Episode 122: JFK & The Peace Speech

As we approach JFK's birthday, it's important to think about his life and legacy. Although some believe the Peace Speech signed JFK's death warrant, he was so much more than November 22. 

➡️ Certain powers do not want a strategy of peace.

➡️ Is there a death cult? Are there people in high places who actively want genocide and mass extinction events?

➡️ Did the "Peace Speech" sign JFK's death warrant? If so, what was so radical about it?

Links:

https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610

https://www.paddycullivan.com/online-show

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/18941077

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fkKnfk4k40

****

My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats on July 29th! 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Sara Causey discusses JFK's peace speech at American University on June 10, 1963, emphasizing its relevance today. She reflects on the importance of focusing on JFK's life and legacy beyond his assassination. Causey highlights key points from the speech, including JFK's vision of genuine peace, the futility of total war in the nuclear age, and the need for mutual tolerance and peaceful resolution of conflicts. She contrasts this with the current state of global politics, noting the resistance to peace initiatives and the ongoing arms race. Causey also mentions her personal connection to Dag Hammarskjold and his vision for the United Nations.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

JFK Peace Speech, American University, June 10, 1963, genuine peace, nuclear weapons, Cold War, Soviet Union, mutual tolerance, United Nations, disarmament, deep politics, Satanic panic, Michael Collins, Dag Hammarskjold, peace strategy.

