W. Niederhut

Speaking as an former member of the old "White" Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, (ROCOR) I can assure people that Putin's KGB/FSB-controlled Moscow Patriarchate ROC was never considered a legitimate, canonical Orthodox Church by the Synod of free Russian Orthodox bishops in exile from the Soviet Union after 1917. In fact, the "White" Russian ROCOR Synod anathematized the MP ROC repeatedly, right up until 2007, when Putin and the FSB annexed the ROCOR in Western Europe and North America through an internal political coup. The MP ROC was always a mere tool of the atheistic Soviet police state-- following the incarceration and murders of Patriarch Tikhon and the legitimate Russian Orthodox hierarchs in the 1920s and 30s-- and it is now a mere tool of Putin's fascist Russian Federation police state. I realized this back in 2007, after Putin and the FSB seized my own parish church here in Denver. Putin is no Christian. He makes a show of lighting an occasional candle at ROC services, but it's all a facade. No Orthodox Christian would do what Putin is doing in Ukraine right now-- even during Orthodox Holy Week, which began today! (We're a week behind the Western/Papal calendar for Pascha (Easter) this year.) The phrase, "Abomination of desolation," from the Biblical Apocalypse, comes to mind. It's galling enough to watch what Putin is doing in Ukraine, without the added insult of Dugin and Putin's MP hierarchs justifying it as a "holy war" waged by their KGB-controlled, pseudo- Orthodox Church.

One of the things I have always valued about this forum is the general commitment here to discerning and telling the truth about our "untold history" and relevant contemporary events. It has been an intellectual sanctuary in a society awash in mass media disinformation. Some people, more recently, seem to be promoting the false premise that all points of view about history and current events are equally valid and deserving of respect-- regardless of the actual facts. Posting the facts and standing up for the truth, in this view, is viewed as discourteous-- i.e., we should all be tolerant and respectful of falsehoods. In contrast, the great English sage, Samuel Johnson, once told James Boswell that there is nothing rude or unethical about being indignant about falsehoods regarding issues that really matter. For example, if a POTUS tries to violently overturn a U.S. election that he lost, we should be morally indignant. Our democracy and the rule of law matter. A related false premise is that, "No one has a monopoly on truth." The problem with this kind of solipsistic, fact-free relativism and false equivalence is that it may result in a betrayal of the public good, of humanity. And humanity can also be betrayed by silence about things that really matter, as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. often said. We can all agree that JFK's murder was a betrayal of humanity. Almost all of us feel morally indignant about the murder. And we speak up to advocate the truth, based on the known facts. We also feel morally indignant about the coverup of the murder, the lies-- at least I do. The same thing can be said about contemporary political issues that matter to humanity. There is nothing rude about confronting the destructive falsehoods in our society and mass media.

I really like Mamet's film, The Edge, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Quite the thriller, set in the Alaskan wilderness, but also an interesting Oedipal drama.

