evidence and tell you where to find more detailed summaries and research reports. A straight forward outline of all the material can be found in a book written by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, called The Spirit Level, published by Penguin, available at Amazon and any good book store.
Health, homicides and beyond
A review of 168 studies summarizes the evidence internationally among rich and poor countries as well as for regions, states, and cities within many different countries. The tendency for more unequal societies to have worse health has been found for many different health indicators, including age-specific death rates, infant mortality, life expectancy, and illness.
More recently we have found that the same pattern applies to most of the social problems which, within countries, tend to be concentrated in the most deprived areas, and become more common further down the social ladder. Like violence and ill health, they are all much more common in more unequal societies. So far the evidence covers mental illness, drug abuse, teenage births, obesity, the proportion of the population in prison, educational performance of school children, levels of trust and strength of community life, and social mobility.
Some of these relationships with inequality have been demonstrated many times in peer reviewed research publications. Almost all have been shown in at least two different tests beds: internationally among a group of the richest countries, and independently among the 50 states of the USA. We should emphasize that when we talk about the effects of inequality, we do not necessarily mean the effects of poverty or low average incomes.
Big differences, everyone affected
One of the most striking and important features of these relationships is that the differences in the prevalence of the various social problems are so large. Some are two or three times as common in more unequal societies, but others are as much as ten times as common. The evidence suggests that this is partly because inequality affects the vast majority of the population — not just the poorest.
Finally, it tends to be the same societies which do well on each of the different outcomes, just as it is the same ones which do badly on all these outcomes. Because inequality affects so many different outcomes, if you know that a society does badly — for instance — on health, it is very likely that it also does badly with regard to a wide range of social problems. In other words, that society probably has high levels of violence, high teen birth rates, a high prison population, lower levels of trust, more obesity, and a bigger drug problem. In a nutshell, societies with large income inequalities are sure to be socially dysfunctional as compared to other societies with less income inequality.
Overviews of the bare facts and statistical evidence can be found in:
Wilkinson RG, Pickett KE. Income inequality and health: a review and explanation of the evidence. Social Science and Medicine 2006; 62: 1768-84. [PDF] http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/docs/inequality-and-health.pdf
