HONORING JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS (PART TWO)

We now continue to elaborate on JFK’s major accomplishments:

PEACE CORPS:

Contrary to the misbegotten trope that Peace Corps was started as a legion for do- gooders, the actual basis was as part of geopolitical strategy during the Cold War. Even before the program was inaugurated on March 1, 1961, Kennedy had pointed out that the Soviet Union "had hundreds of men and women, scientists, physicists, teachers, engineers, doctors, and nurses . . . prepared to spend their lives abroad in the service of world communism."

Kennedy understood, as few leaders do today, that most true victories aren’t won on battlefields but in the hearts and minds of populations. Support those vulnerable populations in a constructive way – by providing medicines, basic health care, ways to grow new crops to feed themselves, access to clean water and education – and you will win the most critical battles. To say JFK’s program has helped burnish the American image abroad would be an understatement – never mind the common detractors whose only contribution to human advancement to date has been…..well, nothing !

Since 1961, more than 220,000 volunteers- male and female - have served in the Peace Corps, working in such diverse fields as education, health, agricultural development, HIV/AIDS education and prevention, information technology, business development, protecting the environment and developing water resources,. Peace Corps volunteers have to be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Peace Corps service is now a 27-month commitment.

And no, contrary to the lies of certain n’er do well, ignorant imps (who likely wouldn’t qualify for Peace Corps based on failing the psychological exam) Peace Corps was never a historical haven for “draft dodgers”. As part of the government, how could it have been? To be accepted you had to go through a government screening process and if you had dodged a draft call -up you’d have been exposed in a New York minute. If of draft age, at the time – say late 1960s, early 70s when the Vietnam War was going on – you had to either have a government deferment, or a draft card showing your classification was IY or 4F. There were no exceptions!

The goals of the Peace Corps remain:

1) To help the people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained workers

2) To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served

3) To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

During my four year stint in the Peace Corps in Barbados, I helped set up the Science departments and fully outfitted biology, chemistry and general science laboratories at two different secondary schools, acted as the Head of Science Dept. in both, assisted in teacher education and curriculum development, helped found the Barbados Philosophical Society, and launched the first ever scientific journal for The Barbados Astronomical Society – as well as helping to organize public lectures, seminars, technical workshops.

The ALLIANCE for PROGRESS:

In March, 1961, Kennedy launched this critical economic assistance program – realizing the strategic importance of Latin America. In his opening speech in recognition of its goals, Kennedy said:

“We propose to complete the revolution of the Americas, to build a hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living and all can live out their lives in dignity and in freedom. To achieve this goal political freedom must accompany material progress...Let us once again transform the American Continent into a vast crucible of revolutionary ideas and efforts, a tribute to the power of the creative energies of free men and women, an example to all the world that liberty and progress walk hand in hand. Let us once again awaken our American revolution until it guides the struggles of people everywhere-not with an imperialism of force or fear but the rule of courage and freedom and hope for the future of man

Because of the program, economic assistance to Latin America nearly tripled between fiscal year 1960 and fiscal year 1961. Between 1962 and 1967 the US supplied $1.4 billion per year to Latin America. If new investment is included, the amount of aid rose to $3.3 billion per year during this time span while the total amount of aid was roughly $22.3 billion. Sadly, once LBJ got in, the amount of aid did not equal the net transfer of resources. LBJ was likely worried about the bad press Kennedy had received – as in the reactionary Wall Street Journal – which repeatedly accused him of being a “statist” and using “dirigisme”. (E.g. 8/15/63: 'When Friends Become Foes')

SPACE - THE MOON PROGRAM:

After the ignominy of the Russian satellite Sputnik, launched on Oct. 4, 1957, the U.S. received a wake up call in respect to its science and technology deficiencies. JFK knew that in order to technologically compete, a single program and focus was needed to capture the nation's imagination and to propel it toward a future where it wouldn't be left behind. Thus the manned space program was launched, and Kennedy declared in 1961 that "before this decade is out we will land a man on the Moon". With this single -minded focus the national resources were summoned through NASA, and he was as good as his word, with the Apollo astronauts setting down on July 20, 1969. Look at most of those who became interested in math or science, especially physics - at the time - and they will tell you it was Kennedy's challenge of going to the Moon, and manned space exploration in general. For me, I recall Alan Shepherd's Mercury flight on May 5, 1961 as if it was yesterday.

