A few years ago at a retreat I was outlining the dark side of the triumphalist mythology of progress. A man raised his hand and shared the following story. “When I was a boy in the early 1960s,” he said, “my father took me aside one day and said, ‘Son, we are living at the greatest moment of the greatest nation ever to exist on this earth. Anything is possible.’”
"Yes, I take as a given that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy." Yeehaw! Charles is finding his voice! Your essays and books are a great inspiration for me, but during this pandemic until recently I felt that you were a bit too detached and neutral and too careful not to choose sides. In your last few post the warrior is coming out, keep it up. Yes, we absolutely need compassion, and we also need clarity and strength.
Thank you, Charles. You have a way of speaking about complex issues that reach the heart of the matter. It is incredibly grounding and rejuvenating in times of turmoil, both inner and outer.
Charles, I didn’t realize but by the time I reached the last lines of this essay I had tears in my eyes. No, it isn’t merely optimism but the deep trust you have in humanity. Many years ago when I came across a random post on Facebook about Sacred Economics and I looked you up and started reading The Ascent of Humanity is when my worldview started to shift. This may embarrass you but I consider you along with J.Krishnamurti as the two people who have had the most impact on my Self.
I was four years old when Kennedy was assassinated. I remember my distraught parents showing me the newspaper headline. The fact that I remember so much about where I was and how I felt at the time underscores just how a watershed moment this was. And I am Canadian living in Toronto, I can only imagine how it was for an American.
Thank-you I really appreciate this piece. You provide great clarity about the creation of the environment that has resulted in the situation that all of us have found ourselves. I would add that the "necrosis spread... all became captives of industry" affected many people well beyond the US border. Getting away with such a brazen act in 1963 seems to have emboldened the "Deep State" to continue to enable that necrosis. All resulting in what we are all experiencing today. Utterly morally bankrupt and corrupt.
It is like an alcoholic uncle hitting bottom. There are many possibilities for change and it starts with communication, Disclosure and courage. So beautiful 💗 so true.
I do not live in the USA and do not know when I came to know about the assassination of JFK - I could have even known about it in real time - just... But despite knowing very little about it and all the theories surrounding it I have always had an instinct that this was a major downward turning point - not just for the US but for the planet. This moment stripped from the stage any example of what could be, of how government could serve life.
It is interesting to note the connection between banking and presidential assassinations. Lincoln created the publicly owned greenback to win the civil war. Jackson survived a double pistol misfire after stating “The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the government are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.” Cleveland was shot weeks after he claimed “Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce . . . And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
It makes me wonder what JFK was about to say?
Additionally;
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction. Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets everywhere. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the International Bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects of the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”
Charles, having interviewed you in Bali and followed your work for years, I have to say this amongst is the most edgy stuff I have seen / read from you. Thanks for having the courage to "go there" .
Excellent piece; thank you. I'm not so hopeful, though, that Disclosure of the information behind the assassination, in itself, would lead to Disclosure of the many other secrets held by the Corporatocracy, or that, so long after the fact, would cause many people who trust government to decide that their trust was misplaced. I would like to believe that was possible, but I have my doubts. Cognitive dissonance is very powerful (look at the current crisis to get a feel for that), and tough to dispel Also, don't let us hold our collective breath waiting for such Disclosure; that would not end well for us.
"Today huge numbers of people believe the election was stolen, that the vaccines are a deliberate depopulation scheme, even that the moon landing was fake, the earth is flat, and Santa Claus is a hoax."
This is a weird collection of items, hard to know what to make of it. My own position has always been to try believe nothing.
About the moon landing: I wasn't there and am not qualified to know for sure what happened, whether the landing was fake or real.
The stolen election: I follow Sydney Powell on Telegram and am convinced she is sincere. Her lawyerly record is strong, so she's not an idiot. Why is she risking her career on this matter? Because right-wing folks are crazy? The election looks for all the world like it was stolen to me on the evidence she and others present. But I may be wrong; I wasn't there. However, I was there in Berlin when a family friend, who happened to work for the CIA, told me with calm certainty that G. W. Bush would win the election against Al Gore. It was in the summer, so months before the elections.
