Monday, April 8, 2013
Mystery of Kennedy assassination solved in the book 'Double-Crossed' by Chuck Giancana
Mystery of assassination solved in the book 'Double-Crossed' by Chuck Giancana
« on: January 31, 2012, 07:02:28 AM »
I have just finished reading the book 'Double Crossed' by Chuck and Sam Giancana, brother and nephew of Chicago gangster Sam Giancana.
In the book, Chuck tells what Sam Giancana said privately to him a few months after the assassination. Sam Giancana then left to live the rest of his life in Mexico and other places in South America. Giancana, Roselli were killed before they could testify before the Church Committee on the assassination - probably by Mafia counterparts.
Sam told Chuck the following: -
The assassination was a joint effort by the CIA, Cuban Exiles, Mafia and Texas Oilmen. 'Throughout the book the 'very' close association between the CIA and Mafia is mentioned'. Each group provided organisers and shooters for the big event. The assassination was funded by six Texas Oilmen who each paid $50,000.
Jack Ruby did a lot of the organising for the assassination - he was Giancana's man in Dallas. Charles Nicoletti was at the west end of the six floor, Richard Cain (associate of Giancana) at the end east end of the six floor. There were other shooters placed in the Daltex and somewhere in the west end of the Plaza.
J.D.Tippett was in with assassination organisers. He was meant to kill Oswald out in the back streets to silence him. When Tippett failed at this task, he was killed by an associate.
Jack Ruby bought off a lot of the Dallas Police Officers to allow him access to the Police Department to kill Owald. Apparently a lot of the Dallas Police Dept also knew about the assassination attempt and removed a lot of protection on the day.
Oswald didn't fire a bullet.
Nixon and LBJ both knew upfront of the assassination.
The assassination was planned for various cities, Miama, Chicago, Dallas, it all came together perfectly in Dallas.
The Mafia had used the method of a patsy several times before - this wasn't the first time. Sam Giancana said 'he couldn't believe the country fell for it, it has mafia hit all over it'.
What are fellow forum members thoughts?
Why would Giancana lie about this - except to give himself more notoriety. He told his Chuck in complete faith that he would keep quiet.
The reason for the killing was: -
1) To remove the heat being applied to the Mafia by the Kennedy's - The Mafia helped JFK win the election and were promised they would be left alone by the Government, and then JFK and RFK went after them.
2) The firing of various CIA bosses.
3) Tax reforms which would take a lot of money from the Oil Tycoons.
4) Bay of Pigs
The book is a fascinating read - everything starts to fall into place when you read it.......
Obama's Empathy Deficit in Palestine
By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, April 5, 2013
Obama in Israel: Every word right. Every gesture genuine. Every detail in its place. Perfect.
Obama in Palestine: Every word wrong. Every gesture inappropriate. Every single detail misplaced. Perfect.
It started from the first moment. The President of the United States came to Ramallah. He visited the Mukata’a, the “compound” which serves as the office of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. One cannot enter the Mukata’a without noticing the grave of Yasser Arafat, just a few paces from the entrance.
It is quite impossible to ignore this landmark while passing it. However, Obama succeeded in doing just that.
It was like spitting in the face of the entire Palestinian people. Imagine a foreign dignitary coming to France and not laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Or coming to Israel and not visiting Yad Vashem. It is more than insulting. It is stupid.
Yasser Arafat is for the Palestinians what Gorge Washington is for Americans, Mahatma Gandhi for Indians, David Ben-Gurion for Israelis. The Father of the Nation. Even his domestic opponents on the left and on the right revere his memory. He is the supreme symbol of the modern Palestinian national movement. His picture hangs in every Palestinian office and school.
So why not honor him? Why not lay a wreath on his grave, as foreign leaders have done before?
Because Arafat has been demonized and vilified in Israel like no other human being since Hitler. And still is.
Obama was simply afraid of the Israeli reaction. After his huge success in Israel, he feared that such a gesture would undo the effect of his address to the Israeli people.
