Thursday, December 26, 2013

EPIDEMIC RADIATION EXPOSURES AND DEATHS IN JAPAN DUE TO THE FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR MELT-DOWN HAVE BEEN COVERED UP BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT. ALSO COVERED UP HAVE BEEN LOWER BUT UNRELENTING QUANTIES OF WIND-CARRIED RADIONUCLIDES REACHING NORTH AMERICA. THIS RADIOACTIVE FALL-OUT IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE AT LEAST TO 2020. SO EDUCATE YOURSELFS AND YOUR LOVED ONES OF THIS THREAT AND LEARN TO PROTECT YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY!



Gundersen: All of Japan is contaminated, gov’t covering up enormous exposures to public; Epidemic is just beginning — Evacuee: We are in fact dying in Fukushima; What happened to us will soon affect all Japanese people (VIDEOS)

Published: December 16th, 2013 at 8:54 pm ET                                                                               Original Here
By ENENews

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds, Dec. 16, 2013: The Japanese parliament has just passed the state secrets law. It’s really an information ‘iron curtain’ that’s preventing people in Japan from learning just how bad the exposures were that they received after the accident at Fukushima. […] They’re trying to underestimate the amount of radiation that the Japanese received […] I think they’re neglecting some really serious sources of radiation in their effort to convince the Japanese people that nuclear power is safe. […] These exposures not being calculated by the Japanese, or the IAEA, are in fact enormous. [..] Fukushima was 3 times worse than Chernobyl as far as the noble gases [e.g. xenon, krypton] that were released. […] There’s already a 10-fold increase in thyroid issues in Japan and we’re just at the beginning of the thyroid epidemic. […] As I discovered when I was in Tokyo during the book tour during 2012, all of Japan is a radiologically contaminated area, and the people in Japan need to take extraordinary precautions. The net effect of all this is the total exposure to the Japanese is being grossly underestimated. >> Watch the video here
Or watch the embedded copy below



Testimony of a Fukushima Evacuee, Oct. 30, 2013 — Miko from Iwaki City (at 7:00 in): What the state announces is different from the reality. […] As I just told you what the media says and the facts are entirely different.  […] What happened to Fukushima residents will soon affect all Japanese people […] While some say the radiation has dispersed, we are now safe people are in fact dying in Fukushima. One day a nephew of my friend died of Leukemia. The next day her husband also died. […] There are people living in Fuksuhima, now, they all say: “We’re guinea pigs after all […] many people are dying, huh? There’s nothing we can do, it’s useless, so why bother? I’d rather focus on happy things” and continue with their decontamination. […] People refuse to face the fact that these will eventually come back to haunt them. >> Watch all of Miko’s testimony here
Or watch the embedded copy below:



Related Posts

  1. Famous Japanese Actress: Gov’t is covering up Fukushima crisis — “Our nation has a right to know” — People who write the truth on Internet will be punished under new law — TV stars in Japan are to never discuss political views September 18, 2013
  2. AP: Japan cancer surgeon in fear of what’s to come after Fukushima disaster — “A terrible thing has happened, but people don’t realize it at all” October 22, 2013
  3. Anonymous Interview: Medical doctors working in Fukushima say lots of people are dying — “Bleeding, losing hair, and having a bad health condition” (VIDEO) April 30, 2012
  4. German TV Interview on Fukushima: More and more people living in highly contaminated places are dying of heart disease because of cesium (VIDEO) May 6, 2012
  5. Video: “Frankly, things like this have never ever happened in Japan before — Ordinary people shouting down leadership of country” September 20, 2012

"[T]he only [U.S.] data from 2011 that we had was on newborns with hypothyroidism. Every baby in this country, every newborn baby is tested for certain diseases, one of which is hypothyroidism. And we looked at California ... and we looked at the changes in the rates of hypothyroidism for the nine months after Fukushima compared to the previous year, and we found a 26 percent increase in the rate of hypothyroidism." "[T]he doses in Japan are hundreds, thousands of times higher than they were on the West Coast. Unfortunately, there have really been no studies in Japan except for one, and that is one that's being done by the Fukushima Medical University. They haven't looked at hypothyroidism, but what they've done is this: they have taken 200,000 children under age 18 who live relatively close to Fukushima, and they tested for two things ... [one of which] was thyroid cancer. And they have found up to 59 children have thyroid cancer. In a normal population, it's very rare in children. In a normal [case] we would expect one or two. They have 59." "Second thing that they found is they through ultrasound look at the child's thyroid gland for precancerous lumps, you know, what they call cysts and nodules. And so far, 56 percent of children near Fukushima do in fact have a precancerous cyst or a nodule. And every year it gets higher--two years ago, 35 percent, last year 45 percent, this year 56 percent. Pretty soon we're going to find that almost every child in the area has a precancerous growth on their thyroid gland."