As for the vaccines, the logic I apply is the same. I find the idea vaccines could be "kill shots" unconvincing, but people far more qualified to judge than me, including ex vice president of Pfizer Dr Mike Yeadon and Nobel-prize winner Dr Luc Montagnier are of this opinion, as are so many other doctors and lawyers. I'm not convinced by their arguments, but I certainly don't dismiss them; I'm not qualified. I have been against lockdowns from the start, and against all measures said to slow down the spread of a 'disease' whose insanely broad symptom list once included "covid toes". John Ioannides of Stanford University attributes any excess mortality in 2020 to lockdown measures (btw, Germany's mortality rate declined by 2.4% in 2020). Furthermore, it is clear that the PCR test is insufficient on its own – as the WHO conceded earlier this year – to detect infection by virus. PCR is this 'pandemic's' "gold standard", but in fact tells us little to nothing about who died of what. Ergo, we have no solid evidence there was a pandemic at all. I should also add here, in case anyone reading this thinks I'm crazy, that the swine-flu 'pandemic' of 2009-2010 was declared a "fake pandemic" by The Council of Europe in 2010. The vaccine developed at that time was withdrawn after people developed narcolepsy after being vaccinated. I think there were 700 cases in Europe. The swine-flu vaccine of 1976 was withdrawn after 25 US citizens died after receiving it, then the acceptable high-water mark. We are at tens of thousands in the US today. My best guess re. the vaccines is that they are part of forcing blind obedience with the direction of travel here being global totalitarianism. That the vaccines are being forcibly mandated in several countries around the world, on almost no evidence that they are "safe and effective" and while still in phase 3 trials and thus experimental – in fact the evidence is loud and clear that they ineffective and harmful – should ring alarm bells in all of us. (Look at the data from the UK and Israel, with Israeli citizens now needing four shots to qualify as "fully vaccinated".) Perhaps it is pure greed that motivates this madness, but my goodness, that idea is harder to me to accept as plausible than population control; Big Pharma risks losing all trust when the Covid Circus implodes around them: too big a gamble for money gain alone. As such, this whole thing stinks of a desperate Hail Mary in an effort to maintain control of global systems in dire need of reconfiguring, as clearly set out in Klaus Schwab's book "The Great Reset", published in July 2020, if memory serves. (Klaus Schwab is the head and founder of the World Economic Forum. Check out how influential that private organisation is.)
I'll stop there after drifting dangerously towards a rant, but I note again that the addition of "Santa Claus is a hoax" suggests one can't be sure what your position really is. It undermines the whole essay, actually, despite how well it is written. You are an excellent writer, so that is par for the course. What matters more is the truth and getting as close to it as we can: the process of being courageously, open-mindedly skeptical. Theorising is perfectly fine. Discarding theories that dissolve in the face of contradictory evidence is how we proceed effectively through the poisoned well of information that today confronts us. Ridiculing those who theorise outside the mainstream narrative is not mature, nor is it helpful. I speak as a man who has respected your work since 2008, and been profoundly influenced by it.
Thank you for this article Charles. 'Disclosure' here is such a vital and important word and so perfect, as it directly counteracts the 'Enclosure' of the Commons, which of course started in the Middle Ages in Europe, and one could argue, was the beginning of all this 'trouble'.
I am so grateful for your essays because many, many writers today covering similar topics make me want to slit my wrists by the end of their pieces, you however, always manage to turn these discourses into something positive and full of hope, and for that I am deeply grateful.
This footage of JFK's body guard get waved off was released anonymously in 2002. Like many I am archiving footage like this expecting it to get censored: https://youtu.be/yJci8_rMFWw
Everything I believe and articulated so well... I was 11 years old sitting between two adults when the news came on the radio. My auntie let go a muffled scream and cried. My mouth opened and said "that man did not kill the president." Even as a child I could feel the LIE that changed America. Charles short explanation explains reality and the connection to Covid and how discourse is the next step. Bravo for saying it so concisely.
I think it's incorrect to assume humans trust authority. Probably okay to assume incompetent humans who rely on authorities for survival appear to cooperate. But most competent humans understand the truth that power corrupts, and don't like it. We tolerate government in return for handling administrative chores we'd rather not perform ourselves, but increasingly resist increasing oppression that inevitably occurs with increasing authority. The solution is assuring government does not become large enough to accumulate enough power to become overtly tyrannical. We have failed to hold that line. We will likely restore the line by reducing the size and scope of our government. The open question is how messy that inevitable reversal will become.
