Case Study Baltimore: From Avatar of Decline Back to Prosperity

FREE Zoom Event Wed. March 13, 2024 3:00 – 4:30 pm ET RSVP HERE 

Economic justice is doable though the principles of Henry George as a foundation to grow world peace as envisioned by President Kennedy. *Joshua Vincent,* Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Economics, will present a demonstration of what happened to Baltimore from the end of World War II until the present, including demographic conditions and a land-based solution to revive the people and recharge the economy. You will learn how this  process of transformation from decline to prosperity is activated. You’ll also be updated about the 2024 Equinox Earth Day Celebration coming up on March 19th.

*Joshua Vincent,* Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Economics is a consultant/researcher for 75 municipalities, counties, NGOs, and national governments. He works with tax departments and elected officials to restructure their jurisdictions’ taxation to land-based systems and helps in administration as needed.

RSVP and join us on March 13. Visit valediction.net/world-peace to find links to historical analysis and visionary possibilities for the future  Visit our ValedictionVisionChannel to watch past Roundtables, especially #26, which unpacks the concept of the Roundtables with clarity and hope.

R.A. “Kris” Millegan, host, publisher, writer, researcher, and musician

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors and investigative journalists

Alanna Hartzok, Earth Rights activist and author

Bruce de Torres, author, TrineDay marketing and moderator

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -HAMLET, William Shakespeare

Hiroshima and the stark, devastated reality caused by the August 6, 1945 atomic bomb blast

St. Valentine’s Day – a commercialized celebration of romance and flowers that had already come to stand for the worst in what it means to be American – just got a lot worse. A super bowl celebration in Kansas City gone mad with – according to police – absolutely no evidence of violent extremism or terrorism to blame it on: Just good old fashioned American gangsterism that ended in extreme terror, fear and death. Or maybe it was something more to the two men charged with killing one young woman  and wounding 22 others ranging in age from 6 to 47 with at least half under the age of 16. Maybe it was just their way of saying happy Valentine’s Day to an American society blind to its own way of getting things done through extremism and terrorism, just the way Al Capone said it on February 14, 1929. Now that was the St. Valentine’s Day massacre we all got groomed to love. The one when Al Capone’s gang gunned down Bugs Moran’s gang in a Chicago garage full of bootleg liquor. Al Capone merged mob violence with Romance in 1929 and thanks to Billy Wilder’s 1959 Hollywood film Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon  – Valentine’s Day has been that way ever since.  But there was another Valentine’s Day massacre fifty years later in Kabul Afghanistan that got a lot hotter than Billy Wilder could ever have imagined about 1929.

The 1959 film Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon.

Everybody knows the assassination of JFK took the United States off a course towards world peace and cooperation following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but how many people know that the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs on February 14, 1979 ensured that the US would permanently pivot back to the same Apocalyptic course that was inaugurated with the murder of JFK.

So, this story is about that other Valentine’s Day massacre as described in our book Valediction Three Nights of Desmond and to start we want to go back to 1979.

Few people today realize what failure in the Vietnam War really meant to the people who made American policy. To quote from author Fred Kaplan’s 1983 Wizards of Armageddon “Vietnam brought out the dark side of nearly everyone inside America’s national security machine. And it exposed something seamy and disturbing about the very enterprise of the defense intellectuals, [Formerly known as the New York Intellectuals]. It revealed that the concept of force underlying all their formulations and scenarios was an abstraction, practically useless as a guide to action.”

Nevertheless by the mid -1970s the same people who’d created that “abstraction” were busy reinventing themselves from a “fringe movement” into a Neo Conservative political force and in 1976 – the year of Jimmy Carter’s election  – joined forces with old right-wing Hawks and Defense Democrats to oppose Détente and Strategic Nuclear Arms Limitation by convening an official panel called the Team B. Recommended by Leo Cherne, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and approved by CIA Director George Bush, Team B’s stated objective was to determine whether the CIA had underestimated Soviet capabilities and to no one’s surprise their ideological analysis not only changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees but went on to prophesy that the Soviets would soon exploit  this American weakness to invade a neighboring country.

A veil of intrigue surrounded the creation of Team B from the start. Leo Cherne along with his young partner, future Reagan CIA director William Casey, had written the book on militarizing the American economy in a 1939 manual titled Adjusting Your Business to War. And in a fall 1941 newsletter they’d prophesied the U.S. wouldn’t enter the war in Europe until “a triggering event occurs in the Pacific.”

John Arthur Paisley, the CIA’s liaison charged with reviewing Team B’s conclusions (and a Team B critic) disappeared in September 1978 while writing his report on a boat in Chesapeake Bay. A body fixed to diving weights and shot in the head “execution style” was later found that failed on numerous accounts to match his description. And yet Paisley’s death was ruled a suicide and the body cremated.

A campaign waged by Team B supporters would claim the discrepancies proved Paisley was a KGB mole and that the real Paisley had been whisked away behind the Iron Curtain – but in the end no proof of KGB hijinks ever emerged.

In the final analysis Team B’s real objective was to avoid the American system of checks and balances and politicize intelligence by delivering the levers of power to followers of Leo Strauss and turn reality into whatever they wanted. As described decades later by a horrified ex-member of the neocon fraternity – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Neoconservative agenda of Team B was to scare the government into establishing a full mobilization and endless war against Russia and in this, they ultimately succeeded.

Following the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, this new neoconservative alliance led by Richard Pipes, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze and Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, continued to lobby against Strategic Nuclear Arms Limitation and Détente and found a powerful ally in President Carter’s national security advisor – the well-known Russophobe, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Brzezinski had helped elevate Carter to the presidency as a member of the Trilateral Commission, a Rockefeller-funded group whose goal was to restore U.S. hegemony after the Vietnam War. In return Carter appointed him to the exclusive national security advisor post which Carter had elevated to cabinet level and which Brzezinski then reorganized to assume control over CIA covert action and seize power from the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. In the words of neoconservative author David Rothkopf “it was a bureaucratic first strike of the first order” with Carter doing precisely what he’d promised not to do.

According to former Secretary of Defense and CIA director Robert Gates, despite President Carter’s campaign promises to establish better relations with the Soviet Union, upon coming into office in January 1977 Brzezinski immediately began destabilizing pro-Soviet regimes and looking for a place to trap the Soviets. Then, in an effort to fulfill Team B’s prophecy he activated covert action inside Soviet territory bordering Afghanistan hoping to provoke a response. By April of 1978, Brzezinski’s efforts were bearing fruit when a radical Marxist group led by the U.S. educated Hafizullah Amin seized power in a bloody coup in Kabul. And by the time the new American Ambassador to Afghanistan Adolph “Spike” Dubs arrived that May, the Afghan trap was ready to be sprung.

A proponent of détente and opponent of Brzezinski’s anti-Soviet plots, Dubs was a Soviet expert who had served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis and again as chargé d’affaires in 1973-74. His posting to Kabul came at a critical tipping point in U.S. Soviet relations. According to former Washington Post reporter Selig Harrison, Dubs’ assignment was to coordinate a multinational and UN effort to control narcotics production and trafficking in Afghanistan – establish a close personal relationship with Amin and detach him from the Soviet Union. But he knew dealing with Amin – the Machiavellian mastermind behind the coup who’d been elected president of the CIA-affiliated Afghan Student Association while receiving a Masters at Columbia in the early 1960s – would be tricky.