          Original Here





Scientists Link Spike in Thyroid Disease to Fukushima Disaster

Nuclear expert and researcher Joseph Mangano explains his research in connecting the increase of hypothyroidism in newborns on the West coast to the Fukushima nuclear disaster - December 23, 2013



More at The Real News

Bio

Joseph Mangano MPH MBA is a health researcher, and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP). The group is the only one in the U.S. with a specific mission of producing research on health hazards of nuclear reactors and weapons. Among Mangano's accomplishments are 32 medical journal articles, 53 newspaper editorials, 3 books, 27 press conferences on research findings, and testimony to 19 government agencies.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Paul Craig Roberts celebrates Christmas while recalling that "people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual" and lamenting that "we now have a police state." He notes that "Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it." And he concludes that "There is not much that we can do about [the current] assaults [on our Constintutional rights], but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults," and finally wonders if "[a]s the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?"


The Greatest Gift for All — Paul Craig Roberts

December 23, 2013 | Original Here                                              Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Dear Readers, thank you for your support in 2013. Although you have kept me working past retirement age, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

My traditional Christmas column (below) goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States would be a different country, and Americans would be a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution and assaults on Christianity are assaults on all of us. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults.

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.
Paul Craig Roberts


The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced, because their religion does not submit to Washington’s hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2014, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?



Monday, December 23, 2013

The 100 Year History of the Federal Reserve Bank and who it serves (hint: NOT US)



100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility


December 23rd, 2013, marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve, warranting a review of its performance.  Has it achieved the purposes for which it was designed?

The answer depends on whose purposes we are talking about.  For the banks, the Fed has served quite well.  For the laboring masses whose populist movement prompted it, not much has changed in a century.

Thwarting Populist Demands

The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s.  Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today:
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . Money rules . . . .Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. . . .

We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
That was what they wanted, but the Federal Reserve Act that they got was not what the populists had fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for it in 1913. In the stirring speech that won him the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896, Bryan insisted:

[We] believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. . . . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson . . . and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.

He concluded with this famous outcry against the restrictive gold standard:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
What Bryan and the populists sought was a national currency issued debt-free and interest-free by the government, on the model of Lincoln’s Greenbacks. What the American people got was a money supply created by private banks as credit (or debt) lent to the government and the people at interest. Although the national money supply would be printed by the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, it would be issued by the “bankers’ bank,” the Federal Reserve. The Fed is composed of twelve branches, all of which are 100 percent owned by the banks in their districts. Until 1935, these branches could each independently issue paper dollars for the cost of printing them, and could lend them at interest.

1929: The Fed Triggers the Worst Bank Run in History

The new system was supposed to prevent bank runs, but it clearly failed in that endeavor. In 1929, the United States experienced the worst bank run in its history.

The New York Fed had been pouring newly-created money into New York banks, which then lent it to stock speculators. When the New York Fed heard that the Federal Reserve Board of Governors had held an all-night meeting discussing this risky situation, the flood of speculative funding was retracted, precipitating the 1929 stock market crash.

At that time, paper dollars were freely redeemable in gold; but banks were required to keep sufficient gold to cover only 40 percent of their deposits. When panicked bank customers rushed to cash in their dollars, gold reserves shrank. Loans then had to be recalled to maintain the 40 percent requirement, collapsing the money supply.

The result was widespread unemployment and loss of homes and savings, similar to that seen today. In a scathing indictment before Congress in 1934, Representative Louis McFadden blamed the Federal Reserve. He said:
Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks . . . .

The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over. . . .

Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United  States  Government  institutions.  They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.

These twelve private credit monopolies were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.
Freed from the Bankers’ “Cross of Gold”

To stop the collapse of the money supply, in 1933 Roosevelt took the dollar off the gold standard within the United States. The gold standard had prevailed since the founding of the country, and the move was highly controversial. Critics viewed it as a crime. But proponents saw it as finally allowing the country to be economically sovereign.

This more benign view was taken by Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a presentation before the American Bar Association in 1945. He said the government was now at liberty to spend as needed to meet its budget, drawing on credit issued by its own central bank. It could do this until price inflation indicated a weakened purchasing power of the currency. Then, and only then, would the government need to levy taxes—not to fund the budget but to counteract inflation by contracting the money supply. The principal purpose of taxes, said Ruml, was “the maintenance of a dollar which has stable purchasing power over the years. Sometimes this purpose is stated as ‘the avoidance of inflation.’”

It was a remarkable realization. The government could be funded without taxes, by drawing on credit from its own central bank. Since there was no longer a need for gold to cover the loan, the central bank would not have to borrow. It could just create the money on its books. Only when prices rose across the board, signaling an excess of money in the money supply, would the government need to tax—not to fund the government but simply to keep supply (goods and services) in balance with demand (money).

Ruml’s vision is echoed today in the school of economic thought called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But after Roosevelt’s demise, it was not pursued. The U.S. government continued to fund itself with taxes; and when it failed to recover enough to pay its bills, it continued to borrow, putting itself in debt.