Of course the government conspires against individuals and groups. We generally don't care. We make entertainment of it. We easily tolerate it until it affects us personally, and then only when the impact becomes too egregious to ignore. The only important lesson from past corruption is to remind us it still persists. As Mulder taught us, trust no one. And certainly don't love your rulers.
It was a gorgeous read indeed. I really love those substack articles - and they're giving me a lot of strength, courage and resolve. Much to be grateful for...
So, Kennedy was a true leader that was leading us somewhere?..
I was excited to read this. Perhaps the world of politic is not that corrupted I thought. It is just that it took a wrong turn and history could have been different if courageous leaders would have prevailed at the time.
And then it made me think about Noam Chomsky and his assertion that if the Nuremberg Laws would have been applied, every american president would have been hanged or something not too far from this?
Here what he had to say about Kennedy:
One of Chomsky’s famous sayings starts with, “If the Nuremberg Laws were applied … ” Here’s what he said about Kennedy in that context:
“Kennedy is easy. The invasion of Cuba was outright aggression. Eisenhower planned it, incidentally, so he was involved in a conspiracy to invade another country, which we can add to his score. After the invasion of Cuba, Kennedy launched a huge terrorist campaign against Cuba, which was very serious. No joke; bombardment of industrial installations with killing of plenty of people, bombing hotels, sinking fishing boats, sabotage. Later, under Nixon, it even went as far as poisoning livestock and so on. Big affair; and then came Vietnam; he invaded Vietnam. He invaded South Vietnam in 1962. He sent the US Air Force to start bombing.”
And then in “On Democracy,” a 1996 interview by Tom Morello:
“Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam – Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm. Also laid the basis for the huge wave of repression that spread over Latin America with the installation of Neo-Nazi gangsters that were always supported directly by the United States. That went on and in fact picked up under Johnson.”
*
Yeah, to read that brings confusion in me and seems to weaken the line of reasoning of this essay.
A generous interpretation would be that — at the time, the position of President of United States required to be responsable for deeply immoral actions from the government and what carried hope was that the american people were pushing hard toward a better direction.
The America that Almost Was and Yet May Be
"Yes, I take as a given that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy." Yeehaw! Charles is finding his voice! Your essays and books are a great inspiration for me, but during this pandemic until recently I felt that you were a bit too detached and neutral and too careful not to choose sides. In your last few post the warrior is coming out, keep it up. Yes, we absolutely need compassion, and we also need clarity and strength.
Thank you, Charles. You have a way of speaking about complex issues that reach the heart of the matter. It is incredibly grounding and rejuvenating in times of turmoil, both inner and outer.
Charles, I didn’t realize but by the time I reached the last lines of this essay I had tears in my eyes. No, it isn’t merely optimism but the deep trust you have in humanity. Many years ago when I came across a random post on Facebook about Sacred Economics and I looked you up and started reading The Ascent of Humanity is when my worldview started to shift. This may embarrass you but I consider you along with J.Krishnamurti as the two people who have had the most impact on my Self.
I was four years old when Kennedy was assassinated. I remember my distraught parents showing me the newspaper headline. The fact that I remember so much about where I was and how I felt at the time underscores just how a watershed moment this was. And I am Canadian living in Toronto, I can only imagine how it was for an American.
Thank-you I really appreciate this piece. You provide great clarity about the creation of the environment that has resulted in the situation that all of us have found ourselves. I would add that the "necrosis spread... all became captives of industry" affected many people well beyond the US border. Getting away with such a brazen act in 1963 seems to have emboldened the "Deep State" to continue to enable that necrosis. All resulting in what we are all experiencing today. Utterly morally bankrupt and corrupt.
It is like an alcoholic uncle hitting bottom. There are many possibilities for change and it starts with communication, Disclosure and courage. So beautiful 💗 so true.
I do not live in the USA and do not know when I came to know about the assassination of JFK - I could have even known about it in real time - just... But despite knowing very little about it and all the theories surrounding it I have always had an instinct that this was a major downward turning point - not just for the US but for the planet. This moment stripped from the stage any example of what could be, of how government could serve life.