Following official State Department policy put Dubs in direct opposition to Brzezinski and the goals of Team B as well as a covert entity known as the Safari Club which was standing-in secretly for the CIA. As the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal once explained to a gathering of Georgetown University alumni, the Safari Club was an off the books alliance between national intelligence agencies that wished to compensate for the CIA’s retrenchment in the wake of President Carter’s election and Senator Church’s post-Watergate reforms and focused on fighting communism.

Dubs arrival on the scene was intended to bring Afghanistan’s new government closer to the U.S. while keeping the Soviets out but with the Safari club working against him the chances were close to zero he could succeed. Destabilizing Afghanistan satisfied a long list of interlocking agendas and it would soon become obvious that Dubs would have no support from the Russophobe Brzezinski. First and foremost, Afghanistan’s strategic position was crucial to the designs of an emerging globalist cabal looking to migrate the booming drug trade from Southeast Asia to the opium-growing Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan where a friendly government could protect it. To the Saudis it provided the opportunity to spread its radical Wahhabist doctrine to Central Asia’s Muslim population while gaining control over oil pipeline routes to Europe. And to the Americans it was the ideal location to inflict a humiliating and low cost revenge on the Soviet Union by giving them their own Vietnam.

The CIA had set the stage for conflict in 1977 with an absurdly fabricated report that the Soviets would soon run out of oil, putting them desperately in need of new outside resources. This disinformation would soon find its way into Carter administration efforts to blame the Soviets for the coup in Afghanistan as Brzezinski and the CIA warned of a Soviet master plan to take over the oil fields of the Middle East, using Afghanistan as a stepping stone.

Adding to those dangers was an outright civil war over foreign policy inside the White House which pitted Brzezinski against Secretary of State Cyrus Vance whose State Department intelligence unit found no evidence of Soviet complicity in the 1978 Marxist coup and dismissed Brzezinski’s claim as a Cold War fantasy. But that fantasy was becoming real for both Moscow and the American Ambassador Adolph Dubs as he struggled to balance his influence with the Soviets who were becoming convinced Amin was on the CIA payroll.

To make things worse, by that fall as the uprising in the countryside grew, Amin wrestled for power inside his party and proceeded to imprison and execute many of his political rivals. Rumors spread that he was seeking an agreement with the CIA’s favorite, the well-known drug-dealing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fellow member of the Ghilzai clan who’d been trying to overthrow the Afghan royal family for more than a century.

Nevertheless Dubs continued to press on secretly, meeting with Amin 14 times over the next few months, wanting to keep a back door open to American influence while not triggering Soviet countermeasures. Dubs knew that Brzezinski’s covert action was intended to lure a Soviet response. He’d even asked the State Department for an analysis of a possible Soviet invasion before leaving Washington. But when Dubs complained about the destabilization, Brzezinski blocked the State Department from doing anything about it and then sent Thomas P. Thornton from the National Security Council to tell Dubs to knock it off.

By February of 1979, Dubs was an ambassador out ahead of a State Department policy that was being burned to the ground by Brzezinski. And then on the morning of February 14, a kidnapper posing as a police officer stopped Dubs’ armored Oldsmobile on the way to the U.S. embassy and got the Ambassador to open the door.

Followed by three additional kidnappers they demanded to be driven to the Kabul Hotel in the center of town and took the Ambassador to room 117. Nothing about the abduction made sense. The Hotel was the worst place for the kidnappers to have chosen. The lobby was crowded and filled with Afghan, Soviet and Iraqi security accompanying a high level diplomatic mission. The room 117 was indefensible from the street outside and the door to the room was locked. The original policeman who’d stopped the car disappeared into the crowd the minute they’d entered the lobby and the kidnapper sent downstairs to get the key was immediately apprehended.

When news reached the Embassy, Bruce Flatin, the Embassy’s first secretary returned to the hotel using Dubs’ armored Oldsmobile and noticed the U.S. flag had been removed from the car’s right front fender and its American eagle top was missing. Had this been a signal to the kidnappers?

When Flatin arrived the hotel lobby was swarming with police and Afghan troops—Police Chief Mohammed Lal, Internal Affairs Superintendent Major Saifuddin; and Yosuf Sahar, Chief of the Anti-Smuggling Unit. Flatin informed the Afghan police that the room where Dubs is being held should not be stormed under any circumstances and was given assurances by the Russians that it wouldn’t.  But as the morning wore on the Afghans began to take action.

Back at the embassy the deputy U.S. chief of mission was told by the State Department to negotiate with the kidnappers and not do anything to endanger the ambassador but failed to reach Amin by phone. Simultaneous to these events in Kabul, Iranian students had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Carter and Vance were out of town on a diplomatic mission to Mexico and caught off guard. Under Secretary of State Warren Christopher took charge at the White House but sent mixed signals about what to do to the embassy in Kabul.

Hours passed. Rumors abounded as numerous other members of the Embassy staff trickled into the hotel; CIA officer Warren Marik and Drug Enforcement Agency attaché Harold “Doug” Wankel arrived around noon. Wankel had a close working relationship with Superintendent Taroun and Anti-Smuggling Chief Sahar from an ongoing DEA funded drug enforcement program. Wankel had just met with Sahar on January 17, to cosign a payment of 11,700 Afghanis to an Afghan drug informant. 1.17, 11,700 and room 117 all falling into place like tumblers. What a strange coincidence.

Flatin met with a Russian security officer and told him he wanted to talk to the ambassador. Minutes later he was asked to come upstairs where he knelt at the keyhole and conversed with Dubs at length about the situation until the police informed him to tell your Ambassador that exactly ten minutes from now he is to fall to the floor.

Flatin retreated to the foyer at the top of the stairs where he saw Police Chief Mohammed Lal preparing an assault team. Lal was known to be a dangerous psychopath and Flatin realized he’d taken control of the operation.

Flatin learned from the Soviet advisor for the first time that the Afghan police were working under a deadline imposed by the kidnappers. The U.S. Security Officer transmitted over his radio that the Afghans were now acting under someone else’s orders. But he didn’t know who.

Wankel, Marik, and two other embassy staff carried a stretcher upstairs to the foyer. A man who was assumed to be KGB provided a weapon to a member of the Afghan assault team. The Soviet advisors positioned the Afghan snipers across the street. Afghan commandos moved into position near the door. Flatin observed there were no Soviets present or involved with the assault team.

At 12:45 a presumed Soviet advisor went to the window and signaled five minutes to the Afghan police snipers on the bank balcony.  Then at exactly12:50 a gunshot rang out inside the room. The single gunshot was followed by heavy gunfire in the corridor, inside the room and from the balcony across the street. Smoke and flying debris filled the hallway for what seemed a full minute until the Soviet advisor reappeared at the window and waved his arms. Flatin headed for the splintered door but was held back by Police Chief Lal who entered ahead of him. He then heard four more loud bursts inside the room. Then silence.

Wankel, Marik and the two embassy staffers rushed to the room with the stretcher as Flatin peered inside. He saw the Ambassador slumped dead in a chair by the wall with multiple gunshot wounds to his head and body, his two kidnappers sprawled nearby. The floor was covered in water from radiators shot up in the barrage. Flatin observed that half of the Ambassador’s clothing was wet, as if he’d been lying on the floor and somebody had propped him up in the chair. But was he killed from the bank balcony or by someone in the room?

The conflicting interpretations of how Adolph Dubs died reveal the stark divisions inside the Carter White House.  Flatin is a State Department diplomat tasked with maintaining American policy. Wankel and Marik are DEA/CIA policemen who are clearly aligned with Brzezinski’s agenda of demonizing anything Russian.

