Scott75

The New York Times' article on the United States' involvement in the war in Ukraine is the first time that it's been publicly revealed just how extensive it is. There have ofcourse been many articles from alternative media outlets that have provided a lot of the information in it, but it's one thing to be a small news outlet saying such things, and quite another for the New York Times to be doing it. I don't know about your assertions above, but there's certainly been plenty of evidence that Nuland played a pivotal role in destabilizing Ukraine way back in 2014 with the Euromaidan role. The following article, published the day Russia's military operation in Ukraine began, gets into a lot of what happened during that time: https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/24/timeline-euromaidan-the-original-ukraine-crisis/

He's right. While I do believe that tariffs can at times be good, it's apparently never worked out when U.S. Presidents have gotten heavy handed with them. I started a thread that gets into this, as well as a better solution to American problems that doesn't involve tariffs here:

I've been following Ellen Brown for a while- she seems to focus exclusively on monetary policy and I've never found a flaw in her reasoning. I admit I'm pessimistic about the possibility that Trump would follow her advice, but what matters is that her advice certainly can be followed, if not by Trump then some successor down the line. Here is her article: https://scheerpost.com/2025/04/07/ellen-brown-mckinley-or-lincoln-tariffs-vs-greenbacks/ Quoting from the introduction and conclusion of Ellen Brown's article: ** April 7, 2025 President Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Republican President William McKinley, highlighting his use of tariffs as a model for economic policy. But as critics note, Trump’s tariffs, which are intended to protect U.S. interests, have instead fueled a stock market nosedive, provoked tit-for-tat tariffs from key partners, risk a broader trade withdrawal, and could increase the federal debt by reducing GDP and tax income. The federal debt has reached $36.2 trillion, the annual interest on it is $1.2 trillion, and the projected 2025 budget deficit is $1.9 trillion – meaning $1.9 trillion will be added to the debt this year. It’s an unsustainable debt bubble doomed to pop on its present trajectory. The goal of Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is to reduce the deficit by reducing budget expenditures. But Musk now acknowledges that the DOGE team’s efforts will probably cut expenses by only $1 trillion, not the $2 trillion originally projected. That will leave a nearly $1 trillion deficit that will have to be covered by more borrowing, and the debt tsunami will continue to grow. Rather than modeling the economy on McKinley, President Trump might do well to model it on our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, whose debt-free Greenbacks saved the country from a crippling war debt to British-backed bankers, and whose policies laid the foundation for national economic resilience in the coming decades. Just “printing the money” can be and has been done sustainably, by directing the new funds into generating new GDP,; and there are compelling historical examples of that approach. In fact it may be our only way out of the debt crisis. But first a look at the tariff issue. Trump Channels McKinley Trump said at a 2024 campaign event, “In the 1890s, our country was probably the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs.” And in his second inaugural address on January 20, 2025, he said, “The great President William McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.” That may have been true for certain industries, but it did not actually hold for the broader population. The Tariff Act of 1890, commonly called the McKinley Tariff because it was framed by then Representative William McKinley, raised the average duty on imports to almost 50%. The increase was designed to protect domestic industries and workers from foreign competition, but the 1890s were marked by severe economic instability. The Panic of 1893 plunged the U.S. into a depression lasting until 1897. Unemployment soared to 18.4% in 1894, with over 15,000 businesses failing and 74 railroads going bankrupt. The stock market crashed, losing nearly 40% of its value between 1893 and 1894. Far from being the wealthiest era, this period saw widespread hardship that tariffs not only failed to prevent but exacerbated. Farmers and factory workers were hit particularly hard. The McKinley Tariff raised the cost of imported goods, squeezing rural and working-class budgets. Farmers faced a deflationary spiral as crop prices plummeted. Real wages for industrial workers stagnated or declined, with purchasing power eroded from high tariffs inflating the prices of consumer goods. In the 1860s, President Lincoln issued debt-free money in the form of unbacked U.S. Notes or “Greenbacks;” but new issues of Greenbacks were discontinued in the 1870s, and gold was made the sole backing of currency. The resulting economic distress fueled the Greenback movement, which sought a return to the “lawful money” issued by President Lincoln. The Greenbacks were considered lawful because they were issued directly by the government as provided in the Constitution, rather than by private banks. The Greenback Party faded, but its policies were adopted by the Populist Party and were pursued by a grassroots movement called “Coxey’s Army.” It staged the first-ever march on Washington in 1894, seeking a return to the Greenback solution. The march was considered the plot line for the 1900 classic American children’s story, The Wizard of Oz, with the scarecrow as the farmers, the tin man as the factory workers, the lion as William Jennings Bryan, and Dorothy as populist leader Mary Ellen Lease. Like the powerless Wizard, then-President Grover Cleveland turned the marchers away at the gate. (For a fuller history, see my book, The Web of Debt.) As with McKinley’s tariffs, President Trump’s tariffs are said by critics to be backfiring, contributing to a dramatic stock market drop and prompting retaliatory tariffs and trade withdrawals from other countries. Economists warn of broader fallout. According to a New York Times analysis on March 9, tariffs and retaliation could slash U.S. GDP growth by a full percentage point in 2025, and households are potentially facing an extra $1,000 annually in costs due to tariff-driven inflation. Internationally, the tariffs have triggered withdrawals and realignments. Reuters highlighted on March 10 that the U.S. stock market had lost $4 trillion in value as recession fears grew, and the S&P 500 lost $1.7 trillion just on April 3. [snip] HR 4052, titled “The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023,” is currently before Congress and has 47 co-sponsors. Like Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the bank is designed to be a source of off-budget financing, without adding new costs to the federal budget. For more information, see https://www.nibcoalition.com/. At the local level, state-owned infrastructure banks could do something similar. Currently our only state-owned bank is the Bank of North Dakota, but it is a very successful model that not only funds state infrastructure and development but generates income for the state and acts as a “mini-Fed” for local banks. For more information, see the Public Banking Institute website. The U.S. could also issue money directly, as Lincoln did in the 1860s with Greenbacks, and the German government did in the 1930s with Mefo bills, among other examples. The German government avoided speculative exploitation of the funds by issuing Mefo bills as payment for specific industrial output. The British did something similar in the Middle Ages with tally sticks issued as payment for goods and services, a system that lasted over 600 years. Keeping federal payments honest and transparent is possible today with modern IT technology, one of the assigned tasks of the DOGE IT team.The possibilities were framed in an editorial directed against Lincoln’s debt-free Greenbacks, attributed to the 1865 London Times (though not now to be found in its archives): Without trade wars or kinetic wars, President Trump is in a position to achieve the vision for which President Lincoln might have taken a bullet, through the time-tested expedients of publicly-issued money and publicly-owned banks. **

