Jeff Carter

I think that’s now the twelfth time you have designated some sort of insult or conjectured identification - i.e. now I’m an embarrassing cartoon whereas previously I was chief propagandist for RT - coupled with misstatements of fact. For the record, as my previous post from several nights ago is clear, I did not state “they have Russian troops in Ukraine”. I said that this has long been the position of Ukraine and its NATO backers. “There are no bombardments from Ukraine to the rebel held territory Jeff. Only the other way.” That is factually incorrect. The international deconfliction group OSCE has been monitoring the hinterland between Ukraine proper and the rebel Donbass region since 2014. It noted a remarkable spike in both ceasefire violations and “explosions” which began on Thursday, following the unanimous endorsement of the Minsk Accords at UNSC the previous day. While these violations are occurring on both sides of the contact line, the majority of this activity has been initiated by forces on the Ukraine side. Do you dispute this and what are your countervailing sources? https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports As per the Russian recognition of the Donbass entities - which as it turns out is all that has really happened over the past few days - it is useful to understand that there are a fair number of disputed territories which have limited recognition, most of which exist as ‘frozen” disputes which do not produce the sort of theatrical hysteria seen today. Kosovo, for example, was subject to a UNSC resolution from 1999, but unilaterally declared “independence" in 2008 which the United States and 96 other UN members accepted, but others in the international community still consider Resolution 1244 (from 1999) as legally binding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_limited_recognition

I see the comic book is still being referred to. I guess it is a Giant-Size or Annual edition. Apparently no Russian troops have yet crossed into Donbass, and no one has yet been killed or injured due to Russian military activity. It appears that what has so far happened is that Russia has made a unilateral decision to recognize the regions as independent states - i.e. expressed the opinion that their desire to be independent is “legitimate”. So far a very few very small states have concurred. So is this the “invasion” or the “beginning of the invasion” or the beginning of the beginning of the invasion?… Can someone explain why the act of bestowing “legitimacy” after an unconstitutional putsch against an elected government is “good”, while a declaration of “legitimacy” in the interest of halting or blunting ongoing artillery barrages is “bad”. And this: “In the modern world sovereignty isn’t an ancestral right; it’s a sacred trust between the government and its people. … We live in a world where history matters, but so do human beings. Kosovo could not remain a territorial souvenir of Serbia’s past imperial glory. So while resolving Kosovo’s status through a unilateral declaration of independence is hardly ideal, I believe it was necessary. I am proud the United States was among the first countries in the world to recognize the newly independent Kosovo.” Joe Biden, Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 2008

If you haven’t noticed - your country didn’t “stand up for Ukraine”. As the promotion of imminent Russian invasion really took steam back in December, your President publicly announced that no American military personnel would be placed in harm’s way. In the past few weeks, as the hysteria multiplied, it was announced that all American citizens should immediately leave the country on their own initiative and expense as there would be no official assistance available. All “trainers” and “advisors” were then removed. The US embassy in Kiev - largest in all of Europe - was shuttered and personnel were first sent to Lviv, in the far west of the country, and then removed entirely to Poland. While this massive evacuation was occurring, amidst daily predictions of massive violence, State Dept officials continued to espouse full commitment to diplomatic procedures yet did absolutely nothing, even as the UN mandated process which everyone agreed was the path forward lay moribund - and as the US and allies continued to ship into the country huge collections of armaments for a Kiev regime which had been essentially left on its own. This is just further evidence that the whole purpose of the Ukraine episode was to create a stick by which to annoy and bait the Russians but now, unlike 2014, the blowback won’t be as easily absorbed.