This consideration guided Obama throughout his short visit to the West Bank. His feet were in Palestine, his head was in Israel.
He walked in Palestine. He talked to Palestine. But his thoughts were about the Israelis.
Even when he said good things, his tone was wrong. He just could not hit the right note. Somehow he missed the cue.
Why? Because of a complete lack of empathy.
Empathy is something hard to define. I am spoiled in this respect, because I had the good fortune to live for many years near a person who had it in abundance. Rachel, my wife, hit the right tone with everyone, high or low, local or foreign, the old and the very young.
Obama did so in Israel. It was really amazing. He must have studied us thoroughly. He knew our strengths and our weaknesses, our paranoias and our idiosyncrasies, our historical memories and dreams about the future.
And no wonder. He is surrounded by Zionist Jews. They are his closest advisors, his friends and his experts on the Middle East. Even from mere contact with them, he obviously absorbed much of our sensitivities.
As far as I know, there is not a single Arab, not to mention Palestinian, in the White House and its surroundings.
I assume that he does receive occasional briefings about Arab affairs from the State Department. But such dry memoranda are not the stuff empathy is made of. The more so as clever diplomats must have learned by now not to write anything that may offend Israelis.
So how could the poor man have possibly picked up empathy towards the Palestinians?
The conflict between Israel and Palestine has very solid factual causes. But it has also been rightly described as a “clash between traumas”: the Holocaust trauma of the Jews and the Naqba trauma of the Palestinians (without suggesting equivalence between the two calamities.)
Many years ago in New York I met a very good friend of mine. He was an Arab citizen of Israel, a young poet who had left Israel and joined the PLO. He invited me to meet some Palestinians at his home in a suburb of New York. His family name, by the way, was the same as Obama’s middle name.
When I entered the apartment, it was crammed full with Palestinians—Palestinians of all stripes, from Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, the refugee camps and the Diaspora. We had a very emotional debate, full of heated arguments and counter-arguments. When we left I asked Rachel what, to her mind, was the most outstanding common sentiment of all these people. “The sense of injustice!” she replied without hesitation.
That was exactly what I felt. “If Israel could just apologize for what we have done to the Palestinian people, a huge obstacle would have been removed from the road to peace,” I answered her.
It would have been a good beginning for Obama in Ramallah if he had addressed this point. It was not the Palestinians who killed six million Jews. It was the European countries and—yes—the USA which callously closed their doors to the Jews, who were desperately trying to escape the lot awaiting them. And it was the Muslim world which welcomed hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing from Catholic Spain and the inquisition some 500 years ago.
Out conflict is tragic, more than most. One of its tragedies is that neither side can be entirely blamed. There is not one narrative, but two. Each side is convinced of the absolute justice of its cause. Each side nurses its overwhelming sense of victimhood. Though there can be no symmetry between settlers and natives, occupier and occupied, in this respect they are the same.
The trouble with Obama is that he has completely, entirely, totally embraced one narrative, while being almost completely oblivious to the other. Every word he uttered in Israel gave testimony to his deeply-rooted Zionist convictions. Not just the words he said, but the tone, the body language, all bore the marks of honesty. Evidently, he had internalized the Zionist version of every single detail of the conflict.
Nothing like this was in evidence in Ramallah. Some dry formulas, yes. Some honest efforts to break the ice, indeed. But nothing that touched the hearts of the Palestinians.
He told his Israeli audience to “put yourselves in the shoes of the Palestinians”. But did he do so himself? Can he imagine what it means to wait every night for the brutal banging on the door? To be woken by the noise of bulldozers approaching, wondering whether they are coming to destroy your home? To see a settlement growing on your land and waiting for the settlers to come and carry out a pogrom in your village? Being unable to move on your roads? To see your father humiliated at the road blocks? To throw stones at armed soldiers and brave tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and sometimes live ammunition?
Can he even imagine having a brother, a cousin, a loved one in prison for many, many years because of his patriotic actions or beliefs, after facing the arbitrariness of a military “court”, or even without a “trial” at all?
