Paul Rigby

An excellent post. The KLA was "outed" as a CIA project in the mainstream British press by Peter Beaumont in The Observer - I dimly recollect a headline referring to the Agency's "runaway army," or some such. Langley and MI6 were plainly pursuing very different objectives in the region circa 1999-2000.

How the CIA & its assets really worked during the Maidan: The "Snipers' Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine (2020) Ivan Katchanovski Description This video compilation with added English-language subtitles provides a video reconstruction of the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police in Ukraine. It contains synchronized fragments of numerous video and audio recordings of the Maidan massacre, in particular, videos of snipers in Maidan-controlled locations and their shooting the police and the Maidan protesters, and more than 80 testimonies about such snipers in the videos during the massacre itself. This video compilation visually shows that at least the absolute majority of Maidan protesters and the police were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings. This is an online Video Appendix A of papers prepared for presentation at the virtual 52nd Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in 2020 and the 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Montreal in 2021.

No question - yes: Clinton-lands The end of an era in Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and beyond Nov 19th 2016 https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/11/19/clinton-lands The liberal interventionism espoused by Hillary Clinton was forged in the American efforts to bring peace to Bosnia and Kosovo. When backing military action in Libya in 2011, Mrs Clinton invoked the memory of the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Balkan countries expected Mrs Clinton to continue her muscular efforts to build an international liberal order if she were elected president.

NATO attacked Yugoslavia, 1994-1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia The [1999] bombing caused damage to bridges, roads and railway tracks, as well as to 25,000 homes, 69 schools and 176 cultural monuments.[179] Furthemore, 19 hospitals and 20 health centers were damaged, including the University Hospital Center Dr Dragiša Mišović.[180][181] NATO bombing also resulted in the damaging of medieval monuments, such as Gračanica Monastery, the Patriarchate of Peć and the Visoki Dečani, which are on the UNESCO's World Heritage list today.[182] The Avala Tower, one of the most popular symbols of Belgrade, Serbia's capital, was destroyed during the bombing.[183] The use of Depleted Uranium ammunition was noted by the UNEP, which cautioned about the risks for future groundwater contamination and recounted the "decontamination measures conducted by Yugoslavian, Serbian and Montenegrin authorities."[184] NATO members aren't even safe from each other, as the recent US destruction of Germany's Nord Steam pipelines reconfirmed. In July 1974, for example, Kissinger permitted the junta ruling Greece (NATO member since 1952) to coup the leader of Cyprus, then green-lit an invasion of the same island by another NATO member, Turkey.

While on the subject of CIA & MI6 beauts, here's an outstanding examination of the Holodomor fabrication. Famine? Yes. Confined to Ukraine? No. Deliberate? Far from it. The crash industrialisation programme undertaken by Stalin had a largely unaddressed trigger - American & British support for a guy called Adolph.

How the US brought what Bush II termed "freem and moxy" to Korea: America’s Korean massacres: Sinchon: https://youtu.be/wDexrR4m4cU Taejon: https://youtu.be/6Cta5M9J3fE Korean civilians: https://youtu.be/EwhgJZHKRvQ https://youtu.be/_mOFr5BqQfU The brutal terror state established post-WWII by the US: https://youtu.be/1iF6PIpPOl4

I rather suspect John doesn't, not least because he's not dumb enough to fall for such an obviously invented attribution. Stalin never said or wrote anything of the sort. The quotation in fact comes from a 1932 work on French humour by Kurt Tucholsky, a German satirist:

The Duran's interview this morning with guest Jeffrey Sachs on JFK:

To follow, some typed notes: The Salandrian analyis of Prouty & his work As set out in various places within Michael D. Morrisey’s Correspondence with Vincent Salandria 1993-2000 (Lulu, 2007) 1) Prouty was launched as the Pentagon’s response to the CIA’s Pentagon Papers. Salandria: In answer to the Agency’s self-serving re-write of the origins of the Vietnam War, Prouty gave us, among other things well worth having, chapter and verse on NSAMs 51, 53 & 55, Kennedy’s attempts to curb the Agency’s role and transfer its paramilitary powers to McNamara and the nascent DIA. Prouty’s placement of Lansdale in Dealey Plaza may be read, at one level, as a pointed reminder to the Agency of its role in the Dulles Bros end-run around Eisenhower/Lawton-Collins mission to Saigon – to dump Diem - in 1955. 2) Prouty challenged the CIA to the precise extent that he reinforced & exonerated it: He lauded the Dulles Bros, Cabell, Krulak etc in the Acknowledgments to ST (Secret Team), at one point claiming that he “knew” Dulles, Lansdale & Cabell were definitely not involved in Dallas (CwVS, 390); defended the Warren Report as a necessary expedient (Secret Team, 420, CwVS 334); & repeatedly described the ST as a Dulles-CIA controlled network, but nevertheless insisted that neither AWD nor the CIA was responsible for the Dallas coup (CwVS, 335). In sum, Salandria argues that the concepts of both the ST and, above it, the High Cabal (CwVS, 345), were fictions designed to let the CIA, as an institution, off the hook. He goes on to note that this is a common trait among ex-intel officers (Boxley, Turner, Newman; Ibid). To reconcile 1) and 2) we need to supply an ingredient missing from VS’s analysis: to wit, Prouty was, in essence, absorbed and co-opted by the CIA 3) Prouty’s cheer-leaders are hypocrites Salandria observes that unsourced allegations from Prouty are treated as gospel, while similar claims from others – not least himself – are greeted, by the very same critics, as mere conjecture or worse (CwVS, 349). If anyone has the full passages from Salandria's musings on Prouty, please post.

Paul, The retired engineer named Tim referred to by Chris Davidson is Tim Nicholson, and the 21pp essay in question is entitled Evidence of Zapruder Film Alteration. You can sign up for free at this link & download his 2018 paper: https://www.academia.edu/38392224/Evidence_of_Zapruder_Film_Alteration_May_2018_pdf

The Black Dwarf*, Tariq Ali’s revolutionary organ, outed Richard West, then working at Private Eye, as a recycler of low-grade CIA nonsense (in this instance, about Che Guevara’s murder) in an October 1968 edition**. According to the splendidly named Dwarf Diary feature, the CIA had first attempted to persuade British reptiles to run with the claim that Fidel Castro had bumped off Guevara in a desperate attempt to steal his wife. When this failed the credibility test of even our notoriously corrupt and dishonest presstitutes, the Agency tried a different tack, according to the diminutive diarist, comparing Castro to Peron, and other such guff. West, the anonymous diarist insisted, duly obliged (“bearded loony…hysterical tirade”). An alternative explanation may well lie in West’s time working for the British Council in Yugoslavia, where, he was later to claim, he refused the offer of a job with the Charlatans (MI6). Given that Private Eye was founded by a coterie of serving and “ex-“ Charlatans, and West spent a number of happy years there, it would appear much more likely that he either accepted the MI6 offer while based in Belgrade, or was recruited before, perhaps even at university (Cambridge). West’s denial should not be taken at face value for an additional reason – he was notoriously untruthful. Challenged at Private Eye as to the origin of some or other legally dubious allegation, West responded that his source was “cast-iron.” Unconvinced, Richard Ingrams, the Eye’s then-editor, persisted. West’s reply was classic Fleet Street: “As a matter of fact, I made it up myself.”*** *This was the second incarnation of The Black Dwarf, not to be confused with the original, an early nineteenth century British radical paper (1817-1824): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Dwarf John Simkin produced a better history of it: https://spartacus-educational.com/Black_Dwarf.htm **Dwarf Diary, Private C-Eye-A (The Black Dwarf, 15 October 1968, V13 N6, 😎 https://banmarchive.org.uk/black-dwarf/ *** Anonymous, A System of Wandering – a profile of Richard West (The Spectator, 6 May 1989, V262 N8391, 19)

Roger, try this venerable thread for detail on the extent of CIA support for Gene McCarthy in 1968:

