There was a crazy literary battle between James Baldwin and the Jewish Community, including Norman Podhoretz and others (you’ll see).

Norman Podhoretz is the Godfather of Neoconservatism. Without his ideas there would have been no 9/11. No ‘War on Terror.’ And the Middle East might just be experiencing peace. He grew up in a different time, that is true, but what follows is so very shocking, especially when you find out it was published in mainstream publications Commentary, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and the New York Times.

I had to dig to find these, so I am publishing them in full. This is a lost way of debate. Long gone with the technological advancements of our day. For the better? You decide. Let’s discuss in the comments section.

But this will be forever “Crystallized in Stone.”

Look, I am copy/pasting these articles side-by-side so we can see the full exchange. There will be words that we don’t use anymore in current society. This shit’s raw and I refuse to censor a single word.

Continue at YOUR OWN RISK.

Thank you, Sincerely,

Management,

February 1963

My Negro Problem—And Ours

One of the Most Controversial and Powerful Essays Published in COMMENTARY

by Norman Podhoretz

And so for a long time I was puzzled to think that Jews were supposed to be rich when the only Jews I knew were poor, and that Negroes were supposed to be persecuted when it was the Negroes who were doing the only persecuting I knew about—and doing it, moreover, to me. During the early years of the war, when my older sister joined a left-wing youth organization, I remember my astonishment at hearing her passionately denounce my father for thinking that Jews were worse off than Negroes. To me, at the age of twelve, it seemed very clear that Negroes were better off than Jews—indeed, than all whites. A city boy’s world is contained within three or four square blocks, and in my world it was the whites, the Italians and Jews, who feared the Negroes, not the other way around. The Negroes were tougher than we were, more ruthless, and on the whole they were better athletes. What could it mean, then, to say that they were badly off and that we were more fortunate? Yet my sister’s opinions, like print, were sacred, and when she told me about exploitation and economic forces I believed her. I believed her, but I was still afraid of Negroes. And I still hated them with all my heart.

It had not always been so—that much I can recall from early childhood. When did it start, this fear and this hatred? There was a kindergarten in the local public school, and given the character of the neighborhood, at least half of the children in my class must have been Negroes. Yet I have no memory of being aware of color differences at that age, and I know from observing my own children that they attribute no significance to such differences even when they begin noticing them. I think there was a day—first grade? second grade?—when my best friend Carl hit me on the way home from school and announced that he wouldn’t play with me any more because I had killed Jesus. When I ran home to my mother crying for an explanation, she told me not to pay any attention to such foolishness, and then in Yiddish she cursed the goyim and the Schwartzes, the Schwartzes and the goyim. Carl, it turned out, was a Schwartze, and so was added a third to the categories into which people were mysteriously divided.

Sometimes I wonder whether this is a true memory at all. It is blazingly vivid, but perhaps it never happened: can anyone really remember back to the age of six? There is no uncertainty in my mind, however, about the years that followed. Carl and I hardly ever spoke, though we met in school every day up through the eighth or ninth grade. There would be embarrassed moments of catching his eye or of his catching mine—for whatever it was that had attracted us to one another as very small children remained alive in spite of the fantastic barrier of hostility that had grown up between us, suddenly and out of nowhere. Nevertheless, friendship would have been impossible, and even if it had been possible, it would have been unthinkable. About that, there was nothing anyone could do by the time we were eight years old.

Item: The orphanage across the street is torn down, a city housing project begins to rise in its place, and on the marvelous vacant lot next to the old orphanage they are building a playground. Much excitement and anticipation as Opening Day draws near. Mayor LaGuardia himself comes to dedicate this great gesture of public benevolence. He speaks of neighborliness and borrowing cups of sugar, and of the playground he says that children of all races, colors, and creeds will learn to live together in harmony. A week later, some of us are swatting flies on the playground’s inadequate little ball field. A gang of Negro kids, pretty much our own age, enter from the other side and order us out of the park. We refuse, proudly and indignantly, with superb masculine fervor. There is a fight, they win, and we retreat, half whimpering, half with bravado. My first nauseating experience of cowardice. And my first appalled realization that there are people in the world who do not seem to be afraid of anything, who act as though they have nothing to lose. Thereafter the playground becomes a battleground, sometimes quiet, sometimes the scene of athletic competition between Them and Us. But rocks are thrown as often as baseballs. Gradually we abandon the place and use the streets instead. The streets are safer, though we do not admit this to ourselves. We are not, after all, sissies—that most dreaded epithet of an American boyhood.

Item: I am standing alone in front of the building in which I live. It is late afternoon and getting dark. That day in school the teacher had asked a surly Negro boy named Quentin a question he was unable to answer. As usual I had waved my arm eagerly (“Be a good boy, get good marks, be smart, go to college, become a doctor”) and, the right answer bursting from my lips, I was held up lovingly by the teacher as an example to the class. I had seen Quentin’s face—a very dark, very cruel, very Oriental-looking face—harden, and there had been enough threat in his eyes to make me run all the way home for fear that he might catch me outside.

Now, standing idly in front of my own house, I see him approaching from the project accompanied by his little brother who is carrying a baseball bat and wearing a grin of malicious anticipation. As in a nightmare, I am trapped. The surroundings are secure and familiar, but terror is suddenly present and there is no one around to help. I am locked to the spot. I will not cry out or run away like a sissy, and I stand there, my heart wild, my throat clogged. He walks up, hurls the familiar epithet (“Hey, mo’f—r”), and to my surprise only pushes me. It is a violent push, but not a punch. A push is not as serious as a punch. Maybe I can still back out without entirely losing my dignity. Maybe I can still say, “Hey, c’mon Quentin, whaddya wanna do that for. I dint do nothin’ to you,” and walk away, not too rapidly. Instead, before I can stop myself, I push him back—a token gesture—and I say, “Cut that out, I don’t wanna fight, I ain’t got nothin’ to fight about.” As I turn to walk back into the building, the corner of my eye catches the motion of the bat his little brother has handed him. I try to duck, but the bat crashes colored lights into my head.

The next thing I know, my mother and sister are standing over me, both of them hysterical. My sister—she who was later to join the “progressive” youth organization—is shouting for the police and screaming imprecations at those dirty little black bastards. They take me upstairs, the doctor comes, the police come. I tell them that the boy who did it was a stranger, that he had been trying to get money from me. They do not believe me, but I am too scared to give them Quentin’s name. When I return to school a few days later, Quentin avoids my eyes. He knows that I have not squealed, and he is ashamed. I try to feel proud, but in my heart I know that it was fear of what his friends might do to me that had kept me silent, and not the code of the street.

Item: There is an athletic meet in which the whole of our junior high school is participating. I am in one of the seventh-grade rapid-advance classes, and “segregation” has now set in with a vengeance. In the last three or four years of the elementary school from which we have just graduated, each grade had been divided into three classes, according to “intelligence.” (In the earlier grades the divisions had either been arbitrary or else unrecognized by us as having anything to do with brains.) These divisions by IQ, or however it was arranged, had resulted in a preponderance of Jews in the “1” classes and a corresponding preponderance of Negroes in the “3’s,” with the Italians split unevenly along the spectrum. At least a few Negroes had always made the “l’s,” just as there had always been a few Jewish kids among the “3’s” and more among the “2’s” (where Italians dominated). But the junior high’s rapid-advance class of which I am now a member is overwhelmingly Jewish and entirely white—except for a shy lonely Negro girl with light skin and reddish hair.

The athletic meet takes place in a city-owned stadium far from the school. It is an important event to which a whole day is given over. The winners are to get those precious little medallions stamped with the New York City emblem that can be screwed into a belt and that prove the wearer to be a distinguished personage. I am a fast runner, and so I am assigned the position of anchor man on my class’s team in the relay race. There are three other seventh-grade teams in the race, two of them all Negro, as ours is all white. One of the all-Negro teams is very tall—their anchor man waiting silently next to me on the line looks years older than I am, and I do not recognize him. He is the first to get the baton and crosses the finishing line in a walk. Our team comes in second, but a few minutes later we are declared the winners, for it has been discovered that the anchor man on the first-place team is not a member of the class. We are awarded the medallions, and the following day our home-room teacher makes a speech about how proud she is of us for being superior athletes as well as superior students. We want to believe that we deserve the praise, but we know that we could not have won even if the other class had not cheated.

That afternoon, walking home, I am waylaid and surrounded by five Negroes, among whom is the anchor man of the disqualified team.

“Gimme my medal, mo’f—r,” he grunts. I do not have it with me and I tell him so.

“Anyway, it ain’t yours,” I say foolishly. He calls me a liar on both counts and pushes me up against the wall on which we sometimes play handball.

“Gimme my mo’f—n’ medal,” he says again.

I repeat that I have left it home.

“Le’s search the li’l mo’f—r,” one of them suggests, “he prolly got it hid in his mo’f—n’ pants.”

My panic is now unmanageable. (How many times had I been surrounded like this and asked in soft tones, “Len’ me a nickel, boy.” How many times had I been called a liar for pleading poverty and pushed around, or searched, or beaten up, unless there happened to be someone in the marauding gang like Carl who liked me across that enormous divide of hatred and who would therefore say, “Aaah, c’mon, le’s git someone else, this boy ain’t got no money on ‘im.”)

I scream at them through tears of rage and self-contempt, “Keep your f—n’ filthy lousy black hands off a me! I swear I’ll get the cops.”

This is all they need to hear, and the five of them set upon me. They bang me around, mostly in the stomach and on the arms and shoulders, and when several adults loitering near the candy store down the block notice what is going on and begin to shout, they run off and away.

I do not tell my parents about the incident. My teammates, who have also been waylaid, each by a gang led by his opposite number from the disqualified team, have had their medallions taken from them, and they never squeal either.

For days, I walk home in terror, expecting to be caught again, but nothing happens. The medallion is put away into a drawer, never to be worn by anyone

Obviously experiences like these have always been a common feature of childhood life in working-class and immigrant neighborhoods, and Negroes do not necessarily figure in them. Wherever, and in whatever combination, they have lived together in the cities, kids of different groups have been at war, beating up and being beaten up: micks against kikes against wops against spics against pollocks. And even relatively homogeneous areas have not been spared the warring of the young: one block against another, one gang (called in my day, in a pathetic effort at gentility, an “S.A.C.,” or social-athletic club) against another. But the Negro-white conflict had—and no doubt still has—a special intensity and was conducted with a ferocity unmatched by intramural white battling.

Why, why should it have been so different as between the Negroes and us? How was it borne in upon us so early, white and black alike, that we were enemies beyond any possibility of reconciliation? Why did we hate one another so?

I suppose if I tried, I could answer those questions more or less adequately from the perspective of what I have since learned. I could draw upon James Baldwin—what better witness is there?—to describe the sense of entrapment that poisons the soul of the Negro with hatred for the white man whom he knows to be his jailer. On the other side, if I wanted to understand how the white man comes to hate the Negro, I could call upon the psychologists who have spoken of the guilt that white Americans feel toward Negroes and that turns into hatred for lack of acknowledging itself as guilt. These are plausible answers and certainly there is truth in them. Yet when I think back upon my own experience of the Negro and his of me, I find myself troubled and puzzled, much as I was as a child when I heard that all Jews were rich and all Negroes persecuted. How could the Negroes in my neighborhood have regarded the whites across the street and around the corner as jailers? On the whole, the whites were not so poor as the Negroes, but they were quite poor enough, and the years were years of Depression. As for white hatred of the Negro, how could guilt have had anything to do with it? What share had these Italian and Jewish immigrants in the enslavement of the Negro? What share had they—downtrodden people themselves breaking their own necks to eke out a living—in the exploitation of the Negro.

No, I cannot believe that we hated each other back there in Brooklyn because they thought of us as jailers and we felt guilty toward them. But does it matter, given the fact that we all went through an unrepresentative confrontation? I think it matters profoundly, for if we managed the job of hating each other so well without benefit of the aids to hatred that are supposedly at the root of this madness everywhere else, it must mean that the madness is not yet properly understood. I am far from pretending that I understand it, but I would insist that no view of the problem will begin to approach the truth unless it can account for a case like the one I have been trying to describe. Are the elements of any such view available to us?

At least two, I would say, are. One of them is a point we frequently come upon in the work of James Baldwin, and the other is a related point always stressed by psychologists who have studied the mechanisms of prejudice. Baldwin tells us that one of the reasons Negroes hate the white man is that the white man refuses to look at him: the Negro knows that in white eyes all Negroes are alike; they are faceless and therefore not altogether human. The psychologists, in their turn, tell us that the white man hates the Negro because he tends to project those wild impulses that he fears in himself onto an alien group which he then punishes with his contempt. What Baldwin does not tell us, however, is that the principle of facelessness is a two-way street and can operate in both directions with no difficulty at all. Thus, in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, I was as faceless to the Negroes as they were to me, and if they hated me because I never looked at them, I must also have hated them for never looking at me. To the Negroes, my white skin was enough to define me as the enemy, and in a war it is only the uniform that counts and not the person.

So with the mechanism of projection that the psychologists talk about: it too works in both directions at once. There is no question that the psychologists are right about what the Negro represents symbolically to the white man.

For me as a child the life lived on the other side of the playground and down the block on Ralph Avenue seemed the very embodiment of the values of the street—free, independent, reckless, brave, masculine, erotic. I put the word “erotic” last, though it is usually stressed above all others, because in fact it came last, in consciousness as in importance.

What mainly counted for me about Negro kids of my own age was that they were “bad boys.” There were plenty of bad boys among the whites—this was, after all, a neighborhood with a long tradition of crime as a career open to aspiring talents—but the Negroes were really bad, bad in a way that beckoned to one, and made one feel inadequate.

We all went home every day for a lunch of spinach-and-potatoes; they roamed around during lunch hour, munching on candy bars. In winter we had to wear itchy woolen hats and mittens and cumbersome galoshes; they were bare-headed and loose as they pleased.

We rarely played hookey, or got into serious trouble in school, for all our street-corner bravado; they were defiant, forever staying out (to do what delicious things?), forever making disturbances in class and in the halls, forever being sent to the principal and returning uncowed. But most important of all, they were tough; beautifully, enviably tough, not giving a damn for anyone or anything. To hell with the teacher, the truant officer, the cop; to hell with the whole of the adult world that held us in its grip and that we never had the courage to rebel against except sporadically and in petty ways.

This is what I saw and envied and feared in the Negro: this is what finally made him faceless to me, though some of it, of course, was actually there. (The psychologists also tell us that the alien group which becomes the object of a projection will tend to respond by trying to live up to what is expected of them.) But what, on his side, did the Negro see in me that made me faceless to him?

Did he envy me my lunches of spinach-and-potatoes and my itchy woolen caps and my prudent behavior in the face of authority, as I envied him his noon-time candy bars and his bare head in winter and his magnificent rebelliousness?

Did those lunches and caps spell for him the prospect of power and riches in the future? Did they mean that there were possibilities open to me that were denied to him? Very likely they did. But if so, one also supposes that he feared the impulses within himself toward submission to authority no less powerfully than I feared the impulses in myself toward defiance.

If I represented the jailer to him, it was not because I was oppressing him or keeping him down: it was because I symbolized for him the dangerous and probably pointless temptation toward greater repression, just as he symbolized for me the equally perilous tug toward greater freedom. I personally was to be rewarded for this repression with a new and better life in the future, but how many of my friends paid an even higher price and were given only gall in return.

We have it on the authority of James Baldwin that all Negroes hate whites. I am trying to suggest that on their side all whites—all American whites, that is—are sick in their feelings about Negroes. There are Negroes, no doubt, who would say that Baldwin is wrong, but I suspect them of being less honest than he is, just as I suspect whites of self-deception who tell me they have no special feeling toward Negroes. Special feelings about color are a contagion to which white Americans seem susceptible even when there is nothing in their background to account for the susceptibility. Thus, everywhere we look today in the North, we find the curious phenomenon of white middle-class liberals with no previous personal experience of Negroes—people to whom Negroes have always been faceless in virtue rather than faceless in vice—discovering that their abstract commitment to the cause of Negro rights will not stand the test of a direct confrontation. We find such people fleeing in droves to the suburbs as the Negro population in the inner city grows; and when they stay in the city we find them sending their children to private school rather than to the “integrated” public school in the neighborhood. We find them resisting the demand that gerrymandered school districts be re-zoned for the purpose of overcoming de facto segregation; we find them judiciously considering whether the Negroes (for their own good, of course) are not perhaps pushing too hard; we find them clucking their tongues over Negro militancy; we find them speculating on the question of whether there may not, after all, be something in the theory that the races are biologically different; we find them saying that it will take a very long time for Negroes to achieve full equality, no matter what anyone does; we find them deploring the rise of black nationalism and expressing the solemn hope that the leaders of the Negro community will discover ways of containing the impatience and incipient violence within the Negro ghettos.¹

But that is by no means the whole story; there is also the phenomenon of what Kenneth Rexroth once called “crow-jimism.” There are the broken-down white boys like Vivaldo Moore in Baldwin’s Another Country who go to Harlem in search of sex or simply to brush up against something that looks like primitive vitality, and who are so often punished by the Negroes they meet for crimes that they would have been the last ever to commit and of which they themselves have been as sorry victims as any of the Negroes who take it out on them.

There are the writers and intellectuals and artists who romanticize Negroes and pander to them, assuming a guilt that is not properly theirs. And there are all the white liberals who permit Negroes to blackmail them into adopting a double standard of moral judgment, and who lend themselves—again assuming the responsibility for crimes they never committed—to cunning and contemptuous exploitation by Negroes they employ or try to befriend.

“Crow-Jimism”- In the 1950s, the poet Kenneth Rexroth coined the term “Crow-Jimism.” He was referring to the belief among many white liberals that Negroes, as they were then called, could do no wrong and were in many ways superior to whites. Rexroth recognized that “Crow-Jimism” was an inverse form of racism, which didn’t prevent it from spreading.

And what about me? What kind of feelings do I have about Negroes today? What happened to me, from Brooklyn, who grew up fearing and envying and hating Negroes? Now that Brooklyn is behind me, do I fear them and envy them and hate them still? The answer is yes, but not in the same proportions and certainly not in the same way. I now live on the upper west side of Manhattan, where there are many Negroes and many Puerto Ricans, and there are nights when I experience the old apprehensiveness again, and there are streets that I avoid when I am walking in the dark, as there were streets that I avoided when I was a child. I find that I am not afraid of Puerto Ricans, but I cannot restrain my nervousness whenever I pass a group of Negroes standing in front of a bar or sauntering down the street. I know now, as I did not know when I was a child, that power is on my side, that the police are working for me and not for them. And knowing this I feel ashamed and guilty, like the good liberal I have grown up to be. Yet the twinges of fear and the resentment they bring and the self-contempt they arouse are not to be gainsaid.

But envy? Why envy? And hatred? Why hatred? Here again the intensities have lessened and everything has been complicated and qualified by the guilts and the resulting over-compensations that are the heritage of the enlightened middle-class world of which I am now a member. Yet just as in childhood I envied Negroes for what seemed to me their superior masculinity, so I envy them today for what seems to me their superior physical grace and beauty. I have come to value physical grace very highly, and I am now capable of aching with all my being when I watch a Negro couple on the dance floor, or a Negro playing baseball or basketball. They are on the kind of terms with their own bodies that I should like to be on with mine, and for that precious quality they seem blessed to me.

The hatred I still feel for Negroes is the hardest of all the old feelings to face or admit, and it is the most hidden and the most overlarded by the conscious attitudes into which I have succeeded in willing myself. It no longer has, as for me it once did, any cause or justification (except, perhaps, that I am constantly being denied my right to an honest expression of the things I earned the right as a child to feel). How, then, do I know that this hatred has never entirely disappeared? I know it from the insane rage that can stir in me at the thought of Negro anti-Semitism; I know it from the disgusting prurience that can stir in me at the sight of a mixed couple; and I know it from the violence that can stir in me whenever I encounter that special brand of paranoid touchiness to which many Negroes are prone.

This, then, is where I am; it is not exactly where I think all other white liberals are, but it cannot be so very far away either. And it is because I am convinced that we white Americans are—for whatever reason, it no longer matters—so twisted and sick in our feelings about Negroes that I despair of the present push toward integration. If the pace of progress were not a factor here, there would perhaps be no cause for despair: time and the law and even the international political situation are on the side of the Negroes, and ultimately, therefore, victory—of a sort, anyway—must come. But from everything we have learned from observers who ought to know, pace has become as important to the Negroes as substance. They want equality and they want it now, and the white world is yielding to their demand only as much and as fast as it is absolutely being compelled to do. The Negroes know this in the most concrete terms imaginable, and it is thus becoming increasingly difficult to buy them off with rhetoric and promises and pious assurances of support. And so within the Negro community we find more and more people declaring—as Harold R. Isaacs recently put it in these pages²—that they want out: people who say that integration will never come, or that it will take a hundred or a thousand years to come, or that it will come at too high a price in suffering and struggle for the pallid and sodden life of the American middle class that at the very best it may bring.

The most numerous, influential, and dangerous movement that has grown out of Negro despair with the goal of integration is, of course, the Black Muslims. This movement, whatever else we may say about it, must be credited with one enduring achievement: it inspired James Baldwin to write an essay³ which deserves to be placed among the classics of our language. Everything Baldwin has ever been trying to tell us is distilled here into a statement of overwhelming persuasiveness and prophetic magnificence. Baldwin’s message is and always has been simple. It is this: “Color is not a human or personal reality; it is a political reality.” And Baldwin’s demand is correspondingly simple: color must be forgotten, lest we all be smited with a vengeance “that does not really depend on, and cannot really be executed by, any person or organization, and that cannot be prevented by any police force or army: historical vengeance, a cosmic vengeance based on the law that we recognize when we say, ‘Whatever goes up must come down.’”

The Black Muslims Baldwin portrays as a sign and a warning to the intransigent white world. They come to proclaim how deep is the Negro’s disaffection with the white world and all its works, and Baldwin implies that no American Negro can fail to respond somewhere in his being to their message: that the white man is the devil, that Allah has doomed him to destruction, and that the black man is about to inherit the earth. Baldwin of course knows that this nightmare inversion of the racism from which the black man has suffered can neither win nor even point to the neighborhood in which victory might be located. For in his view the neighborhood of victory lies in exactly the opposite direction: the transcendence of color through love.

Yet the tragic fact is that love is not the answer to hate—not in the world of politics, at any rate. Color is indeed a political rather than a human or a personal reality and if politics (which is to say power) has made it into a human and a personal reality, then only politics (which is to say power) can unmake it once again. But the way of politics is slow and bitter, and as impatience on the one side is matched by a setting of the jaw on the other, we move closer and closer to an explosion and blood may yet run in the streets.

Will this madness in which we are all caught never find a resting-place? Is there never to be an end to it? In thinking about the Jews, I have often wondered whether their survival as a distinct group was worth one hair on the head of a single infant. Did the Jews have to survive so that six million innocent people should one day be burned in the ovens of Auschwitz? It is a terrible question and no one, not God himself, could ever answer it to my satisfaction. And when I think about the Negroes in America and about the image of integration as a state in which the Negroes would take their rightful place as another of the protected minorities in a pluralistic society, I wonder whether they really believe in their hearts that such a state can actually be attained, and if so why they should wish to survive as a distinct group. I think I know why the Jews once wished to survive (though I am less certain as to why we still do): they not only believed that God had given them no choice, but they were tied to a memory of past glory and a dream of imminent redemption. What does the American Negro have that might correspond to this? His past is a stigma, his color is a stigma, and his vision of the future is the hope of erasing the stigma by making color irrelevant, by making it disappear as a fact of consciousness.

*Miscegenation-marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. (I had to Google it, I didn’t know what it meant)

I share this hope, but I cannot see how it will ever be realized unless color does in fact disappear: and that means not integration, it means assimilation, it means—let the brutal word come out—miscegenation. The Black Muslims, like their racist counterparts in the white world, accuse the “so-called Negro leaders” of secretly pursuing miscegenation as a goal.

The racists are wrong, but I wish they were right, for I believe that the wholesale merging of the two races is the most desirable alternative for everyone concerned. I am not claiming that this alternative can be pursued programmatically or that it is immediately feasible as a solution; obviously there are even greater barriers to its achievement than to the achievement of integration. What I am saying, however, is that in my opinion the Negro problem can be solved in this country in no other way

I have told the story of my own twisted feelings about Negroes here, and of how they conflict with the moral convictions I have since developed, in order to assert that such feelings must be acknowledged as honestly as possible so that they can be controlled and ultimately disregarded in favor of the convictions. It is wrong for a man to suffer because of the color of his skin. Beside that clichéd proposition of liberal thought, what argument can stand and be respected? If the arguments are the arguments of feeling, they must be made to yield; and one’s own soul is not the worst place to begin working a huge social transformation. Not so long ago, it used to be asked of white liberals, “Would you like your sister to marry one?” When I was a boy and my sister was still unmarried, I would certainly have said no to that question. But now I am a man, my sister is already married, and I have daughters. If I were to be asked today whether I would like a daughter of mine “to marry one,” I would have to answer: “No, I wouldn’t like it at all. I would rail and rave and rant and tear my hair. And then I hope I would have the courage to curse myself for raving and ranting, and to give her my blessing. How dare I withhold it at the behest of the child I once was and against the man I now have a duty to be?

¹ For an account of developments like these, see “The White Liberal’s Retreat” by Murray Friedman in the January 1963 Atlantic Monthly.

² “Integration and the Negro Mood,” December 1962.

³ Originally published last November in the New Yorker under the title “Letter From a Region in My Mind,” it has just been reprinted (along with a new introduction) by Dial Press under the title The Fire Next Time (128 pp., $3.50).

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James Baldwin, right after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature wrote the following editorial. In response to the above by Norman Podhoretz, father of John Podhoretz — The Neocon God & Godfather — in Commentary Magazine:

April 9, 1967

Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White

By JAMES BALDWIN

When we were growing up in Harlem our demoralizing series of landlords were Jewish, and we hated them.

