John Fitzgerald Kennedy

A Memoir

By Richard E. Noble
The phone rang in our little kitchen. We lived in a tiny apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I spent the first twenty seven years of my life there. It was a mill town with layer after layer of blue collar tenement houses. My mother rarely answered the phone. It was usually never for her but someone calling for one of us kids. We all rushed to her side, ready to grab the phone when she said for whom the call was actually intended. But we were all stopped short, as she hung onto the receiver and began to speak;
“Yes, I know who you are, Bobby. Yes, I know that it is your brother, John, who is running for president.”
“What the ...? Who are you talking to Ma?”
“She’s talking to Bobby; you know Johnny’s brother.” We all laughed, as she went on as if she were talking to one of our school chums.
“Yes, I realize that tomorrow is Election Day ... Oh yes, I certainly intend to vote for your brother. I understand ... Yes, I certainly will ... I will ... I will! I’m going to be there the first thing in the morning. I wish you and your brother the best of luck ... Oh, don’t you worry Bobby; you have my vote.”
Bobby Kennedy had called our house the night before his brother was elected President of the United States.
J.F.K was one of us.
An Irish Catholic, Massachusetts boy, was going for the presidency. This was as close to home as it could get; our little State, our maligned faith, our dumpy neighborhood, our blue collar apartment in the inner-city slum, and our telephone. It was unbelievable. My mother was talking to Bobby about the election; my mother who was probably the least political person that I have ever known. But, that next morning she donned her winter coat and hat and went prancing off with her pocketbook hanging on her arm. I ran out on the porch. I didn’t know whether to cheer, applaud or what. She looked like a miniature Eleanor Roosevelt parading down Chelmsford Street to the corner where they were all lined up at the voting station.
She had received her orders and was marching to her destiny which was to personally elect John F. Kennedy president. And she did it. It was the closest election of the twentieth century thus far.
Johnny won by slightly more than 100,000 votes. He was the youngest man yet to be elected president - the first Catholic president. And though I was just slightly too young to vote for him myself, he was my president also.
He was the president of all the young people. He was as sharp as a tack. He knew his ABC’s. He had all the answers. The press was no match for him. He was smarter than they were. He smiled, had a huge grin and told jokes about his dad and his wife and brothers and sisters. He was a big tease, just like your older brother, or your own dad. He was a hero during the War. I went to see the movie PT-109 at the local movie theater. I bought his book, “Profiles in Courage”. I still have a copy. It was a real book.
“Profiles in Courage” was no political biography book about how I was born in a log cabin. It was not about himself. It was about men in history who had acted courageously, even if it meant their political careers. John F. Kennedy was more than another pretty face.
“Profiles in Courage” was a book about ideals, about principles. It became a TV series. I can remember lying on the parlor floor with my head up against a hassock watching this week’s excerpt with the whole family. At the end of each episode there was somebody crediting John F. Kennedy, and some bit of his personal idealistic inspiration. If I’m not mistaken, he introduced the show, or signed it off - or something.
John F. Kennedy, the War Hero, who had saved his buddies; the intellectual and Harvard graduate, the Journalist, the TV show writer, the first Catholic president, the youngest elected president, the family man with a picture book wife and regular kids hiding under his desk at the White House, the little rich boy who had a feeling for the working stiff. John F. Kennedy, the man who was going to bring peace to the world at last.
By the time I got to college everybody was enrolling in the Kennedy Army for Peace. They called it the Peace Corps. They say that it was really Hubert Humphrey’s idea, but it was Kennedy who pushed and promoted it. Every student that I talked to was joining the Peace Corps. They were all making me feel guilty and hypocritical. Finally we had a president who stopped the tradition of talking about peace while making war; a president who was going to turn it all upside-down. He was going to actively make peace and try to keep the war mongers talking. The whole world got his message and everybody was cheering - except the Russians and Fidel Castro.
Then suddenly it was eyeball to eyeball. The end of the world was on the horizon. But this was O.K. It was all for one and one for all. It was no pull-a-name-out-of-a-hat deal. If we were going to die, we were all going to die at once - BOOM! And who gives a damn. It was a relief. No more hiding under the desks, or looking for a designated bomb shelter, or storing up supplies in the cellar, or contemplating a slow death by some kind of horrid radiation poisoning. If the world really couldn’t be saved, then let’s end it, once and for all. We would prove T. S. Eliot wrong. The world wouldn’t end with a whimper but a BANG! We finally got this chicken-chicken stuff over with. Khrushchev pushed, and Kennedy pushed back - the Cuban Missile Crisis.
When it was over Khrushchev had blinked. Russian ships were on the TV loading up their ships and heading home with their bombs and missiles. Kennedy had stood up to the bullies and they were tucking their missiles between their legs and heading back to their own school yard. If there was anybody who doubted Kennedy’s policy at that time, I don’t remember that they had time to voice their opinion. The missiles were there; we were on the brink of destruction, and then it was over. It was scary, but we all went through it together - holding our breath.
I have heard many say that Kennedy did it all wrong, we should have invaded Cuba and put Castro to rest. But information from the Russian Archives has since proved that Mister Kennedy and his brother were more than correct. The Russians had tactical nuclear weapons on Cuban soil and submarines off the East Coast of the U.S. with orders to fire if the U.S. had attacked. And due to problems in the Russian communications system the order to retaliate had been given by Khrushchev and couldn’t have been changed in time to stay a holocaust. The East Coast of the United States from Washington D.C. to Tampa Florida would have been gone - along with a heck of a lot more. The incident scared the heck out of both Kennedy and Khrushchev and they consequently had the infamous hot lines installed.