Chomsky takes a break from urging the isolation of the unvaxed to...refuse to answer questions about his meetings with Epstein. Funding is such a private matter, after all. Unraveling the Epstein-Chomsky Relationship Recent revelations that the renowned linguist and political activist met with Jeffrey Epstein several times have surprised and confused many. Why was Epstein interested in meeting with Noam Chomsky? And why did Chomsky agree to meet him despite his past? The answer may surprise you. BY WHITNEY WEBB, MAY 3, 2023 https://unlimitedhangout.com/2023/05/investigative-reports/unraveling-the-epstein-chomsky-relationship/ On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published a report detailing information contained within a “trove” of previously unreported documents of the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Those documents, which have not been publicly released and appear to have been passed solely to the Journal, included Epstein’s private calendar and meeting schedules. The documents, per the Journal, contain “thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017” and – as the report notes – detail Epstein’s dealings with several prominent individuals whose names were not on his flight logs or his infamous “little black book” of contacts. One of these individuals is the renowned linguist, political commentator and critic of capitalism and empire, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, who has previously discussed the Epstein case in interviews and who has maintained that Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies should be considered a “conspiracy theory,” had not previously disclosed these meetings. Chomsky, when confronted by Journal reporters, was evasive, but ultimately admitted to meeting and knowing Jeffrey Epstein. Many, largely on the left, have expressed dismay and confusion as to why someone with the political views of Chomsky would willingly meet, not once but several times, with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, particularly well after Epstein’s notoriety as a sex trafficker and pedophile. As this report will show, Epstein appeared to view Chomsky as another intellectual who could help guide his decisions when it came to his scientific obsessions – namely, transhumanism and eugenics. What Chomsky gained in return from meeting with Epstein isn’t as clear. Why Did Chomsky Meet with Epstein? According to the Journal, Chomsky’s meetings with Epstein took place during the years 2015 and 2016, while Chomsky taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Chomsky told the Journal that he met with Epstein to discuss topics like neuroscience with other academics, like Harvard’s Martin Nowak (who was heavily funded by Epstein). On a separate occasion, Chomsky again met with Epstein alongside former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, allegedly to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.” A separate date saw Chomsky and his wife invited by Epstein to have dinner with him, Woody Allen and Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn. When asked about the dinner date with Woody Allen and Epstein, Chomsky referred to the occasion as “an evening spent with a great artist.” When confronted with this evidence, Chomsky initially told the Journal that his meetings and relationship with Epstein were “none of your business. Or anyone’s.” He then added that “I knew him [Epstein] and we met occasionally.” Before continuing further, it is important to note that aside from Epstein, both Ehud Barak and Woody Allen have been accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with minors. For instance, Barak was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s residences in New York, so often that The Daily Beast reported that numerous residents of an apartment building linked to Epstein “had seen Barak in the building multiple times over the last few years, and nearly half a dozen more described running into his security detail,” adding that “the building is majority-owned by Epstein’s younger brother, Mark, and has been tied to the financier’s alleged New York trafficking ring.” Specifically, several apartments in the building were “being used to house underage girls from South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union,” according to a former bookkeeper employed by one of Epstein’s main procurers of underage girls, Jean Luc Brunel. Barak is also known to have spent the night at one of Epstein’s residences at least once, was photographed leaving Epstein’s residence as recently as 2016, and has admitted to visiting Epstein’s island, which has sported nicknames including “Pedo Island,” “Lolita Island” and “Orgy Island.” In 2004, Barak received $2.5 million from Leslie Wexner’s Wexner Foundation, where Epstein was a trustee as well as one of the foundation’s top donors, officially for unspecified “consulting services” and “research” on the foundation’s behalf. Several years later, Barak put Harvey Weinstein in contact with the Israeli private intelligence outfit Black Cube, which employs former Mossad agents and Israeli military intelligence operatives, as Weinstein sought to intimidate the women who had accused him of sexual assault and sexual harassment. In addition, Barak previously chaired and invested in Carbyne911, a controversial Israeli emergency services start-up that has expanded around the world and has become particularly entrenched in the United States. Barak had directed Epstein to invest $1 million into that company, which has been criticized as a potential tool for warrantless mass surveillance. Leslie Wexner also invested millions in the company. In Woody Allen’s case, he has been accused of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old. That abuse claim has been corroborated by witnesses and other evidence. Furthermore, Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by state police in connection with the investigation and lost four exhaustive court battles related to child custody and his abuse of Dylan Farrow. One of the judge’s in the case described Allen’s behavior towards Dylan as “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” Actress Mia Farrow, Dylan’s mother, alleged in court that Allen took a sexual interest in her adopted daughter when she was between the ages of two and three years old. Allen subsequently “seduced” and later married another adopted daughter of Farrow’s, Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen first met when Previn was a child. However, Previn has stated that her first “friendly” interaction with Allen took place when she was a teenager. In 1992, Mia Farrow found nude photos of Previn in Allen’s home and has stated that this was her motive for ending her relationship with Allen. In the case of Allen and Epstein, and potentially Barak as well, their sexual proclivities and scandals were well known by the time Chomsky met with these men, making a strong suggestion that this type of behavior was not seen by Chomsky as taboo or as a barrier to socialization. It is more likely than not that there was some other major draw that led Chomsky to overlook this type of horrendous behavior toward vulnerable minors. In terms of reaching a deeper understanding about why Epstein would have been interested in Chomsky – and vice versa, it is important to review – not just the information recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, but also what Epstein himself said of Chomsky before his 2019 death. According to an interview conducted in 2017, but later published in 2019 when Epstein was a major news topic, Epstein openly stated that he had invited Chomsky to his townhouse and he also explicitly stated why he had done so. Oddly, this early acknowledgement of Epstein’s regarding his relationship with Chomsky was left out of the Journal’s recent report. In that interview, which was conducted by Jeffrey Mervis and later published in Science, Epstein stated that following about Chomsky: […] Epstein readily admitted to asking prominent members of the scientific establishment to assess the potential contribution of these so-called outcasts [i.e. MIT students Epstein described as being “on the spectrum”]. “So, I had Jim Watson to the house, and I asked Watson, what does he think about this idea,” a proposal to study how the cellular mechanisms of plants might be relevant to human cancer. Watson is a Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. “Likewise with [Noam] Chomsky on artificial intelligence,” he said, referring to one of the pioneers in the field. In fact, Epstein expressed great respect for the opinions of these elder statesmen. “It’s funny to watch Noam Chomsky rip apart these young boys who talk about having a thinking machine,” Epstein noted. “He takes out a dagger and slices them, very kindly, into little shreds.” Thus, per Epstein, his interest in inviting Chomsky to his house was explicitly related to the “artificial intelligence,” which was a major scientific interest of Epstein’s. This also provides a major clue as to how Chomsky and Epstein might have first been introduced. Chomsky, Epstein and MIT Chomsky is most widely viewed as a famous linguist, political commentator and critic of modern capitalism and imperialism. So, why did Epstein seek to meet with him instead on Artificial Intelligence matters? Well, an admitted “friend” of both Chomsky’s and Epstein’s was the AI pioneer Marvin Minsky. Like Chomsky, Minsky was a long-time professor and academic at MIT. It is very possible that Minsky connected the two men, especially considering the fact that Epstein was a major donor to MIT. Epstein described himself as being “very close” to Minsky, who died in 2016, roughly a year after Epstein began meeting with Chomsky. Epstein also financed some of Minsky’s projects and Minsky, like Ehud Barak, was accused of sexually abusing the minors Epstein trafficked. Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition, for those who don’t know, is based very much on evolutionary biology. Chomsky was also a pioneer in cognitive science, described as “a field aimed at uncovering the mental representations and rules that underlie our perceptual and cognitive abilities.” Some have described Chomsky’s concept of language as based on “the complexity of internal representation, encoded in the genome, and their maturation in light of the right data into a sophisticated computational system, one that cannot be usefully broken down into a set of associations.” A person’s “language faculty,” per Chomsky, should be seen as “part of the organism’s genetic endowment, much like the visual system, the immune system and the circulatory system, and we ought to approach it just as we approach these other more down-to-earth biological systems.” Despite their friendship, Minsky greatly diverged with Chomsky in this view, with Minsky describing Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition as largely superficial and irrelevant. Chomsky later criticized the widely used approach with AI that focuses on statistical learning techniques to mine and predict data, which Chomsky argued was “unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition.” However, Chomsky’s views linking evolutionary biology/genetics with linguistics/cognition were notably praised by the aforementioned Martin Nowak, who had attended one of the meetings Epstein had with Chomsky. Nowak, a professor of biology and mathematics and head of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard, later stated that he had “once broke out a blackboard during dinner with Epstein and, for two hours, gave a mathematical description of how language works,” further revealing that Epstein was interested in aspects of linguistics. It is unclear if this particular meeting was the same that Chomsky had attended alongside Nowak to discuss “neuroscience” and other topics. However, given the importance of evolutionary biology and genetics to Chomsky’s theories, it is hardly surprising that Jeffrey Epstein would have gravitated more towards his views on AI than those of Minsky. Epstein was fascinated by genetics and, even per mainstream sources, was also deeply interested eugenics. Take for example the following from an article published in The Guardian in 2019: Epstein was apparently fixated on “transhumanism,” the belief that the human species can be deliberately advanced through technological breakthroughs, such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. At its most benign, transhumanism is a belief that humanity’s problems can be improved, upgraded even, through such technology as cybernetics and artificial intelligence – at its most malignant though, transhumanism lines up uncomfortably well with eugenics. Thus, Epstein’s interest in AI, genetics, and more was tied into his documented obsession with “transhumanism,” which – as several Unlimited Hangout reports have noted – is essentially a rebranding of eugenics. Indeed, the term transhumanism itself was first coined by Julian Huxley, the former president of the British Eugenics Society and the first head of UNESCO who called to make “the unthinkable thinkable again” with regards to eugenics. Aside from transhumanism, Epstein also had an avowed interest in “strengthening” the human gene pool, in part by impregnating as many women as possible with his “seed” in order to widely disperse his genes. These views may also explain Epstein’s interest in associating himself with people like James (Jim) Watson. As noted earlier in this article, Epstein stated in 2017 that he had invited both Watson and Chomsky to his home on separate occasions. Watson has been a controversial figures for years, particularly after he openly stated that people of African descent are genetically inferior and less intelligent than their European counterparts. He also previously promoted the idea that women should abort babies that carried a “gay gene,” were such a gene ever discovered. He also felt that gene editing should be used to make all women “prettier” and to eradicate “stupidity.” Notably, Watson made all of these comments well before Epstein invited him to his home. Watson was also praised, controversially, after these same comments by another Epstein-funded scientist, Eric Lander. Lander, who was recently Biden’s top science advisor, was forced to resign from that post last year after being accused of harassing those who worked under him in the Biden administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Lander had collaborated with Watson on the Human Genome Project and later ran the Broad Institute, a non-profit born out of collaboration between MIT and Harvard. Returning to Chomsky, though he may not have been aware of Epstein’s interests in eugenics and transhumanism, it has since become clear that Epstein’s main interest in Artificial Intelligence – his stated purpose for courting Chomsky – was intimately tied to these controversial disciplines. However, Chomsky did know of Epstein’s past, and likely also knew of Woody Allen’s similar past before meeting him as well. He turned a blind eye on those matters, telling the Journal that Epstein had “served his sentence” and, as a result, had been granted a “clean slate.” In saying this, Chomsky is apparently unaware of Epstein’s controversial “sweetheart deal” that resulted in an extremely lenient sentence and non-prosecution agreement. That “deal” was signed off on by then-US Attorney Alex Acosta because Acosta was told to “back off” Epstein because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Chomsky had previously told several people, including an Unlimited Hangout reader, that an Epstein-intelligence agency connection is a “conspiracy theory.” Given Chomsky’s odd views on Epstein’s past and the fact that Epstein frequently discussed transhumanism and eugenics around other prominent scientists, it is possible, though unproven, that Chomsky may have known more about Epstein’s true interests in AI and genetics. Would Chomsky have been willing to overlook these ethical conundrums? Given his political views on capitalism and foreign policy, many would likely say that he would not. However, finding ways to circumvent these ethical conundrums with respect to AI may have been one of Epstein’s main reasons for heavily funding MIT, particularly its Media Lab. Epstein, in addition to his own donations, also funneled millions of dollars from Bill Gates and Leon Black to the Media Lab. According to former Media Lab employee Rodrigo Ochigame, writing in The Intercept, Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab – who took lots of donations from Epstein and attempted to hide Epstein’s name on official records – was focused on developing “ethics” for AI that were “aligned strategically with a Silicon Valley effort seeking to avoid legally enforceable restrictions of controversial technologies.” Ito later resigned his post at the Media Lab due to fallout from the Epstein scandal. Ochigame writes: A key group behind this effort, with the lab as a member, made policy recommendations in California that contradicted the conclusions of research I conducted with several lab colleagues, research that led us to oppose the use of computer algorithms in deciding whether to jail people pending trial. Ito himself would eventually complain, in private meetings with financial and tech executives, that the group’s recommendations amounted to “whitewashing” a thorny ethical issue. “They water down stuff we try to say to prevent the use of algorithms that don’t seem to work well” in detention decisions, he confided to one billionaire. I also watched MIT help the U.S. military brush aside the moral complexities of drone warfare, hosting a superficial talk on AI and ethics by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and notorious war criminal, and giving input on the U.S. Department of Defense’s “AI Ethics Principles” for warfare, which embraced “permissibly biased” algorithms and which avoided using the word “fairness” because the Pentagon believes “that fights should not be fair.” Ochigame also cites Media Lab colleagues who say that Marvin Minsky, who worked with the Lab before his death, was known to say that “an ethicist is someone who has a problem with whatever you have in your mind.” Also troubling is the fact that Ito, and by extension the Media Lab, played a role in shaping White House policy with respect to AI. For instance, Obama called Ito an “expert” on AI and ethics during an interview with him in 2016. Ito, on his conversation with Obama, said the following: “[…] the role of the Media Lab is to be a connective tissue between computer science, and the social sciences, and the lawyers, and the philosophers […] What’s cool is that President Obama gets that.” If you are Jeffrey Epstein, with a history of illegal and criminal activity, and interested in avoiding the regulation of controversial technologies you feel are necessary to advance your vision of transhumanism/eugenics, financing groups that greatly influence “ethics” policies that helps limit the regulation of those technologies would obviously benefit you. Ochigame goes on to write: Thus, Silicon Valley’s vigorous promotion of “ethical AI” has constituted a strategic lobbying effort, one that has enrolled academia to legitimize itself. Ito played a key role in this corporate-academic fraternizing, meeting regularly with tech executives. The MIT-Harvard fund’s initial director was the former “global public policy lead” for AI at Google. Through the fund, Ito and his associates sponsored many projects, including the creation of a prominent conference on “Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency” in computer science; other sponsors of the conference included Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Notably, Epstein was tied into these same circles. He was very, very close, not just with Bill Gates, but with several other top Microsoft executives and was also known to have a close relationship with Google’s Sergey Brin, who has recently been subpoenaed in the Epstein-JPMorgan case, as well as Facebook/Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Notably, many of these same companies are currently pioneering transhumanist technologies, particularly in healthcare, and are deeply tied to either the military or intelligence, if not both. The MIT-AI-Military Connection Chomsky is just one of several prominent academics and intellectuals who were courted by Epstein in an attempt to supercharge the development of technologies that could help bring his controversial obsessions to fruition. Notably, many of these characters, including Chomsky, have had their work – at one point or another – funded by the U.S. military, which has itself long been a major driver of AI research. For example, Minsky and Danny Hillis, a close associate of Epstein’s in his own right, co-created a DARPA contractor and supercomputer firm called Thinking Machines, which was aimed at creating a “truly intelligent machine. One that can see and hear and speak. A machine that will be proud of us,” according to one company brochure. Minsky was Hillis’ mentor at MIT and the pair sought out Sheryl Handler, who worked for a genetic-engineering start-up at Harvard called the Genetics Institute, to help them create their supercomputer firm. Thinking Machines, which made poor business decisions routinely from the beginning, was only able to function for as long as it did due to multi-million dollar contracts it had secured from the Pentagon’s DARPA. With the close of Cold War, DARPA sought to use its clout with Thinking Machines to push the company to develop a product that could deal with things like modeling the global climate, mapping the human genome and predicting earthquakes. Subsequent reporting from the Wall Street Journal showed that the agency had been “playing favorites” and Thinking Machine’s “gravy train” abruptly ended due to the bad publicity, subsequently leading to the collapse of the company. Hillis, around this time, met Jeffrey Epstein. The introduction may have been brokered by former Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, a friend of Hillis’ who grew close to Epstein in the 1990s and even took Epstein on an official Microsoft trip to Russia. Myhrvold, who was also named as an abuser of the minors Epstein trafficked, was one of the other top Microsoft officials who was close to Epstein beginning in the 1990s. Another was Linda Stone, who later connected Jeffrey Epstein to Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab. As previously mentioned, Epstein would later direct the long-time head of Microsoft, Bill Gates, to donate millions to the Media Lab. Chomsky’s own history at MIT brought him into contact with the military. For instance, during the early 1960s, Chomsky received funding from the Air Force, which aimed to program a computer with Chomsky’s insights about grammar in an attempt to endow it “with the ability to recognize instructions imparted to it in perfectly ordinary English, thereby eliminating a necessity for highly specialized languages that intervene between a man and a computer.” Chomsky later stated of the military funding of his early career that “I was in a military lab. If you take a look at my early publications, they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics.” Chomsky has since denied that military funding shaped his linguistics work in any significant way and has claimed that the military is used by the government “as a kind of a funnel by which taxpayer money was being used to create the hi-tech economy of the future.” However, reports have noted that this particular project was very much tied to military applications. In addition, the man who first recruited Chomsky to MIT in the mid-1950s, Jerome Wiesner, went on to be Chomsky’s boss at MIT for over 20 years as well as “America’s most powerful military scientist.” To Chomsky’s credit, after this program ended, he became fully, and publicly, committed to anti-war activism. This activism led him, at one point, to consider resigning from MIT, which he declined to do – likely because he was rather quickly granted professorship. As Chris Knight writes, “this meant that instead of resigning, Chomsky’s choice was to launch himself as an outspoken anti-militarist activist even while remaining in one of the US’s most prestigious military labs.” By staying at MIT, Chomsky chose to maintain his career, in relative proximity to the centers of power he would later become an icon for denouncing. However, it shows that Chomsky, from this time onward, began to make some choices that undermined his radicalism to an extent. Chomsky may have rationalized his decision to stay at MIT in the 1960s because it gave him a better platform from which to espouse his political and anti-war views. It is not unheard of for prominent public figures to make such compromises. However, in light of the recent Epstein revelations and what they appear to signal, it seems that Chomsky, particularly in his later years, may have become too comfortable and too willing to make these types of compromises – ones that a much younger Chomsky would have surely rejected. More on Chomsky and his CIA funding here: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/12903-cracking-the-chomsky-code/