This week, a prisoner called Maisara Abu-Hamdiyeh died in prison, and the West Bank exploded in rage. Israeli journalists ridiculed the protest, stating that the man died from a fatal disease, so Israel could not be blamed.
Did any of them imagine for a moment what it means for a human being to suffer from cancer, with the disease slowly spreading through his body, deprived of adequate treatment, cut off from family and friends, seeing death approaching? What if it had been their father?
The occupation is not an abstract matter. It is a daily reality for two and a half million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—not to mention the restrictions on Gaza.
It does not concern only the individuals practically denied all human rights. It primarily concerns the Palestinians as a nation.
We Israelis, perhaps more than anyone else, should know that belonging to one’s nation, in one’s own state, under one’s own flag, is a basic right of every human being. In the present epoch, it is an essential element of human dignity. No people will settle for less.
The Israeli government insists that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the “Nation-State of the Jewish People”. It adamantly refuses to recognize Palestine as the “Nation-State of the Palestinian People”. What is Obama’s position on that?
Following the visit, Secretary of State John Kerry is now working hard to “prepare the ground” for a “resumption” of the “peace talks” between Israel and the PLO. Many quotation marks for something so flimsy.
Diplomats can string together hollow phrases to conjure up the illusion of progress. That is one of their main talents. But after a historic conflict lasting some 130 years, no progress towards peace between the two peoples can be real, if there is no equal respect for their national history, rights, feelings and aspirations.
As long as the US leadership cannot bring itself to that point, the chance of its contributing to peace in this tormented country is close to nil.
Lessons from the Angelus
By Henry Drummond (1851–1897), abridged
God often speaks to men’s souls through music; He also speaks to us through art. Millet’s famous painting entitled “The Angelus” is an illuminated text, upon which I am going to say a few words to you tonight.

There are three things in this picture—a potato field, a country lad and a country girl standing in the middle of it, and on the far horizon the spire of a village church. That is all there is to it—no great scenery and no picturesque people. In Roman Catholic countries at the evening hour the church bell rings out to remind the people to pray. Some go into the church, while those that are in the fields bow their heads for a few moments in silent prayer.
That picture contains the three great elements which go to make up a perfectly rounded Christian life. ... The Angelus may bring to us suggestions as to what constitutes a complete life.
The first element in a symmetrical life is WORK.
Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course, the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God, three-fourths of life remains unsanctified.
The proof that work is religious is that most of Christ’s life was spent in work. During a large part of the first thirty years of His life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and yokes and household furniture. Christ’s public ministry occupied only about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great bulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks, and ever since then, work has had a new meaning.
When Christ came into the world He was revealed to three deputations who went to meet and worship Him. First came the shepherds, or working class; second, the wise men, or student class; and third, the two old people in the temple, Simeon and Anna; that is to say, Christ is revealed to men at their work, He is revealed to men at their books, and He is revealed to men at their worship. It was the old people who found Christ at their worship, and as we grow older we will spend more time exclusively in worship than we are able to do now. In the meantime we must combine our worship with our work, and we may expect to find Christ at our books and in our common task.
Another element in life, which of course is first in importance, is GOD.
The Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted this century. You cannot look at it and see that young man standing in the field with his hat off and the girl opposite him with her hands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, without feeling a sense of God.
Do we carry about with us the thought of God wherever we go? If not, we have missed the greatest part of life. Do we have a conviction of God’s abiding presence wherever we are? There is nothing more needed in this generation than a larger and more scriptural idea of God. A great American writer has told us that when he was a boy the conception of God which he got from books and sermons was that of a wise and very strict lawyer. I remember well the awful conception of God which I had when a boy. I was given an illustrated edition of Watts’ hymns, in which God was represented as a great piercing eye in the midst of a great black thundercloud. The idea which that picture gave to my young imagination was that of God as a great detective, playing the spy upon my actions, as the hymn says: “Writing now the story of what little children do.”
