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Paul Rigby

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  1. Er, no, I didn’t. Quite the reverse. The sequence of incremental newspaper fictions, designed to persuade readers that Kennedy was shot by Oswald from behind, could only work if the filmic turn from Houston onto Elm, present in the first version of the Z fake and showing no such shooting, was suppressed. That couldn’t be clearer. Nor is the presence of an organizing intelligence behind the reports of Herbers (NYT), Snider (Chicago Daily News Service), and Mandel (Life). So who was feeding the aforementioned reporters these lies about bullet strikes on Houston and/or the beginning of Elm? To find a precedent for this kind of work, we need look no further than the reportage on the Bay of Pigs, as “headlines throughout the US recounted mass uprisings by the Cuban people against Castro, Soviet MIGs blasting the invaders, rebel capture of the Isle of Pines, the surrender of Castro’s brother. An eight-column banner in the Miami News screamed: CUBAN NAVY IN REVOLT.” One problem: All of these claims were invented, as Victor Bernstein and Jesse Gordon noted in their fascinating analysis, The Press and the Bay of Pigs (Columbia University Forum, Fall 1967, 5-13). So who was responsible for feeding this earlier string of progressively more preposterous fabrications to the US press? Again Bernstein and Gordon provide the answer: “About the press coverage of the invasion itself, the less said the better. The chief source of information was a Mr. Lem Jones who, according to Arthur M Schlesinger Jr., in his A Thousand Days, “was putting out in the name of the [Cuban Revolutionary] Council press releases dictated over the phone by the CIA.” The CIA, Mr. Schlesinger intimates wryly, had not even bothered to inform the Council that Mr. Jones had been hired to do the invasion publicity. Who was Mr. Jones? In Haynes Johnson’s The Bay of Pigs, he is described this way: “The president of Lem Jones Associates, Inc., a Madison Avenue public relations firm …had done public relations work for such clients as a lay committee of the Armenian Apostolic Church and corporation stockholders waging proxy fights; but his present client, he told a reporter, was ‘a very serious thing, too.’ Mr. Jones was still in the proxy business, it appeared; this time he was proxying for the Cuban Revolutionary Council and the CIA. Largely on the basis of his news releases, headlines throughout the US recounted mass uprisings by the Cuban people against Castro…” The CIA had always, were possible, avoided blood on its collective pinny, so we may reasonably hypothesize that they used a cut-out or proxy, just as they had earlier with the Bay of Pigs, when it came to orchestrating their holding operation on the left turn from Houston onto Elm. Did Lem Jones do double-duty? Or was it a different PR man, perhaps for Life (and Langley)? Identifying that figure would be very useful. https://archive.org/details/pressbayofpigs00vict
  2. It is a universally acknowledged truth that nothing betokens a commitment to the truth than strictly compartmentalized intelligence inspections of an assassination film. It becomes even truer when we realize that the NPIC’s two inspections of the Zapruder fake, even when combined, were fleeting and desultory by comparison with the amount of time and effort dedicated to the infinitely more important matter of…analysing a January 1966 article in Science & Mechanics magazine devoted to a Soviet propaganda film called Walk in Space. Yes, you read that right. “Fifty-eight Polaroid prints,” no less, “and four transparencies were generated during the study” (1). Now compare and contrast the level of detail contained within that report with that which emanated from both NPIC encounters with the Zapruder fake. This fact is even more extraordinary than it may at first appear, as the author of the magazine piece, Lloyd Mallan (2), had previous with the CIA: His early 1959 piece for True magazine – in expanded form, to issue later the same year as a Fawcett book, [Russia and] The Big Red Lie (exposing, inter alia, the Soviet monster plot to pretend it had a space programme) - was subjected to a withering dissection by, yes, the Agency’s own analysts later that same year (3). The NPIC was thus set, in early 1966, to detailed scrutiny of the claims of a figure who was, at most generous, a nut, as his subsequent two books in the same year were to confirm: Russia’s Space Hoax (“Documented Proof That The Soviet Space Program Has Been Faked”); and the no less remarkable It Is Safe To Smoke (a Hawthorn book, no less). The CIA authors of the Analysis of Russian Walk In Space Film – it was nominally attributed to the Chief of the Agency’s Technical Intelligence Division - were unabashed by the inspiration, cheerfully confessing that “this entire analysis seems to have been inspired by Mr Lloyd Mallan…with each point made by Mr Mallan…considered.” If only someone had bunged Mallan to write an article or book on the Dallas coup. (1) ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN WALK IN SPACE FILM CIA-RDP80T01137A000500030001-2 (2) Noel Valis, Who Was Lloyd Mallan? (The Volunteer, 12 March 2023) https://albavolunteer.org/2023/03/who-was-lloyd-mallan/ (3) The Big Red Lie (True, 2 January 1959): CIA-RDP63T00245R000100290001-8.pdf COMMENTS ON ARTICLE BY LLOYD MALLAN, ' THE BIG RED LIE ', PART II, TRUE MAGAZINE, JUNE 1959 cia-rdp67b00446r000100350003-0 Memo To Honorable Bob WIlson From John S. Warner, 19 January 1960: CIA-RDP63T00245R000100290007-2.pdf