Not for the first time, I'm in your debt - excellent stuff.

Unraveling the Epstein-Chomsky Relationship Recent revelations that the renowned linguist and political activist met with Jeffrey Epstein several times have surprised and confused many. Why was Epstein interested in meeting with Noam Chomsky? And why did Chomsky agree to meet him despite his past? The answer may surprise you. BY WHITNEY WEBB, MAY 3, 2023 https://unlimitedhangout.com/2023/05/investigative-reports/unraveling-the-epstein-chomsky-relationship/ On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published a report detailing information contained within a “trove” of previously unreported documents of the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Those documents, which have not been publicly released and appear to have been passed solely to the Journal, included Epstein’s private calendar and meeting schedules. The documents, per the Journal, contain “thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017” and – as the report notes – detail Epstein’s dealings with several prominent individuals whose names were not on his flight logs or his infamous “little black book” of contacts. One of these individuals is the renowned linguist, political commentator and critic of capitalism and empire, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, who has previously discussed the Epstein case in interviews and who has maintained that Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies should be considered a “conspiracy theory,” had not previously disclosed these meetings. Chomsky, when confronted by Journal reporters, was evasive, but ultimately admitted to meeting and knowing Jeffrey Epstein. Many, largely on the left, have expressed dismay and confusion as to why someone with the political views of Chomsky would willingly meet, not once but several times, with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, particularly well after Epstein’s notoriety as a sex trafficker and pedophile. As this report will show, Epstein appeared to view Chomsky as another intellectual who could help guide his decisions when it came to his scientific obsessions – namely, transhumanism and eugenics. What Chomsky gained in return from meeting with Epstein isn’t as clear. Why Did Chomsky Meet with Epstein? According to the Journal, Chomsky’s meetings with Epstein took place during the years 2015 and 2016, while Chomsky taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Chomsky told the Journal that he met with Epstein to discuss topics like neuroscience with other academics, like Harvard’s Martin Nowak (who was heavily funded by Epstein). On a separate occasion, Chomsky again met with Epstein alongside former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, allegedly to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.” A separate date saw Chomsky and his wife invited by Epstein to have dinner with him, Woody Allen and Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn. When asked about the dinner date with Woody Allen and Epstein, Chomsky referred to the occasion as “an evening spent with a great artist.” When confronted with this evidence, Chomsky initially told the Journal that his meetings and relationship with Epstein were “none of your business. Or anyone’s.” He then added that “I knew him [Epstein] and we met occasionally.” Before continuing further, it is important to note that aside from Epstein, both Ehud Barak and Woody Allen have been accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with minors. For instance, Barak was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s residences in New York, so often that The Daily Beast reported that numerous residents of an apartment building linked to Epstein “had seen Barak in the building multiple times over the last few years, and nearly half a dozen more described running into his security detail,” adding that “the building is majority-owned by Epstein’s younger brother, Mark, and has been tied to the financier’s alleged New York trafficking ring.” Specifically, several apartments in the building were “being used to house underage girls from South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union,” according to a former bookkeeper employed by one of Epstein’s main procurers of underage girls, Jean Luc Brunel. Barak is also known to have spent the night at one of Epstein’s residences at least once, was photographed leaving Epstein’s residence as recently as 2016, and has admitted to visiting Epstein’s island, which has sported nicknames including “Pedo Island,” “Lolita Island” and “Orgy Island.” In 2004, Barak received $2.5 million from Leslie Wexner’s Wexner Foundation, where Epstein was a trustee as well as one of the foundation’s top donors, officially for unspecified “consulting services” and “research” on the foundation’s behalf. Several years later, Barak put Harvey Weinstein in contact with the Israeli private intelligence outfit Black Cube, which employs former Mossad agents and Israeli military intelligence operatives, as Weinstein sought to intimidate the women who had accused him of sexual assault and sexual harassment. In addition, Barak previously chaired and invested in Carbyne911, a controversial Israeli emergency services start-up that has expanded around the world and has become particularly entrenched in the United States. Barak had directed Epstein to invest $1 million into that company, which has been criticized as a potential tool for warrantless mass surveillance. Leslie Wexner also invested millions in the company. In Woody Allen’s case, he has been accused of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old. That abuse claim has been corroborated by witnesses and other evidence. Furthermore, Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by state police in connection with the investigation and lost four exhaustive court battles related to child custody and his abuse of Dylan Farrow. One of the judge’s in the case described Allen’s behavior towards Dylan as “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” Actress Mia Farrow, Dylan’s mother, alleged in court that Allen took a sexual interest in her adopted daughter when she was between the ages of two and three years old. Allen subsequently “seduced” and later married another adopted daughter of Farrow’s, Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen first met when Previn was a child. However, Previn has stated that her first “friendly” interaction with Allen took place when she was a teenager. In 1992, Mia Farrow found nude photos of Previn in Allen’s home and has stated that this was her motive for ending her relationship with Allen. In the case of Allen and Epstein, and potentially Barak as well, their sexual proclivities and scandals were well known by the time Chomsky met with these men, making a strong suggestion that this type of behavior was not seen by Chomsky as taboo or as a barrier to socialization. It is more likely than not that there was some other major draw that led Chomsky to overlook this type of horrendous behavior toward vulnerable minors. In terms of reaching a deeper understanding about why Epstein would have been interested in Chomsky – and vice versa, it is important to review – not just the information recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, but also what Epstein himself said of Chomsky before his 2019 death. According to an interview conducted in 2017, but later published in 2019 when Epstein was a major news topic, Epstein openly stated that he had invited Chomsky to his townhouse and he also explicitly stated why he had done so. Oddly, this early acknowledgement of Epstein’s regarding his relationship with Chomsky was left out of the Journal’s recent report. In that interview, which was conducted by Jeffrey Mervis and later published in Science, Epstein stated that following about Chomsky: […] Epstein readily admitted to asking prominent members of the scientific establishment to assess the potential contribution of these so-called outcasts [i.e. MIT students Epstein described as being “on the spectrum”]. “So, I had Jim Watson to the house, and I asked Watson, what does he think about this idea,” a proposal to study how the cellular mechanisms of plants might be relevant to human cancer. Watson is a Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. “Likewise with [Noam] Chomsky on artificial intelligence,” he said, referring to one of the pioneers in the field. In fact, Epstein expressed great respect for the opinions of these elder statesmen. “It’s funny to watch Noam Chomsky rip apart these young boys who talk about having a thinking machine,” Epstein noted. “He takes out a dagger and slices them, very kindly, into little shreds.” Thus, per Epstein, his interest in inviting Chomsky to his house was explicitly related to the “artificial intelligence,” which was a major scientific interest of Epstein’s. This also provides a major clue as to how Chomsky and Epstein might have first been introduced. Chomsky, Epstein and MIT Chomsky is most widely viewed as a famous linguist, political commentator and critic of modern capitalism and imperialism. So, why did Epstein seek to meet with him instead on Artificial Intelligence matters? Well, an admitted “friend” of both Chomsky’s and Epstein’s was the AI pioneer Marvin Minsky. Like Chomsky, Minsky was a long-time professor and academic at MIT. It is very possible that Minsky connected the two men, especially considering the fact that Epstein was a major donor to MIT. Epstein described himself as being “very close” to Minsky, who died in 2016, roughly a year after Epstein began meeting with Chomsky. Epstein also financed some of Minsky’s projects and Minsky, like Ehud Barak, was accused of sexually abusing the minors Epstein trafficked. Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition, for those who don’t know, is based very much on evolutionary biology. Chomsky was also a pioneer in cognitive science, described as “a field aimed at uncovering the mental representations and rules that underlie our perceptual and cognitive abilities.” Some have described Chomsky’s concept of language as based on “the complexity of internal representation, encoded in the genome, and their maturation in light of the right data into a sophisticated computational system, one that cannot be usefully broken down into a set of associations.” A person’s “language faculty,” per Chomsky, should be seen as “part of the organism’s genetic endowment, much like the visual system, the immune system and the circulatory system, and we ought to approach it just as we approach these other more down-to-earth biological systems.” Despite their friendship, Minsky greatly diverged with Chomsky in this view, with Minsky describing Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition as largely superficial and irrelevant. Chomsky later criticized the widely used approach with AI that focuses on statistical learning techniques to mine and predict data, which Chomsky argued was “unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition.” However, Chomsky’s views linking evolutionary biology/genetics with linguistics/cognition were notably praised by the aforementioned Martin Nowak, who had attended one of the meetings Epstein had with Chomsky. Nowak, a professor of biology and mathematics and head of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard, later stated that he had “once broke out a blackboard during dinner with Epstein and, for two hours, gave a mathematical description of how language works,” further revealing that Epstein was interested in aspects of linguistics. It is unclear if this particular meeting was the same that Chomsky had attended alongside Nowak to discuss “neuroscience” and other topics. However, given the importance of evolutionary biology and genetics to Chomsky’s theories, it is hardly surprising that Jeffrey Epstein would have gravitated more towards his views on AI than those of Minsky. Epstein was fascinated by genetics and, even per mainstream sources, was also deeply interested eugenics. Take for example the following from an article published in The Guardian in 2019: Epstein was apparently fixated on “transhumanism,” the belief that the human species can be deliberately advanced through technological breakthroughs, such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. At its most benign, transhumanism is a belief that humanity’s problems can be improved, upgraded even, through such technology as cybernetics and artificial intelligence – at its most malignant though, transhumanism lines up uncomfortably well with eugenics. Thus, Epstein’s interest in AI, genetics, and more was tied into his documented obsession with “transhumanism,” which – as several Unlimited Hangout reports have noted – is essentially a rebranding of eugenics. Indeed, the term transhumanism itself was first coined by Julian Huxley, the former president of the British Eugenics Society and the first head of UNESCO who called to make “the unthinkable thinkable again” with regards to eugenics. Aside from transhumanism, Epstein also had an avowed interest in “strengthening” the human gene pool, in part by impregnating as many women as possible with his “seed” in order to widely disperse his genes. These views may also explain Epstein’s interest in associating himself with people like James (Jim) Watson. As noted earlier in this article, Epstein stated in 2017 that he had invited both Watson and Chomsky to his home on separate occasions. Watson has been a controversial figures for years, particularly after he openly stated that people of African descent are genetically inferior and less intelligent than their European counterparts. He also previously promoted the idea that women should abort babies that carried a “gay gene,” were such a gene ever discovered. He also felt that gene editing should be used to make all women “prettier” and to eradicate “stupidity.” Notably, Watson made all of these comments well before Epstein invited him to his home. Watson was also praised, controversially, after these same comments by another Epstein-funded scientist, Eric Lander. Lander, who was recently Biden’s top science advisor, was forced to resign from that post last year after being accused of harassing those who worked under him in the Biden administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Lander had collaborated with Watson on the Human Genome Project and later ran the Broad Institute, a non-profit born out of collaboration between MIT and Harvard. Returning to Chomsky, though he may not have been aware of Epstein’s interests in eugenics and transhumanism, it has since become clear that Epstein’s main interest in Artificial Intelligence – his stated purpose for courting Chomsky – was intimately tied to these controversial disciplines. However, Chomsky did know of Epstein’s past, and likely also knew of Woody Allen’s similar past before meeting him as well. He turned a blind eye on those matters, telling the Journal that Epstein had “served his sentence” and, as a result, had been granted a “clean slate.” In saying this, Chomsky is apparently unaware of Epstein’s controversial “sweetheart deal” that resulted in an extremely lenient sentence and non-prosecution agreement. That “deal” was signed off on by then-US Attorney Alex Acosta because Acosta was told to “back off” Epstein because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Chomsky had previously told several people, including an Unlimited Hangout reader, that an Epstein-intelligence agency connection is a “conspiracy theory.” Given Chomsky’s odd views on Epstein’s past and the fact that Epstein frequently discussed transhumanism and eugenics around other prominent scientists, it is possible, though unproven, that Chomsky may have known more about Epstein’s true interests in AI and genetics. Would Chomsky have been willing to overlook these ethical conundrums? Given his political views on capitalism and foreign policy, many would likely say that he would not. However, finding ways to circumvent these ethical conundrums with respect to AI may have been one of Epstein’s main reasons for heavily funding MIT, particularly its Media Lab. Epstein, in addition to his own donations, also funneled millions of dollars from Bill Gates and Leon Black to the Media Lab. According to former Media Lab employee Rodrigo Ochigame, writing in The Intercept, Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab – who took lots of donations from Epstein and attempted to hide Epstein’s name on official records – was focused on developing “ethics” for AI that were “aligned strategically with a Silicon Valley effort seeking to avoid legally enforceable restrictions of controversial technologies.” Ito later resigned his post at the Media Lab due to fallout from the Epstein scandal. Ochigame writes: A key group behind this effort, with the lab as a member, made policy recommendations in California that contradicted the conclusions of research I conducted with several lab colleagues, research that led us to oppose the use of computer algorithms in deciding whether to jail people pending trial. Ito himself would eventually complain, in private meetings with financial and tech executives, that the group’s recommendations amounted to “whitewashing” a thorny ethical issue. “They water down stuff we try to say to prevent the use of algorithms that don’t seem to work well” in detention decisions, he confided to one billionaire. I also watched MIT help the U.S. military brush aside the moral complexities of drone warfare, hosting a superficial talk on AI and ethics by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and notorious war criminal, and giving input on the U.S. Department of Defense’s “AI Ethics Principles” for warfare, which embraced “permissibly biased” algorithms and which avoided using the word “fairness” because the Pentagon believes “that fights should not be fair.” Ochigame also cites Media Lab colleagues who say that Marvin Minsky, who worked with the Lab before his death, was known to say that “an ethicist is someone who has a problem with whatever you have in your mind.” Also troubling is the fact that Ito, and by extension the Media Lab, played a role in shaping White House policy with respect to AI. For instance, Obama called Ito an “expert” on AI and ethics during an interview with him in 2016. Ito, on his conversation with Obama, said the following: “[…] the role of the Media Lab is to be a connective tissue between computer science, and the social sciences, and the lawyers, and the philosophers […] What’s cool is that President Obama gets that.” If you are Jeffrey Epstein, with a history of illegal and criminal activity, and interested in avoiding the regulation of controversial technologies you feel are necessary to advance your vision of transhumanism/eugenics, financing groups that greatly influence “ethics” policies that helps limit the regulation of those technologies would obviously benefit you. Ochigame goes on to write: Thus, Silicon Valley’s vigorous promotion of “ethical AI” has constituted a strategic lobbying effort, one that has enrolled academia to legitimize itself. Ito played a key role in this corporate-academic fraternizing, meeting regularly with tech executives. The MIT-Harvard fund’s initial director was the former “global public policy lead” for AI at Google. Through the fund, Ito and his associates sponsored many projects, including the creation of a prominent conference on “Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency” in computer science; other sponsors of the conference included Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Notably, Epstein was tied into these same circles. He was very, very close, not just with Bill Gates, but with several other top Microsoft executives and was also known to have a close relationship with Google’s Sergey Brin, who has recently been subpoenaed in the Epstein-JPMorgan case, as well as Facebook/Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Notably, many of these same companies are currently pioneering transhumanist technologies, particularly in healthcare, and are deeply tied to either the military or intelligence, if not both. The MIT-AI-Military Connection Chomsky is just one of several prominent academics and intellectuals who were courted by Epstein in an attempt to supercharge the development of technologies that could help bring his controversial obsessions to fruition. Notably, many of these characters, including Chomsky, have had their work – at one point or another – funded by the U.S. military, which has itself long been a major driver of AI research. For example, Minsky and Danny Hillis, a close associate of Epstein’s in his own right, co-created a DARPA contractor and supercomputer firm called Thinking Machines, which was aimed at creating a “truly intelligent machine. One that can see and hear and speak. A machine that will be proud of us,” according to one company brochure. Minsky was Hillis’ mentor at MIT and the pair sought out Sheryl Handler, who worked for a genetic-engineering start-up at Harvard called the Genetics Institute, to help them create their supercomputer firm. Thinking Machines, which made poor business decisions routinely from the beginning, was only able to function for as long as it did due to multi-million dollar contracts it had secured from the Pentagon’s DARPA. With the close of Cold War, DARPA sought to use its clout with Thinking Machines to push the company to develop a product that could deal with things like modeling the global climate, mapping the human genome and predicting earthquakes. Subsequent reporting from the Wall Street Journal showed that the agency had been “playing favorites” and Thinking Machine’s “gravy train” abruptly ended due to the bad publicity, subsequently leading to the collapse of the company. Hillis, around this time, met Jeffrey Epstein. The introduction may have been brokered by former Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, a friend of Hillis’ who grew close to Epstein in the 1990s and even took Epstein on an official Microsoft trip to Russia. Myhrvold, who was also named as an abuser of the minors Epstein trafficked, was one of the other top Microsoft officials who was close to Epstein beginning in the 1990s. Another was Linda Stone, who later connected Jeffrey Epstein to Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab. As previously mentioned, Epstein would later direct the long-time head of Microsoft, Bill Gates, to donate millions to the Media Lab. Chomsky’s own history at MIT brought him into contact with the military. For instance, during the early 1960s, Chomsky received funding from the Air Force, which aimed to program a computer with Chomsky’s insights about grammar in an attempt to endow it “with the ability to recognize instructions imparted to it in perfectly ordinary English, thereby eliminating a necessity for highly specialized languages that intervene between a man and a computer.” Chomsky later stated of the military funding of his early career that “I was in a military lab. If you take a look at my early publications, they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics.” Chomsky has since denied that military funding shaped his linguistics work in any significant way and has claimed that the military is used by the government “as a kind of a funnel by which taxpayer money was being used to create the hi-tech economy of the future.” However, reports have noted that this particular project was very much tied to military applications. In addition, the man who first recruited Chomsky to MIT in the mid-1950s, Jerome Wiesner, went on to be Chomsky’s boss at MIT for over 20 years as well as “America’s most powerful military scientist.” To Chomsky’s credit, after this program ended, he became fully, and publicly, committed to anti-war activism. This activism led him, at one point, to consider resigning from MIT, which he declined to do – likely because he was rather quickly granted professorship. As Chris Knight writes, “this meant that instead of resigning, Chomsky’s choice was to launch himself as an outspoken anti-militarist activist even while remaining in one of the US’s most prestigious military labs.” By staying at MIT, Chomsky chose to maintain his career, in relative proximity to the centers of power he would later become an icon for denouncing. However, it shows that Chomsky, from this time onward, began to make some choices that undermined his radicalism to an extent. Chomsky may have rationalized his decision to stay at MIT in the 1960s because it gave him a better platform from which to espouse his political and anti-war views. It is not unheard of for prominent public figures to make such compromises. However, in light of the recent Epstein revelations and what they appear to signal, it seems that Chomsky, particularly in his later years, may have become too comfortable and too willing to make these types of compromises – ones that a much younger Chomsky would have surely rejected.