The Fed Agrees to Return the Interest

For its first half century, the Federal Reserve continued to pocket the interest on the money it issued and lent to the government. But in the 1960s, Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, pushed to have the Fed nationalized. To avoid that result, the Fed quietly agreed to rebate its profits to the U.S. Treasury.

In The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, published in 1973, Congressman Jerry Voorhis wrote of this concession:
It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation’s money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit—which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do.
Rebating the interest to the Treasury was clearly a step in the right direction. But the central bank funded very little of the federal debt. Commercial banks held a large chunk of it; and as Voorhis observed, “[w]here the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people’s money.” Commercial banks did not rebate the interest they collected to the government, said Voorhis, although they also “‘buy’ the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books—nothing more.”

Today the proportion of the federal debt held by the Federal Reserve has shot up, due to repeated rounds of “quantitative easing.” But the majority of the debt is still funded privately at interest, and most of the dollars funding it originated as “bank credit” created on the books of private banks.

Time for a New Populist Movement?

The Treasury’s website reports the amount of interest paid on the national debt each year, going back 26 years. At the end of 2013, the total for the previous 26 years came to about $9 trillion on a federal debt of $17.25 trillion. If the government had been borrowing from its own central bank interest-free during that period, the debt would have been reduced by more than half. And that was just the interest for 26 years. The federal debt has been accumulating ever since 1835, when Andrew Jackson paid it off and vetoed the Second U.S. Bank’s renewal; and all that time it has been accruing interest. If the government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it might have had no federal debt at all today.

In 1977, Congress gave the Fed a dual mandate, not only to maintain the stability of the currency but to promote full employment.  The Fed got the mandate but not the tools, as discussed in my earlier article here.

It may be time for a new populist movement, one that demands that the power to issue money be returned to the government and the people it represents; and that the Federal Reserve be made a public utility, owned by the people and serving them. The firehose of cheap credit lavished on Wall Street needs to be re-directed to Main Street.

__________________________
Ellen Brown is an attorney, president of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the bestselling Web of Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. She is currently running for California State Treasurer on the Green Party ticket.

Friday, December 20, 2013

HOW PATRIOT EDWARD SNOWDEN HAS (SO FAR) SAVED THE CONSTITUTION AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT.


                  Original Here





McGovern: Unconstitutionality of NSA Phone Call Collection is Indisputable 

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says that the recent federal district judge's ruling on the NSA's bulk phone collection applies constitutional protections, but will not lead to amnesty for Edward Snowden - December 18, 13


More at The Real News


Bio

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program. McGovern now works for "Tell the Word," a ministry of the inner-city/Washington Church of the Saviour.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

A blogger using the pseudonym "teacherken" collects a number of quotes by Bill Moyers and uses them as context bearing on his own history-based sense of what We the (99% of American) People currently confront, i.e., living under an extractive plutocracy, and how this nightmare fits in our history.



teacherken
Daily Kos member
Profile  Diaries (list)  Stream                                                                              Original Here


SAT DEC 14, 2013 at 09:33 AM PST

I am going to ask, no insist, that you read something



Bill Moyers recently gave a speech at the Brennan Institute.  If you go to his website, you can read an edited version of that speech, titled The Great American Class War:  Plutocracy Versus Democracy.

Simply put, Moyers provides context - from a variety of sources, to what we currently confront, and how it fits in our history.

He quotes Justice Brennan, and his experience of why he was a liberal.  

He looks at his own background, growing up a child of the Depression whose first 11 years of life overlapped with the vast majority of the Presidency of FDR.

He quotes a warning from The Economist and then adds pertinent words of his own:
Ten years ago the Economist magazine — no friend of Marxism — warned: “The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.” And as a recent headline in the Columbia Journalism Review put it: “The line between democracy and a darker social order is thinner than you think.” We are this close – this close! – to losing our democracy to the mercenary class. So close it’s as if we’re leaning way over the rim of the Grand Canyon waiting for a swift kick in the pants.
Please keep reading.
The historian Plutarch warned us long ago of what happens when there is no brake on the power of great wealth to subvert the electorate. “The abuse of buying and selling votes,” he wrote of Rome, “crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors.”
After this, Moyers, provides examples of what we confront, starting with
We don’t have emperors yet, but we do have the Roberts Court that consistently privileges the donor class.
He continues in a similar fashion to excoriate the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Republican party -  abiding by fair use prevents me from quoting all of that. Perhaps this paragraph provides an appropriate summary:
Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through. It is simply astonishing that in this rich nation more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits, while our financial class pockets record profits, spends lavishly on campaigns to secure a political order that serves its own interests and demands that our political class push for further austerity. Meanwhile, roughly 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty line and, with the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percent of kids in poverty than we do. Yet a study by scholars at Northwestern University and Vanderbilt finds little support among the wealthiest Americans for policy reforms to reduce income inequality.
And that is part of the problem, because increasingly - thanks to the Roberts Court, to the Senate being populated by millionaires who seem to have forgotten about those who are struggling, to a Republican party  (and too many Democrats) who are beholden to the corporate interests and the wealthy who control and benefit from them - the wealthiest Americans have no interest in anything that does not further enrich and empower them, and in the process our democracy is disappearing, the social contract that should bind us together is being shredded and the notion of "we the people of the United States" is becoming obsolete, as this become evermore
a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy
as I wrote in this piece for CNN.Com in February, 2011.

