JFK: The Act, The CASE,
and Persistence of Vision,
2007, By Sir Robert Pinpoint.
(Reprinted here by permission of the author)
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Forty years ago, JFK signed the KCW Act into law. Three years later, in his first Cavett interview, JFK announced looming changes mandated by The Act. Ten years after that I felt compelled to make note of the many positive changes that had come about in this nation as a direct result of The Act.
Twenty-seven years have passed since that book, and I am once again compelled to write, this time to chronicle the many transformative accomplishments of JFK, working this time through his CASE
Foundation.
I’ve found it difficult however, to separate the accomplishments of the one from the other. They are intertwined, The Act and the CF, and while either could exist without the other, they become, when combined, a force for change the like of which has never before walked upon this Earth. The world now is a fantasy world compared to the one we left behind.
Does anyone remember that only forty years ago our world was 262
host to several wars, with a few more threatening, and with lesser conflicts too numerous to mention? Do you remember toxic air and water, polluted, dying oceans, diseases with no cure, droughts, floods and famine, evil warlords and drug cartels, criminal organizations with global reach? How about crowded, poverty-ridden cities, overpopulation, homelessness, human trafficking and slavery, gang violence, ethnic cleansing, genocides, nuclear proliferation, political corruption?
The Act was a bold stroke that forced upon a reluctant power structure a realignment, an evolution of our public institutions.
When the struggle between the haves and the have-nots was predicated on the principle that elevating the lot of the teeming masses was impossible without an unfair redistribution of wealth, The Act set in place a doctrine of fairness so pervasive it carried over into the rest of our culture; a doctrine that allows even the lowliest to gain a level of affluence dependent only on their willingness to work, while still allowing for the creation of wealth by those willing to work harder, or smarter. Enter the CASE Foundation.
While wealthy individuals and corporations who have thrown in with the CF were cautioned that their funds would be put to work in altruistic endeavors from which no profit is expected, it should be noted that profit usually does occur, in some form or other, and at a level that incentivizes ample numbers of the wealthy to clamor at the gate of The CASE, seeking admission to that elite fraternity with whom The CASE will associate.
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The partnership between Carl Sagan and The CASE was the cornerstone of JFK’s vision. Even though JFK involved the CASE
in hundreds of other altruistic projects over the decades, and even though each one became a successful leg of the journey that led to life as we know it today, the Sagan Teams spawned so many breakthrough technologies that it’s impossible to place too much credit there. The Heaven project was, of course, the largest.
Well it has been noted that the Heaven project had met with 263
frosty resistance until JFK uttered the five-word phrase, “Like getting manna from Heaven.” I wonder if we could ever over-emphasize the import of those five words, spoken at that precise time in our history. Believing, as I do, that Heaven project would not have commenced without the blessings spawned from that phrase, I am compelled to go on record stating that it is the most productive five-word-phrase ever spoken in our entire history.
Heaven. The popularized name dovetails nicely with the look.
Almost everyone lives within sight of at least one of the 19-inch colored transmission laser beams. Who can look up, see it descend-ing from the night sky cloaked in its elemental glory, and not wonder, just for a moment, if man truly could have created such a thing?
Since the last decade of the 20th century, Heaven has been supplying a remarkable 99.9% of the residential and commercial electricity needs of the entire planet. JFK and Sagan worked together tirelessly in the sixties and seventies to get the project off the ground (pun intended). The list of obstacles they had to overcome was long and multifaceted.
First, they had to gain public and governmental acceptance.
Without that, the effort required to accomplish this task may have proven too colossal even for these two remarkable men.
Then, they had to marry the American space shuttle, being developed at NASA, to the Heaven project, and perfect an ion drive so the shuttle could attain the higher orbit needed for Heaven. Photovoltaic technology was still in its infancy when Carl accepted his mission. He had to increase efficiency several fold, and make it simpler, lighter and longer lasting. Once the Sagan teams chose the laser concept as the method to transmit electrical energy to Earth, they had to reinvent the technology to make it compatible with energy transmission.
Though he didn’t publicize it, JFK’s vision from the start was that the people of the earth, through their governments, would one day own the entire Heaven system, from the PV arrays orbiting in space to the receiver anodes on Earth; that the expense of operating and maintaining the system would be borne by the people, again, 264
through their governments; that governments would roll their cost for the Heaven system into their budget and taxation systems; and that by maintaining their status as citizens, the people would enjoy free energy. From Heaven.
It was a bold endeavor, and JFK knew he would have little control over how other governments or entities dealt with the issue. He hoped they would implement the U.S. model globally, but he admits the process may not yet be complete when he passes from this world to the next.
