The murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 is the most discussed, scrutinized and written about assassination in history. The official narrative is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Dallas and that there was "no evidence of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign." That was the conclusion of the Warren Commission in 1964. However, fifteen years later the House Select Committee on Assassinations said there was a "high probability that two gunmen fired at President Kennedy" and “that he was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” Information relating to the assassination held in secret at the National Archives was released on Oct. 26, 2017. Curiously, some documents were held back because of “national security” concerns. More than 60% of Americans do not believe the government’s version of what happened. Questions about JFK’s death won’t and may never go away.

The definition of civil liberties is straightforward. They are rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution allowing individuals to be free to speak, think, assemble, organize, worship, or petition without government or even private interference or restraints. Idaho Senator Frank Church back in the 1970s warned the country about the dangers inherent in domestic spying: "No American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything. There would be no place to hide. And there would be no way to fight back.” Today, the never-ending so-called War on Terror has led to an erosion of civil liberties. The state snooping agencies, with their ballooning budgets, accrue more and more surveillance power and reach. What does it portend? As Bob Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” This event was presented by the Lannan Foundation.

The self-styled deal maker is a deal breaker when it comes to the historic agreement limiting Iranian uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of sanctions. Trump refused to certify Iranian compliance and passed the ball to Congress which now must decide. But the UN monitoring agency has determined that Tehran is adhering to the conditions agreed to. Does the U.S. have evidence indicating otherwise? Why is Trump now abrogating the deal and insulting Iran as “a rogue state.” Iran, once in Washington’s hip pocket under the Shah, broke away with its 1979 Islamic Revolution. The U.S. has been hostile ever since. If the deal collapses why would any country, say North Korea, enter into an agreement with Washington? It changes what has been negotiated post-facto. In this case, the old saw applies, If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

David Suzuki, the renowned Canadian environmental activist, author and broadcaster, says, “If you fly over a forest and look down, you'll see every green tree and plant reaching to the heavens to absorb the ultimate energy source: sunlight. What a contrast when you look down on a city or town with its naked roofs, asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks, all ignoring the sun's beneficence! Our economic systems don't often encourage the most efficient and least harmful ways of providing necessities. They aim for the quickest, easiest, cheapest and most economically profitable paths. We can do better than that.” Indeed we can and we must if we are going to leave a habitable planet for future generations. Yet as Dr. Suzuki observes, “We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.”

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are two of the great figures of the 20th century. Their novels, 1984 and Brave New World focus on authoritarianism. Both draw grim pictures of totalitarian rule but in each book the dictatorship to effect control deploys different techniques. For Orwell it’s straight out force. His dark image is brutal state oppression—“a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Big Brother is watching your every move. You can be arrested at any time. Endless war is in the background. Whereas, in Huxley’s dystopia, societal control is achieved by more subtle means such as entertaining diversions, staged spectacles and the directed pursuit of manufactured needs and desires. People are infantilized. They are to be concerned with trivia like shopping, celebrity divorces and scandals leaving them with little time or interest to challenge power.

The centuries-long genocidal policies of the U.S. settler-colonial regime has largely been omitted from history. The ferocity and savagery of the U.S. attack on Native Americans is usually turned on its head. The colonists were the victims. They had to defend themselves against the heathens. The sheer hatred for indigenous people manifested in genocide. George Washington called them “beasts.” Jefferson declared, “We will destroy them all.” The notorious Indian killer Andrew Jackson said, “They must disappear.” Jump to Barack Obama who pronounced “America was not born a colonial power.” Really? Native Americans are still here. They have survived. The coalition of many nations resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock was inspiring. Though the pipeline is being built the resistance generated a consciousness and awareness about the situation of indigenous people and land and water issues.

The upheaval and regime change in Russia in 1917 “shook the world” in the words of journalist John Reed. In place of the feudal czarist monarchy came radical revolutionaries. A civil war ensued pitting former regime elements against the communists. In addition, a number of countries, including the U.S., Britain and France didn’t like what they saw and heard from Lenin, Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders. They invaded Russia in an attempt to destroy the revolution and bring back the old order. Churchill said the Russian Revolution must be “strangled in its cradle.” They didn’t succeed. A few years after Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin takes over the country. His rivals are sent into exile, jailed or killed. The dictatorship calcifies. In 1991 the Soviet Union ends. The centenary of the revolution has sparked renewed interest in its history.

The U.S. pays more for health care than any other country yet has shamefully poor results. People are paying through the nose for their hospital stays, surgeries and prescription drugs. An MRI in the U.S. costs five times what it costs in Australia. Instead of quality affordable health care we are building absurdly expensive F-35s, submarines and aircraft carriers. And there is a cool $ trillion for nuclear weapons. Our spending priorities are upside down. Every other industrialized country has universal health care. Since the 1970s surveys have shown most people in the U.S. want a single-payer, universal health care program. But Washington says: That’s off the table. So even though the public wants it, our so-called representatives, except for Bernie Sanders and a few others, are not considering it. Maybe we should look to Slovenia for inspiration.

The present phase of capitalism is a great success story for the uber rich. Torrents of wealth flow overwhelmingly to a sliver of the population. Millennials in large numbers are seriously questioning the existing economic order. They are even willing to, hold your breath, consider a socialist alternative. The Bernie Sanders campaign made a huge impact on many young people and sparked interest in socialism. When millennials hear the term capitalism they think about Wall Street bailouts, corporate greed, off shore accounts, and a tax code riddled with loopholes for the well connected. For far too many the vaunted invisible hand feels like a death grip. Now is the time to think outside the box. As George Monbiot writes in The Guardian, “It’s not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed.”

The great radical historian Howard Zinn once told me, half in jest, that one of the greatest disasters to befall socialism was when the Soviet Union put it in the official name of the country: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I asked him to explain and he said, The USSR, which had little to do with socialism, it was an authoritarian state, wanted to capitalize on the almost universal good name that socialism had. And the capitalist countries played along by smearing socialism and conflating it with the USSR. If you expressed interest in socialism the response would be: “Why don’t you move to a gulag in Siberia? Today, because of growing wealth and income inequality and the Bernie Sanders campaign, he got more than 13 million votes, there is a resurgence of interest in socialism. Many young people are fed up with predatory capitalism and are looking for alternatives. Worker-owned and operated coops are springing up. These initiatives can proliferate and grow. And as Howard Zinn always said, authentic socialism must be small “d” democratic.