  3. Rolly Zavada’s talents were wasted. He might more usefully have conducted a study of the film’s mysterious influence upon human memory, an effect, it should be noted, not confined to the assassination city itself. Leaving aside those scores of participants and/or eyewitnesses in Dallas who saw things unrecorded by, or very different to, the dress-maker’s remarkable camera and its even more remarkable self-healing film stock, spare a moment’s thought for the poor staff who laboured within Life magazine’s photographic department, most of whom had wandered through life, prior to November 1963, with excellent reputations for sobriety, professional competence and a basic ability to distinguish ripped film from unripped film. Then along came the dreaded Z film. From the anonymous technicians, to their bosses Richard Pollard (photographic director) and Herbert G. Orth (deputy supervisor of the magazine’s laboratory), all suffered a similar mass hallucination to the Dallasites, one which caused them to believe, on no rational basis whatever, that the same aforementioned technicians had accidentally destroyed four frames from “the original, intact, color film,” and to publicly admit such. Little did those suckers know. Good, thankfully, can still issue from mushrooms (or whatever it was preciseIy that caused this extraordinary collective imagining). I propose a memorial to the victims of ZFP (Zapruder film psychosis), possibly in the form of a giant metal replica of an optical printer bearing the inscription: Mr. Liebeler: ‘…Now, what about picture No. 210 – however – there is no No. 210 in here.’ Mr. Zapruder: ‘No.’ Mr. Liebeler: ‘How about No. 222?’* For after all, one fake film frame is ultimately of no more value than any other; and, like principles, the CIA always have others. *Richard H. Levine, Film of Kennedy Torn, ‘Life’ Says (The Baltimore Sun, Thursday, 22 December 1966, A1 & A4)
  4. The anonymous Milwaukee Journal reporter responsible for the words in parenthesis above was not the only local journalist who pursued the story-behind-the-film(s). Ed Seitz of the Cincinnati Enquirer was also moved to enquiry. The result was this fascinating report: Ed Seitz, “What’s Going … Those Assassination Films,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Wednesday, 27 November 1963, 7: From ‘Black Friday’ to ‘Blue Monday,’ the one thing Cincinnati TV watchers did NOT see was camera coverage at the instant of assassination. This may have been a blessing. But when the word got round Tuesday that Life magazine’s current issue was carrying movie clips of the actual shooting, news stand stocks were bought up in a hurry. Bell-Block sold out its quota of 150 copies in two hours, then said ‘sorry’ to a stream of would-be purchasers. Behind this grisly episode in American history lies a story of high finance and commercial competition. Life, in spirited bidding for a Dallas amateur’s eight-millimeter movies, paid $40,000 for so-called ‘still’ rights – and that’s the short of it. For the movie rights, Time, Inc. (of which Life is a subsidiary) put out a reported $250,000. Mims Thomason, United Press International president, told the Enquirer Tuesday he had bid $100,000 for the movie rights. He said one of his attorneys reported Time’s successful quarter-of-a-million bid. Because of the money involved, Mr. Thomason said he was glad his bid wasn’t accepted. But he conceded that the Time movies were ‘pretty good stuff.’ ‘It’ll be a good investment for 100 years,’ he said. ‘For documentary and historical purposes, it is priceless. For example, what would a movie of Lincoln’s assassination be worth now?’ Mr. Thomason said he had bought (price undisclosed) another amateur’s eight mm. movie film. Those are the shots you might have seen on WCPO-TV at noon, 7p.m. and 11 p.m. Tuesday. But the UPI executive admits they are inferior to Time-Life’s films, having been taken from the opposite side of the presidential limousine. Both movie strips, however, show the former First Lady frantically climbing out onto the trunk, shouting at the Secret Service man on the back bumper. How she bore up – then and in many public appearances of the next few days – no one can ever know.
  5. It's always a pleasure to encounter an epistle from the man affectionately known hereabouts as "Pine Gap" - for the zeal and frequency with which he transmits intelligence from the Antipodes, you understand, especially those estimable assorted strayan independent observers - and this latest farrago is no exception. Not since J Edgar Hoover issued his November 1966 statement insisting that the Z film was whole and pure has the case for authenticity been set out with such wit and verve. So, 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 at the Parkland press conference that Kennedy was shot from the front threw a significant spanner in the works, not least because their expert, disinterested, first-hand, matter-of-fact descriptions were widely disseminated. 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, beginning with the turn from Houston onto Elm, 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: 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. Showing the left-turn from Houston onto Elm would have furnished visual-pictorial refutation of the entire elaborate deceit. So out it went.
