Jeff Sachs, an academic with a spine

[James DiEugenio]

From his current column at Common Dreams.

 

Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.

[Benjamin Cole]

34 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

From his current column at Common Dreams.

 

Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.

It is interesting to note parallels between JFK being deposed, and RMN getting deposed...both as they sought detente (Nixon with Moscow and Beijing). 

I happen to be a JFK fan, and not so high on Nixon. 

Mark Groubert has been talking about this, Bob Woodward, and Alexander Haig. 

I am not a fan of Jeffrey Sachs either, but he has his points. 

[Matthew Koch]

I am not a fan of Sachs either, he was part of that team that advised Yeltsin after the Soviet Union fell. 

Sachs is a Chompskyesk Globalist that works with the Vatican and The World Economic Forum on Climate Change The Things he said would happen if Trump was reelected happened because of Biden. Sachs wants a multi polar world order which just means he wants the United States to have a lesser role and for Brics to lead the world. 

Sachs wrote a book on JFK in 2013 called 'To move the World' has anyone read it? 

 

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

48 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I happen to be a JFK fan

It's nice he has fans still.

[Benjamin Cole]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

It's nice he has fans still.

We are thinning rapidly. Soon, there will nobody who remembers him (I mean actually seeing him on TV or live). 

[Charles Blackmon]

4 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

We are thinning rapidly. Soon, there will nobody who remembers him (I mean actually seeing him on TV or live). 

I was only a kindergartner in '63 so my memories of JFK were some recollections of TV news coverage including the funeral. We did not see the LHO assassination live because it was Church Sunday.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Charles Blackmon said:

I was only a kindergartner in '63 so my memories of JFK were some recollections of TV news coverage including the funeral. We did not see the LHO assassination live because it was Church Sunday.

I was a little older, and even then liked politics. So I remember seeing JFK on TV, and the JFKA. 

I think we have lost the battle, however. The next generation will not really have it in their gut to pursue the JFKA, and the current administration has done a snuff job on the JFK Records Act. 

In a few more years, debates about the JFKA will echo the "true Lincoln assassination" tales. 

[Matthew Koch]

Dr. Good, comparing himself to Sachs also doesn't bode well, since his thesis is a Logic Fallacy.

Something I have found interesting is how, if your opinions are Anti America your problematic opinions on JFKA get ignored or swept under the rug.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nuclear-armageddon

Here is the rest of the article of course Sachs had to include Trump (who tried to create peace with a nuclear nation N. Korea)

Rather amazing that the people who voted for what is happening in the world via Biden won't take responsibility because they're leftists who view liberals like JFK as the problem. Sachs and Good are Marxists who call themselves Multipolarists which is nothing that JFK represented because he supported Independent status of Nations if they didn't align with  the Communist Block. [Emphasis added] 

Good and Sachs Globalist American Exception Fallacy Thesis is basically the Ice Cream Debate from Thankyou For Smoking where they widen the goal posts for themselves. 

 

JFK's speeches the day of his death debunk this thesis 

 

Edited May 31 by Matthew Koch
spelling

[Charles Blackmon]

Don't you just wonder what was going on in LBJ's head in that still.

[James DiEugenio]

Sachs wrote a book on JFK in 2013 called 'To move the World' has anyone read it?

Whenever you are not sure of something, go to Kennedysandking.com.  More often than not you will find it.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/book-review-to-move-the-world-by-jeffrey-sachs

Edited May 31 by James DiEugenio

[Matt Cloud]

13 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

It is interesting to note parallels between JFK being deposed, and RMN getting deposed...both as they sought detente (Nixon with Moscow and Beijing). 

I happen to be a JFK fan, and not so high on Nixon. 

Mark Groubert has been talking about this, Bob Woodward, and Alexander Haig. 

I am not a fan of Jeffrey Sachs either, but he has his points. 