That was a very mistaken and harmful idea which it has taken me years to obliterate. We think of God as “up there,” or as one who made the world 6,000 years ago and then retired. We must learn that He is not confined either to time or space. God is not to be thought of as merely back there in time, or up there in space. If not, where is He? “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth.” The Kingdom of God is within you, and God Himself is among men. When are we to exchange the terrible, faraway, absentee God of our childhood for the everywhere present God of the Bible?
Too many of the old Christian writers seem to have conceived of God as not much more than the greatest man—a kind of divine emperor. He is infinitely more; He is a spirit, as Jesus said to the woman at the well, and in Him we live and move and have our being. Let us think of God as Immanuel—God with us—an ever-present, omnipresent, eternal One. Long, long ago, God made matter, then He made the flowers and trees and animals, then He made man. Did He stop? Is God dead? If He lives and acts, what is He doing? He is making men better.
He it is that “worketh in you.” The buds of our nature are not all out yet; the sap to make them comes from the God who made us, from the indwelling Christ. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of God is kept up, not by logic, but by experience.
Until she was seven years of age the life of Helen Keller, the Boston girl who was deaf and dumb and blind, was an absolute blank; nothing could go into that mind because the ears and eyes were closed to the outer world. Then by that great process which has been discovered, by which the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the mute speak, that girl’s soul became opened, and they began to put in little bits of knowledge, and bit by bit they began to educate her. They reserved her religious instruction for Phillips Brooks. After some years, when she was twelve years old, they took her to him and he began to talk to her through the young lady who could communicate with her by the exceedingly delicate process of touch. He began to tell her about God and what He had done, and how He loved men, and what He is to us. The child listened very intelligently, and finally said:
“Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn’t know His name.”
How often we have felt something within us impelling us to do something which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or enabling us to do something which we could not have done alone. “It is God which worketh in you.” This great simple fact explains many of the mysteries of life, and takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting the difficulties which lie before us.
The third element in life about which I wish to speak is LOVE.
In this picture we notice the delicate sense of companionship, brought out by the young man and the young woman. It matters not whether they are brother and sister or lover and loved; there you have the idea of friendship, the final ingredient in our life, after the two I have named. If the man or the woman had been standing in that field alone, it would have been incomplete.
Love is the divine element in life, because “God is love.” “He that loveth is born of God,” therefore, as someone has said, let us “keep our friendships in repair.” Let us cultivate the spirit of friendship, and let the love of Christ develop it into a great love, not only for our friends, but for all humanity. Wherever you go and whatever you do, your work will be a failure unless you have this element in your life.
These three things go far toward forming a well-rounded life. Some of us may not have these ingredients in their right proportion, but if you are lacking in one or the other of them, then pray for it and work for it that your life may be rounded and complete as God intended it should be.
God often speaks to men’s souls through music; He also speaks to us through art. Millet’s famous painting entitled “The Angelus” is an illuminated text, upon which I am going to say a few words to you tonight.
There are three things in this picture—a potato field, a country lad and a country girl standing in the middle of it, and on the far horizon the spire of a village church. That is all there is to it—no great scenery and no picturesque people. In Roman Catholic countries at the evening hour the church bell rings out to remind the people to pray. Some go into the church, while those that are in the fields bow their heads for a few moments in silent prayer.
That picture contains the three great elements which go to make up a perfectly rounded Christian life. ... The Angelus may bring to us suggestions as to what constitutes a complete life.
The first element in a symmetrical life is WORK.
Three-fourths of our time is probably spent in work. Of course, the meaning of it is that our work should be just as religious as our worship, and unless we can work for the glory of God, three-fourths of life remains unsanctified.
The proof that work is religious is that most of Christ’s life was spent in work. During a large part of the first thirty years of His life He worked with the hammer and the plane, making ploughs and yokes and household furniture. Christ’s public ministry occupied only about two and a half years of His earthly life; the great bulk of His time was simply spent in doing common everyday tasks, and ever since then, work has had a new meaning.