  6. I have read little on the subject and hitherto assumed that accounts of the initial Parkland Hospital treatment of Connally were unproblematic. A recently encountered UPI dispatch has caused me pause. In recent years, plaudits for saving the Governor have gone, almost exclusively, to James “Red” Duke, a fourth-year resident at Parkland. That Duke was involved in Connally’s initial treatment is not disputed. It’s the centrality of that involvement that is seemingly challenged by the aforementioned UPI dispatch. A brief preamble to the relevant portion of the dispatch. It’s source was particularly credible for six reasons: 1) He was speaking from recent experience, when the memory was fresh; 2) he was doing so when he had no notion of how subsequent accounts might need to be “tweaked”; 3) the tribute he offered was unsolicited; 4) manifestly heartfelt; 5) without obvious gain, reputational or financial (quite the reverse); and 6) the level of detail. With no further ado, then, the key, concluding section of the dispatch in question: It may just be that Perry, busy working on Kennedy, and therefore unsighted as to who precisely was doing what to Connally “across the hall,” incorrectly assumed Dr. David Mitchel Mebane, a much more experienced surgeon than James Juke, was doing more than merely keeping a watching brief on the latter’s handiwork while offering him (Perry) verbal reassurance. Alternatively, was something perhaps more interesting was going on? Here I have in mind Lifton's long-standing puzzlement at the fate of 6 inches of one of Connally’s ribs, noted as missing by Dr. Shaw prior to the commencement of his work on the Governor. A hypothesis suggests itself: Was Mebane’s role in Connally’s treatment minimized because it was he who removed the lengthy section of rib in question, rib that presumably contained manifold remnants of the bullet which struck the Governor’s back? https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/33515328/david-mitchel-mebane
  7. Pretext for a Fedsurrection (24 Jan 2024) Extract: The real whopper occurs at around the 1:09:41 timestamp. Here we can see a group of children cross the street in the direction of the pipe bomb, and walk within feet of where the pipe bomb is placed. Astonishingly, the Secret Service agents who themselves are standing about don’t even bother to warn these children of the bomb. Shortly thereafter, a Capitol Police officer walks right up to the bomb, snaps a photo of it, gives a thumbs up sign to the other agents, who then for the first time in the entire clip move with hustle and purpose and quickly leave the scene. Here we see the Secret Service detail acting with utter lack of concern for their own lives, for the lives of their protectee Kamala Harris, and perhaps most scandalously of all, for the lives of the group of children they cavalierly allowed to walk right next to the pipe bomb. The Secret Service somehow knew the pipe bomb was a dud, but how would they have known that? A reliable source who has seen the extended non-public footage reports to us that, minutes after the footage above ends, authorities had that very DNC pipe bomb defused by a bomb-safe robot. If the Secret Service were so confident the bomb wasn’t a threat that they would exhibit zero concern for themselves, their protectee, and children walking by, then why bother with the gratuitous spectacle of defusing the bomb with a robot? https://americanmind.org/salvo/pretext-for-a-fedsurrection/ New Details About the Mysterious J6 Pipe Bomber (25 Jan 2024) https://youtu.be/w-jbrLo81Bs?si=PRauV8D1virFfTvA Smoking Gun? New Video of 1/6 Pipe Bomb Raises More Questions (29 Jan 2024) https://youtu.be/6rS6jKovw3Y?si=1OjVM3jgYdgqFTCj
  8. We welcome the views 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. John F. Kennedy: "Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America.," February 26, 1962.
  9. Biden has often traced his unyielding support for Israel to dinner-table conversations with his father about the horrors of the Holocaust and to a 1973 meeting in Israel with Prime Minister Golda Meir during his first year as a senator. Even so, it took “a long, long discussion” with Henry “Scoop” Jackson, a famously hawkish Democratic senator from Washington state, for Biden to adopt a more hardline position. As Biden explained in a 1983 eulogy of Jackson, he had not felt “nearly as strongly” about backing Israel before his senior colleague encouraged him to make multiple visits to Israel and Nazi concentration camps. As a result, Biden said, Jackson “changed a major part of my political life and my attitude about a whole segment of society that I did not understand before.” Jackson was once seen as Israel’s strongest defender in the Senate. As a Saudi ambassador put it, he appeared “more Zionist than the Zionists,” despite being the Protestant son of Norwegian immigrants. That was reflected in extreme rhetoric that alienated some liberal American Jews and fellow Democrats. But many American Jews saw Jackson as their champion—in part because of his advocacy for Jews persecuted in the Soviet Union. (Jackson would later be called a “patron saint of neoconservatism”; his former aides Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz were architects of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.) Under Jackson’s influence, Biden could similarly come across as a pro-Israel zealot. In 1982, the year Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu first met, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon that caused massive civilian casualties. Israel’s tactics in Lebanon as it tried to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and empower the country’s Christian minority outraged people in the Arab world and were opposed by key American officials. How Joe Biden Became America’s Top Israel Hawk The president once said “Israel could get into a fistfight with this country and we’d still defend” it. That is now clearer than ever. NOAH LANARD DECEMBER 22, 2023 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/12/how-joe-biden-became-americas-top-israel-hawk/
  10. As ever, nil points for historical accuracy: It was precisely the Soviet Union that JFK urged America to negotiate with.