But, Kennedy was a president to whom the presidency wasn’t the culmination of his life and career. He was too young. He was just starting. He was going to really be something special. He would write history or be a movie star, or teach at Harvard. The presidency was just a stop on his way to bigger and better things and everybody knew it.
I was in my college History class at Northern Essex Community College. It was a renovated Haverhill grammar school. It cost me one hundred and fifty bucks a semester. I had a 1946 Desoto, fluid drive that had to be jump-started every day. I parked it on a hill outside the school and everybody watched and laughed each day as, my buddies and I, all pushed it down the hill to get it rolling and then jumped in when I popped it to a start. It was bright yellow, and we called it the Banana Boat. A phrase made popular a few years earlier by Harry Belafonte. This new junior college and the state-wide junior college program was one of Kennedy’s new ideas. A kid of my Class, and my finances, and my academic background had very little hope of getting a college education.
A young office worker stepped into our classroom, unannounced. He walked up to the teacher’s desk and handed him a piece of paper. The teacher read the note, silently. Then he looked up at the class, and spoke:
“The president of the United States has just been shot in Dallas, Texas. The class is dismissed”.
A boy in the back of the class jumped up and started mumbling something about his tuition and that he was paying that teacher’s salary and he wanted the class to continue. The teacher repeated; “Class dismissed.” Then he turned and started gathering things up from his desk. The mouthy boy kept grumbling. He grumbled all the way down the corridor and out into the school yard. In a matter of seconds he had a crowd around him and was in a fist fight.
In the cellar of the grammar school we had a small make-shift cafeteria. It was just vending machines, a small bookstore and a couple of TV’s. We were glued to the TV’s. The girls were all in tears and sobbing. Their eyes were all wet and raw and their noses red from the constant use of tissues and table napkins.
My father had died suddenly and without warning a few years earlier. This assassination was the exact same experience all over again. Once again I was waiting for the doctors to announce that everything would be all right and that he would live, but just as with my dad, this wasn’t to be the case.
I was stunned in the same way as I had been with my dad when they announced that the president was dead. But, I was steeled to the concept of death now. I had no tears. I had no why’s. Death has no explanation. The Nation would go on as it did after Lincoln, after Garrison, after McKinley. It would go on as it has after all the different presidents who had been killed or who had died in office. We had a system, and the system would go on; just as my life had gone on after my father’s death. Just as everyone’s life continues and goes on after the death of any loved one. You have no choice.
But a lot of dreams would now die and be forgotten.
At my father’s funeral, they kept saying; - He was so young - and I thought, silently; does death have an age limit? Is anyone too young or not old enough to die? Hardly. Here was the hope of the world and he had just had his head blown off in Dallas, Texas.
Watching the funeral on the TV was tragic. Little John-John being prodded forward by his mother and saluting the coffin; the horse with no rider; the hauntingly slow, and penetrating cadence of the drums - a whole nation in mourning. The memories of those days never seem to die.
Maybe they’re not supposed to.
John F. Kennedy holds the unique distinction of being the only president to be assassinated more than once.
He was first assassinated on November 22, 1963 when he had his head blown off in Dallas, Texas. Since that initial assassination, John F. Kennedy has been slowly assassinated, day by day, by the written word in newspapers, periodicals, books, and documentary films in what seems to me to be an attempt to prove to us, the American people, that John F. Kennedy was such a terrible man that he really deserved to be killed in the first place.
I view this with the same attitude that I have learned to view rape. It doesn’t matter if she looks like a whore, acts like a whore, or even if she is a whore, no man has the right to take her without her voluntary consent.
Somebody murdered a president of this United States, and not only got away with it, but has since convinced us Americans that it doesn’t even matter.
John F. Kennedy, no matter what his character faults, did not deserve to be murdered. He may have been an S.O.B., but, as someone has said before me, he was our S.O.B. And if our government knows what happened, it is time that we were informed and the information, at least, made available to our historians. I feel that I have a right to know the truth before I die. The time is here.
The suspects in the murder of J.F.K. include nearly everyone. The only prominent person or group not yet accused of the crime, I think, is the Pope.
Things we know: The Warren Commission Report was a blatant cover-up. The autopsy was fudged. There was more than one gunman. It now seems that there were so many bullets fired, one wonders how innocent by-standers weren’t hit - Oswald’s nest, the grassy knoll on the right; the grassy knoll on the left; somewhere from the front; somewhere from the back; from the sewers. Assassins seem to have been all over the place. Shoplifters got better police protection than Oswald received walking up that ramp to his death at the hands of Jack Ruby. Who are they kidding!
To me, one thing does seem to be certain here. A whole bunch of prominent people have been lying on this matter. Why?
Americans have the right to know their own history. Open up all this secret stuff and, at least, let the academics in. Most everybody involved is probably dead by now. It won’t change anything, but it should be important to a people who keep making claim to be living in - the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Richard Milhous Nixon