My understanding is that both methods worked.

Here's the first article, which is fully viewable for free: New York Times Fantasy Tale of Ukraine’s Almost Great Victory Over Russia | Larry Johnson My favourite quote from this article: ** Entous, in the closing paragraphs of Part 3, grudgingly admits the [2023 Ukrainian] counteroffensive was a clusterf*ck, but refuses to assign any blame to the incredible US military leaders. =But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.” Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”= ** Here's the second article: New York Times Admits Ukraine Was An American Run Proxy War | The Dissident Here's its concluding remarks: ** The report notes that Biden “crossed his final red line” in 2024 by “expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia” both crossing the ATACMS red line and the red line prohibiting direct U.S. attacks on Russia. The report also noted that “The(Biden) administration also authorized the C.I.A. to support long-range missile and drone strikes into a section of southern Russia used as a staging area for the assault on Pokrovsk, and allowed the military advisers to leave Kyiv for command posts closer to the fighting.” The fact that this did not spiral into World War three or a nuclear war is truly a miracle, but this report shows that Biden again and again crossed all of Russia’s red lines and authorized direct American attacks into Russian soil. Earlier in the report, it quotes an official who opposed giving Ukraine direct intelligence as to where Russian officials were located saying “Imagine how that would be for us if we knew that the Russians helped some other country assassinate our chairman” with another U.S. official saying “Like, we’d go to war”. But the Biden administration and the CIA took it way farther than this, actively working with Ukraine to strike into Crimea and later deep into Russian territory, even after the U.S. intelligence estimated a “50 percent chance” Russia would use Nuclear weapons over Crimea. Final Thoughts The truth about war will always come out, but only when it’s too late. This information would have been crucial during the Biden administration, but mainstream media denied these facts for years, only to admit that they were true all along -after the damage had already been done. ** The mainly paywalled one is here: Secret History: 'Bombshell' NYT Report Uncovers True Depth of US Involvement in Ukraine War | Simplicius Here's the introduction to this last one: ** The following is a detailed ~4,300-word premium article delving into the more insightful nuggets and revelations found in the New York Times’ epic new report on the American involvement in the Ukrainian war. Some have dismissed the NYT report as chaff, filled with obvious realities long known to most. Which is why I’ve specifically concentrated on the rarer insights, and overlooked gems that provide a deeper understanding of just how enmeshed NATO and the US have been in the war since the beginning. This includes major confirmations of my reporting on the Delta Leaks from 2023, as well as fascinating intersections with Grayzone’s leaks about parallel and rival British secret programs to shore up Ukraine. NYT just released a bombshell exposé which goes into more detail than ever before on the secret US military and intelligence operation using Ukraine as a proxy, which consisted of the combined assets from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency working in concert with military officials to provide everything from targeting and kill-chain control, to direct frontline tactical maneuver advisement—amongst other things. Of course, most of it is news only to the NPCs who’ve subsisted on main courses of MSM consumption. If you’ve been a subscriber here for a while, you will have already known everything ‘uncovered’ in the above exposé—which we’ll get in to later—but it’s at least refreshing to see the admissions finally rolling out, as well as more fleshed out details of the involvement. The article was allegedly the result of more than a year’s worth of research, comprising over 300 interviews “with current and former policymakers, Pentagon officials, intelligence officials and military officers in Ukraine, the United States, Britain and a number of other European countries.” =While some agreed to speak on the record, most requested that their names not be used in order to discuss sensitive military and intelligence operations.= It begins by describing how in the early months of the war, two Ukrainian generals embarked on one of the most ‘secretive’ missions of the war, to Clay Kaserne—the HQ of US Army Europe—in Wiesbaden, Germany. Right up front they make one of the most critical admissions of the conflict: =But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.= In particular, pay attention to the last pair of sentences: =Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.= The last part in particular is what we had already uncovered here with the Delta Leaks two years ago, which exposed how the US was collating vast reams of actionable targeting data and transmitting it to Ukraine. We later learned through the Google-founded Project Maven that AI was utilized to further sift through these endless satellite/SAR data streams to identify ‘points of interest’. [snip] The article is more interesting for the small nuggets it reveals, rather than the grand scheme that had long been obvious to the astute not drinking from the propaganda fountain. For instance, it describes how early ‘successes’ in the US-Ukraine partnership led to a kind of honeymoon phase which culminated in the offensives of 2022, but soon after had curdled beneath growing resentment between the two sides. =The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice. Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.= **

On March 29, the New York Times published an article from a journalist named Adam Entous with the same name as this thread. I have a subscription to the New York Times, which allows me to share 10 articles a month. Here is the unlocked version: The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine | New York Times A great deal of what it revealed was already revealed through leaks, but this is the first time that a mainstream publication is actually coming forward with this. 3 journalists that I follow have come out with articles getting into what it had to say. The first 2 are free articles, the third is mostly behind a paywall, but still worth the first free part I think. I'll add the articles that talk about it later, as this site apparently has an issue with some of the text, so putting it in slowly.

I too am suspicious. Some articles whose authors are also suspicious of all these right wing politicians being charged, and not just in France. First, on French politician Marie Le Pen: https://www.eurosiberia.net/p/le-pen-and-the-guillotine-of-democracy Then some articles on the corruption in Moldova over the past few years, culminating this week in arrests of right wing politicians. The first 2 articles are from small site, but ofcourse the headlines in the mainstream media only focuses on the flashy arrests: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/18/leaked-recordings-state-corruption-moldova/ https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/21/the-wests-romance-with-elections-is-dead-the-rules-based-order-killed-it/ https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-03-31/moldova-says-russia-helped-pro-moscow-mp-flee-long-jail-sentence

I suspect more people are also beginning to wonder what a Russo-American alliance might look like. Dark and desperate for anyone who falls under its domination for the most part. The United States has certainly done a lot of dominating, but Russia is another matter. Generally speaking, they tend to stick close to home. As to the idea of a Russo-American Alliance, I doubt that'll be happening any time soon. Right now, the U.S. is still financing the war in Ukraine to "weaken" Russia. All I'm hoping for at this point is that this ends.

Ukraine is a big deal not because of Ukraine, but because of the proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. I suspect many non European countries don't talk about Ukraine, Russia or Putin because they're more concerned about what Trump is doing closer to home, but I also suspect it's because Trump is doing the right thing there, which is -de- escalating things between Russia and the U.S., rather than escalating things.

