Vancouver-bound author James Douglass on JFK and the Unspeakable

[Adele Edisen]

Fri, March 8, 2013 12:15:24 PM
Vancouver-bound author James Douglass on JFK and the Unspeakable | Georgia Straight
From: Tree Frog <treefrog@ix.netcom.com>

http://www.straight.com/life/360251/vanc...nspeakable

or

http://tinyurl.com/b47n4wm

(There is a very nice photograph of Mr. Douglass on the web page - AE)

Vancouver-bound author James Douglass on JFK and the Unspeakable
by Adrian Mack on Mar 7, 2013 at 10:05 pm

Last Christmas I was standing in line at Chapters with a copy of the book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters when the man behind me commented, "That's the best book on the subject."

He might have been right. If it's not the best, it's one of them, partly because of the clarity author James Douglass brings to an event that can be overwhelmingly complex in its fine details. Indeed, JFK and the Unspeakable achieved a rare consensus inside the assassination research community for its wise and lucid organization of the known data. If you're new to the subject, there isn't a better primer.

But Douglass' book is important because it also introduces a fresh and ultimately very rewarding way of viewing the assassination.

A Christian theologian and peace activist, Douglass employs the Trappist monk Thomas Merton's concept of the Unspeakable to understand the events of Dallas, using the record of Kennedy's presidency to demonstrate that JFK, particularly after the Cuban missile crisis, made a "turn toward peace." This in turn put him at odds with his own national security apparatus.

It's also an aspect of his presidency that official history seems determined to forget. Happily, and in contrast to most books on the subject that don't hew to the Warren Commission's version of events, JFK and the Unspeakable managed to gain some traction after it was published in 2008.

I mentioned this at the top of a phone interview with the B.C. born author, who comes to Vancouver this weekend to conduct a talk at the Canadian Memorial United Church (1825 West 16th Avenue) on Friday (March 8) called JFK, Gandhi, and the Unspeakable in 2013, followed by a workshop on Saturday.

And on Saturday night, there will beget this!a read through of Noah's Ark, a play based on Douglass' book that's been arranged rather serendipitously by Nina Rhodes-Hughes, a Bowen Island resident who witnessed the assassination of Robert Kennedy and who has volunteered to assist Sirhan Sirhan's new defense team. "It's a great coming together," Douglass exclaimed. "It's dynamite stuff!" (More info here)

Georgia Straight: Given the topic and your perspective on it, JFK and the Unspeakable has actually done very well, hasn't it?

Jim Douglass: Well, it's a best seller. But that's not because any print reviews have saturated the field. They've been quite light, but there have been some key moments, like when Oliver Stone went on Bill Maher's show and promoted it. And the fact that Simon & Shuster, to my great astonishment, took it on as a paperback, that gives it a huge distribution even though it's unreviewed in major print media.

How did Bill Maher react to Stone talking about the book?

He did not want to go there…

Right. Which reminds me that RFK Jr. made some extraordinary comments about the assassination in Dallas recently. But we haven't been allowed to hear what he said.

That was remarkable, but again, this is Charlie Rose who's asking the questions, and Charlie Rose, or his network, or Charlie Rose incorporated, whatever it is, they will not release that interview. I know people have been trying to get it to get the exact words, because it's very, very important. He's out there saying that his dad didn't agree with the Warren Report, which isn't a secret, but this is the first time RFK Jr or a member of the family is saying that. That is big news, except that it's no news.

The reports that did surface excised RFK Jr's remarks about "rogue CIA."

Yeah, exactly. And his reference to JFK and the Unspeakablewhich I knew he was supporting but this is the first time he's said it publiclythe only report that actually mentioned that was a Dallas online thing, and most of it was devoted to a dismissal of the book by a guy who's sort of notorious for his comments. It's still a difficult subject, let's put it that way.

What is the Unspeakable?