Many of the devices we take for granted today, especially in computers and electronic miniaturization, are direct spinoffs from the manned space program. Specific examples include: artificial limbs, scratch resistant lenses, ventricular assist devices, and light emitting diodes for medical therapies. In addition, you can thank the space program for having provided the satellites essential to keep your GPS locators functioning in your cars and satellite dishes operating for your satellite TV. You can also thank the space program for all the weather satellites that make it possible to know in advance the approach of hurricanes.

THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY:

Few Americans today appreciate what we had to endure in the 1950s - early 60s, in terms of radioactive fallout (with Strontium 90 and other nuclides contaminating food, air, water etc.) from massive Russian and U.S. nuclear tests in the atmosphere. Often, say each month, 100 megaton or larger test warheads would be detonated – especially in the Soviet Union. The radiation from the blasts traveled across Europe as well as the Pacific. The U.S. had its share of tests too, and before Kennedy’s initiative (signed also by Nikita Khrushchev) few of us knew whether or if it would ever end.

But with the signing and ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban treaty in August, 1963, it did. As author James Douglass aptly has noted (JFK and the Unspeakable):

“The test ban treaty was JFK’s critically important way to initiate, with Khrushchev, the end of the Cold War and their joint leadership in the United Nations for the redemptive process of general and complete disarmament.”

What changed Kennedy? Most observers believe it was the close call with the Cuban Missile crisis. Kennedy then became firmly convinced there needed to be controls in place, and also a path to general nuclear disarmament. In his American University speech on June 10, 1963, for example, JFK noted:

“Our primary long-range interest is general and complete disarmament- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms”.

Indeed, in his National Security Action Memorandum 239 he explicitly said he was prepared to pursue such a program, noting:

” The events of the last two years have increased my concern for the consequences of an unchecked continuation of the arms race between ourselves and the Soviet bloc.”

CHALLENGING THE FEDERAL RESERVE CONTROL OF THE MONEY SUPPLY

Kennedy, while not a strict constructionist as regards the Constitution, did believe that the creation of money was legally only allotted to the U.S. Treasury and not an outside banking enterprise. (Which the Federal Reserve was, and is – see e.g. James Livingstone Origins of the Federal Reserve System - Money, Class and Corporate Capitalism 1890- 1913, Cornell University Press, 1986, p.233.)

Realizing that if he didn’t make a move to challenge the Federal Reserve no one else would, he signed Executive Order 11,110 on June 4, 1963 - to challenge Fed's control of the money supply. This EO authorized the creation of some $4.2 billion in U.S. Notes ($30b in today's dollars) to replace Federal Reserve Notes. These U.S. Notes were issued by Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, and bore his signature. After the assassination nearly all the notes were recalled. I was fortunate in being able to save two: a $2 note with Jefferson on the front, and a $5 with Lincoln. Both display the serial numbers in red ink, not green like Federal Reserve notes. Readers who are interested in seeing the fiver can go to my blog post of July 14, last year, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/yes-those-us-notes-were-real.html


JFK's U.S. note issuance was clearly an effort to break the Fed stranglehold, and especially its policy whereby new money is brokered into the M1 supply system via interest, passed on to lending, issuing banks, thereby creating a stream of new debt each time.

Had he lived, massive additional infusions of U.S. Notes likely would have occurred, ultimately leading the way to redundancy of the Federal Reserve. But perhaps that’s why he couldn’t be allowed to live.

