Dear Moderator

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Paul Rigby said:

The Duran's interview this morning with guest Jeffrey Sachs on JFK:

 

This video is a bunch of far-left, pro-communist propaganda. Sachs is a hardcore radical leftist who thinks America is the Great Satan of the planet. He was part of the so-called "anti-war movement" during the Vietnam War. He calls the U.S. bombing of Cambodia "completely reckless and illegal." I should have him talk with some of my Cambodian friends, one of whom attends the same church with me. They could set him straight about who the bad guys were in Cambodia. I notice he says nothing about the brutal reign of terror that his North Vietnamese Communist buddies imposed on the South Vietnamese after Saigon fell. 

JFK would spin in his grave to be associated with such an anti-American radical as Sachs. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Paul Brancato]

Mr Griffith - since you are so sure that Vietnam was winnable, how do you propose Ukraine wins this war? 

[James DiEugenio]

Ben:

This is mild from Russell.

In private he told LBJ that if he went into Vietnam, it would be like throwing millions and millions down a rathole.  It would be the worst thing that ever happened to America.

He was right about Vietnam and he was right about the assassination.

[Roger Odisio]

4 hours ago, Paul Rigby said:

The Duran's interview this morning with guest Jeffrey Sachs on JFK:

 

Thanks for this, Paul.  Sachs is in top form.  Amazing breadth. One example: he even touches briefly on the Powell memo of the early 70s that first led to the "money is speech" Supreme Court decision (Buckley) and then to Citizens United that completed the job of financially corrupting our elections.

 

So much here to absorb and ponder about the central role played by the JFKA.

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Mr Griffith - since you are so sure that Vietnam was winnable, how do you propose Ukraine wins this war? 

The surest and quickest way for Ukraine to defeat Putin's criminal invasion would be for us to give Ukraine ample fighter jets and bombers, which would enable them to take the offensive in a decisive way. I give Biden full credit for finally agreeing to give Ukraine fighter jets. It's about time. This should have been done many months ago. 

Even without bombers, the fighter jets, assuming Biden provides an adequate number, will enable Ukraine to take the war to the Russians in their rear assembly and supply areas, and to attack Russian naval ships that are prowling off Ukraine's coast, something that Ukraine cannot now do very effectively.

Another step that would help Ukraine win the war would be to give them long-range missiles so they could hit Russian naval ships and retaliate for all the vicious Russian missile attacks on civilian areas. 

But just look at the magnificent job that Ukraine has done fighting off the invasion with just the weapons that Biden and NATO have been willing to give them. It is a testament to the spirit of the Ukrainian people.

I have a deep interest in Putin's criminal invasion because I have dear friends in Ukraine, one of whom is like a daughter to me and my wife. We had a Ukrainian exchange student for a school year in 2018, and we visited Ukraine to meet her family in 2019. Her father, who is in his forties, is voluntarily serving in the Ukrainian army. She and her mother, sister, and grandmother have had to spend time in bomb shelters. At times we have lost contact with them because they had no cell service and no Internet access. It infuriates me just to think about it. 

[W. Niederhut]

5 hours ago, John Cotter said:

William,

So you believe a Ukrainian view of the proxy war against Russia is objective.

Thanks for further illustrating your one-eyed perversity, otherwise known as shadow projection.

____________________ 

John,

     As an Irishman, surely you, of all people, should understand that Ukrainians don't want to be ruled and oppressed by their larger imperial neighbor.

      It isn't a proxy war in their view.  It's a war to maintain their independence and sovereignty.

      As for your repetitious tropes about "perversity" and "shadow projection," please tell us what is perverse about referring to a mass murderer and war criminal as "evil."

       Do you, perchance, share Stalin's perverse opinion that, "One death is a tragedy.  A million is a statistic?"

[Michael Griffith]

8 hours ago, John Cotter said:

William,

So you believe a Ukrainian view of the proxy war against Russia is objective.

Thanks for further illustrating your one-eyed perversity, otherwise known as shadow projection.

____________________ 

The perversity is your peddling of disgraceful Russian propaganda. 

