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+--- Thread: A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable (/thread-3131.html)
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Ed Jewett - 15-02-2010
The book by James Douglass entitled "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters" is one of the best and most important books I've read in some time, ranking with the work of Peter Dale Scott and David Ray Griffin. He addresses superbly all four elements in the title.
I learned things about the event(s) I did not know, mostly because I was unaware of the depth, breadth and proof of information that emerged in the 90's. What someone else has described as repetition I took as layering, a spiral re-coating. Douglass' work is a tapestry in which he left and then returned to tape up again an important thread so as to advance it and tie it to another.
While Douglass does not discuss 9/11, the parallels in terms of black ops, cover-up, media silence, etc. are obvious. He does a superb job of explaining how the CIA, even back then let alone today, has infiltrated all corners of the government and the media, how compartmentalization works (putting to rest all those "debunking" themes that such a conspiracy would have taken too many people, and especially the one about 'how come no one has spoken up?'), and how cover-up was/is accomplished.
One of the more powerful things about this book (they do not detract from the rigor of the research) is that Douglass gives the reader gets a feeling for JFK -- the man, the leader, the human-- that has perhaps been missing in much of the research and commentary of late because it focused on the minutiae. Douglass was clearly informed by Vincent Salandra's perspective and stepped back away from the detail and painted with a broad brush.
It is a very moving book. After forty some odd years, one would think the tear ducts had been emptied; Douglass fills them up and makes them flow without being maudlin or gaudy about it, or using it as a literary device.
The most powerful thing about the book for me personally, having been an adolescent in the early 60's who remembers well the nuclear tensions and the specific events -- the B-58 Hustlers flying treetop missions over the hedgerows in my backyard, my future brother-in-law detained in the Navy to work the blockade -- is the focus, borne of Douglass' own witnessing, on the nuclear issues. Those issues and the very same internal US political tensions and questions are alive today in some dark and quiet corners. While waiting for the delivery of "JFKU", I read Douglass' first book "Resistance and Contemplation" which called to me as a human and a Christian; indeed, I would not crack "JFKU" until I could better understand the unlikely person called to write it. The themes in JFKU of "Pacem in Terris", the American University speech, and JFK's growing awareness or turning were first explored and exposed in "R&C".
JFK said, in that important commencement address that the media ignored then and continues to ignore now, that -- in the end -- we are all mortal, and we all cherish our children's future. The book showed us the human in him that cherished his children and who was mortal.
Even after having been gripped by the fervor and passion of trying to figure out what happened in Dealey Plaza, I as reader came to great clarity. The issue, especially for me, however, was not closure, but a renewal, a beginning, a re-commitment in the face of the inexorable and infernal military machine that today continues to kill at will and threaten the globe in so many ways. We missed the opportunity to take up the banner that fell in Dealey Plaza back then; we cannot afford to fail to do so now. Douglass asks "Have we reached the point where the state itself has become an enemy of the people....?"
I suspect I shall return again, and again, to the pages of these two books by Douglass (and no doubt will read his others in good time) in order to harvest and sow its seeds. Douglass' book focuses on the President and his death, the governmental nexus that was responsible for it and accomplished its cover-up (an effort still underway nearly half a century later), but he leaves the focus on the reader through the question left hanging in the air :
So what are you going to do now?
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Albert Doyle - 16-02-2011
I wish the original poster had written "Unspeakable" in the title for search purposes and to do proper respect to what is a consummate JFK book.
I just wanted to say JFK And The Unspeakable is actually even better than its praisers said.
I'm currently reading the book and wanted to comment that I'm not sure I agree with Douglass in his Chronology list at the beginning where he says Ruby brought the gun to the press conference with the intention of killing Oswald. Ruby was a Dallas Police insider. I don't think there was anything stopping him from getting into the hallway with Oswald and shooting him point blank through the heart. No, I tend to think Ruby was put there as a 'minder' of sorts to make facial contact with Oswald and make him know he was still expected to play his role no matter what.
If you watch the You-Tube video Rush To Judgment by Mark Lane you can see a reporter says to the Dallas police spokesperson (Fritz?), when referring to Ruby at the press conference, after he killed Oswald, "You looked like you were friends". The spokesperson flashes a nervous smile and turn of his body in reaction and doesn't comment. (Because they were friends and the reporter was correctly reading the body language between Ruby and the Dallas Police)
Right now I'm reading about Thomas Vallee. I'm wondering if his boasting about wanting to kill Kennedy at the small restaurant was part of his sheep-dipping assignment that he was doing to himself? If so - if this was part of his ordered assignment, it ended-up getting him caught by Officer Moyland. They sheep-dipped him too vigorously and it ended-up exposing him and getting him under police surveillance that eventually ended-up in his arrest hours before the intended Chicago assassination attempt. To me, this is a sign the Chicago plot was rushed and a quick alternative to the blown Washington DC attempt exposed by Richard Case Nagell.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Lauren Johnson - 16-02-2011
I reported that I had finally talked my book group into reading this book. We are just now finishing it. As we work through the book, its power is gripping this group who used to look at me as being a part of the Grassy Knoll Crowd. We are meeting tonight (and extra meeting) to watch 3 1/2 hours of "JFK." Most members are in a kind of in a kind of mourning now.