We hated them because they were terrible landlords, and did not take care of the building. A coat of paint, a broken window, a stopped sink, a stopped toilet, a sagging floor, a broken ceiling, a dangerous stairwell, the question of garbage disposal, the question of heat and cold, of roaches and rats—all questions of life and death for the poor, and especially for those with children—we had to cope with all of these as best we could. Our parents were lashed to futureless jobs, in order to pay the outrageous rent. We knew that the landlord treated us this way only because we were colored, and he knew that we could not move out.

The grocer was a Jew, and being in debt to him was very much like being in debt to the company store.

The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home, along with the meat.

We bought our clothes from a Jew and, sometimes, our secondhand shoes, and the pawnbroker was a Jew—perhaps we hated him most of all. The merchants along 125th Street were Jewish—at least many of them were;

I don't know if Grant's or Woolworth's are Jewish names—and I well remember that it was only after the Harlem riot of 1935 that Negroes were allowed to earn a little money in some of the stores where they spent so much.

Not all of these white people were cruel—on the contrary, I remember some who were certainly as thoughtful as the bleak circumstances allowed—but all of them were exploiting us, and that was why we hated them.

But we also hated the welfare workers, of whom some were white, some colored, some Jewish, and some not.

We hated the policemen, not all of whom were Jewish, and some of whom were black. The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason so, and God knows we didn't. “If you must call a cop,” we said in those days, “for God's sake, make sure it's a white one.”

We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder—on your head—to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other niggers.

We hated many of our teachers at school because they so clearly despised us and treated us like dirty, ignorant savages. Not all of these teachers were Jewish. Some of them, alas, were black. I used to carry my father's union dues downtown for him sometimes. I hated everyone in that den of thieves, especially the man who took the envelope from me, the envelope which contained my father's hard-earned money, that envelope which contained bread for his children. “Thieves,” I thought, “every one of you!” And I know I was right about that, and I have not changed my mind. But whether or not all these people were Jewish, I really do not know.

The Army may or may not be controlled by Jews; I don't know, and I don't care. I know that when I worked for the Army, I hated all my bosses because of the way they treated me.

I don't know if the post office is Jewish, but I would certainly dread working for it again.

I don't know if Wanamaker's was Jewish, but I didn't like running their elevator and I didn't like any of their customers.

I don't know if Nabisco is Jewish, but I didn't like clearing their basement.

I don't know if Riker's is Jewish, but I didn't like scrubbing their floors.

I don't know if the big, white bruiser who thought it was fun to call me “Shine” was Jewish, but I know I tried to kill him—and he stopped calling me “Shine.”

I don't know if the last taxi driver who refused to stop for me was Jewish, but I know I hoped he'd break his neck before he got home.

And I don't think that General Electric or General Motors or R.C.A. or Con Edison or Mobil Oil or Coca Cola or Pepsi-Cola or Firestone or the Board of Education or the textbook industry or Hollywood or Broadway or television—or Wall Street, Sacramento, Dallas, Atlanta, Albany or Washington—are controlled by Jews.

I think they are controlled by Americans, and the American Negro situation is a direct result of this control. And anti-Semitism among Negroes, inevitable as it may be, and understandable, alas, as it is, does not operate to menace this control, but only to confirm it. It is not the Jew who controls the American drama. It is the Christian.

The root of anti-Semitism among Negroes is, ironically, the relationship of colored peoples—all over the globe—to the Christian world. This is a fact which may be difficult to grasp, not only for the ghetto's most blasted and embittered inhabitants, but also for many Jews, to say nothing of many Christians. But it is a fact, and it will not ameliorate—in fact, it can only be aggravated—by the adoption, on the part of colored people now, of the most devastating of the Christian vices.

Of course, it is true, and I am not so naive as not to know it, that many Jews despise Negroes, even as their Aryan brothers do. (There are also Jews who despise Jews, even as their Aryan brothers do.)

It is true that many Jews use, shamelessly, the slaughter of the 6,000,000 by the Third Reich as proof that they cannot be bigots—or in the hope of not being held responsible for their bigotry. It is galling to be told by a Jew whom you know to be exploiting you that he cannot possibly be doing what you know he is doing because he is a Jew.

It is bitter to watch the Jewish storekeeper locking up his store for the night, and going home. Going, with your money in his pocket, to a clean neighborhood, miles from you, which you will not be allowed to enter.

Nor can it help the relationship between most Negroes and most Jews when part of this money is donated to civil rights.

In the light of what is now known as the white backlash, this money can be looked on as conscience money merely, as money given to keep the Negro happy in his place, and out of white neighborhoods.

One does not wish, in short, to be told by an American Jew that his suffering is as great as the American Negro's suffering. It isn't, and one knows that it isn't from the very tone in which he assures you that it is.

For one thing, the American Jew's endeavor, whatever it is, has managed to purchase a relative safety for his children, and a relative future for them. This is more than your father's endeavor was able to do for you, and more than your endeavor has been able to do for your children. There are days when it can be exceedingly trying to deal with certain white musical or theatrical celebrities who may or may not be Jewish--what, in show business, is a name?--but whose preposterous incomes cause one to think bitterly of the fates of such people as Beside Smith or King Oliver or Ethel Waters. Furthermore, the Jew can be proud of his suffering, or at least not ashamed of it. His history and his suffering do not begin in America, where black men have been taught to be ashamed of everything, especially their suffering.

The Jew's suffering is recognized as part of the moral history of the world and the Jew is recognized as a contributor so the world's history: this is not true for the blacks. Jewish history, whether or not one can say it is honored, is certainly known: the black history has been blasted, maligned and despised. The Jew is a white man, and when white men rise up against oppression, they are heroes: when black men rise, they have reverted to their native savagery. The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was not described as a riot, nor were the participants maligned as hoodlums: the boys and girls in Watts and Harlem are thoroughly aware of this, and it certainly contributes to their attitude toward the Jews.

But, of course, my comparison of Watts and Harlem with the Warsaw ghetto will be immediately dismissed as outrageous. There are many reasons for this, and one of them is that while America loves white heroes, armed to the teeth, it cannot abide bad niggers. But the bottom reason is that it contradicts the American dream to suggest that any gratuitous, unregenerate horror can happen here. We make our mistakes, we like to think, but we are getting better all the time.

Well, to state it mildly, this is a point of view which any sane or honest Negro will have some difficulty holding. Very few Americans, and this includes very few Jews, wish to believe that the American Negro situation is as desperate and dangerous as it is. Very few Americans, and very few Jews, have the courage to recognize that the America of which they dream and boast is not the America in which the Negro lives. It is a country which the Negro has never seen. And this is not merely a matter of bad faith on the part of Americans. Bad faith, God knows, abounds, but there is something in the American dream sadder and more wistful than that.

No one, I suppose, would dream of accusing the late Moss Hart of bad faith. Near the end of his autobiography, “Act One,” just after he has become a successful playwright, and is riding home to Brooklyn for the first time in a cab, he reflects:

“I started through the taxi window at a pinch-faced 10-year-old hurrying down the steps on some morning errand before school, and I thought of myself hurrying down the streets on so many gray mornings out of a doorway and a house much the same as this one. My mind jumped backward in time and then whirled forward, like a many-faceted prism—flashing our old neighborhood in front of me, the house, the steps, the candy store—and then shifted to the skyline I had just passed by, the opening last night, and the notices I still hugged tightly under my arm. It was possible in this wonderful city for that nameless little boy—for any of its millions—to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank, or an imposing name counted for nothing. The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream.”

But this is not true for the Negro, and not even the most successful or fatuous Negro can really feel this way. His journey will have cost him too much, and the price will be revealed in his estrangement—unless he is very rare and lucky—from other colored people, and in his continuing isolation from whites. Furthermore, for every Negro boy who achieves such a taxi ride, hundreds, at least, will have perished around him, and not because they lacked the boldness to dream, but because the Republic despises their dreams.

Perhaps one must be in such a situation in order really to understand what it is. But if one is a Negro in Watts or Harlem, and knows why one is there, and knows that one has been sentenced to remain there for life, one can't but look on the American state and the American people as one's oppressors.

For that, after all, is exactly what they are. They have corralled you where you are for their ease and their profit, and are doing all in their power to prevent you from finding out enough about yourself to be able to rejoice in the only life you have.

One does not wish to believe that the American Negro can feel this way, but that is because the Christian world has been misled by its own rhetoric and narcoticized by its own power.

For many generations the natives of the Belgian Congo, for example, endured the most unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the Belgians, at the hands of Europe. Their suffering occurred in silence. This suffering was not indignantly reported in the Western press, as the suffering of white men would have been. The suffering of this native was considered necessary, alas, for European, Christian dominance. And, since the world at large knew virtually nothing concerning the suffering of this native, when he rose, he was not hailed as a hero fighting for his land, but condemned as a savage, hungry for white flesh.

The Christian world considered Belgium to be a civilized country; but there was not only no reason for the Congolese to feel that way about Belgium; there was no possibility that they could.

What will the Christian world, which is so uneasily silent now, say on that day which is coming when the black native of South Africa begins to massacre the masters who have massacred him so long? It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn’t make a right, either.

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't.

They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

In the American context, the most ironical thing about Negro anti-Semitism is that the Negro is really condemning the Jew for having become an American white man—for having become, in effect, a Christian.

The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro's understanding. It increases the Negro's rage.

For it is not here, and not now, that the Jew is being slaughtered, and he is never despised, here, as the Negro is, because he is an American. The Jewish travail occurred across the sea and America rescued him from the house of bondage. But America is the house of bondage for the Negro, and no country can rescue him. What happens to the Negro here happens to him because he is an American.

When an African is mistreated here, for example, he has recourse to his embassy. The American Negro who is, let us say, falsely arrested, will find it nearly impossible to bring his case to court. And this means that because he is a native of this country—”one of your niggers”—he has, effectively, no recourse and no place to go, either within the country or without.

He is a pariah in his own country and a stranger in the world. This is what it means to have one's history and one's ties to one's ancestral homeland totally destroyed.

This is not what happened to the Jew and, therefore, he has allies in the world. That is one of the reasons no one has ever seriously suggested that the Jew be nonviolent. There was no need for him to be nonviolent. On the contrary, the Jewish battle for Israel was saluted as the most tremendous heroism. How can the Negro fail to suspect that the Jew is really saying that the Negro deserves his situation because he has not been heroic enough?

It is doubtful that the Jews could have won their battle had the Western powers been opposed to them. But such allies as the Negro may have are themselves struggling for their freedom against tenacious and tremendous Western opposition.

This leaves the American Negro, who technically represents the Western nations, in a cruelly ambiguous position. In this situation, it is not the American Jew who can either instruct him or console him. On the contrary, the American Jew knows just enough about this situation to be unwilling to imagine it again.

Finally, what the American Negro interprets the Jew as saying is that one must take the historical, the impersonal point of view concerning one's life and concerning the lives of one's kinsmen and children. "We suffered, too," one is told, "but we came through, and so will you. In time."

In whose time? One has only one life. One may become reconciled to the ruin of one's children's lives is not reconciliation. It is the sickness unto death. And one knows that such counselors are not present on these shores by following this advice. They arrived here out of the same effort the American Negro is making: they wanted to live, and not tomorrow, but today.

Now, since the Jew is living here, like all the other white men living here, he wants the Negro to wait.

And the Jew sometimes—often—does this in the name of his Jewishness, which is a terrible mistake. He has absolutely no relevance in this context as a Jew. His only relevance is that he is white and values his color and uses it.

He is singled out by Negroes not because he acts differently from other white men, but because he doesn't. His major distinction is given him by that history of Christendom, which has so successfully victimized both Negroes and Jews. And he is playing in Harlem the role assigned him by Christians long ago: he is doing their dirty work.

No more than the good white people of the South, who are really responsible for the bombings and lynchings, are ever present at these events, do the people who really own Harlem ever appear at the door to collect the rent. One risks libel by trying to spell this out too precisely, but Harlem is really owned by a curious coalition which includes some churches, some universities, some Christians, some Jews, and some Negroes.

The capital of New York is Albany, which is not a Jewish state, and the Moses they sent us, whatever his ancestry, certainly failed to get the captive children free.

A genuinely candid confrontation between American Negroes and American Jews would certainly prove of inestimable value. But the aspirations of the country are wretchedly middle-class, and the middle class can never afford candor.

What is really at question is the American way of life.

What is really at question is whether Americans already have an identity or are still sufficiently flexible to achieve one.

This is a painfully complicated question, for what now appears to be the American identity is really a bewildering and sometimes demoralizing blend of nostalgia and opportunism. For example, the Irish who march on St. Patrick's Day, do not, after all, have any desire to go back to Ireland.

They do not intend to go back to live there, though they may dream of going back there to die. Their lives, in the meanwhile, are here, but they cling, at the same time, to those credentials forged in the Old World, credentials which cannot be duplicated here, credentials which the American Negro does not have. These credentials are the abandoned history of Europe—the abandoned and romanticized history of Europe.

The Russian Jews here have no desire to return to Russia either, and they have not departed in great clouds for Israel. But they have the authority of knowing it is there.

The Americans are no longer Europeans, but they are still living, at least as they imagine, on that capital.

That capital also belongs, however, to the slaves who created it for Europe and who created it here; and in that sense, the Jew must see that he is part of the history of Europe, and will always be so considered by the descendant of the slave. Always, that is, unless he himself is willing to prove that this judgment is inadequate and unjust. This is precisely what is demanded of all the other white men in this country, and the Jew will not find it easier than anybody else?

The ultimate hope for a genuine black-white dialogue in this country lies in the recognition that the driven European serf merely created another serf here, and created him on the basis of color. No one can deny that that Jew was a party to this, but it is senseless to assert that this was because of his Jewishness. One can be disappointed in the Jew if one is romantic enough—for not having learned from history; but if people did learn from history, history would be very different.

All racist positions baffle and appall me. None of us are that different from one another, neither that much better nor that much worse. Furthermore, when one takes a position, one must attempt to see where that position inexorably leads. One must ask oneself, if one decides that black or white or Jewish people are, by definition, to be despised, is one willing to murder a black or white or Jewish baby: for that is where the position leads.

And if one blames the Jew for having become a white American, one may perfectly well, if one is black, be speaking out of nothing more than envy.

If one blames the Jew for not having been ennobled by oppression, one is not indicting the single figure of the Jew but the entire human race, and one is also making a quite breathtaking claim for oneself. I know that my own oppression did not ennoble me, not even when I thought of myself as a practicing Christian. I also know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated. I learned this from Christians, and I ceased to practice what the Christians practiced.

The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews.

—James Baldwin, New York Times Magazine

Response to James Baldwin in New York Times Magazine in the following issue. As much controversy as Podhoretz piece created, as did James Baldwin’s.

Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They Want a Scapegoat; A Reply to James Baldwin

By Robert Gordis
April 23, 1967,

Section “The New York Times Magazine,” Page 235

THE brilliant Negro writer, James Baldwin, wrote a characteristically articulate and frank article on Negro anti-Semitism in The New York Times Magazine two weeks ago, His, thesis was clearly expressed in the headline: "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White." In a prefatory note we are informed that Mr. Baldwin resigned from the black nationalist magazine Liberator, which had published a series of anti-Semitic articles, saying, “I think it is distinctly unhelpful, and I think it is immoral, to blame Harlem on the Jew. . . .” He concludes his piece with these words: “The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews.” Thus, he graciously absolves the Jews from the crime of deicide which for centuries, in Israel Zangwill's words, “has made the people of Christ the Christ of peoples.” Baldwin also declares, “I know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated.”

Here is impressive evidence indeed of James Baldwin's anti-anti-Semitism. These credentials notwithstanding, he devotes the bulk of his lengthy article to a passionate justification of Negro anti-Semitism today. In the process he utilizes all the time-honored devices of propaganda perfected in our century. For decades Negroes have been battling energetically to destroy the white man's various stereotypes of the Negro as shiftless, irresponsible, happy-go-lucky and contented with his inferior lot. Nevertheless, Baldwin does not hesitate to set up a series of stereotypes of the Jew in Harlem in order to explain the anti-Jewish prejudice of Negroes.

The landlord who exploits the Negro tenant, the grocer and the butcher who overcharge and short-weight their customers, the pawnbroker who battens on the misery of the Negro-all these, we are told, are Jews, and the Negro therefore hates the Jews.

Baldwin “does not know” whether Grant and Woolworth are Jewish names, but the Negro hates the Jews.

He hates the welfare worker and the policeman; “we hated black cops even more than white cops.” Though Jews on the police force are not particularly numerous, the Negro hates the Jews.

Not all public-school teachers in the Negro ghetto are Jews, but he hates the Jews.

He feels the same way toward the union to which his father belongs, which is “a den of thieves.”

So, too, with the Army which “may or may not be controlled by Jews; I don't know and I don't care [italics mine(author)]. I know that when I worked for the Army, I hated all my bosses because of the way they treated me.”

The same reaction applies to the great business corporations, to Hollywood and Broadway, to the post office, to the television industry and to Wall Street. To be sure, Baldwin doesn't think that they are all controlled by Jews, but the consequence is anti-Semitism, which is both inevitable and understandable." Baldwin would dismiss as irrelevant such factual questions as the degree to which Jewish businessmen and landlords dominate Harlem and other Negro ghettos stretching from Boston to Miami, from New York to Seattle, from Washington to Los Angeles. It does not occur to him to compare the exploitation of Negroes allegedly practiced by Jews with the treatment they receive at the hands of non-Jewish merchants and landlords, both white and black.

He ignores the fact that preliminary studies by social scientists at the University of California suggest that the attitude of Negroes toward Jews is less negative than toward white non-Jews, and that Negroes tend to recognize that Jews have often treated them with a greater degree of fairness and decency than have white Christians.

Since the substantial funds contributed by Jews to the civil-rights movement are denounced as "conscience money,” it is fatuous to expect any recognition-let alone any appreciation of the disproportionate role that Jews have played in the civil-rights struggle. The deaths of Jewish civil-rights workers are passed over in total silence. To recall the earlier work of Julius Rosenwald in Negro education and of Joel E. Spingarn in the founding of the N.A.A.C.P., or the current efforts of Morris Milgram in inter-racial housing, would obviously be out of place.

It is a truism of military strategy that the best defense is an offense. We are warned against examining critically the exaggerations which Baldwin seriously advances as legitimizing Negro anti-Semitism. Thus, he writes: "The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was not described as a riot, nor were the participants maligned as hoodlums: the boys and girls in Watts and Harlem are thoroughly aware of this, and it certainly contributes to their attitude toward the Jews.” Baldwin recognizes that his comparison of Watts and Harlem with the Warsaw ghetto "will be immediately dismissed as outrageous" and declares that there are many reasons for this. He overlooks the only important reason: the comparison is totally false. In the Warsaw ghetto, defenseless men, women and children were systematically attacked and butchered by the world's most powerful military machine. In the Watts and Harlem riots, Negro youths, abetted by their elders, were the attackers, beating and killing white men and women upon whom they chanced to come, and looting and destroying millions of dollars of property. Whatever reasons the rioters had for resentment and bitterness, there was no physical attack upon their lives to justify the resort to mass violence. In the best tradition of the purveyors of prejudice, the Jew is blamed for his virtues as well as for his vices. Thus the complaint is advanced that "the Jew is recognized as a contributor to the world's history: this is not true for the blacks.” Here again the distortion underlying the comparison is patent. It is no criticism of Bulgarians or Algerians or, for that matter, of Belgians or Swiss-to say that their group contributions to Western civilization are less than that of the Jewish people, and that their respective literature and history are correspondingly less familiar to the rest of the world than the traditions enshrined in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. There can be no doubt that the time is long overdue for a greater knowledge and appreciation, by whites as well as by blacks, of Negro culture created both in Africa and in America. But to offer this condition as an apology for anti-Semitism (since no note of objection is interposed) is indeed going far afield. Nor is it true to say that the American Jew tells the Negro "his suffering is as great as the American Negro's suffering. We suffered, too, but we came through, and so will you. In time.” Baldwin's reticence in opposing anti-Jewish prejudice is all the more striking when contrasted with the vigor of style he employs in criticizing Jews. He declares, "It is true that many Jews use, shamelessly, the slaughter of the 6,000,000 by the Third Reich as proof that they cannot be bigots-or in the hope of not being held responsible for their bigotry" (italics mine). The italicized adverb is deeply revealing and disturbing. The statement, of course, is false. I challenge Baldwin to offer evidence that the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler is used by Jews, shamelessly or otherwise, to prove that they cannot be bigots. Jews have demonstrated their capacity for bigotry and, by that token, their link with all humanity-time and again. And not only vis-à-vis non-Jews, but also in their relations with one another! It may be true that, in general, Jews are like other people, only more so. In their relations with Negroes, they, like all other white Americans, have been guilty of major sins both of commission and of omission. But their record, though far from admirable, is nonetheless at least as good as and in most respects better than that of others. If Baldwin is right and the Jew is "singled out by Negroes not because he acts differently from other white men, but because he doesn't," Negro leadership is confronted by a crucial moral issue and not merely a problem of strategy and finances.

WHAT is most disturbing in the approach of Baldwin and other apologists for Negro anti-Semitism is not so much what is said, but what is left unsaid. One searches in vain in the article for any forthright recognition that hatred is as disastrous to its perpetrator as to its victim. No effort is made to grapple with the problem of

MARCHERS Police throw tear gas at civil-rights supporters in Selma, Ala., during the demonstrations there in early 1965. a possible cure or amelioration of the disease. Nowhere is there one word of admonition or warning addressed to the Negro community, urging them to fight the incubus of Jew-hatred which he finds both ubiquitous and justified. Instead, all the ills of contemporary society in general and the plight of the Negro in particular are placed at the doorstep of the Jew, the scapegoat of the ages. Jews and all white men of decency and good will do wish to speak with their Negro brothers in fruitful confrontation. But the undertaking does not become easier in the face of the exaggerations and distortions which are being advanced.

ONE of the gravest intellectual errors of which men are capable-and its consequences in the practical sphere are devastating-is simplism. The phenomenon of Negro anti-Semitism is tragically oversimplified and by that token dangerously distorted when it is explained-and justified-in terms of one cause only. Undoubtedly the social and economic factor is a basic element in the anti-Semitic complex. But other strands are woven into the age-old chain of Jew-hatred. Anti-Semitism in the Christian world derives its original impetus, and much of its present hold on men's spirit, from religion. This remains true even in an age marked by both unbelief and ecumenicalism, and the two phenomena are not unrelated.

Yeoman efforts are being made today to extricate Western society from the burdens of prejudice and ill will inherited from the earliest period of traditional Christianity. When the Christian church first came into being, its leaders confidently expected that Jews would flock to its fold since it claimed to be the new Israel, the heir and successor of the old. The hoped-for mass conversion, however, did not take place and Jews, by and large, refused to accept the new dispensation. The church expressed its resentment by charging the Jewish people not merely with the rejection of the Savior but with His death. Thus the Jew became the cosmic villain in the Christian drama of salvation. In every age there were a few great-souled exemplars of religion who spoke out for brotherhood and love, but they were usually voices crying in the wilderness. For 19 centuries Jew-hatred was not merely condoned but glorified as a religious virtue. Even today, anti-Semitic prejudice is difficult to dislodge because it is so often sustained by a conviction of self-righteousness and piety. When the American Negro was kidnaped from his native Africa and brought to the United States and cast into slavery, he was converted to Christianity in its most literalistic form. Lacking the education and sophistication which even his white masters rarely possessed he could hardly be expected to counter the outspoken anti-Jewish bias of the Gospels. He therefore tended to identify the Jew, whom he knew from the New Testament, with the enemy of God. The seeds of prejudice, having been sown in the soil of faith, continued to produce their bitter fruit in the arena of life. When the Negro met Jews, rarely in the rural South but more commonly in the urban North, and often in situations of economic hostility, the religious basis for anti-Semitism was strengthened. This prejudice has remained even with the Negro who has surrendered or attenuated his commitment to Christianity. As Zangwill pointed out with bitter irony years ago, many a Christian who is sure that Jesus never existed is certain that the Jews killed him.

BOTH the religious and economic motives for Negro anti-Semitism have provided the basis for a deep psychological need in the lives of many Negroes. Oppressed, exploited and despised by the white majority, often suffering from the malaise of a sense of inferiority, he needs an avenue of relief. He often finds it in anti-Semitism because here, at least, he can identify with the dominant white majority, give vent to his pent-up hostilities and indulge a sense of imaginary superiority. The same psychological mechanism explains why "poor whites" in the South have historically been among the most rabid supporters of "white supremacy" and the most active practitioners of violence against their Negro neighbors. Similarly, the Negro anti-Semite who echoes the prejudice of white Americans compensates for his sense of inferiority by believing that he is "better than the Jew." It is only when this deeply intertwined complex of factors in Negro anti-Semitism-religious, psychological and socio-economic-is understood and clearly recognized that we can hope to attack the disease at its roots. Without abating an iota of their zeal in the battle for equality on every front, Negro leaders have an obligation to fight black anti-Semitism, not merely because it is a dangerous diversion from the long and arduous struggle for Negro freedom and equality, but for the sake of their own moral and intellectual integrity. Nearly 70 years ago, the Socialist leader August Bebel, speaking of the Jew-hatred endemic in his native Germany, declared: "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools." We may add that black anti-Semitism is the democracy of charlatans. In the difficult struggle for racial justice that confronts Negroes and all Americans, Jews have not been altogether idle. Without minimizing in the slightest the obligation of white Americans, individually and collectively, toward the Negro community, and in deepest friendship and sympathy for their problems, American Jews are perhaps more conscious than others of another moral challenge confronting Negro leadership: the obligation to mobilize its resources for self-help and mutual responsibility. Here, the past experience of the American-Jewish community is by no means irrelevant. During the four decades from 1880 to the outbreak of World War I most Jewish immigrants to America arrived penniless and from backward countries. They were unfamiliar with the language and the customs of the new land, faced by countless temptations and exposed to poverty, overcrowding and disease. It is true that some agencies for the new arrivals were established by their coreligionists who had settled here earlier. But the East European Jews who crowded the ghettos of our great cities were not long content to be recipients of help, even from their fellow Jews. Almost immediately they created a vast network of institutions of philanthropy, education, recreation and culture of their own. I do not suggest that the pattern of the American-Jewish experience can be taken over ready-made by the American Negro, but there is a lesson to be derived nevertheless. To the outside observer, however sympathetic, there seems to be too little evidence of self-help and mutual responsibility within the Negro community. Growing numbers of Negroes are today well-to-do, if not wealthy. Many thousands of Negroes employed in government, industry and commerce live considerably above the subsistence level. Yet in Harlem, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and in other areas of Negro settlement throughout this city and nation, Negro-sponsored and Negro-maintained settlement houses and schools, cultural, vocational and welfare institutions are few and far between. It is true that Jewish immigrants to America possessed one great and incalculable advantage. In Judaism there has existed for centuries love of learning and a tradition of mutual responsibility. The Negro, on the other hand, is a comparative newcomer to the Western world. In the face of intolerable brutality and oppression he has had to close the gap of centuries in one or two generations. His position has been heartrendingly difficult since his period of physical slavery lasted until only a century ago and his social and economic burdens have remained heavy. Particularly in view of the grave responsibility the American people must bear for the condition of the Negro, both before and since the Emancipation Proclamation, the Negro cannot be expected to "go it alone" in raising his present status and his future prospects. But he still has the obligation to put forth his best efforts to do as much as he can for himself. Help from others, however necessary, inevitably breeds ill will, ingratitude and a sense of inferiority. La Rochefoucauld observed that we are never able to pardon those we have injured. As a corollary one might say that the existence of Negro anti-Semitism testifies that we can rarely forgive those who have helped us.

