Interesting news from The Guardian newspaper here in London that it is to collaborate more closely with the The New York Times in relation to the material being provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden:
The arrangement was made when the Guardian was faced with demands from the UK government to hand over the GCHQ files it had in its possession. "In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, the Guardian decided to bring in a US partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden. We are working in partnership with the NYT and others to continue reporting these stories," the Guardian said in a statement.It appears that The Guardian is bringing in a major US newspaper in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the free-speech protections provided by the US Constitution:
Journalists in America are protected by the first amendment which guarantees free speech and in practice prevents the state seeking pre-publication injunctions or "prior restraint".
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It is intended that the collaboration with the New York Times will allow the Guardian to continue exposing mass surveillance by putting the Snowden documents on GCHQ beyond government reach. Snowden is aware of the arrangement.This is relevant to this forum because one of the things that has always baffled me is why the so-called free press in the US has never shown much interest in investigating and reporting on the JFK assassination. And, of course, top of the list of those showing a distinct lack of interest is the New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print"). Bear in mind that the various governmental (and related agency) pronouncements on and reports into the assassination were full of shortcomings and inconsistencies, any number of which would have provided the ideal "in" to an editor interested in finding out the truth.
But this never happened - why not?
Recently, I have been re-reading Martin Schotz's 1996 book "History Will Not Absolve Us". Dr. Schotz presents a thought-provoking response to this question, and one I would like to share with forum members.
Schotz argues that the assassination was not considered a threat to the security of the country because most people in power at the time considered it to be an acceptable, even necessary, act:
I suggest we consider that possibly the assassination of JFK was not a wound to American democracy. It was a wound against certain political forces in our democracy, but not to the democracy itself. In fact, I submit that the assassination was totally within the framework of how American democracy works, and that this was instantly the opinion of people who were knowledgeable, sophisticated, and leading participants in the so-called democratic politics of this society.
The notion that American democracy was not wounded by the assassination of its President is supported by the fact that virtually every segment of the establishment - right, left, and center - lined up to support the mystery cover-up and participate in the pseudo-debate. Not a single member of the Kennedy Administration resigned in protest over what had been done. Not a single member of Congress resigned in protest. Not a single judge in the entire country, not to mention a single justice of the Supreme Court, resigned in protest over the role of the Chief Justice of the United States in this case. The President's brother did not resign in protest, and the entire Kennedy family publicly accepted the Warren Report, albeit with their behind-Âthe-scenes maneuvering and their delayed and lukewarm endorsements. Not a single editor of a major newspaper resigned over being forced to swallow this obviously phony story (Schotz, 1996:17).Schotz goes on to argue that the reason that none of these resignations occurred was that some or all of the people concerned considered that the assassination was an unfortunate but required act. In other words, it was
acceptable to them:
But how is it possible? How can you have a democracy in which there is a coup and literally no one, not a single person in power, protests by resigning? You could have this only if it is not really a coup. You could have this only if, no matter how distasteful it may be, all these people are prepared to find what had been done ultimately acceptable. The fact that for American democracy it was acceptable for the CIA to shoot Kennedy is proven by the fact that it was accepted virtually without protest.
At first glance this idea may seem disorienting, shocking, even bizarre. Is it really conceivable that it is acceptable to the entire spectrum of the governmental establishment, the entire spectrum of the university establishment, the entire spectrum of our media establishment that the CIA can very obviously carry out the murder of a president? This seems crazy. But it is what happened. It was accepted, ergo it was acceptable (p.18).
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We are thus left with a conclusion that the President's murder by the CIA was accepted throughout the entire establishment. Indeed the liberal leadership ultimately confirmed that the murder of the President by the CIA and the military could go unpunished and unrevealed without disturbing our constitutional process. It is they who made the decision that the murder of the President by the CIA would be politically acceptable. And as a result, this murder did not cause the ripple of a single resignation. It was business as usual. This is not an ideological conclusion. This is a logical conclusion based on a factual analysis of the way our democracy reacted to the crime (p.23).Now in further consideration of this proposal I am hoping that forum members will not dwell overlong on the various media operations conducted by the intelligence services (Mockingbird, Nightingale, and such like), nor on their payment to journalists to "devise and place propaganda" (a la Church Report). These were active efforts by the intelligence services to ensure that the truth remained hidden.
I am more specifically interested in the idea that some or all of the power elite were fully capable of working out what had happened, but CHOSE to go along with the official storyline and to remain silent about the obvious flaws with it. And that they made this choice because, at some level, they agreed that the assassination was a necessary evil to restore stability to the American political system.
So, the question is ... do you think that a significant part of the reason for the silence of the establishment was (and continues to be) that this establishment considered President Kennedy to be more of a risk to the American political system than his assassination was?
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/23/guardian-news-york-times-partnership
Schotz, E. M. (1996), History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy. Brookline, Massachusetts:Kurtz, Ulmer & DeLucia.
