Friday, November 22, 2013

President John F. Kennedy's Assassination: 50 Years Later





 

 

It has been over 50 years since the evil, unjust assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK made mistakes and he learned from him. The JFK in 1963 was radically different from the JFK from 1961. Now, he was killed as his motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. He wanted to win the election in 1964. Millions of Americans still remember the horrendous event like it was yesterday. He was the fourth American President to be assassinated Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. Both assassinations resonate in the consciousness of Americans. The killing of JFK was caught on national TV including the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. The evil assassination of President John F. Kennedy caused many to see the internal social contradictions of American society and the reactionary agenda of extremists (who wanted America to have an imperialist agenda). John F. Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961. That was only 16 years after the end of World War II.  When JFK was inaugurated, there was the growth of anti-imperialist movements in the world. America wanted to have containment to deal with the foreign policy issues of the day. American foreign policy even back then involved counterinsurgency operations as a means to try to prop up pro-American puppet regimes (even when those regimes had anti-democratic measures). Just days before he left office, President Eisenhower—perhaps frightened at the monster whose growth he had abetted—delivered a televised “Farewell Address” in which he warned the American people that the growth of the “military-industrial complex” posed an immense danger to the survival of American democracy. President John F. Kennedy said in his January 20, 1961 inaugural address that the “torch had been passed to a new generation of Americans” who would be willing to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe." His words inspired many Americans, especially the youth to embrace public service. Yet, he dealt with the contradiction of the democratic pretensions of the United States with American imperialism (and the denial of basic human rights of African Americans). The repression from the McCarthy era was disgraceful. John F. Kennedy was once more reactionary in terms of foreign policy and then changed to be more progressive by 1963. He had disagreements with the ruling class over international policy matters. He refused to invade Cuba, he signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, he refused to invade Laos, and he spoke in favor of world peace via his American University speech of 1963. New documents show that Kennedy wanted to withdrawal troops from Vietnam. The coup of Diem weighed deep on Kennedy and he wanted to fire folks over it. Lyndon Baines Johnson was the President after his assassination. He wanted Jackie Kennedy to be with him when he was sworn in as President.








The assassination on November 22, 1963 caused the military industrial complex to grow their power and to cause a reactionary foreign policy to fester. Most of the American public reject the lone gunman story completely. We know that a 1979 House of Representative special Select Committee on Assassinations. Folks have the right to agree or disagree with its conclusions. It found that scientific acoustical evidence finds a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations. That committee believes that the evidence that they found available that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy. We know that JFK had a continuous relationship with the CIA. The CIA was trying to kill Fidel Castro and JFK did not want this to occur. JFK wanted to disband and he hired the former head of the CIA Allen Dulles. Dulles ironically was a member of the Warren Commission, which was a conflict in interests The CIA back then was provoking WWIII with Russia. President John F. Kennedy made an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to create a nuclear test ban treaty. The CIA feared a premature end to the Cold War as JFK wanted. The CIA was actively undermining the foreign policy of the USA. This has been called treason by some. JFK was clear about what he wanted. In his American University speech of June 10th, 1963, JFK said the following, eloquent words: "...I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace...What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time." After the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the rejection of Operation Northwoods plans, JFK had an epiphany. We know about the CIA coups, assassination, spying, infiltration, and their other crimes for years and decades. The crimes of the CIA include Operation MOCKINGBIRD, Operation Ajax, Operation MK-ULTRA, Operation Phoenix, etc. We should continue to investigate the information of the assassination. We have the right to develop a society that is based on the needs of the people and the general welfare of the people too.