Welcome to Con-sara-cy Theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't, and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I'd like to talk about JFK and the peace speech. The peace speech was the commencement address at American University in Washington, DC, on june 10, 1963 Some people believe that it was the peace speech that signed JFK's death warrant. Now, with that being said, I don't want this episode, which is falling so close to his birthday, it'll come out on Wednesday the 27th in honor of his birthday, which would be the 29th I don't want to use an episode like this to talk about his murder, which is not to say that the pop pop is not still significant, that it doesn't matter who done it, or that we shouldn't try to figure out who, and if anybody would still be alive that was involved in the murder or the cover up of said murder, that they shouldn't still be brought to justice, of course. Those things are still true. What gives me pause is that whenever somebody dies under mysterious, grotesque, bizarre circumstances, that tends to become the story, and people forget they had a life, they had a family, they have a legacy that's not part of being a murder victim. You're talking about the worst day or the worst night in that person's entire life, and that suddenly becomes the focus, and people forget about everything else that happened before the murder. And I just have grown to hate that again, I'm not saying that we don't talk about the pop pop, or that I won't record episodes about it in the future. I'm certain I will. I just don't want that to be the only point that ever gets made about JFK. Back on april 1, I released an episode that I recorded with Patty Cullivan. I'm so glad that he was able to come on the show. He has done some programs as it relates to the death of Michael Collins. If you missed that episode for some reason, I'll drop a link in the write-up. Go back and listen to it. It's definitely worth your time. I'll also drop a link, because on his website he has some videos that you can watch. I think they're only like 10 euros for a two-part set completely worth your time and money. I actually sat and watched them just the other night because I wasn't able to go to his shows at the time that he was in America this year. I was recovering from the Razor Blade variant of the Rona, or whatever the hell they gave me. Who even knows anymore? And I couldn't travel anywhere, and I also felt pretty lousy, but I finally watched the videos, and the reason why I'm bringing that up in this particular episode is because one of the things that he talks about is getting criticism from people in Ireland saying, "Why are you bringing this up? Michael Collins died or was murdered more than 100 years ago now. Let it go. It's not going to change anything. Why don't you just focus on his life and legacy, and quit trying to turn everything into a murder mystery? And I see both sides of that argument, because I get what Patty is trying to do, and one of his points is, well, don't you think he'd want to know who killed him? Don't you think that would kind of be important to him to know who the murderer was? Some people answer that question by saying no, especially now after all this time. No, it wouldn't be important to him. Keeping the peace would have been more important to him. So, you have these two factions that are kind of warring with each other about would Michael care about the murder, or would he say let it go, and there is something to be said for remembering a person's life and legacy, frankly, I think I stand maybe in the middle ground on this, because I think you have to consider all of the above, the life, the legacy, what the person themselves would want, and then trying to solve the murder. Murder doesn't have a statute of limitations, obviously. Whoever would have been involved in the murder of Michael Collins is long gone, not just gone, but long gone at this point, and wouldn't there's no way that you could prosecute them. Same thing, most likely with JFK. People involved in the murder and the cover-up are long gone. Why is it still being covered up? Well, we have to presume it's because of the systems that are in place, not so much the individual people anymore, most likely, but because of the systems, what Peter Dale Scott wisely labels as deep politics, it's about a system and not so much individual people. I had a dream one night, and I'm going to talk about it on the air. I may have done so before, I can't remember. I've done episodes about. Satanic panic, and how I don't personally believe that the devil forces people to do things against their own will. I don't believe in the devil made me do it as a legal defense, like what the judge or the jury would just say, "Oh, well, you said the devil forced you to do it, you didn't have a mind of your own, and Satan made you do it. Oh, shit. Well, in that case, no jail time for you. Just go home and read the Bible, and forget about it. Like, no, that's not how it works. If you killed somebody, you're going to have to answer for that, and you don't get to say, 'Oh, the devil made me do it. I shouldn't go to jail because it was a devil, right? Of course, it was. But my skepticism of the satanic panic, and also wondering why that whole thing was engineered in the first place should not be mistaken that I don't believe in anything paranormal. I do. I absolutely do. I'm just skeptical of satanic panic and people who try to say, oh, it's the devil, the devil forced me to do it, so I'm not really guilty, and it's cool. No, it isn't cool. I had a dream one night, it's been a few months back now, and I was sitting in this very nondescript classroom, could have been any classroom anywhere. There was nothing special about it at all. A projector screen was down. If you went to school in the 70s or 80s, you remember what the old-timey projection screens look like when the teacher was going to show you a movie or a slideshow, a film, a film strip, and they were going to turn the lights off, and you knew, like, okay, I might be able to sleep a little bit if we're gonna watch some lame old film strip today, but it was like that, and JFK walked in, and he was, he was angry and pacing and agitated, and the Zapruder film started to play on the film, the projection screen, and it was like a loop of the Zapruder film over and over again, playing on this projection screen, and he was walking around, pacing upset, and he was like, "Do you have any idea what it's like for people to only see your murder and to watch what amounts to a snuff film over and over again of you getting murdered, just over and over and over, the worst possible moment of you being executed in broad daylight, and people want to watch that in a continuous loop. Do you know what that's like? And I said, no, not firsthand, I don't. I understand the point that you're making, and I have empathy for it, but no, I don't firsthand know what that's like, and I hope to God I never find out. So he was pacing back and forth as the Zapruder film is going in a loop on this projection screen, and I remember sitting at that desk thinking, I do not ever want this to happen to Dag as a Hammerschule biographer. I don't ever want people to think the only thing that matters about Dag is the fact that he was a murder victim and that his death is surrounded in secrecy and weird circumstances, and we still to this day don't have definitive agreed upon answers about who killed him and why. I have my own theories, trust, and belief that I may or may not go into someday, depends on, you know, I'm feeling very fine, guys. I didn't suddenly take ill, and I didn't suddenly unalive myself. Okay, let's be very clear on that, that it would just depend on, you know, how risky I felt like being. I guess have my own theories about it, but that's not the only thing that matters about DAG. It's not even the most interesting thing. It's a bit like a sideshow. It might be the thing that gets people in the front door, but my God, it shouldn't be the only reason that they stay. Dag had the most incredible life. I could write 50 books about Dag and still not talk about all the interesting things that happened to him, and how amazing he was. I love him. I've never made any, any bones about that at all. So I was sitting there in this dream, thinking about Dag, but the point remains the same, you know. Whether you're like, hey, this is a figment of your imagination, or you believe it was real spiritual communication, which is what I personally believe. JFK has a point there, watching the Zapruder film over and over again as a snuff film, and watching a man get publicly executed in broad daylight. At some point, we have to step away from that and say he had a life, he did other things that mattered. He wouldn't have been marked for murder if he wasn't doing something right. Hence, here we are. Whether or not the peace speech really was the thing that signed his death warrant, I don't know, but it certainly didn't help matters, and there are passages of it that could have been written by Dag. I really think that you, you would not have gotten a speech like this had Dag Hammershould not pave the way for it first. I said what I said. Nevertheless, let us saddle up, get our frosty beverage of choice, and instead of thinking about the murder, let's think about what JFK says in this speech, why it was important then, and why it's still so important now.

Just a reminder, Sara's award-winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next non-fiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th. To learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com. Now, back to the show.

