Last Wednesday was the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy – the 35th President of the US (1961-1963); the youngest man elected to the office and the youngest president to die. With only 4% of our population over sixty-five, very few Guyanese will have a personal recollection of “where they were when JFK was shot”. However, that assassination not only changed America but the world – especially our little Guyana! – not only for the killing of an American President, but who organised the dastardly act and why.
Kennedy was the president who decided Jagan was a commie “fellow traveller” – in an age of communist hysteria – and he had to go!! If the young’uns think the west’s Islamophobia is over the top nowadays, they should bone up on the anti-communist hysteria in the fifties and sixties!! Americans saw “reds under beds” at the drop of a progressive word – and even had a Senator McCarthy who used the FBI to purge American public life of hundreds of suspected communists and communist sympathisers. Hollywood and Jews were hit particularly hard!!
So it’s on Kennedy’s watch that our politics was channelled into the destructive, internecine ethnic war it remains mired into this day: the Yanks backed Burnham’s rise and Jagan’s 28-year sojourn in the political wilderness! But back to who killed him and why. Immediately after his death an ex-Marine named Oswald was arrested but was killed 2 days later by a small-time crook Jack Ruby – while surrounded by police.
Doubts Immediately arose on the official story. Firstly, even though Oswald was positioned behind Kennedy – who was riding in an open limo – in Dallas and his shot to the head should’ve knocked JFK forward, a home film showed the head thrown backwards. This started the speculation about a second shooter: Thomas Buchanan’s book Who Killed Kennedy? published in May 1964, was the first book to allege a conspiracy. But the official 1964 Warren Commission rejected this line – even as discrepancies kept piling up. Each of them led to movies that the establishment dismissed as “conspiracy theories”.
In 1979, while a US Congressional Committee agreed that Oswald killed Kennedy, it concluded that the Waren Commission’s report – and the original FBI investigation – were seriously flawed. It concluded that at least four shots were fired, with a “high probability” that two gunmen fired at Kennedy – and that a conspiracy was probable! Nowadays most conclude that the conspiracy led to the highest levels of US agencies like the CIA.
Most damming is that even though an Act was passed to release the Kennedy Investigations’ papers…up to Biden it hasn’t not been completely complied with.
If there’s nothing to hide, why hide the papers?
…to patriotism??
Along with the GRA, your Eyewitness is alarmed that recently, two barrels shipped in from the USA contained weapons and bullets. In the first one last month from the Bronx, there were eight 9mm pistols with magazines (with serial numbers filed out) and in last month’s one from Georgia, there were 5 pistols and 5000 rounds of ammo. Now that’s a whole lotta firepower in a country with less than 800,000 people. So your Eyewitness wonders exactly what’s going on?
And wonders why only the GRA’s worried and not the police and their investigative arms. After all – with no aspersions cast on our Customs Officers – your Eyewitness’ personal experience with clearing barrels suggests they could be picking up maybe only 1 out of 10 barrels with guns. Now he doesn’t want to get paranoid or anything but – like with the Warren Commission above – your Eyewitness warns against dismissing the possibility that folks are being armed for another “Freedom Fighters” onslaught against the PPP government.
…to Dutch placidity??
The Dutch have been pretty slick in presenting themselves as a laid-back bunch of friendly burghers!! Well, their slave trading and plantation history is rising to the fore with the success of the far-right politician Wilders. Outed!!