It is the East that benefitted perhaps more from the extension of the Cold War than the West.  Or, if you like, globalization benefited from the extension of the Cold War.  It was no secret that the Soviet economy could not keep pace with the West already by the 1950s, Paul Samuelson notwithstanding, and the lie was perpetuated, then and again in the mid-70s and then in the early 80s.  Hence the creation of "neo-Marxism" -- social critique, not industrial competition.  But to merge into what J.K. Galbraith called The New Industrial State, to achieve what Daniel Bell called "The End of Ideology," or what Walt Rostow identified as "The Stages of Economic Growth," what thinkers on both sides (Alexander Yakovlev the architect of perestroika e.g.) would call "Convergence Theory," the fastest and safest way to achieve this was (counterintuitively, to be sure) by extending the Cold War conflict, which would achieve decolonization in the third world and thus allow for rapid industrialization there, as well as allow the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc to receive technology transfers through that greatest driver of economies, militarization.  (And we received transfers in return as well -- see Sakharov and the fusion Tokamak Reactor.)  Had the Cold War ended let's say in 1964 or even 1974, you would not have achieved these things, arguably, and not achieved the purported End of History in 1989, however controversial that thesis is.  You might not have achieved the social upheaval of the sixties, here in the US either, for better or for worse.  Certainly these realities and contingencies need to be considered -- as a whole.  The Cold War cannot be separated from the events which it subsumed.  Again, you can dislike that history, and find much to be morally questionable about it, but you can't or shouldn't analyze it in a vacuum, and say that all would have been ideal if the Cold War had ended in 1964.  This is completely simplistic and myopic.

There were and are hardliners and softliners on both sides.  Hardline communists and hardline anti-communists, as well as those wishing a more integrated approach.  Politicians on both sides had to skillfully navigate these competing interests.  Extending the cold war while at the same time, covertly, achieving integration, so as to avoid all-out conflict, was the strategy.  Always was.  Moreover, Kennedy's overtures to the left, after the Cuban Missile Crisis especially, and reflected in his AU speech after the Test Ban Treaty -- which btw Harriman negotiated -- were reflections of this larger understanding.  These changes were attributable in other words, to the presence of the The Mole (Moynihan as leader of the Harriman neo-con penetration) -- plain and simple.  Kennedy's shifts were a reflection of this.  But his detente, the actual contours of which are not and cannot be known, like his Vietnam policy, was not the reason for his assassination.  Not, that is, in a reactionary sense, meaning it was not because he took some unauthorized turn in policy.  The Kennedy assassination was already in the works, for decades, because it would create the mass social distraction necessary to achieve the East-West integration and to bring the social changes in America.  

[Matthew Koch]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sachs wrote a book on JFK in 2013 called 'To move the World' has anyone read it?

Whenever you are not sure of something, go to Kennedysandking.com.  More often than not you will find it.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/book-review-to-move-the-world-by-jeffrey-sachs

Thanks,

I've got the book but I'm waiting until I'm done with Cold War and Counter Revolution the foreign policy of John F. Kennedy by Richard j. Walton before I read it and review it. 

[Kevin Balch]

I agree that JFK almost singlehandedly peacefully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Almost singlehandedly. Early in the crisis, it was Adlai Stevenson that overtly pushed the idea of a trade of the Jupiter missiles for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. JFK was quick to grasp the value of the idea. After the crisis, JFK kind of threw Stevenson under the bus and an article written by Charles Bartlett shortly afterward with JFK’s cooperation, minimized Stevenson’s contribution. To his credit, JFK was really the only one on the EXCOMM that thought about WHY the Soviets placed the missiles in Cuba.

Incidentally, the deployment of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy was a proposal of the Eisenhower administration  in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. It was believed that this undermined the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella with NATO as the US would not have an operational ICBM for several years. The Jupiters would temporarily fill in the perceived gap. The missiles were actually deployed during JFK’s administration by which time not only were they unnecessary but also obsolete as the US had an operational ICBM (the Atlas) as well as a submarine launched ballistic missile (Polaris).

One of the major stumbling blocks to removing the Jupiter missiles was fear of causing division within NATO, particularly with the Turks. So not only were the missiles deployed to reassure NATO, NATO considerations also delayed their removal leaving NATO essentially causing and prolonging the crisis. The situation in Ukraine shows we haven’t learned a thing.

