#1127 – Monika Wiesak

 

  • Book: America’s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy by Monika Wiesak
  • Get the book here: PaperbackKindleAudiobookScribdBarnes & Noble
  • June 11 1963, JFK’s landmark Civil Rights Speech: VideoText
  • How Monika got interested in the JFK presidency
  • Understanding the root causes vs. supressing the symptoms
  • The world JFK envisioned vs. the world we ended up with
  • The Bay of Pigs operation was Kennedy’s introduction to the world of intelligence
  • NSAM 55 (FRUS)
  • NSAMs 55, 56 and 57
  • Kennedy fired Allen Dulles, Richard Bissel and Charles Cabell from the CIA
  • Kennedy cut CIA’s budget by 20%
  • President Kennedy’s actions in the Congo
  • UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s death in a suspicious plane crash
  • Documentary: Cold Case Hammarskjold: Stream on AmazoniTunesDirectvMicrosoftVerizonVudu
  • Book: Who Killed Hammarskjold? by Susan Williams: HardcoverPaperbackKindle
  • Edmund Gullion told JFK that Hammarskjold’s death was suspicious
  • In 2 years and 10 months, Kennedy personally met with 28 African heads of state
  • Whereas Eisenhower met with 8 African heads of state in 8 years
  • G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams was one of Kennedy’s first appointees
  • Kennedy supported “Africa for the Africans”
  • Kennedy supported Angola over Portugal and Algeria over France
  • Full text of JFK’s Algeria speech in the Senate, 1957
  • The Alliance for Progress
  • Jackie Kennedy said that JFK would have never done what LBJ did in the Dominican Republic and Brazil
  • Book: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
    (interviewed by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.): HardcoverPaperbackKindleAudiobook
  • FREE Borrowable EbookJacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
  • Philanthro capitalism or philantro imperialism
  • Video: President Kennedy calls out the steel companies (1962)
  • “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now,”
    President Kennedy famously said when he felt steel executives had double-crossed him by raising prices
  • FREE Borrowable EbookSilent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson
  • Kennedy amended the rules to make sure that the FDA does both safety and efficacy studies
  • The FDA ended up removing 600 drugs from the market after they did retroactive efficacy studies
  • Thalidomide and the pharmaceutical industry
  • The four basic consumer rights: the right to safety, be informed, choose and be heard
  • JFK’s consumer rights speech (March 15, 1962)
  • World Consumer Rights Day is celebrated every year on March 15
  • Stockpile investigation
  • Military is the biggest pollutor on the planet
  • Kennedy chose peace over war repeatedly during his presidency
  • Kennedy was working towards ending the cold war
  • June 10 1963, JFK’s American University commencement address titled ‘A Strategy of Peace’AudioVideoText
  • Kennedy hoped to visit the Soviet Union in his second term
  • JFK sought good relations with all Middle Eastern countries
  • “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market
    is a nation that is afraid of its people” – John F. Kennedy
  • CIA document titled Countering Criticism of the Warren Report
  • Jim DiEugenio interviews Monika Wiesak: please listen to episode 1112