Yes, because Trump seems inclined to make sure it gets worse. No, because Russia is winning the war. I've seen no evidence for this. As a matter of fact, I see the opposite. It's a shame Trump wasn't around back when Russia and Ukraine almost made a peace deal at the start of the war, as I can easily imagine that Trump would have jumped at the chance, instead of what actually happened, which was the Biden Administration and Boris Johnson telling Zelensky to "fight on". Had Trump been at the helm at that time and persuaded Zelensky to accept the deal rather than reject it, Russia would have literally walked away from -all- of the territory they took since the start of their military operation, in exchange for some very reasonable concessions from Ukraine. You can read all about the almost peace here: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-russia-war-peace-diplomacy/ As things stand, Trump inherited a mess in Ukraine. Considering that fact, I'd say he's doing a lot better than Biden ever did there. His biggest problem is that Zelensky's Administration has no interest in facing the reality of their situation as thus has no interest in actually achieving peace at this time. The Russians have figured that out: https://www.rt.com/russia/614714-kiev-violates-truce-moscow/

Just finished reading a new article on the war in Ukraine from a substacker I've come to admire on the topic, Simplicius. It can be seen here: https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/negotiations-continue-to-go-nowhere Quoting from the introduction and conclusion of the article: ** The next go-around of negotiations has concluded today between the Ukrainian and American sides in Riyadh. It’ll be the Russians’ turn with the Americans in the same place tomorrow, where Ukraine’s positions from today’s meeting will be conveyed. The most fascinating part of these developments is that on their eve, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff made a number of compelling statements on his media circuit. It provided some of the first glimpses of a real possibility of the US reconciling with Russia’s operative framework of the war. Most significantly, he implied that the US is on board with Russia taking not just Crimea, but all the newly annexed regions: [video interview of Witkoff in original article] In fact, Witkoff demonstrated such an emotional intelligence and sensitivity to the Russian cause, that some commentators have even gone as far as noting ‘this is the first time a US administration has viewed Russians as truly human.’ Maybe Witkoff has an affinity for his ancestral homeland—both of his grandparents were born in Russia. Witkoff demonstrated this in his talk with Tucker Carlson, wherein he called for Russia and the US to work together—a proposal that strikes so discordantly against previous US approaches that it’s nearly surreal to hear: [video interview of Witkoff with Tucker Carlson in original article] But the moment that stole the show and aroused eye-watering resentment from the war-hawk faction was the following, wherein Witkoff relayed an unexpected level of commiseration between Putin and Trump, stating that Putin prayed for Trump after the shooting, and commissioned a portrait for him as a gift: [video interview of Witkoff on Russia's RT in original article] Such things lead one to believe there is some hope, after all, in Russia and the US resolving things in an amicable way. Of particular interest were simultaneous reports that Russia would allegedly end the conflict if the currently demanded regions were recognized, but with one big kicker: ** Putin wants Trump to formally recognise all land Russia has taken in Ukraine, Kommersant reports ** Source: https://archive.ph/43mZI The kicker? Keep in mind Kommersant is not a ‘tabloid’ or rag, but one of Russia’s most respected publications. So, if we are to believe the claim above, Putin is essentially giving the West and Ukraine a short window of time to accept the current territories, or risk having Odessa be included in the official demands. This obviously fully goes along with Putin’s previous more ‘vague’ statements, echoed by the likes of Lavrov et al, about how Ukraine’s terms would progressively worsen over time, should they refuse to accept Russia’s current ‘generous’ ones. [snip] Now we wait to see what tomorrow’s meeting with Russia will bring. Until then, the spring thaws are starting, and both sides have big plans for coming offensives, with new ‘rumors’ suggesting Zelensky wants to organize another broad-fronted assay sometime in April to show the world the AFU’s still got its legs, and to preemptively steal the thunder of impending Russian offensives. With the political pressures heating up, it’s sure to become a pivotal time for the war. **

Disagree. With what? Could you elaborate on what you're asking here? If you're referring to the 2 bombs dropped on Japan and you want to get technical, neither. The nuke dropped on Hiroshima was dropped by U.S. Air Force pilot Paul Tibbets, while the nuke dropped on Nagasaki was dropped by U.S. Air Force pilot Charles Sweeney. If you had meant to ask who made the -decision- to drop 2 nukes on Japan, though, then yes, that decision was Truman's: https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm

That statement makes no sense, and is also incredibly dangerous. Getting accused of being racist for simply trying to apply logic only stultifies reasoned debate and can actually be used to promote racism of certain types. That's what racists say when they're deflecting. I wouldn't go that far, but stifling debate by calling anyone who dares question a person's logic on racism can certainly -lead- to racism of certain types.

