FTR#‘s 1266 and 1267 Interviews #5 and #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

These pro­grams con­tin­ue our series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about the Oliv­er Stone doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed, for which Jim wrote the screen­play.

Yet anoth­er area in which JFK’s pol­i­cy out­look ran afoul of the pre­vail­ing wis­dom of the Cold War was with regard to the Con­go. A Bel­gian colony which was the vic­tim of geno­ci­dal poli­cies of King Leopold (esti­mates of the dead run as high as 8 mil­lion), the dia­mond and min­er­al-rich Con­go gained a frag­ile inde­pen­dence.

In Africa, as well, Kennedy under­stood the strug­gle of emerg­ing nations seek­ing free­dom from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion as falling out­side of and tran­scend­ing stereo­typed Cold War dynam­ics.

In the Con­go, the bru­tal­ly admin­is­tered Bel­gian rule had spawned a vig­or­ous inde­pen­dence move­ment crys­tal­lized around the charis­mat­ic Patrice Lumum­ba. Under­stand­ing of, and sym­pa­thet­ic to Lumum­ba and the ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal forces embod­ied in him, Kennedy opposed the reac­tionary sta­tus quo favored by both Euro­pean allies like the Unit­ed King­dom and Bel­gium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the Unit­ed States.

In 1961, there was anoth­er assas­si­na­tion that over­lapped events lead­ing up to JFK’s killing. U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dag Ham­marskjold was on the same page as JFK with regard to Con­golese inde­pen­dence from Bel­gium, nega­tion of the Bel­gian-spon­sored attempt at get­ting min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province to secede and was of the same mind as JFK with regard to assur­ing Patrice Lumum­ba’s sur­vival. 

Ham­marskjold’s 1961 death in a plane crash was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being:

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 105.

. . . . The pho­tos of Ham­marskjold show his body as the only one not burned or charred. And he had a play­ing card, report­ed­ly the ace of spades, stuffed into his shirt col­lar above the know in the tie. Now, due to Susan Williams’ book and new evi­dence offered by Desmond Tutu and the Union of South Africa’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, there are con­tro­ver­sial doc­u­ment that indi­cate Allen Dulles was involved in the sab­o­tage of the plane. The project was called Oper­a­tion Celeste and was to be car­ried out through a secret white suprema­cist group called SAMIR.

Kennedy’s old men­tor Edmund Gul­lion advised JFK that Ham­marskjold’s death was not the acci­dent it was rep­re­sent­ed as being.

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; pp. 402–403.

. . . . Sus­pi­cions were every­where that there had been foul play. The first per­son on the scene was the US air attache. And there were bul­lets that he said were in the vic­tims includ­ing Ham­marskjold. And a close friend of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, Edmund Gul­lion, sent a cable home say­ing: Con­trary to the offi­cial expla­na­tion for this trag­ic inci­dent, this was an assas­si­na­tion . . . .

In the Con­go, LBJ reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy stance, and the cor­po­rate loot­ing of the Con­go result­ed under Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pira­cy.

LBJ also reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy toward Indone­sia.

In 1955, Sukarno host­ed a con­fer­ence of non-aligned nations that for­mal­ized and con­cretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nation­al­ism of some Dutch indus­tri­al prop­er­ties, led the U.S. to try and over­throw Sukharno, which was attempt­ed in 1958.

Kennedy under­stood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indone­sia in 1964 to forge a more con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship with Sukharno. Obvi­ous­ly, his mur­der in 1963 pre­clud­ed the trip.

In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aid­ed coup in which as many as a mil­lion peo­ple were killed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in con­nec­tion with Indone­sia, is the dis­po­si­tion of Freeport Sul­phur, a com­pa­ny that had enlist­ed the ser­vices of both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie in an effort to cir­cum­vent lim­i­ta­tions on its oper­a­tions imposed by Cas­tro’s Cuba.

It should be not­ed that Freeport had set its cor­po­rate sights on a very lucra­tive pair of moun­tains in Indone­sia, both of which had enor­mous deposits of min­er­als, iron, cop­per, sil­ver and gold in par­tic­u­lar.

Cuba was an area of major con­flict between JFK and the Pow­ers That Be.

When JFK gave a green light to the attempt­ed over­throw of Cas­tro via the Bay of Pigs inva­sion, he had under­stood that the plan itself was des­tined to work.