(President from 1969-1974, 37th)


By Richard E. Noble

John F. Kennedy assassinated. Martin Luther King assassinated. Bobby Kennedy assassinated; the ghettoes a cinder, the college campuses in a state of revolution, the streets of America filled with burning American flags, protesters of one nature or another and people fist fighting in their living rooms.
I remember watching film clips of the 1968 Democratic Convention on TV. I couldn’t believe that it was the United States. I thought it was some banana republic replacing another general who just got his new Polaroid sunglasses in the mail.
Richard Nixon was the Republican and Hubert Humphrey was the Democrat. Nixon couldn’t speak and Humphrey wouldn’t stop. But they both had pretty much the same story. They were going to end the war in Vietnam. Lyndon had quit the battle; no guts, said Harry Truman. But Humphrey had been Lyndon’s vice president and right-hand man. Would he really end the war and reverse his old boss and the whole party? Nixon was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years. Ike promised that he would end the war in Korea and he did. Could Tricky Dickey be of the same cloth?
Nixon cut his political teeth in the post F.D.R., communist bashing era. He won his seat in the Senate, bashing a Mary Cohagan Douglas. He called her a socialist and a commie. He was one of McCarthy’s dirty dozen. He played big in the Alger Hiss case and the Pumpkin Papers. I really think that Tricky Dickey made a lot of enemies during this anti-commie period. He ruined a lot of lives and destroyed the careers of a slew of prominent hopefuls. He and McCarthy and comrades struck down big names. Those attacked, along with their children, friends and relatives came back to haunt Tricky Dickey. Nixon and crowd didn’t pull any punches and weren’t freighted of fabricating information or doctoring photos to make a point.
“I am not a crook,” said Richard Nixon, and there are those today who claim that he never really did anything worse than other of our fearless, political leaders. I always thought that this claim of innocence on Nixon’s part was nothing but hogwash until I started reading about the life and times of other of our presidents. But whatever, there is no doubt that Nixon liked to dabble on the edge of legal legitimacy. In one of his campaigns, he sent out a card which claimed to have been sponsored by conservatives in the Democratic Party. The card advertised the support and backing of these Democrats. He had no such support from any such group. But just to make matters worse, he had these supposed supporters also make a request for financial support on this card, giving HIS address as the proper place to send their contributions. Was this illegal or just cleaver? Well a court decided that this definitely was illegal, and banned such type activity to “future” political aspirants. Nixon, as innovator of this technique, was excused from any prison time. [Was THIS illegal - seems like an even better question.]
Nixon won his first term as president in a very close election with no opposition claims of foul play. But his landslide victory over McGovern in 1973 was not considered quite so evenhanded. It seems that if you were a McGovern supporter and donated money to the cause, you very quickly found yourself and/or your business being investigated by the I.R.S. Was this illegal?
Whatever you might think, this practice had long ago been declared illegal. But was there any proof that Nixon had actually authorized these I.R.S. incursions? Apparently not; so no prison time here either. In the midst of this second campaign we have new political borders being challenged; the Watergate scandal.
Four years had passed and Nixon hadn’t fulfilled his promise of ending the war in Vietnam. A good many people were not very happy about this. One of these people was a man named Daniel Ellsberg. He had worked for the Department of Defense during the Johnson administration, and had access to information with regards to the war. He knew that the Federal Government was lying to the American people about the war under Johnson and now under Nixon. He decided to expose this to the public in what is now known as the Pentagon Papers.
Nixon had been working on stopping “leaks” in the White House. He had put on a staff of “plumbers”. In the case of Ellsberg it was decided by the administration that he was a traitor to his country and was “undermining the war effort” by giving out secret information to the public and our enemies overseas. Nixon felt that he should be silenced, put in jail or at least discredited.
The “plumbers” or representatives there of broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office looking for information that could discredit him personally. Maybe he was a psychopath, paranoid, or schizophrenic; or possibly something even worse, like a man who cheated on his wife or was queer or dressed “funny” on Wednesday nights.
From the psychiatrist office, the Plumbers then went to the National Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. What they were looking for there is the subject of much speculation[1], but whatever, the bozos got caught. Getting caught is one of the chief qualifications of becoming a criminal. If you never get caught, you can not legitimately claim to be one. Richard Nixon didn’t do any of the breaking and entering, and, at the time, it couldn’t really be proven that he had authorized any of this activity. So why was he threatened with impeachment and once threatened, did he resign?
Well, it seems that Richard Nixon was audio taping his presidency for prosperity. Other presidents had done the same thing. Knowledge of these tapes became known to the investigating committee, and it was discovered that Nixon knew about the illegal activities of his hired Plumbers and then proceeded to make attempts to cover up their exploits. Tricky Dickey was not ahead of his time on this one. This was already considered a crime, and now Tricky Dickey had been caught. So contrary to his claim, Richard Nixon was and is a crook. He broke the law and got caught doing it. So then why didn’t he go to prison?
This is really one of the most outstanding episodes in American presidential history. Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, had been indicted or found guilty or convicted of tax evasion. (Richard Nixon at a later date was also found guilty of tax evasion, and was fined 300,000 dollars.) Richard Nixon then appointed Gerald Ford, vice president, after which he conveniently resigned the presidency. Gerald Ford then promptly pardoned and absolved Nixon of his sins and any prison time that he might have had coming.
So there you go a Russian classic novel, “Crime and No Punishment”. But nevertheless Richard Nixon must be awarded the prize of being America’s first legitimately criminal president – even though he did no actual prison time – he did “plea bargain”.