It comes from Thomas Merton, from his great book, Raids on the Unspeakable, in which he is suggesting a kind of systemic evil that includes such realties as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and these assassinations. When he gets to the point where he's actually describing it, he describes it as a "void," an emptiness, a lack of compassion and responsibility, and when I was reading that description, I thought, Warren Report.'

How would you describe JFK's confrontation with the Unspeakable?

I would describe it as his encounter with that void in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, where the world was on the verge of a total nuclear war. If that isn't the void, I don't know what is. And he and his greatest enemy in the world, in terms of ideology, Nikita Khrushchev, encountered that void simultaneously. And what was remarkable and what led to Kennedy's assassination was that in that moment, when it reached the darkest point possible, and Kennedy felt he was losing power to his generals who were going to push through an opportunity for victorybecause they had the dominant power; in their terms, for example, We'll get them for 150 million, they'll only get 40 million on our side'; that's victory to that kind of insanity; they actually talked that wayin the midst of all that, what Kennedy does is totally outrageous. He turns to Nikita Khrushchev, the enemy.

In the book you describe how Robert Kennedy was dispatched to speak to the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, telling him that the president is losing power to his generals.

This is in Khrushchev's memoirs, and it was in his son Sergei Khrushchev's book about his fatherI'm not inventing this. So then Dobrynin wires to Khrushchev that there's this secret communication, and Khrushchev turns to his foreign minister, Gromyko, and he says we have to let Kennedy know that we want to help him. And at that moment the whole shebang turns upside down, and Khrushchev and Kennedy are closer to each other than either is to his own military command. And you know, this is not simple, there are many conflicts that continue between Khrushchev and Kennedy, but in essence from that point on they are moving, moving, moving toward an end to the Cold War. The major marks from Kennedy's standpoint are his extraordinary June 10, 1963 American University address in which, as Norman Cousins says, Kennedy is calling for an end to Cold War. If you read the thing, you can see what he's saying.

And then, as you point out, he manoeuvres around his generals to secure the test ban treaty.

And then he's doing a back channel with Castro. And if Khrushchev isn't the devil, then Castro is. So there he's becoming even more of a heretic and a traitor. And then he signs National Security Action Memorandum 263 to end the Vietnam WarI mean, he's off the charts in terms of what he's doing. He's out ahead of the peace movement. It's an astonishing story, and it's untold. And the reason it's untold, of course, is because it's the Unspeakable. Why was he killed? Simple. He turned from global war to a strategy of peace. That's the why of his assassination. And given the Cold War dogmas of his government, his murder followed as a matter of course. It was a transparent act of state, and has been ever since, and nobody wants to go there, whether it's Bill Maher or Henry Kissinger or President Barak Obama. Nobody wants to go there.

The Unspeakable seems to have an enormous support system. You mention back channel communications with Khrushchev and Castro, and his Vietnam policy, which was actually consistent with his foreign policy elsewhereall of this is on the record. And yet it seems that most people would still describe JFK as a cold warrior. Why is that?

You ever heard the term, the Mighty Wurlitzer? That's why. It's the enormous propaganda that is put out through the media. The Mighty Wurlitzer is alive and well, to mix metaphors, and it pumps out this stuff through intermediaries, and for that to be happening 50 years after the assassination is itself a mark of what we're faced with. It's a question for all of us: what is going on here? It took me 12 years to write the book. [Bob] Woodward could have turned it out in six months with the resources he has, so what's going on here? What's going on is the Unspeakable. If they do that, that's the end of their access inside the Beltway. They lose all access to all their future best sellers. They are, as the term goes, marginalized. That's the nice, conventional term for the Unspeakable.

Oliver Stone barely survived his marginalization.

Exactly. He's still wounded from what happened 20 years ago. When he talks about what happened he still shakes his head. They were attacking him two years before the film comes out and they don't even know what's in it. But they really do know… In the case of Martin Luther King I went to the only trial ever held for his assassination, for three weeks, 70 witnesses. And a jurysix black and six whitecome back and say, You know, he was killed by a conspiracy that includes government agencies.' That's explicitly in the verdict, so this is supposed to be headlined around the world the next day. Wellnot quite.