Moyers is no idealist.  He is a hard-headed realist, a journalist, a former student of theology, someone who has observed and thought about what this country means for more than half a century, who has used his various programs as a means of allowing other thinkers to have their ideas expressed to a broader audience.

There are three more paragraphs that I feel I must quote.  I will do so one at a time, although they run consecutively, because I want to offer some additional thoughts of my own on each.
In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.
This is one of the early battles of this nation, starting with the event that actually led to our Constitution being written, Shays Rebellion, which scared the moneyed classes into coming together to "fix" the flawed Articles of Confederation.  The government they created was NOT a democracy -  those people who could vote - largely white, male, property owners over the age of 21 - could only vote directly for the House of Representatives, with democracy held at bay through the indirect elections of Presidents and Senators. It is also part of the battle between Jefferson and Hamilton.  Each had his strengths, each had his flaws, but the Federalist approach of Hamilton keeps reappearing, as it did in the Gilded Age (and in Supreme Court decisions such as Lochner v New York) and as it does again with the Roberts Court and Citizens United, among other atrocious decisions.  IT certainly appears when a budget deal negotiated in part by a Democratic Senator will cut retirement benefits for those who have served in the military for a pittance of a savings but impose no additional taxes or responsibilities upon those making billions in the current economy, sitting on trillions of cash, while millions have no jobs or what jobs they have are losing benefits and are insufficient to maintain a family, plan for the future, and whose retirement plans increasingly will be to keep working until they drop dead.
I should make it clear that I don’t harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy. Remember, I worked for Lyndon Johnson. Nor do I romanticize “the people.” You should read my mail and posts on right-wing websites. I understand the politician in Texas who said of the state legislature, “If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents.”
Here I will disagree somewhat with Moyers.  I agree about the expressions one encounters from those constituents.  But that is for many because that is all they have ever been taught - by politicians who manipulate them, by preachers who distort the Bible, by petty and larger tyrants who will willingly turn people against one another and against their own interests so long as they themselves maintain power and gain riches.

It is a problem.   It is solvable.  But when those on "our side" take the approach that so long as they are marginally to the left of the Republicans, then  the real progressive approach that would speak even to many of these constituents goes unheard.

When the journalists no longer see themselves as tribunes of the people but are more concerned with to whose Christmas party they will be invited, the press ceases to have a function on behalf of we the people, even if ownership was not increasingly concentrated in hands that seek to use that power to propagandize on behalf of the powerful, not when a Democratic administration seeks to neuter the press by going after journalists as well as those who expose the wrongdoings in the past as well as the current administration.
But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.
one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud

and any institution that attempts to stand up to this steamroller finds itself marginalized if it is lucky, privatized or crushed if it is not so lucky.

The words I quote from my CNN piece are of course derived from Lincoln, from Gettysburg.  Moyers ends with a similar reference to that speech.  I will let him have the final word, as I again strongly urge - demand - that you go read and consider the entire speech:
One hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln stood on the blood-soaked battlefield of Gettysburg and called Americans to “the great task remaining.” That “unfinished work,” as he named it, remained the same then as it was when America’s founding generation began it. And it remains the same today: to breathe new life into the promise of the Declaration of Independence and to assure that the Union so many have sacrificed to save is a union worth saving.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO TEACHERKEN ON SAT DEC 14, 2013 AT  09:33 AM PST.


ALSO REPUBLISHED BY CLASS WARFARE NEWSLETTER: WALL STREET VS WORKING CLASS OCCUPY MOVEMENT.

AMY GOODMAN: "A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The House approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which is set to expire this month." DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: "Well, this deal is actually a big win for the Paul Ryan Republicans. They will avoid the embarrassment, shame, and political damage of shutting down the government, and they obtained this from the Democrats without touching at all the major issues. The corporate loopholes aren’t being closed. The tax-avoidance techniques of billionaires, who can legally live tax-free if they choose to, are not being shut down. The hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to be advantaged. And we’re going to kick 57,000 poor children out of Head Start, which means we’re going to narrow their economic futures and make all of us worse off in the future. We’re cutting a billion-and-a-half dollars from medical research to save lives. Why? Because the very richest people in America, those who have benefited most from being in this market, don’t want to pay for that kind of services. And the Pentagon is getting an extra $20 billion out of this deal. We already spend 42 percent of all the money in the world on our military." DAVID L GRISCOM: "If this is what the Democrats in Congress believe is a good deal, I'm going to join a party that believes its representatives should put the stuggling 99% above the filthy rich 1%."



MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2013                                                                                            .


"Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/16/makes_absolutely_no_sense_david_cay

A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The vast majority of House members from both parties approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. It is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which are set to expire this month. To discuss the deal, we are joined by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek.

Guest

David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek. He is author of several books, including The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner Jr., Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Committee on the Judiciary, demands that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper be removed from his position and prosecuted for lying to Congress. Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, defends Clapper as a “direct and honest” person. In this matter, I stand with the Republican.










Original Here   Blogs / Ray McGovern's blog / Fire the Liar

Fire the Liar

By Ray McGovern - Posted on 11 December 2013

Obama Urged to Fire DNI Clapper

December 11, 2013

(Editor Note)  Last March – before Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s sweeping collection of phone and other data – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said no such operation existed. Now, a group of ex-national security officials urge President Obama to fire Clapper.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Fire James Clapper

We wish to endorse the call by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Committee on the Judiciary, that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be removed and prosecuted for lying to Congress. “Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill. “The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced.”

Sensenbrenner added, “If it’s a criminal offense — and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)



This brief Memorandum is to inform you that we agree that no intelligence director should be able to deceive Congress and suffer no consequences. No democracy that condones such deceit at the hands of powerful, secretive intelligence directors can long endure.

It seems clear that you can expect no help from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to which Clapper has apologized for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony, and who, at the height of the controversy over his credibility, defended him as a “direct and honest” person.

You must be well aware that few amendments to the U.S. Constitution are as clear as the fourth:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Even the cleverest lawyers cannot square with the Fourth Amendment many of the NSA activities that Clapper and Feinstein have defended, winked at, or lied about.

Only you can get rid of James Clapper. We suspect that a certain awkwardness — and perhaps also a misguided sense of loyalty to a colleague — militate against your senior staff giving you an unvarnished critique of how badly you have been served by Clapper. And so we decided to give you a candid reminder from us former intelligence and national security officials with a total of hundreds of years of experience, much of it at senior levels, in the hope you will find it helpful.

Statements by DNI Clapper re Eavesdropping on Americans

March 12, 2013

Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper: “No, Sir.”

Wyden: “It does not?”

Clapper: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect but not, not wittingly.”
(7-minute segment of Clapper testimony; link below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs

####################

June 6, 2013

In a telephone interview with Michael Hirsh of the National Journal:

Clapper: “What I said [to the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12] was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails. I stand by that.”

####################

June 8, 2013

Excerpt of interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell:

Mitchell: “Senator Wyden made quite a lot out of your exchange with him last March during the hearings. Can you explain what you meant when you said that there was not data collection on millions of Americans?”

Clapper: “… in retrospect, I was asked – ‘When are you going to start– stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is meaning not — answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying No. …

“And this has to do with of course somewhat of a semantic, perhaps some would say too – too cute by half. But it is — there are honest differences on the semantics of what – when someone says ‘collection’ to me, that has a specific meaning, which may have a different meaning to him.”

(See link below to full NBC transcript)
http://www.nbcuni.com/corporate/newsroom/nbc-news-exclusive-transcript-of-andrea-mitchells-interview-with-director-of-national-intelligence-james-clapper/
(Full video – 27 min.) http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/52158136  (27 min.)
(Most relevant segment) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZt1zLQ11E

####################

June 9, 2013

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of Senate Intelligence Committee on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos (after he showed video of Clapper testimony on March 12, 2013, denying that NSA collects “any type of data” on Americans):

Stephanopoulos: “Senator Feinstein, I have to confess, I have a hard time squaring that answer with what we learned [from the Snowden disclosures] this week.”

Feinstein: “Well, I think this is very hard. There is no more direct or honest person than Jim Clapper. … You can misunderstand the question.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-sen-dianne-feinstein-rep-mike-rogers/story?id=19343314&page=4

####################

June 11, 2013

Sen. Ron Wyden issued the following statement regarding statements made by Clapper about collection on Americans:

“One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions.

“When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance, it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence. So that he would be prepared to answer [in his testimony on March 12], I sent the question to 
Director Clapper’s office a day in advance.

“After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer. Now public hearings are needed to address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives.”
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-statement-responding-to-director-clappers-statements-about-collection-on-americans

####################

July 2, 2013

Clapper sends a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, in which he refers to his March 12 testimony denying that NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Clapper: “My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize.”

A spokesman for Wyden, Tom Caiazza, said that a staff member in the Senator’s office had asked Clapper to correct the public record after the March hearing, which he “refused” to do. Caiazza explained:

“Senator Wyden had a staff member contact the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on a secure phone line soon after the March hearing to address the inaccurate statement regarding bulk collection on Americans.
“The ODNI acknowledged that the statement was inaccurate but refused to correct the public record when given the opportunity. Senator Wyden’s staff informed the ODNI that this was a serious concern. Senator Wyden is deeply troubled by a number of misleading statements senior officials have made about domestic surveillance in the past several years.”

