I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. Psalm 82:6
Monday, March 29, 2010
Inside a Brain Stroke (video)
Friday, March 26, 2010
The Robert Taylor Homes
History
The Robert Taylor Homes housing project was completed in 1962 and named for Robert Taylor, an African American activist and Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) board member[1] who in 1950 resigned when the city council refused to endorse potential building locations throughout the city of Chicago that would induce racially integrated housing.[citation needed]
At one time, it was the largest housing project in the country, and it was intended to offer decent affordable housing. It was composed of 28 high-rise buildings with 16 stories each, with a total of 4,321 apartments, mostly arranged in U-shaped clusters of three, stretching for two miles (three kilometers).[2] The Robert Taylor Homes were also home at one time to such celebrities as Mr. T, Kirby Puckett, and current Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.
Robert Taylor Homes faced many of the same problems that doomed other high-rise housing projects in Chicago such as Cabrini-Green. These problems include narcotics, violence, and the perpetuation of poverty.
Planned for 11,000 inhabitants, the Robert Taylor Homes housed up to a peak of 27,000 people. [3] Six of the poorest US census areas with populations above 2,500 were found there. Including children who are not of working age, at one point 95 percent of the housing development's 27,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source,[4] and 40 percent of the households were single-parent, female-headed households earning less than $5,000 per year. About 96 percent were African-American. The 28 drab, 16-story concrete high-rises, many blackened with the scars of arson fire, sat in a narrow two-block by 2.5-mile[5] (300 m by 3 km) stretch of slum. The city's neglect was evident in littered streets, poorly enforced building codes, and scant commercial or civic amenities.
Police intelligence sources say that elevated number of homicides was the result of gang "turf wars," as gang members and drug dealers fought over control of given Chicago neighborhoods. Its landlord, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), has estimated that $45,000 in drug deals took place daily. Former residents of the Robert Taylor Homes have said that the drug dealers fought for control of the buildings. In one weekend, more than 300 separate shooting incidents were reported in the vicinity of the Robert Taylor Homes.[dubious – discuss] Twenty-eight people were killed during the same weekend, with 26 of the 28 incidents believed to be gang-related.[dubious – discuss]
The Robert Taylor Homes housing project was completed in 1962 and named for Robert Taylor, an African American activist and Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) board member[1] who in 1950 resigned when the city council refused to endorse potential building locations throughout the city of Chicago that would induce racially integrated housing.[citation needed]
At one time, it was the largest housing project in the country, and it was intended to offer decent affordable housing. It was composed of 28 high-rise buildings with 16 stories each, with a total of 4,321 apartments, mostly arranged in U-shaped clusters of three, stretching for two miles (three kilometers).[2] The Robert Taylor Homes were also home at one time to such celebrities as Mr. T, Kirby Puckett, and current Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.
Robert Taylor Homes faced many of the same problems that doomed other high-rise housing projects in Chicago such as Cabrini-Green. These problems include narcotics, violence, and the perpetuation of poverty.
Planned for 11,000 inhabitants, the Robert Taylor Homes housed up to a peak of 27,000 people. [3] Six of the poorest US census areas with populations above 2,500 were found there. Including children who are not of working age, at one point 95 percent of the housing development's 27,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source,[4] and 40 percent of the households were single-parent, female-headed households earning less than $5,000 per year. About 96 percent were African-American. The 28 drab, 16-story concrete high-rises, many blackened with the scars of arson fire, sat in a narrow two-block by 2.5-mile[5] (300 m by 3 km) stretch of slum. The city's neglect was evident in littered streets, poorly enforced building codes, and scant commercial or civic amenities.
Police intelligence sources say that elevated number of homicides was the result of gang "turf wars," as gang members and drug dealers fought over control of given Chicago neighborhoods. Its landlord, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), has estimated that $45,000 in drug deals took place daily. Former residents of the Robert Taylor Homes have said that the drug dealers fought for control of the buildings. In one weekend, more than 300 separate shooting incidents were reported in the vicinity of the Robert Taylor Homes.[dubious – discuss] Twenty-eight people were killed during the same weekend, with 26 of the 28 incidents believed to be gang-related.[dubious – discuss]
Friday, February 19, 2010
Excuses; Tool of the Medioccre
Excuses are the tools of the mediocre person.
There are a lot more someone could do do to improve their abilities to an higher level. Do not think you are doing enough because you can always do more. People should let go of laziness and start applying themselves to exceed the goals. Determination and pushing oneself can be ways of apshing past mediocrity. Excuses are not an option do the job and do it well !!!!
Essay written by Quantavius Morgan of Tift County High School 12th grade.
Below is an statement from a interview with Michael Vick in 2010 " There was a lot more I could have done off the field and in the film room that could have elevated my game to a different level. I was complacent at the time, somewhat lazy and I settled for mediocrity. I thought that I was doing enought. If I really would have been applying myself. That's a regret that I have."
Excuses are not an option. Do the job and do it well. Excueses are ways to cover up sopmeones mediocrity. One shouldn't use excuses to why they didn't do something. This person should state why they did't do it and say so honestly. Being mediocre isn't a achievement. People should strive to be better thatn mediocre. Doing you best and being the head of the class in everything you do is aver achieving mediocrity.
Never settle for less, the sky is the limit. Set high standards to be successful and accomplish your goals for your future. Without doing your best could cause you to lose your job or a spot in a starting line up. Think of it as competition. "If you're not first you're last."