The article that shares the name of this thread speaks of the moral/ethical degradation of the west and its consequences. Quoting parts of it that I thought were particularly good below: ** While the self-proclaimed peacemaker was on the phone polishing the newest iteration of his Art of the Deal, genocidal psychopathological Zionists with hammers a-bleedin’ were unleashing wild wolves on displaced newborn babies – huddling in tents ablaze in Khan Yunis. And ten thousand EUrotrash talkers with their tongues all broken were mute on genocide but ready to erupt in shrieking delight pledging loyalty – and billions in funds – to the envoy of the former self-proclaimed Emir of Al-Nusra, a moderate head-chopper turned Hugo Boss-clad President. [snip] In parallel the Exceptionalist “peace through strength” circus ringmaster – dubbed across vast swathes of the Arab street as “The Marmalade Mor*n” – brutally started bombing Ansarallah in Yemen, to force unbowed warriors to ditch their unwavering support for Palestine and wallow in submission. [snip] Compared to Yemeni courage, EUrotrash cowards might yearn, in their wildest dreams, to sound like thunder but are more likely to drown under a massive wave of irrelevance – to the sound of drummers whose hands are a-blazin’, bangin’ the Syria jihadi song. They shouldn’t even bother to whisper – because nobody is listenin’. [snip] Putin, Medvedev, Patrushev, Naryshkin, Lavrov, they all know that this war the current, breathless circus ringmaster is trying to end was always about breaking Russia, as well as containing China, and designed mostly as a Hail Mary pass to salvage the fast-declining Empire of Chaos. And all that brings us to Spengler, as re-examined in this superb analysis, and to where Hard Rain is mostly gonna fall with no mercy. When it comes to Europe, we are now dealing with Faustian men that don’t even qualify as T. S. Eliot’s hollow men, as “Europe has forgotten how to breed conquerors.” The Spenglerian metaphor for “the suffocation of a young civilization by the corpse of an old one” does apply. Yet Russian was never Faustian: more like Tolstoyan. All of us who have been spending quality time in Russia after the start of the SMO do carry the feeling that it’s as if “the Third Rome was always waiting, biding its time, watching as Europe gutted itself on the altar of its own hubris.” Now Russia seems to have shed “its Western skin”, turning to “its own roots – Eurasian, Orthodox, steppe-born.” I was personally overcome by this cultural/spiritual illumination not only in white nights in Moscow, Kazan or Vladivostok, but mostly while traveling in the black soil of Novorossiya – where the “rules-based international order” came to die. The fragmented West is indeed trapped in a Baudrillard-style total simulation of its own making – while Russia is operating full tilt in objective reality. And indeed “this is why the West cannot win in Ukraine. It fights as a bureaucratic entity, not as a people. And Russia, for all its flaws, fights as a people.” The current Hollow Men masquerading as Europe’s political “leaders” [snip] should not be underestimated. They will get their revenge – over their own European fellow citizens. Cue to Christine “Vuitton” Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB): “The digital euro is more crucial than ever.” Translation: all European bank accounts will eventually be transferred to the ECB. Now couple that with the proclamation by the Toxic Medusa in Brussels: “This month [March 2025] the European Commission will present the Savings and Investment Union. We will turn private savings (italics mine) into much-needed investments.” Extra translation: it’s the private savings of European citizens that will be stolen and invested in 800 billion warmongering euros for Europe’s “defense” against the perennial “Russian threat”. Hard Rain – on each and every European citizen. ** There is a link in the article I quoted above that I also thought was quite good in its predictions. It can be seen here: https://www.eurosiberia.net/p/dugin-and-the-decline-of-the-west

The question that should be asked is, what is better for Ukraine- to continue a war it can't win where it continues to lose territory or to negotiate a peace deal now. I think there's already plenty of evidence that the deal it's likely to get will get worse and worse the longer it refuses to work out a deal.