 


One of the most controversial reports in American history was the one from Patrick Moynihan from 1965 called, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." The report makes the silly notion that the legacy of slavery forced black matriarchy to exist in the world, so black matriarchy (and other factors) caused unstable family structures (and black families must be modeled with Eurocentric nuclear families as a means for the survival of the black family). He blamed black matriarchs for the tangle of pathology, which is offensive. Many scholars, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists disagree with Moynihan. The report has sparked debate and it has been exploited by many reactionaries as a means to take stats out of context or try to scapegoat the black community for the evils done by evil modern power structure in the world today. The report is very slick and starts on a false premise and continues with more falsehood. The report claims that the culture of matriarchy in the black household automatically contributes to the harm of the Black family. That is false since back when the report was finished, black males were mostly in the households of African American families. The massive harm done to the black family has nothing to do with single black mothers. It has everything to do with socioeconomic factors and the system of discrimination including oppression (from the system of white supremacy). After deindustrialization, jobs being restricted from black males and from black females, the War on Drugs, mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenses, continued discrimination, continued economic exploitation, the growth of the prison industrial complex (which caused many even innocent black men to be in prison now in 2013), etc. came about in the black community, then the Black family has been heavily harmed. These events have harmed many fathers and many mothers. Our issues have nothing to do with the essence of black culture. It has to do with oppression and economic conditions. There are still strong black human beings in nuclear families, extended families, single families, or otherwise. Also, he or Moynihan refuses to acknowledge the need of gender equality, but says that matriarchal societies relate directly to juvenile delinquency, etc. which is silliness. The report ignores the gender gap among both genders. It ignores that black women also suffer discrimination in education, employment, and political life. So, black men need respect and job opportunities, but black women also need the same as a means to fight poverty and racial inequality. Black women have always had a great role in our struggle for black liberation. Their role should be honored. Poverty is complex and it is related to structural, institutional, and economic reasons. If someone ignores the economic, structural determinants of poverty, then that person has an issue. Cultural pathology has been used by some as a coded phrase to over simplify poverty and scapegoat blacks for issues collectively. A real man can never be emasculated by a strong, independent, and intelligent Black Woman at all. A black woman having progress in schools, in the workplace, and in positions of our community are an asset not a detriment to the progress of Black Men. Black Men doing the same is also an asset in our community too. Black men and Black women should have jobs not just Black Men mostly (as the Moynihan report implies). The report have been exploited as a means to advance false stereotypes about single black women being heavily promiscuous, domineering in nature, and emasculating of black men, which are all lies. This has been proven by the historian Deborah Gray White.  Now, there is nothing wrong with gender egalitarianism. Husbands and wives sharing breadwinning and caregiving responsibilities are fine. Community groups and the government should advance employment for men and women, improve education, grow job training, etc. In other words, men and women rise and fall together. Jim Crow discrimination and the legacy of slavery have harmed many black human beings. Yet, black women collectively have nothing to do with massive poverty in the black community at all. We should look at social and economic factors that harm our community (not to mention that back then, the black community was not even mostly matriarchal at all). Also, is being a black matriarch immoral? The answer is no. Single mothers and single fathers are not monolithic at all. We still have issues in our community. They have grown since the great recession hit in 2008. Everything is not perfect, but we should confront our issues, we shouldn't sugarcoat them, and we should not scapegoat single black mothers for our problems either. That is the point. We need economic justice and real, revolutionary solutions in our community. We need justice. When both genders realize that they need each other and each gender is not the enemy, then massive progress will come about.



 

 