I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived, and that is the most important topic on earth, peace. What kind of a peace do I mean, and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children, not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all the Allied air forces in the Second World War, it makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

This passage is very interesting, because he talks about not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave, but genuine peace, peace that makes life worth living. Don't you know that the war hawks and the Joint Chiefs were so pissed about that they had to have been, because if there was any kind of peace, they would absolutely want it to have been peace that was enforced by boom stick and bayonet and bombs, you know that they would have peace of the grave, is also an interesting line, because I'm thinking now of the letter that Jackie Kennedy sent to Nikita Khrushchev. He had responded with a letter of condolence after Kennedy's murder, and Jackie had responded back to him, thinking of his quote that if there really ever was warfare between the US and the USSR, and nuclear weapons were used, Nikita was like, I hope that the bomb lands at my feet, because I don't want to be here in a nuclear holocaust like that. The living would envy the dead, so I think that's one of the things that he's getting at when he has that line, not the peace of the grave, meaning I've just completely blipped out of here, because this is the only way to find peace. Resting in peace is the only way to find peace. He also says something that makes complete and utter sense, which is total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. This also goes back to what Nikita said, the living would envy the dead. Let's also think about Dr. Strangelove, where Buck Turgidson is sitting there, like, well, I mean, we're going to kill 10 or 20 million people, depending on the breaks, but you know that's life, that's part of it.

There wasn't any compunction that the war hawks had. If 10 or 20 million people had to die, they were fine with that. So long as America came out as the so-called victor, they were fine with it. As long as we beat back the commies, beat back the scourge of communism, and our way of life was deemed the way of life. Well, shit, 10 or 20 million people no longer exist on the planet, and the environment itself is poisoned and uninhabitable. So be it. He gets to that point as well when he says it makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn, meaning there would be no safe place, and even people who were not involved, non-aligned countries, people who were neutral, that wanted nothing to do with this East versus West bullshit. Would be impacted generations yet unborn. What would happen to people like pregnant women and babies yet to be born that would come into this post-apocalyptic world? What would their life be like that conjures up images of a novel or a movie like The Road, where they're traveling hordes of zombies and life above ground is terrible.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace, but surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles, which can only destroy and never create, is not the only, much less the most efficient means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears, but we have no more urgent task. Some say that it is useless to speak of peace, or world law, or world disarmament, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it, but I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes as individuals and as a nation, for our attitude is as essential as theirs, and every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the Cold War, and towards freedom and peace here at home.

In this passage, I like what he's bringing up, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. This is something that Dag faced a lot at the UN, because it was like he would - he was a strong proponent for disarmament and for the peaceful uses of atomic energy, instead of thinking up ways to annihilate and commit genocide. What if we, you know, hold, hold the phone here, folks. What if we used our brain power for the power of good? What if we used these abilities for job creation, for agriculture, for economic growth, and not engines of war? What if we didn't think about ways to more efficiently commit mass murder, and people would sometimes push back on that by saying, well, the Soviet Union has to go first, America is not going to disarm, America is not going to use atomic energy for peaceful uses first, in the Soviets have to go first, and that's, I think, that's part of what he's getting at here is the idea that, well, the Soviet Union has to go first. We can't be the standard bearer. We have to make sure that in a game of chicken they respond first, but nobody wins. Nobody's going to go first. If you're standing there and both people have boom sticks pointed at each other, like, well, I'm not going to fire. Are you going to fire? Well, no, I'm not going to. But then I can't trust that you're not frauding me when you say that. It turns into a stalemate, really, and a giant waste of time, not to mention the brinksmanship and the giant waste of money and the fear that's put into the heart of the general public.

First, examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible, too many think it is unreal, but that is a dangerous defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man, and man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings, man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill, of which some fantasies and. And fanatics dream, I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace based not on a sudden revolution in human nature, but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements, which are in the interests of all concerned. There is no single simple key to this piece, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process, a way of solving problems with such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor; it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement, and history teaches us that enmities between nations as between individuals do not last forever, however fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors, so let us persevere. Peace need not be impractical, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.

