Paul Rigby

Washington Daily News, 1st January 1965, p.15 Fair Trial First Richard Starnes The subsidiary disgrace of Dallas, in which Lee Oswald was convicted and executed without trial, is likely to result in long-needed reforms. Few responsible voices in the newspaper industry refuse to concede that the press owned a share in the wretched episode in the basement of the Dallas Municipal Building. The circus atmosphere was condoned by the clodpate cops, to be sure, but it was created by the frenetic antics of the press – a term which in this instance must specifically include the noisy electronic journalists. But the execution of Lee Oswald was not the sum of the outrage; almost as savagely unfair was his summary conviction by Prosecutor Henry Wade, with the news media cheerfully acting as judge and jury. Even if Oswald had survived Jack Ruby’s lunatic attack he was as good as dead, for he had no chance of a fair trial in Dallas or any other place else in the United States, once Mr. Wade and his eager helpers had got in their licks. Saddest of all is the fact that the Oswald case was unique only in its celebrity. The same things every day, to the extent that one could almost adopt as a rule of thumb that no defendant in any notorious criminal case ever gets a wholly fair trial. Politically ambitious prosecutors, which includes almost all of the breed, systematically leak choice morsels to news media, and by the time the veniremen are seated the atmosphere is hopelessly clouded by unfair pre-trial. Newspaper people do not like to talk about this. They know it is true, and they know it makes it difficult for the criminal defendant to obtain a fair trial. But the thought of some quasi-judicial bureaucracy telling them what they may and may not print runs counter to their very instinct, and they fight it. Nevertheless, it appears that some sort of code of pre-trial ethics is slowly taking shape and will someday be applied to defense, prosecution and news media alike. The Philadelphia Bar Association has endorsed a tentative code, altho it is voluntary and since it is bitterly opposed by news media it may never have any real effect. But the Philadelphia code is very likely the forerunner of other more effective means of insuring that criminal defendants do not go to trial with their fate already sealed by public clamor. The Philadelphia code seeks to enjoin lawyers from making statements regarding pending cases, to forbid them to grant interviews or to prepare statements to be issued by others. There may be many things wrong with the proposed guidelines and there are undoubtedly numerous refinements which experience would dictate. But the opposition has not been notable for reason and logic. Justice Michael A. Musmanno, for example, opposed the proposed restraints on the ground that “curbing crime news is like recommending that no one can talk about cancer on the theory that silence will somehow cause cancer to disappear.” This is nonsense. The point is not whether crime will be reduced or increased: the point is a man’s right to a fair trial – a right which is too often diluted by prejudgments in press and radio. Moreover, no one has ever been able to show that undue publicity about crime has had any deterrent effect. A better case perhaps could be made for the reverse. In any event, there is no real issue of freedom of the press here. The press will remain free in this country as long as it is a responsible organism. It was not responsible in Dallas, as the Warren Commission properly observed, and it needs to mend its ways of dealing with accounts of crime and criminals.

A quite splendidly ludicrous analogy: Matthew Koch as General Walker? The Mods as JFK? Education Forum contributors as serving members of the US military? Who knew? Hilarious, and as cynically irrelevant as just about everything else you post.

From a nearly nine year-old post, which has stood the test of time very well: Why was it necessary to suppress the first version of the Zapruder film on November 25/26, and revise it? One key element of any answer lies with the Parkland press conference. The insistence of Perry and Clark that Kennedy was shot from the front threw a significant spanner in the works. How to preserve the credibility of both the patsy-from-the-rear scenario, and the similarly pre-planned supporting film? The solution was to suppress the film-as-film, hastily edit it, and meanwhile bring the public round by degree through the medium of the written word. Here’s the latter process in action. Note how in example 1, the first shot, which does not impact, is fired while the presidential limousine is on Houston: In this second example, the first shot, which now does impact, occurs as the turn is made from Houston onto Elm: And here’s the process completed in example 3, with the presidential limousine now “50 yards past Oswald” on Elm: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/mandel.htm The film-as-film could not be shown while the above process of fraudulent harmonisation - of medical testimony and the lone-assassin-from-the-rear – was undertaken. More, it was predicated on the removal of the left turn from Houston onto Elm. Showing of that turn would have furnished visual-pictorial refutation of the entire elaborate deceit. Just how imperative it was for the plotters and their heirs on the Warren Commission to withdraw the first version of the Z fake – thus making comparison impossible for the general public and posterity - is made abundantly clear in the following piece: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/12216-was-muchmore%E2%80%99s-film-shown-on-wnew-tv-new-york-on-november-26-1963/page/18/

In the wake of Tucker Carlson’s intervention in the JFK assassination debate, individuals and institutions with a pre-existing interest in the case had a number of options. These ranged from obsessing over Carlson’s sincerity, through pulling up the drawbridge in disdain, to embracing the opportunity to broaden the coalition of the informed and interested. For those genuinely committed to advancing our knowledge of the case, the latter alternative was self-evidently the best option. It offered potential, from committing Trump and DeSantis, the leading GOP contenders for the presidency, to a full release of government records (and thus increasing the pressure on the Dem candidate, whoever supplants Biden), to unlocking familial secrets from MAGA descendants of direct participants in the coup and cover-up. None of these outcomes were guaranteed: Nothing would be lost by attempting any of them. So what did this forum do? It prioritised domestic US party political partisanship over the advancement of the JFK case. As Joe Bauer put it with such commendable honesty, albeit ironically within a thread entitled “Thankyou, Tucker Carlson,” the real purpose of this forum, as most clearly revealed in the double-standard used to expel Matthew Koch, is to keep the deplorables out: “Maybe a better analogy is that this forum is like an elite membership private country club with strict vetting rules. Only the most respected and intelligent are allowed in? It was never intended to be a Jerry Springer/Maury Povich/Pit Bulls And Parolees TV show fan drop in venue.”* A similar contempt for the riff-raff occurred on the same page of that thread, emanating this time from Lesley Sharp: Yes, I have a problem when bad actors infiltrate any tent, and I'm pretty defensive of this one (the Royal) as you no doubt recognize. You'll ask what constitutes infiltration, and I could be glib and say "you'll know them when you see them," but kidding aside, I've concluded based on Hank's investigation and our additional research, the assassination of Kennedy — a president whose platform is polar opposite of the platform Trump ran on — was ideologically driven by etremists from the right on an international scale. And MAGA, led by Trump is simply the latest iteration (think JBS, Buchanan's "America First," the Tea Party) of the big tent that housed those extremists in 1963. MAGA is anathema to all that Kennedy stood for. So, when Carlson promoted propaganda designed to please MAGA, and along with Trump coopted the term "deep state" and spun it to suggest that Trump and Kennedy had something in common, or when Trump attempted a coup using lies about the 2020 election, those who believed the lies rolled into Kennedy assassination research tents in a multi-pronged attack and promoted the lie that Trump was the reincarnation> I think we're looking at the hammer that will nail the coffin of democracy constructed in Dallas in 1963.”* The utter asininity of this position is demonstrated by a single statistic - roughly 13% of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2012**. Were all of these people “simply the latest iteration (think JBS, Buchanan's "America First," the Tea Party) of the big tent that housed those extremists in 1963”? The proposition is deranged. This forum was founded by an English Socialist. He did not impose political loyalty tests or exclude Americans based upon their domestic party affiliation. It is a tradition that needs to be recovered by a new set of moderators who are above and beyond tribal US party political concerns. *https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28836-thankyou-tucker-carlson/page/20/ **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama%E2%80%93Trump_voters