The Detroit bankruptcy is an important issue in our community and in the world in general. One report came about by the New York City based liberal think tank called Demos. It was a refutation of the arguments used by the Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to throw the city of Detroit into bankruptcy. The Demos report charged that the financial numbers used by Orr and other advocates of bankruptcy were grossly inflated. They found that the real causes of Detroit's economic issues were parasitic loans and other financial schemes that were pushed on the city by the banks and other powerful creditors. The data in the report makes the case clear that the city of Detroit's July 19 Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing was not driven by economic necessity but by political considerations. The Demos findings are interesting. Orr filed for Chapter 9 as a means to use the bankruptcy courts to get the pensions of 21,000 retired municipal workers, privatize services and sell off public assets (even the artwork of the Detroit Institute of Arts). The goal of the elite is to pay off the same financial institutions clearly responsible for the city's crisis that grew after the 2008 economic crisis. U.S. Judge Steven Rhodes is expected to rule soon on whether the city is eligible for bankruptcy.  The whole political and media establishment in Detroit and nationwide have respected the view that Detroit is facing inescapable financial distress (because of pension obligations and other costs, which is inaccurate). The Demos report shows that the surge in legacy costs used by to justify the filing “was driven heavily by the city’s complex financial deals, not retiree benefits.” Detroit is facing cash flow problems, because of the conditions of deindustrialization, mass unemployment, the growth of poverty, and huge tax giveaways to corporations. This has nothing to do with the pensions and benefits owed to workers. “Contrary to widely held belief, Detroit does not have a spending problem,” the report states. “Since the onset of the Great Recession, the city’s total expenses have actually decreased by $356.3 million… although its financial expenses have gone up.” Summing up its main conclusions, Demos writes, “The City of Detroit’s bankruptcy was driven by a severe decline in revenues (and, importantly, not an increase in obligations to fund pensions.) Depopulation and long-term unemployment caused Detroit’s property and income tax revenues to plummet. The state of Michigan exacerbated the problems by slashing revenue it shared with the city. The city’s overall expenses have declined over the last five years, although its financial expenses have increased. In addition, Wall Street sold risky financial instruments to the city, which now threaten the resolution of this crisis.” The report points to the bad social conditions in the wake of the 2008 crash as a primary factor behind the collapse in city revenue. The number of employed Detroit residents fell by 53 percent from 2000 to 2012. Half of the decline occurred in the year of 2008 as the Great Recession took hold. That is a true, inescapable fact. The Great Recession harmed Detroit. Detroit lost hundreds of millions of dollars in state revenue sharing as Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his Democratic predecessor two term governor Jennifer Granholm cut more than $700 million in transfer payments from the state government in Lansing to the city. From 2008 to 2013, as the impact of the crisis hit hardest, annual revenue sharing fell 27 percent, from $249.6 million to $182.8 million. The Democratic Party aligned think tank mentions that it only tangentially, federal aid from the Obama administration (that deals with anti-poverty, public education, Head Start and other programs) has also been slashed precipitously since 2009. The White House has cut funding to cash strapped states. That is reducing funding to cities. Tax concessions to powerful corporations have depleted the city's revenue stream as well. The more than $20 million per year awards to companies included gifts to DTE Energy, Comerica Bank, Quicken Loans, Compuware, the Farbman Group, and Detroit Medical Center according to the report. The report says that the $18 billion for the city's deficit was irrelevant to a municipal bankruptcy, which is based on immediate cashflow considerations and not on speculative estimates of long term solvency. “That figure is irrelevant to an analysis of Detroit’s insolvency and bankruptcy filing, highly inflated, and in large part, simply inaccurate,” the report claimed. “In reality, the city needs to address its cash flow shortfall, which the emergency manager pegs at only $198 million, although that number too may be inflated because it is based on extraordinarily aggressive assumptions of the contributions the city needs to make to its pension funds.” Detroit experience brutal cuts as a result of the 2008 crash. The report said that:  “Between FY 2008 and FY 2013, the city drastically cut operating expenses by $419.1 million. This was accomplished in large part by laying off more than 2,350 workers, cutting worker pay, and reducing future healthcare and future benefit accruals for workers… The city reduced salary expenses by 30 percent between FY 2008 and FY 2013. Total operating expenses have been reduced by nearly 38 percent during that same time.” Operating expenditures decreased and debt servicing and other financing cost radically increased. Wall Street have benefited from interest rate swap agreement and more monetary arrangements. The creditors harmed the city even after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates in the wake of the 2008 crash. The case of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department illustrates the scale of these losses. For fiscal years 2011 and 2012, the city took on more than $1.16 billion in debt to pay for expenses related to the DWSD. Nearly half of this debt total, $547 million, went to cover “swap termination payments” imposed on the city after its credit was downgraded. Orr is now pushing for the city to accept a proposed $350 million loan from the international finance house Barclays to pay off the debts incurred to Bank of America/ Merrill Lynch and UBS as a result of these swaps. This means that the debt burden has increased while cuts against the working class have grown (in order to pay off the criminal elements that harmed the city into swaps). “A strong case can be made that the banks that sold these swaps may have breached their ethical, and possibly legal, obligations to the city in executing these deals,” Demos reported. The Demos report has great evidence of the conspiracy behind the Detroit bankruptcy. There is a bigger issue of the assault on the working class. The New York Times and the Washington Post ignored the Demos report. So, Detroit should be defended. Its workers, its poor, its homeless, and its infrastructure should not be harmed as an excuse to advance some austerity agenda in Detroit.




