Recently Barbados, the Island Country in the Caribbean, cut her ties from British Commonwealth and declared herself a republic. She unceremoniously replaced QEII with her President as the Head of State to cut off England's previous legacy in slavery.
It also declared China as a friendly nation to rub salt on an open wound. To strengthen bilateral ties, flights between countries were commenced, and Barbados went so far as to let the Middle Kingdom finance many of its development projects. The Western world decries that this is a prelude to a takeover of Barbados by China via debt traps. Barbados denies, saying that China's loans constitute only 2.5% of the nation's total debt.
America is, of course, hot under the collar because of its proximity to the United States. This kind of reminds us of the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the autumn of 1962, which almost triggered the Third World War.
Soviet SS4 ballistic missiles.
After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Cuba requested Big Brother protection. The Soviet Union offered to park some medium-range missiles in Cuba, just in case. This was discovered by the prying USAF U2 spy planes.
The movie tries to capture the events that unfolded over the next thirteen days in October 1962 as President Kennedy and his team tried to get these nuclear missiles far away from their soil. It is told from the point of view of JFK's political secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell.
It showcases the Army bigwigs so gungho in pushing the Big Red Button to start a war with the Soviet Union as JFK attempts desperately to avert a clash. Kenneth O'Donnell is seen as a kingmaker in cutting many back deals behind the scene with the Russians. JFK imposed a 'quarantine' to prevent Soviet missiles from reaching Cuba by sea. It was purposely not labelled 'blockade' as it would infer aggression and justify war. The US did lose a pilot and had another plane shot at as it went on its clandestine reconnaissance work. Still, it was hushed from the media apparently by O'Donnell's backhand manoeuvres. Of course, O'Donnell's keen involvement in the whole hoopla is denied by many who were directly involved in the crisis. They say that his job was just to attend to JFK's political needs, not actively influencing the President's and the AG's (Robert Kennedy) decisions!
Dark Legacy II: The Assassination of JFK Jr.(2014) This is a followup documentary film to the one released in 2009 which incredulously implicated George HW Bush in the 1963 assassination of JFK in the streets of Dallas. It looks like the Bush-Kennedy animosity seems to continue into the next generation. George W Bush is said to be cited in the death of JFK's son. John F Kennedy Jr. I remember reading about his plane crash on 16th July 1999. The cause of his mishap was told to be spatial disorientation as he was flying at night and lost his bearings when he made a sharp turn near the coast on a dark night with no stars. At that time, I thought it was just a case of a rich kid crashing his new toy. Now, this documentary shows many loopholes in the reporting, investigation, the search and rescue missions and even official statements from the authorities. JFK Jr was a licenced and experienced pilot who is said to be meticulous in the handling of his flight paths. He had just recovered from an ankle sprain but was fit enough to fly. He was flying with his wife and his sister-in-law. There is controversy on whether a flying instructor was accompanying them. There are conflicting statements on this. They started the journey a little late at about 7.30pm as they could have been waiting for his sister-in-law who arrived late. A skilful aviator as he was, travelling in a spanking new plane, he maintained regular contact with the traffic control tower. Just after his last contact at 9.39pm, his plane just plunged down almost vertically into the waters. No rescue attempts were initiated and his uncle, Ted Kennedy, had to contact the FAA and the US Coast Guard on his disappearance. Being a public figure, the media was also interested. Even late past midnight, the authorities were clueless where to look for the plane. The information about the locator beam was also unknown. Search mission only commenced after 6am.
The wreckage was only found in the afternoon. The black box was found to have its battery missing, and the fuel valve turned off. One of the plane seats was missing allegedly with the said flight instructor. To the makers of this documentary, all of the above screamed of a planned assassination. The battery of the black does not go missing just like that. It is not easy for the person manning the flight to accidentally turn the fuel selector valve. There are safety features against this. In the Egypt Air flight #990, a few months later, its pilot deliberately turned off the valve in an apparent suicide manoeuvre. The makers suggest that the flight instructor could be a Manchurian Candidate implanted by the same Military Industrial Complex as warned by President Eisenhower in the early '60s. This group of people are the wealthy moguls of the world who prosper from a world which is in an anarchic state. This Cabal is the same one which profited from World War Two and masterminded JFK's assassination in 1963 because he wanted to pull out from Vietnam.
JFK Jr had political ambitions. And so had George W Bush. At that time John McCain seemed like the likely candidate to make to the White House. Thus, the Cabal got George W to supervise the planned murder. Bush's whereabouts for three days surrounding 16th July 1999 is unknown to everyone, including his office in Texas. The documentary suggests that he was on the ground arranging the 'accident', it seems.