Paul, While it is true that the corporate M$M on the entire political spectrum has long been involved in suppressing news coverage of U.S. CIA and military black ops-- Operation "Mockingbird"-- it is a stretch to claim that the quality and quantity of censorship/disinformation/propaganda on the left and right in the U.S. M$M is equivalent today. Nor is it consistently aligned with the Democratic Party! In the case of the 2016 Presidential race, mass media corporations across the political spectrum (including the NYT and WaPo) consistently sabotaged Hillary Clinton, while suppressing stories about the Trump campaign's multiple contacts with Kremlin assets. (My own theory is that the corporate media moguls in 2016 were mainly motivated by the prospect of Trump/GOP tax cuts.) IMO, Biden was correct recently when he described propaganda tycoon Rupert Murdoch as one of the most dangerous people on the planet. (The same thing can be said of the less prominent right wing tycoons funding mass media propaganda in the U.S. today-- Robert Mercer, Phil Anschutz, and the corporate owners of Sinclair, Newsmax, OANN.) A number of academic studies in recent years have documented the relative ignorance and delusions of Fox News viewers compared to U.S. citizens who get news from more reliable sources. Fox consistently censors the real news, and has even been busted for deceptively editing Presidential speeches and videos, (including Obama's Ferguson Address condemning the looting and riots in Missouri.) The most recent example was the study from UC Berkeley in which Fox News viewers who were paid to watch CNN experienced markedly improved reality testing.* * OSF Preprints | The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers’ beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers As for Ben, he's a good example of someone who has consistently amplified right wing disinformation on social media -- a phenomenon described by a professor at Stanford as, "ampliganda." For example, Ben bought into the Fox Trumpaganda re-framing Trump's January 6th coup attempt as a Deep State false flag "patriot purge." He promoted the bogus "patriot purge" narrative here for months, while referring to the January 6th attack on the Capitol as a harmless "scrum." Ben also bought into the persistent Trumpaganda in the M$M denying Trump's longstanding involvement with the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs, (during the past 30 years!) and Trump's numerous 2016 campaign contacts with Kremlin assets and cut outs, including Julian Assange. Most recently, Ben has been amplifying the Trumpaganda relating to Bill Barr's Durham "straw man" investigation, while ignoring the facts about the actual origin of the FBI investigation of Trump's Kremlin contacts in 2016. Despite sharing the facts with Ben, he still doesn't seem to realize that the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign's Russia contacts was not initiated by the Steele Dossier (or Michael Sussman.) Trump and Paul Manafort had altered the 2016 RNC platform to reduce military aid to Ukraine before the FBI was even aware of Christopher Steele's research. And Manafort had been under FBI surveillance, intermittently, since 2014 as a result of his work for the Kremlin in Ukraine.

But the cover up was also posthumous. In fact, it's still happening. Also, Joe, didn't LBJ tell people other than Cronkite that he was skeptical about the WCR conclusions? (Possibly Richard Russell?)

Joe, It seems to me that if LBJ had openly endorsed the conclusions of the Warren Commission, it would have looked more like he was participating in the cover up. Instead, he cleverly distanced himself from the bogus commission that he, himself, created to cover up the crime.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

At the same time, if I recall correctly, Richard Russell was also involved in the Dixiecrat break with LBJ and the Democratic Party over the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The exodus of the Dixiecrats over Civil Rights was, obviously, a major factor in the dissolution of the Democratic Party after 1964, (along with issue of Vietnam.) Under the circumstances, it amazes me that the old U.S. Senate office building was named for Richard Russell in 1972.

Iago (in Othello) comes to mind. We have to rule out Macbeth because, unlike Macbeth, LBJ was not a courageous military hero. I have noticed that Phillip Nelson doesn't get much respect around here, but I think Nelson made a very convincing circumstantial case for LBJ's complicity in JFK's murder in his two books on the subject. But LBJ, the sly sociopath, was always very slick about covering his tracks -- e.g., disguising himself as a champion of Civil Rights after 1963, after colluding with the Dixiecrats in Congress for years to sabotage Civil Rights legislation. He was wooing the liberals in the Democratic Party in 1964 and 1965, posing as a man committed to supporting JFK's policy agendas (while secretly reversing JFK's foreign policies.) One of LBJ's slyest con jobs, IMO, was his professed skepticism about the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. If he had expressed support for the WCR, it would have aroused suspicion.