In fact, Allen Dulles knew the plan as for­mu­lat­ed would fail, and expect­ed Kennedy to autho­rize the mil­i­tary to step in and neu­tral­ize Cas­tro.

Real­iz­ing that he had been lied to, JFK dis­missed Allen Dulles, Richard Bis­sell and Gen­er­al C.P. Cabell.

He also spoke of shat­ter­ing the CIA into a thou­sand pieces. It is grim­ly, mor­bid­ly iron­ic that it was Kennedy’s head that was shat­tered, and that he was “decap­i­tat­ed.”

Dur­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, JFK rebuffed the pres­sure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to invade Cuba, there­by avoid­ing the con­fronta­tion with Sovi­et tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons that had been pro­vid­ed to Cas­tro, unbe­knownst to the U.S.

Opt­ing for a block­ade, Kennedy also estab­lished a quid-pro-quo with Niki­ta Khrushchev, agree­ing to remove U.S. nuclear mis­siles from Turkey.

This was fol­lowed by a num­ber of back-door diplo­mat­ic attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba.

At the moment that Cas­tro heard JFK had been killed, he was meet­ing with French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel, who had func­tioned as one of those back-door diplo­mat­ic chan­nels to Cas­tro.

After dis­cus­sion of the “dual front” 531 Lafayette Place/544 Camp Street in New Orleans run by “pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor” Guy Ban­is­ter, we review the alleged “left­ist” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s involve­ment with that orga­ni­za­tion and his appar­ent­ly con­trived alter­ca­tion with Car­los Bringuier, the anti-Cas­tro Cuban and mem­ber of the DRE, part of the CIA-spon­sored fronts oper­at­ing against Cas­tro.

As we have seen in past pro­grams, George Joan­nides direct­ed the DRE for CIA dur­ing Bringuier’s tenure with the orga­ni­za­tion. Researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley filed a FOIA suit against CIA to pre­cip­i­tate more dis­clo­sure about Joan­nides, who had been the Agen­cy’s liai­son with the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Appel­late Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh cast a decid­ing vote negat­ing Mor­ley’s appeal.

Dis­cus­sion con­cludes with analy­sis of how two visu­al events keyed major events in the inves­ti­ga­tion of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion: a 1975 TV pro­gram, on which Ger­al­do Rivera–featuring come­di­an Dick Gre­go­ry and Robert Groden–aired the Zaprud­er film. The uproar fol­low­ing that led to the for­ma­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tion.

The “crawl” at the end of Oliv­er Stone’s JFK, inform­ing the audi­ence that the HSCA had  clas­si­fied key doc­u­ments until 2029, gen­er­at­ing fur­ther out­rage and lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of the Assas­si­na­tion Records Review Board.

Golden Lily Veterans Involved with 1965 Indonesian Coup

The “Deep Pol­i­tics” detailed by the bril­liant Berke­ley pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott in his opus “Amer­i­can War Machine” set forth the involve­ment Japan­ese war crim­i­nals Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in the Indone­sian coup of 1965. That epic blood­let­ting saw the engi­neers of the event kill a mil­lion peo­ple (some put the toll as high as three mil­lion.) In addi­tion to being prime movers behind the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio were lynch­pins of the per­pet­u­a­tion of the oper­a­tional foun­da­tion of Japan­ese fas­cism under the aus­pices of the LDP in the post­war peri­od. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1216 The Dealey Plaza Blues

Revis­it­ing the event that pro­pelled Mr. Emory into this field of endeav­or, this pro­gram reflects on the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on the 58th anniver­sary of his killing.

One source of Mr. Emory’s “Dealey Plaza Blues” is a depress­ing piece in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine from 11/22/2021.

In addi­tion to the minor styl­is­tic sin of end­ing a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion, Tim Wein­er tars those who have grasped the doc­u­men­tary truth of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as vic­tims of Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da.

In the midst of the red-bait­ing, Wein­er does offer one unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, true state­ment: “ . . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .”

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go.

This sto­ry, too, was pub­lished by Times on the anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion.

Pre­sent­ing the pre­dictable ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.

(What does not occur to U.S. media out­lets, is that Chi­na’s pro­pri­etary advances in this area are an alto­geth­er com­pre­hen­si­ble strat­e­gy for con­tin­ued indus­tri­al expan­sion in the cen­tu­ry to come, while mov­ing to reduce green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tion in keep­ing with the inter­na­tion­al legal and diplo­mat­ic tar­gets for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.)