Jeremy is invariably a welcome breath of fresh nonsense, and this Antipodean-sourced contribution is no exception. By far the biggest threat to the reputation of JFK research is an association with, well, lawyers (the sainted Larry Schnapf excluded), as this heart-rending piece by Staci Zaretsky, referencing a seminal 2014 Princeton Uni study by Friske & Dupree, leaves no doubt: Scientific Study Concludes No One Trusts Lawyers Lawyers are ranked on par with prostitutes when it comes to trust. Lovely. https://abovethelaw.com/2014/09/scientific-study-concludes-no-one-trusts-lawyers/ From Friske and Dupree: “The [rightmost] corner lists the ambivalently perceived high-competence, low-warmth, “envied” professions: lawyers, chief executive officers, engineers, accountants, scientists, and researchers. They earn respect but not trust. Being seen as competent but cold might not seem problematic until one recalls that communicator credibility requires not just status and expertise (competence) but also trustworthiness (warmth). People report envy and jealousy toward groups in this space. These are mixed emotions that include both admiration and resentment.” As Zaretsky concludes: “What’s the lesson to be learned here? The next time someone asks you what the difference between a lawyer and a hooker is, it’s not just that the hooker will stop trying to screw you when you’re dead.” There are four additional obvious lessons to be drawn from this compelling study: 1) On no account should JFK research become tainted by association with the legal profession; 2) Friske and Dupree are masters of the obvious; 3) Reputable professionals – garbage collectors and the like – should be excluded from all future comparison studies and replaced with similarly malign occupations such as traffic wardens, grave robbers and politicians; 4) Prostitutes should lawyer up and sue the hell out of whoever compares them to members of the legal profession.

“We welcome the view of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For 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.” https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkvoiceofamerica.htm Address on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America, delivered 26 February 1962, Health, Education, and Welfare Building, Washington, D.C. Education Forum Mods: Get real. This only applies to Biden supporters. The forum’s BPPT (Bidenescu’s Plunge Protection Team): Anyone who criticizes Biden is a Trumpo-Putinoid fascistic communist. Censorship of these people is a right and an obligation. “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.” https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/50-years-later-jfk-peace-speech-still-inspires-and-has-been-scientifically-validated/ The forum’s BPPT (Bidenescu’s Plunge Protection Team): Slava Ukrayini! More arms! More woar! Education Forum Mods: We’re studiously neutral, of course, but if anyone disagrees with the BPPT, we’ll close the thread concerned and banish it to the outer darkness. Need anything else, BPPT? The forum does indeed have a problem, but it isn’t Matthew Koch, who should be reinstated immediately, if not sooner, not least so I can exchange opinions with him on a lunatic claim by Kristi Noem*. The real problem is twofold: the presence of a claque of Bidenescu regime propagandists for whom each and every issue is judged not on the basis of merit or evidence, but rather its threat or utility to the Bidenescu regime; and by a Deep State Dem mindset, sadly shared by its moderators, that fears debate and suppresses it whenever it receives an appeal from the whiners of the claque. We need, in short, a new set of mods, one which more accurately reflect the diversity of contributors’ political opinions; and enforces, preferably as lightly as possible, its rules equitably. * Noem went bonkers and claimed that China had spent the last 2,000 years plotting America's demise.

Matt Koch is entirely correct about the participation of the Ukrainian far-right in the events of January 6: Why Were Ukrainian National Socialists in the U.S. Capitol on January 6? By Larry Johnson Jun. 9, 2022 9:00 pm https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/ukrainian-National Socialists-u-s-capitol-january-6/ In light of the sham show trial regarding the alleged culprits behind the so-called January 6, 2021 “insurrection,” I think some actual facts are in order that, when you examine them, only raise more questions. One of the most troubling questions is why were Ukrainians tied to neo-National Socialist groups inside the U.S. Capitol mingling with undercover FBI agents and supporters of Donald Trump? I have the answer for you thanks to the work of Yaacov Apelbaum. Yaacov wrote an outstanding investigative piece more than a year ago and few have paid attention to the facts he has uncovered. I am here to rectify that… From Yaacov Apelbaum’s Operators, Hammers, Scorecards, and a Con Man: https://www.yaacovapelbaum.com/2021/02/10/operators-hammers-scorecards-and-a-con-man/ The actual identity of Sergai Dybynyn, who Mary Fanning misidentified during the Capital riots as “pro-Russian” and his arrest warrant by the Lugansk People’s Republic. Before you start screaming that the “Zhidobanderite” image on Ihor Kolomoysky’s T-shirt was photoshopped, chill, this alliance/marriage of convenience with the ideology of the Právyi Séktor is well documented… A deeper dive into Dybynyn and three other related individuals wanted in the LPR arrest warrants. All four are Ukrainian nationalists. Roman Bochkala, one of the wanted man, is a US Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine who visits the US regularly and has attended training in the US (via the Open World program). Interestingly, he also seems to be frequent flyer on various US military aircrafts. If you are still not convinced about what these people really think about the Russians, check the message on Roman’s right hand bandage.

On the upside, you have the privilege of being psychoanalysed, for free and on a regular basis, by the intellectual equivalent of a blancmange.

Isn't a lot of Soros money behind Antifa? Or have I confused the American version with the notorious European pseudo-gang, "Black Bloc," which seems to consist of several hundred policemen and spooks in drag?

Chris, I suspect Kirk is a more dedicated follower of Kenneth Williams – he of "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me" fame – than he understands. “I can't stand innuendo,” the great thespian once admitted, adding, “If I see one in a script I whip it out immediately.” So with Kirk.

