Recorded Feb­ru­ary 24, 2008
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

In this pro­gram, Mr. Emory and author and radio pro­ducer Paris Flam­monde rumi­nate about the polit­i­cal effects of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion and the Amer­ica that evolved out of that event. The title of the broad­cast is taken from Jack Ruby’s inter­view with the War­ren Com­mis­sion, in which he observed that “A whole new form of government’s going to take over this coun­try . . .” (For more about this topic, see FTR#579.) That new form of gov­ern­ment is—to make a long story short—fascism. Mssrs. Flam­monde and Emory dis­cussed a num­ber of ways in which Amer­i­can domes­tic and for­eign pol­icy have changed: the elim­i­na­tion of habeas cor­pus; the sta­tion­ing of mas­sive num­bers of troops around the world; the ero­sion of democ­racy and Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and a legacy of cor­rup­tion that defies both effec­tive judi­cial action and viable jour­nal­is­tic investigation.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Kennedy’s attempts to with­draw the U.S. from Viet­nam; review of Kennedy’s attempts at effect­ing a diplo­matic rap­proche­ment with Cuba; dis­cus­sion of the role of the oil indus­try and the Hunt fam­ily in par­tic­u­lar in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion; dis­cus­sion of Kennedy’s attempts at elim­i­nat­ing the oil deple­tion allowance; a trib­ute to the first gen­er­a­tion of Kennedy assas­si­na­tion researchers and investigators.

1. In this pro­gram, Mr. Emory and author and radio pro­ducer Paris Flam­monde rumi­nate about the polit­i­cal effects of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion and the Amer­ica that evolved out of that event. The title of the broad­cast is taken from Jack Ruby’s inter­view with the War­ren Com­mis­sion, in which he observed that “A whole new form of government’s going to take over this coun­try . . .” (For more about this topic, see FTR#579.) That new form of gov­ern­ment is—to make a long story short—fascism. Mssrs. Flam­monde and Emory dis­cussed a num­ber of ways in which Amer­i­can domes­tic and for­eign pol­icy have changed: the elim­i­na­tion of habeas cor­pus; the sta­tion­ing of mas­sive num­bers of troops around the world; the ero­sion of democ­racy and Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process and a legacy of cor­rup­tion that defies both effec­tive judi­cial action and viable jour­nal­is­tic investigation.

2. Short term domes­tic and for­eign pol­icy changes stem­ming from the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion include: the can­cel­la­tion of Kennedy’s plan to with­draw from Viet­nam; an effort at détente with the for­mer Soviet Union; can­cel­la­tion of Kennedy’s diplo­matic effort aimed at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Castro’s Cuba and, of course, a change in the 1964 elec­toral landscape.

3. One of the most impor­tant of Kennedy’s domes­tic ini­tia­tives to be destroyed by his mur­der was his plan to can­cel the oil deple­tion allowance—a major tax loop­hole exploited by Big Oil to the detri­ment of the soci­ety as a whole. Mssrs. Emory and Flam­monde high­light the role of pow­er­ful inde­pen­dent oil men in the assas­si­na­tion. The pow­er­ful Hunt fam­ily was deeply involved in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. As noted by Mr. Emory, the Hunt fam­ily fig­ures in some of the con­spir­a­to­r­ial power pol­i­tics man­i­fest­ing itself on the very trou­bled “oiled waters” flow­ing through the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape. As noted in FTR#’s 513, 556, 611, the Hunt fam­ily and asso­ciates fig­ure promi­nently in the events in and around the Bank al-Taqwa milieu, as well as in the petro­leum land­scape around the Iraq war.

4. One of the major goals of Mr. Flammonde’s for­mi­da­ble tomes and one of the major goals of Mr. Emory’s inter­views with Paris is to com­mem­o­rate the orig­i­nal gen­er­a­tion of JFK assas­si­na­tion researchers. Men like Bernard “Bud” Fen­ster­wald, Harold Weis­berg, Penn Jones, Joachim Joesten, Seth Can­tor and the other authors and inves­ti­ga­tors were peers of Mr. Flam­monde and they—along with Paris—inspired and informed Mr. Emory’s work. For more about Paris and his work, see FTR#’s 619, 620, 621, as well as “The Guns of Novem­ber, Part IV.”

5. Paris’ four-volume set can be obtained from Scanuscrip­tion; Tarot; RR 6, Box 6199; Strouds­burg, PA 18360. Visit the web­site at: www.assassinationofamerica.com. Paris can be reached at: flammonde@assassinationofamerica.com.

6. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­ated by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lecture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fascist.” For more about this project, visit TheAntiFascist.com.