AS TIME PASSES, WE LEARN MORE

Over 60% of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, that Lee Oswald did not act alone.  I don’t.  

Flawed as the Warren Commission report is, it’s still the best report we have..and several broadcast programs last week added to my conviction Oswald acted alone.

A fine Nova program on PBS/KET “Cold Case JFK” used modern forensic devices..lasers, computers, GPS..none available in 1963.. to show that Yes, Oswald could have and did do it. The “magic bullet” or “single bullet” theory---Oswald’s second shot struck both JFK and Texas Governor Connally--- was right.

Other programs brought out new information,..including that the Warren commission sent a secret official to meet with Fidel Castro off Cuba’s shore to be assured he did not launch the murder. That was news to me.

So was a shocker..that Bobby Kennedy, then attorney-general, point blank asked a top CIA official “Did you kill my brother?” He was told No..but that  he even felt he had to ask seems to me to be worthy of  much more investigation.

All the official records have not been made public. By law some 1200 more must be made public by October of 2017. We should know more then, but I don’t expect the conspiracy theories to end. We just don’t want to believe that a pipsqueak loser with a $20 rifle & scope changed the world. But maybe the 60% will fall drastically.

Til then, there are more good programs to be aired this week, especially on NBC and PBS. Check your local listings.

As time passes we do learn more; we might even learn the importance and necessity of more effective gun control laws…lest some future president fall victim to a home-printed, plastic, invisible to detect, even cheaper deadly weapon..and change all our lives---again.

I'm just sayin'...

FOR THOSE OF YOU UNDER SIXTY

This is your month—to learn important past history of your country.

I’ve been reviewing all the special programming TV(and to a lesser extent radio, especially NPR) planned for this month. It’s great and while I  pointed out last time we  would be observing anniversary events..of the space program, and even more so the JFK assassinations, events I lived through—and covered as a reporter…the JFK events dominate.

TV is a marvelous teacher; the early programs have been well done, by and large and better ones are coming.

Surveys show most Americans believe Lee Oswald did NOT act alone in killing Kennedy—the conspiracy theory. Several programs on that are scheduled.  Watch and make up your own mind. (The Warren Commission’s report was flawed, but I believe it still to be the best, basic report yet..and yes, I think Oswald did it, alone).

Other programs are on the JFK legacy..and some “what ifs”..Would we have gotten more in, or gotten  out of Vietnam. How would the Cold War have progressed. Only a few examples.

For you UK students, and more, use this month and see as many of these shows as possible. The times you live in  NOW were greatly impacted by what happened THEN..and these special programs during November offer you an unparalleled chance at an education in those times you—we all—badly need.

I'm just sayin'...

AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE FESTERING SORE

...is, and remains Gitmo…more precisely the flaunting of all our traditional rights and liberties, and the unreasonable delay in ending it.

Over 100 men have been jailed there for 12 years, in a military prison, WITHOUT being charged with a crime. Five of them, labeled the 9/11 suspects, including the alleged mastermind, are supposed to have plotted and carried out various aspects of the plan that killed 2800 people.

The mastermind is supposed to have confessed. To whom did he confess, the CIA?  And was this before or after he was “water boarded” 3 times a day for a solid month?  Water boarding was deemed legal by the Bush administration and illegal by the Obama administration. (Strange how lawyers can issue such differing opinions depending on who is asking for them!)

Most of these men were captured by various U-S military units, or allied units, and sent to Guantanamo, being declared “enemy combatants” by President Bush…a strange, little used term… which has the practical effect of denying them rights they would otherwise have under the Geneva convention…or our laws.

Their lawyers cannot discuss whether they were tortured or not, under a strange court ruling..further denying them their rights. And contrary to all U-S judicial standards, the CIA or other government agencies listens in on their private conversations with their attorneys. (Where is our Bar association to protest all these violations of our judicial canons?)

I was reminded of much of this by a new, updated report on “Sixty Minutes” Sunday, still the best investigative program broadcast. But I was also reminded how easy it is for any of us to assume..hey, the Army arrested them in Afghanistan (or Iraq or…); they were fighting against us; the CIA says they took part in planning 9/11, or the USS Cole attack, or…so they MUST be guilty.

