Monday, December 14, 2009

Can Obama Face the 'Unspeakable'?

By Lisa Pease
December 14, 2009

If there’s one book I wish President Obama would read over the holidays, it would be JFK and the Unspeakable.

Read on.
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13 comments:

rightly said...

Only a Catholic or some other religious dogmatist would use the term "Unspeakable" as if the true name of "God" was unspeakable. It is because we can use all words to understand and examine events objectively that we avoid condemnation and prejudice. Evil is in the mind of the beholder, the priest, and the politician, in those who set the bounds of morals and ethics , of property rights and voting rights, and the right and risk of individual responsibility.
An honest man, honest to himself, serves best. James Monroe, Harry Truman and a very few others rose to the needs of their office without fanfare or adulation, the trappings of false gods and false leaders.

Mon Dec 14, 10:46:00 AM 2009
chaunticlear said...

Thank you for this fine article, Lisa. I agree with your review of this book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

I would add two elements to Ike's warning about the military industrial complex: The financiers and the crime syndicate. Perhaps Ike implied them in the word "complex", but in my opinion, those need to be plainly stated.

JFK was also going after the Federal Reserve - he issued Treasury bonds. Bobby was going after the crime element Big Time. IMO, both had a major hand in JFK's assassination, and all that has followed since that black day.

Mon Dec 14, 11:25:00 AM 2009
Ethan Allen said...

As I have not yet read the book reviewed by Lisa Pease, any opinion about it would be premature; her mentionings of the politicalization and resulting revisionism of the actual history surrounding most of our recent past, however, calls out for comment; as does her topical query, "Can Obama Face the 'Unspeakable'?"
The bigger question, addressed in part by Ms. Pease, is rather or not the people can rise above indifference and complacency and demand that the President speak the previously 'unspeakable' truths, and fashion his actions in accordance with them.
Thus far, Obama has demonstrated an exceptional ability to articulate such candor, but his penchant for "incremental action" seems to be playing into the hands of the very societal elements that have, and continue to, damage our republic.

Mon Dec 14, 02:01:00 PM 2009
Randal Marlin said...

Lisa Pease's review is most interesting. I've been reading the Operation Northwoods memorandum, which reveals a parallel screwball mentality among the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Can she verify the authenticity of that document for me?

As for Diem, John Kenneth Galbraith in his letters to JFK, viewed Diem as politically unsustainable. Galbraith supported Kennedy against the Joint Chiefs of Staff, though.

Mon Dec 14, 02:19:00 PM 2009
EJK said...

A lovely piece on what is, as Lisa writes, THE best book ever written on JFK's death.

However, the possibility that Barack Obama -- the ultimate empty suit -- could find the greatness and courage to take on a National Security State which, in large measure because of Dallas, is not(as it was in '63) one source of internal power and control -- it is now, along with Wall Street, THE source of internal power and control: Barack Obama is certainly not the man.

Ask yourself this question: if you were enamored, as I was, with the 2007/2008 presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, and someone told you that 10 months into his term he would be announcing the beginnings of a whole new war against countries with no demonstrated aggression toward the United States, you would think that the messenger had lost his mind, or that there had been a "9/11"-level(or worse) attack on American soil.

Barack Obama owes his election to the tidal wave of disgust, exhaustion, and hatred toward all things war-like, deceptive, covert, and bloody. He was elected to lead an army against war, against violence, against demonization of others. He was elected to De-Reaganize, De-Bush, and De-Clinton the United States of America.

Instead, he has crossed the Rubicon -- casting his non-existent pearls with the swine of reaction: locking in the political discussion over the next three years into a right-wing framework; further destroying any budgetary possibility to rebuild the country's education system, roads, bridges, libraries, public housing, public arts; creating a necessary political alliance with the very war-mongers who seek to destroy all things progressive; and -- worst of all -- crippling whatever hopes true progressives had that the American system of power was reachable and changeable.

Those sort of romantic hopes were moribund for the 30 years prior to Obama's emergence. We took them out of our sachet-smelling music box(playing "Camelot" no doubt), and gave them up to our new crush. And now he's run off with the Imperialist milkman.

So we're left with: "Never again, never again. . ."

Meaning what, exactly?

Mon Dec 14, 02:36:00 PM 2009
Lisa Pease said...

Randal - yes, Operation Northwoods was a proposal that Kennedy nixed, in which the Joint Chiefs discussed planning a fake attack on America and blaming it on Cuba as a pretext for war. That's a very real document. Not sure re your particular copy, but yes, there was such a proposal, never enacted, of course.