Ben, So, how is the weather in your weird MAGA-verse lately? 🤥 Here on Planet Earth a Nobel Laureate in Economics from Princeton has just penned an op-ed about the Party of Plutocrats in the U.S.-- i.e., the party that repeatedly cut taxes for billionaires in the U.S. during the past 40 years, creating our gargantuan national debt. (Hint: It's also the anti-labor party of Nixon's "Southern strategy"-- i.e., white identity politics.) I posted this reference for you earlier today but, since you didn't read it, I'm re-printing it, in case you're a non-subscriber. The G.O.P. Is Still the Party of Plutocrats https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/14/opinion/republicans-populism-rich.html April 14, 2022 By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist I recently wrote about how international trade has made some Western nations — Germany in particular — unwilling to confront autocracy. Germany hasn’t just been weak-kneed in its response to Vladimir Putin; it and other European nations have stood by and even continued to provide economic aid to Hungary while Viktor Orban dismantles democracy. In response, I received mail from Europeans to the effect that American democracy is also under threat and that some of our right-wing politicians are every bit as bad as Orban. Agreed! But that wasn’t the point of my argument. And while I’m quite willing to believe, for example, that Ron DeSantis would be Florida’s Orban if he could, state governors don’t have as much repressive power as rulers of sovereign nations. Still, the comparison of European and U.S. ethno-nationalists raises some interesting questions. In particular, as the G.O.P. has become a full-on antidemocratic party, why has it also remained the party of plutocrats and the enemy of any policy that might help its many working-class supporters? To understand the puzzle, consider the policy positions of Marine Le Pen, who has a serious chance of becoming France’s next president. Her party, National Rally — previously called the National Front — is often described as right-wing. And on social issues it is; in particular, the party is largely defined by its hostility to immigrants and the alleged threat they pose to France’s national identity. On economic policy, however, Le Pen is if anything to the left of President Emmanuel Macron. Now, it’s important to understand the context. France provides social benefits on a scale beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives: universal health care, huge family benefits and more. Macron isn’t challenging the fundamentals of that system. He is, however, trying to trim some benefits, notably by raising the retirement age. Le Pen, by contrast, actually wants to reduce the retirement age for some workers. I am not making a case for Le Pen. If she wins, the consequences for France, Europe and the world will be terrifying. But there is some genuine populism — advocacy of policies that might actually help workers — in her platform. Compare that with the positions taken by prominent U.S. Republicans. I can’t tell you what the official Republican economic program is, because the party doesn’t have one — in fact, it has made a point of not saying what it will do if it regains power. We do, however, know what the party did when it was last in power: It gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy, while almost succeeding in repealing the Affordable Care Act, which would have caused tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance. There’s no reason to believe it won’t once again pursue anti-worker, pro-plutocrat policies if it regains control. At the state level, the debacle in Kansas has apparently done nothing to shake Republicans’ faith in the magical power of tax cuts for the affluent. Mississippi — America’s poorest state, with the lowest life expectancy and facing a collapse of its rural hospitals — is slashing income taxes. And recently Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who heads the Republican senatorial campaign, released a “Rescue America” plan that called for tax increases on the half of Americans whose incomes are low enough that they don’t pay income taxes (even though they pay payroll taxes, sales taxes and so on). He also warned, falsely, that Social Security and Medicare are headed for bankruptcy, without offering any suggestions about how to preserve them. Senior Republicans have said that they don’t support Scott’s agenda, but haven’t explained what their actual agenda is — and have left Scott in his key campaign position, suggesting that his views have wide support within the party. So everything suggests that the Republican Party is as pro-wealthy, anti-worker as ever. Unlike right-wing European parties, it hasn’t made any gestures toward actual populism. Why? The answer, presumably, is that the G.O.P. caters to plutocrats, even as it attacks “elites,” because it thinks it can. After all, being nice to plutocrats and crony capitalists can yield tangible rewards, not just in the form of campaign contributions but also in the form of personal enrichment. And the Republican Party doesn’t believe that it will pay any price for pursuing these rewards. It believes that its supporters will focus on denunciations of critical race theory and buy into conspiracy theories — almost half of Republicans agree that top Democrats are involved in child sex-trafficking — while not even being aware of what the party is doing for the very rich. After The Times revealed Jared Kushner’s highly questionable $2 billion deal with the Saudis, Fox News simply ignored the report, while harping endlessly on Hunter Biden. I wish I could say with any confidence that this cynicism will backfire. But I can’t. In particular, Democrats who want to campaign on bread-and-butter issues are assuming that voters will understand who’s actually buttering their bread. And that doesn’t look at all like a safe assumption.