It's great that Elon is beginning to learn how money is created. Some of us have known for a while. I personally think that the best documentary to explain how money is made these days is one from a former banker. It can be seen here:

I think it may have been a big help if you would have posted this right off the bat instead of me staying up half the night trying to make sense of everything. You think I just breezed through the thing :-p? It was definitely a dense article. Agreed 🙂

You can click the link to the authors’ other wonderful work on Newsweek, including his rave review of Trump’s clown cabinet and, in particular, Tulsi Gabbard. “I see no evidence…”. 😆 I'm not going to get distracted with you bringing other people into this, such as Tulsi Gabbard. You had claimed that these diplomats were "Republican shills", but you have yet to offer a shred of evidence for your assertion.

The House Select Committee debunked the idea that Oswald was the lone gunman way back in 1979. From an article I just found on its work in investigating the JFK assassination: ** The House Select Committee on Assassinations was the second major investigation of the JFK assassination, following the Warren Commission by nearly a decade and a half. The revelations of the Church Committee were profound in the 1970s, and efforts to re-investigate the assassinations of the 1960s picked up steam. The airing of the Zapruder film on television in 1975, showing Kennedy reacting “the wrong way” to a bullet from the rear, was a defining event which helped push the momentum over the top. Congress authorized an investigation into the murders of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Chief Counsel Richard Sprague ran into early troubles, butting heads with the CIA over secrecy oaths among other matters. He was eventually forced to resign, and the investigation was taken over by G. Robert Blakey. After a few years of work, the House Committee issued a Final Assassinations Report, along with 12 appendix volumes on each of the murders. In the JFK case, the HSCA found that "Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy," based in large part on acoustics evidence which captured the sound impulses of gunfire from more than one location in Dealey Plaza. [snip] Based on new evidence indicating CIA withholding of key information, HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey in 2003 wrote a scathing letter about CIA obstruction of the HSCA inquiry: "I now no longer believe anything the Agency told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity." more ** Source: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/HSCA.html Wikipedia words this finding differently, but seems to be pointing at the same result: ** Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that at least two gunmen fired at the President. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations. ** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Assassinations Personally, I found Oliver Stone's film on JFK's assassination to be quite compelling. His film was based in part on 2 books, one of which I read a fair amount of a while back, this one to be precise: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/301804.Crossfire