The "proxy war against Russia"??? That is a truly sick joke. Ukraine did nothing to provoke Putin's aggression. Ukraine is a liberal democracy. It is none of Putin's business if Ukraine wants to join a defensive alliance or to join the European Union.

You remind me of the people in the so-called "anti-war movement" during the Vietnam War. They whitewashed North Vietnam, one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on Earth, and demonized the anti-communist regime of South Vietnam. And when the Hanoi regime finally won, thanks in no small part to the American anti-war movement, those same protestors who had railed against every real and imagined human rights violation in South Vietnam suddenly fell silent when the Hanoi regime executed tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sent hundreds of thousands of others to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%. The so-called "anti-war protestors" said not a peep about these horrific crimes.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

The so-called "anti-war protestors" said not a peep about these horrific crimes.

Joan Baez Starts Protest On Repression by Hanoi

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/30/archives/joan-baez-starts-protest-on-repression-by-hanoi.html

 

 

 

[Paul Rigby]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

John...

       Do you, perchance, share Stalin's perverse opinion that, "One death is a tragedy.  A million is a statistic?"

I rather suspect John doesn't, not least because he's not dumb enough to fall for such an obviously invented attribution. Stalin never said or wrote anything of the sort. The quotation in fact comes from a 1932 work on French humour by Kurt Tucholsky, a German satirist:

Quote

 

Much like Rousseau did with his "great princess," Tucholsky quotes a fictional diplomat from the French Ministry of Foreign affairs, speaking on the horrors of war.

"The war?" says Tucholsky's diplomat, "I cannot find it to be so bad! The death of one man: this is a catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of deaths: that is a statistic!"

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-misquotes-The-10-most-famous-things-never-actually-said/The-death-of-one-man-is-a-tragedy.-The-death-of-millions-is-a-statistic.-Josef-Stalin

 

[James DiEugenio]

William keeps on pressing stuff about Stalin.

Even stuff that, according to Mr Rigby, he never said.

So how can this thread NOT go off track under those conditions.

I have tried to keep it about Kennedy, his foreign policy, the Peace Speech and a little of Jeff Sachs.

Stalin has been dead since the fifties.  For about the 20th time, the USSR does not exist and Russia is not a communist state today. But William wants us all to read Alexander S?

Edited June 14, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

46 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Joan Baez Starts Protest On Repression by Hanoi

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/30/archives/joan-baez-starts-protest-on-repression-by-hanoi.html

Joan Baez was the rare exception. As I have said several times, there were a few, a precious few, anti-war liberals who condemned North Vietnam's reign of terror after Saigon fell. Also, notice the date on that article: 1979. That was four years after the brutal subjugation had begun. Still, kudos to Joan Baez for speaking out in 1979. Better late than never. 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Joan Baez was the rare exception. As I have said several times, there were a few, a precious few, anti-war liberals who condemned North Vietnam's reign of terror after Saigon fell. Also, notice the date on that article: 1979. That was four years after the brutal subjugation had begun. Still, kudos to Joan Baez for speaking out in 1979. Better late than never. 

There was more protest than you think.

A lot went on in 1979.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/27-days-hell-when-china-vietnam-went-war-19596

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/40-years-ago-vietnam-steamrolled-genocidal-khmer-rouge-cambodia-lightning-war-41412

[Benjamin Cole]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Ben:

This is mild from Russell.

In private he told LBJ that if he went into Vietnam, it would be like throwing millions and millions down a rathole.  It would be the worst thing that ever happened to America.

He was right about Vietnam and he was right about the assassination.

Russell was a man of his times and had some of the shortcomings of the era.

But he was smart and serious about his work, and knew something was wrong in the JFKA and in Vietnam. 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Paul,

This is the crux of our disagreement:

You view American imperial interests as central to the eastward expansion of NATO.

I view American imperial interests as incidental to the eastward expansion of NATO.

[James DiEugenio]

I just wonder Ben, if Russell ever put the two points together.

You know, sort of like Dulles suspected Truman did.