Ben, That would be a real nightmare for Trumplican misogynists, eh? But don't worry. It will never happen. For one thing, there is no Presidential election in 2022. 🤥 Cheney and Clinton are in quite disparate political camps on most major policy issues, as I explained to you above. My hunch is that you are keeping an "open mind," and the facts I posted for you about major policy differences between Hillary and Liz Cheney went in one of your ears and out the other, as always. You still seem to imagine that there are no substantial differences between the Koch-bought GOP and the Democratic Party.* As for Hillary's "hawkishness," you're not telling me anything I haven't known for the past decade. Sadly, she went along with the Neocon game plan in the Middle East from 2009-13, to a point. It was her only flawed policy stance in 2016, in comparison with the blathering Orange Booby. Of course "policy" for Trump was always, ultimately, based on bribes and kick backs from wealthy donors and tycoons, foreign and domestic. Have you figured out yet where Hillary stood on the issue of war with Iran, compared to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon brain trust? * Opinion | The G.O.P. Is Still the Party of Plutocrats - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Ben, I will concede that Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney are both women, and that they both have short blonde hair. Perhaps you and Chris, therefore, find them to be more or less identical. Hee hee... 🤥 At least Chris can be excused for knowing so little about American history and politics. As for their obvious political differences... Hillary has supported the Obama/Kerry Iranian nuclear disarmament treaty. Conversely, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld very much wanted to expand their disastrous Neocon "War on Terror" to Iran. Remember the Bush/Cheney "Axis of Evil?" How about tax policy? Healthcare policy? Climate change mitigation? Environmental protection? We know Hillary's positions on tax policy, healthcare policy, climate change, and the EPA from her 2016 Presidential platform. Her positions were diametrically opposed to Cheney-ism on all of those major issues. The Cheney's have always been major champions of fossil fuels, de-funding the EPA, and Reaganomic supply-side tax cuts for the wealthy (which have largely created our national debt since 1980.) Remember Dick Cheney's argument with Paul O'Neill about the second round 2003 Bush-Cheney tax cuts-- "Reagan proved deficits don't matter?" (Did you read Paul O'Neill's The Price of Loyalty?) IMO, the major reason that the corporate M$M sabotaged Hillary Clinton in 2016-- a well-documented historical fact-- is that she was opposed to Trump's proposed income tax and corporate tax cuts. In fact, she hinted at possible tax increases on America's plutocrats. She also supported upgrades in Obamacare, and U.S. participation in the Paris Climate Accords. I doubt that Liz Cheney supports any of those policies. Perhaps you can enlighten us.

So, you imagine that Dubya Bush and Liz Cheney are "New Donk heroes" now, Ben? I suppose this latest non-fact-based theory of yours derives from your old non-fact-based theory that Trump's January 6th coup attempt was merely a "scrum" used to "purge patriots?" As a guy who took some flak in March of 2003 for criticizing Dubya's invasion of Iraq, (as did former Colorado Senator Gary Hart, in a debate on Fox News with Bill Blah-Blah O'Reilly) I find your latest theory especially absurd. Personally, I've never met a single Republican who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003-- and I've known a lot of Republicans and Democrats intimately over the years, in my psychiatric practice. The truth is that it took most Republicans years to even admit that Bush's Iraq WMD sales pitch was a snow job. As for Paul Brancato's comments about "bipartisan" propaganda in the M$M, I generally agree-- which is why I used to read Russia Today, to get some perspective on our U.S. M$M propaganda bubble. But Pat Speer's comments on RT were excellent. Its ultimate focus was always on promoting the Kremlin and undermining the U.S., whenever possible. Everyone on this forum is quite familiar with the role that "liberal" and conservative news sources have played in covering up CIA and military black ops (including the JFK assassination) since the 1950s. WaPo, NYT, and CBS have been among the worst offenders. But I also agree with Matt. There is a qualitative (and quantitative) difference in the disinformation being cranked out of the right wing M$M in the 21st century-- especially by Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire, along with the crap funded by Robert Mercer, Phil Anschutz, and television corporations like Sinclair, Newsmax, and OANN. In fact, a recent five year study at Stanford showed that reality-testing improved significantly for Fox News watchers who were paid to switch to CNN.