####################

Mr. President, are you not also troubled by those misleading statements? We strongly believe you must fire Jim Clapper for his lies to the Congress and the American people and that you must appoint someone who will tell the truth.

* * *

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel
Daniel Ellsberg, former State and Defense Department official
Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst
David MacMichael, Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council
Todd Pierce, MAJ, U.S. Army, Judge Advocate (ret.), Military Commissions Defense Counsel
Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)
William Binney, former technical director at NSA
Larry Johnson, CIA and State Department (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy NIO for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Ann Wright, Retired US Army Reserve Colonel and former US Diplomat

Sunday, December 15, 2013

"According to [Washington's] self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country." "A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect. People propagandized into the belief that they are the world’s special people inevitably lose their humanity." "With the exception of the ACLU, constitutional rights groups and independent Internet voices, the American people including the Christian churches have accepted their government’s criminality and immorality with scant protest." -- Paul Craig Roberts



Washington Drives the World Toward War — Paul Craig Roberts

December 15, 2013 | Original Here                                             Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

Washington Drives the World Toward War

Paul Craig Roberts

Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation. The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel’s interest by removing obstacles to Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.

As costly and destructive as these wars have been, they are far below the level of a world war, much less a world war against nuclear armed opponents.

The fatal war for humanity is the war with Russia and China toward which Washington is driving the US and Washington’s NATO and Asian puppet states. There are a number of factors contributing to Washington’s drive toward the final war, but the overarching one is the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

According to this self-righteous doctrine, America is the indispensable country. What this means is that the US has been chosen by history to establish the hegemony of secular “democratic capitalism” over the world. The primacy of this goal places the US government above traditional morality and above all law, both its own and international.

Thus, no one in the US government has been held accountable for unprovoked aggression against other countries and for attacking civilian populations, unambiguous war crimes under international law and the Nuremberg standard. Neither has anyone in the US government been held accountable for torture, a prohibited crime under US law and the Geneva Conventions. Neither has anyone been held accountable for numerous violations of constitutional rights–spying without warrants, warrantless searches, violations of habeas corpus, murder of citizens without due process, denial of legal representation, conviction on secret evidence. The list is long.

A person might wonder what is exceptional and indispensable about a government that is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany in every respect. People propagandized into the belief that they are the world’s special people inevitably lose their humanity. Thus, as the US military video released by Bradley Manning reveals, US troops get their jollies by mowing down innocent people as they walk along a city street.

With the exception of the ACLU, constitutional rights groups and independent Internet voices, the American people including the Christian churches have accepted their government’s criminality and immorality with scant protest.

The absence of moral denunciation emboldens Washington which is now pushing hard against Russia and China, the current governments of which stand in the way of Washington’s world hegemony.

Washington has been working against Russia for 22 years ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In violation of the Reagan-Gorbachev agreement, Washington expanded NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic states and established military bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is also seeking to extend NATO into former constituent parts of Russia itself such as Georgia and Ukraine.

The only reason for Washington to establish military and missile bases on Russia’s frontiers is to negate Russia’s ability to resist Washington’s hegemony. Russia has made no threatening gestures toward its neighbors, and with the sole exception of Russia’s response to Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, has been extremely passive in the face of US provocations.

This is now changing. Faced with the George W. Bush regime’s alternation of US war doctrine, which elevated nuclear weapons from a defensive, retaliatory use to pre-emptive first strike, together with the construction on Russia’s borders of US anti-ballistic missile bases and Washington’s weaponization of new technologies, has made it clear to the Russian government that Washington is setting up Russia for a decapitating first strike.

In his presidential address to the Russian National Assembly (both chambers of parliament) on December 12, Vladimir Putin addressed the offensive military threat that Washington poses to Russia. Putin said that Washington calls its anti-ballistic missile system defensive, but “in fact it is a signifiant part of the strategic offensive potential” and designed to tip the balance of power in Washington’s favor. Having acknowledged the threat, Putin replied to the threat: “Let no one have illusions that he can achieve military superiority over Russia. We will never allow it.”

Faced with the Obama regime’s murder of the nuclear weapons reduction treaty, Putin said: “We realize all this and know what we need to do.”

If anyone remains to write a history, the Obama regime will be known as the regime that resurrected the cold war, which President Reagan worked so hard to end, and drove it into a hot war.

Not content to make Russia an enemy, the Obama regime has also made an enemy of China. The Obama regime declared the South China Sea to be an area of “US national security interest.” This is akin to China declaring the Gulf of Mexico to be an area of Chinese national security interest.

To make clear that the claim to the South China Sea was not rhetorical, the Obama regime announced its “Pivot to Asia,” which calls for the redeployment of 60% of the US fleet to China’s zone of influence. Washington is busy at work securing naval and air bases from the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia, and Thailand. Washington has increased the provocation by aligning itself with China’s neighbors who are disputing China’s claims to various islands and an expanded air space.