The following is as notable for its naivety as its honesty - it was, for example, obvious to anyone familiar with the OSS's preposterous "psychological" profile of Hitler, so hilariously debunked by Lev Navrozov, that the water sports attributed to Trump in the Steele Dossier was a straight lift from that earlier nonsense - but the latter is unquestionably to be welcomed: Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf Dear Conservatives, I Apologize My "Team" was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda Mar 9 https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-conservatives-i-am-sorry There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere. It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways. But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong. I owe you a full-throated apology. I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me - many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases. The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson [https://www.axios.com/2023/03/08/mccarthy-defends-jan-6-footage-tucker-carlson-fox-news]. While “fact-checkers” state that it is “misinformation” to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/07/27/fact-check-nancy-pelosi-isnt-in-charge-capitol-police/8082088002/], the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to — the United States Capitol Police: [https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight]. This would be the same Congress that convened the January 6 Committee subsequently, and that used millions of dollars in taxpayer money to turn that horrible day, and that tragic event, into a message point that would be used to tar a former President as a would-be terrorist, and to smear all Republicans, by association, as “insurrectionists,” or as insurrectionists’ sympathizers and fellow-travelers. There is no way to unsee Officer Brian Sicknick, claimed by some Democrats in leadership and by most of the legacy media to have been killed by rioters at the Capitol that day, alive in at least one section of the newly released video. The USCP medical examiner states that this Officer died of “natural causes,” but also that he died “in the line of duty.” Whatever the truth of this confusing conclusion, and with all respect for and condolences to Officer Sicknick’s family, the circumstances of his death do matter to the public, as without his death having been caused by the events of Jan 6, the breach of the capitol, serious though it was, cannot be described as a “deadly insurrection.” [https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes] Sadly, though the contrary was what was reported, Officer Sicknick died two days after Jan 6, from suffering two strokes. https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-police-officer-brian-sicknick-died-of-natural-causes-after-suffering-two-strokes-day-after-jan-6-report/ There is no way for anyone thoughtful, even if he or she is a lifelong Democrat, not to notice that Sen Chuck Schumer did not say to the world that the footage that Mr Carlson aired was not real. Rather, he warned that it was “shameful” for Fox to allow us to see it. The Guardian characterized Mr Carlson’s and Fox News’ sin, weirdly, as “Over-Use” of Jan 6 footage. Isn’t the press supposed to want full transparency for all public interest events? [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/mar/07/biden-medicare-taxes-desantis-trump-2024-live-updates] How can you “over-use” real footage of events of national relevance? Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senate minority leader, did not say the video on Fox News was fake or doctored. He said, rather, that it was “a mistake” to depart from the views of the events held by the chief of the Capitol Police. This is a statement from McConnell about orthodoxy — not a statement about a specific truth or untruth. [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5060662/senator-mcconnell-calls-tucker-carlsons-depiction-january-6-attack-mistake] I don’t agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos as depicting “mostly peaceful chaos.”[https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3887103-tucker-carlson-shows-the-first-of-his-jan-6-footage-calls-it-mostly-peaceful-chaos/] I do think it is a mistake to downplay how serious it is when a legislative institution suffers a security breach of any kind, however that came to be. But you don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to believe, as I do, that he engaged in valuable journalism simply by airing the footage that was given to him. And remember, by law that footage belongs to us — it is a public record, and all public records literally belong to the American people. “In a democracy, records belong to the people,” explains the National Archives. [https://www.archives.gov/publications/general-info-leaflets/1-about-archives.html] You don’t have to agree with Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to notice the latest hypocrisy by the Left. My acquaintance and personal hero Daniel Ellsberg was rightly lionized by the Left for having illegally leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times was rightly applauded for having run this leaked material in 1971. [https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1435/daniel-ellsberg]. I do not see how Mr Carlson’s airing of video material of national significance that the current government would prefer to keep hidden, or Fox News’ support for its disclosure to the public, is any different from that famous case of disclosure of inside information of public importance. You don’t have to agree with Mr Carlson’s interpretation of the videos, to conclude that the Democrats in leadership, for their own part, have cherry-picked, hyped, spun, and in some ways appear to have lied about, aspects of January 6, turning a tragedy for the nation into a politicized talking point aimed at discrediting half of our electorate. From the start, there have been things about the dominant, Democrats’ and legacy media’s, narrative of Jan 6, that seemed off, or contradictory, to me. (That does not mean I agree with the interpretation of these events in general on the right. Bear with me). There is no way to un-hear the interview that Mr Carlson did with former Capitol police office Tarik Johnson, who said that he received no guidance when he called his superiors, terrified, as the Capitol was breached, to ask for direction. [https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-talks-exclusively-key-capitol-police-officer-ignored-by-jan-6-panel-amid-footage-release] That situation is anomalous. There is always a security chain of command in the Capitol, at the Rayburn Building, at the White House of course, and so on, which is part of a rock-solid “security plan.” [https://www.dhs.gov/news/2014/09/30/written-testimony-usss-director-house-committee-oversight-and-government-reform]. There are usually, indeed, multiple snipers standing on the steps of the Capitol, facing outward. I made note of this when I was researching and writing The End of America. There is never improvisation, or any confusion in security practices or in what is expected of “the security plan”, involving “principals” such as Members of Congress, or staff at the White House. I know this as a former political consultant and former White House spouse. The reason for a tightly scripted chain of command and an absolutely ironclad security plan in these buildings, is so that security crises such as the events of Jan 6 can never happen. The fact that so much confusion in security practice took place on Jan 6, is hard to understand. There is no way to not see that among the violent and terrifying scenes of that day, as revealed by Mr Carlson, there were also scenes of officers with the United States Capitol Police accompanying one protester who would become iconic, the “Q-Anon Shaman”, Jacob Chansley - and escorting him peaceably through the hallways of our nation’s legislative center. [https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-lawyer-qanon-shaman-says-jan-6-footage-wasnt-shown-client-calls-prison-sentence-tragedy]. I was oddly unsurprised to see the “Q-Anon Shaman” being ushered through the hallways by Capitol Police; he was ready for the cameras in full makeup, horned fur hat, his tattooed chest bare (on a freezing day), and adorned in other highly cinematic regalia. I don’t know what Mr Chansley thought he was doing there that day, but so many subsequent legacy media images of the event put him so dramatically front and center — and the barbaric nature of his appearance was so illustrative of exactly the message that Democrats in leadership wished to send about the event — that I am not surprised to see that his path to the center of events was not blocked but was apparently facilitated by Capitol Police. A point I have made over and over since 9/11 is that many events in history are both real and hyped. Many actors in historic events have their agendas, but are also at times used by other people with their own agendas, in ways of which the former are unaware. Terrorists and terrorism in the Bush era are one example. This issue was both real and hyped. “Patriots” or “insurgents” (depending on who you are) entering the Capitol can be part of a real event that is also exploited or manipulated by others. We don’t know yet if this is the case in relation to the events of Jan 6, or to what extent it may be the case. That is where a real investigation must come in. But as someone who has studied history, and the theatrics of history, for