Monday, November 26, 2007

Money behind JFK hit


The anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy rolled around again last Thursday, and, as expected, the same old conspiracy theories were trotted out, but there are a few points that are rarely mentioned.

It is often said that Kennedy was killed because he challenged the powers that be.
In 1963, shortly before his death, Kennedy had decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam because military experts had convinced him that the war was unwinnable.
Obviously, the major shareholders of the corporations of the military-industrial complex were not pleased with this move.
After Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded Kennedy as president, he gave orders to escalate the war.
U.S. troops remained in Vietnam for about 10 more years, and the military-industrial complex earned billions upon billions of dollars, which was the major shareholders’ goal in the first place. They didn’t care who won the military conflict. They were only interested in winning the economic side of the Vietnam War.
Three future U.S. presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush, were in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated.
It is said that this strange coincidence was actually arranged to give the future presidents a stark warning of what would happen to them if they disobeyed orders.
Johnson was sworn in as president shortly after the assassination.
Nixon said he was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 but left town shortly before the assassination. However, according to other accounts, Nixon was attending a meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company at the time the shots were fired, representing the Pepsi Cola Company’s law firm Mudge, Rose, Nixon et al.
George H.W. Bush said he couldn’t remember where he was on the day of the assassination and that he was not a member of the CIA in 1963. However, in an FBI phone memo dated November 22, 1963, he said he was proceeding to Dallas and would stay there until November 23.
When another FBI document surfaced, dated November 29, 1963, which mentioned a certain “George Bush of the CIA”, George H.W. Bush said that another “George Bush of the CIA” was the person the document was referring to. When the other “George Bush of the CIA” was located, he said the document was actually referring to George H.W. Bush.
Kennedy also gave the order to issue new United States Notes, which angered the dark forces that control the Federal Reserve System, which controls the Federal Reserve Note currency.
In addition, Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110, which enabled the U.S. Treasury Department to print silver certificates, bypassing the Federal Reserve System.
It should come as no surprise that the people who own the Federal Reserve System are the same people who own the military-industrial complex.
According to Wikipedia:
“A United States Note is a fiat paper currency that was issued directly into circulation by the United States Department of the Treasury.”
“The primary difference between the United States Note and the Federal Reserve Note is that a United States Note is created by the government directly as a bill of credit, and thus there is no interest for the government to pay for the creation of that dollar. A Federal Reserve Note, on the other hand, is bank currency, and the U.S. has to pay interest on the treasury bonds that it gives the Federal Reserve System in exchange for the right to produce a like quantity of Federal Reserve Notes. This, in turn, increases the tax burden on the people. Abraham Lincoln advocated the use of United States Notes because they avoid the usury and debt multiplication aspects of debt-based currencies, and thus save the government immense sums of interest. Thomas Jefferson also believed that the issuing power of money should rest with the U.S. Treasury, and not the private banks. He noted in the debate over The Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809) that, ‘…the issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.’”
A limited number of United States Notes were still issued until 1971, but none have been placed into circulation since.
Since U.S. citizens are paying taxes to the U.S. government to pay for their own national currency, it can be said that the United States is a colony of the cabal of bankers who own the private banks that own the branch banks of the Federal Reserve System.
Although Kennedy was seeking power for himself, his decision to issue United States Notes and silver certificates was a step toward independence from the Federal Reserve System.
After all this, the secret government could no longer tolerate Kennedy’s power plays and the decision was made to assassinate him.
The CIA was tasked with carrying out the deed, and Lee Harvey Oswald was set up as the fall guy.
After the assassination, Oswald said, “I’m a patsy.”
Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963, two days after the Kennedy assassination, and Ruby died in prison in 1967.
The people who carried out this operation don’t like loose ends.
The Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy endorsed the Lone Gunman Theory, which is largely dependent on the Magic Bullet Theory.
The Magic Bullet Theory postulates that a single bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository passed through Kennedy’s neck, the chest and wrist of Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in the limousine with Kennedy, and then embedded itself in Connally’s thigh, causing all of the non-fatal wounds to Kennedy and Connally.
The Warren Commission Report said the fatal head wound that killed Kennedy was caused by another bullet.
Connally’s wife Nellie Connally, who was sitting beside her husband when the shots that hit Kennedy and Connally were fired, never believed the Magic Bullet Theory.
In January 1979, a special U.S. House of Representatives Assassinations Committee reported that a second assassin may also have fired a shot and that there may have been a conspiracy.
There is evidence that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired from in front of him, whereas Oswald was in the Texas School Book Depository, which was behind the presidential limousine.
Dr. Robert McClelland, a physician working at the Parkland Memorial Hospital emergency room, described a massive wound in the back of Kennedy’s head. Some experts have said the size of the wound indicates it was an exit wound, and thus the true assassin would have been positioned in front of the presidential limousine.
Evidence of CIA involvement is provided by a photo of three bums on the grassy knoll near Dealey Plaza, the site of the assassination. It turns out that two of the three bums have an uncanny resemblance to CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, who later gained notoriety for their role in the Watergate scandal.
So, it seems that Kennedy was assassinated for challenging the power of the people who own the Federal Reserve System and the military-industrial complex, and specifically for challenging their control of the currency and monetary policy.
This might seem like an outlandish theory, but it’s not more outlandish than the Magic Bullet Theory.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Islamic movements and the struggle against authoritarianism