It is interesting to note the connection between banking and presidential assassinations. Lincoln created the publicly owned greenback to win the civil war. Jackson survived a double pistol misfire after stating “The bold efforts the present bank has made to control the government are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.” Cleveland was shot weeks after he claimed “Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce . . . And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”
It makes me wonder what JFK was about to say?
Additionally;
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction. Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets everywhere. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the International Bankers was the prime reason for the Revolutionary War.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects of the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”
-John Adams
Hmmmmmmm🤔
Charles, having interviewed you in Bali and followed your work for years, I have to say this amongst is the most edgy stuff I have seen / read from you. Thanks for having the courage to "go there" .
Excellent piece; thank you. I'm not so hopeful, though, that Disclosure of the information behind the assassination, in itself, would lead to Disclosure of the many other secrets held by the Corporatocracy, or that, so long after the fact, would cause many people who trust government to decide that their trust was misplaced. I would like to believe that was possible, but I have my doubts. Cognitive dissonance is very powerful (look at the current crisis to get a feel for that), and tough to dispel Also, don't let us hold our collective breath waiting for such Disclosure; that would not end well for us.
"Today huge numbers of people believe the election was stolen, that the vaccines are a deliberate depopulation scheme, even that the moon landing was fake, the earth is flat, and Santa Claus is a hoax."
This is a weird collection of items, hard to know what to make of it. My own position has always been to try believe nothing.
About the moon landing: I wasn't there and am not qualified to know for sure what happened, whether the landing was fake or real.
The stolen election: I follow Sydney Powell on Telegram and am convinced she is sincere. Her lawyerly record is strong, so she's not an idiot. Why is she risking her career on this matter? Because right-wing folks are crazy? The election looks for all the world like it was stolen to me on the evidence she and others present. But I may be wrong; I wasn't there. However, I was there in Berlin when a family friend, who happened to work for the CIA, told me with calm certainty that G. W. Bush would win the election against Al Gore. It was in the summer, so months before the elections.
As for the vaccines, the logic I apply is the same. I find the idea vaccines could be "kill shots" unconvincing, but people far more qualified to judge than me, including ex vice president of Pfizer Dr Mike Yeadon and Nobel-prize winner Dr Luc Montagnier are of this opinion, as are so many other doctors and lawyers. I'm not convinced by their arguments, but I certainly don't dismiss them; I'm not qualified. I have been against lockdowns from the start, and against all measures said to slow down the spread of a 'disease' whose insanely broad symptom list once included "covid toes". John Ioannides of Stanford University attributes any excess mortality in 2020 to lockdown measures (btw, Germany's mortality rate declined by 2.4% in 2020). Furthermore, it is clear that the PCR test is insufficient on its own – as the WHO conceded earlier this year – to detect infection by virus. PCR is this 'pandemic's' "gold standard", but in fact tells us little to nothing about who died of what. Ergo, we have no solid evidence there was a pandemic at all. I should also add here, in case anyone reading this thinks I'm crazy, that the swine-flu 'pandemic' of 2009-2010 was declared a "fake pandemic" by The Council of Europe in 2010. The vaccine developed at that time was withdrawn after people developed narcolepsy after being vaccinated. I think there were 700 cases in Europe. The swine-flu vaccine of 1976 was withdrawn after 25 US citizens died after receiving it, then the acceptable high-water mark. We are at tens of thousands in the US today. My best guess re. the vaccines is that they are part of forcing blind obedience with the direction of travel here being global totalitarianism. That the vaccines are being forcibly mandated in several countries around the world, on almost no evidence that they are "safe and effective" and while still in phase 3 trials and thus experimental – in fact the evidence is loud and clear that they ineffective and harmful – should ring alarm bells in all of us. (Look at the data from the UK and Israel, with Israeli citizens now needing four shots to qualify as "fully vaccinated".) Perhaps it is pure greed that motivates this madness, but my goodness, that idea is harder to me to accept as plausible than population control; Big Pharma risks losing all trust when the Covid Circus implodes around them: too big a gamble for money gain alone. As such, this whole thing stinks of a desperate Hail Mary in an effort to maintain control of global systems in dire need of reconfiguring, as clearly set out in Klaus Schwab's book "The Great Reset", published in July 2020, if memory serves. (Klaus Schwab is the head and founder of the World Economic Forum. Check out how influential that private organisation is.)