decades, I was not at all surprised to see, on Mr Carlson’s security camera footage, the person who was to became the most memorable ‘face’ of the ‘insurrection’ (or the riot, or the Capitol breach) — escorted to the beating heart of the action, where his image could be memorialized by a battery of cameras forever. There are other aspects of the Jan 6 breach that seemed anomalous to me from the start. I study the relationship in history of buildings such as The White House and the Capitol, to the US public; I follow the way in which the public is either welcomed into or barred from these structures. The White House itself and the Capitol steps have often been open to US citizens. They are public buildings. Indeed, inaugurations have been open public events in which the US citizenry simply entered the building for the celebration; this tradition lasted from President Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, to 1885. Things got very chaotic indeed in 1829. “On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson upholds an inaugural tradition begun by Thomas Jefferson and hosts an open house at the White House. After Jackson’s swearing-in ceremony and address to Congress, the new president returned to the White House to meet and greet a flock of politicians, celebrities and citizens. Very shortly, the crowd swelled to more than 20,000, turning the usually dignified White House into a boisterous mob scene. Some guests stood on furniture in muddy shoes while others rummaged through rooms looking for the president–breaking dishes, crystal and grinding food into the carpet along the way. […] The White House open-house tradition continued until several assassination attempts heightened security concerns. The trend ended in 1885 when Grover Cleveland opted instead to host a parade, which he viewed in safety from a grandstand set up in front of the White House.” [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jackson-holds-open-house-at-the-white-house]. And inaugurations were not the only occasions in which US citizens approached their public buildings in Washington. The Bonus Army, which massed in the summer of 1932, during the Depression, to claim the financial “bonus” promised to veterans who had served in World War I, is an example of citizens assembling peaceably at the Capitol. When I was an undergraduate, we were taught that the Bonus Army sat on the steps of the Capitol and lobbied the legislators who were entering and leaving the building. I remember from my history textbook, images of crowds seated on the Capitol steps in 1932. “[M]ore than 25,000 veterans and their families traveled to Washington, DC, to petition Congress and President Herbert Hoover to award them their bonus immediately. Fortunately for the marchers, Pelham Glassford, the local police chief and a veteran of the war himself, made accommodations for this influx, including the creation of an enormous camp in the Anacostia Flats […]. Glassford understood that Americans had an inherent right to assemble in Washington and petition the government for the “redress of grievances” without fear of punishment or reprisals. […] On June 15, the House of Representatives passed the new bonus bill by a vote of 211 to 176. Two days later, some 8,000 veterans massed in front of the Capitol as the Senate prepared to vote, while another 10,000 assembled before the raised Anacostia drawbridge. The police were anticipating trouble because of the large crowds. The Senate debate continued until after dark. […] When it appeared that the bonus would not be paid, many of the marchers refused to leave, and President Hoover ordered the Army to evict them. Using tear gas, tanks, and a troop of saber-wielding cavalry commanded by Major George S. Patton, U.S. Army chief of staff General Douglas MacArthur drove the marchers out of Washington and burned their main camp on the Anacostia Flats.”[https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-bonus-army] I mention the massing of the Bonus Army on the Capitol steps in 1932, to note that the dominant narrative around Jan 6 today, often implies that it is an act of violence or of “insurrection” simply to march en masse peacefully to the Capitol. But we should be wary of allowing history to be rewritten so as to criminalize peaceful, Constitutionally-protected assembly at “The People’s House.” Massing peacefully at the Capitol and other public buildings, is part of our rights and inheritance as citizens, and this use of our First Amendment right to assemble has a long history. Indeed, the public has traditionally had the right peacefully to enter the Capitol — to obtain passes to events, to galley seats, and to witness the proceedings in other ways. The Capitol is not a sealed space exclusively for legislators, but it is one that is supposed to welcome the public in an orderly way. [https://history.house.gov/Collection/Search?Term=Search&Classifications=Historical+Artifacts%3A+Passes&CurrentPage=1&SortOrder=Title&ResultType=Grid&PreviousSearch=Search%2CTitle]. We should not be encouraged to forget this. The violence of Jan 6 and its subsequent service as a talking point by the Democrats’ leadership, risks its use also to justify the closing off of our public buildings from US citizens altogether. This would be convenient for tyrants of any party. Leaving aside the release of the additional Jan 6 footage and how it may or may not change our view of US history —- I must say that I am sorry for believing the dominant legacy-media “narrative” pretty completely from the time it was rolled out, without asking questions. Those who violently entered the Capitol or who engaged in violence inside of it, must of course be held accountable. (As must violent protesters of every political stripe anywhere.) But in addition, anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of the day so as to distort the complexity of its actual history — must also be held accountable. Jan 6 has become, as the DNC intended it to become, after the fact, a “third rail”; a shorthand used to dismiss or criminalize an entire population and political point of view. Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day. So half of the country has been tarred by association, and is now in many quarters presumed to consist of chaotic berserkers, anti-democratic rabble, and violent upstarts, whose sole goal is the murder of our democracy. Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry. I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC and The New York Times. I believed that stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian propaganda. Dozens of former intel officials said so. Johns Hopkins University said so. [https://sais.jhu.edu/news-press/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinformation-dozens-former-intel-officials-say]. “Trump specifically cited a “laptop” that contained emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden”, said ‘CNN Fact-Check’, with plenty of double quote marks. [https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_036fb62c-377f-4c68-8fa5-b98418e4bb9c] I believed this all — til it was debunked. I believed that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia — until that assertion was dropped. [https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2019/03/mueller-concludes-investigation/] I believed that President Trump was a Russian asset, because the legacy media I read, said so [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book]. I believed in the entire Steele dossier, until I didn’t, because it all fell apart. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63305382]. Was there in fact an “infamous pee tape”? So many other bad things were being said about the man — why not? [https://www.businessinsider.com/christopher-steele-trump-pee-tape-probably-exists-2021-10] I believed that Pres Trump instigated the riot at the Capitol — because I did not know that his admonition to his supporters to assemble “peacefully and patriotically” had been deleted from all of the news coverage that I read. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-11/trump-team-hoping-peacefully-and-patriotically-will-be-shield] Because of lies such as these in legacy media — lies which I and millions of others believed — half of our nation’s electorate was smeared and delegitimized, and I myself was misled. It damages our nation when legacy media put words in the mouths of Presidents and former Presidents, and call them traitors or criminals without evidence. It damages our country when we cannot tell truth from lies. This is exactly what tyrants seek — an electorate that cannot know what is truth and what is falsehood. Through lies, half of the electorate was denied a fair run for its preferred candidate. I don’t like violence. I do believe our nation’s capitol must be treated as a sacred space. I don’t like President Trump (Do I not? Who knows? I have been lied to about him so much for so long, I can‘t tell whether my instinctive aversion is simply the habituated residue of years of being on the receiving end of lies). But I like the XXXXX who are our current gatekeepers, even less. The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time — and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors - deserve our disgust. I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time. I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in —- journalism. I am sorry I believed so much nonsense. Though it is no doubt too little, too late — Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA: I am so sorry.