There are a lot more someone could do do to improve their abilities to an higher level. Do not think you are doing enough because you can always do more. People should let go of laziness and start applying themselves to exceed the goals. Determination and pushing oneself can be ways of apshing past mediocrity. Excuses are not an option do the job and do it well !!!!
Essay written by Quantavius Morgan of Tift County High School 12th grade.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Economic Diversity How to Escape poverty
Diversity – Difference
Economic diversity is created the problem of a lack of resources. There are Eight Critical Resources needed to get out of poverty. These eight resources are so important that if a person is missing five out of the eight they will never get out and if by chance they do they will return within a couple years. Here is an interesting fact. Within five years of winning the lottery eighty percent of the lottery winners will be in worse shape than before they won the lottery. Here is another interesting fact; most professional athletes after they leave the sports arena, return to the economic status they were at before they got contracted to play professional sports.
The Eight Critical Resources needed are:
• Financial, we all could use some financial education and financial backing.
• Emotional, the lack of healthy psyche and depends on releasing emotions and resentments.
• Mental, the mental health aspect is sometimes tide to a healthy emotional state. But in poverty area it is most likely tide to addiction.
• Spiritual, we must have a conscious contact with a higher power that we choose to call God.
• Physical, to not be handicapped puts us on a level playing field.
• Support, to have someone who will pick up the individual when they are down emotionally and mentally.
• Know how, what it takes to get something done.
• Relationships, mentors/roles models who will give the needed know how to the individual. Someone who can teach them the hidden secrets.
Interesting enough ninety-five percent of behavioral problems is a result of an individual only having 3 or less of the Eight Critical Resources. If a person only has two or three of the eight resources eighty-five percent will not be able to climb out of poverty.
Some folks have their financial priorities confused. Do you purchase the latest trendy fashions, go out to have fun or do you pay bills? Do you buy drugs, alcohol or pay your bills and save your money?
Because some live in poverty they have a lack of choices. As a result there are the rent to own businesses who charge the poor $1350.00 for a $400.00 television. There are also the payday loans businesses who charge ridiculously high interest rates. Then there are the title loans companies and pawn shops that replace banks. In the Bronx Borough of New York City there are only 3 banks.
I discovered the hidden definition of capitalism for the employer/employee relationship. For the employer it is to get as much work out of the employee for as little wage as possible. For the employee it was to get as much pay out of the employer for as little work as possible. It is my experience that the employers, who pay the least wages, work employee the hardest are the strictest, bordering on the line of worker exploitation, sweat shops for example? But then you take a company like Google they have a place that if you get tense, they have a masseuse on the premises so you can go get a massage while on the clock. That is the extreme difference between a skilled technical worker and the unskilled in the work place.
There is the problem of the language barrier. Because this is the country where dreams come true and freedom still rings, we have an influx of immigrants. Immigrants come to enjoy America, to work hard and make their dreams come true. But they sometimes don’t speak English. It is very hard to get a fair shake if you can’t understand and communicate with your opponent. Now let us look at the hidden secret of “formal versus casual” language. Formal language is the language of the middle class. Some may call it talking proper, talking white or just plain good grammar. But this is the language of the work place. We cannot get hired with casual talk during the interview process with a stranger or even sometimes a friend in a casual environment. The employer and your friend want his business to be professionally run. The business’ clients want the service or product they receive to be handled professionally.
Poverty is relative. What constitutes poverty here in America maybe middle class in Mexico. There is a difference between poverty in the city and its counterpart poverty in rural area. Poverty occurs in all races. There are more Caucasians that suffer from poverty than minorities, for the simple fact that. There are 308,710,263 people in America. Caucasians are 211,460,626, the majority race in the United States.
But, remember one in five children live in poverty. Children are our most valuable resource let us be thoughtful to take care to give them the best future possible because they will give us the best futures possible.
There are five reasons for poverty. Here is a list of the five reasons:
• The educational level of the mother is crucial, the higher the educational level of the mother the better chance for the child to not live in poverty.
• The family structure is crucial because that can provide the needed support, the knowhow and the other critical resources needed to beat poverty. The persons living in the family must be able to contribute to the best mental and emotional health of each member.
• Immigration is passage to this great country but it also negated due to the language.
• Are the poor speaking English? Are we using formal or casual language in the business arena?
• Addiction has broken the stronghold of families living in poverty. Addiction is breaking down the strongholds of middle class families today. There is a show on A&E called “Addiction” . This is a show on alcohol and drug interventions of immediate family members in middle class families. Electricity bills are not getting paid on time if at all, because of drug and alcohol addiction. Drug addiction is a major reason for the “Payday Loan” business. Parents can’t keep a job or just plain can’t go to work because the drug addiction has a grip on the.
Generational and situation poverty are different. Generational poverty means two or more generations in poverty. If the family is in poverty for four generations, the likelihood of getting out of poverty is a five percent probability, there is probably no escaping.
Teach your kids, they must know the hidden rules.
• Your business attire must look middle class.
• Your manners must be sharp. Buy an etiquette book.
• You speech must be articulate and correct in grammar.
Save the casual look, talk and etiquette for home and play. Code switching – Ebonics versus proper English. Know how to switch from “What’s happening? to How are you?”
Schools operate from middle class norms and values. Know the hidden rules.