Like many others, I see no direct evidence of Israeli involvement in the assassination, but have many questions about the cover-up. That said, the case of de Gaulle suggests a little caution is in order, as there is still much we don't know about the former. The following extracts are from Sylvia K. Crosbie's 1974 work, Tacit Alliance: France and Israel from Suez to the Six Day War (Princeton UP, 0691075573):

The USA – What Democracy? Craig Murray May 3, 2023 https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/05/the-usa-what-democracy/ Joe Biden will very probably be re-elected. No incumbent President has ever lost a primary (though it should be remembered the current primary system is younger than me). Only one sitting President has ever not been selected by their party to stand again, and that was knocking on two hundred years ago. Both Biden’s main primary challenger, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump, are less than enthusiastic about promoting massive war in Europe and risking nuclear obliteration. (I hope everyone in the UK enjoyed the nationwide new alert test the other day and spent a few moments contemplating whether they would die instantly or slowly in agony). The military industrial complex simply cannot permit a non-hawkish President. The sums of money at stake are enormous. Trump, for all his many faults, was the only President in recent memory not to have started any wars. I know he continued some, but his entire Presidency needs to be seen as a dialectic between Trump and the intelligence service/military power base, in which to his credit Trump was never captured as completely as Obama. (Clinton and the Bush family did not need to be captured, they were always true believers). Thirteen months ago, I wrote this: The Biden laptop was leaked on 14 October 2020, three weeks before voting day in the Presidential election. Its suppression by the mainstream media, Twitter and Facebook, at the behest of the security services, is the biggest illegitimate interference in an election in modern western history. The evidence has piled up since. It is truly astounding that incalculable volumes of media coverage have been given to largely groundless accusations of Russian interference in US Presidential elections, when this actual, entirely proven interference in a US Presidential Election, which arguably was key to Biden’s election, has in itself been largely suppressed. The letter released by 51 former US intelligence officials, telling what we now know to be the outright lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation”, was initiated by the Biden campaign, according to sworn testimony from former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell – who was willingly a part of it with the declared aim of wanting Biden to win. If you are not fully up to speed with this, this Wall Street Journal podcast is excellent. It should be recalled that, apart from all the sex and drugs, the laptop contained emails showing plainly Hunter Biden leveraging his father’s influence to obtain lucrative business deals with, inter alia, Ukraine and China. Three weeks before a close election, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could undoubtedly have swayed it, if it had not been massively and falsely derided as a Russian hoax by almost the entire mainstream media, and censored to death by Twitter and Facebook. Since Elon Musk released Twitter files, we have known for certain that the FBI orchestrated the suppression of the story on social media. This Twitter thread is five months old but remains a must read. It is, I think, the epitome of the corruption of modern mainstream media that, if you go to the CNN website you can still find a “fact check” item from CNN which states that Donald Trump was promoting Russian disinformation by referring to the Hunter Biden laptop. Google searches differ depending on the person making them. But try this. Google for the exposure of the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian hoax” as itself misinformation. How many stories come up for you from the “liberal” media, from the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Guaridan etc? I get nothing on from them on the front page of my google search except the old CNN misinformation. That says a great deal both about the legacy media – and about Google. So we have conclusive evidence from the Hunter Biden laptop story that the security services, corporate media and corporate internet gatekeepers were in cahoots to ensure the election of Joe Biden. What we see now is the same forces working to ensure that he is re-elected. Now read this from Robert F Kennedy’s campaign website: In the long term, a nation’s strength does not come from its armies. America spends as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the country has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years. Even as its military technology has reigned supreme, America has been hollowing out from the inside. We cannot be a strong or secure nation when our infrastructure, industry, society, and economy are infirm. A high priority of a Kennedy administration will be to make America strong again. When a body is sick, it withdraws its energy from the extremities in order to nourish the vital organs. It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance. As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country. This is astonishing stuff to be put before the American people from the scion of one of the great American political dynasties. (I am aware of his chequered past, his support for Hillary over Bernie, and his Covid vaccine scepticism, though the latter appears to be more based on his long term commitment to tackling the profiteering and corrupt influence of big Pharma than an actual anti-vaccine stance). I did not predict that the USA would become a gerontocracy. Biden shows signs of the mental decay that is a natural part of the human condition. He will not have to face Kennedy in any Primary debates – the NDC could be relied on to stitch up that potentially huge hurdle for him – but the risk of Biden detariorating further mentally in a way that is impossible to hide must exist for anyone of his age. So the Kennedy challenge is not without a slim hope. A slim hope for a declared opponent of the military industrial complex is one hope too many, therefore the twin agencies of social media suppression and corporate media ridicule have already swung in to action against Kennedy. The challenge must be choked at birth. The range of acceptable opinion to the US Establishment is now extremely narrow. Trump remains an enigma. He is a mixture of far right prejudice and serious outbursts of commonsense. I do not doubt that he does have interests beyond the personal advancement of Donald J Trump, but only in an incidental way. In Ukraine we are either going to see death and destruction on a scale well beyond the terrible horrors already inflicted, or there is ultimately going to be a deal involving the ceding of some territory to Russia (Crimea+, as my FCO sources tell me it is currently called in Beijing based diplomacy). Trump says this. It is the kind of thing that makes the US military-industrial-security service complex hate him, as they are seeing super profits, massive resources and political influence stretching ahead for at least another five years. They don’t care at all how many Eastern Europeans die. Trump is a much greater threat to Biden, and the full weight of the state is therefore being thrown into stopping him through lawfare. Some of this is very dubious, and subject to the perfectly true response that Bill Clinton was never prosecuted for remarkably identical behaviours. Watching the agencies of the state find a way to stop Trump is going to be fascinating. Russiagate was a hoax. There is however a real interference with what the public are allowed to know which makes the notion of “democracy” in the USA meaningless, and that is the interference of the security state of the USA itself. Those interests got Biden into power, and will do everything and literally anything to help him stay there. The British security state is of course complicit. A final thought. It is fast approaching a year since Julian Assange submitted his High Court appeal against extradition, and still the High Court has not even decided if it will hear the appeal or not. We had initially hoped the actual hearing might be before last Christmas. The Assange prosecution is not popular in the USA, where even the mainstream media have come out against charging a journalist with espionage. In addition everybody can now see the parallel with Evan Gershkovich and potential impact of Assange’s treatment on Gershkovich. Assange’s arrival in Washington would be a free speech cause celebre with the potential to alienate some liberal support from Biden in a close election. The US security services therefore still very much want Julian imprisoned for life – but they do not want him extradited until after Biden is safely re-elected. The British government therefore need to keep Julian in maximum security in Belmarsh for another two years, to keep the Biden campaign and its security service backers happy. This can only be done by introducing lengthy and unnecessary delays into the judicial process. We see that happening, or rather we see it “inexplicably” not happening, before our very eyes. The senior British judiciary do what the security services tell them to do. Discreetly suggested, in the club.