I fully concede I did not anticipate the Russians would move away from a UN Security Council mandated process which they had fully endorsed. Is it an “invasion”? The position of Ukraine and its western partners over the six or seven years they did nothing themselves to realize the UNSC process was that the Russians were already present in the Donbass. Either way, the Russians acted like they did in Crimea - quickly, decisively and producing a zero casualty event. Is it the equivalent to Sudetenland in 1938? I don’t think so - if the Russians were really intent on re-establishing some kind of empire then there wouldn’t have been an eight-year delay in Donbass. But gnash your teeth and arm-chair general the next big war if that’s what you want. This is only one part of a broader campaign to realize what Russia describes its legitimate national security concerns - in reaction to the steady encroachment of NATO into the former space of first the Warsaw pact and second the old USSR itself. Many distinguished US diplomats from the Cold War era warned of exactly this moment twenty years ago. It has arrived. I think the events and concepts of international law played out during the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962 are directly relevant to today, and directly relevant to this forum. A discussion of that would be fruitful. But the partisan brigade which features on this thread have, I’m sure, many more Daily Beast and MSNBC links to share, let alone fingers to point, before anyone gets to that.

A “popular uprising” deposing an elected government over a trade policy dispute is not consistent with a functioning democratic system - in fact “deposing” is prima facie “unconstitutional” i.e. illegal a.k.a. a coup or putsch. That it happened in reaction to an internationally-mediated compromise which resolved many issues of the immediate dispute in the opposition’s favour and created space for a proper political debate ahead of a new election highlights the extreme bad faith by which this coup was within hours recklessly declared “legitimate” by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. That was the destabilization, not the reactions. I’m almost convinced the intention at the time was to provoke a Russian invasion to restore the legal government, and use the images of “tanks in Kiev” to institute a renewed walled-off decoupled Cold War status that US/NATO policy has since proved eager to promote. The continuing rancor directed to the Soviet Union - which dissolved itself more than 30 years ago - suggests a great deal of frustration that the Cold War did not resolve through a decisive war. Maybe you’ll yet get that opportunity.

Breaking news: The Elysee Palace in Paris released a statement just a few minutes ago announcing both Biden and Putin had agreement to a summit to “discuss security and strategic stability in Europe”. The summit was proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke on the phone to both Biden and Putin.

There is no invasion. The Ukrainians themselves don’t believe there will be an invasion. The only faction hyping an invasion is the anglo bloc of NATO along with NATO senior leadership - the same entities which helped to facilitate the 2014 coup which started all the problems in the first place. To claim there is a universalist Ukrainian identity which has been disrupted by Russian aggression - which is Bob’s stated opinion - is itself a form of disinformation. Stating that 70% of people in eastern Ukraine are “Russian” reflects long-standing cultural, economic, historic, and linguistic ties - not a form of nationalist identity. The fine print of the EU Association agreement, only published in September 2013 near the end of negotiations, mandated a severance of specifically the economic ties which, along with the stipulations of a wide-ranging austerity program, is what caused Yanukovych to back away from the deal. At that time, some 80% or so of economic activity in eastern Ukraine was with Russia, so the EU Association agreement would have led to severe recessionary repercussions. This has been grossly misrepresented by the western media. Within Ukraine as a whole, a deep-seated animus towards Russia is a factor solely in the western regions, partly a factor of an entirely different historical experience. Again, the reality is more complex and nuanced than the comic book version would have it.

There is no Russian invasion of Ukraine. If the rebel provinces are seriously attacked then the Russians will intervene, and have the capability to do so without moving personnel physically across a border. The current dispute is actually over broader security guarantees. There is a material record of the history of this, and I have shared where to find it. (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu). American diplomats warned back in the mid to late 90s of the crisis which is today occurring. The Russian case is not unreasonable, it follows in part the logic advanced by the Kennedy administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it is consistent with signed treaties. The current American / NATO position is belligerent, and appears designed to recreate the walled-off tensions of the Cold War 1980s. This is confirmed by proposed Congressional legislation and attendant declarations directed at Russia (available on Congressional website), and by the statements of NATO head Stoltenberg a few days ago that a state of permanent tension and military readiness is the “new normal” for Europe moving ahead (https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2937821/russia-forces-a-new-normal-on-europe-stoltenberg-says/). Greg said: “Gorbachev was making breathtaking significant strides toward achievement of that vision, but of course Gorbachev lost power and that was the end of that.” That’s not exactly the case. Americans had tremendous influence in Russia during the Yeltsin years (i.e. most of the 90s). Unfortunately, their advice resulted in an oligarchical kleptocracy whereby the human development index of an industrialized country notably declined for the first time in history. This occurred in tandem with a series of broken promises regarding NATO expansion, and a general dismissal of articulated Russian security concerns (as can be confirmed at the National Security Archive). The decade culminated with NATO’s attack on Russian ally Serbia, conducted outside of international legal protocols and based on assertions which have been called into question.