Below, we present infor­ma­tion fea­tured in FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.

The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects:

1.–Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.
2.–Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources.
3.–Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” (In the Con­go, as in so many coun­tries, the World War II Allies reneg­ing on their ini­tial pledge to grant inde­pen­dence to Euro­pean colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that had been occu­pied by Axis coun­tries, pro­pelled colo­nial prop­er­ties into the Cold War meat-grinder in an attempt to gain inde­pen­dence.)

Per­spec­tive on this unhap­py anniver­sary comes from The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. . . .”

The Times pub­lished the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion enshrined as the War­ren Report.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights parts of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion that sup­port Gar­rison’s the­sis.

” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .” 

The excerpt comes from anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent book on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy. The book was the focus of FTR#190.

The lat­ter por­tion of the broad­cast high­lights the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

” . . . .  [CIA Direc­tor Richard] Helms want­ed the group to ‘con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency’ of what Gar­ri­son was doing in ‘New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw.’. . . [CIA offi­cial Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt ‘that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.’ This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .”

We con­clude with a sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approaches–this is anoth­er gen­er­at­ing force behind “The Dealey Plaza Blues.”

The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire.

For a nation that has cho­sen to ignore what is per­haps the deci­sive event in Amer­i­can history–the assas­si­na­tion of JFK (Sr.) in Dal­las, Texas–the goth­ic fan­ta­sy dri­ving a dis­turbing­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple is, per­haps, a fas­cist after-din­ner drink.

Kool-Aid?

A Blast From The Past–Literally

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go. Pre­sent­ing ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects; we present infor­ma­tion from FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.) Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. 2) Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources. 3) Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1212 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 19

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

This pro­gram chron­i­cles the U.S. coup in Indone­sia. In our land­mark series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio, we not­ed that Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion put the rail­way described by Stan­ley Horn­beck back on sched­ule in Indone­sia, as it had been put back on sched­ule in Viet­nam. 