AS the battle for the removal of all external restraints on the Negro enters its next, difficult phase-and it must be crowned with success if America is to survive-we need to recall a truth, painfully discovered by Moses when he liberated the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. The Negro, like Everyman, can attain real freedom not through emancipation but through self-emancipation. Twenty centuries ago, a Hebrew sage set forth what might well become the slogan of the American Negro: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what good am I? And if not now, when?” Mature and intelligent men and women in the Negro community should recognize and act upon the recognition-that hatred of whites in general, and of Jews in particular, points not to liberation but to perdition. There is a better way.

WATTS “In comparing what happened at Watts with the Warsaw ghetto uprising, novelist James Baldwin recognizes that the comparison 'will be immediately dismissed as outrageous' and declares that there are many reasons for this. He overlooks the only important reason: the comparison is totally false."

The following is taken from ’s article “Blacks and Jews Pt. One", on the tensions throughout the 20th century between African Americans and Jewish Americans, of which I wouldn’t know took place if I hadn’t read/listened to his series on this. I couldn’t find the original anywhere of the following, but it’s too good, I couldn’t leave it out

The Martyr Made Substack

Blacks & Jews, pt. 1

Long before the recent hullabaloo surrounding Kanye West’s self-immolation on the steps of the Anti-Defamation League’s headquarters, much ink had been spilled over the complicated relationship between American blacks and Jews - though, not much recently. When, every so often, a black celebrity hits the news for saying something that causes Jews to feel…

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3 years ago · 244 likes · 98 comments · Darryl Cooper

Some congratulated Podhoretz’s courage to write the essay, but others were outraged. One of the latter was the black author, and Village Voice columnist, Joe Wood, wrote a blistering essay in response, accusing Podhoretz of repressed homoerotic feelings for black men, envy of the black penis, Jewish self-hatred, and many other defects of body and character (and, of course, of racism).

Podhoretz is barking from the shadows, gentle reader. Don’t be afraid - read the record and see for yourself: remember how much the writer envied Negro strength, notice how he fails to mention the millennia of “stigma” between Jewish “past glory” and “imminent redemption,” notice how easily his lunatic description of black experience could be used to describe Jewish experience. Then dare to follow my reasoning to its unattractive and obvious conclusion. At bottom, a profound self-hatred menaces in (Podhoretz’s essay): each time he reveals his weakness, as whiteness, he is confession how much he hates his weakness, as Jewishness, gentle reader…

Throughout (his essay), Podhoretz unwittingly gives readers a glimpse of the peculiar blend of desire, anxiety, and racism that informed the Jewish American discourse during the Depression. This collision of impulses is never better revealed than in the writer’s discussion of his black playmate named Carl… It is here that Podhoretz comes closest to describing how his boyhood world shaped his ideas about black people. The scrape with Carl is perfectly typical of New York City, where ethnic clashes are routine, but the incident also condenses nicely a worldview peculiar to immigrant Jews at the time, which can be boiled down to a question: With goyim slamming you from above, and blacks threatening from below, what is a person to do?...

In choosing to open his essay with a spotty memory of a black boy whose most notable feature is his moral equivalence to goyim, Podhoretz dismisses the idea of a special black moral station. It is an understandable move. African-Americans’ history of subjugation bestowed a moral authority historically reserved for Jews by Jews in Christian Europe… Since Jewish Americans could basically be themselves without the kind of penalties they had suffered in Europe, a Jewish identity based on that oppression made no sense. One way to deal with the resultant confusion was to hate the displacers, the blacks.

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And here we have Commentary Magazine's “Letter to the Editor” in response to Norman Podhoretz “Negro Problem” that he shares with all of us.

“My Negro Problem”—II

by Our Readers

To the Editor:

Here is where I am: I found Norman Podhoretz’s unfortunate contribution on the stance of one liberal an ugly item. Ugly because of its arbitrary excision of history in order, apparently, to indulge in a personal aggravation against history. It is the only reason that I can think of that his amazing explication preferred to ignore the sophistication of concern with the commodity value of the blanket opposition of an entire people and roam around instead, presumably as befits a “psychoanalytical” age, in the field of narrative of boyhood iniquities tellingly peppered with the traumatic impact of lots and lots of “mo’ f—r’s”. . . .

I mean to say that an attempt to reduce the situation of U.S. Negroes to an exchange of personal memorabilia of the brutalizing hazards of an urban upbringing is a sheer outrage. I would have supposed even that Mr. Podhoretz’s sensibilities would enjoy more dignity had his lingering distaste for bullies led him, if not to a bus due South, then to a fiercely angry, if safe, pen, in behalf of the objects of the most notorious and institutionalized bullying of the moment.

Above all was I struck with Mr. Podhoretz’s hanging implication that he feels absolved from any crimes that might have been going on around here because, after all, his ancestors were somewhere else when the slave ships docked. To long for that particular absolution Mr. Podhoretz and everyone else will have to give up that sweeping phrase which he uses without hesitation in the middle of his article—“we white Americans.” . . .

The main impression gained from the article was that the world is changing and Mr. Podhoretz is agitated because it is so apparent that the liberal ought be saying and doing something; that he ought be stepping into the street to join the parade but that, as always, His Majesty has discovered that he hasn’t got a stitch on, despite the weaving of intricate platitudes of liberalism for generations.

Thus that “blood” which has been flowing in our streets for three hundred and forty-four years of racial antagonism finally seems a threat; that same three hundred and forty-four years of “miscegenation” in which so much blood has mingled that at least about 40 per cent of the writer’s remembered bullies probably were “misceged”—is now seen by him as the “only solution.” This despite the fact that he can only feel “prurient” stirrings at the mere sight of a “mixed couple”; and is sent into ravings and rantings at the thought of his daughter marrying “one.” But history, once again, has not waited for Mr. Podhoretz’s adjustments and education and it would be beside the point that he would probably be confounded in the face of our own black ultras, and not only the “separatists,” who perceive and curse the implication in This House that the presence of the undiluted black is intolerable and therefore this nation must now weigh, in a manner suggesting the taking of hemlock to the lips, sexually absorbing what it will not love! Black pride, including that untouched by fanaticism or racism of any kind, is, it must swiftly be understood, more ferocious than that! The Negro demand is for equality for Negroes; the biological and sociological reality of Negroes as they presently exist. Which individuals shall choose to marry or otherwise have sexual union with whom remains on all counts outside the scope of any kind of politics.

Finally, reading Mr. Podhoretz’s article, I was ashamed for it in a particular way for I thought that I recognized in it an adolescent expectation and hope that the writer would be congratulated by black and white alike on his—“honesty.” As if, somehow, his recitation of perfectly old fashioned racist motifs would lend a refreshing bit of ambiguity to the tasks at hand and be properly appreciated by all like himself who are trying like the devil to avoid the enormity of the actual confrontation before us. It is a saddening posture for the editor of a responsible journal.

I charge Mr. Podhoretz with not dealing with the greater honesty at all; I charge him with offering up a confessional which will merely be a device of those anxious to see the world stay as it is—“just a little longer.” But most painfully of all, I charge him with something I know that he cannot presently appreciate the seriousness of: of having given those impassioned young black folk who have “given up the Mr. Podhoretz’s” a document with which to heighten their ever-deepening articulation of their contempt of his self-exemption. Those of us who feel that we stand between, trying to maintain the chain, have been handed a body blow. . . .

Lorraine Hansberry
New York City

To the Editor:

. . . God knows the white liberal needs help, and both Baldwin from the outside and Podhoretz from the inside have been of help in discussing the problem. But does the February 1963 COMMENTARY hint at solution? Yes, on the last page the editor proposes one. For a moment I thought it was important: the problem will disappear when color in fact disappears. Assimilation and miscegenation he says are solutions. Then comes the letdown: “I am not claiming that this alternative can be pursued programmatically or that it is immediately feasible as a solution,” says the editor. . . . For a moment I could picture Southern Gentleman-hood rolling up sleeves and taking delight in resuming extra-curricular activities which have been hampered for exactly 100 years this winter. But, no, “programmatic” solutions are to be denied the white male, anti-liberal though he be, who works toward assimilation. He is only to talk about it.

It is not the programmatic assumption that disturbs me so much as the theory be-behind it. The footnote on page 93 suggests that the editor is a bit diffident about undertaking so controversial a topic in a journal devoted to better intergroup relations. He should not worry about that. All solutions that can be conceived ought to be proposed in these dark days. He is wary about spitting out the word “miscegenation” though I know of few high religions that intrinsically rule it out, however aesthetically improbable it is to most. There is some health to bringing into the open the most radical solution; it makes the more moderate steps seem possible. That could be in Podhoretz’s mind. But that is not in his words, and we are analyzing words. . . .

Baldwin and Podhoretz and all of us find it necessary to reach back to boyhood to find the matrix from which bad attitudes are born. Here is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant sample. Mine comes from a prairie boyhood in the white-majority culture of Nebraska (I’ll bet neither B. nor P. has ever met anyone else from there!). We loved the Negro because the nearest one was ninety miles away in Omaha and each summer the Piney Woods singers, as they came through town to clap their hands and sing their spirituals, showed us how simple, lovable, and godly the Nigger Soul is. Our Sunday School literature told us that the Jew was being punished because his grandfather had shouted to the heavens and to Pontius Pilate: “Jesus’s blood be on us and on our children.” Like Podhoretz, I was puzzled by this kind of mythological approach. The only Jews I knew were the merchants in Norfolk, Nebraska—five or six of them—who were being punished by making more money than all the gentiles in sight. Everyone knew how the Jews are, after all. But we could love even them. They were potential converts.

Our problems were more with the like, not the unlike. First there were the “Cathlicks.” Tension took no more violent form than the snowball fights with the gangs from the Guardian Angels school. But to be told that Catholicism was a beleaguered minority (even in a state where today it is a majority in only ten counties!) was an unbelievable improbability. Our battle cry was always the plaintive, “They that be against us, O Lord, are more and mightier than those that be with us.” They were consolidated, better organized, and like all Polacks, Bigger than we. We always lost. But we still loved them, for they were separated Brethren long before the Pope started calling us that.

Our problems, the location of our real passionate intensities, were the other Protestants in that Protestant county, the other brands of Lutherans in that county of Lutheran majority. The people we were taught to mistrust, despise, and hate: the people concerning whom we drew practical conclusions that we were to stand off, were the people most nearly like us. We did stand them off, and vice versa. “The United Lutherans are all right, but would you want your daughter to marry one?” was a question that was real and practical and thus more threatening than the dramatic ones Baldwin and Podhoretz ask. I hope the parable seems trivial. God, it was and is trivial! And in its triviality is its point: we do no better with the most obscure and subtle shadings of difference than we do with the vastly different. We do worse. For we: Baldwin in Harlem, Podhoretz in Brooklyn, I in Nebraska, were insecure. The former two had real reason to be—I think—and we did not. In that lies a great sociological difference. But theologically and personally the problem was the same for all of us and remains so.

Our Negro problem; our Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and secularist problem is unbelief. We do not believe anything. We do not really believe in the God or gods in whom we profess to place our trust or in His or their revelations of plans and programs for man. . . .

Baldwin and Podhoretz are showing how Will Rogers’s observation is useless in intergroup relations. They are willing to admit that they did meet men they didn’t, they couldn’t like. . . . But their religion and ours, which let us down at the crucial test, told them that they would never meet a man they couldn’t love. Sociology was against them and us, in boyhood as today. But theology and personhood were for them, and neither they nor any of us will get anywhere if we wait until difference disappears. When difference diminishes we will grow more insecure, more fierce—Next Time, The Fire.

Martin E. Marty
Associate Editor
The Christian Century
Chicago, Illinois

To the Editor:

Sad, sad are the statements in Mr. Podhoretz’s “My Negro Problem—And Ours.” The current militancy (a word coined by whites) of the Negro can be partially laid to just such honesty set down by Mr. Podhoretz. To be more specific, he has revealed the classic in-depth feelings of the liberal now and perhaps always perceived by the Negro.

. . . It appears that it is self-hate rather than hatred that the author feels, and it had early inheritance from school days when he was beaten on the street by Negroes. He quite carefully points out that he did not fight back, hated himself, and transferred this hatred to the Negro boys. Forget about the black boys who have been beaten in the streets, not because of medals, not because of giving correct answers in the classroom, but just because they were black.

So the son of countless victims of East European pogroms and the sons of numerous lynching victims, forced into the poverty box, turned even as rabbits will to a kind of cannibalism. A further line will help Mr. Podhoretz to understand the neo-nihilism of the Negro boys. . . . The Negro has been in America for over four hundred years. From then until now he has acquired little. But an Irishman runs the government with a good many Jews in it (and a token group of Negroes), the old Italian with the handlebar moustache has vanished. Postwar refugees, Hungarian Freedom Fighters, Cuban refugees, all move ahead. The Negro waits, history having a way of by-passing him in terms of advancement. If not in the spoken word all this was the sense of things in the 30’s and now. Those black boys who were the author’s classmates knew it and those who are boys today know it. . . .

I do not agree with Mr. Baldwin’s opinion that every Negro person hates every white person. There are times—God, yes. But hate cannot be lived with continually; it is too energy-sapping and too, too overwhelming in its ultimate sense, a love for those who are so hated.

I cannot understand the shock of the Jews at what Mr. Podhoretz calls “Negro anti-Semitism.”. . . Massive historical conditions which to a large extent have excluded Jews from sharing to the full the benefits of American capitalism, have brought Jew and Negro into harsh commercial contact. It is sheer delusion to ignore the fact that 90 per cent of the stores in Harlem are Jewish-owned or to deny that on the upper West Side where Mr. Podhoretz now lives the apartment-hotels are largely owned by Jews who charge exorbitant rents and permit sub-human living conditions and the accompanying violations. The result of all this is not anti-Semitism, but a striking back at whoever seems to be in control, seems to block the nervous progress of the Negro. . . .

And yet for all this confusion and misunderstanding . . . our primary “advance” organizations are officered, staffed, and superbly aided by Jews. Few people of any other Caucasian kind have been so concerned with the lot of the Negro. A former officer in such an organization remarked privately (for the facts are hard) that Jews realize subconsciously that their future goes hand in hand with that of the Negro. . . . Furthermore, he went on, there is that “tradition” rooted in Judaism which submits . . . not that all men are equal, but that all men shall be equally judged, a concept more splendid at the root than the Bill of Rights.

With such a concept in mind, why is it that the Black Muslims cannot be seen in proper perspective? . . . To my mind their work has been good. They’ve salvaged junkies, worked savagely to replace the pride lost through generations of second-class citizenship. . . . They say they will defend themselves if attacked. Can one ask more of a man? To cloud this issue of self-defense, turn its meaning into a perpetual threatening offensive against whites is to misunderstand for the sake, not of misunderstanding, but to give excuse for additional mayhem against all Negroes. . . .

But I disagree with separation. Perhaps I am blind. Speaking for myself, I have no intention of giving up what several generations of my people have rightfully earned by hard, hard labor. This land upon which we walk, especially the South, was sown with the bones of my forefathers. That is a truth not worth arguing. And, like the Jew who sought Israel, I mean to have it, and further, I will have it and my rights as well.

Mr. Podhoretz is aware of this sense; it contributes, I believe, to his anguish which is painfully clear. For how may a man see the solution of our racial dilemma through legal or condoned or completely acceptable miscegenation, and in the same breath voice his hatred for the mixed couple? But the author is quite through, it seems, deluding himself. This is an important step and indicates, as trite as it may seem, blessed hope for us all.

John A. Williams
New York City

To the Editor:

The publication of Norman Podhoretz’s article is to be commended. The experiences he describes have the ring of truth. Precisely because this “truth” is likely to be distasteful, it is vital that it be presented and understood.

Unfortunately, his proposed solution (miscegenation) does not appear to resolve the issue which he poses. . . . Is the “melting pot” an appropriate goal in the fight against discrimination? Granted that a society is desirable in which miscegenation is accepted, should not the true goals of the humanist in this connection be: (1) preservation of ethnic differences; (2) loyalty of an individual to his own ethnic group; and (3) respect by the individual for other ethnic groups and their members? My belief is that our social health would be better served by the continuation of a variegated culture with respectful competition among the several ethnic groups.

Mr. Podhoretz has, of course, presented the supreme challenge to my position in asking: “In thinking about Jews I have wondered whether their survival as a distinct group was worth one hair on the head of a single infant. Did the Jews have to survive so that six million . . . people should be one day burned in the ovens of Auschwitz?” While this question may, as he stated, be unanswerable, I wonder whether the assimilation of the European Jew could have insulated him from the terrors of Nazism. It certainly afforded no protection to that most assimilated of all Jewish communities, that of Germany.

Jerome Lefkowitz
New York City

To the Editor:

. . . . I feel that Norman Podhoretz’s article represents a beginning of the unpleasant educational process that the “enlightened” white liberal must undergo before any real progress can be made in race relations in this country. Everyone tells everyone else that race relations are just as deplorable in the North as in the South, because there is so much hypocrisy about them here. But to my knowledge Mr. Podhoretz is the first established white liberal to make an effort to explain why, from his own experience and not just from psychological theories, northern liberals are such hypocrites. . . .

My background could hardly be more different from Mr. Podhoretz’s—I am a middle-class, small-town, Midwestern Protestant who had no contact at all with Negroes when I was growing up. . . . I can’t point to any actual experiences in my background that give me a right to the confused and conflicting feelings I have regarding the Negro. But I have these feelings, and I know that everyone with whom I talk about this question . . . has feelings just as “sick” as mine. . . .

Why can’t it be realized (or even discussed), by Negroes and whites alike, that the society that has done what it has to the Negro has also taken its toll among the oppressors? . . . I am convinced that my feelings—and those of others like me—are important, and that if more whites understood themselves and each other we might truly begin, as Mr. Podhoretz says, to free ourselves from the sickness that keeps us and our leadership from being anything but hypocritical in our attitudes. This doesn’t mean that I am so optimistic as to think that, even if we do become more honest, our actions will necessarily be much more positive; I too am a pessimist. But at least it wouldn’t be quite so easy for us to declare that we are free of prejudice, which is the kind of declaration that makes a mockery of liberalism.

I suppose we shouldn’t ask the Negro to try to understand that our feelings, too, are complex and that we too have been victimized by our white society. He’s got enough troubles of his own. But I have tried and I suppose I will continue to try not only to understand the Negro’s position and feelings but to get him to understand mine. . . .

And I will continue to prod my white friends; I think there is no excuse for them, if they have any integrity in this matter, to put off much longer an honest attempt to analyze and admit to their own attitudes. The white liberals are a big stumbling block to the improvement of race relations. (In time this too will become a cliché if it isn’t already). . . . Surely there is more harm in pious platitudes and empty gestures on the part of the white liberal, in the long run, than there is in an honest expression such as Mr. Podhoretz’s, even if it seems unkind or cavalier in the short run. . . .

In all, I am grateful to Mr. Podhoretz for his honesty and intelligence, and hope that more of us, myself included, will be prompted to display some of our own, no matter how unpleasant the immediate consequences might be.

Georgia Griggs
New York City

To the Editor:

COMMENTARY deserves great credit for having the courage to publish what must be an agonizing self-appraisal of a liberal. However, I feel that there are several points in Mr. Podhoretz’s article which merit and undoubtedly will receive vigorous further discussion. His feelings toward Negroes are admittedly conditioned by his childhood traumatic experiences in contact with some of them, yet he somehow fails to grasp the essential fact that Negroes’ feelings toward whites are similarly conditioned by a collective traumatic experience which extended over a period of several hundred years. . . .

Indeed, the profound effect of slavery on the psyche of the American Negro is something which must be increasingly reckoned with by all who are interested in the future of race relations in this country. Frequent or sporadic outbreaks of apparently senseless brutality, violence, and amorality must be viewed against the background of that institution which relegated us to the position of animals, and subjected our forebears to the inhuman condition of being bartered and sold, and bred like horses and cows. . . .

I find it quite significant, also, that Mr. Podhoretz, in company with the Black Muslims and others, in looking toward the future, can envision, with peculiar blindness, only the two extremes of further, more fervent hatred, on the one hand, or miscegenation on the other. . . . He asks, rather derisively, what does the Negro have that could possibly make him wish to survive as a distinct ethnic group, yet, a few paragraphs earlier, he waxes almost eloquent about those very qualities of “physical grace and beauty” which characterize our physiognomy. Perhaps the terms hate-love, rather than hate-envy, could better be used to describe this dichotomy of the emotions, and explain this tendency to think of bloodshed and rioting in the same breath with sexual intermingling, and perhaps the psychiatrist’s couch for all of us would be a fortunate substitute for a mad dash to the marital bed of miscegenation and/or the bloody streets of race rioting.

Most of us believe that there is a middle way, a path which avoids both of these extremes. And the patient, careful search for this way must be the ultimate goal of all liberals.

(Dr.) Robert E. Fullilove, Jr.
Newark, New Jersey

To the Editor:

The significant quality of Norman Podhoretz’s article is the high sense of irrelevance reflected in its personal emphases. The Negro problem in America in the last one hundred years has been the denial of equal status before the law. It is not basically a problem of racial brotherhood. That aspect might take time but we cannot wait, ever, to rely on public attitude in assuring equal status before the law. That must be guaranteed to every individual, particularly against hostile prevailing majority hate.

Irving Ferman
Vice President
Playtex
Washington, D.C.

To the Editor:

. . . As, I hope, a good Jew, and as the wife of a Negro, I think I have some insight into Mr. Podhoretz’s feelings. Even though I must admit I was stopped short by his prurience (disgust?) at the sight of an interracial couple, I forced myself to go beyond that—something perhaps that his detractors have not done—and complete his piece. I want him to know that we—my husband and I—do understand what he is trying to say and respect him for it. . . .

Having said all this, may I then take a few lines to indicate where I think he has not been completely honest—or perhaps realistic is a better word. For example, he says that in the world of his boyhood there was little difference in the poverty of the Jew and the poverty of the Negro. And yet, I wonder if he really thinks back hard, wouldn’t he find that perhaps all—or most—of the shopkeepers—however hard they may have worked and however small their profits—weren’t they usually Jewish? And the consumers—who were perhaps sometimes overcharged or sold defective goods (because, let’s face it, that poor little grocer had to sell the stale rolls to somebody)—weren’t they almost always Negro? The problem with being exploited is that you don’t always see the man at the top. When I was a little girl in the Bronx—we were refugees from Vienna and Hitler, circa ’38—we lived in a neighborhood mostly Irish and Italian. (Incidentally, I was afraid of them as Mr. Podhoretz was of Negroes, and for the same reasons. . . .) My parents, in their stinking little grocery, worked seven days a week, sometimes fifteen and sixteen hours a day, delivering bottles of milk to the sixth-floor walk-ups to keep a customer, never looking right or left, but only to “get ahead.” They, on the other hand, had parents who worked in banks, factories, and the like; they got new outfits (cheap, but flashy) for all their holidays (while on the High Holy Days, as well as the rest of the time, I wore hand-me-downs); their parents got drunk every Saturday night, and I, too, envied and despised them, all at the same time. Of course, my parents did get ahead a little, and then they accused us of being secretly “rich” and cheating them!

What I am trying to say is that one serious mistake in Mr. Podhoretz’s generalization about the very real chasm between the races in this country is that he thinks that all white children who grew up near Negroes, grew up with the same feeling toward them. That there is hatred, jealousy, and even fear, I am not denying. But I am suggesting that they are based on something different from what Mr. Podhoretz’s personal case suggests. My husband, as a shy, frightened, black boy from Jamaica, moving to the States when he was twelve, was prone to the same emotions Mr. Podhoretz describes for himself when, on moving into a formerly “all white” neighborhood, he and his friends were terrorized by a group of young white hoodlums whose ferocity might have made a good match for Mr. Podhoretz’s childhood nightmares. Their favorite word may not have been “m’t’r f’kr,” (a word probably originated by Southern whites, according to the best of sources) but they were pretty free with their own obscenities and racial epithets, so it all kind of works out to the same thing.