  11. The world will end if Trump is elected... Jimmy Dore & crew scrutinise Deep State Dems' at their ghastly best:
  12. Do tell, given that you mention this twice. Was this really ever a widely-held theory beyond David Lifton (and then only briefly)? If so, you shouldn’t have any difficulty in producing a list of adherents, who must have roamed the plains of JFK research, given the prominence you afford them, like eighteenth century herds of wild bison. Would, say, six be too many? Perhaps just three, then? You can go all the way back to 1966 if it helps. Of course, if you can’t produce any such evidence, we may reasonably conclude that this is just another gross caricature of the research community, one indistinguishable from those routinely provided by what was once the mainstream media, and is now little more than a fringe legacy. Quite why anyone should be concerned with the approval of such a mistrusted, embittered rump continues to elude me. And again, I ask, how does reproducing the vituperation of the establishment assist in any campaign to win round the declining media of that same establishment? Will, for instance, Jeff Bezos be won over by your insults and throw aside all those lucrative multi-million dollar contracts with the CIA for the sake of a one-off truthful WaPo investigation? If you believe that, you need immediate psychiatric intervention. Your reasoning is no less peculiar with respect to the general public. How does your obsessive need to insult researchers who don’t agree with you “influence[s] the attitudes of reasonable people who are not familiar with the facts of the JFK assassination”? The answer is obvious: In your own words, it “encourages those people not to take the case seriously.” Contrary to your purported goals, this seems to be your real aim.
  13. What if the KGB had Joe? DrJLT Economics Jan 15, 2024 A humorous take on Joe's destructive term: If the Soviets had someone like Joe, would the Cold War not end differently? I examine 8 areas where Joe undermines American prestige, credibility, and viability. Disclaimer: No conspiracy here. Joe is an American patriot. This is only a critique of the results of his ineptitude.
  14. But no more keen than you, for whom it is an apparently obligatory feature of just about every contribution to this forum that you make. An obvious question arises: why do you constantly share a legacy media strawman? It’s particularly egregious in this instance as you’re replying to someone who had nothing whatever to say on the matter in the course of his posts in this thread. You, yet again, introduced it. Might not your putative “reasonable, intelligent member of the public who has no particular interest in, knowledge of, or opinion about the assassination,” considering your obsession, reasonably conclude that you are either disturbed, or worse, that your real function is to attempt to police a debate in the service of the perpetrators? A second question occurs: Why on earth are you worried about the opinion of the legacy media? After all, it lied about the case long before Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel in the kisser, or Capricorn One hit cinemas. What exactly is the basis for your belief that if only other researchers fell into line with your strictures the legacy media would reverse its position on the assassination? The proposition is so full-moon unhinged that it brings nothing but discredit upon researchers of every stripe, gender, and headwear. Have a word with yourself - and bill for the full hour.
  15. NBC News Admits 'Deep State' Exists... To Save Us From Trump's Return BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY, JAN 14, 2024 - 11:05 PM https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nbc-news-admits-deep-state-exists-save-us-trumps-return The last time Donald Trump got within striking distance of the Oval Office in 2016, the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, and various foreign accomplices invented a hoax accusing the real estate tycoon of being a secret Russian agent, who would use the power of the United States to do Vladimir Putin's bidding (Which begs the question; why wouldn't Putin have just invaded Ukraine when his 'puppet' Trump wouldn't have waged a proxy war?). And when Donald Trump asked Ukraine about obvious corruption by the Biden family, one of the key 'deep state' players in his impeachment behind the scenes was none other than Mary McCord - who went from taking down Michael Flynn after the FBI set him up, to helping Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to peddle a "whistleblower" complaint about Trump's Ukraine call. McCord is back with a new hoax to peddle, telling NBC News that the Deep State is preparing for Trump's return - and is taking action to limit his ability to 'become a dictator' and use the military to those ends. "We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to," McCord - executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law - told the outlet. The quotes from this fine piece of yellow journalism from NBC are simply hilarious... "Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy." "A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term." "In a new term, many former officials worry that Trump would instead surround himself with loyalists unwilling to say no." "He’s a clear and present danger to our democracy." "His support is solid. And I don’t think people understand what living in a dictatorship would mean." "There are an array of horrors that could result from Donald Trump’s unrestricted use of the Insurrection Act." "The military is hundreds of thousands of people strong, and ultimately Trump will find people to follow his legal orders no matter what ... The Insurrection Act is a legal order, and if he orders it there will be military officers, especially younger men and women, who will follow that legal order." This one might be the best: "We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy," said William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration. "I think that’s how close we’re coming to it when you have a presidential candidate who can be indicted on 91 counts, who can be [found liable for] sexual aggression, who we have seen lies pathologically, who has flouted every rule in the book." Wow! Narrative: Trump is going to appoint loyal peons to subvert democracy and declare himself a dictator. But wait, the deep state cavalry is here! "Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs." Part of the aim is to identify like-minded organizations and create a coalition to challenge Trump from day one, those taking part in the discussions said. Some participants are combing through policy papers being crafted for a future conservative administration. They’re also watching the interviews that Trump allies are giving to the press for clues to how a Trump sequel would look. Other participants include Democracy Forward, an organization that took the Trump administration to court more than 100 times during his administration, and Protect Democracy, an anti-authoritarian group. ... Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is crafting a bill that would clarify the act and give Congress and the courts some say in its use. Its chances of passage are slim given that Republicans control the House and are largely loyal to Trump. You tell us what that sounds like... deep state noun a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy. "We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back," according to Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward. "We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part." Ah yes, another 'existential moment.' Remember, the first rule of 'Deep State' is you do not talk about 'Deep State'.