The poor think about survival. The poor fight just to survive. Because the poor don’t have many material belongings then relationships become very important and people become belongings. On that same level of thinking the middle class think instead of about survival, about their work ethic. Work is the single most import thing in their lives. Their achievement depends on how hard and how much they work, their work ethic. There are teachers who in thirty years of teaching have only taken 3 to 4 days off work. Material security is important to the middle class. On top of the priority list is the purchase of a home. The middle class will work two jobs and have no entertainment and eat the basics foods for a period of time to save up the down payment for that home. Parents will make a wedding gift the down payment for a new home to the newlyweds. On this level of thinking the wealthy will think politics and what political campaign are they going to make a contribution to. Do they have the connections to increase their financial worth. That is why it is important to the wealthy to get their children into the Ivey League schools because of the quality of education, but more importantly because of the social connections they will make and the financial opportunities that come with these social connections.
Think about this, the poor think as it relates to food and eating. “Did you get enough to eat?” The middle class ask “Did you like it?” The wealthy ask “Did the wine go well with the food?” There are cultural differences in poverty. This study is cross cultural.
The kids of poverty must not be excused neither scolded. We must teach them. To get out of poverty there must sometimes be sacrifices of relationships. Sometimes we must leave friends and fun to get things done. Critical mass the number of things it takes to make change. Forty percent has to go one way to become critical mass. We must teach that there are two sets of rules. For instance fighting in business or school is strictly prohibited. But in the barrio or ghetto there are very few times when you do not fight to save face or resolve conflict. For example when playing football the rules say that tackling is part of the game. But in basketball you will be penalized for tackling the person with the ball. There are two sets of rules learn them.
Two things that help move a person out of poverty is education and relationships. Looking back the two most important of the eight critical resources are knowhow and relationships. “No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship, and mutual respect.” Dr. James Comer
Let us look at the cultivation of this subject. Look for two movies to rent “Freedom Writer” with Hillary Swank , “Million Dollar Baby” with Hillary Swank and Clint Eastwood also “Stand and Deliver” with Edward Olmos
Economic diversity is created the problem of a lack of resources. There are Eight Critical Resources needed to get out of poverty. These eight resources are so important that if a person is missing five out of the eight they will never get out and if by chance they do they will return within a couple years. Here is an interesting fact. Within five years of winning the lottery eighty percent of the lottery winners will be in worse shape than before they won the lottery. Here is another interesting fact; most professional athletes after they leave the sports arena, return to the economic status they were at before they got contracted to play professional sports.
The Eight Critical Resources needed are:
• Financial, we all could use some financial education and financial backing.
• Emotional, the lack of healthy psyche and depends on releasing emotions and resentments.
• Mental, the mental health aspect is sometimes tide to a healthy emotional state. But in poverty area it is most likely tide to addiction.
• Spiritual, we must have a conscious contact with a higher power that we choose to call God.
• Physical, to not be handicapped puts us on a level playing field.
• Support, to have someone who will pick up the individual when they are down emotionally and mentally.
• Know how, what it takes to get something done.
• Relationships, mentors/roles models who will give the needed know how to the individual. Someone who can teach them the hidden secrets.
Interesting enough ninety-five percent of behavioral problems is a result of an individual only having 3 or less of the Eight Critical Resources. If a person only has two or three of the eight resources eighty-five percent will not be able to climb out of poverty.
Some folks have their financial priorities confused. Do you purchase the latest trendy fashions, go out to have fun or do you pay bills? Do you buy drugs, alcohol or pay your bills and save your money?
Because some live in poverty they have a lack of choices. As a result there are the rent to own businesses who charge the poor $1350.00 for a $400.00 television. There are also the payday loans businesses who charge ridiculously high interest rates. Then there are the title loans companies and pawn shops that replace banks. In the Bronx Borough of New York City there are only 3 banks.
I discovered the hidden definition of capitalism for the employer/employee relationship. For the employer it is to get as much work out of the employee for as little wage as possible. For the employee it was to get as much pay out of the employer for as little work as possible. It is my experience that the employers, who pay the least wages, work employee the hardest are the strictest, bordering on the line of worker exploitation, sweat shops for example? But then you take a company like Google they have a place that if you get tense, they have a masseuse on the premises so you can go get a massage while on the clock. That is the extreme difference between a skilled technical worker and the unskilled in the work place.
There is the problem of the language barrier. Because this is the country where dreams come true and freedom still rings, we have an influx of immigrants. Immigrants come to enjoy America, to work hard and make their dreams come true. But they sometimes don’t speak English. It is very hard to get a fair shake if you can’t understand and communicate with your opponent. Now let us look at the hidden secret of “formal versus casual” language. Formal language is the language of the middle class. Some may call it talking proper, talking white or just plain good grammar. But this is the language of the work place. We cannot get hired with casual talk during the interview process with a stranger or even sometimes a friend in a casual environment. The employer and your friend want his business to be professionally run. The business’ clients want the service or product they receive to be handled professionally.
Poverty is relative. What constitutes poverty here in America maybe middle class in Mexico. There is a difference between poverty in the city and its counterpart poverty in rural area. Poverty occurs in all races. There are more Caucasians that suffer from poverty than minorities, for the simple fact that. There are 308,710,263 people in America. Caucasians are 211,460,626, the majority race in the United States.
But, remember one in five children live in poverty. Children are our most valuable resource let us be thoughtful to take care to give them the best future possible because they will give us the best futures possible.
There are five reasons for poverty. Here is a list of the five reasons:
• The educational level of the mother is crucial, the higher the educational level of the mother the better chance for the child to not live in poverty.
• The family structure is crucial because that can provide the needed support, the knowhow and the other critical resources needed to beat poverty. The persons living in the family must be able to contribute to the best mental and emotional health of each member.
