Inevitability

[John Dolva]

Inevitability

Something that John said in another topic triggered off a chain of thought that I had previously tried to express.

"Castro was no Arbenz. He was not removed, he was made stronger. Phillips and company could not believe that the reason for this was their own misreading of the situation in Cuba. As far as they were concerned, the Bay of Pigs failed because of one man: John F. Kennedy."

I think that this is a good example of an issue that shadows change of any nature.

One of the founders of the american SWP once said in a speech to a national conference words to the effect that "one of the best things that a socialist man can do, is to give equality to woman."

My difficulty with such a statement is the implication that equality is something that anyone has so that they can give it to others.

I think he should have said "stop standing in the way of equality"

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The reason, I'm suggesting, that Castro was not removed was because the strength of his moral authority made victory inevitable. It's the same authority of truth that does away with slavery, feudalism, facism. It wasn't the first attempt in Cuba, but it was the first where all the ingredients for success were in place.

In the same way I think there was an element of inevitability surrounding Kennedy.

Kennedy and his intimates had discussed Assassination and I think Kennedy had made certain decisions. He knew that if it was to happen then how it happened was going to be very important to the world he would leave behind. No grubby behind the doors, in the dark, poison in the drink whatever stuff.

Rather a statement to the world : This is the world you live in! I choose to live in the world as it should be. Here is the contrast.

Change hurts those who change is demanded of. Pain, physical and emotional, is often sublimated and the cause, while in fact internal, is projected outwards onto any convenient scapegoat.

This refusal of humanity to accept basic laws of nature inevitably has victims. I think Kennedy's memory is best honoured by recognising him as an agent of change. And the clue to who killed the Kennedys found amongst those who were being asked to change.

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I think Oswald was the patsies patsy.

The significance of the concept of the 'lumpen' is possibly being overlooked here. Mindless elements carefully steered towards the inevitable.

The real killers, if there is such a thing, were probably in Woopwoop, having a cuppa in the corner cafe, NOT in Dallas.

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

The reason, I'm suggesting, that Castro was not removed was because the strength of his moral authority made victory inevitable.

Castro? Moral authority? Give me a break!

From: "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant":

By the time Castro was cheered at Harvard Law School in April 1959, Mr. Castro's firing squads had slaughtered 568 men and boys... By the time Norman Mailer (an opponent of capital punishment), was calling Castro "the greatest hero to appear in the Americas," Fidel's firing squads had piled up four thousand corpses. By 1975, when George McGovern (another opponent of capital punishment), was saying, "[Castro] is very shy and sensitive, I frankly liked him," the bullet-riddled bodies of fourteen thousand Cuban lay in unmarked graves.

Castro promised to bring democracy to Cuba and instead he brought a tyranny far worse than Batista. Read this book, John.

The US (indeed the CIA and the State Department) foisted Fidel on Cuba. When he broke his promises, we owed it to the Cuban people to remove him. We should have removed him and brought him to trial.

People were not risking their lives to cross the Florida straits to escape Cuba under the Batista regime. The ones who are not killed in the dangerous waters, often on makeshift rafts, often land in the Florida Keys.

But we should not have tried to remove Castro by repeated assassination attempts (with or without the assistance of organized crime) and by a "secret war" (see the recent book book "The Castro Obsession" by former Miami Herald reporter Don Bohning, wherein Bohning, as a review of the book indicates, strongly condemns the "secret war").

As I have said earlier, if Castro (or his supporters, perhaps without his personal knowledge) killed JFK, that, however, was not because Castro was an "evil Communist"; it was because of our country's repeated attempts on his life. Gerry Hemming has suggested that perhaps Trujillo followers and his son helped sponsor the JFK assassination because our country encouraged the assassination of Trujillo. When our country assassinates or attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, retaliation against the leaders of our country should not be unexpected.

[John Dolva]

The recent discussion about Che' is helpful in explaining what I was getting at here.

Cause and effect.

I think Kennedy, like Che', had a sense of who he was in history. Jackies comments after the assassination "he didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights" bears that out. I think people who have this sense make deciscions that carry risks. The measure of them as people is why they choose to do what may lead to death.

Thus their death itself is something that even the assassins cannot control. The assassin fulfuls a role that The assassinated factors into the equation.

"this is the world you live in, its up to you now to deal with it, may my life, and death, show what humanity is capable of"

This is something that the 'scum' who kills these sort of people can never overcome.