So the Left (who originally began the free speech movement in the 60's), buys into the theories of critical race theorist Mari Masuda. They begin 'cancelling' those they label as oppressers, and ensure the oppressed are granted the tolerance of hateful speech that comes from the experience of oppression. As a result, free speech becomes more muddled and oriented to social justice. Conservatives and Centrists claim this is divisive and intellectually backward. Trump comes along and does the same thing except there's a difference of opinion about who are the oppressers and who are the oppressed. In doing so, he's reinforcing the Left's position on speech. But there is a difference if it's true that protesters are harassing Jews on campus (in America) while right leaning speakers get cancelled because of their views or what they may or may not say. If Palestinians want to harass Jews or Jews want to harass Palestinians.... then go back to Palestine. Have I got this about right? I definitely think you got some of it right. Your bring up Mari Matsuda, which certainly seems to be fundamental to the type of speech that's been censored for a while now on both the left -and- the right. Again quoting from Geoff Shullenberger's article: ** In the wake of the October 7 Hamas terror attack against southern Israel, however, conservatives dramatically shifted their criticisms of the progressive campus speech regime. From the Nineties battles over political correctness to the early 2020s wars over wokeness, their main concern was with universities’ censoriousness towards conservative-coded views. But their new focus is on the same institutions’ permissiveness towards extreme speech by Leftists — most notoriously, celebration of terrorist violence against Israeli civilians. In other words, the criticism directed at universities shifted away from the “intolerant towards the Right” side of Marcuse’s equation, and toward the “tolerant towards the Left” side. Meanwhile, the Left correspondingly pivoted from demanding “intolerance towards the Right” — keeping Milo off-campus — to “tolerance towards the Left” — letting pro-Palestinian protesters protest, even if their speech may offend some. However, this reversal of positions was possible in part because it’s not only the Right/Left polarity that came to determine the range of permissible speech on campus in the post-Sixties era. Indeed, the unofficial campus speech regime didn’t so much legitimise itself in Right/Left terms as in terms of victimhood and oppression. A programmatic statement of this rationale can be found in the pioneering critical race theorist Mari Matsuda’s article “Public Response to Racist Speech”, published in 1989. In Matsuda’s account, it is speech by members of or on behalf of “historically dominant groups” and against “subordinated communities” that should be subject to “intolerance”, while speech going in the opposite direction, even if hateful or violent, should be subject to “tolerance”. Matsuda offered, in effect, an update on Marcuse’s “liberating tolerance”, processed through the classifications of civil-rights law. Instead of “the Left” being granted extra leeway, as Marcuse had demanded, it was members of oppressed groups who were to enjoy what Matsuda calls the “victim’s privilege”. In practice, this meant that when any speech generated controversy, the task was to identify oppressor and oppressed, then ensure that the latter is granted “the tolerance of hateful speech that comes from an experience of oppression”, whereas the former is subject to maximum intolerance. This is how the attempts to shut down controversial speakers at the height of last decade’s Great Awokening were justified. For instance, in 2017, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argued in The New York Times that efforts to prevent figures like Yiannopolous and Charles Murray from speaking on campus “should be understood as an attempt to ensure the conditions of free speech for a greater group of people, rather than censorship”. Intolerance toward oppressors, that is, equals tolerance toward the oppressed. Matsuda defined universities as a “special case” because college students are “at a vulnerable stage of psychological development”. Accordingly, “tolerance of racist speech in this setting is more harmful than generalised tolerance in the community-at-large”. Gesturing back at Berkeley and other Sixties protest, Matsuda reaffirmed support for the protesters’ speech rights, but not on grounds of “pure tolerance”. Rather, she appealed to the “power imbalance” between students and “university