And still I agree with Mr. Podhoretz—for him, and me, and people like us only—more than I disagree. As I grew older, as the state of Israel emerged, and I realized that to be a Jew didn’t have to mean letting yourself get abused without fighting back, as I learned more about my religion and culture (perhaps fortunately, for my development, not from official sources, but, as with all lonely children, from books), I took the same path he did of having intellectual convictions which were for a long time not matched by emotional growth of the same order. By the time I was sixteen and lived in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood in Yonkers, I had still had little personal contact with Negroes. . . . Then, I read Native Son, and my awakening nationalism, my new Jewish pride, seemed to insist that I see the fight for Negro rights in this country as my fight. Those few Negroes I had in my classes at this time were similar to the ones Mr. Podhoretz has described, except that this middle-class environment did not permit them to terrorize white children, only each other. Nevertheless, I began consciously to seek to change my feelings—to regard what had seemed to me almost another species (don’t forget I was European, and they were strange to me) as equals. I blush with shame at the thought of all the patronizing I must have done in my own kind, stupid way, on the road to salvation.

This was not meant to be the story of my life, and yet I must, for Mr. Podhoretz, add a few more words. He ends his article by saying what his reaction would be if his daughter decided to marry black. When I was finally faced with a man whom I loved, who loved me, whose simple fault in the eyes of the world was his black skin, I could not morally, intellectually, or any other way reject him for that reason only. What did I owe white? Hadn’t our people been murdered by them for two thousand years? There would have been more hesitation on my part if he had been a practicing Christian. And did I not know that the child of a Jewish mother is Jewish? My thoughts of our future children were set at rest in this way. I told my parents of my decision. They were, naturally, quite upset. My mother said I would soon be sitting shive for them. My father—who does not stoop to such tactics—said that I was throwing my life away, it could not possibly work, and they both agreed that we would not be able to see each other if I went ahead with my plan.

It was a lovely wedding. My mother took only a few weeks to come around. She had done everything she could to stop me, and having failed, she still wanted her daughter. My father took longer. . . . Nevertheless, our little daughter has been the apple of my parents’ eyes since her birth, and whatever my papa still holds against the marriage, he couldn’t love her more. She’s almost eleven, incidentally, quite proud of being a “Jewish-Negro” girl, and one of the better students at the Hebrew school she attends.

I agree with Mr. Podhoretz completely about the phony liberals who move to the suburbs, the sick ones who come to Harlem looking for thrills and vitality (and oh, do they get abused for their troubles), and the ones with a double standard of morality. I also think that the many problems faced on the West Side are problems of poverty and ignorance. If Mr. Podhoretz ever meets one of what the late Dr. Franklin Frazier called the “black bourgeoisie,” he will find that he is as frightened of violence, unrepressed sex, and nonconformity as any middle-class Jew. . . .

Finally, as long as Mr. Podhoretz remains on the West Side, probes honestly and deeply (à la James Baldwin), and is willing to contemplate so radical a solution (to what is, after all, an American dilemma) as a Negro son-in-law, then only the foolish and misguided dare call him racist. I call him friend.

(Mrs.) Ronald Gibel
New York City

To the Editor:

My congratulations and gratitude for Norman Podhoretz’s courageous and liberating article. . . .

Melvin J. Lasky
Editor
Encounter
London, England

To the Editor:

When a brilliant writer, Negro, describes his childhood and youthful experiences in order to give the unknowing white man a glimpse into the ghetto, this should not constitute an invitation to a less talented writer, liberal and Jewish, to answer with a reminiscence of his own. Unfortunately every Negro knows and understands the antipathy Norman Podhoretz feels for him. . . .

The liberal must begin to understand that Negroes are different from whites, they have a culture white men are not part of. The Negro’s past is no more a stigma than the Jew’s—it is filled with a heroic battle to survive, with poetry and music. . . .

Mr. Podhoretz’s program for miscegenation is a sophisticated racist argument; to wit, we can only solve the Negro problem when there are no more Negroes; everything will be all right when everybody looks alike. Miscegenation is probably the most radical sounding reactionary slogan a white liberal can find. . . . Until Mr. Podhoretz begins to understand that Negroes are human beings who are brutalized in this society, and that it is their responsibility to stop the brutalization, relations between Negroes and white liberals will deteriorate. . . .

Rachelle Horowitz
New York City

To the Editor:

When Mr. Podhoretz in “My Negro Problem—and Ours” writes autobiographically of his youthful experiences with Negroes in a specific part of Brooklyn, I am sympathetic. When, however, on the basis of such experiences, he vaults to the conclusion that “the Negro problem can be solved . . . in no other way” than miscegenation, I must object strongly. . . .

Whether granting the Negro his constitutional rights might lead to increased intermarriage is presently irrelevant. Marriage is a personal decision and one’s sister or daughter can always say “No.” . . . To grant or to deny the Negro his rights as an American citizen on the basis of “the wholesale merging of the two races,” or on the disappearance of color “in fact” is to introduce inflammatory nonsense into an already blazing conflict.

Lawrence Jarett
Roslyn Heights, New York

To the Editor:

Having just read Norman Podhoretz’s courageous and strugglingly honest account of the Negro-white dilemma, I am moved to suggest that the prospect is not as near-hopeless as he suggests. Nor as James Baldwin had previously suggested in the New Yorker.

For, Ecclesiastes to the contrary, there is something new under the sun, something I believe that can be “caught, not taught” by the American Negroes and may help them walk with pride down those streets to which, by their own efforts and those of the forward-looking whites, they are now gaining access. This “something” is the appearance on the world scene of the independent African nations and, on the domestic scene, because of African curiosity and willingness to travel, the appearance throughout the country of these new nations’ UN representatives. . . .

By and large—with exceptions of course—these Africans do not have the proverbial chip on shoulder. They are whole and rich and vital persons who turn out to be, with their openness and their humor, more like Americans than are many of the more skeptical Europeans or more reserved Asians. . . .

The result is that, today, when such an African suffers a racial slight in this country, his reaction is not one of diminishment but of righteous wrath. . . . The experience of growing up as part of the majority, a majority, moreover, which in former times had regally ruled itself, appears to be such a wholesome one that not only the person involved but those who later identify with him can profit from it. . . .

For what has been imported into this country, duty-free, as a by-product of the UN’s being established here, is precisely the consciousness of being black as something good, something to be respected by those of paler hue and perhaps thinner blood. The Africans themselves refer to this consciousness as Négritude or The New African Personality. . . .

In addition to the personal impact of these UN Africans, there is also the new political dimension to which Harold Isaacs referred (COMMENTARY, December, 1962). For as the African nations grow individually and collectively in international importance—and if they succeed, as they hope to, in developing a “third force” which may prevent the white nations from blowing each other to ashes—then the American Negro, more and more, may lift up his eyes unto the (African) hills whence cometh what may feel like salvation, namely the removal of the stigma Mr. Podhoretz talks about. The UN Africans in their robes may thus be paving the way for American Negroes not only into previously lily-white restaurants, hotels, and clubs, but, more importantly, into the inner realm where self-acceptance is nurtured. . . .

(Mrs.) June Bingham
Riverdale, New York

To the Editor:

As neither I nor Mr. James Baldwin is a psychoanalyst, perhaps I can with at least equal authority on one point presume to disagree with him, or with Mr. Podhoretz’s interpretation of his feelings. I am a Negro and I do not hate all white people. However, as a sociologist, I have long been interested in the expression of values and conflict within the society of whites. . . .

I believe Mr. Podhoretz’s comments would have represented a more useful agonizing reappraisal if he had chosen to write either as a Jew relative to the Negro or as a white American relative to the Negro. The alternating perspective, incomplete in both instances, weakens the reader’s understanding of either. . . .

To the extent that categorized social relationships can be usefully analyzed between the various groups in America and American society as a whole and/or between themselves as separate entities, it seems clear and supported by data that the relationship between Negro and Jew in either its positive or negative manifestations is not identical with that between white Americans and Jews. That there are certain common features which make them similar in many respects is quite another matter. . . .

A forthright personal expression in the field of race or ethnic relations is always very welcome because it is so rare. Its greater value, however, beyond that of personal therapy, rests on giving it the proper theoretical, or if you will, categorical focus.

(Mrs.) Adelaide Cromwell Hill
African Studies Program
Boston University

To the Editor:

Mr. Podhoretz’s article is a moving confession of his feelings about Negroes but throws light only on his own state of conflict. It has the virtues of honesty and good will but, alas, not of insight....

Mr. Podhoretz was intimidated and persecuted by some boys acting in groups and singly. Had they been white or mixed or unidentifiable to him in ethnic background, they would simply have been malicious boys. How is it that the fact that they were Negro boys remains so salient in his memory?... They could have been identified in a number of ways—“group 3” boys, or boys from a certain block, or boys from bad homes or from the opposing team. It is not the fact of their skin color but the meaning given to this fact in our culture by its agents of transmission that is crucial....

If this were not so, why should it be that many middle-class whites who have never been beaten or threatened by any Negroes, who may have never even been close to a Negro, share the same fears as Mr. Podhoretz (and, I would submit, probably to an even greater degree)?...

As any Jew should know... the essence of the minority problem... is the deeply-held conviction that there exists an evil or inferior Negroid or Jewish essence which makes the ethnic adjective seem appropriate. Otherwise, why include it? This is the conviction against which minority group members continually bang their heads in a hopeless and frustrated attempt to demonstrate and explain the facts of biological and cultural life to the majority....

No, Mr. Podhoretz, your experiences, traumatic as they may have been, are probably irrelevant to your present feelings. As a social psychologist once observed: “We get our attitudes toward minorities not from contact with minorities themselves but from contact with the prevailing attitude toward minorities.”

Charles Herbert Stember
Department of Sociology
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey

To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz’s “My Negro Problem—And Ours” is bound to evoke howls of rage from some quarters, but I found his article both a beautiful piece of prose and an uncommon act of courage. I am not myself a partisan of miscegenation, possibly because it has always seemed to me a union between guilty whites and self-hating Negroes. And since we are all losing our color so rapidly in a world without distinctions, I would prefer a solution which allowed to both races their self-respect, privacy, and special identity. Still, Mr. Podhoretz has carried liberal thought to its inexorable conclusion, an intellectual feat which contrasts refreshingly with the pious platitudes of most white spokesmen, and even with the ambiguous exhortations of James Baldwin, who invariably mitigates an orgy of anger and hatred with contradictory pleas for Love. It is Mr. Baldwin’s individual experience, like that of Mr. Podhoretz, which, if honestly and courageously presented, can be of most value to us; for it is as personal witnesses, rather than as public spokesmen, Brotherhood peddlers, or salvation salesmen, that both are making genuine contributions to this necessary debate.

Robert Brustein
Department of English
Columbia University
New York City

“My Negro Problem-and Ours” at 50

Reflections on a controversial essay and its legacy.

by Norman Podhoretz

This year marks the 50th anniversary of possibly the most controversial but certainly the most notorious piece ever published in COMMENTARY from that day to this. Its title was “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” and it was written by me. Over the years I have often been asked what impelled (or as it was sometimes put, “possessed”) me to write such a thing when I must have known that (in the words used by a critic when it first came out) “there was something in it to offend everyone.” Yes, of course, I would usually answer, I did know that many readers, both white and black, would be outraged. But contrary to a widely held suspicion that this was precisely my purpose in writing it, I had no conscious desire “to offend everyone.” Nor did I enjoy having provoked so much anger (though I very much enjoyed being applauded by those who admired the essay for one reason or another). In any case, the truth is that both the idea and the instigation came not from me but from James Baldwin. And thereby hangs a tale.

In those days, in common with just about everyone else in the literary world, I considered Baldwin one of the best writers of any kind in America, and among black writers Ralph Ellison’s only rival for the crown. As a novelist, he had produced nothing to compare with Ellison’s Invisible Man, but his essays were much better than Ellison’s, and there was no more elegant prose stylist then writing in any genre in English. Nor was there anyone, white or black, who had cast more light on the complexities of the relations between the races—a subject about which passions ran even higher than they do today and that were about to be further exacerbated by the rise of the Black Muslims.

This movement, whose leading spokesman was the incendiary Malcolm X, totally rejected the idea held by the dominant civil-rights movement that the solution to what everyone then called the Negro Problem¹ lay in the “integration” of the two races. The goal of the integrationists, both white and black, was a society in which the two races would live and work and rub shoulders together, and the way to get there was through a gradual dismantling of the discriminatory barriers that were forcibly keeping them apart and denying blacks an equal chance in the “pursuit of happiness.” But the Black Muslims had no wish to associate with whites on any terms whatsoever. What they wanted was to have as little to do with them as possible. Indeed, they did not flinch from (literally) denouncing the whole white race as a creature of the devil.

To the surprise and consternation of the devout liberals who led and supported the civil-rights establishment, the Black Muslims seemed to be gaining influence within the black community. This was due in no small part to the brilliant oratorical skills of Malcolm X, but the main cause was that many blacks were beginning to feel that progress toward integration was too slow and that in the end whites would never stop resisting it.

As for me, I was then on the left and still about five years away from “breaking ranks” with my erstwhile political friends. I was also at the beginning of my fourth year as the editor of COMMENTARY, where a number of Baldwin’s most powerful essays, later collected in Notes of a Native Son, had first appeared. This was before my time, but having traveled for ages in the same literary circle and attended all the same parties, we had come to know each other, and—because I liked him for the work he had done, and he liked me because I admired him as a writer—we had become fairly friendly. Inevitably, then, when it struck me that an important article was clamoring to be written that would explain why the Black Muslims were becoming more and more influential and how this wholly unanticipated development might play itself out, I simultaneously decided that no one could do the job as well as, let alone better than, Jimmy Baldwin. As a passionate antagonist of separationism, he would undoubtedly hold out against the pernicious ideology of the Black Muslims, but as an imaginative observer with a wonderfully perceptive eye and a pen to match, he could also be relied on to understand and elucidate the growing appeal of Malcolm’s message.

The minute I proposed it to him, Baldwin immediately saw the possibilities of such an article and he accepted the assignment with alacrity and enthusiasm, promising moreover to deliver the manuscript in just a few weeks. But a few weeks came and went and then another few weeks, and still no manuscript. When I finally reached him after a string of unanswered calls, he nervously confessed that he had finished the piece but that his agent had sent it to the New Yorker.

Now, selling an article proposed and commissioned by one magazine to another was so egregious a breach of trust and common practice that it could not be justified, at least not in my eyes, even by the fact that the New Yorker could pay him about 10 times as much as COMMENTARY could have done. And to deepen my chagrin at having been robbed of a major editorial coup, it (deservedly) created one of the great journalistic sensations in living memory when it came out under the title “Letter from a Region in My Mind”—and then in book form as The Fire Next Time.

The poet Kenneth Rexroth had recently coined the term “Crow-Jimism” to describe the tendency of white liberals to make special allowances for blacks who were guilty of any sort of offense, up to and including violent crimes. This was exactly how most of my friends and colleagues responded on hearing what Baldwin had done, but I was having none of it. Consequently when, at his request, I agreed to meet him for a drink “to talk this thing over,” I let him have it with both barrels even after the minimal contrition he now showed. His refusal to justify himself was all very well, I told him, but it did not make what he had done any less dishonest and dishonorable, especially coming from someone who went around preaching the virtue of “paying one’s dues.” The truth was that the only reason he had dared to behave so abominably was that, thanks to the white liberal guilt he himself had often written about with the authority of a frequent beneficiary, he could count on getting away with it. But he was very much mistaken if he thought that I felt even the slightest degree of guilt toward him or toward Negroes in general. How could I, when I had grown up in a slum neighborhood where it was the Negro kids who persecuted us whites and not the other way around?

I then proceeded to tell him a few stories about my childhood encounters with black thugs of my own age and about the resentment and bitterness and even hatred with which this experience had left me. It had also left me, I said, with an irritable attitude toward all the sentimental nonsense that was being propagated about integration by whites who knew nothing about blacks and by blacks who imagined that all their problems would be solved by living next door to whites. The trouble went deeper than the integrationists seemed to understand; there was something almost psychotic in the relation of whites to blacks in America, resembling in its imperviousness to rational analysis or political action the feeling of Christian Europe toward the Jews. You yourself, I went on, have told us that all blacks hate whites, and I am here to tell you that all whites are twisted and sick in their feelings about blacks. This was where the Black Muslims, for all the craziness of their “white devil” theology, had a point. But if they were right that integration was not the answer, they were dead wrong to place their faith in separation. In fact, the ideal conclusion to the whole sorry story would be the opposite extreme: the wholesale merger of the two races through miscegenation.

As I talked, Baldwin’s normally bulging eyes bulged and blazed even more fiercely than usual. “You ought,” he whispered as though participating in a conspiracy, “to write all that down.” It was important, more important than I realized, for such things to be said; and they had to be said in public. Thus it was that Baldwin repaid me for giving him the idea and the incentive for The Fire Next Time with the idea and the encouragement for “My Negro Problem—and Ours.”²

Relatively speaking—since the circulation of the New Yorker was about 20 times greater than COMMENTARY’s—the sensation “My Negro Problem—and Ours” caused upon its publication in February 1963 was, in its own league, almost as great as the one that had greeted Baldwin’s piece. Rarely in the history of COMMENTARY had there appeared an article that drew more than a few letters. Even for controversial articles, 10 was a lot and 20 extraordinary. “My Negro Problem—and Ours” drew more than 300, and it also elicited dozens of pieces in newspapers and other magazines.

All this comment did indeed bear out the critic who would later say that there was something in the essay to offend everyone. Integrationists were beside themselves over my dismissal of their ideas as naive and even deluded. Separationists—including, along with the Black Muslims, various other groups waiting in the wings such as the ultra-left Black Panthers who would in the near future coalesce into the Black Power movement—were outraged by the slighting references to the history and culture of their people I made in the course of arguing for the desirability of miscegenation. Nor were black nationalists alone in feeling this way. Ralph Ellison, as fervent an enemy of separatism as could be found, lashed into me in private for my blindness to the central place that black culture held in American culture at large. And finally, many of my fellow Jews were horrified when, piling injury to them on top of this insult to blacks, I said that if the survival of the Jewish people, who carried so rich a culture with them, might not have been worth the suffering it entailed, how much less would it matter if the blacks, who had nothing to lose but their “stigma,” were to disappear through miscegenation.

Still, not everyone was offended. To be sure, hardly anyone agreed with my endorsement of the hope Baldwin had held out in The Fire Next Time that “color as a fact of consciousness” could some day be made to disappear in America and my own addendum that wholesale miscegenation was the only way to banish it. Nevertheless, while taking issue with me over miscegenation, a fair number of the 300 letters we received and even a few of the pieces in other periodicals commended the essay for its “intellectual integrity” in refusing to back away from the logical conclusion of the analysis, however shocking or distasteful it might be. But the majority of those who admired the essay mainly focused on its “honesty” in confessing to feelings that they themselves also unhappily harbored and that they could now begin to confront and try to overcome. Most also commended me for my “courage” in exposing myself so nakedly to attack. And what was most gratifying of all (as any writer will understand), more than a few letters hailed the essay as an exceptionally powerful and eloquent piece of writing

This, then, is how things stood in 1963, and since then “My Negro Problem—and Ours” has been cited and reprinted more times than I can count. I like to think that what accounts for this continuing interest is its literary qualities. But my guess is that another factor was at work that had far more to do than prose style with keeping it alive for half a century. For as the years went on, a curious reversal occurred, as a result of which this essay that originally had something in it to offend everyone turned into a piece that now had something in it to please, if not everyone, then a growing number of both blacks and whites.

This something was the idea that all whites hated blacks.³ Of course, that was not exactly what I had said. My own words were that all whites were “twisted and sick” in their feelings toward blacks. But to many readers, it turned out, this formulation was indistinguishable from the charge that all whites, very much including the liberals among them who had been lifelong participants in the black struggle for equal rights, were incorrigibly racist in their heart of hearts. (As I write, an op-ed piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the New York Times has just leveled this very accusation at all “the good people” living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the very heartland of American liberalism.) And just as I had invoked the authority of Baldwin in saying that all blacks hated whites, “My Negro Problem—and Ours” was made to serve as definitive evidence of the universally reciprocal feeling among whites. The reason it was made to do so, of course, was that this interpretation lent itself perfectly to the view that the “Negro problem”—the only Negro problem—was external oppression, and that nothing blacks themselves did or failed to do made, or could ever make, more than a trivial difference.

It pains me to think that “My Negro Problem—and Ours” may have played a part, however small, in this kind of thing. For the almost complete abdication of black responsibility and the commensurately total dependence on government engendered by so obsessive and exclusive a fixation on white racism as the root of all racial evils has been nothing short of calamitous. It has spawned attitudes and policies that have undermined the very habits and behaviors that are essential to the achievement of independence and self-respect, and it has thereby helped consign three generations of black kids to the underclass while contributing to the immiseration of countless black lives.

It has also had the indirect consequence of fostering thuggery and aggression. In 1963, the stories I told about my own childhood experience of such thuggery and aggression were very shocking to most white liberals. In their eyes, blacks were all long-suffering and noble victims of the kind who had become familiar through the struggles of the civil-rights movement in the South—the “heroic period” of the movement, as one of its most heroic leaders, Bayard Rustin, called it. Although none of my white critics denied the truthfulness of the stories I told, they themselves could hardly imagine being afraid of blacks when their first-hand acquaintance with them was limited to nannies and cleaning women.

Today, it is still other blacks who are most often the victims of black crime, but black-on-white violence is much more common than it was in 1963, so that many whites could now top my stories with worse. And yet even today, few of them would be willing to speak truthfully in public about their entirely rational fear of black violence and black crime. Doing so remains dangerous to one’s reputation: To borrow the phrase I once appropriated from D.H. Lawrence in talking about ambition, white fear of blacks has become a “dirty little secret” of our political culture. And since a dirty little secret breeds hypocrisy and cant in those who harbor it, I suppose it can still be said that most whites are twisted and sick in their feelings about blacks, albeit in a very different sense from the way they were in 1963.

It therefore seems to me that the narrative section of “My Negro Problem—and Ours” is perhaps as resonant today as it was then. I cannot, however, say the same for other parts of the essay.

Obviously I was right in predicting that integration as it was naively envisaged in those days would never, if ever, come about. Yet I have to admit that some of the goals of integrationism have been achieved. For example, a larger proportion of the black community is economically better off than was the case in 1963, and blacks have acquired much more political power than they had then. But at the same time relations between the races have deteriorated. Gone on the whole are the interracial friendships and the interracial political alliances that were quite common 50 years ago. In their place we have the nearly impassable gulfs of suspicion and hostility that are epitomized by the typical college dining hall of today where black students insist on sitting at tables of their own and whites are happy to accept this segregated arrangement or feel hurt at being repulsed.

Ironies abound here. For one thing, this development represented the cooptation of an integrationist goal by the black-nationalist ideal. By this I mean that the process of reverse discrimination euphemistically known as affirmative action, whose intention was to further the integrationist vision of a society in which blacks would mingle on equal terms with whites, ended up serving the separationist purposes of the Black Power movement (not to mention how it also ended up aping the segregationist practices in the South that the civil-rights movement had fought so hard to abolish).

Because I failed to anticipate such developments, I found in 1963 no path to the elimination of “color as a fact of consciousness” except the wholesale merging of the two races. I knew of course, as Baldwin did too, that there was an even smaller chance of this coming to pass in the foreseeable future than the much less ambitious goals of the integrationists. But because my objective in writing the essay was to speak the truth as I saw it and to go where it took me no matter what the consequences, it would have been a cowardly betrayal to shrink from the conclusion to which my analysis inexorably led.

Yet if I did the right thing from the perspective of intellectual coherence and literary fitness, I was wrong to think that miscegenation could ever result in the elimination of color-consciousness. I had already been half convinced of this in 1963 by an angry Ralph Ellison, who stopped me in my tracks, again in private, with the biting observation that, far from making us color-blind, racial intermarriage would only succeed in producing more babies who would be considered black. But what settled the matter once and for all for me was what has happened since the election to the presidency of a pure product of miscegenation. For the ascension of Barack Obama from out of nowhere to the White House has if anything heightened the American consciousness of color. Worse yet, instead of putting an end to the compulsive insistence on the racism of American society, it has given this obsession a new lease on life. Thus, any and every criticism of Obama’s policies is now ascribed to racist motivations, and any and every little incident involving the mistreatment—or the alleged mistreatment—of a black is seized upon and blown up into another proof that racism remains rampant, if largely hidden, in American society. So far has this libel traveled that no less mainstream a personage than the editor of the New York Times Book Review has recently disgraced himself with a long article arguing that the ideology of the entire conservative movement is a covert species of racism, and that this ideology has now infected the Republican Party and sickened it unto death. In this intellectually and morally perverted reading, the party of Abraham Lincoln is magically metamorphosed into the party of John C. Calhoun, his greatest political enemy.

I now think that Ellison was also right to excoriate me for my dismissive attitude toward black culture, and that my Jewish critics were right to take offense at my questioning whether the survival of the Jewish people was worth the suffering it entailed (though at the time, the proximity to the Holocaust made it very hard for me to keep this question out of my mind and to refrain from raising it in print).

On the other hand, though I think what I said about white racism in 1963 was right, the contention that nothing has changed since then seems to me almost demented. Surely the election of Barack Obama proves beyond any reasonable doubt that there is infinitely less anti-black bigotry than there was in 1963, when such a thing was simply unthinkable.

No, the problem today is not white racism. Today the root cause of all the ills that plague the black community is the astounding proportion of black babies born out of wedlock who grow up without fathers, and who are doomed to do badly in school, to get into trouble on the streets, and to wind up in jail. Efforts have been made to blame even this tragic state of affairs on white racism, but they all founder on the simple fact that in 1963, when white racism was by any measure far more pervasive than it is today, only about 23 percent of births among black women were illegitimate, whereas the number is now fast approaching 75 percent.