Outraged at the Shaman's heinous crime of, well, wandering round under police escort, silent on Bidenescu's minor offence of blowing up Nord Streams 1 & 2 and causing an ecological catastrophe. Modern Democrats in a nutshell.

Jimmy Dore having fun with the wider Bidenescu plunge protection team:

We join Mr StevenVoiceOver for the latest in our innovatory tour guides, The Insurrection special

As Bakhmut Falls, US May Turn From Ukraine, Starting With Pipeline Story Joe Lauria March 8, 2023 https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/08/as-bakhmut-falls-us-may-turn-from-ukraine-starting-with-pipeline-story/ If the Donbass city of Bakhmut falls to the Russians the U.S. may need to save face in order to reverse course in Ukraine, writes Joe Lauria. On its face, The New York Times article yesterday, “Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say,” appears intended to exonerate both the U.S. and Ukrainian governments from any involvement in the destruction last September of the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany. The thrust of the Times article is that Ukrainians unaffiliated with the Kiev government were the ones who did it, according to the newspapers often cited, unnamed “U.S. officials.” But a closer examination of the piece reveals layers of nuance that do not dismiss that the Ukrainian government may have had something to do with the sabotage after all. The story quotes anonymous European officials who say a state had to be involved in the sophisticated underwater operation. The Times goes out of it way to say more than once that that state was not the United States. And while the second paragraph of the story says categorically that the state is not Ukraine either, the article then leaves the door open to possible Ukrainian government involvement: “U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services. [Emphasis mine.] The Times then makes clear what the consequences would be for the pro-Ukraine “coalition” that Washington has built in the combined West if there was Ukrainian government involvement. “Officials said there were still enormous gaps in what U.S. spy agencies and their European partners knew about what transpired. But officials said it might constitute the first significant lead to emerge from several closely guarded investigations, the conclusions of which could have profound implications for the coalition supporting Ukraine. Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.” The Times further develops the theme that involvement by the Ukrainian government could destroy the international support for Kiev the United States has built, as well as the immense public backing for Ukraine that the U.S.-led information war has developed. The Washington Post, which yesterday ran a similar story, reported that the Ukrainian government denied any involvement in the attack. “Ukraine absolutely did not participate in the attack on Nord Stream 2,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, the top adviser to Zelensky, questioning why his country would conduct an operation that “destabilizes the region and will divert attention from the war, which is categorically not beneficial to us.” Distancing Begins The newspaper here is allowing U.S. officials to begin distancing the U.S. from Ukraine, claiming Washington has limited influence on Kiev, despite years of evidence to the contrary. The piece appears to be preparing the Western public for an abrupt about face in Ukraine because of a litany of Ukrainian operations the U.S. says it opposed. It is worth quoting the Times at length here: “Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine. U.S. officials and intelligence agencies acknowledge that they have limited visibility into Ukrainian decision-making. Despite Ukraine’s deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war. The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border. But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services. One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist. Kyiv denied any involvement but U.S. intelligence agencies eventually came to believe that the killing was authorized by what officials called “elements” of the Ukrainian government. In response to the finding, the Biden administration privately rebuked the Ukrainians and warned them against taking similar actions. The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream operation, there was hushed speculation — and worry — in Washington that parts of the Ukrainian government might have been involved in that operation as well.“ Of course all this is not to say that the United States did not conduct the Nord Stream sabotage just as Seymour Hersh has reported and yet still cynically blames Ukraine. (Hersh ridiculed the Times story in an email to Consortium News, which sought his comment.) In directing attention towards the Ukrainian government’s possible culpability, U.S. intelligence gets a twofer: it deflects blame from the U.S. and prepares the public for the United States to justify abandoning Ukraine after all the U.S. has invested in its adventure to weaken Russia and topple its government through an economic, information, and proxy war, all of which have failed. A consensus is forming among Western leaders that the war against Russia in Ukraine is lost. Thus Washington would have to save face to pull off such a reversal of policy. Insinuating that Ukraine blew up the pipelines of its ally Germany could help the U.S. climb down from its strident position in support of Ukraine. German Media Also Blames Ukraine on Same Day On the same day of The New York Times story yesterday, a joint investigation by a major German newspaper, Die Zeit, and the ARD broadcast network, also reported that the pipeline attack was linked to Ukraine. Die Zeit reports, according to a machine translation: “The German investigative authorities have apparently made a breakthrough in solving the attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. After joint research by the ARD capital studio, the ARD political magazine Kontraste, SWR and ZEIT, it was possible to largely reconstruct how and when the explosive attack was prepared in the course of the investigation. Accordingly, traces lead in the direction of Ukraine.” Just like the Times report, Die Zeit also hedges its reporting, saying that “investigators have not yet found any evidence as to who ordered the destruction.” It might not be credible to immediately blame Ukraine. The sources for these articles may be employing a tactic to gradually prepare the public for more definitive blame later. Die Zeit does provide a level of detail missing from the Times report, however, The investigation “managed to identify the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation. It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians. According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman. Accordingly, the group consisted of a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor, who are said to have transported the explosives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nationality of the perpetrators is apparently unclear. The culprits used professionally forged passports, which are said to have been used, among other things, to rent the boat.” That both articles appeared on the same day in major U.S. and German publications (including The Washington Post) might indicate a degree of coordination between U.S. and German intelligence. On Friday, just four days before the articles appeared, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made an unusual trip from Berlin to Washington, where he immediately went to the White House for a meeting with President Joe Biden. No aides were present in the Oval Office with the two men. The meeting lasted just over an hour. There was no press conference afterward and Scholz did not allow press on his plane. He returned to the airport after the meeting to fly back to Berlin. Clearly the two men did not want to discuss a sensitive matter over the phone or in a video-link. Western Leaders Already Say Ukraine Can’t Win The Times was fed this piece from U.S. intelligence as stories continue to be leaked showing Western leaders do not believe Ukraine can win the war, despite their public pronouncements, and that Kiev must cut its losses and seek a settlement with Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported 11 days ago: “The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say. ‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’ French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner last month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported. According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.” Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported. Bakhmut: a Turning Point A major turning point in the war that would force a huge decision for Washington may come if Russia can complete its military takeover of Bakhmut. The battle for the city in Donbass has been raging since last summer and has intensified in the past weeks. Russia has nearly encircled the entire city trapping an estimated 10,000 Ukrainian troops inside. Ukraine had repeatedly played down the importance of Bakhmut, but nevertheless has continually sent in droves of soldiers to their death. Bakhmut is an important hub in Ukraine’s defense of Donbass. In an interview with CNN yesterday, Zelensky at last admitted Bakhmut’s vital importance to Ukraine. “We understand that after Bakhmut they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk, it would be open road for the Russians after Bakhmut to other towns in Ukraine, in the Donetsk direction,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “That’s why our guys are standing there.” The fall of Bakhmut to Russia would be a major humiliation for Zelensky and Ukraine, as well as for the United States and Europe. The U.S. would have a major choice to make: continue to escalate the war with the danger that it could lead to a NATO-Russia confrontation that could go nuclear, or press Ukraine to absorb its losses and seek a settlement. Russia however would then be in a position to dictate terms: possibly recognition of four eastern Ukrainian oblasts as part of Russia after referendums there voted to join the Russian Federation; Ukraine agreeing to be a neutral nation that will not join NATO; demilitarization of Ukraine and disbanding of neo-National Socialist units. Portraying Ukraine as an unworthy partner that blew up German pipelines might help minimize the humiliation to the West if this were to happen. Then again neoconservatives in Washington and in European capitals might win out in the battle with realists and continue pressing the war, though the realists at this stage seem to have the upper hand.