And another four years (and millions more indigenous Southeast Asian casualties) for Nixon to comprehend that JFK was correct all along. BTW, Nelson also mentioned that December 1963 LBJ quote in LBJ-- From Mastermind to Colossus, sourcing it to Karnow's Vietnam-- A History.

Re-posting this old thread for Ron Bulman in reference to our search for the alleged December 1963 LBJ quote, "Just get me elected and you can have your war." It sounds like the original source for the quote was U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson.

Had to laugh. Here's Putin's krepki Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov shooting free throws... 🤣

Another potentially ominous sign for Putin is that he has been aggressively purging his own Praetorian Guard recently. The KGB/FSB has been his power base during the past 30 years. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10714319/Putin-arrests-man-invented-Putinism-purge-150-spy-chiefs-turns-inner-circle.html

Well, there it is. I was writing my post while you found the source, Ron. Karnow. I may have also read it in one of Phillip Nelson's LBJ books.

Ron, I also remember reading something about an LBJ quote from December of 1963, in which he allegedly said to staffers, "O.K., gentlemen, you can have your war. Just make sure I get elected next year." I don't think I was hallucinating at the time, so I'll have to hunt around for the source. Great essays by Jim D. about the new Califano documentary. It's truly a shame that the M$M continues to televise these fake histories.

Putin is, apparently, taking another page from Joseph Stalin's playbook-- deporting Ukrainians to prison camps in Russia. Solzhenitsyn described, in The Gulag Archipelago, how Stalin did this on a massive scale to non-Russian populations under Soviet control in the 1940s -- Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian Greeks, Volga Germans, and other minority groups. (Stalin even did the same thing to his own Red Army soldiers from N-a-z-i POW camps-- shipping them straight from N-a-z-i POW camps to the Soviet Gulag!) Russian troops deported 500,000 Ukrainians, used Red Cross emblem https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/organization-for-security-and-cooperation-in-europe-russian-troops-deported-500-000-ukrainians April 13, 2022

I agree that the plutocrats (Murdoch, Mercer, et.al.) who own the media are at the heart of the matter, but it's also a dialectical process. The emotional appeals to tribalism in the media reinforce the fear and anger, which, in turn, drives selective viewing and sharing/amplification of tribalist content on social media-- a vicious cycle.

Chris, I think some of it is based on emotional appeals to tribalism in social media, which has been labelled in various ways-- e.g., racism, xenophobia, white resentment, identity politics, the "Southern strategy," etc. The selective viewing and sharing of content seems to be part of an "Us vs. Them" mentality in U.S. sub-populations. And I think these kinds of racial and cultural fault lines have also been deliberately exploited by powerful interest groups-- the Kremlin, the GOP-aligned corporate plutocracy, Koch industries, Rupert Murdoch, Robert Mercer, et.al. American plutocrats can't win elections on a platform of tax cuts for billionaires, so they use the media and the Republican Party to rally their base along racial and "culture war" lines-- xenophobia, homophobia, religious Fundamentalism, etc. That is how they get the white middle and working classes to vote against their own economic interests.

Chris, The Jonathan Haidt essay is not about triviality per se. It's about the worsening polarization of perceptions and opinions in society resulting from selective viewing and amplification of content. And Haidt uses the Biblical metaphor of the Tower of Babel to describe this fragmentation of American society. I have witnessed this process firsthand during the past decade on an American football/sports forum with members from various regions and socio-economic classes in the U.S. Lately, the members seem to be living in increasingly separate social universes-- lacking shared perceptions of basic reality. It's worrisome. At this point, IMO, American society is too fragmented to solve basic existential crises like climate change and the epidemic of gun homicides in the U.S.

Terrific essay at The Atlantic this week by psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Highly recommended. I would have entitled it, "American Babel-- How Modern Social Media Has Fragmented American Society." Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic April 11, 2022

Petraeus Frustrates Fox With High Praise For Biden's Ukraine Reponse The former head of the CIA laid to waste the petty attacks Fox News and their minions have been heaping on Biden since Russia invaded Ukraine https://crooksandliars.com/2022/04/gen-patraeus-praises-bidens-ukraine April 11, 2022