Ukraine was destabilized by an unconstitutional coup directed against a democratically elected government, supported and facilitated by the U.S. and other NATO allies. You are condemning reactions to the coup, while tacitly endorsing the initiating illegality itself. If you choose to be on the “they didn’t get it in writing” side on the issue of NATO expansion - go ahead. It doesn’t look to me as the “intelligent” side of the equation. The regional security issues which Russia has currently highlighted do feature signed treaties (“agreements”) - as does the Donbass issue which has the explicit standing of a UNSC directive. So you are blowing hot air here by attributing imaginary motives or designating “blithering”, based, it appears, on your own personal animus.

The National Security Archive (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu) has published four briefs since 2018 featuring primary documents regarding the expansion of NATO, pledges and assurances related to that expansion, and the articulation of security concerns by representatives of Russia. All of it predates Putin and all of it is consistent with the concerns expressed now. Since December, the dispute has broadened directly into essentially the same geopolitical dissensions which escalated into the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, not that anyone on this thread has noticed. NATO has now publicly repudiated the positions taken by the Kennedy administration at that time. That seems to be of some importance, and rather more complex than the comic-book dichotomies favoured in the legacy/corporate media and mindlessly repeated here. The Russians have the letter of signed treaties established through multilateral institutions on their side, and have the same regarding the territory in Eastern Ukraine as expressed at the UN Security Council yesterday. There is also a grim but telling symbolism in the retreat of US embassy and CIA staff to the city of Lvov in the Galician province of Ukraine. This extends way back to the OSS and Allen Dulles and the formation of “stay-behind” units connected to Gehlen’s networks post WW2. Once a hot topic amongst parapolitical researchers, it is now smugly dismissed as “Russian propaganda”. Interesting times indeed.

Not that I would offer unsolicited advice but … if you dropped the comic-book supervillain framework then the world might seem a bit more comprehensible.

An “imminent Russian invasion” was part of the news cycle last spring as well. The current prediction first hit the headlines on October 30, so that’s about 110 consecutive days of “imminence” and counting In other words it already is a staged crisis and has been for months - at least in the western press and most hysterically in the same Anglo NATO countries (USA, UK, Canada) who facilitated the 2014 coup in Ukraine which started all the trouble in the first place. A longstanding axiom describes NATO’S purpose as keeping the Germans “in” and the Russians “out”. Much of the hype over the “imminent Russian invasion” is a contemporary expression of that axiom, and the actual target of all this is the German-Russian pipeline project known as Nordstream 2.

Durham has in fact set out two indictments to date - both for making false representation to the FBI. One of the indicted was connected to the production of the Steele dossier, the other was a legal representative of the Clinton campaign. The latest information connects to the latter case, and is probably presaging further indictments. It involves, in broad terms, corporate spying on Trump’s business and residence, but also most seriously the “Executive Office of the President” (EOP) “for the purpose of gathering information about Donald Trump.” This illegally gathered information was in turn shared with a federal agency (CIA) in February 2017 as part of an organized effort to encourage investigation into then-President Trump’s alleged connections to the government of Russia. https://www.scribd.com/document/558443477/US-v-Sussmann-GOVERNMENT-S-MOTION-TO-INQUIRE-INTO-POTENTIAL-CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST

That's how I see it too - Rogan interviews Oliver Stone for an hour about the current “JFK fact pattern” and within a couple of weeks there’s an orchestrated campaign to shut down his very popular podcast… Has anyone actually established what “covid disinformation” Rogan’s podcast supposedly disseminated? That’s a surprisingly fuzzy part of the story yet the mania to shut him down is based on it. *** The inexorably expanding censorship trend began in earnest in the autumn of 2017, mostly cheer-led by the purported liberal intelligentsia in USA such as the New York Times. From the start, the effort focussed on shutting things down and closing access off, in concert with promoting repetition of establishment narratives through “fact-checkers” and vetted “experts”. Cancelling, de-platforming, de-algorithmization - this is a noted fact of life now for many independent voices as the space for public discourse has remarkably narrowed. ***I see now Britain's Daily Mail covers the "disinformation" broadcasts which aired back in December. The guests involved are both high profile doctors who have been outspoken in challenging covid orthodoxies: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10466285/The-truth-Joe-Rohans-controversial-guests-Dr-Malone-Dr-McCullough.html

The legal definition of innocent is “not guilty of a crime or offence”. Oswald was never tried or found guilty. You misrepresent the point: the tribunals which proscribed a presumption of Oswald guilt did so without benefit of cross-examination or rebuttal. So they weren’t really a proper constituted exercise in determining the facts, in that their structure more resembled what is generally known as a “kangaroo court”.

Oswald was never convicted in a courtroom, so is technically legally “innocent”. The various mechanisms (i.e. the Warren Commission and mainstream media presentations) which have proclaimed Oswald’s certain guilt have relied almost entirely on prosecutor’s briefs, without benefit of a defence rebuttal or cross examination to their arguments. The cross examinations have required other forums, and are derided as “conspiracy theories”. The game being played here has been obvious for a rather long time.

Also looking forward to this. I've been enjoying the Lubitsch book over the past few weeks in concert with the films available on the Criterion Channel. Perhaps you could make a comment here on the dichotomy between the "remarkable immediacy" of the media over the course of the assassination weekend against the later production of deceptive documentaries relying on the authority of the hosts - such as Cronkite.

The estimable National Security Archive has created a chronology to piece together the events of January 6, 2021 to highlight “Ongoing, Unresolved Discrepancies Between Official Testimony, Media Reporting, and Pentagon's Sparse Timeline.” https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/foia/2022-01-06/capitol-riot-chronology

The mainstream/legacy/corporate media response to the new doc has been entirely predictable, although the Rolling Stone piece was surprisingly reactionary for the specific venue. I suspect this faction will hold the official line right to the bitter end. In the wider spectrum of news and opinion, the weight of what is now understood as the post-ARRB established record has tilted the generalized understanding of what happened in 1963 in the other direction, and in a way which does not call up Mafia / Cubans / etc. Counterpunch - once reliably sneering and contemptuous of “conspiracists” - has posted the fourth or fifth article in just the last few months which posits the JFKA as a high-level conspiracy. Jacob Hornberger again - “The Fear of Those Still-Secret CIA Records on the JFK Assassination”: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/23/the-fear-of-those-still-secret-cia-records-on-the-jfk-assassination/ “The JFK assassination is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Imagine a really complicated puzzle that has 1000 small pieces to it. Your kids have lost 25 percent of the pieces. You decide to put the puzzle together anyway. You finish it. Even though you’ve only got 75 percent of it completed, you can still tell that it’s a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Then, you find several more pieces. You now have 80 percent of the pieces and you’re able to see the Eiffel Tower more clearly. That’s the way it is with the Kennedy assassination. With around 75 percent of the pieces, one can see that this was a national-security state regime-change operation…” “What lone-nut theorists just do not want to confront is the fact that the little monster that was brought into existence to assassinate and regime-change foreign leaders and others turned inward to protect America from a president whose philosophy and policies, they were convinced, posed a grave threat to national security — a much graver threat, in fact, than those other leaders posed who they assassinated or regime-changed… How can a domestic regime-change operation be inconceivable given that mindset on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment?”