RAPPROCHEMENT WITH FIDEL CASTRO:

JFK realized also in the wake of the Cuban Missile crisis, that Castro’s Cuba could not be an enemy of the U.S. for life. There was no upside to it, for either nation. National Archives specialist and archivist Peter Kornbluh has already extensively documented the goings on in the Kennedy white house to do with Cuba in the months leading up to his assassination. Much of this was documented in his article, 'Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been', in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999, p. 1C. As he notes:

"Unknown to all but Robert Kennedy and a handful of advisors, John Kennedy began pursuing an alternative tact on Cuba in 1963: a secret dialogue toward a rapprochement with Castro. "

(snip) "The first private channel to Castro was James Donovan, a Washington lawyer negotiating the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners. During the late fall of 1962, Donovan became the first American emissary to gain Castro's ear and his trust. Donovan arranged a trade of $62 million in food and medicines for the imprisoned brigade members. During the spring of 1963 he continued his trips to Havana to secure the release of two dozen American citizens including three CIA operatives, held in Cuban jails. Debriefed by U.S. intelligence officials after each trip, Donovan described his meetings with Castro as 'most cordial and intimate'."

Developments proceeded rapidly, according to the Kornbluh documents, until by November 19, 1963, the stage was set for a preliminary “secret meeting at the United Nations to discuss an agenda for talks with Castro”. Alas, it was not to be, and 3 days later Kennedy was dead. Most deep politics researchers suspect the CIA caught wind of the plan – despite the extraordinary efforts to keep it secret- and this along with Kennedy’s plan to pull out of Vietnam in 1965 sealed his fate. (Also quite plausible, is that the anti-Castro Bay of Pigs Cubans run by George Joannides of the CIA were privy to the Castro rapprochement, and they volunteered to be mechanics in the assassination – to “pay Kennedy back for his treachery".)

Make no mistake the legacy of John F. Kennedy lives on especially in the hearts and minds of those of us who were directly involved in one or more of his programs. We who carry on that legacy seek to make it known, as well as beating back the endless efforts of racist knaves, know-nothings and knuckle draggers to slander his name and besmirch his legacy.

Why Hugo Chavez Is A Hero To Most Venezuelans (And Why U.S. NeoLiberals Hate Him!)

With the death (yesterday) of Hugo Chavez,  the Amerikkan Reactionaries in the capitalist corporo-media are going overboard in slamming him as a renegade, buffoon, “terrorist” (or friend of such) and other codswallop. But ask the ordinary Venezuelan on the streets of Caracas and you will hear a different take: that without Chavez coming to power they’d have remained ground under the boots of a predatory speculator and business class that tried to garner all the nation’s oil wealth to themselves.


And so it was in the early 1990s I first learned of the degree of suffering of common Venezuelans before Chavez was elected. (Yes, ELECTED….by a majority of the populace!) I learned this from my niece Vanessa, then 28. See her as a 13- year old in the 1976 photo (center), visiting Barbados from her native Trinidad. This was on the day of the Cubana Airlines Flt. 455 bombing off Barbados' southwest coast, a strike instigated by the CIA and Orlando Bosch with the assistance of the then "Washington ally", Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP, to the bombing. (Note: The DISIP was mainly used by the rich thieves who governed Venezuela then to track all "enemies of the state" - mainly the most impoverished peasants yearning to breathe free, but also any Castro sympathizers.)

Anyway, on his arrival in Perez' oligarchic state, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the CIA report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor.  As the report notes: “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’.   None of us in Bim knew the details then, but anyway, this was one reason MANY Bajans were elated when Chavez came to power decades later to oust the Venezuelan Oil-based Plutocrats!


As for Vanessa, after she’d taught classical piano to Venezuelans in the late 80s, she'd seen first hand the degree of depredation and the extent to which the Venezuelan poor were ground under, used and exploited by the governing class elites, plutocrats.

Living on the island of Trinidad, barely 7 miles off the Venezuelan coast, she’d probably always been drawn to at least temporarily live and work in the nearest South American nation.  When I visited Trinidad in 1983, to participate in a CXC Physics Curriculum workshop at the Trinidad Hilton, she confided to me that – after graduating from the University of the West Indies with a degree in Computer Science - she wanted to travel to Venezuela to teach music, piano. She wanted to do this before becoming locked into the regular work-a-day world of computer programming. It was a wise choice, and it broadened her perspectives, apart from allowing her to see and live in another nation. (Her  Spanish skills were excellent, by the way!)