Which points to yet another of the ironies abounding in this unhappy story. For if there is white racism at work here, it is precisely the perverse liberal variety that lies in the contemporary multiculturalist mutation of such “Crow-Jimist” efforts. A perfect recent example is the Planned Parenthood attack on the campaign launched by New York City to discourage unmarried teenage girls from having babies. Since most of these girls are black, Planned Parenthood felt obliged to denounce the “stigmatizing” assumption that there was something wrong with what they were doing.

Given all these disagreements with my younger self, why have I permitted “My Negro Problem—and Ours” to be reprinted so many times without revision? The answer is that I have always been proud of it for the boldness it exhibited in grappling with what was then, and still is, the most difficult subject for any American to discuss without hiding behind the usual clichés and pieties and without taking refuge in cant.

But to be as recklessly candid about this question as I was about race in the essay itself, I also have to admit that looking at it through the eyes of the literary critic I used to be, I cannot help seeing it as a fully realized piece of writing. It is in the nature of such a work that it achieves an existence independent of its author, and so it is with “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” Almost from the day it was published, I have felt that it no longer belonged to me and that I had no right to tamper with it, let alone to kill it off. All the more is this the case now that it has survived to the ripe old age of 50.

“…And you will know them by the fruit that they bare.”

What Donald Trump’s base seemingly wanted to believe about him, has now pressed his back against the wall and not the wall that “Mexico” was “gonna pay for.”

Through his 2024 campaign Donald Trump was quick to offer a declassification of the files on 9/11, the murder of Robert and John F. Kennedy, even Martin Luther King, Jr. but being that this question always is followed up by questions of the file on Epstein President Trump would be forced to answer the question of transparency on Epstein. I don’t know if they workshopped this response but, through hemming and hawing and half-answering, by the time he was reelected his supporters, for the most part, considered the Epstein files release as a campaign promise and his detractors were exclaiming that “he would never!”

It seems like the latter would be closer to the truth. There were many people who only voted for the guy because they believed he would expose the elite class and Jeffrey Epstein seems to be a proxy for that. It’s at the very least the most vilely blatant example of elite misgivings to be covered up and now Donald Trump himself is party to, if not the greatest purveyor of, the cover-up that is the Epstein scandal.

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So, it was clear that they were having a hard time getting these files to the public. Starting with public comments from Attorney General Pam Bondi that the file with the client list was “on her desk waiting for review.”

Then there was the “MAGA Influencer” photo op with the folders reading “Epstein Release: Phase One.” Which turned out to contain more redactions and less information, than was already publicly available.

Followed by reporting that the San Francisco FBI office was caught destroying information from the Epstein file and that FBI Director Kash Patel would be handling the situation. Since Kash is, and has been, the most vocal advocate for transparency, especially on this issue, this was great news!

Following that was radio silence for a couple months followed by the—now infamous—interview on Fox News with Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino and Kash Patel to his side where the two of them nervously asserted that they have seen the evidence, soon we (the public) will see too, the evidence that Jeffrey Epstein, well, “He killed himself.”

Kash would go on to repeat this again on Fox the following day and on the Joe Rogan Experience a couple weeks later with mention of footage showing proof that no one else gain access to the cell on the night of his murder. This was strange because according to reporting at the time of his death the guards were asleep and the cameras to Epstein’s cell block were turned off or malfunctioned. Regardless, this footage would be released to the public, just like Patel and Bondi said it would, but there was just a few small problems.

1st problem, the video that spanned many hours on the day of Epstein’s death after digital forensics had their way with it realized at first that it was missing a minute from the video, which was explained by Bondi, had been spliced together with footage from another day using Adobe Premier, and is video from a completely different floor than Epstein was being held. They’d duped us again.

This led to a lot of debate, a lot of lost faith, a lot of talks of Patel, Bongino, and Bondi being compromised, the erosion of public trust to the point of disintegration.

Then comes the release of the memo and video (minus 3 minutes):

As part of our commitment to transparency, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein. To ensure that the review was thorough, the FBI conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored. These searches uncovered a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence.

The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only a fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography.

This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.

Consistent with prior disclosures, this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims. Each suffered unique trauma. Sensitive information relating to these victims is intertwined throughout the materials. This includes specific details such as victim names and likenesses, physical descriptions, places of birth, associates, and employment history.

One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims. Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.

To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government’s possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.

Unsigned by the way, no doubt to allow for an argument as to who wrote/released this.

But anyone who knows anything about this story knows this just is not true.

Following this release there was what could best be described as an all-out revolt!

From the most dedicated to the least, Donald Trump’s support starts to fall off a cliff with mainstream journalists and democratic party operatives much to oblige.

The day following the report above, during a press conference with Trump, AG Bondi, Noem, Hegseth, and Rubio, Bondi is asked about the report, you can see the President kinda fidgeting nervously as the reporter speaks and President Trump interrupts very condescendingly, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? …That creep.”

Reporter: Um, your memo and release yesterday on Jeffrey Epstein, it left some lingering mysteries. One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for a American or foreign intelligence agency. The former labor secretary who was uh Miami US attorney, um, Alex Acosta allegedly said that he did work for intelligence agency. So, could you resolve whether or not he did? And also, could you say why there was a minute missing from the jail house tape on the night of—

AG Bondi: Yeah, sure.

DJT: If I could I just interrupt. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking—we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time on—Do you feel like answering?

AG Bondi: I don't mind answering.

DJT: I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this. Where we're having some of the greatest success and—and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems, uh, like a desecration. But you go ahead.

This marks the beginning of the end. We might’ve overlooked the bombing of Iran, the obvious wealth transfer by the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” from the most vulnerable to the least or not being able to end the Ukraine war on day one.

But there is no way we will ever overlook the coverup of the world’s most prolific child molester, but we all had to ask why? Why is he covering for this guy, and I think the truth has been right in front of our faces the entire time. He’s not covering for Jeffrey Epstein, or Israel that breaks every deal we set up for peace, or the CIA that tried to frame him for treason or the MOSSAD that has been spying on us for years, Donald Trump is covering for himself.

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Following his condescending comments during the press conference with Miss Bondi Donald makes statement after statement appearing to blame Obama, and Comey, and Clapper, and Hillary of setting him up which makes no fucking sense, it sounded like he was rambling about nothing until the weekend came around and the Wall Street Journal dropped their report of a 50th birthday present to Epstein that Maxwell had put together which was a leatherbound book with each page being a personalized note from his closest friends one of these pages being from Donald Trump that seems to be the eeriest, creepiest shit I’ve ever heard.

Written inside a hand drawn outline of a naked lady with Donald’s signature as the pubic hair was the following note:

Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.

(Signed) Donald

From here all hell breaks loose in Trump world. Reporting comes out that he had approached the owner of the WSJ threatening suit if he releases this report and to their credit, they did it anyways which means they must be willing to go to trial with this, which means there must be some validity to it.

His response:

President Trump, as well as Vice President JD Vance, strongly denied the report while threatening to file a lawsuit.

“This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story. I never wrote a picture in my life. I don’t draw pictures of women. It’s not my language. It’s not my words.”

“I’m gonna sue The Wall Street Journal just like I sued everyone else,” he said, according to the newspaper.

Although he says he “never wrote a picture” he has drawn “doodles” to be sold at auction as early as 1995 to as late as 2017.

So, what lends the most validity to these claims, it’s not like I trust the Wall Street Journal wholeheartedly, and I definitely don’t trust Donald Trump but his late claims that this is a “Hoax” from the Democratic party are what truly makes me believe that this is a Trump cover-up.

He’s taking our broken trust over Russiagate and using it against us. That was, no doubt, carried out by the Clintons, Obamas, Comey, the intelligence community, and FBI. Because he knows that we know this and he knows that their credibility is in the can so he can put the blame on them and we’ll believe that shit, but what he’s not aware of is how much we actually know about this. At this point I believe that everyone from Nixon on up to the present are implicated in these Philes and nothing but the truth, will repair this sinking ship.

Truth and a mass firing of the entire executive branch. Give everyone a polygraph. Do it against their will or they go to prison.

In life he was known as some mysterious evil, cutting corners and building bridges to aid in the crossing of enlightened souls into the darkness of night.

So, what was he? A child molester/extortion extraordinaire? Only when he wasn’t schmoozing with Real Estate developer and the financial class to provide upkeep for his image.

Was he a money launderer? It sure looks that way, but above all else Jeffrey Epstein was a spokesman for the evils of excess. How would Donald Trump not be involved in that? He has gold toilets for Christ sakes!

Even in death this piece of shit is wreaking havoc in our world.

Most recent report is as of yesterday, reported by the Wall Street Journal that the Justice Department advised Donald Trump in May of this year that his name was among many in the Epstein files.

It seems there is a leak at the Justice Department, I don’t know how else they would be finding this stuff out.

According to polling from January to now Trump’s approval rating went from +6 pts in January to -11 now in July Donald Trump is squandering his 2nd chance, starting with bombing Iran.

New Russiagate Disclosures

As of this past weekend new disclosures on Russiagate were released which reveal it was former president Obama’s decision to use the Steele Dossier as evidence for the illegal FISA warrant that needed to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy. Too bad it took our president being implicated in a pedophile ring to get these revelations brought to light.

If the timing of these revelations didn’t seem suspicious to you, no worries, the president makes it perfectly clear when he does what he’s best at and says the quiet part out loud, “It’s a witch hunt, just a continuation if a witch hunt, the witch hunt you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold, Tulsi Gabbard (did), what they did to this country… You ought to take a look at that instead of this nonsense….”

He’s outright admitting that you should be going after these Russiagate revelations instead of pursuing the case that he is implicated in.

By the way, these new implications against Obama are very much important but the timing is ridiculously obvious. And just as Donald Trump will never be held accountable neither will Barack Hussein Obama, James Clapper, James Comey or anyone else for that matter.

This includes the “high level bounty hunter” for finding dirty money to fund the lifestyles of his rich, slob clients, nor the clients themselves.

July 24th, 2025, Jeffrey Epstein’s literal partner-in-crime while seeking a pardon from the Trump Administration is meeting with the Deputy Attorney General of the United States to hand over any information on clients that her and Jeffrey had since apparently no one has ever asked her for such information. Un-fucking-believable! These people had victims in common with Prince Fucking Andrew and no one wanted to know what that was about. Not to mention Bill Clinton! Republicans didn’t want to know that shit?! And Donald Trump? Are you telling me Democrats didn’t wanna know about that?! This is ridiculous!

The problem with this happening now instead of in the first place is for one, she will be incentivized not to include anything she might know about Donald Trump or anyone connected to him because she is wanting a pardon from Donald Trump, my God! If he pardons this evil witch…

For two, if she has information that connects Donald Trump to a pedophile ring and we never found this out because the first investigators refused to ask her any questions, that might be the greatest act of incompetence ever imposed on mankind. Second to none that I can think of.

July 25th, 2025: This story will never end, I’m publishing this before anything else can come out, I’ve got to publish something!

The New York Times have revealed notes by Ghislaine Maxwell adding to the validity of the birthday book from the Wall Street Journal and there is just no doubt in my mind now, where there's smoke, there’s fire and Donald Trump looks like the Murrah Building after the Ryder truck blew up.

One More Thing to Consider

Connections: Jeffrey Epstein, 22-year-old college drop-out, was hired by Donald Barr, ex-CIA before it was the CIA, in 1974, as a math teacher at the elite Dalton school in New York, Donald Barr was father to Bill Barr who would go on to work under three presidential administrations including Donald Trump’s, and oversee the arrest and death of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019. He was also lead counsel as an attorney to the CIA.

The lead Federal Prosecuting Attorney who handled Epstein’s arrest in 2007 and plea bargain, the Deal of a Lifetime, Jeffrey Epstein had dozens of victims willing to testify against him,

Despite ample physical evidence and multiple witnesses corroborating the girls’ stories, federal prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers quietly put together a remarkable deal for Epstein, then 54. He agreed to plead guilty to two felony prostitution charges in state court, and in exchange, he and his accomplices received immunity from federal sex-trafficking charges that could have sent him to prison for life.

He served 13 months in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade. His alleged co-conspirators, who helped schedule his sex sessions, were never prosecuted.

The deal, called a federal non-prosecution agreement, was sealed so that no one — not even his victims — could know the full scope of Epstein’s crimes and who else was involved.

The U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, was personally involved in the negotiations, records, letters and emails show.

And he was given work release six days a week.

Alex Acosta would go on to be Labor Secretary for the Trump Administration from 2017-2019.

When he was asked why he gave Epstein such a sweet deal, he replied that “he was told by his bosses that Epstein belonged to Intelligence (CIA, MOSSAD, MI5, one of them).”

Just a couple more unbelievable connections between Epstein and Trump that might’ve seemed innocuous had everything else not transpired.

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I don’t even know how we got here at this point. Turns out, we don’t have a Russian spy in office, but a billionaire sexual predator….?

Thank you for reading. More to come. Hopefully not about pedophiles in the White House or any house for that matter.

Editor-in-Chief

Also, I couldn’t find this on YouTube, so I did my best screen record of it off of TuckerCarlson.com. The Tucker Carlson Network. Find the original there. Sorry for the watermark and iffy quality. It was within my ghostly budget, so…

A topical Easter speech, enjoy!

Introducing…

Thank you so much.

It's awful to be introduced by someone you really like because it feels like log rolling.

“Ummm… you're so great!”

“No, you're so great!”

JD Vance really is great, actually.

And I'm not sure—First of all, thank you for having me.

It's so weird to be speaking at the Center for Christian Virtue.

I feel, having so little Christian virtue, I just always think of myself as kind of a mediocre person. My father used to say, “the root of all wisdom is knowing how rotten you are.”

It's something I meditate on every day.

So, I just want to make clear before I begin any remarks at all, Christian virtue is something I aspire to rather than embody, just to be clear.

I do aspire to it.

But J.D. Vance, I have no idea, because I'm not in Ohio that much anymore since I don't cover campaigns, I don't know how popular he is here. I hope very. But I can tell you this.

I left Washington three years ago and now live in a town that's literally a 50th the size of this room, but, you know, my parents and my son are still in Washington, and obviously I spent 35 years there, so I know a lot of people there.

I know how he's regarded in Washington, which is as — literally — a unique figure in the Senate. Out of 100, there's one.

And one person who truly doesn't care what's popular and is solely focused on what he thinks is right for the country and for the state, period.

There's just one.

J.D. Vance

I'll just be honest, I really don't like U.S. senators very well, at all, and so it's through that lens that I'm assessing this, and I think there's some decent people in the Senate, but there's only one who really is not on a leash, who is free inside to do what he thinks is right, and that's J.D. Vance, and you see it.

He stood alone the other day on an issue. I mean, there's a whole hierarchy of issues in Washington, and some are like controversial, air quotes “controversial,” and some are just like so controversial they're just verboten, like you just don't bring them up, because it's not simply your constituents who might judge you or the media who might judge you, it's the other 99 you work with, and you know, like all groups, there's a lot of intense pressure to conform.

Washington, DC, America’s Seedy Underworld

The herd instinct is the strongest instinct, maybe even before you know, more basic survival instincts.

The need to fit in with the people around you is paramount for most people, and JD Vance has bucked that in very real ways recently, like this week. And there's nothing I admire more than that.

Someone said to me the other day, well, do you think it's because — in fact, it was flying here — “Do you think it's because J.D. Vance is from a different kind of background? You know, grew up in a poor family, he wrote a book about it. Grew up in Appalachia, disordered environment, lived — in his childhood — the effects of deindustrialization, as many in Ohio have, and he's come from that background, he's in the Senate.”

I thought, “no, that's actually not the reason. He's not the only person in politics from a humble background.”

What makes J.D. unique, I think, is that he went from that to Yale Law School.

So, I think the root of JD's power is not that he's representing the people he grew up with — which he is — but that he has contempt for the people who are trying to bring him to the dark side.

That's the truth.

You see people come to Washington — I've seen this a thousand times in my life — they get there and think, “I'm gonna fight the man,” and they get there, and they realize they kinda want to be the man, actually.

And that was the point of the whole exercise, was to get close to the man and get an invitation to the “Aspen Institute” and to have the “Atlantic Magazine” write a puff piece about them and to meet Zelensky.

That is the core desire.

I'm serious — cool guy in the tracksuit — that is kind of the whole purpose, was to get out of whatever forgotten town they were from and get with the cool kids in DC.

And J.D. Vance had the unusual privilege of learning that world before he got to the Senate and deciding that it was hollow, that didn't lead anywhere and was a path to destruction — not just for the country — but to his soul and rejecting it.

And boy, they hate him for that because he knows who they are.

And as someone who grew up in that world, I can just tell you firsthand — I didn't grow up in Appalachia — I grew up in the opposite.

I grew up in Georgetown, La Jolla and Georgetown.

I know what that feels like, to look around and think, this is as good as it gets, supposedly? This isn't good at all, It's awful! I don't want anything to do with this.

These people are hollow, they think they're God.

So that's the root of his power, and I'm grateful as an American that he's in the Senate.

Election Season & Ballot Initiatives

So, I'm really struck by the ballot initiatives, that your voters will be facing in November.

And I'm struck because they're so very different from the politics that I covered for the bulk of my life.

I'm 54, been covering this stuff since I was 22.

And for most of that time, the debates that we had in the political sphere were over competing visions for how to improve people's lives.

The minimum wage was always a really intense debate, and I always felt like maybe the minimum wage killed jobs, I guess.

That's what my side said, and I think that's probably true.

And the other side would say, “but people need more money to live, and so we're going to mandate that they make this much.”

And it was a, you know, I was on one side of it, but I could also sort of see the other side.

Both sides were at least pretending to try to improve the lives of the people who voted for them, but when you wind up in an election where the two top ballot initiatives are,

one, encouraging people to kill their own kids,

and

two, encourage their kids to do drugs, who's benefiting here?

I'm serious, the one unalloyed source of joy in your life is your children. The point of life is to have children and to watch them have grandchildren. Nothing will bring you joy like that will.

Nothing comes close. Nothing comes close.

Would you trade your job for your children?

Would you trade anything for your children?

Of course not! And so, anyone telling you don't have children, kill your children is not your friend, it's your enemy.

Human Sacrifice

And by the way, it's a very recognizable promise that they're making you because it's as old as time and it's chronicled in great detail throughout the Hebrew Bible.

It's human sacrifice, which rears its head about every four chapters, and which is singled out for approbation every time.

Of all the sins the ancients committed, that sin, every single time it's described, is called detestable, at least in the RSV.

Detestable.

God singled that out.

Throw your children into the fire?

Now, why were people doing that?

Because, of course, they believed they were getting power and contentment and happiness in return. All it's going to take is to sacrifice your children.

This is as old as time.

Every civilization on the face of the earth has engaged in it.

Everyone.

Not just the Mayans and the Aztecs, but the Scandinavians, my people.

No, it's true, even the Swedes did it!

I know, it's embarrassing, but the archaeological record tells us that human sacrifice — the sacrifice of children, the killing of children — is the one constant in human civilization.

Now, you answer the question, how can that be?

How did all these civilizations, at different points of the compass that we know had no contact with one another, reach the same conclusion that in exchange for killing their own children, they would be happy or safe?

Probably not a conclusion they reached organically, right?

It cuts against the imperative of evolutionary biology, which is to continue the species.

And those of us who grew up in a secular world being taught that people are motivated by instinct designed to continue the species, pause at that and say, wait a second, how does killing your own children advance the cause of perpetuating the species?

It doesn't.

In fact, it's an attack on that.

So, it's not... a natural human function to want to kill your own children — actually — that's an idea, an impulse that was introduced.

Outside forces are acting on people at all times throughout history in every culture on the planet to convince people that if they sacrifice their children, they will be happy and safe.

And that's exactly what this is.

This is a religious rite. This is not a policy debate.

They're not telling you that some girl got raped at 13 and she needs to go to college and therefore unfortunately need to abort the child. No, that was 20 years ago.

Now they're saying abortion is itself a pathway to joy!

Really? So, this is not a political debate, this is a spiritual battle. There is no other conclusion.

Take more drugs and be happy?

Right, okay. Less conscious, less aware.

Give your soul over, dull yourself, become a robot.

Really? Those are the promises they're making.

Okay, so how do you respond to this?

Responding

And that's what I've been thinking about all day.

I went on my morning walk with my dogs in Maine this morning, from which I derive much wisdom every morning, my wife and I.

And, um, by the way, I'm not a theologian. I'm the opposite of a theologian, so don't take any theological, insight, from me at all.

I'm just a reader, okay? And here's what's jumped out at me.

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Courageous Paul

So, my second favorite character in the New Testament is Paul, and I think, from what I can tell, the bulk of the New Testament is written by or about Paul. He's a leading character in this drama, I would say.

Okay, and I think just an amazing person because he was not a good person. He was like a horrible person.

He was on his way to murder Christians when he was knocked down and blinded and then pivoted on a dime and devoted his life to spreading the gospel.

So, I find it very inspiring that a truly awful person could become one of the great people of all time. That's reassuring.

But the two qualities that really jump out of the story of Paul's life, first and most obviously, is the courage, this is like the bravest guy ever.

There's not a letter he wrote where he didn't have a sword hanging over his neck.

He expected at any moment to be murdered, and I think the consensus among historians is, in the end he was. He was murdered, as were all of his friends, but he lived with the certainty that he was gonna be killed for his beliefs every day, and he was totally unbothered by it, completely.

He was just moving as fast as he could in the time allotted. He didn't know how much he had, he just kept going, but he was never afraid.

As his boat was sinking in the Med, in his year-long journey, and everyone with us is freaking out, totally fine.

“Oh, we're a shipwreck? No problem.”

Never afraid.

And by the way, why would he be afraid? He believed his fate was sealed. He was going to join Jesus. He was going to heaven. He was totally convinced of that, and it seems to me maybe the one takeaway is like that's table stakes in Christian faith, fearlessness.

“Are you afraid or are you not?”

That is actually the marker of it. Are you afraid or are you not?

Well, if you're afraid, then you're kind of not doing it right, are you?

Like there's no excuse for being afraid, and I don't want to take this opportunity that you've so graciously given me to spend the next 40 minutes pounding on the Episcopal Church, so I won't, but I grew up in it.

You know, my ancestors were in it, high-level people in it.

I married into it. I was educated in it. I educated my kids in it.

I was as firmly ensconced as that church as you could be, even as it crumbled around us and became this very aggressively pagan institution. And we stayed because it's hard to leave something you grew up in, but the moment that we left, for good, and actually, really, it was the greatest thing we ever did, really got to understand God better once we left church. Weird how that works.

But the moment that catalyzed it for us was COVID, which was really an amazing and clarifying experience, and I'm just — as sad as it was — I'm so grateful that we lived through that because everything became so much clearer than it was.

The church that we went to closed for COVID and they closed their Christmas service, and we have this, the one thing about the Episcopal church, we have this amazing liturgy written by actual Christians.

And we have lessons in carols, this ritual that I grew up with, my wife grew up with, her father's an Episcopal minister, and we love it.

And all of our children come home, and we go to it, and it's just this beautiful service, and they cancel lessons in carols.

And I know I'm revealing how shallow I am, but I just wanted to go to the service because I love lessons in carols. I love all the carols, and I love all the lessons, and they didn't have it.

And I said to my wife, “well, why aren't we having lessons in carols?”

Like, “that's like a requirement.” There's no Episcopal church without lessons in carols. Like, what?

And she's like, “well, COVID and the minister sent this letter. Here it is. She is afraid that she's going to, you know, die from COVID.”

And I was like, “what? She's afraid she's gonna die? Why is she worried about dying? She's a Christian minister?” Like, why should she care? Dying?

If you're afraid to die, then you don't really mean it, do you?

No!

Even I — I was like 50 years old at the time and like probably have some reason to worry about what happens after I die. Even I'm not afraid to die.

Do it Our Way

I'm a talk show host! And she's afraid to die?

Okay, not a Christian. We can stop wasting our time on that.

And we've done lessons and carols in our backyard and three years since we're doing it again.

We get a choir, they're terrible at singing, they drink too much, but... It's amazing.

We hired the waitresses at a local restaurant to be our choir last year because no one in my neighborhood can sing, and because we're Episcopalians, we hold on to the rituals.

So, we do have an open bar at our service, and they'd never seen anything like that because they're Baptist, and they just hit that so hard.

They're like, “do you have Bailey's Irish cream?”

I don't even know what that is.

“No, but we'll get it,” says my accommodating wife.

We got a quart. They drank the whole quart. They were the worst singers ever.

They couldn't pronounce King Wenceslaus at all, but it was wonderful. And it was so spirit-filled and edifying, just wonderful, everything about it was wonderful, but my point is, fear, cowardice, is the clearest possible marker of the absence of faith.

There is no excuse for that.

Christians... Don't always have to reach the right decision.

They should be ever conscious of their fallibility, of their fundamental silliness. People are ridiculous.

And if you don't believe that, next time you get out of the shower, stand in front of a mirror and take a good look at yourself, you look ridiculous.

You do!

You look ridiculous naked.

I'm sorry, you do. Okay?

We all do. All furry and lumpy.

You can't take yourself too seriously if you look in the mirror when you get out of the shower, and you shouldn't.

I've done that.

So, Christians can absolutely get it wrong and do. They can follow the wrong path. They can be mistaken.

They can be silly and profane. They can commit the worst sins imaginable. The one thing they cannot do is be afraid.

Period.

Period.

And so, boldness, again, is not just a status extra. It's a baseline requirement for following the gospel, and if you're not doing that, you're not doing it right. Okay?

So that's the first thing, don't be afraid.

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Concern for Fellows in Fellowship

The second thing I notice in reading Paul's letters is his deep concern for his fellow Christians.

Now, it was a universalist message to the uncircumcised and the circumcised, and that's the beauty of Christianity.

It's for everybody, no matter what you look like, no matter where you're from, your language.

It's truly a universal faith, which was a completely radical idea when Jesus was crucified.

I don't think anyone had ever thought of anything like that.

There was nothing like that, never had been anything like that, and I love that, and so, Paul was preaching to everybody.

In fact, in a lot of ways, he was preaching to the Greeks a lot of the time, but even though his concern was for everybody, his heart was focused, and you see this again and again in his letters, on his fellow Christians.

