JFK, Parenti, & the National Security State

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New World Notes News
Volume 1, Number 20 -- November 25, 2008
http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/

This week in New World Notes, #41 -- November 25 & 28:
A pair of NWN installments commemorates John F. Kennedy, who was murdered 45 years ago, on November 22. Last week's program--JFK, Parenti, and "Lone Gunmen" Galore!--discussed the many "lone gunmen, acting alone" that blue-ribbon investigative commissions tend to find responsible for each political assassination in the United States. The program focused on Lee Harvey Oswald, the sole assassin of JFK, according to the Warren Commission Report and the corporate-controlled media.

This week's program is titled, JFK, Parenti, and the National Security State. Michael Parenti's rousing but funny speech continues, now focusing on the institutional structures behind Kennedy's murder. Chief among these is "the National Security State"--persons and entities given the power to invade, assassinate, torture, start wars, and cause other mayhem worldwide, in the name of national security. JFK had thwarted their goals of war with Russia and escalation in Vietmam. By 1963 they had had enough.

Besides Parenti's speech and my commentary, the show offers another jaundiced view of the National Security State--at least a large part of it--by playwright, essayist, and novelist Gore Vidal. Vidal recreates a chat he had with Kennedy in 1961. Here JFK, between puffs of a cigar "liberated from Castro's Cuba," wishes aloud that he had more control over the Pentagon and then explains to Vidal why he is unlikely to attain any.

Attached graphics:

(1) Tarpley's Believe it or Not! shows the interlocking institutions and personnel behind the Kennedy assassination. Or is it the 9-11 disaster? Gulf War I? Hard to tell . . . .

(2) JFK giving Inaugural speech, January 1961. "Ask not what your country can do for you . . . ." As with MLK's "I have a dream . . .," this speech was not Kennedy's best, only the one the Establishment most liked to quote to hoi polloi. Each man gave his greatest speech not long before his assassination. Each, in this speech, denounced war, denounced the Military-Industrial Complex, and called for disarmament. Lockheed shareholders were not amused.

(3) Posthumous poster. Note selected quotation on the poster (then again see #2, above).