Old Man and Oysters

Old Man and Oysters

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble
An old man came walking into the restaurant. I had to look twice. This old man had grown old right before my eyes. A lot of this type thing has been going around in my world lately. Little girls who I just last saw scrambling around on a floor were now mothers themselves; teenagers I once knew somehow became school teachers and policemen; my one time paperboy is now a marine colonel and this old man was once a middle aged man I knew. He had a bulldozer and a dump truck when last I saw him. He cleared my lot as a matter of fact. But there he was sitting over in a corner of this restaurant with his ball cap on, reading the menu.
I gave him a look and a big smile when he came in but he didn’t recognize me - it had been a long time. I kept looking over at the old timer because I was still somewhat shocked. I could look at his face and remember just how he looked thirty years ago. He was basically the same today - his cheeks a little hollowed, his step more tentative, his gaze slightly glassy - but basically the same guy. He had that same big smile and that constantly bemused look. I had absolutely no doubt as to who he was. He took off his ball cap and placed it on the table - and I suddenly realized why he always were a baseball cap.
When the waitress came over he joked and laughed and put in his order. The special for the day in this little seafood community that has been my home for so many years was raw oysters on the half shell. Oysters have been caught right out in the bay in this area for decades - maybe even a century or so.
My wife and I were there for the oysters. We had already downed four dozen and we were now sitting back and sloshing down the last of our draft beer.
As I glanced over every now and then to check on my old neighbor, I noticed that he had gotten the raw oysters also - and he was having the same trouble that we were having. For some reason the oyster shucker had not cut the oysters away from the bottom shell. That’s not a major catastrophe but it is a little annoying to have to be scrapping the oysters out of the shell. And, although one might expect something like this in New York, one didn’t expect it in this little oystering community - where everybody knew better.
The old man struggled with the raw oysters attempting to scrape them away from the shell with his tiny fork. I could see that he was getting a little annoyed. That seems to happen more and more often to “older folks”. He began looking around for the waitress as he played around with his oysters. But she was busy. The place was packed and she was running all over the place. Finally, seeing that the oysters were being shucked no more than five steps away from his table - at the little raw bar - he rose from his seat picked up his straw basket lined with deli paper and headed for the raw bar.
I could see that he had developed a little case of the “shakes”. His straw basket was giggling in his hand like a Spanish maraca. He walked straight ahead concentrating on his goal and trying to catch the oyster shucker’s eye - not noticing that juice and water from in his basket was sloshing out of his straw tray all over the place - most heavily down the front of his nicely pressed tan trousers. He was spilling so much water over himself that I almost jumped up from my seat to run and help. My wife saw my agitation and she turned to take a look. She watched as he continued drenching himself all the way over to the raw bar. We both looked at each other and smiled.
As teenagers we probably would have witnessed this event and giggled and snickered but now, being just a few years behind my good neighbor, a sadness comes along with the slight amusement. It is really sad but, like a couple of insensitive kids, one has to laugh.
After he got his oysters cut away from the bottom shell, laughing and chatting all the while, he turned and headed back to his seat. I forced my wife to turn around and watch. It was the same on the way back to his table as it was on the way over - if not worse. The poor old boy was soaked.
When he sat down at his table he gathered up a fresh napkin and proceeded to spread it out onto his lap. Of course when he looked down at his lap he was completely shocked. How had his lap become soaked with water? He stared down at his pants and my wife and I could just hear the gears moving. “My god, what did I do ... piss my pants? I didn’t feel anything. There must be something wrong here.” Suddenly he looked up to the ceiling. That must be it. The damn ceiling leaks.
The ceiling was one of those warehouse type deals. All the rafters and pipes were left visible for the effect. When my old buddy saw the big round pipes running across the rafters, he had a revelation. One of them damn pipes up there must be leaking. When the waitress came to his table we watched the silent movie.
The old man says something. They both look down at his lap. The poor waitress is horror struck. She grabs up some napkins and starts scrubbing at the poor old man’s crotch. The old man’s face turns red - then the waitress’ face follows. The old man wards her off. He says something and then they both gaze up at the ceiling and stare at the giant cream colored pipes running across the rafters. The man continues to talk as the waitress shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. My wife and I now had our napkins up over our faces trying to disguise our laughter.
But I must say we weren’t laughing at the poor old cougar; we were laughing with him or at ourselves - because without doubt in a very few years even with the grace of God there we are. And one day Sonny, if you’re lucky enough, even you.

Blaise Pascal 162316

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662 A.D.)