• Immigration is passage to this great country but it also negated due to the language.
• Are the poor speaking English? Are we using formal or casual language in the business arena?
• Addiction has broken the stronghold of families living in poverty. Addiction is breaking down the strongholds of middle class families today. There is a show on A&E called “Addiction” . This is a show on alcohol and drug interventions of immediate family members in middle class families. Electricity bills are not getting paid on time if at all, because of drug and alcohol addiction. Drug addiction is a major reason for the “Payday Loan” business. Parents can’t keep a job or just plain can’t go to work because the drug addiction has a grip on the.
Generational and situation poverty are different. Generational poverty means two or more generations in poverty. If the family is in poverty for four generations, the likelihood of getting out of poverty is a five percent probability, there is probably no escaping.
Teach your kids, they must know the hidden rules.
• Your business attire must look middle class.
• Your manners must be sharp. Buy an etiquette book.
• You speech must be articulate and correct in grammar.
Save the casual look, talk and etiquette for home and play. Code switching – Ebonics versus proper English. Know how to switch from “What’s happening? to How are you?”
Schools operate from middle class norms and values. Know the hidden rules.
The poor think about survival. The poor fight just to survive. Because the poor don’t have many material belongings then relationships become very important and people become belongings. On that same level of thinking the middle class think instead of about survival, about their work ethic. Work is the single most import thing in their lives. Their achievement depends on how hard and how much they work, their work ethic. There are teachers who in thirty years of teaching have only taken 3 to 4 days off work. Material security is important to the middle class. On top of the priority list is the purchase of a home. The middle class will work two jobs and have no entertainment and eat the basics foods for a period of time to save up the down payment for that home. Parents will make a wedding gift the down payment for a new home to the newlyweds. On this level of thinking the wealthy will think politics and what political campaign are they going to make a contribution to. Do they have the connections to increase their financial worth. That is why it is important to the wealthy to get their children into the Ivey League schools because of the quality of education, but more importantly because of the social connections they will make and the financial opportunities that come with these social connections.
Think about this, the poor think as it relates to food and eating. “Did you get enough to eat?” The middle class ask “Did you like it?” The wealthy ask “Did the wine go well with the food?” There are cultural differences in poverty. This study is cross cultural.
The kids of poverty must not be excused neither scolded. We must teach them. To get out of poverty there must sometimes be sacrifices of relationships. Sometimes we must leave friends and fun to get things done. Critical mass the number of things it takes to make change. Forty percent has to go one way to become critical mass. We must teach that there are two sets of rules. For instance fighting in business or school is strictly prohibited. But in the barrio or ghetto there are very few times when you do not fight to save face or resolve conflict. For example when playing football the rules say that tackling is part of the game. But in basketball you will be penalized for tackling the person with the ball. There are two sets of rules learn them.
Two things that help move a person out of poverty is education and relationships. Looking back the two most important of the eight critical resources are knowhow and relationships. “No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship, and mutual respect.” Dr. James Comer
Let us look at the cultivation of this subject. Look for two movies to rent “Freedom Writer” with Hillary Swank , “Million Dollar Baby” with Hillary Swank and Clint Eastwood also “Stand and Deliver” with Edward Olmos
Monday, February 8, 2010
Consumerism versus Capitalism
In America there are two types of people; owners/workers, buyers/sellers. But really if we look at the types of people in America there are only two, capitalist and consumers. My definition of a capitalist is a person that takes to the market a product or service to a sell for a profit. A consumer uses the free market to buy goods and services at a price mark up. The United States of America represents the best in "capitalism". People have been coming from all over the world to America for a hundred years to pursue their dream. We now in these dire economic times now have an opportunity to as conumers to buy from top name stors at a discount, online with free shipping, and get money back without leaving the comfort of the kitchen table, our desk, the bed or where ever your laptop or desk top is. You can go to ZamZuu.com/Par3Travel and shop at the Armani Exchange, Nordstroms, Macy's, The Limited, Walmart, Brandsmart over 700 stores, we ahve something for everyone. Just click on "go shopping", register, and start shopping. Now if you are a capitalist and want to make a commission off of everything bought from your own internet mall send me a note, and we will talk. My business is travel. I love to golf and go on golf vacations at a discount. With my own travel website I get a discount squared and commission on my travel. Get stearted shpopping, travelling , or selling. Love, Peace and Happiness
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thought versus Reality
"Before anything can become a reality it must first be a thought."
I think that that if you think of something then it can actually come true.
I want to be an interior designer in the future. I feel as if this quote is going to follow me around throughout my career. When designing a house I have to think it out before I just start decorating. Imust take into consideration the likes and dislikes of my client. If they want to a warm cozy room, and I paint the walls lime green then I didn't do my job right. Working in this kind of business means that my thioughts are someone elses reality, and I must do everything right. (02/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
"The want to win is nothing without the dedication to work for it."
I think this means that if you want something without working for it, you will never reach it. If you aren't dedicated, and if you aren't doing what is needed to get where you need to be, then you arent getting anywhere. You have to be dedicated. Without dedication you have no drive. If I was to say I needed a job, but never actually got up and filled out applications or made and attempt to go out and look, then I must not want a job that badly because I'm not dedicated to it. (2/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
"To get what you want you have to do what others don't."