China has not been intimidated. China has called for “de-americanizing the world.” Last month the Chinese government announced that it now possesses sufficient nuclear weapons and delivery systems to wipe the US off of the face of the earth. A couple of days ago, China aggressively harassed a US missile cruiser in the South China Sea.

The militarily aggressive stance that Washington has taken toward Russia and China is indicative of the extreme self-assuredness that usually ends in war. Washington is told that US technological prowess can prevent or intercept the launch of Russian and Chinese missiles, thus elevating a US pre-emptive attack to slam-dunk status. Yet the potential danger from Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is said to be so great that a pre-emptive war is necessary right now, and a massive Department of Homeland Security is justified on the grounds that the US remains vulnerable to a few stateless Muslims who might acquire a nuclear weapon. It is an anomalous situation that the Russian and Chinese retaliatory response to US attack is considered to be inconsequential, but not nuclear threats from Iran and stateless Muslims.

Not content with sending war signals to Russia and China, Washington has apparently also decided to torpedo the Iranian settlement by announcing new sanctions against companies doing business with Iran. The Iranians understood Washington’s monkey wrench as Washington probably intended, as a lack of Washington’s commitment to the agreement, left Geneva and returned to Iran. It remains to be seen whether the agreement can be resurrected or whether the Israel Lobby has succeeded in derailing the agreement that promised to end the threat of war with Iran.

American citizens seem to have little, if any, influence on their government or even awareness of its intentions. Moreover, there is no organized opposition behind which Americans could rally to stop Washington’s drive toward world war. Hope, if there is any, would seem to lie with Washington’s European and Asian puppets. What interests do these governments have in putting the existence of their countries at risk for no other purpose than to help Washington acquire hegemony over the world? Cannot they realize that Washington’s game is a death-dealing one for them?

Germany alone could save the world from war while simultaneously serving its own interests. All Germany has to do is to exit the EU and NATO. The alliance would collapse, and its fall would terminate Washington’s hegemonic ambition.



Thursday, December 12, 2013

Seymour Hersh is a gritty investigative journalist of U.S. government, wars, and military intelegence who can and will explain all he has learned if asked. Amy Goodman: "In the end, President Obama chose not to strike Syria because the American people just overwhelmingly said no." Seymour Hersh responds: "He didn’t—I’m telling you, he didn’t do it because the American people said no. He knew it because he didn’t have a case. And there was incredible opposition that will be, one of these days, written about, maybe in history books. There was incredible operation from some very, very strong-minded, constitutionally minded people in the Pentagon. That’s the real story. I don’t have it; I could just tell you I know it."


MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2013                                                                                 Original Here

Seymour Hersh: Obama "Cherry-Picked" Intelligence on Syrian Chemical Attack to Justify U.S. Strike

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/9/seymour_hersh_obama_cherry_picked_intelligence

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh joins us to discuss his new article casting doubt on the veracity of the Obama administration’s claims that only the Assad regime could have carried out the chemical attacks in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta earlier this year. Writing in the London Review of Books, Hersh argues that the Obama administration "cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad." The administration failed to disclose it knew Syrian rebels in the al-Nusra Front had the ability to produce chemical weapons. Evidence obtained in the days after the attack was also allegedly distorted to make it appear it was gathered in real time.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Who really killed JFK and, if a conspiracy, who were they and what were their motives? The Assassination Records Review Board has kept secret 1,100 records that, according to the Associated Press, was claimed to be withheld from the American public because they contain “information about confidential sources or methods or have national security complications.” But 50 years after the fact those confidential sources are mostly dead, and the methods and “national security complications” of that period have nothing in common with today’s national security. Indeed, on April 27, 1961, JFK himself told the press corps that “…there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment…”


JFK, Secrecy & the Unspeakable Forces of the National Security State

By: Kevin Gosztola Friday November 22, 2013 1:07 pm                                         Original Here.

John F. Kennedy on September 2, 1963,
being interviewed by Walter Cronkite
From the National Archive & 
in the public domain.
The establishment media, which has been commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination for the past week, will not take the time to appropriately present the dynamics in military and intelligence agencies leading up to when he was killed in Dallas.

Of the three major Sunday morning network television shows on November 17, “Meet the Press, “Face the Nation,” and “This Week,” only “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer broached the topic of whether JFK’s assassination was part of a conspiracy. It was mentioned to show that there is no evidence that the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans or President Lyndon B. Johnson had been involved. But no one bothered to mention that all the files on his assassination have not been released.

The Assassination Records Review Board has kept secret 1,100 records that, according to the Associated Press, the Board claimed contained “information about confidential sources or methods or have national security complications.” Each record is anywhere from one to twenty pages, and the files contain information on a deceased CIA agent, George Joannides, who was a “CIA case officer for the anti-Castro Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE).”