JFK and the Unspeakable fleshes out and names many of the facilitators of the plotpeople largely from the right wing, CIA-Cuban exile milieu but how do we wrap our heads around the actual sponsors?

I approach it as what in the peace and justice movement is called consensus. I don't think there had to be one grandmaster, say one of the Rockefellers or one of the other multi-trillionaires, I don't think that's the way it works. I think you have a process of propaganda, of ideology, of subverting one's own conscience that's going on on a very large scale, and certainly it is to the benefit of those at the very top of the pyramid, to put it mildly. But I think that process is so overwhelming, whether it be the Cold War, or the war on terror, which is the war of terror, it's so overwhelming that when someone comes along and says, I'm the president of the United States, and I'm going to turn toward peace,' then you've got a consensus decision. Intolerable. This guy goes. And I don't think it's a question of somebody having to mastermind a plot; Fletcher Prouty describes the process wherein Allen Dulles is putting people in all these key positions year after year after year, whether it's Secret Service or the White HouseMcGeorge Bundy for that matter is on record for having been working for the CIA when he was a dean at Harvardso this isn't very mysterious. When it comes time to stop all of this, they're all working together. It's a consensus decision. And for those at lower levels, it's just overwhelming. People ask, Why didn't Robert Kennedy do anything?' Robert Kennedy wasn't any dummy. He knew a few things about this system. He and John Kennedy were very well informed. I think even they would be overwhelmed by a total understanding of what was really going on, and they were extremely sophisticated people. So Robert Kennedy was of course biding his time. Until I become president of the United States, I can't do anything.' Well, I think that's an illusion. The best thing possible for him would have been to become Gandhi, but of course, he wasn't Gandhi, he didn't believe totally in "truth force", and if he had, the day after he would have said, The CIA killed the president.' And we would have had, as [Vincent] Salandria has analyzed, a major civil war on our hands. But it would have been better than the 50 years of millions of people being downed by this process.

Not to mention 50 years of illegitimate government.

To put it mildly. And fraud after fraud after fraud. But if you don't deal with the origin of thisnot the only origin but certainly a key one, which is the assassination of a peace-making president by his own national security state, done with impunityif that's not an origin of subsequent problems, I don't know what is.

And that's why it still matters.

As we say down in the south where I happen to live nowadays, Amen, brother.'

http://www.straight.com/life/360251/vanc...nspeakable

Adele

[Phil Dragoo]

Adele

What an excellent and concise interview. Douglass continues to distill.

Bill Maher self-advertises as the unabashed critic of the powerful. It is to laugh. "He didnt' want to go there." QED Maher takes his mark on the unmannedala. No, Maher has no guts. Look at Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, Bill Hicks.

It's good to reiterate the censorship of RFK Jr's voicing of his father's doubts and his own interest in Douglass' Unspeakable. JFK just happened to get offed by a lone nut; his brother as well; their brother by Damore; JFK's son by loss of awareness at night. Now RFK's son is silenced. There's nothing to see here; move along.

"rogue CIA"? Rogues aplenty emanating from Langley, from the National Security Act, from OSS, from decades of deals across borders with schlemiels.

And perhaps the gemstone in this setting, all finework surrounding the brilliant insight:

I would describe it as his encounter with that void in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, where the world was on the verge of a total nuclear war. If that isn't the void, I don't know what is. And he and his greatest enemy in the world, in terms of ideology, Nikita Khrushchev, encountered that void simultaneously. And what was remarkable and what led to Kennedy's assassination was that in that moment, when it reached the darkest point possible, and Kennedy felt he was losing power to his generals who were going to push through an opportunity for victorybecause they had the dominant power; in their terms, for example, We'll get them for 150 million, they'll only get 40 million on our side'; that's victory to that kind of insanity; they actually talked that wayin the midst of all that, what Kennedy does is totally outrageous. He turns to Nikita Khrushchev, the enemy.