To me this meand if your want something bad enough you will do what ever is necesay to get it yo will never give up and nothing will stop you. You put your mind to it, so you are gooing to reach yor goal. If people are doing something, you are going to do the same thing first and better. you will be the best you can be and no matter what you will get betterat at whatever you are doing. The more you do it the easier it becomes. If your friend sat at home and ate popcorn all day, you are not foing to join them. you are going to do what ever helps you and what ever that is is going to help you. "You get what you get when you do what you do."(02/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
Samantha Young is a llth grader at TCHS.
Background: In ISS have 25 quote in my room. When a new student comes in I ask that they copy all of quotes down. After copying all of them I ask that they pick out 3 that mean something to them. Interesting enough the 3 that they pick tell me about their mindset. After discussing the quotes that they picked I ask them to write a one page essay on each individual quote explaining why each quote means something to them.
I think that that if you think of something then it can actually come true.
I want to be an interior designer in the future. I feel as if this quote is going to follow me around throughout my career. When designing a house I have to think it out before I just start decorating. Imust take into consideration the likes and dislikes of my client. If they want to a warm cozy room, and I paint the walls lime green then I didn't do my job right. Working in this kind of business means that my thioughts are someone elses reality, and I must do everything right. (02/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
"The want to win is nothing without the dedication to work for it."
I think this means that if you want something without working for it, you will never reach it. If you aren't dedicated, and if you aren't doing what is needed to get where you need to be, then you arent getting anywhere. You have to be dedicated. Without dedication you have no drive. If I was to say I needed a job, but never actually got up and filled out applications or made and attempt to go out and look, then I must not want a job that badly because I'm not dedicated to it. (2/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
"To get what you want you have to do what others don't."
To me this meand if your want something bad enough you will do what ever is necesay to get it yo will never give up and nothing will stop you. You put your mind to it, so you are gooing to reach yor goal. If people are doing something, you are going to do the same thing first and better. you will be the best you can be and no matter what you will get betterat at whatever you are doing. The more you do it the easier it becomes. If your friend sat at home and ate popcorn all day, you are not foing to join them. you are going to do what ever helps you and what ever that is is going to help you. "You get what you get when you do what you do."(02/05/10 Samatha Young TCHS)
Samantha Young is a llth grader at TCHS.
Background: In ISS have 25 quote in my room. When a new student comes in I ask that they copy all of quotes down. After copying all of them I ask that they pick out 3 that mean something to them. Interesting enough the 3 that they pick tell me about their mindset. After discussing the quotes that they picked I ask them to write a one page essay on each individual quote explaining why each quote means something to them.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
"Gathering Storm"
Former Secret Service agent Ronald Williams, interviewed by a writer at Politico.com, put it like this: "When there are vitriolic comments, acrimonious commentary and anger, the likelihood of violence escalates."
There has been no shortage of the kind of talk that Williams refers to. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, for example, blamed Obama for an incident in which black students attacked white kids, saying it was par for the course "in Obama's America." CNN's Lou Dobbs, joining the outermost fringe, questioned Obama's citizenship against all the evidence. Newsmax columnist John L. Perry suggested that the president is likely to provoke a military coup. U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) notoriously shouted out "You lie!" during a major Obama speech on health care to Congress. And Confederate flags and racist depictions of Obama are now staples of the town hall and "tea party" protests against a public health care option.
In September, Public Policy Polling released the stunning results of a survey designed to measure extremism in the mainstream. Among other things, the poll found that 21% of Americans believe that Obama is the Antichrist or may be. Among Republicans, 34% believe the president is or may be the Antichrist, while 64% of that party's voters say he is not or may not be an American citizen.
All this has been accompanied by a resurgence of hate groups, antigovernment militias and other "Patriot" groups, and nativist vigilante groups. In addition, there has been a spate of domestic terror from people enraged by Obama's election.
The last time the political scene seemed this overheated was in 1995, when years of antigovernment rhetoric culminated in the bombing carried out by right-wing antigovernment extremists in Oklahoma City. In the days after the deaths of 168 people there, a USA Today poll found that fully 39% of Americans agreed with the proposition that the federal government had become "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."
Whether or not today's rage on the right is motivated chiefly by racism, it seems obvious that violent rhetoric leads to violent action. Words have consequences.
"The far right is displaying a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric and astonishingly few leaders … are standing up to it," said Michael B. Keegan, president of the liberal People for the American Way, as he released a November report on the explosion of far-right-wing rhetoric. "That's a reckless strategy, and members of both political parties need to stand up and put a stop to it." (Intelligence Report "Gathering Storm" Winter 2009 Mark Potok, Editor)
There has been no shortage of the kind of talk that Williams refers to. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, for example, blamed Obama for an incident in which black students attacked white kids, saying it was par for the course "in Obama's America." CNN's Lou Dobbs, joining the outermost fringe, questioned Obama's citizenship against all the evidence. Newsmax columnist John L. Perry suggested that the president is likely to provoke a military coup. U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) notoriously shouted out "You lie!" during a major Obama speech on health care to Congress. And Confederate flags and racist depictions of Obama are now staples of the town hall and "tea party" protests against a public health care option.
In September, Public Policy Polling released the stunning results of a survey designed to measure extremism in the mainstream. Among other things, the poll found that 21% of Americans believe that Obama is the Antichrist or may be. Among Republicans, 34% believe the president is or may be the Antichrist, while 64% of that party's voters say he is not or may not be an American citizen.
All this has been accompanied by a resurgence of hate groups, antigovernment militias and other "Patriot" groups, and nativist vigilante groups. In addition, there has been a spate of domestic terror from people enraged by Obama's election.