The DEA/CIA connection itself is a Nixon-era marriage from hell intended to provide a law-enforcement cover for CIA covert action and political assassination. Wankel’s background is Detroit police street-thug narcotics—paying off informants, dealers, pimps and prostitutes. Marik is covert agent provocateur—specializing in propaganda and political subversion. In their minds the KGB is guilty whether they did it or not.

Flatin stood outside the door as the two dead kidnappers were dropped at his feet while the third was wrestled down the stairs and out the door very much alive. Flatin never saw the policeman/kidnapper gone missing until later that night when the police displayed four dead bodies and claimed he was one of them.

As the ambassador’s body was driven away, Wankel, Marik and a third embassy staffer returned to the scene of the crime and discovered the room had been stripped of evidence. Upon inspection Wankel maintained that Dubs was killed immediately by Soviet directed gunfire from the bank balcony across the street and died slumped in his chair. But Flatin’s observation that “one-half of Dubs’ body was wet as though he had been lying on the floor” as instructed, contradicted it. Wankel’s opinion implicated the Soviets; Flatin’s implied that Mohammed Lal had executed him. But even more importantly; the autopsy revealed that Dubs had been killed by four bullets to the head which were fired at close range and were not the same caliber as the bullets fired from the balcony.

And then there’s the cable from deputy U.S. chief of mission Bruce Amstutz denying that there even was a second shootout.  Did Amstutz fail to listen to the Embassy staffers waiting in the hallway who witnessed the events surrounding the second shootout? Or was he trying to divert responsibility from the Afghan police inside the room in order to conform to the Brzezinski line?

A pattern emerges. Unnamed Americans claim the Soviets wanted Dubs out of the way so they could set up for an invasion. But the rules of the game make ambassadors virtually untouchable. There was no upside to killing one, and a big downside. And there was plenty of evidence to show the Soviets didn’t want to invade.

Others claimed the Soviets were afraid that Dubs would win Hafizullah Amin away from their control. But Hafizullah Amin was never under Soviet control and in fact Dubs spent most of his final days demanding to know from his CIA station chief whether Amin had been working for the CIA all along. But with Brzezinski controlling the media directly from the White House, no one got a whiff of the engineering that had been going on behind the scenes, and with the Soviet invasion ten months later the issue would be buried alongside Dubs’ body.

The Dubs’ killing revealed the same kind of prearranged set-up featured in JFK’s assassination with “the lone gunman theory” and with the same results. JFK’s assassination ended the original effort to compromise and cooperate with the Soviet Union following the Cuban Missile crisis. It wasn’t until the reality of Vietnam could no longer be denied that President Johnson was forced to reinitiate a policy of détente. President Carter was elected to further that détente but with the assassination of Ambassador Adolph Dubs that promise would never be fulfilled and made the Soviet invasion inevitable.

It was by no coincidence that only days after that invasion on December 27, 1979 the leader of Team B, Richard Pipes announced on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report that détente was officially dead. Team B had accomplished its mission of a total bureaucratic takeover.

In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who had been given the power to implement the Team B agenda by President Carter gave an interview in which he bragged about luring the Soviets into Afghanistan and that president Carter was fully aware that the Soviets would be provoked by these actions to invade.

But it was not until 9/11 that the full impact of the Neoconservative takeover began to show, and that Brzezinski’s willful manipulation of the American government had caused a permanent institutional damage that would soon spread to every aspect of American life through the war on terror.

Copyright – 2024 Fitzgerald & Gould All rights reserved

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011). Their novel The Voice , was published in 2001. Their memoir, The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond was published by TrineDay (2021) and The Valediction Resurrection was published by TrineDay (2022). For more information visit invisiblehistory, grailwerk and valediction.net 

 

FREE Zoom Event   Wed. Feb. 14, 2024   3:00 – 4:30 pm EST    RSVP at Valediction.net/eventlist

 Join the discussion of JFK’s peace plan, Henry George’s economics, and the 2024 Equinox Earth Day Celebration on March 19th. JFK’s peace plan is the antidote to serving war industries. Henry George’s economics unleash prosperity where they are employed. The 2024 Equinox Earth Day Celebration reminds us that “the Earth belongs to everyone” (and challenges us to think positively and take heroic and forward-looking action).

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -HAMLET, William Shakespeare

At valediction.net/world-peace, you’ll find links to historical analysis and visionary possibilities for the future. On the YouTube Valediction Vision Channel, you’ll find Roundtable 26 from last month, which unpacks our purpose with clarity and hope.

We hope you join us to explore possibilities on February 14th.

R.A. “Kris” Millegan, host
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors and investigative journalists
Alanna Hartzok, Earth Rights activist and author
Bruce de Torres, moderator

#TrineDay #TrineDayPublishing #Roundtable27 #JFKsPeacePlan #HenryGeorgeEconomics #EquinoxEarthDay2024 #EconomicJusticeAndWorldPeace

Dear friends, 

We were interviewed Jan. 28th on Matt Ehret’s Connecting the Dots  on TNT Radio. The link to the interview is HERE. Fell free to share with your friends.

Our best,

Paul and Liz

JFK believed that democracy thrives when citizens contribute their talents to the common good  and we will provide you with that opportunity at our RoundTable!

A FREE Zoom Event  Wed. Jan. 17, 2024  3:00 – 4:30 pm ET    RSVP  HERE

We who want to live together in peace can make a difference. Join with us to discuss Henry George’s economic justice, JFK’s plan for peace, and the upcoming March 2024 Equinox Earth Day Celebration. “Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin”   DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

EXTRA: To get up to speed before the Roundtable, READ the following pieces by Paul and Liz

The JFK Assassination-60 years on Nov. 22, 2023: Moving beyond his Death to the Resurrection of JFK’s World Peace Plan   Read the article HERE

THE CASE OF JFK AND THE FITZGERALDS (Speech delivered Nov.17, 2023 at The JFK Assassination 60 Years Later Convention)    Read the speech HERE

               Economic Justice and Peace Starts by Honoring the Original Earth Day!

 

Greetings! We are the Equinox Earth Day Team, an ad hoc group bringing to the fore for 2024 the earth rights principles and policies of the original Earth Day which has been celebrated every year since 1970 on the March equinox. The next celebration at the UN will be on March 19, 2024. (For more information go to Equinox Earth Day Celebration) 

Earth Day founder John McConnell understood that the foundation for an economics and culture of peace can be found in perennial wisdom teachings that tell us how to build stable, peaceful, flourishing societies. He often used the phrase “Earth Rights” to describe these teachings. He also drew much inspiration from the 19th century political economics of Henry George whose masterwork was Progress and Poverty.

Our Mission is:

To put in place worldwide the fundamentals of an economic system that is fair, regenerative, highly decentralized, and protective of Earth and its resources.

Our Vision is:

To utilize Earth Rights public finance policies to build worldwide movements that address gross inequality, hunger, homelessness, wage slavery, environmental destruction, war, and other major social problems.

The power to tax is the power to create or destroy. Earth Rights policies remove tax burdens from labor and production of basic needs and shift the tax base to those who receive “unearned income” from land, natural resources, and other commons. There are many examples of the positive effects of the Earth Rights public finance approach. For more information read the Earth Rights Manifesto.

We are encouraging people around the world to focus on the economics and culture of peace by holding gatherings, events and celebrations on the day of the equinox (either the 19th or 20th of March depending on location) that will put forth earth rights principles and policies.

Every year since 1971 the Peace Bell has been rung at the United Nations at the exact moment of equinox. This ceremony, which included a minute of silent reflection or prayer along with music and short speeches, was initiated by the Earth Society Foundation founded by John McConnell and Margaret Mead.