administrators, multinational corporations, the US military, and established governments”. In other words, insofar as students can be construed as victims, their speech must be protected — but once they can be construed as victimisers, they can no longer lay claim to that privilege. ** I think the main case that Shullenberger is making is that Matsuda helped open the door to bias on both the left and the right, since all they had to do was state that their side was being victimized in order to censore speech on the other side. The question that should always be asked, whether the speech being censored is from the 'left' or the 'right', is whether allowing such speech is truly victimizing anyone or whether, instead, it is simply exposing a truth that is uncomfortable to powerful interests.

If this is all true then there is a fundamental change from the 'status quo'. How so? Conservatives as a rule don't get involved in violent campus protests. Ah, now I see your point of view. You believe that the pro-Palestinian protests are by default violent and that it is the pro-Palestinians who are the cause of this violence. From what I've seen, it's the other way around: https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/01/new-report-details-police-repression-of-palestine-activism-at-ucla/

Is it true that Jewish students are being harassed on campus and is it true that Khalil is in some way encouraging this harassment? I suspect that a few jewish students are harassed, but I doubt that Khalil has anything to do with that. How so? Sometimes, what matters to politicians is not what is true, but what their voter base believes to be true.

Just finished reading the article that shares the title of this thread. I thought it was quite good. Quoting from its conclusion: ** The broader implication of the original Free Speech Movement’s demand was, again, that intramural speech be protected by the First Amendment in the same manner as extramural speech. The effect of this demand — like the other factors that eroded in loco parentis — was to merge the university with the broader space of rights-granted citizenship. But a further implication of this move, not necessarily evident to the student protesters when they made their demands, was to weaken the specificity of the university’s function within society: to form young adults. It was perhaps an inevitable reaction to this drift and evacuation of institutional purpose that new forms of paternalism reemerged to substitute for in loco parentis, not least the differentiated speech regime outlined by Matsuda. This helped define a new moral, values-imparting mission for universities, which over decades became ever more explicitly oriented around social justice. Conservative and centrist critics of campus politics have documented the divisive and intellectually stultifying effects of this regime. Now that the Trump administration is attempting to force top-down change on the system, many who opposed it are celebrating. Yet it should be clear from the administration’s single-minded focus on reining in pro-Palestinian protest — justified on the grounds of protecting Jewish students from harassment — that what it is offering is not at all a fundamental change from the status quo ante. On the contrary, Matsuda’s basic idea that speech must be regulated on the basis of whether it causes harm to a “subordinated community” remains fully in force; it is simply that a different minority group is now asserted to be in need of special protection. In other words, Trump is merely adjusting the dials of the prior campus speech regime, applying greater tolerance here and greater intolerance there. The real problem with this shift isn’t the apparent inconsistency with conservative opposition to cancel culture, but that the administration is leaving the deeper assumptions of the prior system for regulating speech intact. Universities need to be reformed, and reimagined, on a much more fundamental level. The post-in loco parentis integration of campuses into the broader realm of citizenship has failed to facilitate the responsible exercise of the citizenship. Rather, it has only succeeded at evacuating institutional purpose in favour of an incoherent mix of anything-goes consumerism and tendentious moralism. Trump’s heavy-handed actions will succeed in suppressing some of the campus radicalism to which conservatives object. But they will leave intact the divisive and infantilising speech regime. ** Full article: https://unherd.com/2025/03/the-repressive-tolerance-of-trump/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3