Most of The Spectator, give or take the vagaries of automated text scanning, is now available here: http://archive.spectator.co.uk/issues

If this were true, there would have been no need for NIST to lie about an important component of the construction of WTC7. Yet lie NIST did:

Berlet for Beginners Portland Free Press, July/August 1995 by Ace R. Hayes https://www.geocities.ws/berletwatch/ace.htm Reporting gets complicated when the subject becomes a personal antagonist of a reporter. John Foster "Chip" Berlet has been involved, over the past half decade, in attacking virtually every independent critic of the Imperial State that the reader can name. In his propaganda screed "Right Woos Left" (published by his employer, Political Research Associates -- PRA). which first came out in 1990, he attacked the Christic Institute, Ramsay Clark, Mark Lane, Fletcher Prouty, et al. His most recent attack via the Internet had this bizarre statement (24 April 1995): "Key individuals promoting scapegoaling conspiracism from both the left and the right include Mark Koernke, Sherman Skolnick, David Emory, John Judge, Ace Hayes and Dan Brandt." The only person on his list I don't know to some degree is Mark Koernke -- who is the Imperial State "militia terrorist" poster boy -- tho' some people wonder if "Marrk of Michigan" might have some funny connections of his own with the Agencies who put him on the poster. The other people, whom I do know, are not a mutual- admiration society, with a couple who actively despise each other. But, Berlet charges all of us equally with "scapegoating conspiracism." What, pray tell, does this mean? Whom have I "scapegoated"? And I defy anyone to provide a rational definition of "conspiracism" (see sidebar) -- it is not in any dictionary owned by this reporter. So, it must be a Berletian neologism which he invokes against those who actively challenge the Imperial State's power, ethics and legitimacy. Given that John Foster Berlet has publicly slandered me and suggested that the Imperial State should target me once again, I am not an unbiased reporter in the following investigation. The reason Berlet deserves investigation is that he turns up like a bad penny in every media venue you would care to know about. He has been on CBS News with Dan Rather, on Dateline NBC; he has been in the New York Times, the Progressive, and turns up as an "expert" from Covert Action Quarterly to The New Yorker. This is a person with such media presence that, since he is bogus, he is a serious threat to any understanding of Imperial State conspiracies against the people. If John Foster "Chip" Berlet were denied the use of ad hominum attacks, he would be rendered mute. Just revoking his use of the phrase "paranoid conspiracy theory" would leave gaping holes in his screeds. His reliance on name-calling is an indicator of his level of intellectual competence, research credibility and ethical standards. But, what is worse, he lies. His lies are not merely little self-promotional fibs and deceits. They are big, really big, misrepresentations of fact. One example is his story about his relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It changes to suit his immediate propaganda needs. On the Internet, 23 May 1995, Berlet posts the brass-balled claim that "Neither PRA nor I have any relationship to ADL other than running into them at meetings, an occasional conversation on the phone and reading our respective publications." Berlet's contempt for truth is only exceeded by his faith in universal amnesia concerning his documented history. In the 11 May 1993 issue of Israeli Foreign Affairs he was interviewed by Jane Hunter for an article titled, "Who Was The ADL Spying For?" He was quoted as saying, "I had had quite a cordial professional relationship with the ADL...." George Cothran and Peter Hegarty at San Francisco Weekly interviewed Berlet for their 28 April 1993 article, "Spies For Zion." They wrote that "[Chip Berlet and Russ Bellant] had been doing research in cooperation with ADL, on Lyndon LaRouche." Robert I. Friedman at Village Voice had an article, 11 May 1993, entitled "The Enemy Within." The article says that "[Bellant and Berlet] asked to meet fact-finding head [read Director, ADL Espionage] Irwin Suall to discuss their work on anti-Semite Lyndon LaRouche." The New York City Jewish newspaper "Forward" published an article, "Letter from Boston," by Dale Miller on 22 January 1993 which blows Mr. Berlet's cover yet again. Hollis Mosher goes back to the anti-Commie crusade of the '50s when he helped "indict 7 Communist Party functionaries" in Suffolk County. When he was not playing informant for the FBI, Mosher "has been useful as a conduit in passing information to watchdog organizations, such as PRA, of Cambridge, Mass." Further, Berlet admits to being the conduit for information from Mosher to ADL. Quoting again from the article, "Mr. Berlet said, '... he (Mosher) told us who he was and what he did. Little by little he began showing us things. As he began to see how we operate, he began to bring us publications.'" This running of an ex-anti-Commie FBI informant by Berlet is confirmed in the same article where Leonard Zakim, ADL's New England Region Executive Director, is interviewed. "Although Mr. Zakim says the ADL has not dealt with Mr. Mosher, he expressed high regard for Mr. Berlet and PRA. 'I have found Chip Berlet to be reliable and knowledgeable on extremists and extremist groups in this area,' he said, 'and the information that PRA has shared with us has been very useful.'" So, Berlet was running agents for the ADL until at least 1993. Further, the lead paragraph of Ms. Hunter's article in Israeli Foreign Affairs, 11 May 1993, is of special interest: "Chip Berlet..., who specializes in some of the same rightist organizations the ADL professes to combat, told IFA that several years ago 'a senior ADL official' warned him of 'people in the ADL who reported directly to [Irwin] Suall and it would be wise to assume that information would be made available to the FBI, CIA and Mossad.'" Since Berlet knew for years that any reports he filed with ADL went to FBI, CIA and Mossad (Israel's counterpart to our CIA), how can he now put on the mask of innocence? He claimed in the same Internet post that "I even refused to cooperate with the FBI when it was investigating neo-fascist LaRouche." Does working through a known government espionage cut-out indicate anything other than witting collusion with same? Spy v. spy is more than a cartoon strip in Mad Magazine. Pseudo-private spy operations being run by the various Imperial State Secret Services are quite as Byzantine as they have been in any other imperial epoch. In fact, Elite control of economic and political power requires spies and agents on all flanks. Any person, group or organization which could or would threaten that central Elite power is equally to be watched, controlled and -- if needed -- wrecked. Thus, it should not be a big surprise if the watchers, controllers and wreckers will hurl thunderbolts at one another in their professional roles and then get together for drinks and mutual plotting. "The FBI And Right-Wing Spy Networks" by "Chip" Berlet revised 6 February 1991. This is "#5, Political Rights Information Series, distributed by the Movement Support Network of the Center for Constitutional Rights." It is a fire-breathing attack against John Rees, his legions of pseudo-private spooks and their corrupt involvement with FBI and other government agencies. What makes it of such interest is that it seems to be the case that Mr. Berlet (along with Messrs. Russ Bellant and Dennis King, who will come up later) were funded in cash by the self-same John Rees to attend a secret meeting in 1983. Mr. Berlet hurled his finest verbal thunder bolts at his benefactor in this screed. He also denounced virtually every crime of which the ADL was charged in 1993 and which seem to apply equally to himself. Excerpts from Berlet's absolutely valid attack against Rees follow: "Louise and John Rees have edited Information Digest for over twenty years, during which time they not only worked with far-right political groups such as the John Birch Society and Church League of America, but also provided information to the FBI, congressional committees, and local police intelligence units. "The Hunt for Red Menace." "The FBI has a long history of collaborating with right-wing groups to attack movements for peace and social justice, in much the same way as Oliver North relied on right-wing groups to both raise funds for the Contras, and serve as a public lightning rod to hide his own CIA-backed operation. In fact, some of the same players North orchestrated in the off-the-shelf private foreign policy drama were also involved in the off-the-shelf private domestic intelligence network -- a network which conducts surveillance of progressive groups, and then feeds the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other public law enforcement and intelligence agencies. "This loosely-knit cooperative network passes information both formally and informally as part of an obsessive anti-subversive witch hunt based on a paranoid conspiratorial world view. The network survives through different presidential administrations, working inside and outside of government agencies and Congressional committees, and pursues its goals in the public and private sectors with little regard for legislative or constitutional safeguards. It sees itself as composed of later-day knights on a patriotic crusade... and sees all dissenters as infidels. "Right-wing Intelligence Networks" "Within the right-wing conspiracy-mongering milieu are a handful of organizations which specialize in monitoring the activities of progressive activists. Whether they are sneaky spys [sic] or enterprising journalists generally depends on one's political perspective. "The main right-wing intelligence-gathering networks are the John Rees Information Digest network, and the Council for Inter-American Security network of L. (Lynn) Francis Bouchey. The other two main domestic intelligence operations are the networks run by two cults, the neo-fascist Lyndon LaRouche, and the theocratic authoritarian Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Dozens of smaller groups also exist. "The largest operation is run by Rees, a veritable right-wing spymaster who has published Information Digest, a gossipy newsletter, for over twenty years. John Rees and his wife Sheila Louise Rees spent several years in the late sixties and early seventies infiltrating progressive organizations and reporting their results to the John Birch Society and the FBI.... "John Rees spent the early years of the Reagan administration as the spymaster for the right-wing Western Goals Foundation. The Foundation was the brainchild of the late Rep. Larry McDonald, former leader of the John Birch Society. Western Goals published several small books warning of the growing domestic red menace, and solicited funds to create a computer database on American subversives. The Foundation was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) when it was caught attempting to computerize references to 'subversive' files pilfered from the disbanded Los Angeles Police Department 'Red Squad.'" [This is the perfect analogue with ADL's being caught in San Francisco with SF and Portland Police Department files in 1993.] There is no reason to disagree with the thesis Mr. Berlet advances in this piece. It is quite true that "right-wing intelligence networks" work for and with Imperial State spy agencies. However, the ADL does precisely the same thing. So does PRA and all sorts of regional spy operations being run by the ADL as cut-outs for Imperial State Secret Service. Thus, the hidden proposition that only right-wing spies are spies is simply absurd. So, Berlet is a xxxx, a spook and a cog in the Imperial Secret Service, which is documented in Mr. Herbert Quinde's sworn affidavit in the LaRouche federal appeal. It closes the circle between the John Birch Society and the ADL -- it puts the CIA, FBI, NSC and the various spooks of left and right into the same room at the same time to plot together against a common "enemy." The Baltimore Sun magazine, 5 June 1988, had a major article by Doug Birch on John Herbert Rees. In the article, John F. 