The last time the political scene seemed this overheated was in 1995, when years of antigovernment rhetoric culminated in the bombing carried out by right-wing antigovernment extremists in Oklahoma City. In the days after the deaths of 168 people there, a USA Today poll found that fully 39% of Americans agreed with the proposition that the federal government had become "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens."
Whether or not today's rage on the right is motivated chiefly by racism, it seems obvious that violent rhetoric leads to violent action. Words have consequences.
"The far right is displaying a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric and astonishingly few leaders … are standing up to it," said Michael B. Keegan, president of the liberal People for the American Way, as he released a November report on the explosion of far-right-wing rhetoric. "That's a reckless strategy, and members of both political parties need to stand up and put a stop to it." (Intelligence Report "Gathering Storm" Winter 2009 Mark Potok, Editor)
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Could Pres. Obama be Killed by the "CIA"
Douglass presents a formidable amount of evidence, some old and some new, against the CIA and covert action agencies within the national security state, and does so in such a logical and persuasive way that any fair-minded reader cannot help but be taken aback; stunned, really. And he links this evidence directly to JFK’s actions on behalf of peace.
He knows, however, that to truly convince he must break a “conspiracy of silence that would envelop our government, our media, our academic institutions, and virtually our entire society from November 22, 1963, to the present.” This “unspeakable,” this hypnotic “collective denial of the obvious,” is sustained by a mass-media whose repeated message is that the truth about such significant events is beyond our grasp, that we will have to drink the waters of uncertainty forever. As for those who don’t, they are relegated to the status of conspiracy nuts.
Fear and uncertainty block a true appraisal of the assassination - that plus the thought that it no longer matters.
It matters. For we know that no president since JFK has dared to buck the military-intelligence-industrial complex. We know a Pax Americana has spread its tentacles across the globe with U.S. military in over 130 countries on 750 plus bases. We know that the amount of blood and money spent on wars and war preparations has risen astronomically.
There is a great deal we know and even more that we don’t want to know, or at the very least, investigate.
If Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin. Douglass marshals a wealth of evidence to show how from the very start Oswald was moved around the globe like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters. As he begins to trace Oswald’s path, Douglass asks this question: “Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?” After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operating base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret but a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission), Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., working at a Soviet factory in Minsk , and taking a Russian wife - during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union - he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-communist with extensive intelligence connections, recommended by the State Department. He passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where , at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a graphic arts company that worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba. Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt who, in 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assasinations’ Gaeton Fonzi, allegedly committed suicide. Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April 1963 where got a job at the Reilly Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reilly. The Reilly Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying and training anti-Castro paramilitaries meant to ensnare Kennedy. Oswald then went to work with Bannister and the CIA paramilitaries.
During this time up until the assassination Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Bannister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin.” Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”
When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did , but for which he was paid. Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the picture on cue. Douglass illuminatingly traces in their intelligence connections. Ruth later was the Warren Commission’s chief witness. She had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September 1963 Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to her house in Dallas to live with her. Thirty years after the assassination a document was declassified showing Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s step-father, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell helicopter and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance. Her mother was related to the Forbes family of Boston and her lifelong friend, Mary Bancroft, worked as a WW II spy with Allen Dulles and was his mistress. Afterwards, Dulles questioned the Paines in front of the Warren Commission, studiously avoiding any revealing questions. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently got Oswald a job in the Texas Book Depository where he began work on October 16, 1963.
From late September until November 22, various Oswalds are later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Dallas to Mexico City. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theatre, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back. As Douglas says, “There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.” Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico…their ( CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget. It was apparent that a very intricate and deadly game was being played out at high levels in the shadows.
We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass adds layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so. Oswald, the mafia, anti-Castro Cubans could not have withdrawn most of the security that day. The Sheriff Bill Decker withdrew all police protection. The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been the day before in Houston; took agents off the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire. They approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car came, almost to a halt, a clear security violation. The House Select Committee on Assasinations concluded this, not some conspiracy nut.
Who could have squelched the testimony of all the doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story? Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2 – a story little known but extraordinary in its implications – is riveting.) The list of all the people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up - clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.
The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book.
He says it best: “The extent to which our national security state was systematically marshaled for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains incomprehensible to us. When we live in a system, we absorb and think in a system. We lack the independence needed to judge the system around us. Yet the evidence we have seen points toward our national security state, the systemic bubble in which we all live, as the source of Kennedy’s murder and immediate cover-up.”
Speaking to his friends Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell about those who planned the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK said, “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”
Let’s hope for another president like that, but one that meets a different end.
________________________________________
[i] http://consortiumnews.com/print’2009/091309a.html
[ii] Vernon Loeb, “Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack,” Washington Post, April 29, 2000
[iii] See James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy,” Boston Review, October/November 2003
He knows, however, that to truly convince he must break a “conspiracy of silence that would envelop our government, our media, our academic institutions, and virtually our entire society from November 22, 1963, to the present.” This “unspeakable,” this hypnotic “collective denial of the obvious,” is sustained by a mass-media whose repeated message is that the truth about such significant events is beyond our grasp, that we will have to drink the waters of uncertainty forever. As for those who don’t, they are relegated to the status of conspiracy nuts.
Fear and uncertainty block a true appraisal of the assassination - that plus the thought that it no longer matters.
It matters. For we know that no president since JFK has dared to buck the military-intelligence-industrial complex. We know a Pax Americana has spread its tentacles across the globe with U.S. military in over 130 countries on 750 plus bases. We know that the amount of blood and money spent on wars and war preparations has risen astronomically.