The year 2024 March Equinox events will launch movements for Earth Rights principles and policies that will build an economics and culture of peace. These actions will be coordinated, supported and guided to maximize effective policy implementation in accordance with our mission and vision.

Please join us! The first step is to add your name to our endorsement list by sending an email with the subject line “EED Yes!” and contact information to equinoxearthday@gmail.com.   Consider hosting an Equinox Earth Day event in March 2024 at your location by filling out and sending this Event Registration form. When we receive this form, we will give you support and suggestions for your Special Equinox Earth Day Event.  Fell free to pass this invitation on to your friends.

From the Equinox Earth Day Team: Mary Carlin, Johnanne Winchester, Robert Weir, John Mundy, Wendell Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Gould, Ginger Metraux , Emer O’Siochru, Charles Avila, Ibrahima Drame, Margaret Valta, Wendy Rockwell, Diane Perlman, Alanna Hartzok

Worldwide Equinox Earth Day 2024 Mission Statement Endorsements

ARGENTINA – Carlos Louge, Andreau Guillermo

AUSTRALIA – Emily Sims

AUSTRIA – Patricia Rojo

COSTA RICA – Wendy Rockwell

COLUMBIA – Lilian Calvache

EGYPT – Amir Mohamed Taha

ETHIOPIA – Kidane Hiwot

SPAIN – Fernando Scornik Gerstein

GERMANY – Dirk Lohr, Cay Hehner

HONDURAS – Quisia Gonzalez

INDIA – Yeti Nisha Madhoo, Shyam Nath

IRELAND – Emer O’Siochru

NICARAGUA – Aaron Fuentes

NIGERIA – Audu Liberty Oseni, Funlola Famuyiwa, Gordon Abiama

PAKISTAN – Yousuf Shabbir

PHILIPPINES – Charles Avila

REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA – Masiphula Mbongwa

RUSSIA – Tatiana Roskoshnaya

SOUTH KOREA – Sung-Chan Cho, Jae Hyoung Choi

SPAIN – Fernando Scornik Gerstein

UNITED KINGDOM – Carol Wilcox, Dave Wetzel, David Triggs

UNITED STATES – Mary Carlin, Robert Weir, Elizabeth Gould, Ginger Metraux, Marilyn Langlois, Alanna Hartzok, Johnanne Winchester, Wendell Fitzgerald. Ed Dodson, Rick Rybeck, Diane Perlman John Mundy, Ibrahima Drame, Margaret Valta, Audu Liberty Oseni, Paul Fitzgerald, Dean Goodman, Ruth Gould-Goodman, Barbara Honegger, Kris Millegan, Bruce de Torres, Kris Millegan, Marty Lewis

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011). Their novel The Voice was published in 2001. Their memoir, Valediction Three Nights of Desmond, was published by TrineDay (2021) and Valediction Resurrection was published by TrineDay (2022).  For more information visit invisiblehistory.com and valediction.net. Contact Paul and Liz at gould.fitzgerald@verizon.net

By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

The Deep Answers to JFK’s assassination are hidden in the Mystical—A Fitzgerald’s Revelation presented by Paul Fitzgerald

I was twelve years old the day JFK was killed and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was grief stricken but old enough to understand that if someone was willing to execute the president of the United States in broad daylight under the full protection of the United States Government and get away with it, what chance did any of us have when the murderers finally decided to turn their guns on us.

Over the years I came to see that there were any number of people willing and capable of doing what happened on November 22, 1963. My own bookshelf contains a dozen deeply researched books about the subject (Many by our own publisher Trine Day). Seen from that moment in time their logic all work perfectly. But for me there was always something missing.

So today I want to present a connection to an older and deeper background story about JFK that puts his assassination into a broader historical context that we hope you’ll find worthy of serious consideration. When Liz and I met in 1970 I had no reason to think we’d spend forty years digging into a thousand year old family history. Nor did I imagine we’d be shocked into believing there was a mystical aspect to the JFK assassination.

The first hint that I was being drawn directly into the JFK Saga came in early 1980 when we were invited to hear Ted Kennedy’s challenge to President Carter’s nomination for a second term. As soon as we arrived at the event, one of the organizers came over to introduce a Kennedy insider named Al Lowenstein. Lowenstein had been the driving force behind Robert Kennedy’s campaign in 1968. He’d carried on after RFK’s death and spent most of the 1970s researching both murders. Just being a Fitzgerald was enough for Lowenstein to make me a confidante and he made his intentions clear when he told us in a hushed tone, “We’ve got to get Ted elected and finally bring those CIA sons of bitches that killed Jack and Bobby to justice. Since you’re family I can tell you this. We know who did it and people are willing to talk. But we need the presidency to protect them.”

I thought that was the end of it, until two weeks later when we read that Al Lowenstein had been murdered by a colleague who walked into his office, shot him seven times, then put the gun down and waited for the police. Lowenstein’s murder made me wonder whether he hadn’t known something was brewing and was passing on the mission before it got too late. And so began our journey that winds its way from Boston to Kabul, to Jerusalem to Paris and the Holy Grail and Scottish Rite Freemasonry and from there to the death of JFK. By the end of this presentation you should know why JFK was destined to meet his fate on November 22, what the Fitzgerald legacy reveals about how that came to be – and how we believe it will lead to the resurrection of JFK’s Vision of World Peace at the closing of our era.

Everybody knows JFK was shaking up the deep state but it turns out there was a tradition behind his behavior. Thanks to his maternal grandfather John Francis Fitzgerald he had been made aware of his family’s roots going back to the foundation of the British Empire and was most likely informed that old grudges die hard. JFK’s declaration that he “wanted to splinter the C.I.A. into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds,” has been on everyone’s shortlist of motives from the beginning. But few may realize what that phrase would have meant to the people he was threatening to splinter – considering they saw themselves as modern-day Knights Templar tasked with guarding the Holy Grail.  It might be hard to believe that America’s elite Cold Warrior spies of the1940s, 50s and 60s considered themselves to be Holy Warriors. But if you look at it through the filter of a black and white Manichean struggle for power that had seesawed back and forth between Rome and London through the centuries you might get a better idea of how they viewed their mission.

Let me start by addressing some assumptions that I came to know simply by growing up as a Fitzgerald in a small suburb north of Boston. Back at that moment in time I was known to my friends as Fitzy and that I was unquestionably Irish. As I grew older I came to know that the Fitz in Fitzgerald was Norman French for the son of a 12^th century Anglo Norman baron named Gerald of Windsor born in the year 1075 or according to my Y-DNA records – Walter Fitz Otho his father whose birth dates to 1025. I also came to know that the name Gerald derived from the Old German Gervald meaning Spear Ruler which it turns out – is apparently what the family did best. The Fitzgeralds were what is known as Familiaris Regis – members of THE ROYAL INNER COUNCIL – and were the product of Gerald’s marriage to a princess of Wales named Nest – daughter of the last Welsh King of Deheubarth, Rys ap Tewdwr. I also found out that being a Fitzgerald from a little village called Abbeyfeale in the Southwest corner of Ireland came with a lengthy and complicated history.

My grandfather Michael Fitzgerald was the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son and inherited a 500 acre farm in Abbeyfeale which he’d left in the hands of his brother Ned before heading for Massachusetts in 1900. By 1912 Michael had worked his way up to being a union official for the Eastern Mass Street Railway Company and got to sit down with JFK’s grandfather – Boston Mayor John Francis Fitzgerald – to iron out the difficulties surrounding a serious rail strike. After what I assume was a profound session of solemn prayer at the Parker House bar across the street from city hall, they proceeded to share backgrounds on their respective Fitzgerald lineages and determined that they were closely related.