I didn’t “edit it out”. The context is GWOT, which began with the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and intensified with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Global activism in response to the widespread harm initiated by GWOT is the immediate context of the formation of Wikileaks. You keep repeating this, and it appears as the crux of your argument why Assange should be put on trial in the U.S. What are your sources? Certainly a decade ago there was a lot of speculation published in mainstream media of potential risks to persons who may have been exposed by Wikileaks, but by the time of the Manning trial it became apparent that internal US military documents could not identify anyone who had been harmed. See - “Military Fails to Link Leaks With Any Deaths” (July 31, 2013) https://www.courthousenews.com/military-fails-to-link-leaks-with-any-deaths/ As well, as I explained to you, the issues of potential harm, proper vetting, and Wikileaks policies concerning receipt and publication of information were covered in detail at the original extradition hearing in September 2020. The prosecution declined to rebut the defence’s thorough presentation, which materially contradicts most of your assertions. Daniel Ellsberg’s presentation at the hearing, which I referred previously, was in particular thoughtful and philosophical regarding issues of leaking information and the associated responsibilities. Assange did not “avoid the process entirely”. Assange is not an American citizen and Wikileaks did not operate in the United States. He had no obligation to surrender himself to a U.S. courtroom or the caprices of the U.S. justice system. As it stands, his liberty was taken from him through a series of questionable legal maneuvers which have involved three states (U.S., UK, Sweden), two of which were instrumental in initiating the massive destruction and chaos sown by GWOT in the first place. American officials have plotted Assange’s death, plotted his extra-legal kidnapping, and through a CIA contractor extensively spied on Assange including privileged meetings with his legal counsel. The extradition process has been wholly out of normal legal bounds, adopting the character of what were once known as Soviet show trials. That it is Assange, and not any of the well identified persons responsible for initiating the GWOT chaos, who faces significant time inside the sadistic isolation regimes of the U.S. prison system (facilities where all the whistleblowers and leakers to date have been condemned) is beyond “unjust” and the consequences of this sordid act of revenge will be profound. Again, since the Manning trial, US officials have conceded that they cannot identify specific examples of any but reputational harm caused by Wikileaks. You insist otherwise - what are your sources for such assertion?

This response exemplifies a point-of-view known in much of the rest of the world as “American exceptionalism”. It features a psychological projection which fuses state institutions - such as the military and judiciary - with the individual, and weirdly embodies such institutions within the individual’s personal moral universe. I would never argue that Bob as a person would advocate war crimes, but as can be seen here he is capable of excusing or rationalizing or downplaying the incredibly destructive misuse of US military power as exhibited since 2003 as merely a “mess”. Here are some obvious questions: If the military-industrial-complex has “legal authority” from the citizens of USA and is in fact an “extension” of these citizens, then where does legal responsibility for the massive application of military violence since 2003 begin or end? The institutional response to the “Collateral Murder” video, leaked by Manning and published by Wikileaks, does not indicate that there is any responsibility at all. In light of the documented record which shows that the attack on Iraq in 2003 (which began the events which led to the deaths of a million persons including hundreds of thousands of civilians) was the result of deliberate high-level decisions to repudiate the United Nations Charter and lie to both the people of the United States and the rest of the world to do so, how is it even possible to portray this as a (presumably) noble effort to “unencomber the people of Iraq and Afghanistan”? Note that few in Iraq or Afghanistan asked the U.S. to do this or had any say in the decision-making at all. Does “American exceptionalism” give legal authority to the United States to override international law and make extremely consequential unilateral decisions which results in widespread death and destruction? It seems the answer to the preceding question must be “yes” in order to then assert that efforts to expose the extent and consequence of this unilateral application of military violence is the true crime and that the initiators and perpetrators of this very serious breach of international law are in fact the “victims” of this exposure. How is it even possible that the exposure of the extent and consequence of the massive unilateral application of military violence could make things “worse” for the “unfortunate” millions of persons who have been killed, wounded, or displaced by the violence? Do you believe that the millions of persons negatively affected by this violence should rationalize their plight as something that is merely “sad” or just a “mess”?