There was talk that JFK Jr was going through some turbulent times with his magazine 'George'. A rumour was going around that his marriage could be in the rocks but, on the other hands, others said his wife was pregnant. The press, which initially gave the image of trying to find the truth soon started parroting the authorities and hinted the suicide angle.
1963: A 3-year-old JFK Jr saluting Sr's hearse.
The final verdict (according to the documentary makers) is that the instructor was the Cabal's Manchurian Candidate, who was on a suicide mission, and the delay is discovering the wreckage was necessary to retrieve his body to cover his trail.
After this incident, George W Bush was catapulted to the White House. Then there was 9-11 and their involvement.
In another YouTube presentation, the presenter suggested that probably the elusive Q of QAnon fame is non-other than JFK Jr himself. He postulates that JFK Jr faked his own death to confuse the Military-Industrial Complex. JFK Jr is now working in the background to right the wrong that his father wanted to do. The Cabal was just too powerful to clash head-on.
‘As the World Turns’ Interrupted by Kennedy’s Shooting
Clockwise from top left, Helen Wagner and Santos Ortega in the episode of “As the World Turns” that was interrupted by a CBS News Bulletin, as Walter Cronkite began reporting on Kennedy’s assassination. Cronkite’s updates were followed by commercials, like one for Nescafé.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CBS
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
NOVEMBER 22, 2013
As usual, on that Friday afternoon, Mable Snodgrass, a 19-year-old first-time mother, was at home in Echols, Ky., watching “As the World Turns.” Ten minutes in, at about 12:40 p.m., the soapy drama was bubbling. Nancy Hughes, played by Helen Wagner, had just told Grandpa (Santos Ortega) that her son, Bob, had invited his ex-wife, the scheming Lisa, and their young son, Tom, to Thanksgiving dinner.
After his initial shock, Grandpa ventured, “That was real nice of the boy.”
“And I’ve thought about it,” Nancy said, “and I gave it a great deal of thought, Grandpa ——”
At that instant, Nancy and Grandpa were wiped off the screen, replaced by the words “CBS News Bulletin” slide and the urgent voice of Walter Cronkite.
“I was fixing to get angry because they were screwing up my show,” Ms. Snodgrass recalled. “And then I found out it was about the president.”
Americans of a certain age remember where they were when they learned of the shooting of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. But no group was united in quite the same way just then as those who were tuned to “As the World Turns.”
Fifty years ago, “A.T.W.T.,” as it came to be known, was not merely television’s most popular daytime drama. At the moment of the assassination, the slow-moving series about personal and professional goings-on in fictional Oakdale, Ill., was the only regular program being broadcast nationally by a major network — specifically, throughout the Eastern and Central time zones. In Washington, the NBC and ABC affiliates were scheduled to present “TV Beauty School” and “Divorce Court.” In Dallas, a discussion of winter coats with hidden zippers was the focus of “The Julie Benell Show,” a local effort by the ABC affiliate WFAA.
Today, the live telecast of “As the World Turns” No. 1,995 (there was no title) remains frozen in time as a last semblance of normalcy before the face of television changed permanently. The very ordinariness of Wagner’s scene — “my dubious claim to fame,” the actress once called it — underscores the day’s nightmarish events.
“Look at that conversation between Nancy and Grandpa,” said Lynn Liccardo, the author of the e-book “as the world stopped turning ...” “They’re dusting books. And then he gets a cup of coffee.”
Was that conversation between Nancy and Grandpa important? No, said Sam Ford, a great-nephew of Ms. Snodgrass’s and co-editor of “The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era.” “There’s rarely one scene in a soap opera that’s ever pivotal, because there is so much redundancy built in.”
An uninterrupted version of the episode is preserved at the Paley Center for Media, in New York and Los Angeles. In it, Nancy boldly predicts that Bob and Lisa will reunite.
But it is the fragmented version, available on YouTube, that has gone down in TV history. Among other things, it offers the bizarre sight of Cronkite’s dire updates being followed by cheery commercials for Nescafé instant coffee (opening, ominously, with a slowly swinging pendulum) and Friskies puppy food. In those first few frantic minutes, CBS programmers were scrambling. So were those on the soap opera set at the Hy Brown studios on West 26th Street in Manhattan.
Don Hastings, who played Bob Hughes, knew something was amiss as he prepared for a restaurant scene with Henderson Forsythe after the Nancy-Grandpa exchange.
Mr. Hastings, 79, recalled: “Phil Polansky, our cameraman, said, ‘Don’t tell the actors what? The president’s been shot?’ He had headphones on, and he was talking to the control room. We got our cue and we just kept going, because no one else knew what to do.” Mr. Hastings was unaware that the news was already blacking out the first half of his scene.
