26-04-2009, 09:43 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:The second version - the one we are familiar with today - represents a much more cunning beast. It was designed to conscript popular suspicion of an inside job to certain elite ends, most notably the campaign to restrain those forces determined to use Vietnam as a springboard into China. The classic synthesis of this cynical business is Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, which yolked (non-existent) rear wounds to (misplaced) frontal entries.
Three golden rules for understanding the history of the Z fake:
1) The cover-up was - and remains - a process, not an event.
2) The coalition which sought and effected Kennedy's removal sundered - and it did so over the question of war with China.
3) The film was not above and beyond the shifts and twists of politics, but instead reflected and mediated them, following the shifting imperatives of the key forces.
To illustrate briefly:
1) The photo attributed to Altgens which captured Chaney alongside the presidential limo received swift and global distribution because it served important purposes at that particular juncture. That it later caused acute problems with respect to the Z film was neither here nor there.
2) Without the China factor, we cannot begin to understand why previously loyal supporters of the coup - Harrison Salisbury, Time-Life etc. - changed tack, however fleetingly, so dramatically in 1966/7.
3) A genuinely dissident analysis of the Z film & related evidence would have left rear wounds where they belong - in the dustbin of history.
Quote:It is no secret in the capitals of the world that an articulate and powerful element of the American decision-making complex believes passionately that the course of national survival lies in making nuclear war on China before her own nuclear potential is realized. The Chinese know this: their error may be in overestimating the influence of the “bomb-‘em-now” school in Washington.
Richard Starnes, “Red China Reacts – With Words,” The Washington Daily News, 1 August 1965, p.19