It seems there were two main branches of the Fitzgerald family in Ireland, the Earls of Kildare and the Earls of Desmond both descending from Gerald of Windsor and that our branch connected back through the Earls of Desmond.

The record of the Fitzgerald’s arrival in Ireland under the English King Henry II in 1169 is well documented and was recorded in a book known as the Expugnatio Hibernica written by another family member named Gerald de Barri. De Barri was a famous 12^th century prelate and grandson of Gerald of Windsor and Princess Nest whose Tudor lineage made the family contenders to the throne of England. And as a rival Norman family with a Welsh lineage directly connected to the source of Arthurian legends and the Holy Grail – it also made their intentions highly suspect.

Gerald of Windsor had already been sent to Ireland by Nest’s family in 1102 on a diplomatic mission to unite Wales and Ireland against the new English King Henry I. The 12^th century was a time of constant power struggles. At the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland, the sovereignty of Scotland, Ireland and Wales was up for grabs. An enterprising Norman baron with an extended family of mercenary knights at his disposal could establish a rival kingdom at will and attain sovereignty over it with the Pope’s blessing. Such was the case with the Fitzgeralds and their association with the Earl of Pembroke, Richard de Clare known as Strongbow. Strongbow was a Welsh Marcher Lord whose ancestry (like William the Conqueror) went straight back to the Viking Rollo with close family ties to the Fitzgeralds and strong financial support from London’s Bankers. Gerald de Barry described the earl as “of high descent, for he was born of the noble stock of Clare. Yet withal, so far, a man whose family was better than his fortune; who had more blue blood than brains, and whose pedigree was longer than his purse.”

Strongbow would pass on his lineage down through the ages and in January 2005 a study revealed that among Strongbow’s descendants was one George W. Bush, President of the United States. Strongbow’s grandfather and great uncle rode with the hunting party that day in 1100 when King William Rufus was assassinated in the New Forest and a daughter known as Adeliza was married to the assassin, Walter Tyrel. The De Clares had gained power and influence under Rufus’s successor Henry I, crusaded in the Holy Land, went to war against Henry II’s mother Matilda during the “anarchy” that followed Henry I’s death and operated a serious military industrial complex on the border of England and Wales second only in size to the City of London. Strongbow had accepted the invitation of Ireland’s King of Leinster, Dermot Mac Murrough in 1167 to help him reclaim his Kingdom and in payment receive his daughter in marriage as well as the Kingship of Leinster upon Dermot’s death.

While Strongbow was threatening to establish an independent Anglo-Norman state in Ireland, Henry was facing another threat much closer to home. Back in London, his archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was challenging him over nothing less than his authority over the Church. Henry had brought in his old friend Becket as archbishop to help bring the Church to heel but upon assuming his role as Vicar sided with Rome. “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” Henry was said to proclaim in frustration. The rest is of course history as Becket would soon die in his Cathedral from three blows to the head delivered by Four of Henry’s knights.

The description from the British Museum’s website is vivid and brutal.

“Becket held tight onto one of the Cathedral’s pillars to prevent them seizing him, and it was at this point that one of the knights raised his sword for the first time, bringing it down on Becket, slicing off the crown of his head. Two of the other knights then started to attack Becket and most of the monks fled. The third blow brought the Archbishop’s life to an end. Gruesomely, by the end of the attack, Becket’s crown had separated from the head so that blood turned white from the brain, and the brain equally red from the blood.” 

Three blows to the head, the first removing the crown, the third scattering brain matter over consecrated ground.

To my mind Becket’s murder sounded too much like the JFK assassination to be coincidence. And when I learned that by the ancient rules of Saxon kingship, the archbishop could stand in for the king as the sacred sacrifice in a seven-year astrological cycle, I felt so even more.

I’d seen the classic film version of Becket in 1964. But it took me years to see the connection. But coming off Afghanistan twenty years later where I’d witnessed the official narrative being fabricated for events that had been intentionally made to happen by the CIA, Becket now looked different.

Still, an eight hundred year old murder was just ancient history with no personal meaning to me until we came upon two books that changed our outlook forever.

The first, titled Strongbow’s Conquest of Ireland had been compiled in London in 1888 as one in a series of popular histories of Britain. It included much of Gerald de Barri’s Expugnatio Hibernica but also chronicles from the Irish perspective that opened my eyes to the way people in the 12^th century thought about the world. Reading it for the first time was like reading Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with dreams, visions, phantom armies, prophecies and miracles filling the pages. But Strongbow’s Conquest wasn’t fiction, it was history. And when I turned to Appendix II on page 195 and viewed the names of the invaders it was no longer history it was personal. There in black and white was a list of the most prominent persons engaged in the Conquest of Ireland under Henry II and the first seven of them could have been pall bearers at my father’s funeral including my father’s name William Fitz-Gerald and my great grandmother’s maiden name Barri.

Much in Strongbow’s Conquest regarded the personalities of the Fitzgerald family and their fulfillment of Merlin’s prophecies. Prophecies were important to 12^th century ecclesiastical authors who saw them as a way to justify the invasion as God’s will. Gerald de Barri himself promised a full book of such prophecies and applied one of them from Merlin Silvester to the ritual murder of Thomas Becket.

“‘A new martyr will be revealed by a new kind of miracle. In western lands, and in the age when the world is drawing to its end, he will, by his own peculiar power, restore to the maimed and wretched limbs that have been wrenched out or cut off.’ And again: ‘Grief will be transformed to joy when sons butcher their father in their mother’s womb.” To Gerald de Barri, Thomas Becket represented the father in the highest degree of the Grail ritual – as was known to the Welsh in 1170 while the mother’s womb represented the Mother Church in which he was killed. To him the four knights represented the sons – who were sentenced by the Pope himself as penance to spend the remainder of their lives fighting in the Holy Land with the Knights Templar and at the end of their days buried under the steps of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Restore the maimed and wretched limbs that have been cut off and sons butchering their father in their mother’s womb sounded to me a lot like Isis and Osiris and a Hermetic ritual sacrifice intended to restore fertility to the land by killing the sacred king.

The second book we’d found had been published in 1947 by author Hugh Ross Williamson with the title The Arrow and the Sword: An Essay in Detection. The arrow, being the instrument for the death of King William Rufus, William the Conqueror’s son, and the Sword being the instrument of Thomas Becket’s death. As an author of British history and a Parish Priest in the ministry of the Church of England, Williamson’s research had led him to believe that the deaths of Rufus in 1100 and Thomas Becket in 1170 were ritual deaths and that those rituals were conducted by medieval gnostic cults.

As it stood in 1964 Becket was very well known history. The saga represented the primal Western struggle between Church and State and that struggle had continued into the modern era. JFK had confronted it head on during the 1960 Presidential campaign in an address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Was his allegiance to Rome an obstacle to his being president? JFK’s grandfather John Francis Fitzgerald had faced it in old Brahman Boston and fiftty years later JFK was facing it in Texas. But to add an ancient pagan conspiracy to the death of the legendary Thomas Becket simultaneous to the Fitzgeralds arriving in Ireland was a coincidence too big to ignore and I began to see the outlines of something I’d been bumping into all my life.

Williamson had done an excellent job at laying out the evolution of the cult – the tradition behind the sacred kingship – The Blood Sacrifice, The Human Victim, The Pattern and the Myths and the Conspiracy of Silence that protected it. He’d cited the same account by John of Salisbury used on the British Museum’s website. But where the British Museum glosses over the conflicting details in Salisbury’s original eyewitness account, Williamson sees a cover up by someone who was his closest friend and Counsellor.