Philosophers

By Richard E. Noble

Blaise Pascal was a child prodigy, a mathematical genius. In his teens he is credited, supposedly, with discovering geometry on his own, and inventing an adding machine; the first such “machine” ever in history. He also formulated the laws of probability, and bunches more. But in all “probability”, Blaise was most probably a psychological whacko. He was extremely self-abusive. Nearing the end of his rather short life of thirty-nine years, he actually tortured himself with contrived devices. He believed that man’s purpose in life was to suffer and then to die. If life does not provide enough suffering on its own, you should help it out, I guess. And if death doesn’t come soon enough it would behoove a “good” man to seek it out. I say he was a whack-o; he claimed to be nothing more than a good Christian.
He had a big problem with affection. He wouldn’t hug anybody, not even his sister’s children. He admonished his sister for calling another woman beautiful, telling his sister never to say such things again for she knew not what evil thoughts she might be inspiring in others. Ough Ohhh! I think Blaise had the extended “pinky” problem. I think that if Blaise would have had a little flame light in his heart for maybe a little Rose or a Gertrude, he might have come to a much better understanding of the science and probable predictions of “hugging” and he “probably” would have led a much happier life.
Another of his achievements in the realm of thought is his development of what is called Pascal’s wager. He said that if it came to a choice in your mind of believing in God or not believing in God, you should place your bet on belief in God; because believing provides an opportunity for heaven, while not believing provides only nothingness or hell.
Yes, but I would add that if you are prone to take such a “calculating” attitude, you should go a step further, and take the choice of Hinduism over Christianity. At least with the God of Hinduism you are offered more that one fleeting, confusing chance at life to determine the moral “truth” of this existence. I might also add that if given the choice of one confusing episode with life determining one’s fate for a possible eternity of endless suffering in hell, I would think that the most of us, even given our basic impetuousness, would never take such a gamble, and thus a “rational” human race would never have been born.

Ronald Wilson Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan
(President - 1981-1988)

Biographical Essay

By Richard E. Noble
Ronald Reagan’s political career begins in the post F.D.R. era and the period called McCarthyism. Reagan, at the time, was the president of the Screen Actors Guild and a McCarthy-ite, like his buddy Richard M. Nixon. Reagan was one of those who went before the McCarthy Committee and ratted on his friends and associates. He, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart, were all of the same political attitude. I don’t really think that Bogart had the so called patriotic, anti-Communist motivation of Reagan and Stewart. Bogart was just cowardly. In honor of that position or characterization Bogart was cast in his next movie, “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”, to coincide with that public perception. He was a big success in duplicating the behavior of a coward.

It is suggested that Reagan may have lost his first wife over this political change of character. He was a Democratic. He went from Democrat to McCarthyite to Republican. Reagan claims to have “seen the light”, but his turn from a defender of the poor and destitute to a heroic supporter of the rich and famous may have been somewhat influenced by his romance and eventual marriage to his second wife, the daughter of a multimillionaire, but whatever...

Reagan came to redeem us from the Carter malaise, and in his first term as president, he did. Carter, in the campaign, had accused Reagan of being “trigger happy”. Reagan had, after all, been an advocate and defender of the Barry Goldwater candidacy. Reagan’s eventual gunboat philosophy and ability to bomb anybody anywhere frightened the heck out of a lot of Democrats. But, it seemed to work. Of course, there are those that claim that he planted the seeds to our current terrorist’s problems, but it is easier to blame Clinton.

Reagan is another of our non-general/non-lawyer presidents. He was only a war hero in the movies. In real life, he was an actor and radio announcer, In his first day in office, the 444 day Iran Hostage Crisis ended. A dilemma that Carter couldn’t seem to solve was ended in one day, seemingly by Ronald Reagan presence alone. While Republicans roared with delight, Democrats sat in suspended contemplation, wonder, admiration and bewilderment. How had he done it? The answer seemed to come to many around the year 1986 in the form of the Iran Contra affair.

It was suddenly discovered, against all of Reagan’s personal protestations that he was, in fact, playing Let’s-Make-a-Deal with the radical Iranian government. Not only was he trading arms for hostages, which he promised that he never, ever would do, but he was involved in a whole array of other very suspicious activities. These activities included subverting the Congress who it seems were not even informed or aware of these arms sales or of any monies earned from these sales; trading weapons illegally, via a Jewish Government intermediary, to hostile, hostage taking Iran; hiding the illegally gained profit in a Swiss bank; and smuggling drugs, and financing revolutionary guerrilla activities which had already been denied funding by Congress due to the inability to determine the good guys from the bad guys.
In “the Secret War against the Jews” by John Loftus and Mark Aarons the authors claim that George Herbert Walker Bush was the real mastermind of this operation and Reagan was once again “napping.”

Ronald Reagan then was brought before an investigating committee. Obviously suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, it quickly became evident that he could barely remember anything. Ollie North who had originally been selected as the fall guy refused to fall and the ex-General Poinderter took the hit.
Ollie swore under oath that to his understanding the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, was completely aware and approved his activities. In fact, he restated this in the very first pages of his memoir.
Reagan may have relieved our malaise but now as he turned to walk away we saw a mask of the face of Richard Nixon strapped to the back of his head. Unlike Nixon, he didn’t try to cover up his misdeeds; he just couldn’t remember any of them.
It seems interesting to me that with all of the misdeeds and illegal activity of the Iran Contra affair, the only thing that the investigating committee was interested in was whether or not the president had authorized or was aware of the diversion of the illegal funds that had been gained from the transaction and deposited in a Swiss bank account. It didn’t matter that he had lied to all of the American people about a very, very important point of American policy; refusing to trade arms for hostages. It didn’t matter that he may have lied, subverted, or somehow misled the entire United States Congress by selling Government property (missiles, rockets and the like) without their knowledge and or permission. I hate to be so blunt, but in real life this would be called stealing ... robbery
embezzlement, something! Taking something that doesn’t belong to you and then selling it to somebody else and then keeping the money in a Swiss bank account? ... To determine that such behavior is against the law does not take a political scientist, or a Harvard law school expert. And then the fact that a group of men who were supposedly authorized by him personally or his close representatives in the Government, C.I.A. director Casey, and others, to smuggle drugs, sell them for a profit and use the money to buy weapons for the political overthrow of a neutral government; thus, supporting a group who had already been determined unworthy by the United States Congress, also has to be considered somewhat criminal, I should think.