  16. And our next hardline FSB agent mulling much the same territory as Donald Courter is, er, Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver, who, as part of Putin's astonishingly cunning master-plan, voted for the corrupt psycho-geriatric - today better known as "Genocide Joe" - in 2020:
  17. BIDEN IS EVERYTHING PEOPLE FEARED TRUMP WOULD BE https://www.therevolutionreport.org/news-1/biden-is-everything-people-feared-trump-would-be Biden has turned out to be everything we were warned Trump would be: a genocidal monster fueling racist violence and crimes against humanity while imperiling the world with insanely reckless foreign policy decisions. In an article titled “Joe Biden Risks A Major Middle East War If He Makes The Wrong Choices,” The Huffington Post cites anonymous US officials who fear the careless and chaotic behavior of their commander-in-chief is going to embroil the US in a hot war between Israel and Lebanon. HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed writes the following: “American officials say the Biden administration is not doing all it can to reduce tensions, despite public commitments from senior officials to avoid a regional blow-up. “ ‘I’ve been trying to keep an avalanche from falling on Lebanon and so have a lot of people,’ one official told HuffPost, saying many national security personnel fear unchecked U.S. support for Israel will make it overly confident about expanding operations into Lebanon. ‘The problem is no one can rein in Biden, and if Biden has a policy, he’s the commander-in-chief - we have to carry it out. That’s what it comes down to, very, very, very unfortunately.’ ” Listening to the way people on the inside have been talking about Biden’s bull-in-a-China-shop behavior regarding middle east policy lately, one can’t help being reminded of the way the liberal press used to talk about the erratic and irresponsible behavior of Donald Trump when he was in office. The mood and tone feels like when Trump was exchanging verbal hostilities with North Korea in the first year of his term, which comedian John Mulaney famously likened to the disorder and discomfort of having a horse loose in the hospital. We’re all just standing here praying that this lunatic doesn’t ignite yet another horrific war in the middle east while watching him unapologetically sponsor a genocide in Gaza, and we’re still a ways off from emerging safely from the world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship his administration dragged everyone into with Russia in Ukraine. And it’s hard not to notice that this all sure looks an awful lot like what liberals were terrified would happen when Trump got into office. The lead-up to Trump winning the 2016 election and taking office was rife with some of the most vitriolic and emotionally intense rhetoric in the history of American politics, featuring frequent fears that Trump would start a nuclear war, that minorities would be fleeing in terror from violent persecution, that he’d be another Hitler and launch another holocaust, that he’d facilitate ethnic persecution and racist attacks. All of which were monstrous. But none of those crimes rise to the level of single-handedly facilitating a genocide in Gaza or taking the world closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis with his peace-killing efforts in Ukraine. Biden has turned out to be everything we were warned Trump would be: a genocidal monster fueling racist violence and crimes against humanity while imperiling the world with insanely reckless foreign policy decisions. None of this is to suggest that Trump would have handled Gaza any differently than Biden, or even that he’d have handled Ukraine any differently. It’s likely that the main reason Biden’s administration has been more warlike than Trump’s is by sheer timing and coincidence; the US empire tends to trudge onward in more or less the same direction regardless of who’s in office, with wars occurring not because of who happens to be president in any given instance but because of whatever the empire’s needs happen to be at that time. The lesson of Joe Biden’s depravity is not that it would be better to have Donald Trump in the White House, it’s that it doesn’t matter which one gets in, because only murderous monsters are allowed to play that role in the management of the US-centralized empire. The globe-spanning power structure which loosely revolves around Washington is held together by nonstop violence and abuse, and nobody who isn’t willing to inflict copious amounts of violence and abuse on human beings around the world will ever make it past the gatekeeping measures that have been placed between that office and the illusion of democracy that the American people have been deceived into believing is real. The atrocities will continue for as long as that empire exists. Humanity won’t ever have a chance at a healthy and peaceful world until that world is freed from the tyranny of a planet-dominating power structure that is fueled by human blood.