Behold the interests above Cold War ideology Charles' distills from his work with George Michael Evica, something perhaps suggested in L. Fletcher Prouty, Peter Dale Scott, The Package (1989) with Tommy Lee Jones and Gene Hackman--

--for Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, John F Kennedy's partner in peace, is removed by the hawk Leonid Brezhnev October 1964. And the band played on.

Losing power to his generals--a condition the secret correspondents shared.

Douglass speaks of the mighty Wurlitzer--no media person will address the murder of the 35th president with an open mind. CIA shut them all by killing a few, humiliating, ridiculing, ruining more, and holding the power over any who would dare oppose the dogma.

Stone was and is stunned by the hostile reaction which scorched his enormous politico-artistic achievement JFK (1991). How could he not realize that those who murdered one to be able to murder a subcontinent in the name of power would hesitate to turn flamethrowers on a mere Hollywood artisan.

Here are the secondary gems: consensus and Dulles' Invasion of the Body Snatchers:

I don't think there had to be one grandmaster, say one of the Rockefellers or one of the other multi-trillionaires, I don't think that's the way it works. I think you have a process of propaganda, of ideology, of subverting one's own conscience that's going on on a very large scale, and certainly it is to the benefit of those at the very top of the pyramid, to put it mildly. But I think that process is so overwhelming, whether it be the Cold War, or the war on terror, which is the war of terror, it's so overwhelming that when someone comes along and says, I'm the president of the United States, and I'm going to turn toward peace,' then you've got a consensus decision. Intolerable. This guy goes. And I don't think it's a question of somebody having to mastermind a plot; Fletcher Prouty describes the process wherein Allen Dulles is putting people in all these key positions year after year after year, whether it's Secret Service or the White HouseMcGeorge Bundy for that matter is on record for having been working for the CIA when he was a dean at Harvardso this isn't very mysterious. When it comes time to stop all of this, they're all working together. It's a consensus decision. And for those at lower levels, it's just overwhelming.

Here's Douglass stating the prime reason it still matters: The American Commission for Truth and Reconcilliation begins here:

But if you don't deal with the origin of thisnot the only origin but certainly a key one, which is the assassination of a peace-making president by his own national security state, done with impunityif that's not an origin of subsequent problems, I don't know what is.

To which I append a modest proposal that a strategy of tension cannot tolerate peace and peacemakers. Lincoln, Kennedy--and loose the dogs of war. None of this bind up the wounds, no part of we are all mortal.

[Jan Klimkowski]

JFK and the Unspeakable fleshes out and names many of the facilitators of the plotpeople largely from the right wing, CIA-Cuban exile milieu but how do we wrap our heads around the actual sponsors?

I approach it as what in the peace and justice movement is called consensus. I don't think there had to be one grandmaster, say one of the Rockefellers or one of the other multi-trillionaires, I don't think that's the way it works. I think you have a process of propaganda, of ideology, of subverting one's own conscience that's going on on a very large scale, and certainly it is to the benefit of those at the very top of the pyramid, to put it mildly. But I think that process is so overwhelming, whether it be the Cold War, or the war on terror, which is the war of terror, it's so overwhelming that when someone comes along and says, I'm the president of the United States, and I'm going to turn toward peace,' then you've got a consensus decision. Intolerable. This guy goes. And I don't think it's a question of somebody having to mastermind a plot; Fletcher Prouty describes the process wherein Allen Dulles is putting people in all these key positions year after year after year, whether it's Secret Service or the White HouseMcGeorge Bundy for that matter is on record for having been working for the CIA when he was a dean at Harvardso this isn't very mysterious. When it comes time to stop all of this, they're all working together. It's a consensus decision. And for those at lower levels, it's just overwhelming. People ask, Why didn't Robert Kennedy do anything?' Robert Kennedy wasn't any dummy. He knew a few things about this system. He and John Kennedy were very well informed. I think even they would be overwhelmed by a total understanding of what was really going on, and they were extremely sophisticated people. So Robert Kennedy was of course biding his time. Until I become president of the United States, I can't do anything.' Well, I think that's an illusion. The best thing possible for him would have been to become Gandhi, but of course, he wasn't Gandhi, he didn't believe totally in "truth force", and if he had, the day after he would have said, The CIA killed the president.' And we would have had, as [Vincent] Salandria has analyzed, a major civil war on our hands. But it would have been better than the 50 years of millions of people being downed by this process.