MARCH 8, 2023 Indian Punchline https://www.indianpunchline.com/it-is-zugzwang-for-biden-in-ukraine/ It is Zugzwang for Biden in Ukraine M. K. BHADRAKUMAR New York Times reported Tuesday that a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ sabotaged Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic on Sept. 27, 2022 There is a cardinal difference between the Washington Post report of June 18, 1972 by Alfred Lewis breaking the news of the Watergate burglary and the sensational claim by the New York Times on Tuesday — per a CNN report — that “intelligence suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group” sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines. The WaPo reported on Watergate several months after Richard Nixon’s thumping victory for a second term as president, while the Times’ claim has been advanced even before Joe Biden has announced his candidacy for the November 2024 election. A common thread, though, could be that while the Lewis story was followed up a day later by two young Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Times report also hopes to be a developing story but with a contrarian purpose. If Watergate wiretapping forced Nixon to resign eventually, the big question is whether the Nord Stream sabotage will also be the undoing of the Biden presidency? These are early days. But the reverberations of the Times’ claim are already being felt in Europe — Ukraine and Germany — although the report was carefully worded to keep out Ukrainian leaders outside its purview. But the bottom line is the caveat that the Times report was not made with high confidence and is apparently not the predominant view of the US intelligence community, and that the Biden Administration has not yet identified a culprit for the attack — succinctly put, this isn’t necessarily the last word on the subject! That’s smart thinking — with an eye on Seymour Hersh, perhaps? Meanwhile, Ukraine has flatly denied involvement and German media reports stressed that there’s no proof that Ukrainian authorities ordered the attack or were involved in it. Evidently, Kiev and Berlin (and Washington) prioritise that the business of war must continue as before. And neither is in a position to hit back in defence. But Moscow is plainly derisive. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti, “Clearly, the authors of the terrorist attack want to distract attention. Obviously, this is a coordinated stuffing in the media.” Indeed, when asked about the Times report, the highly opinionated US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby referred questions to investigating European authorities and excused himself saying he was “not going to get ahead of that investigative work.” Kirby played it safe. So, as Lenin would have asked: ‘Who stands to gain?’ To be sure, what we have here is a high level leak planted in the Times by the US intelligence, which is non-attributable but probably serves as kite flying to see how far it will travel, especially in Europe, or, equally, it could just be, as Peskov put it, the stuff of “obvious misinformation campaign coordinated by the media.” Either way, someone high up in the Biden Administration is playing for high stakes. This is taking place at a time when Biden himself has been implicated by Seymour Hersh for ordering the destruction of Nord Stream — an act of international terrorism —- and of course Biden is yet to announce his candidacy for the 2024 election. As things stand, candidate Biden will not want the Nord Stream scandal to be another Albatross around his neck. The point is, if he stands for election, which he likely intends to, Biden can be sure that the scandalous Ukraine stories concerning him and his son Hunter Biden, dating back to his time as vice-president, will roar back to the centrestage. The questioning that the US ambassador to Estonia Senator George Kent was subjected to by Senator Tom Cruz at the hearings on his appointment in Tallinn in December suggested that the Republicans have a lot of dope on Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine and are waiting for the right moment to strike. Kent, a career diplomat and former deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs with three stints in Kiev — the second time as DCM from 2015 to 2018 and the third as Charge d’Affaires a.i, in 2021 during Biden presidency— is in Senator Cruz’s crosshairs. Last week, again, Sen. Cruz returned to the topic. This time around, he tore into attorney general Merrick Garland accusing the Justice Department of leaking uncontrollably in a calibrated bid to save Biden’s reputation. Conceivably, the implication by the Times report that a “pro-Ukrainian group” may have been behind the Nord Stream attack can be seen as a veiled threat to the powers that be in Kiev to understand which side of their bread is buttered if push comes to the shove. So far, Zelensky has played ball. Biden is bending over backward to appease Zelensky, if the manner in which the move to sack the Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, a close ally of the president, was summarily shelved is any indication. The western media was copiously reporting on a purge under way in Kiev but when the trail came to Reznikov and Zelensky dug in, the US inspectors deputed from Washington to investigate the corruption scandal in the defence ministry simply disappeared. Indeed, Biden must willy-nilly remain in power beyond 2024 or else he becomes extremely vulnerable. Therefore, Biden desperately needs a second term. He cannot be too sure even if some other Democratic candidate wins in 2024. God forbid, if the Republicans seize the presidency, Biden and his family members will be fighting with their backs against the wall. But there is also the flip side. Biden’s candidacy will bring Nord Stream, Hunter Biden, Ukraine war, et al, to the centre stage of the election campaign. Is it worth the risk? Frankly, it is a ‘zugzwang’ for Biden. It is his turn to move, but all of his moves are so bad that having to move can lose the game — and in chess, there is nothing like “pass,” either. The sabotage of the Nord Stream forms part of the Ukraine issue. Whoever destroyed that pipeline did it with the intention to eliminate any residual prospect left of a revival of the post-cold war Russian-German alliance in Europe built around the two countries’ energy cooperation and interdependency. The Biden team in sheer naïveté thought that sabotage of the Nord Stream would be a geopolitical masterstroke to humiliate Germany and make it a vassal state, destroy all bridges leading from Russia to Europe, and consolidate the US’ transatlantic leadership. They overlooked, out of sheer hubris, that it still remained a cowardly criminal act. To compound matters, the war in Ukraine flowed out of Biden’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream (which, according to Hersh, dated back to September 2021.) Today, Biden cannot easily end his war as he is also beholden to Zelensky (who knows far too much about Hunter Biden’s escapades in Kiev.) Will Biden Administration succeed in hushing up the Nord Stream scandal? Hersh is sure to revisit the topic. Biden cannot walk away from the crime now. But it doesn’t cease to be a crime. Biden’s remaining option may be to announce he’s going to contest the 2024 election because Build Back Better Framework is still a work in progress.

I now know how Denis Healey felt after being attacked by Geoffrey Howe.

A strong contender for the most ludicrous and cynical cover story of all-time. All things considered, I think the Old Grey Hooker's editorial board should stick to wrestling with transvestites (or whatever the current imbroglio is about). Talk about the Yanks throwing the Ukie junta under the bus is quite wrong, though. It's actually the entire bloody North Sea... Fantastic.