He writes. “His account is a masterpiece of omissions and falsifications. It is to him that we owe the deliberate lie—which found its way into books and pictures—that Becket died in front of the altar. He (Salisbury) is careful to insist that Becket fell ‘with body straight’, whereas the other accounts make it clear that he was careful to fall to the right—that is to say towards the North, or as Garnier’s poem put it ‘in the aisle of the North and facing the North did Thomas suffer death.’ His omissions are not less pointed than his falsifications.” (End quote)

As a second indication that the murder was a cult rite and that everyone involved was a part of it Williamson cites the words attributed to one of the knights: ‘He wished to be the king; he wished to be more than the king; just let him be the king,’ But it is in the direction of Becket’s death to the North that he sees an indisputable effort to conceal the truth.

Williamson continues: “It is probable that those with knowledge of Masonic secrets are in a position to estimate, even if they could not divulge, the full meaning of this. But at least it can be seen and said that in all dualist philosophy, and explicitly Manichaeism that North and South have distinct and opposed significations. According to Mani, one of the expressions of two forces of Good and Evil was the two trees—the Tree of Life in the North and the Tree of Death in the South. Becket took his stand, deliberately, by the great central pillar in the north transept. This was the place where, according to a member of his household, ‘he had long ago beheld himself crucified in a dream.’ Whatever his motive for ‘turning aside to the northern part of the church’, and choosing a pillar rather than an altar for the place of his death, his action led him to die where ritually, the Divine victim might have been expected to die.” (End Quote)

I didn’t need knowledge of Masonic secrets in order to make an analogy with the JFK assassination.  Given that Dealey Plaza was an outdoor Masonic Temple dedicated to Isis and Osiris – the site of the first Masonic lodge in Dallas and that its namesake was a Thirty-third-degree Scottish Rite Mason and Knight Templar should have been enough. But the fact that the procession should immediately turn to the North following the execution spoke to the same ritual ceremony that had brought down Becket. And thanks to Williamson’s in depth study we also learned that the ceremony centered on the Arthurian Grail mythology rooted in Welsh history and that the origin of that history stretched back in time to the Roman occupation of Britain and the secret religion their soldiers practiced known as Mithraism.

If you asked anyone today about the Holy Grail they’d probably cite the fictional attempt to decipher the secret known as the Da Vinci Code.

But when Hugh Ross Williamson narrowed the source of the mythology of the Holy Grail down to the 12th century Welsh Court of Pembrokeshire, I knew I was getting to where the mythology and the reality merged and where the Fitzgerald family merged with that reality.

Williamson writes: “Dr. J.L. Weston has established that the original stories which developed into the Arthurian romance—those of Percival and Gawain—had their rise in precisely those regions where Mithraic remains are known to exist.  She has identified the original author, Bleheris, with Bledri, that son of Cadivor who entertained William the Conqueror on his visit to Wales and who died in that year [1087] that William Rufus ascended to the throne. Her contention is that the Grail story is not a product of imagination, but the record of an ancient ritual, having for its ultimate object the initiation into the sources of Life, physical and spiritual.

The last time I’d seen Jesse Weston’s book From Ritual To Romance was on Colonel Kurtz’s desk in Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. I’d read it as a student in the 1960s but I didn’t understand its importance until now. The ritual of gaining the Grail was an instruction manual for the Hero’s Quest – intended to initiate the son of man into a higher spiritual life, grade by grade through the trial and error of war until he ascended to the role of father and was given the crown of Mithra which made him an equal to the Great Mother – the Magna Mater. To quote from Jesse Weston In its esoteric ‘Mystery’ form it was freely utilized for the imparting of high spiritual teaching concerning the relation of Man to the Divine Source of his being and the possibility of a sensible union between Man and God.”(End Quote)  A sensible union between Man and God meaning without the interference of a priest.

Williamson explains: “The conflict of the Old Religion with Christianity begun in the last days of the Roman occupation was continued by Druidism in the period between the withdrawal of the Roman legions at the beginning of the fifth century and the consolidation of the Anglo-Saxon conquest at the beginning of the sixth. From the various waves of invaders, paganism was reinforced by a version of the old faith, at once more crude and more vital than Druidism. But Mithra, even when the whole land became officially Christian, was not defeated. If in the South, he was traced in the songs of the Troubadours; in the North he hid himself in the legend of the Holy Grail.” 

So the Grail did have a basis in reality but the underlying reality was pagan and the Fitzgeralds were living in the middle of its transition to Christianity. And as warrior knights with a large measure of autonomy spending most of their time either at war, or waiting for someone to make war on them – they were most likely practicing it as the descendants of their own Great Mother – Princess Nest. As Williamson explains “When the struggle between Mithraism and Christianity ended in the definite triumph of the latter, the higher ritual still survived and was celebrated in sites removed from the centers of population.”

So who were the individuals responsible for carrying these Mithraic rituals into the modern era and why was the date of November 22, so important?

I learned from my research into the inner workings of the 19^th century British involvement in Afghanistan that Masonic symbols and numerology had played a foundational role in the art of encrypted messaging. Masonry and British Intelligence in Afghanistan were one and the same. When British military historian John Keegan visited CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia in the 1980s what impressed him most was its resemblance to British India’s Political and Secret Service in the days of the Raj. “It has assumed the mantle once worn by Kim’s masters as if it were a seamless garment,” he wrote.

The foundation of Kipling’s Masonic lore and its connection to the Knights Templar rested on a work published in 1840 by Grand Master of Scottish Freemasonry in India and Grand Preceptor in the Order of the Knights Templar James Burnes. James was the brother of legendary British spy, military officer and diplomat Alexander Burnes who was murdered in Kabul in 1841 and one of the models for the Man Who would be King.

During World War II the Office of Strategic Services inherited Burnes’ legacy. Its director Wild Bill Donovan encouraged his agents to think of themselves as Knights Templar – guarding the holy Sepulchre in wait for the Resurrection and the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven. Then as now the CIA saw itself through the lens passed down from that same British intelligence that once used secret masonic messaging and the date November 22^nd was the biggest message of all.

As we discovered in over forty years of research into the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, once the approved narrative is established, the gate keepers will use it to serve their purposes no matter what evidence might emerge to contradict it.

We’d gained a personal knowledge of the narrative-making machine at CBS News where we witnessed Muslim extremists being transformed into a vehicle to deliver revenge and retribution to the Soviet Union for America’s humiliation in Vietnam. By no lack of coincidence Dan Rather had played a pivotal role in establishing the lone gunman theory by misreporting the Zapruder film on November 25^th 1963. And according to a 1981 Columbia Journalism report Rather provided the same service for the CIA on April 6, 1980 in a 60 minutes report by (quote) consolidating popular misconceptions about the Afghan war into one high impact coast-to-coast broadcast.” (End quote)

Giving the Russian’s their own Vietnam in Afghanistan had been kicking around the CIA for years. The CIA’s Chuck Cogan, the man who ran the Afghan operation boasted to us on camera that Afghanistan was always about getting revenge on Russia for Vietnam. But with the help of Dan Rather the idea of a Crusade to prevent the Evil Empire from seizing the Holy Land and all its oil would take hold until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

As we watched – America fell under the spell of Rudyard Kipling, Alexander Burnes and the 19^th century British Empire. We were surprised that President Carter would abandon Strategic Arms Limitation and Détente with the Soviets by empowering Islamic extremists. But as we got to know the rules of the game, we came to realize a legacy of the British Empire’s involvement in the Crusades and the metaphysical mission of the powerful Catholic military order known as the Knights Templar – played a more lasting role in modern geopolitical decisions than we had ever imagined.