Fifty years later, the CIA is still fighting efforts to release documents that are decades old. Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter, has worked to get all the files released and believes the CIA must be guarding something big if it still will not release all the documents.

The AP’s story on secret files that remain concealed acknowledges that the CIA was not keen to cooperate with investigators. Joannides was actually brought in to help complete requests for documents by those on the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigating what happened. No one knew that the time that Joannides, a witness, was put in a position to edit material provided to the committee.

Now, I am far, far, far too young and have no memory of the assassination. I only know what I have read about JFK’s assassination and the events leading up to it. Yet, while my grandparents and parents (though very young) think of where they were, I cannot help but conclude that my generation should be reacting to this anniversary by taking interest in what led up to the murder and why, after fifty years, anything related to the horrible event would be permitted to remain secret for any reason.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK’s nephew, assessed his uncle’s attempts to confront the national security state for Rolling Stone. His recounting of forces he bumped up against during his presidency concludes with the following:
…JFK’s great concerns seem more relevant than ever: the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the notion that empire is inconsistent with a republic and that corporate domination of our democracy at home is the partner of imperial policies abroad. He understood the perils to our Constitution from a national-security state and mistrusted zealots and ideologues. He thought other nations ought to fight their own civil wars and choose their own governments and not ask the U.S. to do it for them. Yet the world he imagined and fought for has receded so far below the horizon that it’s no longer even part of the permissible narrative inside the Beltway or in the mainstream press. Critics who endeavor to debate the survival of American democracy within the national-security state risk marginalization as crackpots and kooks. His greatest, most heroic aspirations for a peaceful, demilitarized foreign policy are the forbidden­ debates of the modern political era.
Where RFK Jr.’s analysis excels is its omission of any hypotheses about what JFK might have done if he was not assassinated. We can never know, and there is plenty to contemplate without getting into what impact he could have had.

Peter Kornbluh examined one of Kennedy’s final acts: reaching out to Cuba.

The CIA was opposed to dialogue with Cuba that might have cooled tensions. The CIA controlled Cuba policy, but Kennedy wanted to reach out to Fidel Castro and consider possibilities for ending hostilities.

“Fifty years later, the potential Kennedy envisioned for co-existence between the Cuban revolution and the U.S. has yet to be realized. As part of commemorating his legacy, his vision for a détente in the Caribbean must be remembered, reconsidered, and revisited,” Kornbluh suggested.

Finally, one of the best reflections on JFK’s assassination is contained in the book by James W. Douglass called JFK and the Unspeakable. It connects his assassination and the “unspeakable” forces likely behind it to the “unspeakable” forces that still work in the shadows today.
…John Kennedy’s story is our story, although a titanic effort has been made to keep it from us. That story, like the struggle it embodies, is as current today as it was in 1963. The theology of redemptive violence still reigns. The Cold War has been followed by its twin, the War on Terror. We are engaged in another apocalyptic struggle against an enemy seen as absolute evil. Terrorism has replaced Communism as the enemy. We are told we can be safe only through the threat of escalating violence. Once again, anything goes in a fight against evil: preemptive attacks, torture, undermining governments, assassinations, whatever it takes to gain the end of victory over an enemy portrayed as irredeemably evil. Yet the redemptive means John Kennedy turned to, in a similar struggle, was dialogue with the enemy. When the enemy is seen as human, everything changes…
Douglass makes the case in his book that Kennedy was “murdered by a power we cannot easily describe. Its unspeakable reality can be traced, suggested, recognized, and pondered.” He points the finger at our own government for being to blame for Kennedy’s assassination while at the same time bringing to light the turning away from nuclear war to peace (which RFK Jr’s Rolling Stone article actually outlines).

Despite what mainstream pundits say about Americans’ surviving interest in conspiracy theories around Kennedy’s assassination, it is unfair to marginalize those who are willing to interrogate the past and ask what that past means for the future. There is good reason to push for transparency on a chapter in American history that still remains partly clouded in darkness.

While JFK was simultaneously pleading with newspapers to self-censor information that the government thought Communist “enemies” could use against the United States, on April 27, 1961, he did say the following about secrecy in an address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association:
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment…
The deep state, with the help of docile culture within the press, remains vigilant in guarding secret history it does not want the public to know, perhaps, because such history would explode myths it has relied upon to increase its stranglehold over government. Certainly, if officials within these agencies were found to have played a role in the assassination of an American president, it would likely leave Americans with a profound sense of anger and fear.

Today, as former NSA contractor Edward Snowden compels us through his disclosures to reconcile with the vast power granted to the NSA, all of our national security state should be up for debate. Its history and current concealed history around torture, rendition and targeted assassinations, which it fights in court to protect, should be thoroughly assessed. Page after page after page of the dark seedy exploits and the evil that men do when their identities are likely to never become known ought to be taken seriously. And, we should heed JFK’s words on the dangers of excessive secrecy, which has such an incredible capacity to shield corruption.