Good lord, what an extraordinary post. The forum’s leading member of the Bidenescu plunge* protection team has added a fifth plank to the Deep State Dems’ Neo-McCarthyite platform. Not content with war, lies, censorship and hypocrisy, the poor American voter is to be further enticed by, according to the poster’s own logic, nothing less than…a pan of steaming ordure. “I’ll take what we’re getting…” On past evidence, I’m sure you will. *Plunger would appear to be more appropriate

John, A timely reprimand, for which many thanks. I have engaged, upon reflection, in wanton whataboutery, almost certainly due to the fact that I am a Trumpo-Sino-Putinoid disinformationist, likely with Barf Party sympathies. I promise never again to give time of day to Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel lecture & to infiltrate myself cognitively at the first available opportunity, perhaps while standing in the local supermarket queue for the lesser-spotted egg, vegetable and/or fruit, the rich harvest of sanctions against Russia. Upon return, I shall repair to my unheated study to acquaint myself with the thoughts of Chairman Bidenescu – The Tao of Asufutimaehaehfutbw – cheered by the knowledge that the compassionate adults are back in the saddle, even if the horse is dead and the fields barren. Paul

President George H W Bush bequeathed the world not only bile-based diplomacy – who among us does not know precisely where we were when he unleashed a chunder tsunami into the lap of a grateful Japanese Prime Minister? – but a rich legacy of wisdom, most memorably encapsulated in his dictum “America’s freedom is the example to which the world expires.” Given that the whole world - and California, one trusts - dotes upon the American lead, my modest proposal is that the Bidenescu regime sets an example to Russia by, for example, ending its illegal occupation of a mere one-third of Syria, and then offering lavish recompense to the peoples of that country for the death and destruction caused by the CIA’s vast Operation Timber Sycamore; and the subsequent wholesale theft of the nation’s oil reserves which, entirely coincidentally, rest in that occupied territory. Washington might even consider lifting sanctions, too, on this earth-quake devastated county. Think of the lectures you could give to the world from such a position of moral leadership born of concrete example! No longer would a sceptical world laugh at American hypocrisy on the issue of respect for nations’ territorial integrity, though it might still, I confess, at this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DvA-Vf0MomM&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

The Psychedelic Spy - Spy Thriller set in 1968 - BBC Radio - A Radio Play by Andrew Rissik - 5 episodes of approx 45 minutes each. This five-part thriller has the plot of a Bond movie and the ambience of a Chandler novel and, after just one episode, the stamp of a classic. Notable for the ruminations of the British scientist, beautifully played by Charles Gray, on the assassination of JFK and its import for the future. The soundtrack's not bad, either. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zctW67TAhq0&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Seconded & thanks, Chris, for posting - saved me the trouble of looking it up!

Not for the first time, Matthew, you have it right.