But she wasn’t prepared for the abject poverty, people getting their food from restaurant leftovers tossed into garbage cans and many having to eat rats. She wasn’t ready for the social turmoil and unrest and how the small elite wealthy class lived off the toil of the laborers. She predicted as far back as 1991 that this couldn’t be sustained: the country would either tear itself apart in civil war or revolution, or a new leader would arrive to change the dynamic.

The latter occurred with the election of Hugo Chavez. Chavez unashamedly instituted a policy of wealth redistribution and nationalized foreign oil interests, exploiting the nation’s prime resource. Chavez wanted the bounty from that resource to elevate the quality of life for the poor. In many ways he resembled the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala who sought to nationalize the vast banana plantations of United Fruit – but who was overthrown in a U.S. engineered coup (“Operation Success”) in 1954. See also:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

Chavez faced no similar threat from the Yanqui up north because he had a powerful military to support him, also control of the 4th largest oil reserves in the world (now exceeding that from Saudi Arabia).

How successful was Chavez in introducing a no-holds barred Socialism to the nation? Very! According to data compiled by the UK Guardian, Chavez’s first decade in office saw Venezuelan GDP more than double and both infant mortality and unemployment almost halved. Add to that data a remarkable graph from the World Bank  that shows that under Chavez’s socialism, poverty in Venezuela plummeted (the Guardian reports that its “extreme poverty” rate fell from 23.4 percent in 1999 to 8.5 percent just a decade later). In all, that left the country with the third lowest poverty rate in Latin America. Additionally, college enrollment more than doubled, while millions of people obtained access to health care for the first time and the number of people eligible for public pensions has quadrupled.


Of course this had to upset the capitalist bastion and its propagandizers to the north, convinced as it was that socialism was a failure everywhere and inequality through Neoliberal capitalism was the answer! Hence the incessant bombardment via rhetoric to assail Chavez as one of the worst scumballs on the planet. (Ok, look, I'm not saying the guy was a saint by any means! But let’s get our heads cleared here! He never initiated a war that killed over 600,000 civilians like in Iraq, nor did he overthrow other leaders – like the U.S. has done in Iran (1953, with Mossadegh), in Guatemala (Arbenz in 1954), Allende in Chile in 1972, nor has he taken out innocent bystanders via ‘collateral damage’ with drone assaults. So, it’s kind of funny to see the pot calling the kettle black in terms of Amerikkan media nabobs and self-righteous howlers branding Chavez as a king of humans rights abuses!


But it’s deliberate! Any successful socialist as a leader, and his nation, simply can’t be tolerated by the Neoliberal Capitalist imps who want the whole world reduced to serfs for their perpetual exploitation. So their stock market shares can soar! On the other hand, if a country goes socialist and craters, the Neoliberal free marketeers laugh it off as a harmless and also forgettable cautionary tale about the perils of "statist"  economics. (Or what JFK called dirigisme: the direction of the national economy by the government to protect public interests against private abuses via the dictator of the marketplace.)

By contrast, if a country goes socialist and its economy does what Venezuela’s did, it's no longer perceived as a laughing matter – and it is not so easy to write off or to ignore. It suddenly looks like a threat to the corporate capitalism, especially when said country has valuable oil resources that global powerhouses like the United States rely on. So why be amazed at the U.S.  media buffoons who would attack Chavez as a "buffoon"? (By the way, Hugo's funniest shtick was his UN appearance in 2006, a day after Bush Jr., noting how the podium still "reeked of sulphur" since the "Devil" had been there. Funny, but spot on true since any Texas yahoo that launches a bogus was that kills 600,000 is a Devil - incarnate - unlike Mikey's fantasy devils)

Let’s face it, those of us who inveigh against the meme of Neoliberal supremacy are not treated kindly in this country. I myself have been called a “communist” more times than I can count. But I don’t give a shit. I see how Neoliberalism is destroying the nation I love and rendering its mainstream citizens as chattel (and often dumbed down sheep from the incessant PR blitz) and I am not prepared to just sit back and hold my tongue or keyboard. I see things like the roaring DOW and see the conquest of Main St. by the Neoliberal fat cat economy- the stock market soaring only because labor is cheap (too many still unemployed) and capital is counterposed against it. Oh, and it’s also fed by cheap money from the Fed. Meanwhile, impecunious seniors can't buy meds because they can't earn interest on safe investments like CDs, or money market accounts.