“Titus,” “Timothy,” “how are they doing?” “How are you?” “I love you.”

He really cares about his brothers in the faith. He really, really does, and it's intimate and kind of raw in these letters. It's wonderful! And I think that's a model for us.

We should care about everybody, but we should have a soft spot for other Christians.

We should, and we don't at all. We don't at all.

And that's one thing I've noticed the whole time I've been in D.C. I'm totally opposed to tribalism, particularly religious tribalism. My instinct is ecumenical. We're all in this, let's speak to everybody.

I mean, I'm American, very American, and that's an American idea, but I can't help but notice how the Christian church has almost specifically excluded concern for other Christians from its portfolio.

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Protecting Christians Everywhere

I see it all the time.

I'll never forget going to Iraq to cover the war in 2003 and running into a Christian. I didn't know there were Christians in Iraq.

Well, 1.5 million of them, actually.

It was one of the biggest and oldest Christian communities in the world, it's gone now.

1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003.

They're about, we think, 150,000 or fewer, so that's like, I don't know, kind of qualifies as genocide, I would think. I mean, they're gone!

Okay, a lot of them were murdered. Not a lot of them came here because they were excluded, specifically excluded, by the Obama State Department. This was a news story at the time.

“So, we're getting a lot of refugees from Iraq.”

“What percentage were Christian?”

“None.”

And no one said anything about it. This wasn't hidden information.

I reported it at the time.

Oh, okay, yeah, well, a lot of great people come in.

Well, okay, but if you're a Christian church, what about the Christians?

The president who sent them there was a self-described Christian, but there was not one word in 20 years, I have not heard one word of concern about what happened to all those Christians.

Nobody seems to care. We should care.

Not just about them, but certainly about them.

Why wouldn't we? They're Christians, so are we.

The Christians of Syria? Never hear a word about it.

Bumper Sticker Fallacy

The world is super complicated and any time someone tries to reduce a conflict, say, or a rivalry in another part of the world to a bumper sticker, you know that person's lying.

Because the closer you get to anything, whether it's a country or a marriage or any human interaction, the closer you get, the more you know, the more you understand it's indescribably complex, and you can never fully know the truth.

Okay?

I'm only suggesting that one factor that Christians use to assess the behavior of their government and other governments ought to be the treatment of Christians.

It ought to be. Why is it not?

So, if there's a conflict in say, Syria, and you're being told by everybody in the media that the bad guy in that conflict is Bashar al-Assad, I'm sure he's bad.

Are They Bad? How are the Christians faring?

I'm not endorsing the guy. Never met him. Glad I don't live in Damascus.

On the other hand, I think one of the questions you can ask is, how are the Christians faring? Are they going to do better under Bashar al-Assad?

There's a massive Christian community in Syria.

There was. We funded the Islamists who killed a lot of them.

We're funding the Islamists who are killing the Christians. Anyone know that?

No, of course not. Churches never talk about it. That's true.

Are we for that? I'm not for that.

If the only thing I know, look, it's far away. I don't think it has anything to do with us. I don't think we should be involved. But as long as we are involved, why doesn't someone stand up and say, wait a second, we're funding the killing of Christians?

No, I'm a Christian. I'm against that.

How's that? Let's start there.

Russia/Ukraine

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine, super complicated. I don't think there's an easy answer. I don't think there's a good guy and a bad guy.

I don't think it's Churchill versus Hitler.

I just don't think that. And the more I learn about it, the more I'm confused.

I'm certainly not endorsing Russia. I don't live there either, never been there, but one of the guides that we as Christians should use to assess that situation is how do Christian’s fare in those countries?

It's totally legitimate to ask that question. Is it easier to be a Christian in Russia or Ukraine? They're forcing us to pick.

I mean, I kind of happily live in a world where I don't have to pick. I don't know, they are foreign countries, far away.

They're not America, I'm not that interested, but they're making us be interested.

So, now that we're required to be interested and required to pay for the war, why doesn't some Christian ministers stand up and say, is it easier to be a Christian in Ukraine or Russia?

One of those countries just arrested a bunch of priests and shut down churches with political police in the army.

It wasn't Russia.

I raised that question at a Christian gathering, and people scowled at me. Really?

They're arresting priests! I don't need to know more, actually.

Well, they had bad opinions. Well, okay. So?

I have bad opinions. I don't want to be arrested. Bad opinions are not grounds for arrest, sorry.

And moreover, the gut-level reaction of Christians to the arrests of Christian clergy should be horror!

Period. Period.

Paul cared about his brothers in the faith, and so should we.

What's the oldest Christian church in the world?

Bethlehem

Anyone know? Anyone know?

Well, it's in Bethlehem. Yeah.

Anyone been there?

Yeah. It's a mess. The church is a mess.

Everyone goes to the Holy Land. We get all these preachers on our show at Fox.

“Well, go to the Holy Land.”

I love the Holy Land. There's nothing I like more than Jerusalem. It's my favorite place in the world. It's an unbelievable place whose spiritual power is palpable.

You can feel it. Go to the Western Wall and you can feel it vibrating off the wall. And that's God's power. I don't care what religion you are; You can feel it. It makes the hair on your head stand up. It's amazing.

But it's not the only holy place in the Holy Land.

The Church of the Nativity is the oldest Christian church in the world.

Period.

It's one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, and they're not doing well at all, and the church is a mess.

It's a mess, and they're hassled by government authorities all the time.

Now I know it's super complicated. I couldn't be more on one side of that issue, totally in favor of the current government and all that, but you're not allowed to hassle Christian churches.

Sorry, that has to be our position. I don't care where they are.

I don't care about your little temporal political arguments. The Church of the Nativity is a core Christian holy site. And I don't care who's in charge of the territory or the countries around it. I don't care!

Because that church predates those governments and will outlast them.

As will the faith, but Christians are so intimidated in this country.

We would always get these — I'm sorry, I couldn't be more in favor of the faith — but we would get these blow-dried, guitar-playing preachers on. Very interested in money on our show because the preachers had no idea.

They didn't know the difference. They had no idea, you know, a good preacher or a bad preacher, and they'd be going on, and I'd say, “how's Church of the Nativity doing?”

Oh, shut up. That's in the wrong country.

What?! I don't care what country it's in. It's a Christian holy site! And you are not allowed to get in the way of the worship there, and if you do, we're not sending you any money. How's that sound?

Like, why wouldn't that be our position as Christians?

And yet, even to say that now is considered, like, totally forbidden.

“You're into Christian nationalism!”

No, I'm not. I'm not even sure what that is, by the way.

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God, Government, & The Unruly Nephew

I'm an American nationalist. I grew up in the United States of America, and I support my country, okay?

But I also don't imagine that the goals of the U.S. government, which governs the country that I love, that I was born in, and will die in, is the holder of only one passport, I don't imagine that the goals of that government align necessarily with the goals of my faith, and this really is one of the great misperceptions American Christians have.

This is not, you know, if you are in another country, you sort of know the government is hostile to you because you're a Christian.

The Iraqi Christians certainly learned that. Syrian, too.

Christians at the Church of the Nativity know that quite well, but here, where churches have the American flag, which I fly over my house, I'm very, I salute it, and I will till I die, but that flag sits in most of our churches.

Every church I've ever been to in my life has a flag, which is great, and I hope they continue, but the downside of that is it inculcates in people this assumption that the government supports the church or is not hostile to the church, and the truth is, if you practice real Christianity, the people in charge want to kill you, and that's always been true, period.

Not because you're a threat to them militarily, you're giving unto them what is due to them. That's a requirement of your faith, but because you are saying there is an authority higher than you.

You are not God; you are the government.

I will follow your laws, I will pay you the taxes, you ask, but I'm not going to worship you because there is a higher authority than you.

And that...declaration, whether it's said out loud or just implied, or even if you're just giving off the vibe! They can smell the vibe.

I have a nephew who in fourth grade is my favorite, I have many nephews, he's my favorite, I'll just say it, he's my favorite nephew, and he lived right next door to me, you know, his whole life, and our kids all went to the same school, and this kid was in trouble from like fourth grade on.

And I remember asking one of the teachers at the school, like, what did he do?

“Well, he just, you just can tell, like, he's disobedient.”

Well, did he do anything?

“He just doesn't, he's not with the program.”

They can smell on this kid the spirit of autonomy, and of course, the main goal of every lower schoolteacher is to crush autonomy! Is to crush you! You stand up like, “why, why?” No, shut up!

People can smell it when you're not fully on board, and that goes for massive human organizations, even the largest one in human history, which is the US government.

The largest organization in human history.

Now the point of all large human organizations is to perpetuate themselves, period.

Period.

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And if you won't bow before them in total obedience and love, they will try and kill you! That's been true since Rome.

Why did they come in and destroy the second temple right after the crucifixion. Why did they do that?

They committed genocide against the Jews in Jerusalem, as obviously you know. Why'd they do that?

“Were the Jews marching on Rome?”

No!

All they were doing was saying, we've got our own God, thanks.

That's it, and that was enough to get killed and have their temple reduced to rubble, of which the Western Wall is the only remaining part.

So, this is a standing feature of human civilization. People of sincere faith will always be the target of harassment and more by the temporal authorities, and we somehow have convinced ourselves that we're the exception to that, and we're not.

And we saw it during COVID where they were literally shutting down Christian churches with, by the way, the full cooperation of the Christian ministers running those churches while simultaneously allowing strip bars and liquor stores and weed dispensaries to remain open.

There could not be a clearer signal of intent. Your faith is a threat to us, and we're going to shut you down.

And in the face of that, the cowards who ran those churches went along with it.

I've never been more disgusted by the behavior.

I've never seen behavior that upset me more than that.

—Tucker Carlson, The Cleveland Speech.

Now “Crystallized in Stone.”

Thank you for reading! Have a beautiful Easter!

This is , Editor-in-Chief,

With that being said, there is a worrisome cynicism he leaves behind in his final address, and I pair that with an unbelievable optimism that follows soon behind it with the inaugural address of John F. Kennedy and a few words by I.F. Stone from the time that might explain how that optimism could so deeply be extinguished in November, just two years later. These words, here for you, “Crystallized in Stone.”

Eisenhower’s Farewell: January 17th, 1961

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other — Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

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Ike’s Origination

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling — on my part — of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

America to Now

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

A Hostile Ideology

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Opposing Crises Foreign & Domestic, and Weighing Our Options Realistically

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties: a huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research. These and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

Balance

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

The Military-Industrial Complex

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States — corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The Scientific-Technological Elite

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.

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Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Disarmament and the Element of Time

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations — past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament — of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Ike’s Return to Privacy

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that — in that — in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

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Three Days Later

John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address

Jack Kennedy says, “Hold my beer.”

January 20th, 1961:

Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens:

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom — symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning — signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge — and more.

Cultural & Spiritual Allies

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do — for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom — and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

United Nations — Last Best Hope

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support — to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

The Spread of the Deadly Atom

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course — both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

Civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.

So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Arms Control and Science

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Peace of the Oppressed

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah — to “undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free.”

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor — not a new balance of power, but a new world of law — where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In Your Hands, More Than Mine

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Common Enemies of Man

Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation,” a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

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Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

World Citizens

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Two years and six months later he would give this speech:

Two years, ten months, and 2 days later he would be extinguished on a November Texas day. Much too soon.

Murdered for his words, his ambition, his idealism, in an unidealistic world. By the complex that Eisenhower warned about, and by the “key positions” that I.F. Stone warned of from the days of Eisenhower.

Thank you for reading.

Editor-in-Chief

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This is what I was told so I decided to see what evidence was out there to prove this, what I found was almost funny.

What is their evidence of this? The NYT published a “Letter to the Editor” piece where the letter writer goes after the European press for attacking America over slavery, then when America starts to do something about slavery, they’re totally quiet, but anyone paying attention to European politics would know that “since 1849 (to go no further back) England has had quite enough to do in Europe and Asia, without going out of her way to meddle with America.” And using the term correctly calls it “a physical and moral impossibility that she could be carrying on a gigantic conspiracy against us.” People who don’t know about European politics don’t know they have been too busy to credit us for our attempts to abolish slavery would than subscribe to the “conspiracy theory.” Meaning the theory that there is a conspiracy.

This is not at all the accusation, and they know this because they also have a claim that “Conspiracy Theorist” as a derogatory term was first used in 1961, also the year that USAID was created but that’s neither here nor there, so I look at the evidence they have of this, it links to the definition entry by Miriam-Webster, this actually Websters claim. What is Webster’s proof? Because they say so…

A person who proposes or believes in a conspiracy theory.

I don’t believe this is proof at all. The fact that even Webster was able to get it so close to JFK’s death, November 22nd, 1963, is telling in itself.

The accusation is much more poignant. It is that the term Conspiracy Theorist became a derogatory term at the same time as the Warren Commission was being held and was adapted to those who questioned its ethics.

One of these ethical misgivings was that Allen Foster Dulles, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, fired by John F. Kennedy for going against him and carrying out the failed Bay of Pigs debacle, was then placed on the Warren Commission to investigate his murder. People who pointed things like this out were called Conspiracy Theorists. So, let's see what the evidence is in the positive?

A document was produced by the CIA and made public in the 70’s by a FOIA done by the NYT that seemed to almost say this. The document is called “Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report” the link is to the Internet Archive because I couldn’t get the original to load, but that’s where it came from. Click the link, you’ll see it. So, this report is pretty ugly, regardless of whether it created this term or not, it lays out how to manipulate citizens who rightly have questions about the conclusions of the Warren Report. The fact they feel like they need to manipulate anyone is a red flag on its own.

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Those who write articles/reports discrediting things like this shouldn’t lie about the facts. I found them link to the CIA report in an article that seemed to go into great detail about the term becoming derogatory in the 80’s and 90’s, not the 60’s, and was almost believable, but then made the claim that in the report the term “conspiracy theory” is used one time casually, and that “conspiracy theorist” never shows up, but the writer of this article couldn’t even be bothered to look at his own evidence! At least read the damn report!

The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.

From the article discrediting this:

Once again, I find myself asking, if it’s untrue, if it’s a lie, if it’s a “conspiracy theory” worthy of discrediting, then why, oh, why, must you lie about it.

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And if it was the CIA — or “Intelligence Community” — responsible for Kennedy’s death, and this was a psyop to discredit those with critical opinions, wouldn’t they have to introduce the term to the public before his death, maybe 1961? I’m just asking.

Here’s a screenshot of the rest of the report from JFKLancer.com via Internet Archive:

I still have no clear answer, but this is something that colors any story you read about the nefarious acts of the intelligence community. There is rarely a “smoking gun.” These agencies act in the shadows, leaving only circumstantial evidence behind. We’re left to operate on an accumulation of evidence and draw our conclusions from that. So, with that being said, what do you think?

JFK Files Dump — 2025

Circumstances of the circumstantial.

Now, for the files. I’m not really sure what I am looking for. There are JFK assassination scholars on the job who has made it their lives work to prove the CIA killed JFK, so I will simply post stuff here that I find to be interesting as I dig. If you want the “smoking gun” type information on this, you should definitely subscribe to . His Substack is . But, who knows, maybe I’ll uncover something.

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First Discovery:

• The CIA, not only the FBI, thought MLK was a secret communist or controlled by secret communists, and was also surveilling him in violation of the CIA’s 1947 charter. Which says, “the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse. But the law didn't stop the CIA from spying on Americans. During the 1960s, in clear violation of its statutory mission to co-ordinate foreign intelligence operations only, the CIA ventured into the domestic spying business through “Operation Chaos,” in which it spied on as many as 7,000 Americans involved in the peace movement.

• File number 124-10238-10329_multirif is a 171-page report that seems to point to the CIA believing Martin Luther King Jr received advice from Stanley Levison. Stanley Levison was known to be a member of the Communist Party, USA.

  

  SCLC- Southern Christian Leadership Conference. According to Wikipedia this was “an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, founded by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists in 1957. It aims to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans

CP, USA- Communist Party, USA (Which was frowned upon back then to say the least.) They were considered the enemy in this era. This was not long after the Red Scare or McCarthy Era. Everyone was secret Commies.

Interesting idea, what if the reason these documents were kept under lock and key for so long had nothing to do with JFK. What if it was actually MLK’s death these documents covered up.

The Dark & Nefarious Frank Church Rabbit Hole

Oh! Here’s a letter from Frank Church, of the Church Committee. I am a real Frank Church fan. I recently read James Risen’s book, The Last Honest Man, a biography of Frank Church.

Without him we would’ve never known about all the evil operations by the CIA, FBI, DOD, and NSA, such as:

• Project MK-ULTRA, “was the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early-1950s continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it “supposedly” (“Quotations on my end”) used United States citizens as unwitting test subjects.

  • “The published evidence indicates that Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.”

    “Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed in I973; the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations relied on the sworn testimony of direct participants and on the relatively small number of documents that survived Helms destruction order. Although the CIA insists that MK-ULTRA-type experiments have been abandoned, 14-year CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the CIA routinely conducts disinformation campaigns, and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a “cover story.””

  • What the Church committee didn’t uncover was how many of the most famous serial killers were tested on in these programs then unleashed on the American people. I finally finished Tom O'Neil’s 20-year masterpiece Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the 60’s, so this is all fresh in mind. After 20-years of dedicating his entire life to the Manson story, what started as a Feature in the now bankrupt magazine Premiere in 2000, led to 20 years of reporting and his book Chaos. He came away, although taking the route of the skeptic, about 99% sure that Charles Manson was a test subject of MK-Ultra, and it turns out a few of our other famous criminals were to.

    • Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, because his early targets were University’s and airline's — clever right — attended Harvard from 1959 to 1962. While attending Harvard he became a test subject for a study that turned out to be an MK-ULTRA study. Now, there is no proof they used LSD on him, there never is. What there is proof of, was many of his friends went on to exit society the same way that he did, it was apparently the thing back then, and they didn’t go on to also bomb universities and airlines like he did, and the difference between him and them was the MK-ULTRA study. Alston Chase, Harvard alumni, took many courses relative to Teddy, wrote a report in the Atlantic in 2000, called “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber,” and a book on the same subject that goes further into detail on this, “Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist.” I haven’t read it yet, but it’s ordered. He’d become a pen pal of Kaczynski, after his incarceration and through trial. In his article he writes:

      I had a special interest in Kaczynski. For many years he and I had lived parallel lives to some degree. Both of us had attended public high schools and had then gone on to Harvard, from which I graduated in 1957, he in 1962. At Harvard we took many of the same courses from the same professors. We were both graduate students and assistant professors in the 1960s. I studied at Oxford and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton before joining the faculty at Ohio State and later serving as chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Macalester College, in Minnesota. Kaczynski earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1967 and then joined the Berkeley Department of Mathematics as an instructor. In the early 1970s, at roughly the same time, we separately fled civilization to the Montana wilderness.

      He, and Psychologists at the time didn’t believe the man to be psychotic. He uncovered the MK-ULTRA study carried out on him.

      Known as the Murray experiment, it was carried out by Henry A. Murray. The guy now has a Harvard lab named after him called the Henry A. Murray Research Center of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

      ---

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      Chase writes of Murray:

      The curiosity of this complex man appears to have been impelled by two motives—one idealistic and the other somewhat less so. He lent his talents to national aims during World War II. Forrest Robinson, the author of a 1992 biography of Murray, wrote that during this period he “flourished as a leader in the global crusade of good against evil.” He was also an advocate of world government. Murray saw understanding the dyad, it seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book (1979), John Marks reported that General “Wild Bill” Donovan, the OSS director, “called in Harvard psychology professor Henry ‘Harry’ Murray” to devise a system for testing the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues “put together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, and to read a person’s character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's system became a fixture in the OSS.”

      So, this was his connection to the CIA. Chase doesn’t get much farther in his article because he is denied Teddy’s results from the experiment, but he is able to find out a lot:

      After considering my application, its research committee approved my request to view the records of this experiment, the so-called data set, which referred to subjects by code names only. But because Kaczynski's alias was by then known to some journalists, I was not permitted to view his records.

      Through research at the Murray Center and in the Harvard archives I found that, among its other purposes, Henry Murray's experiment was intended to measure how people react under stress. Murray subjected his unwitting students, including Kaczynski, to intensive interrogation -- what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, assaulting his subjects' egos and most-cherished ideals and beliefs.

      My quest was specific -- to determine what effects, if any, the experiment may have had on Kaczynski. This was a subset of a larger question: What effects had Harvard had on Kaczynski? In 1998, as he faced trial for murder, Kaczynski was examined by Sally Johnson, a forensic psychiatrist with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, at the order of a court. In her evaluation Johnson wrote that Kaczynski "has intertwined his two belief systems, that society is bad and he should rebel against it, and his intense anger at his family for his perceived injustices." The Unabomber was created when these two belief systems converged. And it was at Harvard, Johnson suggested, that they first surfaced and met. She wrote,

      During his college years he had fantasies of living a primitive life and fantasized himself as "an agitator, rousing mobs to frenzies of revolutionary violence." He claims that during that time he started to think about breaking away from normal society.

      23 years later the Daily Mail covered this story, let’s see if they made it any further?

      ---

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      Led by a maniacal psychologist named Dr. Henry Murray, Kaczynski was one of 22 coeds subjected to, in 1Murray's own words, 'vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive' mock interrogations between 1958 and 1962.

      Patients were dosed with potent mind-altering drugs, subjected to extremes of temperature and sound, high and low pressure, oxygen, food and sleep deprivation, strapped to electroshock machines and forcefully interrogated under a blazing spotlight for hours at a time.

      

  Far from it, Harvard became an incubator for Kaczynski's virulent pathology and anti-tech ethos which further isolated him from his peers.

  It began with his placement in special housing at No.8 Prescott Street which was designed to offer its youngest students a nurturing, intimate environment.

  Instead, it siloed the socially-awkward boys from their fellow classmates who were living a more conventional college experience in dormitories. Social adjustment proved difficult for Kaczynski.

  Within a year, Kaczynski —still an impressionably young teenager—had been recruited by the CIA as a human guinea pig to study mind control under intense interrogation, psychotropic drugs, hypnosis and psychological coercion in the top-secret government project known as MK-Ultra.

  Yea, we’re a bit further on this case, I guess. A little more, Daily Mail gives some more background on MK-ULTRA:

  Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union reached new heights in the wake of WWII.

  Fearful of falling behind in the realm of mind control and interrogation techniques, the CIA initiated MK-Ultra, a program aimed at exploring the boundaries of human manipulation through various means, including drug administration, hypnosis, and psychological coercion.

  Perverse human experiments were conducted on prisoners, addicts, mentally and terminally ill patients, unwitting citizens and even children.

  Of the most horrific were those done on children diagnosed with schizophrenia that were given LSD everyday for six weeks. Others were fed cereal laced with uranium and radioactive calcium.

  Doctors were paid enormous stipends to administer drugs to their unwitting patients on the behest of the CIA.

  Under that dark umbrella, a myriad gruesome 'subprojects' were launched across the country at institutions such as: Massachusetts General Hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Universities of Pennsylvania, Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Cornell, John Hopkins New York University. At one point the agency attempted to buy the world's entire supply of LSD, which they called the 'truth drug.'

  One such collaborator was the preeminent Harvard psychologist Dr. Murray who aimed at understanding a human subject's breaking point under intense interrogation.

  Kaczynski told biographer Alston Chase that he felt 'pressured into participating.'

  • Next up, of Boston Irish Mob fame, James “Whitey” Bulger:

    

    So, in Boston, MA, an Irish Gang rose up from the ashes. They were known as the Winter Hill Gang. I knew nothing, a lot less than I thought I knew, about these guys. I knew of Whitey Bulger, I knew nothing of the Winter Hill gang which tells me I must write about them soon. I got an audiobook to listen to at work tomorrow about them. So, expect that soon.

    

    Mr. Bulgers’ connection to MK-ULTRA is dark.

    Whitey Bulger, born to a Union Laborer and occasional longshoreman in 1929, his father lost his arm in a work accident which put the Bulger family in the poor house. In May 1938, the Mary Ellen McCormack Housing Project was opened in the neighborhood of South Boston. The Bulger family moved in and this became home. While his younger siblings excelled at school, James “Whitey” Bulger was drawn into street life. Due to his white hair the police gave him the nickname Whitey although he always hated it. As a juvenile he was in and out of prison for armed robberies and such, following his release in 1948 Whitey joined the Air Force, earned his diploma and trained as a mechanic. While in the AF he would be arrested for many assaults and spend time in military prison, but that ain’t even where this story starts as you’d expect. He received an Honorable Discharge in 1952 and headed back to Boston. In 1956, Bulger was 26 years old when he was convicted of robbing banks in Melrose, Rhode Island and Indiana. He did nine years in four federal penitentiaries, including Alcatraz, and Atlanta Penitentiary.

    Here’s what he wrote in his notebook, that was found and later corroborated:

    In 1957, while a prisoner at the Atlanta penitentiary, I was recruited by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Emory University to join a medical project that was researching a cure for schizophrenia. For our participation we would receive three days of good time for each month on the project. Each week we would be locked in a secure room in the basement of the prison hospital, in an area where mental patients were housed. We went in from 9 a.m. Tuesday to 9 a.m. Wednesday. We were injected with massive doses of LSD-25.

    In minutes the drug would take over, and about eight or nine men — Dr. Pfeiffer and several men in suits who were not doctors — would give us tests to see how we reacted. Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state. Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.

    The men in suits would be in a room and hook me up to machines, asking questions like: Did you ever kill anyone? Would you kill someone? Two men went psychotic. They had all the symptoms of schizophrenia. They had to be pried loose from under their beds, growling, barking and frothing at the mouth. They put them in a strip cell down the hall. I never saw or heard of them again. They failed the Babinski test.