Not to mention 50 years of illegitimate government.

To put it mildly. And fraud after fraud after fraud. But if you don't deal with the origin of thisnot the only origin but certainly a key one, which is the assassination of a peace-making president by his own national security state, done with impunityif that's not an origin of subsequent problems, I don't know what is.

Phil - excellent analysis. Personally, I would expand the key section of Douglass' interview as above. With the following qualification.

The description of the way in which the national security state consensus, created by patronage and sustained by peer pressure, overwhelms is very accurate. However, I don't agree that the CIA or the national security state are the actual Sponsors of the assination. Rather, in my judgement, once the Sponsors set events in train, the national security state consensus accepted the course of events and managed the cover-up.

Indeed, it still manages the cover-up, the suppression of truth and the casting out of truth seekers.

[Jim Hackett II]

By all the members posts above.
How much? I just saved this thread.
Few Words - Profound Truths.
I thank you all, again.
P.S. Money by Floyd (oh which one is Pink)
and Lennon's Working Class Hero sum up my view of Empire.
And the lines on the map move.....us n them.

[Phil Dragoo]

Jan

The sponsors use CIA as sword and shield. Dulles, a uniquie historic figure, placed his (his, not the agency's) agents in many agencies.

He put his stamp on the agency--as noted by two editorials (in addition to Truman's comments)--and was largely responsible for the Langley installation.

Clearly CIA is a favorite tool of sponsors, and of course we don't include the agency per se, nor exclude other covert and overt facilitators.

In a continuing business (Power: the mother of all business) there will be a stamp of influence, sometimes on our face.

Orwell-Blair was an early proponent of transpolitical sponsorship, noting Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia eschewed border-crossing wars which would've destroyed the illusion of difference.

They limited themselves to a quadrilateral.

Syria, say, or, Afghanistan.

Kennedy was a game-changer. The last time somebody messed with the money on the temple steps it didn't end well.

[video=dailymotion;x54ko]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x54ko_pink-floyd-money_music#.UTzpzFfm7qM[/video]

[Adele Edisen]

JFK and the Unspeakable fleshes out and names many of the facilitators of the plotpeople largely from the right wing, CIA-Cuban exile milieu but how do we wrap our heads around the actual sponsors?

I approach it as what in the peace and justice movement is called consensus. I don't think there had to be one grandmaster, say one of the Rockefellers or one of the other multi-trillionaires, I don't think that's the way it works. I think you have a process of propaganda, of ideology, of subverting one's own conscience that's going on on a very large scale, and certainly it is to the benefit of those at the very top of the pyramid, to put it mildly. But I think that process is so overwhelming, whether it be the Cold War, or the war on terror, which is the war of terror, it's so overwhelming that when someone comes along and says, I'm the president of the United States, and I'm going to turn toward peace,' then you've got a consensus decision. Intolerable. This guy goes. And I don't think it's a question of somebody having to mastermind a plot; Fletcher Prouty describes the process wherein Allen Dulles is putting people in all these key positions year after year after year, whether it's Secret Service or the White HouseMcGeorge Bundy for that matter is on record for having been working for the CIA when he was a dean at Harvardso this isn't very mysterious. When it comes time to stop all of this, they're all working together. It's a consensus decision. And for those at lower levels, it's just overwhelming. People ask, Why didn't Robert Kennedy do anything?' Robert Kennedy wasn't any dummy. He knew a few things about this system. He and John Kennedy were very well informed. I think even they would be overwhelmed by a total understanding of what was really going on, and they were extremely sophisticated people. So Robert Kennedy was of course biding his time. Until I become president of the United States, I can't do anything.' Well, I think that's an illusion. The best thing possible for him would have been to become Gandhi, but of course, he wasn't Gandhi, he didn't believe totally in "truth force", and if he had, the day after he would have said, The CIA killed the president.' And we would have had, as [Vincent] Salandria has analyzed, a major civil war on our hands. But it would have been better than the 50 years of millions of people being downed by this process.