There is a great deal we know and even more that we don’t want to know, or at the very least, investigate.
If Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin. Douglass marshals a wealth of evidence to show how from the very start Oswald was moved around the globe like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters. As he begins to trace Oswald’s path, Douglass asks this question: “Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?” After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operating base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret but a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission), Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., working at a Soviet factory in Minsk , and taking a Russian wife - during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union - he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-communist with extensive intelligence connections, recommended by the State Department. He passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where , at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a graphic arts company that worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba. Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt who, in 1977, on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assasinations’ Gaeton Fonzi, allegedly committed suicide. Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April 1963 where got a job at the Reilly Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reilly. The Reilly Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying and training anti-Castro paramilitaries meant to ensnare Kennedy. Oswald then went to work with Bannister and the CIA paramilitaries.
During this time up until the assassination Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, many of these theatrical performances being directed from Bannister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin.” Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”
When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963, de Mohrenschildt exited the picture, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did , but for which he was paid. Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the picture on cue. Douglass illuminatingly traces in their intelligence connections. Ruth later was the Warren Commission’s chief witness. She had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September 1963 Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to her house in Dallas to live with her. Thirty years after the assassination a document was declassified showing Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s step-father, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell helicopter and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance. Her mother was related to the Forbes family of Boston and her lifelong friend, Mary Bancroft, worked as a WW II spy with Allen Dulles and was his mistress. Afterwards, Dulles questioned the Paines in front of the Warren Commission, studiously avoiding any revealing questions. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently got Oswald a job in the Texas Book Depository where he began work on October 16, 1963.
From late September until November 22, various Oswalds are later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Dallas to Mexico City. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theatre, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back. As Douglas says, “There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.” Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico…their ( CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget. It was apparent that a very intricate and deadly game was being played out at high levels in the shadows.
We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass adds layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so. Oswald, the mafia, anti-Castro Cubans could not have withdrawn most of the security that day. The Sheriff Bill Decker withdrew all police protection. The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been the day before in Houston; took agents off the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire. They approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car came, almost to a halt, a clear security violation. The House Select Committee on Assasinations concluded this, not some conspiracy nut.
Who could have squelched the testimony of all the doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story? Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2 – a story little known but extraordinary in its implications – is riveting.) The list of all the people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up - clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.
The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one hardened to the truth would not be deeply moved and affected by his book.
He says it best: “The extent to which our national security state was systematically marshaled for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remains incomprehensible to us. When we live in a system, we absorb and think in a system. We lack the independence needed to judge the system around us. Yet the evidence we have seen points toward our national security state, the systemic bubble in which we all live, as the source of Kennedy’s murder and immediate cover-up.”
Speaking to his friends Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell about those who planned the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, JFK said, “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”
Let’s hope for another president like that, but one that meets a different end.
________________________________________
[i] http://consortiumnews.com/print’2009/091309a.html
[ii] Vernon Loeb, “Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack,” Washington Post, April 29, 2000
[iii] See James K. Galbraith, “Exit Strategy,” Boston Review, October/November 2003
Does President Obama Have Anything To Fear?
JFK and The Unspeakable
Despite a treasure-trove of new information having emerged over the last forty-six years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. There are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission. Both groups agree, however, that whatever the truth, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred almost a half-century ago, so let’s move on.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as James Douglass shows in his extraordinary book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008). It is clearly one of the best books ever written on the Kennedy assassination and deserves a vast readership. It is bound to roil the waters of complacency that have submerged the truth of this key event in modern American history.
It’s not often that the intersection of history and contemporary events pose such a startling and chilling lesson as does the contemplation of the murder of JFK on November 22, 1963 juxtaposed with the situations faced by President Obama today. So far, at least, Obama’s behavior has mirrored Johnson’s, not Kennedy’s, as he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by 34,000. One can’t but help think that the thought of JFK’s fate might not be far from his mind as he contemplates his next move in Afghanistan.
Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by “unspeakable” (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace. He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it” - not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.
Why and by whom? These are the key questions. If it can be shown that Kennedy did, in fact, turn emphatically away from war as a solution to political conflict; did, in fact, as he was being urged by his military and intelligence advisers to up the ante and use violence, rejected such advice and turned toward peaceful solutions, then, a motive for his elimination is established. If, furthermore, it can be clearly shown that Oswald was a dupe in a deadly game and that forces within the military/intelligence apparatus were involved with him from start to finish, then the crime is solved, not by fingering an individual who may have given the order for the murder or pulled the trigger, but by showing that the coordination of the assassination had to involve U.S. intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA . Douglass does both, providing highly detailed and intricately linked evidence based on his own research and a vast array of the best scholarship.
We are then faced with the contemporary relevance, and since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded. In this regard, it is not incidental that former twenty-seven year CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, in a recent interview, warned of the “two CIAs,” one the analytic arm providing straight scoop to presidents, the other the covert action arm which operates according to its own rules. “Let me leave you with this thought,” he told his interviewer, “and that is that I think Panetta (current CIA Director), and to a degree Obama, are afraid – I never thought I’d hear myself saying this – I think they are afraid of the CIA.” He then recommended Douglass’ book, “It’s very well-researched and his conclusion is very alarming.”
Let’s look at the history marshaled by Douglass to support his thesis.
First, Kennedy, who took office in January 1961 as somewhat of a Cold Warrior, was quickly set up by the CIA to take the blame for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. Kennedy refused to go along and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy. But it was all a sham.