Even so astute a reporter as Leslie Stahl has swallowed this line. I am probably the last blogger around who still believes in the presumption of innocence, but her questions were full of..”Now these are really bad guys….our government said they took part in 9/11 which killed all those people…” neatly forgetting that is what a trial is supposed to prove---or disprove.

Gitmo and our holding of these people without even filing charges against them is a blot on America’s human rights record that will take years to remove. Our government should file charges, take these people to trial..or let them go. (I am aware there are some real problems in where they might go; some nations would kill them; some of their home nations refuse to take them back—but surely after 12 years some place can be found. Why not Kirabati?) Which, incidentally would also lessen the burden on U-S taxpayers.

I'm just sayin'...

PREPARE YOURSELF FOR NOVEMBER

A month of anniversaries are coming, especially on KET/PBS..many of them significant and important.

I hope you all support KET to the extent that you get its monthly “Visions” magazine with the schedule for November. If so, there are two major series of events coming.

One will be a number of programs on space..the shuttle, astronauts to the moon, the Hubble telescope and things like that. Fascinating, important events many of us lived through…and for those of you young enough not to have watched them first hand, this is a great opportunity for you to learn..and know how important space exploration is to your lives today.

On a sad note, November brings us the 50^th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy. All the networks will have major programs, and KET has a full array..including American Experience/Frontline/Nova/as well as specials. Having interviewed the President twice, and having covered extensively his campaign in West Virginia, which helped make him President, I hope you will watch as many of these as possible. Even the conspiracy shows, which will undoubtedly crop up, are worth seeing..but not all will be worth believing.

Mr. Kennedy believed public service was a notable goal for all citizens, but especially students and young people. The Peace Corps continues as one of his noblest ideas. While we have every right to be dissatisfied with our government from time to time (NSA, sign-up glitches come to mind right now) “Camelot”  was a time when many things were possible and showed America to the world as a “country on a hill.”

We are far from perfect, so let me close this largely media blog by recommending you read two news stories printed on Sunday.

The Courier-Journal printed a thoughtful column by one of our true statesmen, former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton.  Read it under this headline: “For a stable future, Congress must fix itself.”

And for something entirely different..but inspiring, and one of most interesting and well written stories I have seen in sometime..I commend to you a report from the Sunday New York Times. A story from its Sports section, which should have been on its front page…how a priest and a minister, both baseball fans..handled a much more serious matter. Do read: “A World Away, the Seventh Game; Close at Hand, Condemned Nazis.”

I'm just sayin'...

ET TU, CONGRESSMAN BARR?

It seems to me Republicans can make a case for cutting government spending..but their tactics to do it are all wrong..as the recent 16 day government shutdown proved.

Too many people were truly hurt. Too many things cropped up..not thought of by the “closers” that had to be rectified suddenly, giving more proof of this bad idea.

And, topping it all off..Obamacare went right on; it had been funded previously. So the main goal of the “closers” was not reachable. And, get this, the costs of closing the government turned out to be higher than if the government had remained open!  How illogical can you get? What utter folly on the part of some in the GOP.

In Kentucky, all 3 senior Republican House members finally voted to end the shutdown. Only the two new Young Turks still were intransigent…Thomas Massie and our own Andy Barr. Barr has now voted (1) to shut down and keep shut down our government; (2) cut food stamps to many people in his district who desperately need them; and (3) cut funding for Head Start. He can rationalize his votes all he wants, this is their practical effect.

I suspect he is in trouble for re-election, if his voters have any memory of these past few weeks. This will be signaled even more so if new, well known names announce their interest in running.

Senator McConnell, on the other hand, probably did himself some good..though Matt Bevin and the Tea Partiers may not think so when the liberal Washington Post writes..”Thank God for Mitch McConnell.”

Mitch got a bad rap from many. What I have seen is he did not insert pork into the final settlement, the $3B worth of improvements for Ohio River locks in W. Kentucky. Others introduced that measure and championed it. Mitch and Senator Reid (D-Nev) finally broke the logjam and forced the GOP House to see the light.

That said, let’s realize the “can has just been kicked down the road” a few months---not years..and in 2014, when an election year will make compromise much more difficult..all these issues will be back to haunt the Nation.

Maybe by then, the GOP… Mr. Barr included..can argue their views on both facts and philosophy..without resorting to idiotic, unproductive, and

“job killing” tactics such as sequester and closure.