Not to mention 50 years of illegitimate government.

To put it mildly. And fraud after fraud after fraud. But if you don't deal with the origin of thisnot the only origin but certainly a key one, which is the assassination of a peace-making president by his own national security state, done with impunityif that's not an origin of subsequent problems, I don't know what is.

Phil - excellent analysis. Personally, I would expand the key section of Douglass' interview as above. With the following qualification.

The description of the way in which the national security state consensus, created by patronage and sustained by peer pressure, overwhelms is very accurate. However, I don't agree that the CIA or the national security state are the actual Sponsors of the assination. Rather, in my judgement, once the Sponsors set events in train, the national security state consensus accepted the course of events and managed the cover-up.

Indeed, it still manages the cover-up, the suppression of truth and the casting out of truth seekers.

Jan,

If I were asked who the Sponsors were, I could say that the CIA and the National Security State (NSS) were set up to protect American Business (include Banking) abroad and at home. The CIA was to operate only in foreign countries, but has had, and does have, offices and agents in many of our major cities. Why?

The other aspects of the NSS and all its intelligence operations and agencies are also linked to Wall Street, and they do their best to give the American people misinformation and disinformation to keep us in states of doubt. The MSM just follows orders, and does not think or look for itself, and we certainly know that.

If we look back to the career of Marine General Smedley Darlington Butler, he and his Marines were doing the job of making foreign countries safe for Standard Oil (in China) and other companies in the Caribbean and Central America, as described in his book,"War Is A Racket." That's the way American Capitalism handled it in the early part of the Twentieth Century. After WWII when the CIA was created for which former President Truman apologized to the American people on December 22, 1963, one month, to the day, after the assassination of President John Kennedy, in a letter to the Washington Post newspaper. Truman had signed the National Security Act in 1947, creating the CIA.

The CIA has been involved in the assassination of foreign leaders in order to put a puppet leader, dictator, in place to the liking of American business interests. We've even gone to war to accomplish the same, so perhaps we should include our military in the same type of activity, as in General Butler's day.

Does anyone see the concern over the loss of profits and markets in all this?

Adele

[Charles Drago]

If I were asked who the Sponsors were, I could say that the CIA and the National Security State (NSS) were set up to protect American Business (include Banking) abroad and at home.

The CIA has been involved in the assassination of foreign leaders in order to put a puppet leader, dictator, in place to the liking of American business interests. We've even gone to war to accomplish the same, so perhaps we should include our military in the same type of activity, as in General Butler's day.

Does anyone see the concern over the loss of profits and markets in all this?

Adele

Their profit motives notwithstanding, AMERICAN interests -- banking and otherwise -- are False Sponsors.

The death of JFK most likely was sponsored -- which is to say ordered -- by SUPRA-NATIONAL interests.

Until we accept that tribalism -- which is to say NATIONALISM -- is a weakness that is exploited by powerful groups who pledge allegiance to no one and nothing but themselves and their shared interests, we will be lost in a wilderness of false sponsors until we die of injustice.

[Adrian Mack]

Thanks for posting Adele, and thanks for your comments, Phil.

Bill Maher self-advertises as the unabashed critic of the powerful. It is to laugh. "He didnt' want to go there." QED Maher takes his mark on the unmannedala. No, Maher has no guts. Look at Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, Bill Hicks.