When Christ came into the world He was revealed to three deputations who went to meet and worship Him. First came the shepherds, or working class; second, the wise men, or student class; and third, the two old people in the temple, Simeon and Anna; that is to say, Christ is revealed to men at their work, He is revealed to men at their books, and He is revealed to men at their worship. It was the old people who found Christ at their worship, and as we grow older we will spend more time exclusively in worship than we are able to do now. In the meantime we must combine our worship with our work, and we may expect to find Christ at our books and in our common task.
Another element in life, which of course is first in importance, is GOD.
The Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted this century. You cannot look at it and see that young man standing in the field with his hat off and the girl opposite him with her hands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, without feeling a sense of God.
Do we carry about with us the thought of God wherever we go? If not, we have missed the greatest part of life. Do we have a conviction of God’s abiding presence wherever we are? There is nothing more needed in this generation than a larger and more scriptural idea of God. A great American writer has told us that when he was a boy the conception of God which he got from books and sermons was that of a wise and very strict lawyer. I remember well the awful conception of God which I had when a boy. I was given an illustrated edition of Watts’ hymns, in which God was represented as a great piercing eye in the midst of a great black thundercloud. The idea which that picture gave to my young imagination was that of God as a great detective, playing the spy upon my actions, as the hymn says: “Writing now the story of what little children do.”
That was a very mistaken and harmful idea which it has taken me years to obliterate. We think of God as “up there,” or as one who made the world 6,000 years ago and then retired. We must learn that He is not confined either to time or space. God is not to be thought of as merely back there in time, or up there in space. If not, where is He? “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth.” The Kingdom of God is within you, and God Himself is among men. When are we to exchange the terrible, faraway, absentee God of our childhood for the everywhere present God of the Bible?
Too many of the old Christian writers seem to have conceived of God as not much more than the greatest man—a kind of divine emperor. He is infinitely more; He is a spirit, as Jesus said to the woman at the well, and in Him we live and move and have our being. Let us think of God as Immanuel—God with us—an ever-present, omnipresent, eternal One. Long, long ago, God made matter, then He made the flowers and trees and animals, then He made man. Did He stop? Is God dead? If He lives and acts, what is He doing? He is making men better.
He it is that “worketh in you.” The buds of our nature are not all out yet; the sap to make them comes from the God who made us, from the indwelling Christ. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of God is kept up, not by logic, but by experience.
Until she was seven years of age the life of Helen Keller, the Boston girl who was deaf and dumb and blind, was an absolute blank; nothing could go into that mind because the ears and eyes were closed to the outer world. Then by that great process which has been discovered, by which the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the mute speak, that girl’s soul became opened, and they began to put in little bits of knowledge, and bit by bit they began to educate her. They reserved her religious instruction for Phillips Brooks. After some years, when she was twelve years old, they took her to him and he began to talk to her through the young lady who could communicate with her by the exceedingly delicate process of touch. He began to tell her about God and what He had done, and how He loved men, and what He is to us. The child listened very intelligently, and finally said:
“Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn’t know His name.”
How often we have felt something within us impelling us to do something which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or enabling us to do something which we could not have done alone. “It is God which worketh in you.” This great simple fact explains many of the mysteries of life, and takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting the difficulties which lie before us.
The third element in life about which I wish to speak is LOVE.
In this picture we notice the delicate sense of companionship, brought out by the young man and the young woman. It matters not whether they are brother and sister or lover and loved; there you have the idea of friendship, the final ingredient in our life, after the two I have named. If the man or the woman had been standing in that field alone, it would have been incomplete.
Love is the divine element in life, because “God is love.” “He that loveth is born of God,” therefore, as someone has said, let us “keep our friendships in repair.” Let us cultivate the spirit of friendship, and let the love of Christ develop it into a great love, not only for our friends, but for all humanity. Wherever you go and whatever you do, your work will be a failure unless you have this element in your life.
These three things go far toward forming a well-rounded life. Some of us may not have these ingredients in their right proportion, but if you are lacking in one or the other of them, then pray for it and work for it that your life may be rounded and complete as God intended it should be.