    ---

    This is the whole letter, it starts to get a little racy, as you’d expect an albino irish criminal to get—JLC

    ---

    Lots of tests that have caused me sleeping problems and nightmares to the present. They told us we were helping find a cure for schizophrenia. When it was all over, everyone would feel suicidal and depressed, wrung out emotionally. Time would stand still. I tried to quit, but Dr. Pfeiffer would appeal to me: “Please, you’re my best subject, and we are close to finding the cure.”

    Years later, when I read the book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which came out in 1979 and was written by State Department whistle-blower John Marks, I found out there was a CIA project code-named MK Ultra. The project was a violation of my rights, using prisoners for dangerous tests. I was angry reading that because I’d never mentioned how I felt hallucinating. I kept silent because I thought they might commit me to a mental institution.

    I never slept more than two or three hours a night, waking up in cold sweats with side effects. The tests damaged my sleep and gave me nightmares. I had to sleep with the lights on and only for a few hours at a time. The government used us and never tried to help us out after injecting us with government LSD. I’ve had brain scans that told me I was damaged by the tests. The government did a number on us and walked. If anybody opened a shop selling LSD in my neighborhood, he would have lost his life.

    Prison has changed for the worse. Longer sentences, no mandatory release, no parole after one-third of your time. More laws covering weirdos. They are everywhere you look. In this place they banded together and said to the guards, “You have TVs for Blacks, whites, Native Americans and Spanish. What about a TV for sex offenders?” Needless to say, the guards flipped out. I was there when they formed their little gang. They’re protected by the hate crime statutes.

    In my case three cooperating killers — Kevin Weeks, Stephen Flemmi, John Martorano — took deals from prosecutors that allowed them to keep all their assets, sign book deals to make money and not have to pay any fines. My lawyer asked Martorano in court how many murders he committed, and he answered, “I can’t remember them all.” This guy cut someone’s head off. He used a knife, a shotgun and a machine gun with a silencer. He’s been freed for more than 10 years. Weeks did eight months for each murder he committed.

    I was found guilty of murder, extortion, gun possession and using violence in furtherance of organized crime. They had 53 weapons that they said I kept for my own personal arsenal. One of the killers testified that I “wanted them handy” in case I “wanted to kill somebody in a hurry,” and called them my “murder kit.” There was a grenade in this “murder kit” too.

    Kevin Weeks and the other cooperating killers confessed to all their murders and more, but they said, “I did it, but Whitey told me to do it.” The feds came up with seven bodies that the cooperating killers led them to, but they told the feds, “Whitey killed them, and I buried them.” I never said anything during trial, but twice I’d had enough of their lies and said to FBI agent John Morris, “You’re a fucking liar.” I had to laugh when the prosecutor told the judge, “Your honor, Mr. Bulger said the FBI agent is a fucking liar.” When he did, I repeated, “He is.” The judge told me to be quiet or I would be removed from the court.

    I cooled it then because I didn’t want to make this sideshow bigger than the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. My lawyer was threatened with legal actions if he mentioned certain names at my trial or even offered up what my defense was. My attorney argued, Why can’t we tell the jury and let them decide? But no, no. In the county jail they told me that I couldn’t talk to anyone and no one could talk to me. The guards used to harass me five times a day to make my bed and get up even though I never left the cell or talked to anyone. They said they were following the orders of the U.S. government.

    —James “Whitey” Bulger

    We would find out later that Bulger received 50+ doses of LSD during this program.

    Apparently, there was a lot more in this notebook, here’s CBS News on the story:

    In the notebook -- undated, but apparently written in the years after he was released from prison -- Whitey described "horrible LSD experiences followed by thoughts of suicide and deep depression." Yet he was determined to keep it all to himself so he would not be "committed for life."

    At one point, Whitey wrote that he developed a "morbid fear of LSD" and felt if he had any more of it, "it would push me over the edge." He was afraid that "if I mentioned hearing voices" or the "seeming movement of calendar in cell, etc., that I'd be committed for life and never see the outside again."

    In the notebook, Whitey compared the doctor running the LSD program back in federal prison to "a modern day Dr. Mengele" -- a reference to the notorious Nazi doctor.

    "I was in prison for committing a crime," he wrote, "and feel they committed a worse crime on me."

    But, there's no sympathy from the families of victims killed during Bulger's reign of terror on Boston streets.

    "I think he's been a monster since birth," said Patricia Donahue, whose husband, Michael, was gunned down in the early 1980's allegedly by Bulger. "He's a sociopath and I don't think you can blame the drugs on that."

    Whitey goes on to write about "nightly nightmares" and wonders whether the LSD caused him years of "stomach problems" and "allergies."

    Later, he said he read of LSD causing chromosome damage and felt if he got married his wife would "demand children," and those children, he feared, would have "mental problems" and "no life."

    He wrote of lingering effects. He said he had to "wear long sleeve shirts to bed -- because bear arms make me nervous."

    "Sometimes when awake and area is quiet, with eyes closed, you see shafts of light piercing the darkness," he wrote.

    Dr. Halpern never examined Whitey, but he described how troubling LSD could be for a man like Bulger, a crime boss fueled by power and control.

    "For someone who has a tremendous need for security through control this could lead to a tremendous sense of anxiety and they could feel quite damaged," Halpern said.

    In letters from prison to his brother William, Whitey wrote about how excited he was about the LSD project in the beginning and how he could earn "good time" by taking part in it.

    In fact, he wrote that he spent Christmas Eve in 1957 working on the LSD project and then rang in the New Year in the same place -- and was extremely happy about it.

    Bulger would go on to be involved in 19 murders, extortion, and racketeering, the likes that only Young Thug and George Bush could fathom.

    His Winter Hill gang went through two gang wars. Witnesses of the time describe them in the Irish-Indian gang war as “Hunters”:

    Explaining how the Winter Hill Gang differed from the Patriarca family in their methods of killing, Flemmi described the Winter Hill Gang as "hunters" who tracked down their targets, while the Mafia would wait, possibly for years, for their intended victim to show up on Hanover Street to kill them.

    Listen to this shit:

    In late August or early September 1974, Bulger and an accomplice reportedly set fire to an elementary school in Wellesley to intimidate U.S. District Court Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. over his mandated plan to desegregate schools in the city of Boston by means of busing. One year later, on September 8, 1975, Bulger and an unidentified person tossed a Molotov cocktail into the John F. Kennedy birthplace in Brookline in retaliation for Senator Ted Kennedy's vocal support for Boston school desegregation. Bulger then used black spray paint to scrawl "Bus Teddy" on the sidewalk outside of the national historic site.

    They bombed an elementary school because the elementary school wanted to allow black students in. Right? That is desegregation, is it not? Jeez. This was 1974, three years after he became an informant for the FBI.

    In 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) approached Bulger and attempted to recruit him as an informant in an ongoing effort to gain information on the Patriarca crime family. FBI Special Agent John "Zip" Connolly, who had grown up in Bulger's neighborhood, was assigned to make the pitch. However, Connolly failed to win Bulger's trust. Three years later, Bulger partnered with Flemmi, unaware that he had been an informant for the FBI since the beginning of his career in 1965.

    No, he turned it down the first time, but regardless, the FBI teamed up with a guy that was murdering people and bombing elementary schools.

    AFTER, dosing him 50 times with LSD.

    Although it is a documented fact that Bulger soon followed Flemmi's example, exactly how and why continues to be debated. Connolly frequently boasted to his fellow agents about how he had recruited Bulger during a late-night meeting at Wollaston Beach while the two sat in his agency car. Connolly allegedly said that the FBI could help in Bulger's feud with influential Patriarca underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo. After listening to the pitch, Bulger is said to have responded, "Alright, if they want to play checkers, we'll play chess. Fuck 'em."^: 14

    Weeks considers it more likely that Flemmi had betrayed Bulger to the FBI after being threatened with the loss of his informant status. In 1997, shortly after The Boston Globe disclosed that Bulger and Flemmi had been informants, Weeks met with Connolly, who showed him a photocopy of Bulger's file. In order to explain why both men had chosen to work with the FBI, Connolly said, “The Mafia was going against Jimmy and Stevie, so Jimmy and Stevie went against them.” In a 2011 interview, Flemmi recalled, "Me and Whitey gave [the Feds] shit, and they gave us gold.”

    That was waaaaaaay longer than it was supposed to be.

    *Deep Breathe*Exhale*

  • Charles Manson was a part of MK-ULTRA in the 60’s also. Although, we don’t know how or why, but it seemed to be a cross of Project CHAOS, COINTELPRO, and MK-ULTRA. The FBI and CIA were attempting to discredit the anti-war, and hippie movement, among others, and were able to, by making them out to be Manson Family proteges. And they were using LSD—among many other drugs—to develop mind control techniques. What Manson went on to do with those girls, and a few guys, was wash their minds into followers under his complete control willing to kill. Tom O'Neil explains this in the deepest, darkest detail in his book Chaos. The book is written in first person so you can hear his thoughts and know how he came to this conclusion, and most importantly how hard he tried to convince himself that he was wrong. Through the entire story Tom is just trying to find a conclusion to the story he was assigned in 2000. Every time he tried, he would be slapped in the face with more evidence. I cannot recommend a book more.

    • With that being said, I’ll try my best to explain the most important parts to this story. Manson is in and out of prison all through the 50’s, it seems like he never gets too much time. He ends up on Federal Probation in LA. After a transfer that was moved to the top of a years log waiting list, no questions asked. He shows up in LA, they tell him to stay, he leaves town, disappears, anyone whose been on paper knows that shit’s a no no, he’s arrested twice, let out, let out, he shows up in San Francisco, no biggie, they tell him stay put, he says “ok, as soon as I get back from Mexico”, they say, “No Charlie, you can’t go to Mexico.”

      He says, “What did you say? I can’t hear you; I’m in Mexico.”

      They say, “Now, Charlie I thought I told you not to go.”

      He says, “Don’t sweat it pops, I’m back.”

      “Oh, you’re back? Well, stay there.”

      He doesn’t stay there.

      They go back and forth like this with the dude doing whatever he wants! He gets arrested for assault, arrested for murder, stolen credit cards in his pockets. No parole violations.

    • At the same time there's this Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic that pops up in San Francisco. A guy starts working there, a world-renowned psychiatrist and “former” Air Force medical officer. The first paragraph of his Wikipedia the most milquetoast, state-run, organization, besides maybe Miriam-Webster, in the world, even they don’t dispute who “Jolly” was:

      West worked in the United States Air Force as a medical officer. He pioneered research into brainwashing techniques employed against American prisoners of war (POWs) by their captors. His research exonerated U.S. servicemen under suspicion of treason for making false confessions during the Korean War era. This brought him to the attention of the CIA. West became involved in research into the use and abuse of LSD and other drugs, becoming a contractor for MKUltra, a CIA mind control project in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1954, at the age of 29, West became a full professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. In 1967, West operated in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to conduct research into the hippie movement there. From 1969 to 1989, West served as chair of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

      West frequently worked as a court-appointed psychiatrist and examined Jack Ruby and Patricia Hearst during their trials.

      The “false confessions” these POWs made to the Koreans weren’t false at all, they were confessions!

      US Air Force and Marine Corps pilots captured by the enemy confessed to using germ warfare, and the Chinese and North Koreans used this information in their propaganda campaign against the United States. After the war ended and the pilots that confessed returned home, however, they recanted their statements and said that the enemy forced them to confess.

      This is the “accepted” version of the events. Jolly West was the medical officer tasked with proving these men had been brainwashed by the Koreans, what happened was Jolly West visited and now they had been brainwashed into supposedly making “false” confessions to the Koreans.

      The history of chemical/biological weapons, however, tells us that at the end of WWII we absorbed Japan’s CBW program, Unit 731. 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation and biological weapons manufacturing during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It would be moved to the states at a Fort Detrick, Maryland.

      Anyways, Jolly West comes into the picture, saves the day and is remembered as a “pioneer” in brainwashing “research” that basically convinced the public that the Koreans had “brainwashed” these poor pilots into not only confessing, but lying about the confessions they made, and this was all discovered by Mr. West.

      West turns up in many odd cases throughout history, right about the time that things start to get weird. Like Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the “Lone Gunman” of the JFK assassination, someone who many psychiatrists had found fully sound of mind. After one visit with Jolly West, Jack Ruby would never speak another clear sentence again. He became plagued with hallucinations and kept seeing Nazis torturing his family because they were Jewish. He would warn every person he came in contact with through trial and incarceration that “there was another holocaust happening right now!” And othered tortured hallucinations. In short, Jolly West destroyed that man, for another notch in his belt.

    • Back to San Francisco, at this Free Medical Clinic, the Manson Family visited there all the time, sometimes daily. There’s mixed signals as to why he was there all the time, some say he was getting the girls treated for VD, then it turned out he was meeting his probation officer there, since his officer Roger Smith helped start the place.

      In the 1960s, Roger was also a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, with interests in criminology and the etiology of crime. F0or over 16 years, he served as the Research director, probation officer, and social worker for various public and private agencies in Illinois and San Francisco Bay Area. Over the years, he has worked in several corrections departments specializing in treating sex offenders. Roger was the Director of the Correctional Treatment Program at the Oregon Department of Mental Health for nine years till 1987.

      Although, according to records by the time the clinic opened Roger was no longer an officer at all and had left probation and parole to study behavioral psychology, Manson met him there continuously, like clockwork.

      Now, someone else had an office there it turns out, none other than Jolly West, the MK-ULTRA guy. While there he was carrying out a study on the effects of LSD and amphetamines on society, what better place to do it than San Francisco in the 60’s, who better than the Manson family.

      There are so much more details, but that’s the gist.

      The LA Sheriff’s Office does the biggest raid in LASO history just days before the Tate-Labianca and Hinman murders. They find an arsenal of guns after surveilling the place for months, find stolen credit cards in his pocket, an arsenal of guns, and a working chop shop that turns stolen cars into dune buggies. He’s let out of jail just hours later, no bail posted.

    The Tate–LaBianca murders are known to have “profoundly shook America's perception of itself” and “effectively sounded the death knell of '60s counterculture.”

    Which is exactly what they were meant to do.

• MK-NAOMI, a joint venture of the CIA/DOD into the manufacture and dissemination of Chemical/Biological agents to be used as weapons. “By this agreement, CIA acquired the knowledge, skill, and facilities of the Army to develop biological weapons suited for CIA use.” The facility is known as Fort Detrick, of Detrick, MI and would later be the same lab that the Anthrax attacks post-9/11 was traced back to. Through these tests they developed

• Operation MHCHAOS was an operation carried out by the CIA/FBI under Richard Nixon to discredit left wing groups and anti-war activists by smearing them as Subversives.

  • Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The “MH” designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.

• The “Mail Opening” scandal, known as Project HTLINGUAL: “For a period of approximately two decades, agencies of the U.S. government ran operations which opened the mail of some American citizens. The first identified intercept operation was started by the CIA’s Office of Security in 1952, and mail going to and from the Soviet Union was a subject of keen interest. “Take” from the mail interception was shared in many cases with the FBI. A particularly large-scale mail-opening operation was conducted in New York, and targeted mail entering from the Soviet Union. This operation, run by the CIA, went by the project codename HTLINGUAL. One of the more famous persons to have his mail opened was Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy. Witnesses included senior officials of the CIA, the Postal Service, the FBI, and the Justice Department.”

• The Huston Plan, named after its author Tom Charles Huston, “In June of 1970, during the wave of domestic protest centered around the war in Vietnam, President Nixon approved a set of recommendations known as the Huston Plan. This plan called for various agencies of government, including the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agencies, to conduct wide-ranging intelligence-gathering activities targeted toward dissident groups and individuals. Most of these activities violated basic civil liberties. The President revoked the plan 5 days later, though some of its recommendations continued to be carried out.”

• COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO is the FBI acronym for a series of covert action programs directed against domestic groups. In these programs, the Bureau went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action designed to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals.

• In this “operation” COINTELPRO placed illegal wiretaps on Martin Luther King, and sent his wife, Coretta Scott King, video that seemed to suggest that Martin was flirting with other women. They then followed this up by sending a letter to Martin explicitly suggesting he should take his own life since he had “destroyed his family.”

  

  The Woman's Liberation Movement, they considered them a “subversive group” probably because Hoover was gay. His mother was the only woman he ever liked, let alone loved.

  

• and the assassination attempts by the CIA of Castro.

  • There was like 10 of them. They enlisted the mob, because the mob didn’t like Castro either. They had casinos in Cuba, and our CIA assumed the mob could get the shit done easier than we could.

    Turns out neither could and Castro lived a long healthy life with 2 fingers in the air!

    AND THIS CONCLUDES, the Everything BUT… JFK Files.

    I just went down a 12-hour Church Committee rabbit hole, I don’t even know where my “JFK Files” tab went. That turned into a 2-day serial killer/MK-ULTRA rabbit hole. Can anyone relate? Am I alone? I really hope I wrote something illegible because there went my whole weekend, hahahahahhaha! But it was fun.

    So, it’s taken me a few days to edit this. During that time JFK scholar mentioned earlier, , has been able to produce a bit from the files of which he explains in a Breaking Points interview. Check it out below:

    Aaaaaand, Thank you for reading!

    This is Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to Libya

In the name of the African Union, I would like to greet the members of the General Assembly of the United Nations, and I hope that this meeting will be among the most historic in the history of the world.

In the name of the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session, presided over by Libya, of the African Union, of one thousand traditional African kingdoms and in my own name, I would like to take this opportunity, as President of the African Union, to congratulate our son Obama because he is attending the General Assembly, and we welcome him as his country is hosting this meeting.

Global Crises

This session is taking place in the midst of so many challenges facing us, and the whole world should come together and unite its efforts to defeat the challenges that are our principal common enemy—those of climate change and international crises such as the capitalist economic decline, the food and water crises, desertification, terrorism, immigration, piracy, man-made and natural epidemics and nuclear proliferation. Perhaps influenza H1N1 was a virus created in a laboratory that got out of control, originally being meant as a military weapon. Such challenges also include hypocrisy, poverty, fear, materialism and immorality.

Oh! That H1N1 bit feels like a contemporary take.

History of the United Nations/Grievance of the Many Against the Few

As is known, the United Nations was founded by three or four countries against Germany at the time. The United Nations was formed by the nations that joined together against Germany in the Second World War. Those countries formed a body called the Security Council, made its own countries permanent members and granted them the power of veto.

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We were not present at that time. The United Nations was shaped in line with those three countries and wanted us to step into shoes originally designed against Germany. That is the real substance of the United Nations when it was founded over 60 years ago.

The Charter and Preamble

That happened in the absence of some 165 countries, at a ratio of one to eight; that is, one was present and eight were absent. They created the Charter, of which I have a copy. If one reads the Charter of the United Nations, one finds that the Preamble of the Charter differs from its Articles. How did it come into existence? All those who attended the San Francisco Conference in 1945 participated in creating the Preamble, but they left the Articles and internal rules of procedures of the so-called Security Council to experts, specialists and interested countries, which were those countries that had established the Security Council and had united against Germany.

Veto Power and Permanent Seats

The Preamble is very appealing, and no one objects to it, but all the provisions that follow it completely contradict the Preamble. We reject such provisions, and we will never uphold them; they ended with the Second World War. The Preamble says that all nations, small or large, are equal. Are we equal when it comes to the permanent seats? No, we are not equal.

The Preamble states in writing that all nations are equal whether they are small or large. Do we have the right of veto? Are we equal? The Preamble says that we have equal rights, whether we are large or small.

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That is what is stated and what we agreed in the Preamble. So the veto contradicts the Charter. The permanent seats contradict the Charter. We neither accept nor recognize the veto.

65 Wars Without UN Opposition

The Preamble of the Charter states that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest. That is the Preamble that we agreed to and signed, and we joined the United Nations because we wanted the Charter to reflect that. It says that armed force shall only be used in the common interest of all nations, but what has happened since then? Sixty-five wars have broken out since the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council — 65 since their creation, with millions more victims than in the Second World War. Are those wars, and the aggression and force that were used in those 65 wars, in the common interest of us all? No, they were in the interest of one or three or four countries, but not of all nations.

We will talk about whether those wars were in the interest of one country or of all nations. That flagrantly contradicts the Charter of the United Nations that we signed, and unless we act in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations to which we agreed, we will reject it and not be afraid not to speak diplomatically to anyone. Now we are talking about the future of the United Nations. There should be no hypocrisy or diplomacy because it concerns the important and vital issue of the future of the world. It was hypocrisy that brought about the 65 wars since the establishment of the United Nations.

War Powers of the UN

The Preamble also states that if armed force is used, it must be a United Nations force — thus, military intervention by the United Nations, with the joint agreement of the United Nations, not one or two or three countries using armed force. The entire United Nations will decide to go to war to maintain international peace and security. Since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945, if there is an act of aggression by one country against another, the entire United Nations should deter and stop that act.

65 Aggressive Wars and No UN Prevention

If a country, Libya for instance, were to exhibit aggression against France, then the entire Organization would respond because France is a sovereign State Member of the United Nations, and we all share the collective responsibility to protect the sovereignty of all nations. However, 65 aggressive wars have taken place without any United Nations action to prevent them. Eight other massive, fierce wars, whose victims number some 2 million, have been waged by Member States that enjoy veto powers. Those countries that would have us believe they seek to maintain the sovereignty and independence of peoples actually use aggressive force against peoples. While we would like to believe that these countries want to work for peace and security in the world and protect peoples, they have instead resorted to aggressive wars and hostile behavior. Enjoying the veto, they granted themselves as permanent members of the Security Council, they have initiated wars that have claimed millions of victims.

Non-Interference in Internal Affairs of States

The principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of States is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. No country, therefore, has the right to interfere in the affairs of any Government, be it democratic or dictatorial, socialist or capitalist, reactionary or progressive. This is the responsibility of each society; it is an internal matter for the people of the country concerned. The senators of Rome once appointed their leader, Julius Caesar, as dictator because it was good for Rome at that time. No one can say of Rome at that time that it gave Caesar the veto. The veto is not mentioned in the Charter.

ARE WE EQUAL?

We joined the United Nations because we thought we were equals, only to find that one country can object to all the decisions we make. Who gave the permanent members their status in the Security Council? Four of them granted this status to themselves. The only country that we in this Assembly elected to permanent member status in the Security Council is China. This was done democratically, but the other seats were imposed upon us undemocratically through a dictatorial procedure carried out against our will, and we should not accept it.

Increase the Seats, Increase the Mud

The Security Council reform we need is not an increase in the number of members, which would only make things worse. To use a common expression, if you add more water, you get more mud. It would add insult to injury. It would make things worse simply by adding more large countries to those that already enjoy membership of the Council. It would merely perpetuate the proliferation of Super-Powers. We therefore reject the addition of any more permanent seats. The solution is not to have more permanent seats, which would be very dangerous. Adding more super-Powers would crush the peoples of small, vulnerable and third world countries, which are coming together in what has been called the Group of 100—100 small countries banding together in a forum that one member has called the Forum of Small States. These countries would be crushed by Super-Powers were additional large countries to be granted membership in the Security Council. This door must be closed; we reject it strongly and categorically.

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Adding more seats to the Security Council would increase poverty, injustice and tension at the world level, as well as great competition between certain countries such as Italy, Germany, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, Argentina, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, Tanzania, Turkey, Iran, Greece and Ukraine. All these countries would seek a seat on the Security Council, making its membership almost as large as that of the General Assembly and resulting in an impractical competition.

Solution? Close Membership

What solution can there be? The solution is for the General Assembly to adopt a binding resolution under the leadership of Mr. Treki based on the majority will of Assembly members and taking into account the considerations of no other body. The solution is to close Security Council membership to the admission of further States. This item is on the agenda of the General Assembly during the present session presided over by Mr. Treki. Membership through unions and the transference of mandates should supersede other proposals. We should focus on the achievement of democracy based on the equality of Member States. There should be equality among Member States and the powers and mandates of the Security Council should be transferred to the General Assembly.

Membership should be for unions, not for States. Increasing the number of States Members would give the right to all countries to a seat, in accordance with the spirit of the Preamble of the Charter. No country could deny a seat in the Council to Italy, for instance, if a seat were given to Germany. For the sake of argument, Italy might say that Germany was an aggressive country and was defeated in the Second World War. If we gave India a seat, Pakistan would say that it, too, is a nuclear country and deserves a seat, and those two countries are at war. This would be a dangerous situation. If we gave a seat to Japan, then we should have to give one to Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world. Then Turkey, Iran and Ukraine would make the same claim. What could we say to Argentina or Brazil? Libya deserves a seat for its efforts in the service of world security by discarding its weapons of mass destruction program.

Then South Africa, Tanzania and Ukraine would demand the same. All of these countries are important. The door to Security Council membership should be closed. This approach is a falsehood, a trick that has been exposed. If we want to reform the United Nations, bringing in more Super-Powers is not the way. The solution is to foster democracy at the level of the general congress of the world, the General Assembly, to which the powers of the Security Council should be transferred. The Security Council would become merely an instrument for implementing the decisions taken by the General Assembly, which would be the parliament, the legislative assembly, of the world.

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This Assembly is our democratic forum, and the Security Council should be responsible before it; we should not accept the current situation. These are the legislators of the Members of the United Nations, and their resolutions should be binding. It is said that the General Assembly should do whatever the Security Council recommends. On the contrary, the Security Council should do whatever the General Assembly decides. This is the United Nations, the Assembly that includes 192 countries. It is not the Security Council, which includes only 15 of the Member States. How can we be happy about global peace and security if the whole world is controlled by only five countries?

We are 192 nations and countries, and we are like Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. We just speak and nobody implements our decisions. We are mere decoration, without any real substance. We are Speakers’ Corner, no more, no less. We just make speeches and then disappear. This is who you are right now. Once the Security Council becomes only an executive body for resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, there will be no competition for membership of the Council. Once the Security Council becomes a tool to implement General Assembly resolutions, there will be no need for any competition. The Security Council should, quite simply, represent all nations. In accordance with the proposal submitted to the General Assembly, there would be permanent seats on the Security Council for all unions and groups of countries. The 27 countries of the European Union should have a permanent seat on the Security Council. The countries of the African Union should have a permanent seat on the Security Council.