I think he needn’t worry. As this book goes to print the U.S.
has achieved full implementation of the popular Wellstone Birth-Rate Structure, wherein, as a birthright, each citizen and industrial account receives up to 1,000 kWh (kilowatt hours) of electric energy per month at no charge. Heavy industrial customers pay between two and four cents per kWh, using a sliding logarithmic scale.
Canada, Mexico and the SA Union countries are converting to the U.S. model, and several dozen other countries have taken the first step by forgiving energy bills for low usage of up to 250 kWh per month. If citizens of other countries are not clamoring for similar treatment, it is because even there electrical rates, while not gratis, are quite affordable.
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In the early years, the decade after JFK left office, he had not yet revealed his ultimate goals to anyone, except perhaps Sagan. He knew how lofty it would have sounded to any sane person. He revealed his plan slowly, a piece at a time. After all the elements needed to accomplish a goal were in place, only then would he say to a head of state, an industry mogul, or the public (via a Cavett interview), “Say, now that we’ve done this, I wonder if we could…”
The “Deliverance Arrays” is a good example.
In the late 1970s, the developed world was already beginning to partake of the building and technology boom generated by The CASE and the Sagan Teams. JFK also wanted to bring the undeveloped world along on his ride to the future. Failure to do that would 265
have been, in his eyes, a failure of humanitarianism on a massive scale. He spoke privately to whoever was in charge in dozens of nations, whether that person was a president, dictator, tribal chief-tain or grand holy Poobah. He convinced them to allow placement of smaller versions of receiver anodes at various remote locations in the lands they controlled. For testing, he lied. He chose strategic locations where extreme poverty, disease and hardship prevailed.
Trained crews working with local labor set up small, simple power distribution systems. They salvaged most electrical components from first-world upgrades. When a narrow, three to nine-inch diameter, colored transmission beam descended from the sky to energize an anode for the first time, grateful locals often viewed it with religious reverence. The local chief or strongman’s home was always the first to be lighted, ensuring that no one ever tampered with electrical system components.
Other trained crews drilled wells and set up bare-bones sewage systems, and they trained locals in the craft. Used, but working electric appliances shipped regularly from first world countries.
This monumental effort, while not a secret, neither was it pro-moted. Most people to whom I speak don’t even remember that after the first two PV arrays were on line and delivering energy into the U.S. grid, the next several arrays were Deliverance Arrays, positioned to light parts of the world that may never have been otherwise.
This deed, accompanied by other initiatives which I’ll explore later in this book, has brought the poorest nations of Earth along at an accelerated pace. Although they still lag the more developed nations, the steady improvements in their quality of life have instilled in these grateful peoples the assurance that their children will fare better than they. With that as given, any attempts by selfish exploi-ters to subvert the process have fallen on deaf ears. Electricity has built solid democracies.
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None of these advances would mean anything to anyone who 266
lacks the one thing we need above all else, our health.
In the fall of 1973, JFK visited a well-known east coast university. He walked up to and stood beside a young man waiting to cross a street at a traffic light. “You know,” he said. “the cells in our bodies produce a minute amount of electricity.”
As soon as JFK spoke, the young man recognized the voice. He turned his head toward JFK. “I knew that,” he said.
“Electricity has two states, either on, or off.”
“So what?”
“It’s binary, much like the binary numeral system used in computing, where…
“Yes, yes,” the young man said impatiently. “Unlike our zero through 9 decimal system, base-10, the base-2 binary system uses only 0 and 1. So what?”
“Well, we could think of the electrical on-off state of our cells as the equivalent of the binary 0 or 1 that computers depend upon for calculations and storage of information.”
“Again, so what?” the young man said as he rolled his eyes.
“Consider a computer and a diseased cell. 0 or 1. On or off.”
“Ha,” the young man snorted, grinning. “You think,” he began.
Then he stopped speaking and snapped his head toward Kennedy.
The grin left his face. He said, “You can’t be… You… It’s not…”
The young man faced the street again, his expression blank. “I suppose it… No… Well, if we…”
He wasn’t really speaking now. It was more as if he were thinking out loud, intrigued. “You’d have to write a… But no, no, first you’d have to map… No, no. An interface. Develop some kind of…
Extremely sensitive… But how would you… No, no, that won’t work. Now, if we could somehow measure amplitude…”
The young man went on talking, barely audible, no longer aware JFK was there. The light changed. JFK looked both direc-tions, placed his hand on the young man’s back and gave him a gentle nudge. The young man walked off, mumbling to himself. JFK
turned and walked away.
Two years later, with the help of two like-minded friends, the 267
young man had developed a software program they loaded onto an Altair 8800, the only personal computer available then. They had made substantial alterations to the 8800 circuit boards, including input wires soldered in place. The software could detect electrical energy in cells, as indicated by lights on the 8800’s front panel. It couldn’t measure the energy. There was no visual interface other than the lights on the front panel.