Bob - can you explain exactly how a military-industrial complex responsible since 2003 for the deaths of almost a million persons and the displacement of a staggering 38 million persons is in fact the victim, because a radical journalistic project called Wikileaks was formed to assist in exposing the obvious crimes committed by an unaccountable elite in this specific situation? Bob - do you think the “institutions” which have been “assembled to inspect and oversee” have been successful in light of the physical displacement of 38 million people since 2003? What exactly accomplishes the “earnest desire to right wrongs” done “properly”? Does that involve the NY Times and The Washington Post? So Assange is “problematic” - should he then be condemned to spend the rest of his life in a U.S. SuperMax prison? Please explain.

Bob, can you then explain why your formulation apparently does not start from the start - I.e. the US government organizations and political parties, that is the Pentagon, CIA, and DNC whose sloppy information security procedures assisted the leaks in the first place? Are they not then part of the conspiracy equally too? From the “unattributed” Consortium News: Ellsberg made an astute observation from the stand that the low-level field reports leaked by Manning contained information about U.S. torture and an assassination program that would never have been in such reports in Vietnam, which Ellsberg said he himself had written when he worked at the U.S. embassy in Saigon during the war. The existence of such programs, he said, would have been restricted to the highest levels of government. That thousands of people had clearance to read the reports Manning leaked showed that torture and assassination had been “normalized.” Bob, can you explain how the “attributed media” blew such major stories as the Warren Commission conclusions, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, and “Russiagate” ( which was essentially retracted three weekends ago). Particular attention to WMD - because the Brown University Costs of War project shows since the “attributed media” blew the story and helped steer the USA into a devastating military disaster, about a million people were killed and a staggering 38 million persons have been displaced as war refugees. Ooops. But yeah, let’s shoulder Julian Assange with all the blame. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

Bob - your illustration has nothing at all to do with Wikileaks’ practices. It may be that other organizations have been careless and irresponsible, but Wikileaks always maintained careful vetting of materials submitted. This all was covered during the original extradition hearing, which I would wager you are entirely unfamiliar with despite holding a strong opinion about it. For example, here is a summary of Day Seven of the Hearing: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/09/16/assange-hearing-day-seven-ellsberg-and-goetz-refute-informants-were-harmed-and-that-assange-was-first-to-release-their-names/ The featured witnesses were Daniel Ellsberg and German journalist John Goetz. Consortium News summarizes three important points from these witnesses: 1. It’s not against the law to reveal the names of informants. 2. Assange did not reveal informants names first. 3. Not a single informant is known to have been harmed by the revelation of their names. Ellsberg’s comments in particular are entirely relevant to your arguments, and in fact refute your arguments. Niederhut - all the answers you seek were contained in my post Saturday afternoon at 4:31 PM. I am not going to respond to you if you can’t or won’t read or comprehend the material you are supposing to respond to. I read the silly Frum piece previously, so make half an effort yourself.

Bob - you have repeated Barraister’s comments which essentially merely repeat the prosecution’s presentation at last year’s extradition hearings. Assange’s lawyers very effectively dissected the factual misinformation and distorted surmise of intent at that same hearing. Some very astute persons witnessed and commented on the hearing, and have since been at a loss to explain Barraister’s comprehension. You have formed strong opinion but apparently have not bothered to look into any but the prosecution position. Did you know that Assange spent that hearing locked in a glass cage at the back of the courtroom, with access to his legal council limited? Do you know that access to the public was extremely limited during the hearing? Assange, if he doesn’t die in Belmarsh - which seems to be the intention - will be tried in a US jurisdiction with 100% conviction rates for national security cases. He won’t get a jury, just as he never did in UK. Obviously you reject Wikileaks as a journalistic enterprise and agree with Pompeo that it is a nest of spies. Not sure you’ve really grasped what is going on here.