 
 

The new OECD (or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) report says that the United States is now lower than the average in the 34 countries of the OECD. The OECD report said that while life expectancy in the U.S. has been growing in the last several decades, it has grown more slowly than in other countries. This has been shown in their Health at a Glance 2013 report. The lag in U.S. life expectancy is contributed to social and economic factors. The reason is that we have a large uninsured population, poor access to physicians, poor health behavior, social inequality, and poverty. These factors have been exacerbated and no ameliorated even with the implementation of the ACA. The ACA keeps the for profit health care system intact. The OECD’s report shows that life expectancy in the US has increased by about eight years since 1970, rising to 78.7 years in 2011. Other OECD countries, however, saw an average 10-year gain over the same period. While in previous decades the US achieved better than average gains, it now stands more than a year below the OECD average life expectancy of 80.1 years. U.S. life expectancy in 2011 is ranked below that of every Western European country in the study. It hovered just above Chile, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, the Slovak Republic, Hungary and Turkey. It was below Greece, Portugal, South Korea and Slovenia. The US fell significantly behind Switzerland, which has a life expectancy of 82.8 years, as well as Japan and Italy, both of which have a life expectancy of 82.7 years. Mexico is the only other OECD country beside the U.S. without some form of universal or quasi-universal health care system. Mexico ranked lowest in 2011 at 74.2 years. The study also included data from Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and South Africa. The latter ranked below all of the OECD countries in life expectancy, excluding Mexico. The U.S. spends more by far on health care per capital, but it has not a greater life expectancy. Life expectancy is a key indicator of the quality of life. We have a high per capita of health care spending in America, but the issue is that higher profits for private insurers, giant hospital chains, and drug companies have not improved health care services. We have a worsening social inequality. The tiny minority control even more of the wealth while the vast majority of the people are either treading water or growing poor. We must improve our medical care as a means to improve our health care including our life expectancy. The report explains that most OECD countries have government-sponsored coverage of health care costs for a core set of services, usually including doctor consultations, tests and examinations, and surgical and other procedures. In the States, we have 53 percent of the population having coverage with private health insurance in 2011. About 32 percent receive their coverage via a government program like Medicare or Medicaid. So, that leaves a staggering 15 percent of the population uninsured. The best-case scenario under the ACA, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will still leave 31 million Americans, 10 percent of the population, without health insurance. The OECD ranked the U.S. above average for out of pocket costs. An average household spends 2.9 percent of its income on health care. The report also found that in the US “richer people are significantly more likely to visit doctors” than in other countries. Besides the US, countries showing sharp inequities in doctor visits in line with income were Brazil, Chile and Mexico. The OECD report deals with exposing the fact that a lower proportion of U.S. doctors overall are primary care physicians (in dealing with the gynecologists and psychiatrists). Many doctors in America are over 55. So, the OECD shows that our health care system has many troubles. The reason for this is income inequalities and other reasons despite the advances in medical technology. Also, medical care in the U.S. is driven by corporate profit. This profit will intensify with the advent of the ACA. The key provision of the ACA—the so-called “individual mandate”—is aimed at forcing millions of uninsured people to purchase health coverage from private insurers. There are no government-imposed restrictions on what the insurance companies can charge for their premiums, and people shopping for coverage are discovering that the cheapest policies carry huge out-of-pocket costs, including thousands of dollars in deductibles and other “cost-sharing” expenses. Many choices of doctors, hospitals, and patient services for millions of Americans are a reality now. Corporate profits and big business will grow. There has been a slashing of health care spending, reduction in access to health care and limiting treatment for decades in the States. This issue existed long before the Obama administration came into existence. So, I want to make that clear. So, we should use the OECD report as a means to inspire us to fight more for universal health care in the States and throughout the world.
 






By Timothy

 

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