Then we must also wonder - if Ronald Reagan could authorize all of that with a clear conscience, could it also be possible that all of this dirty dealing had actually started way back in campaign number one?
Is anyone now investigating the possible treasonous behavior of Mister Reagan cutting a arms for hostages deal while competing with the then incumbent Jimmy Carter?

I mean, come on, the very day of his inauguration they release the hostages? In light of what we now know about the Reagan administration, this must loom as a very and highly probable possibility.

Now I do agree that it is too late to have Ronald Reagan executed like the Rosenbergs, or put in jail for life in light of his Alzheimer’s condition. And really there was no declared war with Iran at the time, but then there was no war with Russia at the time of the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss and others who we convicted and punished in the past - in the case of Hiss, punished for much less egregious behavior; in the case of the Rosenbergs, for transferring information that Harry Truman offered to share with the Russians a few years earlier.

Ronald Reagan, it does seem very likely as a private citizen, cut a deal with a country that had for all extent and purposes declared war with us by taking our embassy and its representatives hostage - a flagrant violation of international law.

If Jane Fonda is labeled a traitor for giving succor and comfort to an enemy by sitting on a tank, what do we call a person who steals a tank from the U.S. Government then sells the tank to an enemy, along with a few missiles and other military hardware? A patriot? I think not. A Republican seems to be as accurate as we can get, I suppose. And may I paraphrase a famous Republican hero and say: Extremism in the name of undermining American government and American principles and ideals is not patriotism.

A few other things that we can thank Mr. Reagan for are: A national debt greater than the accumulated debt of all of the other presidents combined - a debt that for the first time in history grew at an even faster rate than the U.S. economy (and inflation) could compensate for.

It was during Mr. Reagan’s administration that most terrorists the world is now attempting to subdue were bought, supplied, or financed - this includes Osama bin Ladin, the Contras, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and probably any others that we may be hearing about in the years to come.

He will also be remembered as the biggest modern day union buster since his name sake Woodrow Wilson and his personal hero Calvin Coolidge - Ronnie made firing people and cutting worker’s wages heroic instead of a disgrace.

He also killed the Public Higher Education idea for good. No longer will Americans look forward to the day that their child, if qualified, will be able to go to college for free. Instead they can look forward to paying off a debt greater than their poor parents ever imagined.

Ronnie encouraged his business friends to take their jobs overseas and with the help of a few of his friends gave them the scam of “cooking” the books.

It was Ronnie’s spending that brought us both the saving and loan and the commercial banking collapses - this is a fiasco that we have still not seen the end of and was the biggest payoff from the people (taxpayers) to a Capitalist business enterprise in all of American History.

But most of all we can thank Ronald Reagan for reviving the spirit and practice of war here in the United States and around the world - “Ronnie” set the groundwork with Granada and Tripoli, which gave his assistant the courage to attack Panama followed by Desert Storm and now Junior has brought us full cycle to Vietnam (Iraq) all over again; this has all served to achieve the main objective of re-establishing an international arms race that will certainly please his old Death Valley boss GE and others - soon all the world will be buying or seeking the where-with-all to start their own nuclear projects. We are probably looking forward to the greatest arms race in all of history. But what should we have expected from the spokesman and loyal employee of one of the greatest arms producers in the world. Oh and by the way, the first thing Ronnie did when he got into office was give General Electric the greatest tax break in the history of the Company. By the time Ronnie was done, GE went from paying hundreds of millions in taxes to having the United States government owing them money - they actually got a credit.

Ronnie may have been loyal to his wife and his ex-employer but he was a traitor to his class, to his roots and ancestry, to the workingman of America and to the American system of government.

BOYS AND GIRLS

BOYS AND GIRLS

Poem

By Richard E. Noble

It all begins with little girls who giggle and chide,
and little boys who twiddle and hide.

Then pink bows give way to rosy breasts,
and baseball gloves to hairy chests.

And then it’s ... Would you like to dance?
and breathless moments we call romance

filled with starry nights and tear filled eyes,
and tender moments bathed in love’s sighs.

It’s Christmas and candy, and everyone’s dream.
It’s lipstick and kisses ... it’s roses ... it’s strawberries
and cream;

followed by golden slippers, and silken vails,
a blushing bride and tuxedo tails.

It’s two by two and all that’s due,
to a boy and girl in love their whole life through.

Then with hardly a notice, it’s bubbly eyes and goo-goo cries,
it’s ‘Mommy’ ... ‘Daddy’ runny noses and teary eyes.

Before you know it, it’s swimming meets, P.T.A. and cookie jars,
payment books, baiting hooks, and second hand cars.

Then what do you know were closing the show,
and all our thoughts are back to rosy breasts with little pink bows,

and memories of sweet little girls who giggle and chide,
and bashful boys who twiddle and hide.

So squeeze your tickets and hold on tight
to the fleeting moments,
the hugs and kisses,
and those sweet smelling seconds of romantic flight
through the smiles and tears of life’s pale moon light.