'Chip' Berlet is quoted as saying that, "he was introduced to Richard Mellon Scaife, the conservative multi-millionaire from Pittsburgh, at a recent conference about extremist Lyndon LaRouche, staged by Information Digest." (This is John Rees' publication, denounced so often by Berlet.) This is enough independent evidence to permit me to take the sworn affidavit by Quinde at face value. Quoting from the Quinde affidavit (Sec. 13 through 16) is quite interesting: "13. Mr. Berlet, an associate of Dennis King, stated to me on August 9, 1990, that individuals present at the meeting he attended at Train's residence [see documentation at end of article for information on Train] in 1983 had sworn never to discuss the meeting. He stated his trip to the meeting was financed, in cash, by John Rees and that Dennis King and Russ Bellant were also brought to the meeting by John Rees. The fact that Mr. Rees provided the financing for Mr. Berlet to attend the meeting was surprising to me. Mr. Berlet has investigated Mr. Rees for years, calling him America's 'premier right-wing spy,' and characterizing his activities against his targets as illegal action conducted 'privately' in conjunction with the Government in order to circumvent government restraints on such activities. I commented on this to Mr. Berlet. Mr. Berlet told me that Rees financed the participation of King, Bellant and himself in the Train meeting in order to allow for the presentation of their views on LaRouche to a conservative audience. "14: Mr. Berlet further stated that Roy Godson, Michael Hudson, Rael Jean Isaac, Patricia Lynch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Virginia Armat, a woman from the ADL, Train, and Rees were also present at this meeting. Berlet also told me that he was introduced to many other individuals at the meeting who were simply identified as 'gentlemen with a government connection.' "15. Berlet also told me that the funding for Dennis King's book, Lyndon LaRouche - The New American Fascism, New York: Doubleday, 1989, was arranged at this meeting. According to acknowledgments in the book, the financing came from the League for Industrial Democracy and the Smith-Richardson Foundation. John Train's name appears in the acknowledgments to that book. "16. I interviewed John Rees on November 6, 1990. He stated that he attended anti-LaRouche meetings at John Train's home in the spring and fall of 1983 and in the spring of 1984. He described Train's purpose in holding the meetings as the next follow-up project to Train's work against the Institute for Policy Studies. He did not substantially disclose additional attendees at the meetings, citing Berlet, Lynch, Cleo Patrius, Rael Jean Isaac, Richard Mellon Scaife, Russ Bellant, Dennis King, John Train, Virginia Armat, and Michael Hudson. He stated that Virginia Armat prepared the chart utilized at the meetings." This should be a wake-up call for every politically conscious citizen of the country, no matter what political flag you think you fly. Here is the Readers Digest; John Birch Society; National Security Council; Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Political Research Associates; Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith; National Endowment for Democracy; New Republic; National Broadcasting Corporation; Wall Street Journal; League for Industrial Democracy and Social Democrats, USA; among others, all together as one big happy family in John Train's living room. Think about this. Don't all the sheep dogs work for the farmer? Berlet is not alone in covert operations with the Imperial Secret Service for the Imperial State. Gloria Steinem worked for CIA in the '60s and has never renounced her past. ADL had one of Tom Metzger's top aids on its payroll. KKK units were founded by FBI agents. ADL ran an agent code named "Hot Spurs" inside the Aryan Nations who was "very close with its chief of security." A major Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) bomber in the 60s was working for the FBI. David Duke has family ties to CIA. ADL had skinheads on its payroll in Portland, Ore. Southern Poverty Law Center has funded white supremacists. PRA has been funded by the Beacon Fund whose only documentable existence was as a CIA funding conduit. The Imperial Secret Service is ubiquitous. (See documentation at end of article) Money is the mother's milk of American politics. Money is funneled into organizations, publications and individuals who will protect the Imperial State from its people. The best protection it has is a condition of low-intensity conflict between and among various population segments. Thus, we get divisions based on race, sex, religion, etc., to keep people fighting each other. The role and function of Berlet and all his clones is to protect the Imperial State through fabrication of fear and hatred among that portion of the population which they can influence. Since no one person, publication or organization can possibly create and maintain irrational popular conflicts over trivia, there must be many, many such covert operations. Most of the funded entities from left to right are corrupt, co-opted and compromised by the Imperial State. Thus, no matter which Imperial Secret Service pied piper is chosen, the people who follow them are fools. Berlet, Rees, Dees, Weyrich, Gingrich and Clinton are functionally identical. They all fill their assigned roles in protecting and enhancing the Imperial State, while the Imperial Secret Service murders, bombs and spies as needed to ensure that there will be a credible basis for popular conflict. Documentation: John Train: A Wall Street lawyer and broker who headed the CIA Afghanistan Relief Committee, is a member of Council on Foreign Relations and has been involved in a number of questionable activities over the years. Covert Action Information Bulletin #30, 1988, and CounterSpy, Spring 1980, are useful sources. Gloria Steinem & CIA: 1. Black-listed News - Secret Histories from Chicago to 1984 / the New Yippie Book Collective, 1983 (ISBN 0-912873-00-0), Bleacker Pub. 2 articles: "Inside the CIA with Gloria Steinem, by Nancy Bowman -- Overthrow," July 1979, p. 117-122; "Did Rocky Buy Women's Movement?" YIPster Times, April 1976, p. 104-105 2. The Chairman: John J. McCloy, the Making of the American Establishment, by Kai Bird, 1992, (ISBN 0-671-454 15-3) Simon & Schuster, NY, p. 482-485 ADL running Metzger: Inspector Ron Roth, San Francisco Police Dept. Documents - Exhibit "C". SFPD interview with Roy Bullock, 25/26 Jan. '93, p. 78, "... we financed 'scumbag,' who rose into the ranks of the WAR (White Aryan Resistance) Unit, until he became the voice of WAR over the telephone.... [scumbag] was able to supply us with the code, whereby you could get into the voice mail. And I wrote up a whole series of those called, I think 'Operation Eavesdrop.'" p. 82 "... I would go over to the ATF office and sit down with [blocked out] and scumbag would then come up, join us and ... we'd get a report on what had happened." FBI-KKK: This information is from personal files of unredacted records from a Texas operation which were provided me by a personal friend whose family bad been a friend of the FBI agent and KKK organizer. I will provide more information on this in future editions of the PFP. ADL - "Hot Spurs": SFPD interview, p. 23 SDS-FBI Bomber: This information was provided by private investigator Phil Stanford in a personal conversation. David Duke and the CIA: Covert Action Information Bulletin, #16, March 1982, "Behind the Klan's Karibbean Koup Attempt," part II, by Ken Lawrence, p. 21 and 44-45 ADL, Portland skinhead payroll: Portland, Oregon Bureau of Police, Inter-office Memorandum, July 27, 1993,from Det. Frank Jolly, "Conclusion of ADL Investigation." "Officer Siewert [Portland Police Department] has given the example that on occasion he and Bullock [ADL] would have different informants [spies] infiltrated into certain White Supremacy groups and they would cross check each other's informant's information to verify its accuracy." p. 2 Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) funding white supremacists: PDXS, Feb. 27-March 12, 1995, "Dave Mazzolla: Saint or Sinner?" by Jim Redden, in a feature entitled, "Snitching for a Living." "... Mazzolla described the SPLC's witness protection program as a 'contract.' ... He said the Center wanted to keep him out of public view until the Metzgers had finished appealing the multi-million dollar judgment against them.... They [SPLC] kept me sheltered until the appeals were final, so that Metzger wouldn't have anything to get back in court with. Not that I lied or anything like that..." Political Research Associates (PRA) -- Beacon Fund: "PRA - Unmasking the Political Right" A Ten Year Report 1981-1991," p. 17 Future issues of PFP will include the letters which document the black hole of Imperial State stonewalling by PRA. Sidebar: Where did this word "conspiracism" come from? This word "conspiracism," turned up in a 19 June 1995 New Yorker article by Michael Kelly entitled "The Road To Paranoia." Kelly interviews Berlet, et al., for the piece, and goes one step beyond to "fusion paranoia by conspiracists." This article is recommended because it is a classic propaganda effort to prove that you should not see the reality which is well described in the article itself. The same reality is presented honestly in the June 95 Harper's magazine by Michael Lind. His article is "To Have and Have Not: Notes on the Progress of the American Class War." If one reads both articles, they will have the truth and a textbook example of Imperial disinformation. Lind says, here is the Imperial system, this is how it works and it is screwing you. Kelly says, here is the Imperial system which is screwing you and if you believe any of this you are a paranoid conspiracist.

John Barbour on Black Op Radio, show #435, August 6, 2009, 44:40 until 47:36. Here’s a fascinating example of mischievous (film?) students at work, sometime in 1969 or the early 1970s, combining Rather’s commentary with the version of the Zapruder film that was released unofficially via the Garrison prosecution of Clay Shaw. Note that this version is not the same one as that described above by John Barbour; and that the edited extracts from Rather’s radio commentary did not originate from the transcript provided by Richard Trask. We are therefore listening to a selected elements of a second and different CBS radio commentary provided by Rather in the course of Monday, 25 November 1963: https://youtu.be/bI50fgzwaKc

I am, er, delighted to welcome O J Groden to the list of converts to the previously heretical position that the Muchmore film was not shown on WNEW-TV in the first hour of Tuesday, 26 November. https://youtu.be/YHCUcP8O7HM?t=9598 I assume he intended this somewhat startling reversal, but I am open to arguments that it was just another enormous O J Groden cock-up. I Rather hope the latter.