On Friday, October 13, 1307, the French King had ordered the Templars arrested and charged with heretical practices and a month later, on November 22, the Pope instructed all the monarchs of Europe to seize their extensive assets. Following a lengthy inquisition and trial including torture, the Templars and their Grand Master Jacques De Molay were found guilty and on March 18, 1314, burned at the stake. The immolation of Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay at the hands of the Pope’s Inquisitors would serve as an inspiration for generations to seek revenge on the Roman Church and for some that revenge was never satisfied.

Much has been speculated about the survival of the Templars following their dissolution in 1312. Today’s Romantic narrative about their role as guardians of the Holy Grail rests mainly on James Burnes’ Sketch of the Knights Templar. Burnes had placed both the Fitzgerald and Kennedy coats of Arms in his List of Templar families at the beginning of the book. It was Burnes’ detailed inclusion of Strongbow and the role of the Fitzgeralds as loyal Irish Templars that I found intriguing – one of them being Maurice Lord of Kerry who served in 1309 as the last Grand Prior of the Order in Ireland. Burnes had gone out of his way to establish a connection to Masonry between the ancient Hermetic symbols and traditions he’d uncovered in Afghanistan and in 1837 was sent by the Grand Master of England to inform the Fitzgerald Duke of Leinster, Grand Master of Ireland all about it.

A 2017 book by British Ambassador Craig Murray about the first Anglo/Afghan war Alexander Burnes: Master of the Great Game not only connects Afghanistan to the Grail legend but maintains that the legendary Burnes and his brother James are the source of the Templar connection to Scottish Freemasonry and that they invented it. But after dealing directly with Afghanistan’s legacy of Alexander the Great and as a crossroads of ancient mystery religions, I’m not convinced a connection can be ruled out. There are many aspects of the Old Religion and the Knights Templar involving the so called High Grade Rituals that remain unexplained and especially when it comes to the Masonic 30^th degree of revenge and retribution.

A book published in 1926 under the title Glimpses of Masonic History by Charles Webster Leadbeater states that “The Pope abolished the Order in private Consistory on November 22, 1312 – a date still commemorated in striking fashion in our high-grade rituals, although he admitted that the charges were not proved. The riches of the Temple were to be transferred to the Order of St. John [the Hospitallers].”

And so there it was a straight line from the destruction of the Templars to the creation of Scottish rite Freemasonry and the date November 22^nd. Leadbeater continues:  (quote) Traditions of vengeance upon the execrable King and Pope and the Traitor passed down throughout the ages, and were interwoven with the Egyptian tradition corresponding to our Black Masonry, culminating in what we now call the 30^th degree. It is these traditions of vengeance, however little understood, that form the basis of our 30the degree ritual.” (End quote)

The Fitzgerald’s presence in Ireland had gotten off to a bad start with Henry II. When his governor first arrived and was greeted by thirty knights all bearing the Fitzgerald Coat of Arms – he spoke to his own followers saying “I will soon put an end to this arrogance and disperse those shields.”  Over the next two hundred years relations wavered back and forth as the power and influence of Kildare and Desmond grew and the Fitzgeralds became more and more assimilated into Irish culture. In response to the Fitzgeralds becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves” and abandoning English norms in 1366 the crown enacted a series of laws against marrying the Irish and accused the Fitzgeralds of creating a race of their own.

Gerald FitzGerald the Third Earl of Desmond born in 1338 and affectionately known in Irish as Gearóid Iarla (Earl Gerald) became the inspiration for a growing mythology surrounding the Fitzgerald family and especially the myth of the sleeping earl who rises again from Lough Gur his birth-lake at the end of time to save the Irish people. Gearóid was highly regarded as a poet and in response to the pressure coming from London composed a poem about his favorite subject

– Irish women – titled “Speak not ill of womankind”:

Speak not ill of womankind,

‘Tis no wisdom if you do.

You that fault in women find,

I would not be praised of you.

 

Sweetly speaking, witty, clear,

Tribe most lovely to my mind,

Blame of such I hate to hear.

Speak not ill of womankind.

 

Bloody treason, murderous act,

Not by women were designed,

Bells o’erthrown nor churches sacked,

Speak not ill of womankind.

 

Bishop, King upon his throne,

Primate skilled to loose and bind,

Sprung of women every one!

Speak not ill of womankind.

 

For a brave young fellow long

Hearts of women oft have pined.

Who would dare their love to wrong?

Speak not ill of womankind.

 

Paunchy greybeards never more

Hope to please a woman’s mind.

Poor young chieftains they adore!

Speak not ill of womankind.

 

With the onset of the Reformation in 1517 the Fitzgeralds found themselves siding with the Pope and in the middle of a spiritual challenge. In 1534, the English Parliament’s Act of Supremacy declared Henry VIII “Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England” which meant that the Pope no longer held religious authority in England or Ireland.

James, the13^th Earl of Desmond didn’t see it that way. And so began the slow grinding holy war that pit the Fitzgeralds in a fight to the death against London that would see the Just War Doctrine of the Catholic Church invoked on their behalf.

In 1541 Henry VIII proposed that James’ son Gerald be raised at the English Court as a companion to his son Prince Edward who would later become King Edward VI of England. James rejected the offer and nothing came of it. But a few years later when word got out that James had entered into covert negotiations with Pope Paul III to establish the sovereignty of Munster, he was labelled the “traitor Earl” and the mark would stick. By the time James’s son Gerald assumed the title as the 14^th Earl of Desmond a deep suspicion had developed and by the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 had evolved into an open rejection of English rule.

In 1568 the first Desmond rebellion broke out. Elizabeth took the opportunity to send Gerald and his brother John to the Tower and Gerald would spend much of the next ten years imprisoned there. In a clear escalation on February 25, 1570 Pope Pius the V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Elizabeth excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church and deprived her of sovereignty in England and Ireland. In addition to excommunication, the bull released the queen’s subjects from any loyalty they owed her, and ordered them not to obey her laws or commandments.

In what amounted to an act of war, the Pope had made every English Catholic a potential traitor to the kingdom. In an effort to calm the tensions Gerald would write a final appeal to Elizabeth from Purt castle in Abbeyfeale pleading for peace, but it was too little too late.

In the end the Fitzgeralds’ war against the Elizabethans and their Renaissance Neoplatonism was more than just a local insurrection but a cosmic struggle – which the Fitzgeralds were doomed to lose.

I’d read Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene as a freshman in College. But it was years before I realized the evil villains in Spencer’s masterpiece were inspired by the Desmond Fitzgeralds while Elizabeth and her Red Cross knights represented Christian purity in the tradition of King Arthur and the Round Table. That tradition would be instilled into Queen Elizabeth’s anti-Papist intelligence services—operated by a cabal of Neo-Platonists known as the Sydney Circle and remain there as a foundation-principle of British intelligence as the empire grew.

It is of no small importance that the beheading of Gerald Fitzgerald, the last Earl of Desmond, in 1583, marked the beginning of the British Empire. The eternal struggle of good against evil, the ancient Manichean war of light against dark required a victory over the darkness, and the Earl of Desmond filled that sacred role. His decapitated head was sent to London where legend has it Queen Elizabeth sat with it for the morning before having it impaled on London Bridge.