Mon Dec 14, 03:06:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

It is gratifying to find such positive reactions to JFK. His name has been sullied on many levels due to the harsh environment of partisan politics.

I knew intuitively he was something special (not perfect; he was human) in the way FDR demonstrated leadership above and beyond the grasp of most heads of state. The people's grief at his
death speaks to their aspirations
and hope for a better world.

Kennedy grew in office, with the help of his brother, Robert--a moralist in the nicest sense of the word. They identified the corruption, attempted to correct our trajectory. JFK was by nature a student of history and saw our country's place in the sweeping panorama of world events.

I so often wonder where we would be today if he had been allowed the time to finish two terms in office. It is my belief we would have avoided the horrors of the sixties--extended wars and further assassinations. "What if"--the two saddest words in our language.

Tue Dec 15, 01:12:00 PM 2009
Unknown said...

Everyone MUST post and talk about this book. It is being boycotted by the Corporate Media. IT IS STILL NOT AVAILABLE IN A SINGLE BOOKSTORE ANYWHERE IN NYC!!! This in spite of the fact that it has far outsold all other JFK books and indeed all other cold war history books since its publication.

This is the only book out there right now that could change history. But it will happen only if we become the media about it.

Tue Dec 15, 09:35:00 PM 2009
PaulM said...

Permanent warfare establishment? Perhaps there are conspiracy theorists such as Ms. Pease who believe the U. S. should simply eliminate the Military Industrial Complex. John Kennedy was a staunch anti-communist. It was Kennedy who pilloried Harry Truman for losing China to the communists. It was Kennedy who in 1961 led the largest defense buildup in American history. It was Kennedy who told Americans to build bomb shelters. It was Kennedy who believed losing in Vietnam would cause a domino effect in SE Asia. It was Kennedy who privately told Dean Rusk "if we have to fight, Vietnam is the place". Kennedy is a martyr today because 50 years ago the world was a somewhat less complex place. JFK's history is one of style over substance. Contrary to what we "want" to believe, history probably would not have changed very much had he served two terms. Douglass's opus is no different than a thousand other conspiracy books. Ignore the actual physical evidence conclusively proving Oswald did the deed and simply make up facts to sell another conspiracy book. Two people died in Dallas on November 22, 1963. JFK and PO J. D. Tippit. Both of the murder weapons were owned and possessed by ONE individual in a city of 700,000 to the exclusion of anybody else. The mathematical odds of Oswald being innocent are non existent. I'm only confused what qualifies Ms. Pease as an historian.

Tue Dec 15, 11:36:00 PM 2009
Lisa Pease said...

PaulM is a shining example of what happens when you don't support independent media. He's clearly fallen for the nearly 50 year's worth of mis- and disinformation about both Kennedy and Oswald.

Re Oswald, there's scientific proof he did not kill Kennedy, that even the FBI knew. The FBI literally could not fire Oswald's rifle and not get nitrate on their cheeks. But Oswald had no nitrate on his cheek.

What did the FBI do with that? They constructed a weird scenario. One FBI agent cleaned the gun and held the clip while a second man fired the gun. In that scenario, the man firing the gun got no nitrate on his cheek. The FBI man was bold enough to say this "proved" that one could fire the rifle and come up nitrate free. But all he proved was that it took a conspiracy to kill Kennedy! ;-) This is in the Warren Commission's own records.

Wed Dec 16, 05:30:00 PM 2009
John L.Opperman said...

Amen, Lisa.
PaulM is simply full of CRAP. His accusations have been disproven over and over again.
~John l.

Wed Dec 16, 11:20:00 PM 2009
PaulM said...

Apparently Ms. Pease and Mr. Opperman believe ambiguity is evidence. Conspiracy theorists are entertaining. They use the "reverse scientific method". They determine what happened, throw out all the data not supporting their conclusion and then hail their findings as the only possible solution.

Thu Dec 17, 09:53:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

PaulM, it is difficult but important to recognize when one has had one's perception "managed." We now know that during the Cold War the CIA was working with assets at TIME-LIFE, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc. What the public was allowed to learn was managed by the CIA who invariably privileged fealty to the National Security State above the truth.

It is sad to realize that one's understanding of reality have been shaped by morally corrupt forces and individuals. Just be thankful that you were only brainwashed via the mass media and academia as opposed to the CIA's MKULTRA program.

Fri Dec 03, 05:41:00 PM 2010

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