The show’s last act, with Eileen Fulton as Lisa Hughes tensely phoning her mother, Alma (Ethel Remey), about a deposit on an apartment, as well as her and Bob’s mutually lingering love, was pre-empted entirely. By then, the crew had heard about Dallas. Ms. Fulton hadn’t.
“I had a very emotional scene,” the actress, now 80, recalled. “When we finished, my cameraman, Joe Hallahan, had tears running down his face. I said, ‘I’m good, but I didn’t know I was that good.’ ”
When the show wrapped shortly before 2 p.m., “the studio went absolutely dark, which must have been some security thing,” Mr. Hastings said. “The monitors went out, and we had no communication with CBS except through a guard on the floor who had a radio.”
The soap’s scheduled episode was canceled on Monday, Nov. 25, amid CBS’s continuing news coverage. One line of that episode’s unused script holds special poignancy: “A dream can be aborted before it’s even born.”
Edward Trach, the supervising producer of the soap opera for the sponsor, Procter & Gamble, said, “When we were able to get back on the air, we tried to do so in a coherent and dramatically effective manner.”
But on that Monday afternoon, when the cast assembled to read through and time Tuesday’s segment, it was hard to focus. Mr. Hastings ducked repeatedly into the control room to watch the funeral cortege. “They kept coming to get me, because I was just destroyed at that point,” he said.
Rosemary Prinz, who played his sister, Penny, hoped for some on-air reference to the killing. But Irna Phillips, the show’s all-powerful creator, wanted no outside intrusion on the make-believe of Oakdale. “She was the meanest bitch on the planet, and you can quote me,” Ms. Prinz, now 82, said.
Ms. Prinz, who still wells up when recalling the assassination, eventually saw her chance during a scene with Mr. Ortega.
“I was supposed to go on about Tom and his father,” she recalled, “and I said instead: ‘Oh, Grandpa, here we are talking about little Tom. My God, after what the country has gone through, it seems so out of proportion. But, of course, we have to go on.’ Santos had very, very round eyes, which he always opened wide as Grandpa anyway, and he opened them even wider.”
An infuriated production team promptly descended on Ms. Prinz. She was unfazed.
“I said, ‘I just went blank and said the first think I could think of, and then I got back to the script.’ Everyone knew I was full of it. But I made the point.”
This film is on the list of most controversial movies ever made for the silver screen. For a lover of conspiracy theories like me, it is God sent. Bring it on, I say!
Even after the secret documents related to Kennedy's assassination is declassified in 2029, the conspiracy is not going die off. This 3hours 20mins story requires a lot of patience, and keen ears for dialogue as that is where the action lies. Forget about special effects and daredevil stunts.
It starts with the aftermath of JFK's assassination. As we know on the fateful day of November 22nd, 1963 in downtown Dallas, his motorcade was shot at. JFK perished, Lee Oswald was apprehended, he was shot dead by a Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner and that is it. No trials. The Warren's Commission put a lid on further speculation after its investigation concluded that Oswald acted unilaterally.
This film is actually the point of view of a particular DA from New Orleans, Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner),who was cocksure about his assumption that there was more to it than a lone man shooter theory and was out to prove against all the odds that there was a concerted effort by CIA to assassinate the President.
The actual story starts 3 years later when a Senator tells Garrison that there is more to it to the JFK killing. Re-reading the volumes of the Warren report showed more discrepancy. He and his team initiate a sensitive investigation which would involve male prostitution, homosexuals, anti-Castro movement, Free Cuba movements, Communisms, Kennedy haters, planned lax security during the President's Dallas, Vietnam War pull withdrawal and much more. Interesting information that he found during the investigation was the publication of Oswald's guilt and confession in New Zealand papers 4 hours before he was formally charged. That smelt of CIA cover-up.
After undergoing many turmoils in pursuit of proving his theory, Garrison had to endure many challenges to his life, job and family life. In the end, his case was brought to the grand jury. Clay Shaw was charged conspiring with CIA in JFK shooting. He managed to obtain footage of the event and proposed the theory multiple shooters based on the entry and exit wounds sustained by the victims. Oswald was just a decoy who did not even shoot a single bullet. Oswald was American agent who learnt the Russian language, denounced his American citizenship, defected to Kremlin, married a Russian wife and miraculously returned to America and led a normal interrupted American life. His whole submission, however, did not convince the jury. Clay was pronounced not guilty.
It is a gripping film with an array of superstars appearing and disappearing in many minor roles - Jack Lemmon (private investigator), Edward Asner (private investigator, ex-CIA, anti-communist), Walter Matthau (Senator on plane), Kevin Bacon (a gigolo), Joe Pesci, Donald Sutherland and even Jim Garrison appeared as a Judge! Tommy Lee Jones acted as Clay and Gary Oldman as Oswald.