Even though the software and hardware were crude and useless, the young man and his team thought they were on the trail of an important discovery. They developed an outline for a product that could, they said, change the state of a cell’s electrical component. They called their product the Micro-Sodium-Channel-Gate-Scan-Reader. The young man retrieved from his wallet the card, with only a phone number printed on it, that he had found in his shirt pocket after the encounter with JFK two years earlier.
A team reviewed the software and the young man’s plans. Early in 1976, the CF began funding the project, insisting on two stipulations: first, they would shorten the name of the software to Microgate Scancell. Second, the young man and his team would release to the public any beneficial product they developed. The young man agreed, with one stipulation of his own: he’d have to invent an operating system to use as a platform for the software. He wished to retain ownership of the operating system. The CF agreed.
By 1985, the young man was a wealthy young man, due to the sale of his operating system to the emerging personal computer industry. The young man had divided his time between his operating system and the Microgate Scancell project. With funding from the CF, the MS staff grew to over two hundred, and they acquired advancements in microprocessor speed the minute it was available. In 1985, they began early releases of the MS program. They distributed it on a set of five floppy disks and sent it without fanfare to the address of anyone who requested it.
Not everyone could get it to load properly. Computing was like that back then. It was still slow, given the trillions of cells in the human body, or even the billions between any two points where one 268
might attach electrodes. However, it could now change the nature of a cell. It worked by comparing each individual cell to a database of characteristics for known healthy cells of that specific cell type, along with a baseline representing healthy cells in that one patient.
When the algorithm determined a cell to be abnormal, it reduced that cell’s electrical amplitude to zero, in effect, turning it off. The body’s natural processes washed it away.
Very few people owned personal computers back then, but those who did soon became popular in their neighborhoods. Before, when confronted with whether to buy a personal computer, a person might ask, “What would I use it for?” That was no longer the case.
Now, one had a specific, practical reason to buy a computer. Most people were skeptical. That didn’t stop them from trying it, especially those who’d already been pronounced incurable.
One at a time, the MS team began hearing reports from people who claimed they’d been cured by using the program. There was no fanfare, neither from the MS team, nor from those who claimed benefit from the MS software. They were all wary of the same thing: if it started working too well, someone might take it away.
By 1987, the phenomenon had caused sales of personal computers to soar. Finally, the Microgate Scancell computer program came to the attention of the American Medical Association, the
American Hospital Association, the US Chamber of Commerce,
and the Life Insurance Association of People. The same four groups had opposed the creation of Medicare, back in 1965.
They filed court cases; sought injunctions. The resulting public hoopla brought the MS program into greater prominence. It became a news item. People began clamoring for it. More importantly, people employed by those four organizations began hearing of friends or family members who claimed to have been helped by the very program the organizations were trying to shut down.
It was too late anyway. The genie was out of the bottle.
The CASE still funds the MS today; they receive no other funds or revenues for the product they continue to upgrade and release free. As computer technology advanced, and the program became 269
more stable, they gradually reduced staff. Today, in 2007, less than a dozen run the whole show.
I still have one question I’ve not been able to answer. It’s one of those chicken and egg questions. Did JFK need to plant the seed in the mind of that specific young man, or would any young man, tapped on the back by JFK, have accomplished the same thing?
(Note: This writer is aware of the rumor that Jacqueline Kennedy made use of the program more than once, but the rumor has never been substantiated.)
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As almost every inhabitant of Earth has listened to each of the Cavett interviews, I needn’t tell you that JFK, ninety years old this year, fully expects the quality of life on Earth to continue to improve long after he is gone. I don’t wish to disagree with him, but I will go on record stating that it would be enough for me if he just tells us how to hang on to the quality of life we have now.
I’m twenty-five years his junior. In my lifetime, I have seen hunger and thirst eliminated everywhere on Earth. What surprises me most is how easily we accomplished that, once we ceased fighting each other, once we quit destroying what each other had created, undoing what each other had done. The Pew Research Center estimates that in 1965, the money and human enterprise spent collectively by all the nations of Earth, on spying alone, was equal to almost half of the money and human enterprise required today to support the entire Heaven project. Hard to believe, isn’t it? However, there is more.
Pew made two lists. The first includes every accomplishment of mankind, everywhere on Earth, in 1965. The second includes every loss, or undoing, suffered by mankind, by man’s own hand, in 1965. They then calculated the cost, in money and labors, of each list. You’ve probably already guessed where this is going. The costs of the two lists were nearly equal. Is it any wonder that we worked and plotted and worried, but never seemed to get anywhere?
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