  18. Ex-Ukraine, thank goodness, a Ukraine which no longer owns its own resources: On the day of Sunak’s visit, Ukraine made a generous gift to its British partners - Australian European Lithium closed a deal to acquire European Lithium Ukraine LLC (formerly Petro-Consulting) with lithium licenses in Ukraine. Now the sole owner of the European Lithium Ukraine company is European Lithium Limited (a British satellite), and the beneficiary is British businessman Anthony Sage who lives in Australia. The British received the right to develop the Dobroye and Shevchenkovskoye (https://t.me/ukraina_ru/181247) fields. Interestingly, last summer European Lithium Limited abandoned these deposits under the pretext that they were close to the front line. Well, now the opinion has changed and the front has “moved back” - it seems that the English pirates understand that the end of the war is near and they can safely lay their hands on the “gold mines” at a bargain price. You have to pay for the “security guarantees” of London – reminds (https://t.me/geonrgru) the telegram channel Geoenergetika INFO Join Slavyangrad chat. Your opinion matters. https://t.me/+5vjQfD5RwOgzMjgx
  19. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but given it's you, I will just have to grin and bear it. The quotes in bold you attribute to me are actually your selections from Asher Orkaby's The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-1968 (2014, 314pp), the Harvard dissertation I recommended, not least because it's online and free, within a different thread. You selected them because you thought them of utility to your argument. A second piece of bad news: It's quite common for me to recommend books or articles containing conclusions from which I dissent. Why? Among other reasons, because such works contain evidence that subverts the conclusions, or offer important and/or interesting sources not readily available elsewhere. And so on and so forth. A small example of the value of Orkaby's work, as found within the expanded dissertation, Beyond the Arab Cold War – The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68, published by the US arm of Oxford's UP in 2017, answers your opening question: Here's Orkaby on a Soviet example of this standard diplomatic gambit: "In 1955, the USSR signed a Treaty of Friendship with Yemen. Iman Ahmad received enough small arms to encourage more hostile anti-British action, but not enough to start a large-scale war that would drag Soviets into the conflict. Moscow’s logic in this agreement was that the continued use of Soviet weapons would increase Yemen’s dependence on Soviet technicians, spare parts, and additional shipments for the foreseeable future…” (Ibid, 16) JFK, in agreeing to the Hawk sale to Israel, was, I repeat, merely following a bog-standard gambit, one as familiar to a low-level drug-dealer as a senior diplomat: create dependence to secure control. Compare and contrast with LBJ, who, in 1965-66, sold Israel the planes and tanks it needed to launch a pre-emptive war on Egypt. Here, the dealer gave the addict an arsenal. The Hawk system was one chip in a lengthier game, one truncated by Kennedy's murder. The notion that by failing to tie the Hawk sale to a specific series of well-publicised and timetabled Israeli concessions, Kennedy effectively lost all hope of ever again influencing Tel Aviv on Dimona inspections or the refugee resettlement issue is belied by subsequent events and represents, on its face, an infantile understanding of dipomacy.
  20. A Time To Cut Bait is the title of the concluding chapter of Warren Bass' Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East & the Making of the US-Israel Alliance, his universally acclaimed tome on the subject. It opens with a page-long summary of the most significant pre-assassination events concerning the Middle East in the course of November 1963. Guess what? Yes, you got it: The UN vote cast by the US delegation on 20 November is entirely omitted. But then Bass' farrago is "A Council on Foreign Relations Book." Great quote, and a timely reminder of just how good Wiesak's book is.
  21. The claim that Kennedy’s sale of Hawk missiles to Israel commenced the arms race in the Middle East is risible, and should be seen for what it always has been, a cynical addition to the self-serving narratives of Kennedy failure contrived and peddled by both the US and Israeli deep states. In the work of the CFR’s Warren Bass, Support Any Friend – Kennedy’s Middle –East & the Making of the US-Israel Alliance (2003), we see the fusion of these endeavours, not least in the minimisation of a striking example of an earlier, and arguably more consequential failure, of American diplomacy in the region, Foster Dulles’ Alpha initiative. The arms race in the Middle East started no later than the late 1940s. The Eisenhower administration’s efforts to restrict Israel’s acquisitions amounted, post the 1955 Egypt-Czech arms-for-cotton deal, to this: Buy what you need off the Europeans, most notably the French, and send us the tab. With the return of de Gaulle and the recentralization of power in the Elysee, this option was effectively foreclosed. In anticipation of this inevitability, Israel began, in February 1960, to push its case in Washington, and launched its first bid for the Hawk system. So why did Kennedy eventually acquiesce in the sale and then fail to explicitly link the sale to Israeli agreement to the Johnson Plan, even though the link was crystal clear in internal Washington deliberations on the matter? First, the sale of the Hawk system sought to restore the status quo prior to Moscow’s sale of substantial air assets to Egypt. As William Bundy explained in July 1962: (a) Israel is vulnerable to UAR air attack and is becoming increasingly so with the arrival of additional Soviet TU-16's. (b) The addition of the Hawk missile within Israel's air defense system would fill an important gap in their defense. (c) Acquisition of the Hawk missile system by Israel would not alone act to shift the balance of military power between Israel and its neighbors. Second, selling a surface-to-air defensive missile system to Israel was preferable to selling it offensive weaponry such as planes and tanks, the preferred armaments sought by the Israeli Air Force leadership, and those within the IDF, who pushed a much more aggressive strategy. Third, the deal ensured that US money went to US manufacturers (much to the angry frustration of the Macmillan government, which wanted to sell Israel the rival Bloodstone system). Fourth, the deal offered powerful political cover to Kennedy’s twin pushes to prevent nuclear proliferation and settle Palestinian refugees. Neither the Israeli state nor the American Zionist lobby could henceforth object that Kennedy was indifferent to Israel’s most fundamental security concerns. Fifth, it was essential to the above that the sale was NOT explicitly linked in negotiations with Israel, a crass move that would have exposed the White House to the charge of cynical calculation. Sixth, and finally, by attaching Israel directly to the American warfare state teat, Kennedy offered both himself – in the overwhelmingly likely event he won a second term – and his presidential successors the opportunity to strengthen its control of Israel’s military, and thus political, options. In summary, Kennedy’s choices with respect to the Hawk sale were rational, wise, and taken with an eye to the future. That his successors lacked the ability, resolve, and/or opportunities to steer US policy in the direction signposted by his decision was not his fault or responsibility.