The Secret War Again

The Secret War Against the Jews

John Loftus and Mark Aarons

Book review

By Richard E. Noble
John Loftus was a former prosecutor for the U.S. Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit. He has been a consultant for CBS and ABC. And he is now the director of the Jewish Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg Fl. - quite and achievement for an Irish Catholic born in Boston. His co-author, Mark Aaron’s is a broadcaster and investigative reporter who lives in Sydney Australia.
For the most part I do not usually read books of this type - “I Spy” books. I have read a few but they are beyond my mental deviousness. By the time you usually get done reading one of these books you are no longer capable of distinguishing up from down or right from left. This book is no different but I chose to read it because of John Loftus’ unique background and qualifications and because the first part of the book was to deal with “history” - pre-cold war and then through the cold war; the period from 1920 to 1947. I wanted to see if the spy version of history ran parallel with the historian’s versions that I have been reading.
From this perspective Mr. Loftus’ book does support and corroborate what I have been reading and the insights that I have been presuming. I am referring here to the first 100 pages - the rest of the book is food for speculative thought for me. I could not verify it from any of my readings and though the book contains nearly 150 pages of footnotes the footnotes are not of a typical nature. When you turn from the text to go to the footnote you find that the footnote lists an interview or a conversation with a “secret” source who can not reveal his identity. The book does contain many valid source notes but a good amount is of this secret, unrevealable nature. So the bottom line is that the book requires and lot of “faith” - which is not one of my strong points.
The book suggests an on-going “conspiracy” among the various powers of the world to undermine the Jews and their attempts to establish the nation of Israel. At first thought this seems ludicrous, but when put beside what I have already read with regards to the intrigues involved with the establishment of Nazism, fascism, Communism and the Western world anything becomes possible.
It seems that in terms of these traditional concepts the Arabs are the Nazis and the Jews are the Communists. Just as the West (Capitalist wealth) built, surreptitiously, the fascists and the Nazis (Mussolini and Hitler) to combat Communism (Stalin/labor revolution) only to have it backfire into World War II; so too has it been with the Jews (Communist) and the Arabs (Nazis).
This conspiracy begins with three main characters - Jack Philby, a British spy, Ibn Saud, Arab leader, and Allen Dulles, free world capitalist profiteer and head of American CIA. A biographer of Allen Dulles has written a book that was entitled “Gentleman Spy”. But after all that I have read about Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles, I would not consider either of them to be gentleman - in fact it is getting harder and harder to even considered them as Americans. Mr. Loftus accuses them of being two of the most corrupt and vicious traitors in all of American History. For those of you out there who are lovers or defenders of the American CIA, I challenge you to start reading about Allen Dulles.
Early on we learn about “Jack” Philby and his son, double agent Kim Philby; Ibn Saud and the Nazi and Wahhabi connection, and a mixture of U.S., British, and Russian Spies, the Balfour Declaration and all the various and nefarious intrigues surrounding the establishing of the State of Israel. The synopsis is clearly pro-Jewish. The early Zionist legitimately struggled, worked, bought and over-paid for all they possess in the area, according to the authors.
We know from reading conventional history that during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s the Jews were not the world’s favorite people. The spirit of anti-Semitism was not just in Germany but extended all over the world.
I have read many histories and attempts at explaining the source of this world hatred of the Jews - most of it pointing to the Jews as Christ killers, but Mr. Loftus does not find this entirely credible and on page 18 he explains; “The most persistent explanation for the hatred of the Jews by some Christians and Moslems is that they refused to accept Jesus and were punished for pursuing their own faith. Yet close to a majority of Jews in Nazi Germany either were agnostic or had been converted to Christianity for several generations. People who had never set foot in a synagogue and who were physically indistinguishable from others in the Aryan genetic pool found themselves loaded into boxcars and taken to death camps. Religious affiliation, on its own, cannot be ascribed as the source of prejudice ... Nearly 75 percent of Jews in Israel today are secular ... In language, culture and habits, the Hebrews and non-Hebrew Canaanite tribes were virtually indistinguishable. What made the cousins differ was literacy. What made the Jews unique to all other early cultures was that literacy became an obligation for the masses ... eighteen centuries ahead of the rest of the world, the Jews had compulsory public education. This early religious commitment to literacy was the secret of continuing Jewish success and the source of consistent envy ... For the next two thousand years the Jews were the only literate nomads on the face of the earth.”
So according to Mr. Loftus, the Jews educated their children and consequently their children became successful wherever they went in the world. Their success made them the envy of the neighborhood and community and therefore everyone wanted to beat them up, torture them to death and exterminate them as a race.
I don’t know if I can buy that explanation either. That blames the whole thing on ignorance, stupidity and jealousy. From what I can see some of the biggest and worst haters of the Jews have been the wealthy, the better educated and the very successful - it wasn’t a poor against the rich “thing” totally either.
The human race and the world at large have exhibited a similar attitude towards the black race. It is certainly not because they are well educated and envied by anybody.
Women in general have been treated miserably by all societies all over the world and for centuries - women are of all races, all religions and all classes. Why has the human race in general, chose to abuse women? Why do Mother’s abuse their children; why to husbands abuse their wives; why to children abuse their siblings and other children? Why is war so prevalent throughout all of human history? Why do living things eat other living things? If you believe in God, why did He create disease, suffering, pain, death and ... Hell? If you don’t believe in God or not, you must realize that abuse is indigenous to the life experience for the birds, the bees, the butterflies and the humans alike. We don’t need to know the cause of it - we only need to stop it - to control it and eventually eradicate it from our lives and hopefully the world.
We also have the Bible and its ancient superstitions to pile on top of the Jews. This seems to be our modern-day pagan mythology. If it wasn’t the Jews, it would be some other group. The human race is forever bent on violence, hate and the destruction of one group or another. They were doing the same thing and exhibiting this same behavior before the first Jew ever existed.
But let’s get off the philosophy and back to the politics. This political conspiracy against the Jews can be better understood as we link it up with the recent historical rivalries.
Just as the Western Industrialists and wealth owners and controllers used their wealth and power to support and build fascism and Nazism after World War I in western Europe while all the while pretending to champion the rights of the workers and the common man - even to the extent of including the Communist/Stalin as ally during World War II - so too was it with the Jews and the Arabs according to this account. While pretending to support the Jews the real money was going to the Arabs via “secret’ channels.
In the light of what is happening today this all seems rather far fetched. But when we note the progress of many of the Arab countries since World War I, it would be hard to deny that somebody has been supplying these folks with lots and lots of money. You say; Well they have all that oil. Yes, but that oil didn’t just jump out of the ground. So for those who have the money to invest who would you choose to back; the Arabs who have Oil, or the Jews who have nothing but a sad story and an excess of zeal and determination?
The book deals on a conspiracy and the hypocrisy that follows along with it - it gives the notion at times that “everyone” was of like mind and in on it. But I wonder if it isn’t more that different parties or groups in the power structures were choosing and supporting different sides - and often making choices in direct conflict with one another - often illegal and immoral choices. But as the book makes evident many people and businesses clearly get involved in what could only be termed as hypocritical and even treasonous behavior. The more I read my history the more commonplace treason seems to be involved in the lives of men of exceptional zeal in high places - the business world is notoriously treasonous.
The book has some very interesting sections. The section on the “Liberty”, an American spy ship involved in the six day war, I thought was certainly deserving of more investigation.
There was a section on the first Gulf war under George Herbert Walker Bush. The only other person who I have encountered to bring up similar points on the Kuwait situation was President Jimmy Carter. He was on PBS twice discussing this issue at the time. Both times at the crucial point in the interview my TV experienced “atmospheric” interference. I called the director at the station in my area. He feigned amazement and disbelief; I was pissed. He finally agreed to send me a transcript of the program. Jimmy Carter explained about the mutual oil well that was shared between Kuwait and Iraq and the diplomatic intrigues involved in precipitating the war. In this book the authors go further and
basically make the claim that Sadaam was given the green light by the ambassador and the administration.
Another very interesting section was on the Iran Contra episode. Although in previous chapters the book somewhat relieves the accusations against Bush #1 on the grounds that he was too stupid and naive to know any better - in this Contra section he is portrayed as the main character and orchestrator of the espionage. Ronald Reagan is hardly brought into the picture.
All in all I found the book interesting - now if I live long enough to see the legitimate history of these times unfold I will know if this man was accurate or not. The book contains enough substantiated truth to make its nebulous areas plausible - but only time will tell; but then again maybe it won’t.