I'll stop there after drifting dangerously towards a rant, but I note again that the addition of "Santa Claus is a hoax" suggests one can't be sure what your position really is. It undermines the whole essay, actually, despite how well it is written. You are an excellent writer, so that is par for the course. What matters more is the truth and getting as close to it as we can: the process of being courageously, open-mindedly skeptical. Theorising is perfectly fine. Discarding theories that dissolve in the face of contradictory evidence is how we proceed effectively through the poisoned well of information that today confronts us. Ridiculing those who theorise outside the mainstream narrative is not mature, nor is it helpful. I speak as a man who has respected your work since 2008, and been profoundly influenced by it.
"The Plot to Kill King" by William Pepper does for MLK what Douglass' "Unspeakable" does for JFK.
Thank you for this article Charles. 'Disclosure' here is such a vital and important word and so perfect, as it directly counteracts the 'Enclosure' of the Commons, which of course started in the Middle Ages in Europe, and one could argue, was the beginning of all this 'trouble'.
I am so grateful for your essays because many, many writers today covering similar topics make me want to slit my wrists by the end of their pieces, you however, always manage to turn these discourses into something positive and full of hope, and for that I am deeply grateful.
This footage of JFK's body guard get waved off was released anonymously in 2002. Like many I am archiving footage like this expecting it to get censored: https://youtu.be/yJci8_rMFWw
Everything I believe and articulated so well... I was 11 years old sitting between two adults when the news came on the radio. My auntie let go a muffled scream and cried. My mouth opened and said "that man did not kill the president." Even as a child I could feel the LIE that changed America. Charles short explanation explains reality and the connection to Covid and how discourse is the next step. Bravo for saying it so concisely.
I think it's incorrect to assume humans trust authority. Probably okay to assume incompetent humans who rely on authorities for survival appear to cooperate. But most competent humans understand the truth that power corrupts, and don't like it. We tolerate government in return for handling administrative chores we'd rather not perform ourselves, but increasingly resist increasing oppression that inevitably occurs with increasing authority. The solution is assuring government does not become large enough to accumulate enough power to become overtly tyrannical. We have failed to hold that line. We will likely restore the line by reducing the size and scope of our government. The open question is how messy that inevitable reversal will become.
Of course the government conspires against individuals and groups. We generally don't care. We make entertainment of it. We easily tolerate it until it affects us personally, and then only when the impact becomes too egregious to ignore. The only important lesson from past corruption is to remind us it still persists. As Mulder taught us, trust no one. And certainly don't love your rulers.
It was a gorgeous read indeed. I really love those substack articles - and they're giving me a lot of strength, courage and resolve. Much to be grateful for...
So, Kennedy was a true leader that was leading us somewhere?..
I was excited to read this. Perhaps the world of politic is not that corrupted I thought. It is just that it took a wrong turn and history could have been different if courageous leaders would have prevailed at the time.
And then it made me think about Noam Chomsky and his assertion that if the Nuremberg Laws would have been applied, every american president would have been hanged or something not too far from this?
Here what he had to say about Kennedy:
One of Chomsky’s famous sayings starts with, “If the Nuremberg Laws were applied … ” Here’s what he said about Kennedy in that context:
“Kennedy is easy. The invasion of Cuba was outright aggression. Eisenhower planned it, incidentally, so he was involved in a conspiracy to invade another country, which we can add to his score. After the invasion of Cuba, Kennedy launched a huge terrorist campaign against Cuba, which was very serious. No joke; bombardment of industrial installations with killing of plenty of people, bombing hotels, sinking fishing boats, sabotage. Later, under Nixon, it even went as far as poisoning livestock and so on. Big affair; and then came Vietnam; he invaded Vietnam. He invaded South Vietnam in 1962. He sent the US Air Force to start bombing.”
And then in “On Democracy,” a 1996 interview by Tom Morello:
“Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam – Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm. Also laid the basis for the huge wave of repression that spread over Latin America with the installation of Neo-Nazi gangsters that were always supported directly by the United States. That went on and in fact picked up under Johnson.”
*
Yeah, to read that brings confusion in me and seems to weaken the line of reasoning of this essay.
A generous interpretation would be that — at the time, the position of President of United States required to be responsable for deeply immoral actions from the government and what carried hope was that the american people were pushing hard toward a better direction.
I'll have to let this one sit for a while..