 I'm just sayin'...

MY HISTORY…AND YOURS

I was 11 when Pearl Harbor happened, my generation’s 9/11, and grew up during WW2 and the Cold War. A future reporter, I followed current events carefully. But now, years later, thanks to some excellent TV programs I am learning things we never knew at the time.

PBS/KET’s fine series “Secrets of the Dead” went a bit afield Sunday to air “The Man Who Saved the World”, a not overblown report on a Soviet sub commander who, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, refused to permit a nuclear strike against the US by one of his ships. That surely would have resulted in a US response, and Armageddon.

We didn’t know that then, nor that one nuclear armed sub near our shores never was found by the US. All this came out in bits and pieces a few years ago until PBS fashioned it into a chilling program of ”what if…?”

CBS’s Sixty Minutes” Sunday told us about the “Oskar Schindler” of Viet Nam..a City bank official who rescued 105 Vietnamese employees and family members when Saigon fell. Had they been left behind, most would have probably been executed by the Viet Cong. John Riordan’s story is only now, 40 years later, coming to light. (To City Bank’s credit, it spent a million dollars to resettle the 105 in the US where  most have become prosperous citizens.)

Also Sunday, the finest news program on the air, CBS’s Sunday Morning

aired a report on the Zapruder film and the man who shot it. That 8mm home movie is the only film known that totally catches the events in Dealy Plaza when JFK was assassinated in Dallas. I had seen that film once before, shown to a small group of journalists at a professional meeting. I never expected to see it aired nationally, but there it was..including the infamous frame where Oswald’s second shot explodes the president’s head. It passes so quickly you scarcely realize what you have just seen.

Next month we will observe the 50^th anniversary of that tragic day. Some preliminary work is being done to have it commemorated on the UK campus…where Kennedy had made major remarks during his Kentucky campaign. (He didn’t carry Kentucky in case you have forgotten, but that was our fault.)

Not remembering history is our “fault” also..but we must always leave open the possibility that new facts, new information will turn up..as the PBS & CBS news programs have shown, to make us reassess what we think we “know” about history.

For, as several learned men have pointed out..”those who will not profit from the lessons of history are condemned to relive it.”

I'm just sayin'...

GREATEST GENERATION???

Tom Brokaw’s book of that title—and the fact I grew up in the Great Depression and World War 2—have always made me appreciate that group just ahead of me..the ones who won the war, after having suffered thru the depression.

And now we are losing them, seemingly in record numbers.

I thought about that this week after seeing and reading a number of stories about these people..heroes in many ways to me..and now they are gone.

Such as the oldest winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, dying at 102.  All he did was attack  German troops opposite him during the Battle of the Bulge. He attacked..not his company. His company was dispirited after 2-3 previous attacks had failed, so he did it himself! And he won, routing a German company single-handedly. ( Sounds like Sgt. York of WW1 fame, doesn’t it?)

Or the man who had been in on the Manhattan project from the beginning..from building the first atomic reactor, to flying on the plane that dropped the first A-bomb on Japan, filming it with his own 16mm camera.

Or the man who took part in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, lived thru 3 Nazi concentration camps, to become a prominent historian of the Holocaust. Lest we forget. (Another survivor, one of the last women to survive that vulgarity also died recently.) How do we keep the memory of that tragic period alive? But we must.

(UK’s Donovan forum program recently heard from a local living survivor of those camps. If you ever get a chance to hear these people, please do; it will change you. Or see the memorial in Washington. I have seen Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust. It is a sobering experience.)

Some of these deaths remind us of great sacrifices—for good, as in the passing of our CMH winner, with whose life I began this blog. Others remind us of challenges still unfulfilled—as in “with justice to all.”

Last week we marked the passing of a man who spent 41 years in a solitary prison cell, only to be released on Tuesday by a judge who said his last incarceration was unconstitutional..tasted three days of freedom only to die on Friday from cancer.  Even knowing of his cancer, among his last words to a friend was..”I’m free!”

To freedom, to that unquenchable desire of the human spirit, I thank those of the Greatest Generation and those since then whose lives remind us of challenges yet unmet, and evils yet to be defeated. Not every old person, as I am, qualifies..but if you meet some of those who do, listen to their stories…and learn.

I'm just sayin'...