  22. The EU Is Willing to Go To War Over Lithium? By Phil Butler New Eastern Outlook January 3, 2024 https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/01/no_author/the-eu-is-willing-to-go-to-war-over-lithium/ The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium. Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point. What’s most significant about this is that the EU, and Germany in particular, desperately need the rare mineral to manufacture green energy technologies such as wind turbines, electric vehicles, and a wide variety of electronic devices. This text from the Critical Minerals Thematic Intelligence Report overview is telling: “Critical minerals are key to transitioning to a low-carbon world. There are over 70 countries globally that have set net-zero targets and pledged to lower their emissions. However, these widespread measures for a greener future are straining natural resources, especially the minerals required to produce energy transition technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels…” The report goes on to reveal how these rare minerals are monopolized by just a few regions and how supply chain problems affect their recovery and distribution. In short, if Europe does not procure more Lithium, the energy transition EU President Ursula von der Leyen toots her horn about every other day will either be delayed or made unfeasible because of demand shortages. While the United States, Australia, and a few Latin American countries hold the lion’s share of Lithium reserves, EU access to these supplies will be expensive. In addition, the U.S. and these emerging nations will surely use the biggest part of their reserves for domestic needs. The demand (need) for European Lithium supply is so intense, German CDU MP Roderich Kiesewetter came right out and admitted the Russia-Ukraine conflict is all about the 500,000 tons or more of the mineral under the ground of the Donbass region. Kiesewetter said, “The European Union supports Ukraine because of lithium deposits in the Donbass.” The politician also took note of the Donbass being part of Russia now, means Berlin’s dependence on Moscow. Kiesewetter, a retired colonel, is also suggesting that Germany provide Zelensky’s regime with the highly accurate Taurus cruise missiles, which have a 500km range. The Swedish/German air-launched missile carries a 1,100-pound warhead and is essentially a bunker-buster type weapon. The missiles would be far more useful for Zelensky’s remaining Nazi battalions than a few rusty old Leopard tanks. What the MP’s statements mean, however, is that Germany and the EU intend on taking Ukraine’s vast resources by force now. The Euromaidan Coup only got the Western elites’ feet in the door, and now the singular order has few options left since the failed Ukraine offensive. The EU commissars are in the process of slitting their own throats. Just the other day, the commission passed another round of sanctions aimed at Russia’s luxury diamond exports to the bloc. This will not affect the average EU citizen, but the upper-middle class and the wealthy will have to fork over more Euros to get pretty round diamonds. The Americans (or British) blowing up the gas pipelines, the potential for grain shortages in the EU, and other key minerals Russia and nations friendly to her export begin to take their toll on an already shaky confederation of member states. Consider what EU member states manufacture and export to elevate their GNP. In the lists here, you’ll click on two vital exports. Cars and/or refined petroleum are vital to every country. Cars are, by far, the biggest import and export commodities. So, when these autos finally go electric, just imagine how desperate EU industry and consumers will be for Lithium! The Europeans will flounder if forced to import quantities of this strategic mineral from distant sources that have their own batteries to make. If there is a WWIII over the Russia/Ukraine situation, I am sure we’ll be able to name it “The Great Lithium War.” See also: Before Invasion, Ukraine’s Lithium Wealth Was Drawing Global Attention (NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/climate/ukraine-lithium.html
  23. Q & A - Gaza Is Starving The chief economist of the World Food Program explains how the scarcity of food may tip the territory into famine. By Isaac Chotiner January 3, 2024 https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/gaza-is-starving Last month, a United Nations report on hunger described a catastrophic situation in Gaza, where more than ninety per cent of the population has been facing “acute food insecurity,” and where “virtually all households are skipping meals every day.” Much of Gaza is at risk of famine in the next several months. Parents have been going without food to insure that their kids have at least something to eat; where food is available, moreover, prices have skyrocketed, making it inaccessible even for middle-class families. The report noted, “This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity” ever recorded “for any given area or country.” I recently spoke by phone with Arif Husain, the chief economist at the United Nations World Food Program, which was one of the partner organizations that compiled the report. The W.F.P. also collects data on hunger around the world and delivers food to needy people. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what the people of Gaza are currently facing, the reasons many cannot access food, and why this crisis is so unprecedented. Could you describe the food-access situation in Gaza right now? The bottom line is that, in Gaza, pretty much everybody is hungry at the moment. In the food-security-analysis business, we do something called I.P.C., or Integrated Phase Classification. This is an exercise that has about twenty-three partners, including nineteen U.N. agencies and international N.G.O.s and about four donors. This group analyzes the food-security situation. And, on the basis of that, it presents a report, which is independent. It is not one agency or one entity. There’s a consensus-based analysis. This exercise is done in between forty and fifty countries worldwide that may have a food-security issue, whether it is because of conflict or climate or anything else. What an I.P.C. does in any given location is put people in five different classifications. I.P.C. Phase 1 is that everything is fine; I.P.C. Phase 2 is that people are stressed in terms of their food-security situation; I.P.C. Phase 3 is that people are, in fact, in a food-security crisis; I.P.C. Phase 4 is that people are in food-security emergencies; and the last phase is called the famine, or catastrophe, phase. Now, the same analysis was done for Gaza, which came out in December, and, according to that, pretty much the entire population of 2.2 million people is in a food-security crisis or a worse situation. Can you describe the difference between crisis, emergency, and famine? It is a scale that looks at people’s food security and consumption, how they’re able to access food, and what type of coping strategies they use. It also looks at other indicators, including socioeconomic indicators. We ask, what is the situation now, and, also, what would you expect in the next, let’s say, few months? Classification on those three thresholds, as the severity increases, is different: crisis; then, if it’s worse than crisis, it turns into emergency; and then, if it’s worse than emergency, it turns into famine or catastrophe. But let me give you the criteria for famine: It’s essentially that, in any given place in the geographic unit, twenty per cent of the population must be starving—that’s criteria No. 1. Criteria No. 2 is that thirty per cent of the children must be severely malnourished or wasted. And then the third criteria is that the mortality rate, the death rate, should be double the average, meaning, for adults, from one per ten thousand a day to two per ten thousand a day. And, for children, from two per ten thousand a day to four per ten thousand a day. When these three conditions come together in a single place, it’s a famine. So the bottom line is that you hope not to say, “O.K., let’s act because there is a famine.” You need to act to avoid a famine, right? Because if you say, “O.K., let’s act when there is a famine,” that means you’re saying people have already died, children are already wasted, people are already starving. That’s not the point. The point is that we should never let a population reach that state. Now, in the case of Gaza, a quarter of the population is already in that state, meaning they’re in catastrophic levels of hunger. We don’t call it a full famine. Why? Because they haven’t met the other two conditions, meaning it’s very hard to say whether thirty per cent of the children over there are already wasted or whether their death rate has doubled. Why? Because their health systems are broken. But what the report says is that, if what is happening continues or worsens, pretty soon—within the next six months—we will have a full-fledged famine. How does Gaza seem similar to other conflict zones, and how does it seem different? I’ve been doing this for the past two decades, and I’ve been to all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of crises. And, for me, this is unprecedented because of, one, the magnitude, the scale, the entire population of a particular place; second, the severity; and, third, the speed at which this is happening, at which this has unfolded, is unprecedented. In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed. There have been reports that in some places in Gaza food has become really expensive. Can you talk about what we’re seeing in Gaza specifically? Access comes in two types: one is physical access to food, and the other is economic access to food—food has to come, and supply chains need to work. And then, if the food is there, is it affordable? It’s always first and foremost about whether a population or community is able to access food. The same story is applicable in Gaza. What is happening in Gaza is that it’s reliant on imports of food and other essential commodities, right? That was the case before the war, and it is the case now.
  24. Some useful background: Youtube channel - Strange History X Discovering the photographic evidence of Where John Lennon Was Shot https://youtu.be/CXmu7XjV_tI?si=aMnrmiqy7i5Vypmj The Shocking Truth Behind John Lennon's Tragic End https://youtu.be/95yoMNx88WY?si=ud0iLxEND5EwiTav Exploring The Dakota, NYC's Most Famous Apartment Building https://youtu.be/ASIVlthXzVA?si=EExN_GfcrPP0awo_ John Lennon's Home. The Dakota's Ground Floor Blueprint. https://youtu.be/6dDuU793U1Y?si=hO2mLBplpWM1RMtV
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