About that ICC warrant: ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept-funded report that debunked itself | The Grayzone How NATO states sponsored ICC prosecutor’s Putin arrest warrant | The Grayzone From the second article: ** As The Grayzone has reported, the ICC’s warrant was inspired by a State Department-funded report that contained no field reporting, no concrete evidence of war crimes, and no proof that Russia was actually targeting Ukrainian youth with a massive deportation campaign. In fact, the investigators acknowledged finding “no documentation of child mistreatment, including sexual or physical violence, among the camps referenced in this report.” What’s more, the inquiry’s lead author told The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo that “a large amount” of the Russian youth camps his team researched were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.” Though Khan pledged his absolute independence in his hunt for Putin, he is closely aligned with the same Western governments that are currently engaged in a proxy battle with Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield. Meanwhile, he has stalled the ICC’s case against Israel, frustrating human rights lawyers who represent the victims of grisly violence in the besieged Gaza Strip. Additionally, Khan formally dropped the international court’s case against the US military for its actions in Afghanistan. Through his focus on Ukraine, Khan has presided over a massive surge in Western financial support for his office, with much of the money earmarked for his investigation into Russian officials. The ICC’s issuance of Putin’s arrest warrant happened to coincide with a major donor’s conference for the court in London, England. The ICC prosecutor’s political entanglements do not stop there. Celebrity lawyer Amal Clooney has worked as a special advisor to Khan’s office while simultaneously counseling the Ukrainian government on its initiative to target Russian officials with prosecution, either by the ICC or another international body. Clooney has also served as a special liaison to the British Foreign Secretary. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that after two decades of unremitting hostile relations with the ICC, official Washington is suddenly warming up to the court, and is endeared by its top prosecutor. **

Yeah they didn't need to fight the invaders, they could've just surrenders. The question you should be asking is, where did all of this start? It certainly wasn't when Putin decided to start his military operation on February 24, 2022. As I pointed out in the post you just responded to, Professor John Mearsheimer predicted that Ukraine was going to get wrecked in large part due to the west's policies in regards to Ukraine way back in 2015. In case you missed it, here's the video again: Since then, Ukraine just became even more brazen in regards to Russia's interests. What I think was the last straw for Russia was Ukraine's renewed assault on the Donbass Republics literally days before Russia's military operation in Ukraine began. I know of only a single writer who laid out the evidence for this, former Swiss Intelligence Officer Jacques Baud, in an article he wrote shortly after Russia's military operation in Ukraine began. Quoting from said article: ** In fact, as early as February 16 [2022], Joe Biden knows that the Ukrainians began to shell the civilian populations of Donbass, putting Vladimir Putin in front of a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem or to sit idle and watch Russian speakers from the Donbass being run over. If he decides to intervene, Vladimir Putin can invoke the international obligation of “ Responsibility To Protect ” (R2P). But he knows that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention will trigger a shower of sanctions. Therefore, whether its intervention is limited to the Donbass or whether it goes further to put pressure on the West for the status of Ukraine, the price to be paid will be the same. This is what he explains in his speech on February 21. That day, he acceded to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Republics of Donbass and, in the process, he signed treaties of friendship and assistance with them. The Ukrainian artillery bombardments on the populations of Donbass continued and, on February 23, the two Republics requested military aid from Russia. On the 24th, Vladimir Putin invokes Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which provides for mutual military assistance within the framework of a defensive alliance. In order to make the Russian intervention totally illegal in the eyes of the public we deliberately obscure the fact that the war actually started on February 16th. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as certain Russian and European intelligence services were well aware… The lawyers will judge. ** Full article: https://scheerpost.com/2022/04/09/former-nato-military-analyst-blows-the-whistle-on-wests-ukraine-invasion-narrative/