“ . . . . The Unit­ed States was part and par­cel of the oper­a­tion at every stage, start­ing well before the killings start­ed, until the last body dropped and the last polit­i­cal pris­on­er emerged from jail, decades lat­er, tor­tured, scarred, and bewil­dered. . . . the U.S. gov­ern­ment helped spread the pro­pa­gan­da that made the killing pos­si­ble, and engaged in con­stant con­ver­sa­tions with the Army to make sure the mil­i­tary offi­cers had every­thing they need­ed, from weapons to kill lists. . . . know­ing full well that the method being employed to make this pos­si­ble was to round up hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple around the coun­try, stab or stran­gle them, and throw their corpses into rivers. . . . Up to a mil­lion Indone­sians, maybe more, were killed as part of Washington’s glob­al anti­com­mu­nist cru­sade. The U. S. gov­ern­ment expend­ed sig­nif­i­cant resources over years engi­neer­ing the con­di­tions for a vio­lent clash, and then, when the vio­lence broke out, assist­ed and guid­ed its long­time part­ners to car­ry out the mass mur­der of civil­ians as a means of achiev­ing US geopo­lit­i­cal goals. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The John­son Administration’s deter­mi­na­tion to wage a “major war against Indone­sia; the inabil­i­ty of U.S. strate­gic plan­ners to com­pre­hend  Indonesia’s sta­tus of non-align­ment in the Cold War out­side of the “either with us or against us” oper­a­tional par­a­digm that was insti­tu­tion­al­ized in U.S. for­eign and nation­al secu­ri­ty under the Dulles broth­ers dur­ing the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion; Pakistan’s ambas­sador to Paris sent a let­ter to for­eign min­is­ter Zul­fikar Ali Bhut­to: “ . . . . West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies were orga­niz­ing a ‘pre­ma­ture com­mu­nist coup.’ Indone­sia, the NATO offi­cer told him, ‘was ready to fall into the West­ern lap like a rot­ten apple.’. . .” The enthu­si­as­tic cov­er­age of the Indone­sian slaugh­ter in the West­ern press, exem­pli­fied by The New York Times’ C.L. Sulzberg­er, who penned the piece “When a Nation Runs Amok”; the cul­tur­al chau­vin­ism tinged with racism of the West­ern press cov­er­age, embod­ied by Sulzberger’s piece: “ . . . . the killings occurred in ‘vio­lent Asia, where life is cheap . . . . hid­den behind their [Indone­sians] smile is that strange Malay streak, that inner, fren­zied blood-lust which has giv­en to oth­er lan­guages one of their few Malay words: amok . . . .”; The fact that the main point of irri­ta­tion in the U.S. about the PKI (Indonesia’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty) was not that they were unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic or try­ing to seize pow­er through sub­ver­sion, but that they “were pop­u­lar;” the role of U.S. plan­ta­tion man­agers and cor­po­rate per­son­nel in sub­mit­ting names to the Indone­sian army and its allies for liq­ui­da­tion; His­to­ri­an John Roosa’s encap­su­la­tion of the results of the slaugh­ter: “ . . . . Almost overnight the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment went from being a fierce voice for cold war neu­tral­i­ty and anti-impe­ri­al­ism to a qui­et, com­pli­ant part­ner of the US world order. . . .”; New York Times colum­nist James Reston’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the coup and result­ing slaugh­ter as “A Gleam of Light in Asia” that out­weighed U.S. set­backs in Viet­nam; he—by now—longstanding and well-rec­og­nized Amer­i­can tac­tic of “mak­ing the econ­o­my scream;” Suharto’s delib­er­ate engi­neer­ing of hyper­in­fla­tion in order to restrict the sup­ply of fun­da­men­tals need­ed by peo­ple to sus­tain their lives; “The U.S. gov­ern­ment was inten­tion­al­ly desta­bi­liz­ing the econ­o­my;” Robert Kennedy’s crit­i­cism of the Indone­sian coup; U.S. cor­po­ra­tions find­ing Indone­sia “open for busi­ness”; a busi­ness con­fer­ence spon­sored by James Linen, Pres­i­dent of Time-Life (it was Time-Life that was–to a con­sid­er­able extent–the eyes and ears of the U.S. on both Chi­ang Kai-shek and the assas­si­na­tion of J.F.K.; The slaugh­ter that took place on the island of Bali, some­thing of an icon­ic trop­i­cal par­adise; analy­sis of the sig­nif­i­cance of machetes being used in the slaugh­ter of scores of thou­sands on the beau­ti­ful Bali beaches–the machete is not a blade used by the Bali­nese, who use a thin­ner, domes­tic cut­ting tool caused the kle­wang; Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang and their sup­port for the Indone­sian coup, includ­ing stag­ing attacks on the Chi­nese embassy in Jakar­ta; Tai­wan as the site for the merg­ing of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Epit­o­miz­ing and encap­su­lat­ing the coup was the butch­ery that tran­spired on the Island of Bali and its after­math in the con­tem­po­rary lux­u­ry resort econ­o­my that pre­vails there:

” . . . . Then he [Wayan Badra] heard what was hap­pen­ing on the beach­es. They were bring­ing peo­ple from the city to the east to kill them on the sand. It was pub­lic prop­er­ty there, and emp­ty at night. The bod­ies were aban­doned there. . . . they found a field of bod­ies. . . .They began look­ing through bones, pick­ing up skulls. . . . There were just ‘too many skulls, too many skele­tons. . . . In total, at least 5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Bali was killed—that is, eighty thou­sand peo­ple . . . .”

” . . . . Wayan Ban­dra, the Hin­du priest, lives on the street where he grew up, in Semi­nyak, South­west Bali. But the neigh­bor­hood has changed dras­ti­cal­ly. The same beach he used to walk on for forty min­utes every morn­ing, as he head­ed to school down in Kuta, is cer­tain­ly not emp­ty. It’s packed wall to wall with lux­u­ry resorts and ‘beach clubs,’ a very com­mon type of busi­ness on the island, where for­eign­ers can sip cock­tails all day, and take a dip in a pool, right on the sand. It’s the same sand, of course, where the mil­i­tary brought peo­ple from Ker­obokan, a few miles east, to kill them at night. . . .”

” . . . . . . . . Over the years, Wayan Badra and his neigh­bors have found bones and skulls in the sand . . . . As the elder priest for this vil­lage, he takes it upon him­self to give the bod­ies a prop­er Hin­du funer­al. . . .”