Something else I thought was interesting was RFK proposing a “Remember the Maine” incident (actually using that phrase) right out of Operation Northwoods to give cover for an invasion of Cuba. It makes me wonder how much of Operation Northwoods was thought of by the military and how much was the military echoing back suggestions of RFK to get him off their backs. No one ever talks about it and there is only the RFK  narrative in Thirteen Days that has become the standard account.

In addition to the excellent Martin Sherwin book mentioned above, I’d also recommend The Other Missiles of October by Philip Nash and Averting the Final Failure: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings by former JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern who was the first to listen to all the recordings made with JFK’s tape recording system.

[Matt Cloud]

18 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

I agree that JFK almost singlehandedly peacefully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Almost singlehandedly. Early in the crisis, it was Adlai Stevenson that overtly pushed the idea of a trade of the Jupiter missiles for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. JFK was quick to grasp the value of the idea. After the crisis, JFK kind of threw Stevenson under the bus and an article written by Charles Bartlett shortly afterward with JFK’s cooperation, minimized Stevenson’s contribution. To his credit, JFK was really the only one on the EXCOMM that thought about WHY the Soviets placed the missiles in Cuba.

Incidentally, the deployment of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy was a proposal of the Eisenhower administration  in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. It was believed that this undermined the credibility of the US nuclear umbrella with NATO as the US would not have an operational ICBM for several years. The Jupiters would temporarily fill in the perceived gap. The missiles were actually deployed during JFK’s administration by which time not only were they unnecessary but also obsolete as the US had an operational ICBM (the Atlas) as well as a submarine launched ballistic missile (Polaris).

One of the major stumbling blocks to removing the Jupiter missiles was fear of causing division within NATO, particularly with the Turks. So not only were the missiles deployed to reassure NATO, NATO considerations also delayed their removal leaving NATO essentially causing and prolonging the crisis. The situation in Ukraine shows we haven’t learned a thing.

Something else I thought was interesting was RFK proposing a “Remember the Maine” incident (actually using that phrase) right out of Operation Northwoods to give cover for an invasion of Cuba. It makes me wonder how much of Operation Northwoods was thought of by the military and how much was the military echoing back suggestions of RFK to get him off their backs. No one ever talks about it and there is only the RFK  narrative in Thirteen Days that has become the standard account.

In addition to the excellent Martin Sherwin book mentioned above, I’d also recommend The Other Missiles of October by Philip Nash and Averting the Final Failure: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings by former JFK Library historian Sheldon Stern who was the first to listen to all the recordings made with JFK’s tape recording system.

The things is, the "back-channel" negotiations during CMC are occurring at Tregaron, from August 1962 at least, an estate in NW DC (3100 Macomb Street N.W.), which happened to be the location of the CORONA / U-2 operations HQ, overlapping with its housing the COMSAT program.  It's just around the corner from the Yengching Palace -- the Chinese restaurant where the crisis was essentially resolved.  Dobrynin was out there, albeit the Washington Post reported that the Soviets were interested in the site for their new embassy.  No mention in other words of its other, classified purpose(s).  Funny thing is: you know who lived at Tregaron?  A then-obscure assistant to the secretary of labor named Pat Moynihan.  That's weird.  You'd think a labor dept employee already with a 201 file and a run-in with Hoover would not be permitted in such sensitive areas.  

[Matthew Koch]

23 hours ago, Matthew Koch said:

I am not a fan of Sachs either, he was part of that team that advised Yeltsin after the Soviet Union fell. 

Sachs is a Chompskyesk Globalist that works with the Vatican and The World Economic Forum on Climate Change The Things he said would happen if Trump was reelected happened because of Biden. Sachs wants a multi polar world order which just means he wants the United States to have a lesser role and for Brics to lead the world. 

Sachs wrote a book on JFK in 2013 called 'To move the World' has anyone read it? 

 

 

 

 

Michael Matt highlighting more on Sachs' Globalist connections and the connection between Klaus Schwab and Communist Latin American Jesuit Priests (almost sounds like a band) who now run the Vatican