The Royal hatred for the Desmond Fitzgeralds and the celebration of their extinction was recorded as History in the 1586 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles with a dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh by the author John Hooker. Hooker labels the destruction of the Desmond Earl as (Quote) “one of the great and wonderful workes of God, both his severe judgement against traitors, rebels and disobedient; and of his mercie and loving kindness upon the obedient and dutiful. But of all others, none to be compared to this tragicall discourse of Ireland, and the most unnatural wars of the Desmond [and that] brainesicke and breakdanse Girald of Desmond, and his brethren, alies, and complices, forgetting the honour of his house and forsaking their faith, did break into treasons, and shewed themselves open enemies, traitors and rebels, using all manner of hostilities and outrages to the impeach of hir most sacred majestie, and the destruction of the commonwealth the price whereof in the end he paied with his and their own bloods, to the utter destruction of themselves and that whole familie.”

With Queen Elizabeth’s incorporation of the British East India Company in 1600, Elizabeth’s victory would be spread around the world. Her favorite courtier Walter Raleigh would sail to America and establish the colony that came to be named Virginia for the “Virgin Queen.”

The empire created by Elizabeth’s courtiers ruled much of the earth for four centuries and was passed on to the United States. But the eternal struggle of good against evil, the war of light against dark continues and whether real or imagined, the need to avenge the Templars sacrifice lingers on. After publishing an article in 2016 dealing with the issue of ending the revenge and retribution cycle that led to the assassination of JFK we received a letter from a modern day self-described heretic named Bill Johnson who explained why JFK’s assassination was justified.

“This country (USA) was created by Freemasons to escape the killing machinery of the Roman Catholic Church and exists as a place of refuge. It was created as a safe haven from which to launch a counter war on that church – hence separation of church and state along with religious freedom.

And yes, JFK, a Catholic, was taken out because of a history beyond his control. Who would allow a Catholic to run a Masonic refuge? The implementation of the Alta Vendita is the other way around – for a Mason to rule the Catholic empire from within. Success has been attained!

Do unto others and it will be done unto them. And it has. Alta Vendita! So no, we will not forget and we do not forgive an evil institutional empire of conquest and profit and power. It is our work to bring it to a halt. That is no church of Jesus. Satan is more like it.

Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam Nemo me impune lacessit”

The first part of that Latin inscription is the motto for the Knights Templar “Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the ‘glory.” That last part – Nemo me impune lacessit – is our heretic’s personal emotional connection to the assassination  It translates: ‘No one assaults me with impunity’ – which is also the motto of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Royal Stuart dynasty of James VI which replaced the Tudor dynasty of Elizabeth I upon her death in 1603.

Gerald de Barri considered Thomas Beckett’s 12^th century martyrdom to be the fulfillment of a prophecy written by the Merlin Silvester in the 6^th century. For our ending today we will update that prophecy and have chosen to name John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the martyr that has already fulfilled it. We have titled it–Transforming Revenge and Retribution into the Resurrection of JFK and the USA.

‘JFK is the martyr (the slain son) revealed by a new kind of miracle. In western lands, and in the age when the world is drawing to its end, who will, by his own peculiar power, restore to the maimed and wretched limbs that have been wrenched out or cut off.’ And again: ‘Grief will be transformed into joy when sons recognize their ability to bring peace to the world and by doing so will heal the father’s wound and the need for endless war.

 

The West will enjoy what was formerly the prerogative of the East, and at the setting of the sun, while the sun rises in its setting, while its light seems to be quenched and extinguished; the daylight illumines with a new brightness the mists of the western land and of the closing age of the world. Orators will come from the East, and princes and principal men will worship the footsteps of a new martyr in the lands that lie on the western borders of the ocean.’ 

 

The last earl of Desmond was slain in 1583 while fighting to the bitter end for Irish Sovereignty. Even with that devastating blow to the cause, the affection for the Fitzgerald family continued to grow. As the president of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy rose to the level of his great ancestor and won the affection of the American people. When he was killed his dream for peace was killed as well. If we who believe in his vision come together we can resurrect JFK’s dream for America and restore the hope that was lost with his death.

In 1926 a folklorist recorded among the peasants of Kerry a curious belief: If on a dark night in November, in the glen below Lough Gur—the birthplace of the magical Earl Geroid Iarla—a peasant should be given the sight, he will see a company of silver horsemen risen from the lake and galloping through the night. At their head rides the Great Earl Gerald himself, garbed in silver brocade and astride a mighty white horse, the Earl will laugh and throw him a gorgeous purse in which will be found 1000 silver pieces, the price paid for his head and when the vision is gone the money will remain.  It is clear by today’s attendance the Earl and his phantom soldiers have already been stirred from their slumber and will rise from Lough Gur to help JFK’s spirit return to the American people at our time of greatest need.

Copyright – 2023 Fitzgerald & Gould All rights reserved

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011). Their novel The Voice , was published in 2001. Their memoir, The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond was published by TrineDay (2021) and The Valediction Resurrection was published by TrineDay (2022). For more information visit invisiblehistory, grailwerk and valediction.net

In their memoir, Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond Part 1, co-authors Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould reported on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and how all was not what it seemed at that time. Clues about the next installment were planted. Valediction: Resurrection Part 2 probes the lineage between Paul Fitzgerald and JFK’s family. The research into Fitzgerald forebears yields clues to a powerful empire that was conspired against and overthrown. Surviving bloodlines are targeted, such as JFK’s November 22, 1963 assassination. While delving into his past, Paul sees the connection to his experiences in Afghanistan. Seemingly disparate subjects are linked to sinister forces in history, manipulating unwitting believers. How does the CIA’s Soviet threat analysis known as “Team B” connect to the Arthurian legends? Do we march forward into the future through random events? Or has a course been charted, going back centuries?

Valediction: Three Nights of Desmond
(Image by Paul Fitzgerald)  Order at TrineDay.com.

“Valediction: Resurrection” is a unique book that awakens new insights. The past is never easy to reconcile, and in Paul Fitzgerald’s case, he went back a 1000 years to do so. The author’s quest for knowledge and truth is filled with intriguing stops along the way. It’s a book with the qualities of a blockbuster film that will appeal to history lovers, conspiracy researchers, genealogists, and mystery fans.

Valediction: Resurrection
(Image by Paul Fitzgerald)   Order at TrineDay.com.

A FREE Zoom Event Nov. 29, 2023   3:00 – 4:30 pm ET   RSVP HERE

At the JFK ASSASSINATION conference publisher Kris Millegan presented “Swirling Milieus” and journalists and authors Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould presented “The Deep Answers to JFK’s assassination are hidden in the Mystical—A Fitzgerald’s Revelation.”

RSVP to hear about the conference, discuss JFK’s vision for world peace and the economics of Henry George, which will help us create world peace.

For sixty years, America has reverberated from the brutal slaying of President John F. Kennedy; psychologically; emotionally; subconsciously; and tangibly: economically; politically; socially; culturally; and geo-politically. We have become an empire of cruelty, crimes, corruption, and endless wars.  Join our discussion on how to transcend the cycles of revenge and retribution by creating a new vision not only of peace but also of reality itself. RSVP and you’ll receive an email with the Zoom-link. If you lose it, just re-RSVP and you’ll get it again. We look forward to seeing you and hearing what you have to say.

Paul and Liz’s Economic Justice World Peace Proposal can be read HERE

Sixty years after his shocking death on a November 22, 1963, the story of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is being investigated for its ties to Medieval Ireland and greater Europe by Investigative Journalists Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould.

TNT Radio’s Worldstage with Bruce de Torres: 10/14/23. Listen to the interview HERE.

VT Foreign Policy Radio 11/5/23 Interview: Listen to the interview HERE and HERE