In this first point that he makes about peace itself, this is another topic that Dag talked about a lot, the idea that peace is not a destination, it's not utopia, where you arrive and then nothing bad ever happens again. It was Dag's vision for the United Nations to be a meeting house, a place where people could come, delegates, representatives, world leaders, and so forth, and hash out their differences, just like you would in arbitration or mediation, think about a couple getting divorced. There are some couples that are determined to hash it out in court, to have custody battles, to take as much from the other person as possible, and it gets nasty, very, very nasty. And then there are other couples that say, why don't we just have this amicable, why don't we go to arbitration or mediation, sort everything out without the courts getting involved, and without dragging each other through the mud. That was really Dag's idea for the United Nations, was to be a meeting house for arbitration rather than war. The goals, shall we say, are not the same anymore. The organization is not at all what Dag envisioned, and then probably the less I say about that, the better. But that was his idea, was that war is not something that every generation should have to experience. It's not the natural state of mankind, and this is one of the things that JFK says. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control, and having those types of defeatist beliefs help the power structure. If people say, "Oh, shit, you know, people are just violent by nature and Lord of the Flies, and all that. There was also recently that Sam Raimi movie, Send Help. I watched that just the other night, and I was like, what was this? Because Linda starts out being a pretty sympathetic character and then turns into a complete psychopath. I hate to drop a spoiler, but you know it is what it is, and I was sitting there thinking, so is he trying to say a Lord of the Flies type message? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the minute that people get out of civilization, everybody turns feral, everybody turns into I'm out for myself and I want to kill. There have been survival stories that didn't go in that direction. There have been stories of real heroism and altruism, so the minute that we say mankind is doomed, everybody is violent and evil, everybody is a piece of shit, that actually helps the power structure, doesn't help me and you, it helps them. He also makes clear that he's not talking about the infinite concept of peace and goodwill. That only exists really in the realm of fantasy. Dag talked about that too, with the idea that peace is not utopia. You don't get there and stay there. There will be dust-ups, and the United Nations should be a place where people can go and settle those disagreements and those dust-ups by not dropping bombs, by not sending your kids and grandkids into the theater of war.

Second, let us reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on military strategy, and find on page after page wholly baseless and incredible claims, such as the allegation that American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of war, that there is a very real threat of a preventative war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union, and that the political aims, and I quote, of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries, and to achieve world domination by means of aggressive war, unquote. Truly, as it was written long ago, the wicked flee when no man pursueth. Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements to realize the extent of the gulf between us, but it is also a warning, a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats. No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity, but we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage, among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other, and no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two thirds of its industrial base was turned into a wasteland, a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago. Today, should total war ever break out again, no matter how our two countries will be the primary target. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours, and even in the Cold War, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation's closest allies, our two countries bear the heaviest burdens, for we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other and new weapons begetting counter weapons. In short, both the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace, and in holding the arms race agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union, as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest, so let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved, and if we cannot end now our differences, at least. Can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.

This second part was definitely a lightning rod. It's like what Sting says in his song, Russians. I hope the Russians love their children too. The whole idea of, like, you know, people just want peace. The common person out on the street, the John and Jane Q public of each country, generally speaking, they just want peace, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I have done numerous language exchanges over the years, talking to people all over the globe, and I have yet to meet anybody who said, I like war, I like that we're going to war, I like bloodshed, I think it's cool. I've not met a single person who's ever told me that. It's always been, I just want peace. I just want to live my life in peace, raise my family, and just live. I don't want drama with anybody, and I don't want anybody to have drama with me. And yet, it was radical for JFK to say no government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity, but we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, and in acts of courage. I think it's also at this point worth remembering that Nikita Khrushchev's son, Sergey, had said that the two of them were planning to work together and collaborate together, and that he believed that if Kennedy had not been murdered when he was, we would be living in a different world. I also really like this passage, so let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved, and if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. Four, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.

Third, let us reexamine our attitude towards the Cold War, remembering we're not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must therefore persevere in the search for peace, in the hope that constructive changes within the communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the communist interest to agree on a genuine peace, and above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or of a collective death wish for the world. To secure these ends, America's weapons are non-provocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility, for we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our God, and for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people, but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth. Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system, a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of ensuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abide. Polished

