Trollheart

Or grassy sex on the gay knoll. Or smoking grass on the... you know what? There are a lot of reasons. Read his lips: he's dead. Now rejoice.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

jadis

Does it have to be one or the other? I remember reading the CIA hired east coast mobsters to do the odd assassination (even in a couple of their many failed attempts on Castro). Plus the CIA clearly had very close ties with quite a few mobbed-up tycoons.

Of all the million things that don't make sense about the assassination the one that sticks out to me is Oswald's official biography. Makes zero sense. It reads like a cover story of a fake defector, and if he was a CIA man then, I don't believe he wouldn't have been used by the CIA during the assassination.

The motive? JFK's second term. They were afraid he would shut the CIA down, which he must've at least considered after the Bay of Pigs. Vietnam is another big one. It does seem probable to me that he had a change of heart on that and wanted to pull out after getting reelected.

The Batlord

True true. The mob was big in Cuba before the Cuban Revolution and worked with the CIA to get it back. Wasn't there supposed to be a CIA/mob connection with stopping socialism in Italy as well?

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rubber soul

Not so sure about that one. The biggest hawk in LBJ's administration was Robert McNamara and he was actually a Kennedy guy.

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jadis

McNamara is an interesting case because there's a chapter in his memoirs (from what I was told by a friend with knowledge on the subject, haven't read it myself) that gives credence to the controversial "JFK ultimately wanted out of Vietnam" theory. Granted he's an unreliable witness who shifted his political positions many times but there's also nothing about this bit of information that somehow exculpates him in hindsight or makes him look good in any way (if anything the other way around), which is why it's interesting.

"Which US official in this or that administration said what when" is an area where I'm completely out of my depth. But an interesting thing I learned from reading up on the death gasps of the French colonial empire is that

1) JFK was a well-informed and articulate critic of US bankrolling of the French military in Indochina and Algeria even before his election as president, he believed that the European colonial project lost all legitimacy

2) JFK had warm personal relations with a few Third World leaders like Sukarno and Nkrumah. He took those people seriously and had respect for the national liberation movements in those countries because he assumed they would join the capitalist order if you offer them the right conditions. In other words, he had his reservations about the Domino Theory and didn't view the postcolonial countries as Soviet pawns in the making (which is the only way someone like Dulles regarded them). So in that sense it's about much more than Vietnam, where obviously no one doubted the communist presence.

jadis

Yeah Italy was a priority cause it was the western European country with the strongest communist party, stronger than even the French one.

The CIA (or maybe even the OSS, don't remember) even laundered money through the Vatican Bank to arm whatever mafia clans and Fascist militias they ended up arming.

music_collector

We actually had a contest to decide who the greatest Canadian was. I don't remember voting in this poll. I agree with #1. I'd put Banting and Bell #2 and 3 though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Canadian

Has this been done in the states before? I'm curious.

Exo

Terry Fox was pretty rad.

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music_collector

Yes he was. ESPN did one of those 30 for 30 shows on him. Steve Nash, the basketball player, narrated the story. To run a marathon every day with 1.5 legs, that's incredible.

music_collector

I heard he had become an advocate for more funding to support vets and first responders. We need to do more to support our vets and first responders in Canada. Nurses, especially, are leaving the profession in droves. Towns are putting full page newspaper ads to get doctors to come to them.