One of them said, as we are reading in the middle of the huge last chapter, 'Up until now, I found myself dismissing the book as a lot of hearsay. I feel like I am being hit over the head with a hammer. I can't dismiss it anymore."
And as I am in my fourth re-reading now, I continue to be struck by power of this book. There have been some comments about that it is now well written. I have come to see a kind of brilliance in its organization.
My battery is getting low, and I am again in grief. So long.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Magda Hassan - 17-02-2011
I edited the title Albert. Good suggestion.
Lauren, I am so pleased to hear about your reading group and the effect the book is having on people there. I hope now that all these readers can also encourage other people to read it. I'd be most interested to hear any comments after the book is completed.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Lauren Johnson - 17-02-2011
They are now a part of the Grassy Knoll Crowd, like it or not. Now, do they want to admit it? What do they do with the fact that they have dropped into the rabbit hole? Can they just climb out and say, Glad that's over with.
I have been really impressed how they have been sticking with it and taking the book seriously.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Albert Doyle - 20-02-2011
I gave this book to a relative who usually prefers the status quo explanation for convenience and political expediency. He often says things like "I can't believe that because I know the military and you can't get that many people to not talk".
After reading The Unspeakable his first comments were that Douglass was a "Kennedy worshipper" and some of the things he said were inaccurate. I know this person well however, and he is conspicuously silent. He knows. In a few months or a few years he'll eventually casually mention Kennedy being assassinated by CIA conspiracy.
I can't do justice to this book without a DiEugenio-scale review that would take my feeble mind a huge effort to write. I will say that the book is enigmatic in its smooth and seamless delivery of the flow of truth. You can almost feel the monastic grace that radiates out of it. If there was such thing as a truth Geiger counter it would register a loud static if held close to this book. It's incredible, and once you think you've reached the limit of awe you are introduced to even more incredible exposure of revelatory, insidious evidence around the next page.
This book is literally an instant American classic. It will be known as one of the best and most important books in American history. It will slowly sink-in and penetrate the evil barriers of truth by means of its truthful grace - an undefensible medium and body of delivery that can't be denied. Douglass's main attribute is possessing a large religious-based truth magnet of whose qualities he is instinctively aware. When the scattered conspiracy evidence is poured out in front of Douglass's truth magnet it almost magically arranges itself into the magnetic field pattern of truth that makes an ugly, perfectly, naturally arranged scenario appear before your eyes like a jigsaw puzzle that has been thrown into the air and landed perfectly put together in front of you. The book has a distinct palpable feeling of the automatic hand of truth with Douglass as its medium. 'JFK And The Unspeakable' achieves something very rare in the literary arts - it is beautiful.
I can't say enough about this book. It glows inside me.
.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Peter Lemkin - 20-02-2011
Without stating exact reasons, I would like to add my voice to the praise of this book and the somewhat unlikely author...this book puts most others on JFK's assassination to shame and will enlighten all but a handful [literally] of top experts. Don't miss reading this at least twice - soon!
It also shows the enormous gulf between those of us who know approximately what happened on 11/22/63 and the official/MSM/Sheeple versions.... This is one of the few books that could possibly bridge that huge gap!
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Charles Drago - 20-02-2011
No filters.
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Albert Doyle - 19-09-2011
A response I made to someone on the Amazon book review who said 'The Unspeakable' was flawed because it omitted LBJ:
I'm amazed at how many people are blind to the best aspect of this book. Douglass doesn't include the LBJ treachery because it would detract from the angelic pantheon he orchestrates within the Thomas Merton, Pope John XXIII, Khrushchev, and Kennedy circle of influence. You are looking at the better angels that controlled the assassination, as Douglass illustrates, and not seeing it. It is the outlining of this fight between good and evil, best embodied by these figures, that is the fingerprint that shows most clearly in the assassination. To miss this in order to gripe about lesser LBJ machinations is to publicly announce one doesn't have the first understanding of what the book, or the assassination itself, is about. The beauty of 'The Unspeakable' is that it captures the undeniable 'proof' for the assassination in this incorruptible realm where it can't be defeated by those who seek to deny it. Kennedy accessed this 'realm' in his power as president to influence the future of the human race. Since nuclear Armageddon was a serious prospect Kennedy was dealing at that level and seeking ultimate solutions equal to the threat. Kennedy went to the deepest spiritual dimensions of his Catholic faith to overcome the forces that were trying to commit nuclear war. It was at these crossroads that all those figures met and LBJ didn't make it to that level, which sort of shows in itself why he wasn't any "mastermind". Like others who have stood down the devil in history Kennedy paid for it with his life...
A Review of "JFKU" JFK and the Unspeakable - Charles Drago - 19-09-2011
Albert Doyle Wrote:You are looking at the better angels that controlled the assassination, as Douglass illustrates, and not seeing it.
Albert, I truly like your Amazon comment -- with the exception of the sentence quoted above.
Who and what are you referencing?