I was watching the movie, J.F.K. for the second time on the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. However one would view Oliver Stone and his credibility or accuracy in telling a story, you would still have to come away from that movie knowing that the Warren Commission was a sham, and that Pres. John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a consortium of big business and our own government was complicit in carrying out his murder.
While you mull over that unfathomable act, especially if you have been brain washed throughout your educational experience, the movie unfolds to more , with Bobby Kennedy's assassination in L.A. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Two more deaths attributed to a lone assassin. During these same years Malcom X went down in Feb. l965, and his murder was dismissed in the press as having been done by jealous compatriots in the Nation of Islam. You start to think back to Gandhi. His assassination. Who was he a threat to?! You roll back up to the sixties when
Che Guevara is murdered by the C.I.A operative Felix Rodriguez in Bolivia in 1967.
Thomas Merton, the iconoclastic Catholic mystic, social critic and anti-war advocate, a Cistercian monk and prolific writer was found dead in a shower in Bangkok while attending a gathering of contemplatives. His death was attributed to electrocution from a faulty fan. This was the time that South East Asia was teeming with C.I.A. Fr. Merton, known for anti-war writings to the point of being forced to write under a pseudonym as dictated by his order. Fr. Merton was not a favored son of the Church, because they leaned toward the status quo.
Four students were killed by the U.S. National Guard on the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio, in the spring of 1970, during a campus wide protest against the Viet Nam war. The students were: Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, William Shroeder, who was shot in the back and Sandy Scheuer, who was shot in the neck. Charges against the National Guard was dropped by a Federal grand jury.
Black Panthers,
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, gunned down while they slept, by an elite tactical unit of the Cook County State Attorney's Office, facilitated by the Chicago Police Dept. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Fred Hampton, 21 yrs. old, described by Noam Chomsky as being the most talented and promising leaders of the Panthers, an effective organizer in the Chicago ghetto and unfortunately one of the main targets of the F.B.I. Terror Campaign, Cointelpro.
Salvador Allende is murdered in Chile in 1973, and Augusto Pinochet takes over the country in a military coup. Allende was a proponent of the redistribution of wealth in Chile during his presidency. His attempts to build a socialist society was opposed by business interests. Henry Kissenger admitted that in Sept. 1970 Pres. Richard Nixon ordered him to organize a coup against the Allende govt., while Kissenger called off the coup a month later, the C.I.A. continued to encourage a coup in Chile. On Sept.11,1973 a military coup removed Allende's govt. from power and Salvador Allende died in the fighting at the Presidential palace in Santiago. General Augusto Pinochet replaced Allende as president, and began a reign of kidnapping, torture and murdering of Chilian citizens.
John Lennon, the last of the American icons is murdered on the street in front of his house in his beloved New York city on Dec 8th. 1980. Lennon was political and forming alliances with radicals such as anti-war and civil rights advocate, Abbie Hoffman.
Also in 1980,
Bishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador is murdered by rightwing paramilitary while he was celebrating mass. He was a champion of the rights of Salvadorans, and begged President Carter not to send arms to El Salvador. He said that military aid was being used to supress the people of El Salvador. His request was unheeded, and he was killed two months later.
In Dec. 1980, four American women are kidnapped in El Salvador, three Catholic nuns and one lay worker are found dead in a shallow grave two days later.
On Nov.16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, a servant and her daughter, murdered by right wing military death squads at Central America University in San Salvador. The priests were purported to be communists. These military death squads that roamed Central America in the 1980's, were trained in the state of Georgia in the United States of America, at the "
School of Americas". I know they changed the name of the institution to some other euphemism, whatever. I would guess most Americans are not even aware of such an ignominious place in their country.
Now, more politicians who have 'died.' House majority leader,
Hale Boggs, member of Warren Commission on the death of President Kennedy, belived that Oswald did not act alone. He went public with his doubts. The plane he was flying in disappeared in 1972.
Missouri Dem. Representative Jerry Litton crashes 1976, the night he won the Democratic nomination for the Senate.
U.S. Senator, liberal Republican, John Heinz, a critic of the Viet Nam war, who also encouraged reconcilation with Cuba, died in a small plane crash on April 4th 1991, killing all aboard and two children playing at recess in a school yard below. He was on his way to Phildelphia to conduct the first in a series of investigation hearings to examine the telemarketing of medical equipment to Medicare beneficiaries, "Bleeding Medicare Dry: The Great Sales Scam."
Former Republican Senator John Tower, investigator of the Reagan/Bush Iran Contra scandel involving a variety of different C.I.A. criminal activities, died in a plane crash on April 5th, 1991, one day after Sen Heinz was killed. Both men had close ties to George Bush Sr. who was a former C.I.A. director in the mid 1970's. Did they have information that needed to be silenced?
Progressive Missouri Senator Mel Carnahan, died in a plane crash, three weeks before election day. He defeated unpopular John Ashcroft posthumously. John Ashcroft was then appointed Attorney General by George W.
Paul Wellstone, the most vocal Senator opponent of the Bush administration and the status quo policies of both Democrats and Republicans, strong champion of civil rights, environmental causes, hikes in minimum wage and health care reform died in a plane crash in Oct. 2002 with his wife and daughter.
Two more individuals who fought for truth and against the hypocricy of this country.
Abbie Hoffman, the most visable opponent of the Viet Nam war, U.S. policy in Central America, civil rights worker in the south. He said, "Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon". "Death from suicide" at 52 in 1989.
Reporter and writer for the San Jose Mercury News, Gary Webb, died of a "self inflicted gun whot wound" in his Sacremento, Ca. home in Dec. 2004. Best known for his series in the San Jose Mercury exposing the C.I.A.'s complicity in the import of cocaine into the U.S. in the 1980's during the U.S. onslaught on the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Can anyone truly believe these deaths are all coincidences and happenstance in the whole scheme of things, no connection to anything? Just happened? These deaths were murders or assassinations, others have been dismissed as accidents. All of their lives bear a large common denominator. These people were all for the rights of people, egalitarian, compassionate, progressive, anti-war, anti-racist and were fightning unselfishly to right the wrongs of this society.
Sonia Sanchez, on the death of Malcom X, said, "you will regret this; you know you cannot continue to kill these people who love us and need us, we must not continue to let this happen".
The climate for killing people who dissent, the corporatization of our and other peoples lives, the lackey press and politicians is continuing. We must not slink from working harder and speaking out for justice. We must keep stepping up against the lies.