Manichaeism and ‘An Ideology of Liberal Empire’ – Biden’s Forever Cosmic War Against Russian ‘Evil’ Alastair Crooke 27 February 2023 https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/27/manichaeism-and-ideology-of-liberal-empire-biden-forever-cosmic-war-against-russian-evil/ When the U.S. begins its pivot away from Ukraine, and looks fully to Europeanise the war, the political class won’t be seen ‘for the dust’. “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed. Autocrats only understand one word: “No.” “No.” “No.” (Applause.). “No, you will not take my country.” “No, you will not take my freedom.” “No, you will not take my future … A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease [erase] the people’s love of liberty. Brutality will never grind down the will of the free. And Ukraine — Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never”. (Applause.) “Stand with us. We will stand with you. Let us move forward … with an abiding commitment to be allies not of darkness, but of light. Not of oppression, but of liberation. Not of captivity, but, yes, of freedom”. Biden’s speech at Warsaw, complete with the lighting effects and dramatic backdrop reminiscent of his Liberty Hall speech in which he sought to portray his own domestic MAGA opposition as a grave security threat to America, again resorts to radical Manicheanism to depict (this time) Russia, (the external counterpoint to the related U.S. MAGA threat), as the foundation for the epic battle between light and the forces of darkness. The eternal struggle that persists – that must be fought endlessly and won crushingly. Again, as with his Liberty Hall speech, Biden offered no concrete plan. Here in Warsaw, with the sands of time running out on his Ukraine ‘project’, and with U.S. ‘Realists’ and China ‘hawks’ gaining more traction at home, Biden elevated the struggle from the literal to the metaphysical plane. By so doing, he is trying to cement America’s deep-seated missionary ethos to a ‘forever’ cosmic war against Russian ‘evil’. He hopes to tie the American ruling class to the metaphysical struggle for the ‘light’. Should Biden continue in office, he hopes by this means, both to ‘define’ himself, and to set this overarching global struggle as something binding Americans, for the period ahead. Simply put, his metaphysical framing is intended to trump those Realists calling for policy change. Manichaeism is nothing new – it is an ancient cult with deep roots in Latin Christianity (and likely, Biden at least partially subscribes to seeing Putin as the Demiurge, the ‘dark’ anti-God). So will this work? Well, this is the struggle now playing out in U.S. politics. At the upper level, the elites are more concerned with power and money than metaphysics – so, Biden’s attempt to transcend the latter and assemble an army “not of darkness but of light; not of oppression, but of liberation; not of captivity, but, yes, of freedom”, more likely will be regarded as a reflection of Biden’s derangement syndrome – his detachment from reality; his kookiness, in other words. If many of the overlap establishments (the ‘Uniparty’) want this war, it will not be for virtuousness, but for the enrichment of the Military Industrial Complex. If the latter élites are veering away, it is because they think the MIC needs time to refurbish –and to restock – so as to take on China. “Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow, and forever … That’s what Americans are and that’s what Americans do”, Biden said. But the political landscape is no longer a Team Biden monopoly. Trump responded: “World War III has never been closer”; and he laid the blame on “all the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists in the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department and the national security industrial complex”. The former president singled out Victoria Nuland in particular who, he said, was “obsessed with pushing Ukraine towards NATO”. Florida Governor DeSantis too, insists that the Biden administration has “effectively [given Kiev] a blank check with no clear strategic objective identified”. “I don’t think that it’s in our interest to be getting into a proxy war … over things like the [Ukrainian] borderlands or over Crimea,” DeSantis said. Republican Senator Hawley a week ago gave an reflective address to the Heritage Foundation: “It’s hard to challenge the ‘Uniparty’: They’ve gotten very good at telling their favourite story. That’s why anyone who questions them gets called “anti-American” or “Vladimir Putin’s puppet” from a hundred different quarters”. “But today, I want to tell you something else. I want to tell the truth. And the truth is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods. Our current foreign policy isn’t working”. It’s falling apart at the seams, with the ‘Uniparty’ doing its level best to patch it together by cutting blank checks to other countries”. Simply said: “we’re over-committed, caught in the grip of an ideology of liberal empire”. Is this enough to ‘turn the worm’? Or, to bring a senior Deep State grandee to Biden’s office to whisper: ‘Remember what happened to Nixon?’ ‘Time for you to let go of Zelensky; (such a pity should Hunter end in jail…!)’. There is however, another aspect to Biden’s resort to metaphysical Manichaeism that brings real, palpable consequence. Again, not new. Rather, a case of old demons re-surfacing. Here was the Estonian PM, Kaja Kallas, at the Munich Security Conference, saying that ‘NATO countries must take control of Moscow and forcibly rewrite the mentality of Russian citizens’: “The entire population of Russia should be re-educated to root out any traces of imperialistic dreams’ – claiming that absent a mandated rehabilitation, “history will repeat itself” and Europe will never be safe. German FM, Annalena Baerbock, similarly warned the 90% of the world who have not taken the U.S./EU side: “Neutrality is not an option, because then you are standing on the side of the aggressor … take a side, a side for peace, a side for Ukraine, a side for the humanitarian international law, and these times this means also delivering ammunition so Ukraine can defend itself”. Yes, alongside this European Manichaeism, the edging towards a new racism can be espied: an ancient rhizome that has one tendril long burrowed into radical Ukrainian nationalism and with other tendrils coiling through mainstream EU structures, as the Euro-Élites patiently debate whether Russia was insufficiently ‘pacified’ after WW2, or whether more radical ‘rehab’ is required. The rise of this class who regard themselves as credentialled to decide whether Russian culture must be cancelled – and ‘re-wired’ – is a particularly pernicious dynamic in global politics. It has been getting worse both in the U.S. and Europe, as its culture-war leaches out into geo-politics. This sense of superiority and impunity, in itself, provokes increased tensions and the risk of war. Wolfgang Streeck, Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, was asked for the meaning of Chancellor Scholtz’s ‘German Zeitenwende’ (turning point). He responded: “The Zeitenwende speech was a response to intensified pressure … for Germany to fall in line with the foreign policy of the U.S. – and, in particular, with that of the Biden administration. What is clear is that Scholz’s Zeitenwende entails a promise, above all to the United States, that Germany will from now on, unlike in the past, act in line with a view of the world as divided between the West – and an evil empire, or better: several evil empires, from Russia to China to Iran…”. (Nota Bene: This is pure Leo Strauss, channelling Carl Schmitt’s earlier explicit German Manichaeism.) Streeck continues: “Between [Germany and the U.S.] – and the various evil empires: Peace is possible, only temporarily and intermittently, and only as long as we enjoy military superiority. In principle, we and they are always at each other’s throats. Real peace will require regime change making an evil empire part of our virtuous one – as a result of its conversion to ‘our values’. It is legitimate to use all its political, economic, and military means to bring such conversion about. “After the Zeitenwende, wars will always be around the corner and we must be prepared for them. What should help is that a virtuous empire’s “value-driven” or “feminist foreign policy” (Baerbock) fights only just wars – as wars against evil cannot be unjust. The underlying world view here is not social-Darwinist, history being a battle for the “survival of the fittest“, but Manichaean, in which history is a relentless struggle between good and bad, in which the forces of virtue must do their utmost to prevail over those of evil. Before they have won, there can be no real peace, only cease-fires for tactical reasons. For real peace we, the forces of virtue, must prepare for war. “There is a strong and a weak version of Zeitenwende rhetoric. The strong version implies that the world was always like this: ontologically Manichaean. Those who in the past had a different view were either feeble-minded fools, cowards who all-too-willingly let themselves be deceived by enemy propaganda, or traitors. This essentially coincides with the world view of the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party in the United States. “The weak version, the one Scholtz obviously prefers, is that the world has recently changed: while in the past it allowed for peaceful coexistence between regimes and countries with different interests or ‘identities’ – so that life in peace could be preferred over victory in war – now the enemy has become so evil that there is no moral alternative to defeating him, cost it what it may. “Today, American messianism seems to have migrated to Europe. At the same time, Bob Dylan is right. And times continue to be a’changing. How long the German government can remain as subservient to the United States as it has now promised to be is an open question – considering the risks that come with Germany’s territorial closeness to the Ukrainian battlefield – a risk not shared by the U.S.. There is also pressure from France for Germany to become more European and less transatlantic in outlook, and this may, with time, have an impact. Furthermore, it is likely that the U.S. at some point, will try to “Europeanise” the war and bow out, as they tried to “Vietnamise” the Vietnam war in the 1970s – hoping that post-Zeitenwende Germany can take the burden of sponsoring their proxy war from them. “As for Europe, the United States may not object to Germany, Poland, and others continuing to help the Ukrainian government pursue its dream of a final victory over Russia, at their own cost and risk. With Germany and the EU having turned their political judgment over to Zelenskiy and Biden, and all serious discussion of the aims of the war – the terms of a settlement – being de facto precluded, this is quite a frightening prospect”. If Streeck’s analysis is correct, the Bidenesque ideology now gripping the upper reaches of Europe suggests that the EU’s conversion to Zeitenwende makes any future relationship with Russia nigh impossible. The conviction this class has of itself as the global future, and of being on the ‘right side of history’, whereas ‘others’ (Russia and the ‘autocrats’) represent only that dark side to history, effective forecloses on mediation. Mediation with ‘evil’ is a tautology. The reality is that the EU is gripped by the attempt to impose a ‘cultural revolution’ – in the sense that broad citizen conformity to its cultural norms and ‘emergencies’ is not enough. But rather, it is its’ thought-processes that have to be fully reflected in modes of thinking such that every citizen’s acts and thoughts reflect EU ‘right thinking’. We see this with the war party’s poster girl, Annalena Baerbock’s, lecturing non-aligned countries that there is no space for neutrality when it comes to Ukraine: ‘You are ‘either with us or against us’; and if the former, then GIVE U.S. AMMO!’. Well, the cultural revolution already is reversing. Today, the Civilisational States (Russia, China, Iran, etc. and link) see the future as theirs and view the woke globalists – and their financialised economic structures – as passé. This reversal increasingly is evident in the popular war in the U.S., but not in Europe. But can the EU change? – since all the bridges by which it might reconnect to the future have long since been burned down. In essence, the EU is a steam-roller ‘offensive’ ever incrementally moving towards ‘more Europe’. Change ultimately will come to the EU as a result of a clash of interests, factiousness, and possibly a big political implosion or two – but above all by events on the ground in Ukraine as the Russian offensive proceeds. Reality has been so far exorcised from the Credentialled Class ‘bubble’. It is not clear how the latter will react to having their ‘Balloon’ popped. Already, we see signs of incipient hysteria. But the bottom line is this: When the U.S. begins its pivot away from Ukraine, and looks fully to Europeanise the war, the political class won’t be seen ‘for the dust’. The latter will soon find that for all its florid language of fighting on behalf of the ‘light’, the number of Europeans willing to die so that Sevastopol can become Ukrainian will be few indeed. Baerbock will find herself alone, as the rest of world already has shifted across to Russia (see here), ignoring her taunts.