Only in America you can fight the authority, accuse them of cheating full-scale, write books about it, make royalty from the screenplay and get away without being blown to smithereens....but then innocent school children will be shot for no apparent reason!
November 22, 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.
In the mid 70s MGR in his endeavour to win mileage in his political career, unashamedly used a line from John F Kennedy's inauguration speech (Ask what your country has done for you but what you have done for your country!) a verse in a song in one of his propaganda movies, "Naan En Piranthen'('நான் ஏன் பிறந்தேன்'). The History Channel recently screened episodes on the ever famous unofficial royal family of America - the Kennedys. Such an honour does not come cheap, as seen in the series. It had a curse associated with it. The first episode started with a scene on the eve of the 1960 American elections, and the story is told in series of flashback interposed with 'present' (i.e. 1960) unfolding of events. It is an enjoyable 7 part series on the events pre-dating and tribulations following the appointment of JFK's presidential throne till Robert's (his confidante) assassination. Joseph Kennedy Sr. (Tom Wilkinson), a not so religious Catholic (apparently Catholics were despised by rest of America) immigrant son who made his millions in business through whiskey licencing had sky-high political ambitions. Due to a foot in the mouth moment as an Ambassador in England during the high tension days of the pre-WW2 era, his political came crushing. He pinned his hopes high on his eye of his apple, the flamboyant first son Joseph Jr.who, unfortunately, died in combat in WW2. His father's political ambition to the White House fell squarely on the reluctant shoulders of JFK (Greg Kinnear) who had been overshadowed by his elder brother. In this series, we are shown the day to day living behind the regalia and princely lives of the Kennedys through the lens of the director and the writer (must be with the approval of the Kennedys, of course). Joe Sr. is portrayed as a hard-driving demanding, domineering patriarchal father who gets his way for anything through emotional blackmail. He is determined to make a Kennedy a President at all cost even it means making empty promises of immunity from prosecution to the Chicago mobs to win votes. This betrayal seems to be implicated as one of the reasons for the assassinations of JFK (1963) and his brother Robert (1968) (Barry Pepper) who was the AG and later Presidential candidate. In the part of the show, I was confused - too many Jacks! How come John was called Jack and Jackie (Katie Holmes) was JFK's wife? JFK was nicknamed Jack, talk about a match made in heaven! On top of that Robert is Bobby. In the earlier episode, we come to know that JFK's sister, Rosemary, appears to be schizophrenic and undergoes a lobotomy. The reluctant politician matures after an indecisive swayed by Generals Bay of Pigs fiasco, he soon takes control of the driver's seat accompanied by a confidante, The AG Robert Kennedy to rule America. Putting a stop to his control-freak father's meddling, he takes control, making decisions from the heart to the chagrin of the big shot gung-ho trigger-happy generals around him. Through diplomacy, he averts an almost WW3 and improves race relations in the race-conscious South. Save for Robert (who appears faithful to his wife with his 11 children), the Ks seem to have a weakness for the weaker sex from Sr down to JFK. The appetite just becomes more ferocious for JFK that FBI boss Hoover (the sore loser to the post of AG) had many files and footages on his clandestine activities. One of the not so gracefully out of love victim is Marilyn Monroe. It is even suggested here that his rejection drove her to gulp potent fatal concoction of mega-doses of barbiturates and alcohol.
America's darling -MM
In the bedroom front, JFK's infidelity sets a strain on his family life. JFK also has to battle with Addison's Disease, hypothyroidism, war-induced chronic nagging back pain and both husband and wife's dependency on alternative pain relief treatment from an unorthodox AMA-unapproved Eastern European doctor. In my opinion, Barry Pepper stole the show with his stellar performance of depiction of the straight-shooting Robert K. Katie Holmes is looking pretty as the photo-friendly oft-copied (dressing and hairstyle) Jacqueline Kennedy. Scrolling through the cyberspace, there are campaigns against the miniseries' incorrect depiction of the revered American family, citing historical inaccuracies and depiction of the world leader, a national treasure, in a very negative light. They did not want people remembering JFK as depicted in the initial script where there was a lot of sex and romping. Obviously, the final release must have been rewritten to satisfy many quarters as it looks well sanitised. I think that was the same fate when our national icon, P.Ramlee's life was attempted to be immortalised on celluloid. The last time I heard, the feat had many oppositions as the truth of his life was not so pleasant nor pleasing to the religious folks. Hence, it did not conform to the strict guidelines set by FINAS and therefore dead end! P.S. The Kennedy cursecontinued on 16th July 1999 with the death of JFK's son who was born 16 days into his Presidential appointment in a plane crash due to spatial disorientation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_d5bAbO0fM