Crescent International



The fact that virtually every regime in the Muslim world, except the Islamic state of Iran, is a dictatorship of some kind or other is widely recognized. In the last month, we have seen high-profile protests against the authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Pakistan. Similar protests, usually on a smaller scale, are commonplace in both countries and in many other Muslim countries. Other countries are even more repressive, so that even such ineffective protests are impossible. Confronting this authoritarianism is inevitably the starting point for virtually all political activism in such countries. Unfortunately, experience suggests that such activism is currently largely ineffective; Mubarak, for example, has been in power since 1981, when he succeeded Anwar Sadat after the latter’s execution, and no-one expects him to surrender power any time soon. If this activism is to be more effective, therefore, some key points need to be understood.
The first is the main reason for the prevalence of authoritarian rule in our countries. There are several explanations for this phenomenon. One, which underpins much Western discussion on the topic, is that there is something in Islamic values and political culture that makes Muslim societies more prone to authoritarianism. This, however, is no more than blaming the victims of dictatorship for their own repression, especially as Islamic movements are both the main political opposition movements in most Muslim countries, and the greatest victims of state repression. This paradox is ignored by Western intellectuals and politicians, who routinely turn the argument around to suggest that the defeat of “political Islam” is an essential prerequisite for the democratisation of Muslim countries.
This formulation takes us closer to the reality of the situation: that the prevalence and popularity of Islamic movements is the main obstacle to democratisation and the main reason for the survival of the dictators. Why? Because virtually every dictator in the Muslim world is an ally of the West, and depends on the West for survival. (This includes even Syrian ruler Bashar al-Asad, who is publicly vilified by the West for their opposition to Israel and relationship with Iran and Hizbullah; remember, for example, where the US sent Mahar Arar for torture after his arrest in New York in 2002.) The real reason for the prevalence of authoritarian rule in Muslim countries is that the West fears any real political liberalisation because it would inevitably mean the rise of Islamic movements and the establishment of governments that represent their own peoples’ values and interests rather than those of the West.
The West claims, of course, to champion democratisation and political reform in Muslim countries. But these claims need to be examined critically. Those of Western politicians like USsecretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who last month lectured Egypt on the need for political reform, can be dismissed as hypocritical, self-serving double-talk that fools no-one. Then there are the claims of many Western non-governmental institutions, which claim to be promoting civil society, political reform, human rights and democratisation, and often offer help and support to opposition movements in Muslim countries. Often they lobby for political prisoners and offer support networks for opposition groups. But this support is seldom without strings: it is offered to those who are willing to set aside any Islamic commitment and accept broadly secular, pro-Western notions of democratic government. Thus marginal figures with little popular credibility are supported and promoted, such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Egypt, while far more popular Islamic movements, even those that work within existing systems, such as the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, are seen as part of the problem.
Islamic movements seeking to oppose authoritarian regimes commonly make two errors. The first is to soften or moderate their Islamic approach in order to find common ground with others who also oppose the government but are less Islamically oriented. These often include secular groups with Western connections. The second is to try to oppose the dictators from within the political systems that they establish. But these systems, even where they have apparently ‘democratic’ elements, such as parliaments and elections, are designed to secure the regime in power, and have rarely been used successfully against their creators; and never when the dictators have had outside support to crush opposition groups if and when they threaten to become too independent.
All dictators recognise that they must allow a degree of political activism and opposition to absorb popular political passions; and so they do, to the greatest extent possible before their essential interests are threatened or they fear losing control of the situation, at which stage the restrictions kick in, usually with tacit Western support in the name of maintaining stability. The opposition demonstrations and activism that we are seeing in Egypt and Pakistan must be understood in this framework. In both countries, the dictators are secure in the knowledge that their own positions are reasonably strong; and the powers behind them are secure that even if the dictators fall there is no risk of genuinely popular, Islamic and anti-Western alternatives emerging.

While Islamic movements must continue to maintain political pressure on the dictators of our countries, therefore, they must also look beyond this immediate imperative. If such opposition is to be meaningful, Islamic movements must offer strategies for the total transformation of Islamic societies, rather than working within existing systems, and build popular bases for more effective political opposition in the future. Such movements are, of course, the ones that are most heavily repressed. But nothing less will achieve the ultimate object of the liberation of our societies from both the West and the dictators.