Other historical antagonists of the Neoliberal creed haven't been treated nicely either! From JFK (when he used the Alliance for Progress to extend low interest loans to Latin America) to Martin Luther King to Michael Moore to Oliver Stone to anyone else who dares question neoliberalism and economic imperialism. We’re all disparaged as commies, “America haters” or worse!


That verbal punishment is all about marginalization – the kind that avoids engaging on substance for fear of allowing the notion of socialism to even enter the conversation in the first place. Instead, the non-conformist is attacked and discredited with vapid invective and caricature, becoming a cartoon villain whose ideas, performance and record are ignored before they can be considered on the merits. He becomes, in other words, the Hugo Chavez we so often saw in  American political ads.


Meanwhile, our own data and predictions show we are right and the Neoliberal vermin wrong. In the United States our  poverty rate is skyrocketing, so we ask: Are there any lessons to be learned from Venezuela’s policies that so rapidly reduced poverty? (Yes! Redistribute wealth  via much higher taxes from those that can afford gold plated toilets to those who can’t afford to buy veggies!)


And in a United States that has become more unequal than many Latin American nations, are there any constructive lessons to be learned from Chavez’s grand experiment with more aggressive redistribution?

Again yes! We must beat the tax cutters and spending cut mongers back! We must demand our Neoliberally compromised politicos fight for the rest of us instead of giving in to the Fascists. We must expose the shameless ploys of the Pete Petersons of the nation and their assorted tricks and covers - like'Fix the Debt' -- only there to fuck us all over. We might hope for a politician with Chavez' balls, but no, you won't find any in D.C. All the balls there were gobbled up by Wall Street, and Banksters' lobbyists long ago.  Meanwhile, every day that  fronts like “Fix the Debt” and other Pete Peterson efforts succeed at destroying Americans' faith in our own government, We The People lose. Maybe it’s time to take some pages from Hugo Chavez’ playbook to socialize this country before we’re all turned into serfs. (To learn more about Peterson and his campaign, and his millionaire CEO buddies, go to www.petersonPyramid.org )


Let me also add here that Chavez’ generosity – by way of a half billion dollars each year for home heating oil - has proven to be a godsend for tens of thousands of older, poorer Americans. For this Citgo and Citizens Energy is to be commended. So is Joe Kennedy for his role in expediting home heating oil distribution for indigent seniors and others, who’d freeze to death if the Neoliberal scum had their way. The scum who can afford to pompasett on their high moral horses when it’s convenient to do so.


But what’s really interesting to me is that American oil companies, with all their tens of billions of dollars in quarterly profits, refused to donate a drop of their oil to such a worthy cause. One of these assholes actually had the nerve (on ’60 Minutes’) to claim he “could never support a program that subsidized the few but undermined fuel prices for all Americans” . Translation: Let the oldsters freeze or starve if it means Hugo’s largesse can’t be appropriated by us and used to extend our manipulation of oil-gas prices even more!

Perhaps the most apropos take appeared in a comment on a New York Times forum:

“Shame on anyone who criticizes providing subsidized energy to the needy in our country. What is worse … the fact that our great, powerful nation can ‘live” with millions of marginalized citizens while  taking a “rebate” from Chavez from funds that were earned by selling oil at a profit to us in the first place. Either no oil from Venezuela, period, OR stop the hypocrisy.”

Well put!

Viva Commandante Chavez! Viva la revolucion! Viva el socialismo bolivriano!!