Though Douglass doesn’t mention it, and few Americans know it, classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned of the date of the invasion more than a week in advance, had informed Castro, but – and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end - never told the President. [ii] The CIA knew the invasion was doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway. Why? So they could and did afterwards blame JFK for the failure.
This treachery set the stage for events to come. For his part, sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (as in a bad joke, later to be named to the Warren Commission) and his assistant General Charles Cabell (whose brother Earle Cabell, to make a bad joke absurd, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed) and said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Not the sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.
The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1961, despite the Joint Chief’s demand to put troops into Laos, Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”
Also in 1961, he refused to concede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”
He refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Afterwards he told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”
Then in June 1963 he gave an incredible speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”
A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.
In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965. [iii]
All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Khrushchev via the KGB , Norman Cousins, and Pope John XXIII , and with Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. In an interview with Daniel on October 24, 1963 Kennedy said, “I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.” Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top generals.
These clear refusals to go to war and his decision to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course. As Douglass and others have pointed out, every move Kennedy made was anti-war. This, Douglass argues, was because JFK, a war hero, had been deeply affected by the horror of war and was severely shaken by how close the world had come to destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout his life he had been touched by death and had come to appreciate the fragility of life. Once in the Presidency, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peace maker. He came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’etat against him. On the night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.” And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned it.
Despite a treasure-trove of new information having emerged over the last forty-six years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. There are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission. Both groups agree, however, that whatever the truth, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred almost a half-century ago, so let’s move on.
Nothing could be further from the truth, as James Douglass shows in his extraordinary book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008). It is clearly one of the best books ever written on the Kennedy assassination and deserves a vast readership. It is bound to roil the waters of complacency that have submerged the truth of this key event in modern American history.
It’s not often that the intersection of history and contemporary events pose such a startling and chilling lesson as does the contemplation of the murder of JFK on November 22, 1963 juxtaposed with the situations faced by President Obama today. So far, at least, Obama’s behavior has mirrored Johnson’s, not Kennedy’s, as he has escalated the war in Afghanistan by 34,000. One can’t but help think that the thought of JFK’s fate might not be far from his mind as he contemplates his next move in Afghanistan.
Douglass presents a very compelling argument that Kennedy was killed by “unspeakable” (the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s term) forces within the U.S. national security state because of his conversion from a cold warrior into a man of peace. He argues, using a wealth of newly uncovered information, that JFK had become a major threat to the burgeoning military-industrial complex and had to be eliminated through a conspiracy planned by the CIA – “the CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it” - not by a crazed individual, the Mafia, or disgruntled anti-Castro Cubans, though some of these may have been used in the execution of the plot.
Why and by whom? These are the key questions. If it can be shown that Kennedy did, in fact, turn emphatically away from war as a solution to political conflict; did, in fact, as he was being urged by his military and intelligence advisers to up the ante and use violence, rejected such advice and turned toward peaceful solutions, then, a motive for his elimination is established. If, furthermore, it can be clearly shown that Oswald was a dupe in a deadly game and that forces within the military/intelligence apparatus were involved with him from start to finish, then the crime is solved, not by fingering an individual who may have given the order for the murder or pulled the trigger, but by showing that the coordination of the assassination had to involve U.S. intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA . Douglass does both, providing highly detailed and intricately linked evidence based on his own research and a vast array of the best scholarship.
We are then faced with the contemporary relevance, and since we know that every president since JFK has refused to confront the growth of the national security state and its call for violence, one can logically assume a message was sent and heeded. In this regard, it is not incidental that former twenty-seven year CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, in a recent interview, warned of the “two CIAs,” one the analytic arm providing straight scoop to presidents, the other the covert action arm which operates according to its own rules. “Let me leave you with this thought,” he told his interviewer, “and that is that I think Panetta (current CIA Director), and to a degree Obama, are afraid – I never thought I’d hear myself saying this – I think they are afraid of the CIA.” He then recommended Douglass’ book, “It’s very well-researched and his conclusion is very alarming.”
Let’s look at the history marshaled by Douglass to support his thesis.
First, Kennedy, who took office in January 1961 as somewhat of a Cold Warrior, was quickly set up by the CIA to take the blame for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. Kennedy refused to go along and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy. But it was all a sham.
Though Douglass doesn’t mention it, and few Americans know it, classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned of the date of the invasion more than a week in advance, had informed Castro, but – and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end - never told the President. [ii] The CIA knew the invasion was doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway. Why? So they could and did afterwards blame JFK for the failure.
This treachery set the stage for events to come. For his part, sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles (as in a bad joke, later to be named to the Warren Commission) and his assistant General Charles Cabell (whose brother Earle Cabell, to make a bad joke absurd, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed) and said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” Not the sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.
The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1961, despite the Joint Chief’s demand to put troops into Laos, Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”
Also in 1961, he refused to concede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”
He refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Afterwards he told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”
Then in June 1963 he gave an incredible speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” and movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”
A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.
In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965. [iii]
All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Khrushchev via the KGB , Norman Cousins, and Pope John XXIII , and with Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. In an interview with Daniel on October 24, 1963 Kennedy said, “I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.” Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top generals.
These clear refusals to go to war and his decision to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course. As Douglass and others have pointed out, every move Kennedy made was anti-war. This, Douglass argues, was because JFK, a war hero, had been deeply affected by the horror of war and was severely shaken by how close the world had come to destruction during the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout his life he had been touched by death and had come to appreciate the fragility of life. Once in the Presidency, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peace maker. He came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’etat against him. On the night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.” And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned it.
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