On the evening of Monday, 25 November 1963, two (of only three) films held to capture the assassination of President Kennedy were being worked upon. According to widely believed myths of the assassination films’ histories, the film attributed to Abraham Zapruder was supposedly being suppressed as a film, but not as still photographs, a select number of which were being readied for publication in Life magazine’s first post-assassination edition (dated 29 November, though going to press late on 25 November or early the following day). The film attributed to Muchmore, by contrast, was being prepared for distribution as a film, but not as still photographs. None of these widely accepted claims, some of which have been previously examined in this thread, withstand scrutiny. Consider the case of the Zapruder stills. Their public debut occurred not within the covers of Life magazine’s first post-assassination edition, but within a newspaper on an island over three thousand miles away – and 5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time in the US. The Daily Express was Britain’s biggest selling daily paper at the time, boasting an established and much prized reputation for its use of photographs. On the evening of Monday, 25 November, it went to press with 11 stills, the earliest the frame we now number 230, from the Zapruder film. There was no question that the publication was authorised - “Copyright 1963 Life Magazine Time Incorporated. All rights reserved,” ran the conclusion of an accompanying piece about Zapruder and his film – or last minute: The photos appeared over two pages deep within that day’s edition, and not on the cover pages traditionally reserved for last minute insertions, additions, or revisions. So how and why did a British morning paper get such a jump on the US press? The conventional answer would likely dwell on the decades-long relationship between Lord Beaverbrook & Henry Luce, the respective owners of the Express & Time-Life. There were, after all, important similarities in background, method and ideology: Both men were sons of Presbyterian ministers; forged vast and influential media empires which they used ruthlessly to advance policies and politicians they supported; and were obsessive and unapologetic imperialists, both of whom had flirted (or worse) with fascism. Their relationship was further cemented by Luce’s two-year affair (1959-1961) with Beaverbrook’s grand-daughter, Lady Jeanne Campbell, who, after a spell as an Evening Standard correspondent in the US, had been working as a researcher at Time, and was subsequently promoted, by an enamoured and plainly grateful Luce, to Life. All of which is true, relevant - and inadequate. Sufficient, yes, to explain the Luce-Beaverbook collaboration, say, in the December 1963 race to capture photographs of the burning cruise ship the Lakonia off the Portuguese coast, but not the Zapruder frames exclusive. Beaverbrook knew enough about Anglo-American intelligence services to fear and never oppose them, as he was to reveal in a letter of reproof to Lady Jeanne Campbell after she committed the faux pas of criticising the CIA in an early despatch for the Evening Standard in 1956. Luce and his empire were the public face of the elite domestic institutional-oligarchical resistance to Kennedy’s policies. Both he and his media were joined at the hip with the CIA. The latter, as we saw in the previous post, was actively pushing, through CBS’ radio and television networks, for the showing of the first version of the Zapruder film on Monday, 25 November. So did the release of those eleven frames by Life to the Daily Express have anything to do with that CIA push? Here the case of the Muchmore film is instructive. Contrary to the impression given by Richard Trask et al, that film was only one element in a package, not the totality of UPI Newsfilms’ work with it, as Maurice W. Schonfeld’s second 2011 epilogue to his 1975 piece for the Columbia Journalism Review made clear: “Originally, UPI Newsfilm had blown the Muchmore film up to 16mm, slow-moed it, stop-motioned it and delivered prints with scripts to all its clients. The original was turned over to the UPI still picture service, which sent frames from it to its clients.” Film, script, stills. Three elements. Remarkably, no examples of the first two categories survive, even though produced in significant numbers and distributed widely. Examples of the stills do, however, preserved by such disparate newspapers as the Philadelphia Daily News, the Orlando Evening Star and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the first two, both afternoon papers, the same four stills from the Muchmore film appeared; while in the last-named, a morning newspaper, only three of the four were utilised. There were two major problems, however, with these photos – the captions and the timings of their appearance. In all three papers, the Muchmore stills were labelled Zapruder’s and attributed to UPI. How was such a misattribution possible? UPI had never, according to the orthodox history, had anything to do with the Zapruder film. The chronology was even more baffling: It was the inverse of what one might reasonably expected had UPI distributed Muchmore stills from its New York HQ during the late evening of Monday, 25 November. By this timeline, there was plenty of time for UPI customers in the Mid-West and West Coast to have incorporated them into next morning’s papers; and almost certainly for East Coast morning papers to have inserted them into later editions. Yet precisely the opposite occurred: The San Francisco Chronicle, a morning paper, only received them in time for its Wednesday, 27 November edition; and both the Philadelphia Daily News and Orlando Evening Star were afternoon-evening papers which splashed them on their respective front pages on Tuesday, 26 November. The evidence here leaves little doubt that the Muchmore stills distributed by UPI were sent no earlier than mid-morning on Tuesday, 26 November. The Muchmore film of the shooting comprised 66 frames, so a minimum of just over 6% of the film was converted to still photographs and distributed. Were the 11 Zapruder frames published by The Daily Express on the late evening of 25 November originally intended to serve the same function as those four (or more) allegedly created from the Muchmore? That is, as accompaniments to, and reinforcing publicity for, a distributed Zapruder film? It certainly looks that way.

A Network Vanishes How far were the coup plotters prepared to go to hide which assassination film debuted where and when? The answer is very far. And then some. Consider the case of a book published by Stanford University Press in 1965. Ostensibly edited by Bradley S Greenberg & Edwin B Parker, The Kennedy Assassination and the American Public: Social Communications in Crisis, comprised a preface, Introduction, twenty-five essays and a summary, all split into four sections. It was based upon extensive research among the public, journalists, television executives and academics, beginning with survey work that commenced in the week following the coup, via a conference involving Dallas’ three network-affiliates in February of the following year, and much else besides, into 1964. For the interested lay reader, the most recognizable names were those of the New York Times duo, Tom Wicker and Harrison Salisbury, who disinterestedly examined their own and their paper’s performance and found both the opposite of wanting. For the academic communications specialists, however, the real big name was the author of the Introduction, Wilbur Schramm, who, as the editors cheerfully conceded, not only prompted them to compile the volume, but secured funding for it, mostly from the Stanford Institute, where he was the Director. Schramm was precisely the kind of guiding hand such a compilation needed, being one of the intellectual and bureaucratic giants in his field (which was propaganda, not communication studies), and thus a serial recipient of CIA (and multiple other warfare state) research grants, and a sometime FBI-informer. A general air of satisfaction pervaded the authors and their essays, a mood Schramm’s Introduction faithfully reflected. The American system had been challenged, and the media had done its patriotic duty in helping it to survive the trauma. He was particularly impressed with the contribution of the small screen: “In a sense television Journalism grew up in Dallas, for never before had it faced such a story with so much of the responsibility for telling it.” How had the three major television networks earned this plaudit? Above all else, by not showing the sole film of the assassination of which Schramm was aware: “Apparently the networks decided against, although Life later published a sequence of still pictures from the same film.” He quoted with evident approval from the essay produced by Ruth Leeds Love, a researcher from the similarly CIA-connected Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia. Love’s essay-contribution to the volume, The Business of Television and the Black Weekend (73-86) contained the following pearl of wisdom: Television had learned from the Old Gray Lady and the assassination that “all the news that’s fit to print is not necessarily fit to be seen.” Love’s essay, focused on the period 22-25 November, expanded on the subject of the Zapruder film and America’s TV networks. She reported that though they might have used stills from the Zapruder film had they been available in the immediate aftermath of the presidential assassination, they had chosen not to bid for the film, despite having the opportunity to do so, because it was just too brutal and dramatic for American households. As one ABC executive explained: “I understand you can see the President’s head snap as a bullet hit him and the blood spurt right out of his temple.” An NBC panjandrum offered a variant on the theme, stating “it wasn’t the fact that it was JFK, but…the inside of a man’s brain being outside that was so awful.” The televising of Oswald’s murder, by contrast, was a different matter, for as an NBC producer insisted, it “turned out to be a very clean one.” All of which was slightly jarring, because according to the conventional history of the assassination films, UPI Newsfilm was offering, on the evening of November 25, the perfect solution for the ethically-minded nabobs of the networks – a film of the assassination that satisfied their imperative to report the assassination pictorially without splashing the extruded and shredded brain of America’s 35th President across the nation’s screens. Not only did the TV executives concerned not seize the opportunity, they appeared, like Schramm and Love, entirely unaware that the Muchmore film option had even existed that evening. Then again, perhaps one of the three networks had managed to work out a via media with the Zapruder film’s first version. The network’s identity was revealed by its absence. For there was a striking omission in Love's list of interviewees from the three television networks: There was not a single quote from CBS and its higher-ups. What inconvenient truth was Love (and Schramm) hiding from the reader? That on the afternoon of Monday, 25 November, Kennedy’s funeral over, a striking bifurcation occurred in the assassination coverage of America’s three major TV networks. The cause of the divergence was the Zapruder film. Two networks - the FBI-friendly ABC, together with NBC, the Pentagon contractor’s network - evinced no interest in the subject, while the third, the CIA annex known as CBS, embarked upon an energetic, Dan Rather-fronted campaign to construct and refine a verbal prism through which the film was to be interpreted - as an obvious prelude to broadcasting it. At least four times in the afternoon and early evening of 25 November, CBS TV and radio had devoted time for Rather to describe the film. Had CBS found a way of showing the Zapruder film without provoking horror and disgust among its audience? John Barbour’s comments on Black Op Radio in early August 2009 strongly suggest it had: This can’t be true, of course, precisely because we don’t have the full footage of CBS’s output during the evening and early hours of 25-26 November 1963, just as we lack a single surviving copy of the allegedly multiple copies of the UPI Newfilm package of the Muchmore film distributed late on the evening of 25 November to subscribing stations across America. For when it comes to the assassination films, absence of evidence is nothing short of conclusive proof. Just ask Wilbur Schramm and Ruth Leeds Love.