This third point must have also been a lightning rod to reexamine the attitude toward the Cold War. Oh, you know that didn't sit well. I'm thinking now of one of the interviewees in that BBC docuseries on Operation Gladio, and he says quite plainly that the cold war was World War Three. People may not realize it, because it didn't have the hot kinetic warfare that we saw in World War One, World War Two, but it actually was the third World War. So now you have somebody saying if we continue on this road in the nuclear age, we will have a bankruptcy of our policy, of our coffers, of all of it. It's basically a collective death wish for the world. Yeah, of course, but the war hawks, the Joint Chiefs, the military industrial and military intelligence complexes, you know, they had to shit a brick and just said, well, fuck this, we do want war, we do want debt. I think it's also worth pointing out that there are a number of conspiracy theories about people in death cults that do court debt. They love mass extinction, they love genocide events. Something literally just moved. I'm sorry. This is almost like. whoo. Okay, that's about like when I was recording that episode about the night the Defeos were murdered, and a light bulb popped. I don't know what that was. Wow, okay, I'm sorry. There are conspiracy here. We are talking about the paranormal, and then that happened. I don't even know what that was. Something in the kitchen moved on its own. I'll check that out later. Anyway, there, there are conspiracy theories about death cults that this idea that you do have people who like and who encourage mass extinction and genocide events. They don't like people, they don't like human beings. There is, let's don't forget a famous quote from Prince Philip, and he said, "If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. I think the exact quote is something like, "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus to contribute something to solving overpopulation. Undoubtedly. undoubtedly, somebody might say, well, he was just trying to be funny, maybe that was dark comedy, or maybe he was being sarcastic. Was he though? Was he really also, as a Hammarskjold biographer, I would be remiss if I did not visit this paragraph. Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system, a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of ensuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. Some people hear that, and they immediately think of the organization as it is today, and they bristle, and I understand why, but that's not the vision that Dag had by this point in time. Dag was already deceased, but that the vision - what has happened today, the modern organization, and what Dag had in mind are two different things, and what JFK is getting at is exactly what Dag was talking about, the idea that let's hash our differences out peacefully, let's talk about it, let's exercise diplomacy, we should not automatically hit the war button every time there's a disagreement between leaders or a disagreement between nations. The matter of trying to quote unquote settle it should not be hot kinetic warfare. And yet it seems like diplomacy has gone by the wayside, and the idea is if we disagree, we hit the war button immediately, and I have to believe that when we're thinking about those conspiracy theories about death cults and people that want mass extinction events, warfare plays into that, because you have civilians getting killed, as well as soldiers, people getting drafted to fight in wars that they don't even know what the fuck is going on anymore. Think about it.

The only major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas, it would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963 the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security. It would decrease the prospects of war. It surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

This is another important passage talking about outlawing nuclear tests. You had to know yet again the Joint Chiefs were sitting there with their sphincter in a knot, like we want arms manufacturers to make money. We want an arms race. There are people that make absolute crap tons of money by manufacturing and selling weapons of war, the profits there are absolutely obscene. So, the idea that we want to get rid of nuclear testing, we want to really get a clear path towards nuclear disarmament. They were not going to tolerate that. It, they just wouldn't have been allowed to have happened.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough, more than enough of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it, but we shall also do our part to build a world of peace, where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success, confident and unafraid. We must labor on, not towards a strategy of annihilation, but towards a strategy of peace

At the end of the speech, while he prognosticates that the United States will never start a war and does not want a war. I mean, I think that that's JFK and his point of view, because it feels like we're a million miles away from that now. He ends by saying confident and unafraid we labor on, not toward a strategy of annihilation, but toward a strategy of peace. This system of deep politics, as Peter Dale Scott labeled it, they don't want peace, they don't want a strategy of peace. It's okay if somebody trots out and they say I'm pro peace, I'm a peacenik, I have a strategy of peace, no new wars, remember, read my lips, no new taxes, read my lips, no new wars, and then kaboom, there's a war. I mean, are we not going through the same fucking thing with the orange man? Did he not tell his constituents, his followers, like, hey, I'm going to be anti-war. I'm tired of these perma wars. I'm not going to do it. And then here we are with some unclear thing, unclear warfare going on between the US, Israel, and Iran, and you have people ranging from virulent anti-Semites that think that every anything that ever happens anywhere ever is Israel's fault automatically. Then you have people saying no, anything that ever happens that goes wrong is America's fault automatically. Nobody really knows what the fuck we're doing in Iran. You have the orange man saying, well, it's okay for people to die because Iran just doesn't need to have a nuclear weapon, they were super close to doing it. We had credible information, and so, yeah, if your kids get killed over there in the theater of war, like, you can rest easy, and you can feel good that you did something important, because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Oh, and then also, I need my ballroom. We just keep having these weird, random attempted pop pops, because I need that ballroom. Okay, thanks. What an absolute pair of clown shoes that we live in. We are way, way away from anybody actually saying and meaning that we shouldn't be strategizing annihilation, but instead should be strategizing peace. Politicians are allowed to say that, but they are not allowed to mean it. The minute that they mean it, all of a sudden there's a real fucking problem. And if they persist, they're just simply not here anymore. I've not played the speech in its entirety. I will drop a link to a video so that you can watch it online. I would highly recommend that you do so. Stay a little bit crazy, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.