There's a little bit more about this. At the top of their interview, Stone reminded Maher that he'd sent him a copy of JFK and Unspeakable. Maher apparently said, "I know, I read it," and then proceeded to avoid the topic anyway!

[Adele Edisen]

If I were asked who the Sponsors were, I could say that the CIA and the National Security State (NSS) were set up to protect American Business (include Banking) abroad and at home.

The CIA has been involved in the assassination of foreign leaders in order to put a puppet leader, dictator, in place to the liking of American business interests. We've even gone to war to accomplish the same, so perhaps we should include our military in the same type of activity, as in General Butler's day.

Does anyone see the concern over the loss of profits and markets in all this?

Adele

Their profit motives notwithstanding, AMERICAN interests -- banking and otherwise -- are False Sponsors.

The death of JFK most likely was sponsored -- which is to say ordered -- by SUPRA-NATIONAL interests.

Until we accept that tribalism -- which is to say NATIONALISM -- is a weakness that is exploited by powerful groups who pledge allegiance to no one and nothing but themselves and their shared interests, we will be lost in a wilderness of false sponsors until we die of injustice.

I'm trying to understand your definitions. Do you mean that American interests are not part of what you call SUPRA-NATIONAL interests? After all, we've been including discussion of the assassination of an American president, and involvement or non-involvement of certain American security agencies. In fact, the CIA seems to operate like a Supra-National organization. Wall Street also. By this I mean that they do not respect national borders or treaty agreements, and even change foreign govenments to their own liking.

By SUPRA-NATIONAL do you mean something akin to the United Nations, but not the United Nations? The world-wide set of private Bankers (not just a central bank in the US) that act internationally? And what about the foreign stockowners of the US Federal Reserve System; could they be considered a Supra-National Group? The Bilderberg Group? The Trilateral Commission? The Opus Dei? Secret fascist international organizations/Gladio? Could it be for political reasons only? NATO and similar regional organizations? Aren't there Cartels?

What kind of organization are you referring to that is, or operates, above nations? What could be the basis of its organization?

In my thinking such an organization would have had to have benefitted in some manner from the John Kennedy assassination, don't you think? Assassinating a national leader isn't done just for the heck of it.

Adele

[Peter Lemkin]

Charles, I sort of agree and sort of don't. The Big Boys of Big Finance and Hidden Power are, yes, pretty much 'above' definition as having allegiance to country X or Y or Z. That said, they do [usually] have a primary interest in one or two - some a few. Yes, when they have wars they usually arm both sides and play the 'game' so that they will win no matter what happens, but they also usually have a favored side to win - which usually wins. At times these Big Guys have differing favored sides [such as during WW2], BUT had a certain collegiality despite this and treated it more as a horse-race than a War in which hundreds of millions were killed - many placed 'bets' on both sides - but most had a favored side; however, when one side one they ALL got along just fine with that new reality and did what they did to reap profits from it. All that said [and similar continues in some form to this day], the JFK hit seems to me to have had a very American 'flavor'. I'm not saying that some who were not American per se or some who truly are supra-national were not involved in agreeing they didn't want JFK nor Peace etc. However, I think the predominant players in that action [Not ALL Big Boys play all games in the Grand Casino, at any given time] were more affiliated with the USA than not. Of course they have European and Asian and other interests. The Planet is their playground and poker table. I don't see the Big Boys, worldwide as absolutely monolithic, but they rarely fight....they just back different objectives at different times and as long as they all make money they leave the others to do what they want. At times they mostly all work in concert. At other times they have separate playgrounds. On JFK, I sense more of an American tllt, but others were involved and backed the objectives of getting rid of JFK and what he stood for. He was bad for business as usual. 'Leaders' are to follow - not lead...or they get wiped off the map more times than not. The real interests of the majority of the People are not figured into the equation and populist leaders don't usually last long - less so in big or 'strategic' countries; big or strategic areas smaller than countries. It is less a 'Grand Chessboard' than a 'Grand Casino' IMO.