Commie vs. Nazi

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Here is a problem of American history that has always baffled me.
We fought World War II in order to defeat Nazism and the Imperialism of the Japanese. In this battle, the greatest and most horrid and destructive human confrontation of all time, our allies were among others, Russia and China. The Chinese suffered tragically in this battle, and the Russians may have had more causalities than all of the other allies combined. Without the Russians it is doubtful that the German Nazis would have been defeated. But yet after this cooperative victory is there an embrace of our Russian (and Chinese) allies, and a punishment of our barbaric Nazi enemies?
Not exactly; in fact, not hardly.
After the war billions and billions of taxpayer dollars are dumped and lavished upon our enemies while those who died fighting for our cause, side by side and dead body for dead body, were ridiculed and humiliated.
This is confusing enough, but, it doesn’t end here. Also Nazi criminals and murders who were condemned to death by declaration of an Allied tribunal, at Nuremberg, were secreted out of Germany and into our own country as members of our CIA, our Rocket program, our Science, Research, and investigative agencies. And it goes on. Prominent Nazi’s Murders and successful businessmen who backed the Nazi movement financially were not only not punished, but like Alfried Krupp, the munitions magnate who murdered thousands in his slave factories, had their fortunes restored. Alfried went on with our help to become the richest man in the world before he died.
And then at home we have a powerful movement called McCarthyism that seeks to condemn the incorporation of criminal Nazis within our Government?
No ... there is no mention of Nazis. Suddenly we have no fear of a political philosophy that advocates the eventual destruction, murder and enslavement, of all of its opponents, and we become deathly afraid of a political philosophy which states that a Society should encourage and benefit from those that are able, and give assistance to those who are in need.
If I am not mistaken the only political party ever to be outlawed in this country where we value above all other values the free expression of ideas is the Communist party, while the Nazi Party, a party that has as its fundamental principle the torture, murder, and enslavement of the majority of mankind, is not only not outlawed but its members are protected as they march through neighborhoods of escapees from their Nazi reign of terror.
I don’t get it. Maybe you can help me here?