Permanent Seats

The Latin American and ASEAN countries should have permanent seats. The Russian Federation and the United States of America are already permanent members of the Security Council. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), once it is fully established, should have a permanent seat. The 22 countries of the Arab League should have a permanent seat. The 57 countries of the Islamic Conference should have a permanent seat. The 118 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement should have a permanent seat. Then there is the G-100; perhaps the small countries should also have a permanent seat. Countries not included in the unions that I have mentioned could perhaps be assigned a permanent seat, to be occupied by them in rotation every six or twelve months.

I am thinking of countries like Japan and Australia that are outside such organizations as ASEAN or like the Russian Federation that is not a member of the European or Latin American or African unions. This would be a solution for them if the General Assembly votes in favor of it. The issue is a vitally important one. As has already been mentioned, the General Assembly is the Congress and Parliament of the world, the leader of the world. We are the nations, and anyone outside this General Assembly will not be recognized. The President of the Assembly, Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will produce the legal draft and set up the necessary committees to submit this proposal to a vote: that from now on, the Security Council will be made up of unions of nations.

In this way, we will have justice and democracy, and we will no longer have a Security Council consisting of countries which have been chosen because they have nuclear weapons, large economies or advanced technology. That is terrorism. We cannot allow the Security Council to be run by super-Powers; that is terrorism in and of itself. If we want a world that is united, safe and peaceful, this is what we should do. If we want to remain in a world at war, that is up to you.

War or Peace?

We will continue to have conflict and to fight until doomsday or the end of the world. All Security Council members should have the right to exercise the veto, or else we should eliminate the whole concept of the veto with this new formation of the Council. This would be a real Security Council. According to the new proposals submitted to the General Assembly, it will be an executive council under the control of the General Assembly, which will have the real power and make all the rules. In this way, all countries will be on an equal footing in the Security Council just as they are in the General Assembly. In the General Assembly we are all treated equally when it comes to membership and voting. It should be the same in the Security Council.

Currently, one country has a veto; another country does not have a veto; one country has a permanent seat; another country does not have a permanent seat. We should not accept this, nor should we accept any resolution adopted by the Security Council in its current composition. We were under trusteeship; we were colonized; and now we are independent. We are here today to decide the future of the world in a democratic way that will maintain the peace and security of all nations, large and small, as equals. Otherwise, it is terrorism, for terrorism is not just Al-Qaida but can also take other forms. We should be guided by the majority of the votes in the General Assembly alone. If the General Assembly takes a decision by voting, then its wishes should be obeyed, and its decision should be enforced. No one is above the General Assembly; anyone who says he is above the Assembly should leave the United Nations and be on his own. Democracy is not for the rich or the most powerful or for those who practise terrorism. All nations should be and should be seen to be on an equal footing.

Political Feudalism

At present, the Security Council is security feudalism, political feudalism for those with permanent seats, protected by them and used against us. It should be called, not the Security Council, but the “Terror Council.” In our political life, if they need to use the Security Council against us, they turn to the Security Council. If they have no need to use it against us, they ignore the Security Council. If they have an interest to promote, an axe to grind, they respect and glorify the Charter of the United Nations; they turn to Chapter VII of the Charter and use it against poor nations. If, however, they wished to violate the Charter, they would ignore it as if it did not exist at all. If the veto of the permanent members of the Security Council is given to those who have the power, this is injustice and terrorism and should not be toloerated by us.

We should not live in the shadow of this injustice and terror. Super-Powers have complicated global interests, and they use the veto to protect those interests. For example, in the Security Council, they use the power of the United Nations to protect their interests and to terrorize and intimidate the Third World, causing it to live under the shadow of terror. From the beginning, since it was established in 1945, the Security Council has failed to provide security. On the contrary, it has provided terror and sanctions. It is only used against us. For this reason, we will no longer be committed to implementing Security Council resolutions after this speech, which marks the 40th anniversary.

Sixty-five wars have broken out: either fighting among small countries or wars of aggression waged against us by super-Powers. The Security Council, in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, failed to take action to stop these wars or acts of aggressions against small nations and peoples. The General Assembly will vote on a number of historic proposals. Either we act as one or we will fragment. If each nation were to have its own version of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the various instruments and each were to have an equal footing, the Powers that currently fill the permanent seats would be confined to use of their own sovereign bodies, whether there be three or four of them, and would have to exercise their rights against themselves. This is of no concern to us.

If they want to keep their permanent seats, that is fine; permanent seats will be of no concern to us. We shall never submit to their control or to their exercise of the veto that was given to them. We are not so foolish as to give the right of veto to the super-Powers to use so they can treat us as second-class citizens and as outcast nations. It is not we who decided that those countries are the super-Powers and respected nations with the power to act on behalf of 192 countries. You should be fully aware that we are ignoring the Security Council resolutions because those resolutions are used solely against us and not against the super-Powers which have the permanent seats and the right of veto. Those Powers never use any resolutions against themselves.

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They are, however, used against us. Such use has turned the United Nations into a travesty of itself and has generated wars and violations of the sovereignty of independent States. It has led to war crimes and genocides. All of this is in violation of the Charter of the United Nations. Since no one pays attention to the Security Council of the United Nations, each country and community has established its own security council, and the Security Council here has become isolated. The African Union has already established its own Peace and Security Council, the European Union has already established a security council, and Asian countries have already established their own security council. Soon, Latin America will have its own Security Council as will the 120 non-aligned nations.

The UN is Securing No One

This means that we have already lost confidence in the United Nations Security Council, which has not provided us with security, and that is why we now are creating new regional security councils. We are not committed to obeying the rules or the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council in its present form because it is undemocratic, dictatorial and unjust. No one can force us to join the Security Council or to obey or comply with resolutions or orders given by the Security Council in its present composition. Furthermore, there is no respect for the United Nations and no regard for the General Assembly, which is actually the true United Nations, but whose resolutions are non-binding. The decisions of the International Court of Justice, the international judicial body, take aim only at small countries and Third World nations. Powerful countries escape the notice of the Court. Or, if judicial decisions are taken against these powerful countries, they are not enforced.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (Nuclear Control)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an important agency within the United Nations. Powerful countries, however, are not accountable to it or under its jurisdiction. We have discovered that the IAEA is used only against us. We are told that it is an international organization, but, if that is the case, then all the countries of the world should be under its jurisdiction. If it is not truly international, then right after this speech we should no longer accept it and should close it down. Mr. Treki, in his capacity as President of the General Assembly, should talk to the Director General of the IAEA, Mr. ElBaradei, and should ask him if he is prepared to verify nuclear energy storage in all countries and inspect all suspected increases. If he says yes, then we accept the Agency’s jurisdiction.

But if he says that he cannot go into certain countries that have nuclear power and that he does not have any jurisdiction over them, then we should close the Agency down and not submit to its jurisdiction. For your information, I called Mr. ElBaradei when we had the problem of the Libyan nuclear bomb. I called Mr. ElBaradei and asked him if the agreements by the super-Powers to reduce nuclear supplies were subject to Agency control and under inspection, and whether he was aware of any increases in their activity. He told me that he was not in a position to ask the super-Powers to be inspected. So, is the Agency only inspecting us? If so, it does not qualify as an international organization since it is selective, just like the Security Council and the International Court of Justice. This is not equitable nor is it the United Nations. We totally reject this situation.

Addressing Africa

Regarding Africa, Mr. President, whether the United Nations is reformed or not, and even before a vote is taken on any proposals of a historic nature, Africa should be given a permanent seat on the Security Council now, having already waited too long. Leaving aside United Nations reform, we can certainly say that Africa was colonized, isolated and persecuted and its rights usurped. Its people were enslaved and treated like animals, and its territory was colonized and placed under trusteeship. The countries of the African Union deserve a permanent seat. This is a debt from the past that has to be paid and has nothing to do with United Nations reform. It is a priority matter and is high on the agenda of the General Assembly. No one can say that the African Union does not deserve a permanent seat. Who can argue with this proposal?

Wages for Colonization…EUROPE!

I challenge anyone to make a case against it. Where is the proof that the African Union or the African continent does not deserve a permanent seat? No one can possibly deny this. Another matter that should be voted on in the General Assembly is that of compensation for countries that were colonized, so as to prevent the colonization of a continent, the usurpation of its rights and the pillaging of its wealth from happening again. Why are Africans going to Europe? Why are Asians going to Europe? Why are Latin Americans going to Europe? It is because Europe colonized those peoples and stole the material and human resources of Africa, Asia and Latin America — the oil, minerals, uranium, gold and diamonds, the fruit, vegetables and livestock and the people — and used them.

Colonial Reparations

Now, new generations of Asians, Latin Americans and Africans are seeking to reclaim that stolen wealth, as they have the right to do. At the Libyan border, I recently stopped 1,000 African migrants headed for Europe. I asked them why they were going there. They told me it was to take back their stolen wealth — that they would not be leaving otherwise. Who can restore the wealth that was taken from us? If you decide to restore all of this wealth, there will be no more immigration from the Philippines, Latin America, Mauritius and India. Let us have the wealth that was stolen from us. Africa deserves $777 trillion in compensation from the countries that colonized it. Africans will demand that amount, and if you do not give it to them, they will go to where you have taken those trillions of dollars. They have the right to do so.

Libyan Italian Relations

They have to follow that money and to bring it back. Why is there no Libyan immigration to Italy, even though Libya is so close by? Italy owed compensation to the Libyan people. It accepted that fact and signed an agreement with Libya, which was adopted by both the Italian and Libyan Parliaments. Italy admitted that its colonization of Libya was wrong and should never be repeated, and it promised not to attack the Libyan people by land, air or sea. Italy also agreed to provide Libya with $250 million a year in compensation over the next 20 years and to build a hospital for Libyans maimed as a result of the mines planted in Libyan territory during the Second World War.

Italy apologized and promised that it would never again occupy the territory of another country. Italy, which was a kingdom during the Fascist regime and has made rich contributions to civilization, should be commended for this achievement, together with Prime Minister Berlusconi and his predecessor, who made their own contributions in that regard. Why is the Third World demanding compensation? So that there will be no more colonization — so that large and powerful countries will not colonize, knowing that they will have to pay compensation. Colonization should be punished. The countries that harmed other peoples during the colonial era should pay compensation for the damage and suffering inflicted under their colonial rule. There is another point that I would like to make. However, before doing so — and addressing a somewhat sensitive issue — I should like to make an aside.

Kenyan Heritage in the Oval Office

We Africans are happy and proud indeed that a son of Africa is now President of the United States of America. That is a historic event. Now, in a country where blacks once could not mingle with whites, in cafés or restaurants, or sit next to them on a bus, the American people have elected as their President a young black man, Mr. Obama, of Kenyan heritage. That is a wonderful thing, and we are proud. It marks the beginning of a change. However, as far as I am concerned, Obama is a temporary relief for the next four or eight years. I am afraid that we may then go back to square one. No one can guarantee how America will be governed after Obama. We would be content if Obama could remain President of the United States of America forever.

Imposing Democracy Whether You Like it or Not

The statement that he just made shows that he is completely different from any American President that we have seen. American Presidents used to threaten us with all manner of weapons, saying that they would send us Desert Storm, Grapes of Wrath, Rolling Thunder and poisonous roses for Libyan children. That was their approach. American Presidents used to threaten us with operations such as Rolling Thunder, sent to Viet Nam; Desert Storm, sent to Iraq; Musketeer, sent to Egypt in 1956, even though America opposed it; and the poisonous roses visited upon Libyan children by Reagan. Can you imagine? One would have thought that Presidents of a large country with a permanent seat on the Security Council and the right of veto would have protected us and sent us peace. And what did we get instead? Laser-guided bombs carried to us on F-111 aircraft. This was their approach: we will lead the world, whether you like it or not, and will punish anyone who opposes us.

What our son Obama said today is completely different. He made a serious appeal for nuclear disarmament, which we applaud. He also said that America alone could not solve the problems facing us and that the entire world should come together to do so. He said that we must do more than we are doing now, which is making speeches.

If anyone can tell me what he meant by “the poisonous roses visited upon Libyan children by Reagan” I can’t find it anywhere. If you know please comment.

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We agree with that and applaud it. He said that we had come to the United Nations to talk against one another. It is true that when we come here, we should communicate with one another on an equal footing. And he said that democracy should not be imposed from outside. Until recently, American Presidents have said that democracy should be imposed on Iraq and other countries. He said that this was an internal affair. He spoke truly when he said that democracy cannot be imposed from outside. So, we have to be cautious. Before I make these sensitive remarks, I note that the whole world has so many polarities. Listen: should we have a world of so many polarities? Can we not have nations on an equal footing? Let us have an answer. Does anyone have an answer as to whether it is better to have a world of so many polarities? Why can we not have equal standing? Should we have patriarchs? Should we have popes? Should we have gods? Why should we have a world of so many polarities? We reject such a world and call for a world where big and small are equal.

Headquarters of the UN: Doesn’t This Suck?

The other sensitive point is the Headquarters of the United Nations. Can I have your attention, please? All of you came across the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, crossing the Asian continent or the African continent to reach this place. Why? Is this Jerusalem? Is this the Vatican? Is this Mecca? All of you are tired, have jet lag, have sleepless nights. You are very tired, very low, physically. Somebody just arrived now, flying 20 hours. Then we want him to make a speech and talk about this. All of you are asleep, all of you are tired. It is clear that all of you are lacking energy because of having to make a long journey. Why do we do that? Some of our countries are in nighttime and people are asleep. Now you should be asleep, because your biological clock, your biological mind is accustomed to be asleep at this time. I wake up at 4 o’clock New York time, before dawn, because in Libya it is 11 in the morning. When I wake up at 11 o’clock it is supposed to be daytime; at 4 o’clock I am awake. Why? Think about it.

Keep America Calm at all Costs

If this was decided in 1945, should we still retain it? Why can we not think about a place that is in the middle, that is comfortable? Another important point is that America, the host country, bears the expenses and looks after the Headquarters and diplomatic missions and looks after the peace and security of the heads of State who come here. They are very strict; they spend a lot of money, New York and all of America being very tight. I want to relieve America of this hardship. We should thank America; we say to America, thank you for all the trouble that you have taken on yourself. We say thank you to America. We want to help reassure America and New York and keep them calm.

American Security is NUTZ

They should not have the responsibility of looking after security. Perhaps someday a terrorist could cause an explosion or bomb a president. This place is targeted by Al-Qaida, this very building. Why was it not hit on 11 September? It was beyond their power. The next target would be this place. I am not saying this in an offhand manner. We have tens of members of Al-Qaida detained in Libyan prisons. Their confessions are very scary. That makes America live under tension. One never knows what will happen. Perhaps America or this place will be targeted again by a rocket. Perhaps tens of heads of State will die. We want to relieve America from this worry. We shall take the place to where it is not targeted. Now after 50 years United Nations Headquarters should be taken to another part of the hemisphere. After 50 years in the western hemisphere, for the next 50 years it should be in the eastern hemisphere or in the middle hemisphere, by rotation.

Now, with 64 years we have an extra 14 years over the 50 that Headquarters should have been moved to somewhere else. This is not an insult to America; it is a service to America. We should thank America. This was not possible in 1945, but we should not accept it now. Of course, this should be put to the vote in the General Assembly — only in the Assembly, because in section 23 of the Headquarters Agreement it says that the United Nations Headquarters can be moved to another location only by a resolution of the General Assembly. If 51 per cent of the Assembly approve relocation of Headquarters, then it can be moved. America has the right to make security tight because it is targeted by terrorists and by Al-Qaida. America has the right to take all security measures; we are not blaming America for that. However, we do not tolerate these measures.

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We do not have to come to New York and be subjected to all these measures. One president told me that he was told that his co-pilot should not come to America because there are restrictions. He asked how he could cross the Atlantic without a co-pilot. Why? He does not have to come here. Another president complained that his honor guard could not come because there was some misunderstanding regarding his name when it came to granting a visa. Another president said his own doctor could not get a visa and could not come to America. The security measures are very strict. If a country has any problem with America, they will set up restrictions on the movements of member delegations, as if one is in Guantanamo. Is this a Member State of the United Nations, or is it a prisoner in the Guantanamo camp that cannot be allowed free movement? This is what is submitted to the General Assembly for a vote — moving the Headquarters. If 51 per cent agree, then we come to the second vote: to the middle of the globe, or to the eastern part. If we say that we must move the Headquarters to the middle of the hemisphere, why do we not move to Sirte or Vienna?

One can come even without a visa. Once you come as a president, Libya is a secure country. We are not going to restrict you to 100 or 500 meters. Libya has no hostile actions against anybody. I think the same holds true of Vienna. If the vote says we should move Headquarters to the eastern part, then it will be Delhi or Beijing, the capital of China or the capital of India. That is logical, my brothers. I do not think there will be any objection to that. Then you will thank me for this proposal, for eliminating the suffering and the trouble of flying 14, 15 or 20 hours to come here. No one can blame America or say that America will reduce its contributions to the United Nations. No one should have that bad thought. America, I am sure, is committed to its international obligations. America will not be angry; it will thank you for alleviating its hardship, for taking on all that hardship and all the restrictions, even though this place is targeted by terrorists. We come now to the issues that will be considered by the General Assembly.

Korean War

We are about to put the United Nations on trial; the old organization will be finished, and a new one will emerge. This is not a normal gathering. Even son Obama said that this is not a normal gathering. It is a historic meeting. The wars that took place after the establishment of the United Nations — why did they occur? Where was the Security Council, where was the Charter, where was the United Nations? There should be investigations and judicial intervention. Why have there been massacres? We can start with the Korean War because it took place after the establishment of the United Nations. How did a war break out and cause millions of victims? Nuclear weapons could have been used in that war. Those who are responsible for causing the war should be tried and should pay compensation and damages.

Suez Canal War of 1956—Egypt

Then we come to the Suez Canal war of 1956. That file should be opened wide. Three countries with permanent seats on the Security Council and with the right of veto in the Council attacked a member State of this General Assembly.

A country that was a sovereign State—Egypt—was attacked, its army was destroyed, thousands of Egyptians were killed, and many Egyptian towns and entities were destroyed, all because Egypt wanted to nationalize the Suez Canal. How could such a thing have happened during the era of the United Nations and its Charter? How is it possible to guarantee that such a thing will not be repeated unless we make amends for past wrongs? Those were dangerous events, and the Suez Canal and Korean war files should be re-opened.

Vietnam War

Next, we come to the Viet Nam war. There were 3 million victims of that war. During 12 days, more bombs were dropped than during four years of the Second World War. It was a fiercer war, and it took place after the establishment of the United Nations and after we had decided that there would be no more wars.

The future of humankind is at stake. We cannot stay silent. How can we feel safe? How can we be complacent? This is the future of the world, and we who are in the General Assembly of the United Nations must make sure that such wars are not repeated in the future.

“Panama was Attacked”

Then Panama was attacked, even though it was an independent member State of the General Assembly. Four thousand people were killed, and the President of that country was taken prisoner and put in prison. Noriega should be released—we should open that file. How can we entitle a country that is a United Nations Member State to wage war against another country and capture its president, treat him as a criminal and put him in prison? Who would accept that? It could be repeated. We should not stay quiet. We should have an investigation. Any one of us Member States could face the same situation, especially if such aggression is by a Member State with a permanent seat on the Security Council and with the responsibility to maintain peace and security worldwide.

War in Grenada

Then there was the war in Grenada. That country was invaded even though it was a Member State. It was attacked by 5,000 war ships, 7,000 troops and dozens of military aircraft, and it is the smallest country in the world. This occurred after the establishment of the United Nations and of the Security Council and its veto. And the President of Grenada, Mr. Maurice Bishop, was assassinated. How could that have happened with impunity? It is a tragedy. How can we guarantee that the United Nations is good or not, that a certain country is good or not? Can we be safe or happy about our future or not? Can we trust the Security Council or not? Can we trust the United Nations or not?

Bombing of Somalia

We must look into and investigate the bombing of Somalia. Somalia is a United Nations Member State. It is an independent country under the rule of Aidid. We want an investigation. Why did that happen? Who allowed it to happen? Who gave the green light for that country to be attacked?

Yugoslavia

Then there is the former Yugoslavia. No country was as peaceful as Yugoslavia, constructed step by step and piece by piece after being destroyed by Hitler. We destroyed it, as if we were doing the same job as Hitler. Tito built that peaceful country step by step and brick by brick and then we arrived and broke it apart for imperialistic, personal interests. How can we be complacent about that? Why can we not be satisfied? If a peaceful country like Yugoslavia faced such a tragedy, the General Assembly should have an investigation and should decide who should be tried before the International Criminal Court.

Invasion of Iraq I & II

Then we have the war in Iraq — the mother of all evils. The United Nations should also investigate that. The General Assembly, presided over by Mr. Treki, should investigate that. The invasion of Iraq was a violation of the United Nations Charter. It was done without any justification by super-Powers with permanent seats on the Security Council. Iraq is an independent country and a member State of the General Assembly. How could those countries attack Iraq? As provided for in the Charter, the United Nations should have intervened and stopped the attack. We spoke in the General Assembly and urged it to use the Charter to stop that attack. We were against the invasion of Kuwait, and the Arab countries fought Iraq alongside foreign countries in the name of the United Nations Charter.

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In the first instance, the Charter was respected, the second time when we wanted to use the Charter to stop the war against Iraq, no one used it and that document was ignored. Why did that occur? Mr. Treki and the General Assembly should investigate to determine whether there was any reason at all to invade Iraq. Because the reasons for that attack remain mysterious and ambiguous, and we might face the same destiny. Why was Iraq invaded? The invasion itself was a serious violation of the United Nations Charter, and it was wrong. There was also a total massacre or genocide. More than 1.5 million Iraqis were killed. We want to bring the Iraqi file before the International Criminal Court (ICC), and we want those who committed mass murder against the Iraqi people to be tried. It is easy for Charles Taylor to be tried, or for Bashir to be tried, or for Noriega to be tried. That is an easy job. Yes, but what about those who have committed mass murder against the Iraqis? They cannot be tried? They cannot go before the ICC?

Who Killed Saddam

If the Court is unable to accommodate us, then we should not accept it. Either it is meant for all of us, large or small, or we should not accept it and should reject it. Anyone who commits a war crime can be tried, but we are not livestock or animals like those that are slaughtered for the Eid. We have the right to live, and we are ready to fight and to defend ourselves. We have the right to live in dignity, under the sun and on earth; they have already tested us and we have withstood the test. There are other things as well. Why is it that Iraqi prisoners of war can be sentenced to death? When Iraq was invaded and the President of Iraq was taken he was a prisoner of war. He should not have been tried; he should not have been hanged. When the war was over, he should have been released. We want to know why a prisoner of war should have been tried.

Who sentenced the President of Iraq to death? Is there an answer to that question? We know the identity of the judge who tried him. As to who tied the noose around the President’s neck on the day of sacrifice and hanged him, those people wore masks. How could this have happened in a civilized world? These were prisoners of war of civilized countries under international law. How could Government ministers and a head of State be sentenced to death and hanged? Were those who tried them lawyers or members of a judicial system? Do you know what people are saying? They are saying that the faces behind the masks were those of the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and that it was they who put the President of Iraq to death. Why do the executioners not unmask their faces? Why do we not know their ranks? Why do we not know whether they were officers, judges, soldiers or doctors? How does it come about that the President of a State Member of the United Nations was sentenced to death and killed? We do not know the identity of the executioners.

Abu Ghraib—America in the Hot Seat

The United Nations is duty-bound to answer these questions: who carried out the death sentence? They must have legal status and official responsibilities; we should know their identities and we should know about the presence of a physician and the nature of all the legal proceedings. That would be true for an ordinary citizen, let alone for the President of a State Member of the United Nations who was put to death in that manner. My third point on the Iraq war relates to Abu Ghraib. This was a disgrace to humankind. I know that the United States authorities will investigate this scandal, but the United Nations must not ignore it either. The General Assembly should investigate this matter. Prisoners of war held in Abu Ghraib prison were torturers; dogs were set on them; men were raped.

Afghanistan

This is unprecedented in the history of war. It was sodomy, and it was an unprecedented sin, never before committed by past aggressors or invaders. Prisoners of war are soldiers, but these were raped in prison by a State, a permanent member of the Security Council. This goes against civilization and humankind. We must not keep silent; we must know the facts. Even today, a quarter of a million Iraqi prisoners, men and women alike, remain in Abu Ghraib. They are being maltreated, persecuted and raped. There must be an investigation. Turning to the war in Afghanistan, this too must be investigated. Why are we against the Taliban? Why are we against Afghanistan? Who are the Taliban? If the Taliban want a religious State, that is fine.

Taliban

Think of the Vatican. Does the Vatican pose a threat to us? No. It is a religious, very peaceful State. If the Taliban want to create an Islamic Amirate, who says that this makes them an enemy? Is anyone claiming that Bin Laden is of the Taliban or that he is Afghan? Is Bin Laden of the Taliban? No; he is not of the Taliban and he is not Afghan. Were the terrorists who hit New York City of the Taliban? Were they from Afghanistan? They were neither Taliban nor Afghan. Then, what was the reason for the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan? If I truly wanted to deceive my American and British friends, I would encourage them to send more troops and I would encourage them to persist in this bloodbath. But they will never succeed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Look what happened to them in Iraq, which is a desert. It is even worse in mountainous Afghanistan.

Hey West—Leave Them Alone

If I wanted to deceive them I would tell them to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But no, I want to save the citizens of the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I tell them: leave Afghanistan to the Afghans; leave Iraq to the Iraqis. If they want to fight each other, they are free to do so. America had its Civil War, and no one interfered in it. There were civil wars in Spain, China and countries all over the world — no place on Earth has been free of civil wars. Let there be a civil war in Iraq. If the Iraqis want to have a civil war and fight each other, that is fine. Who says that if the Taliban form a government, they would possess intercontinental missiles or the kind of aero planes that hit New York? Did those aero planes take off from Afghanistan or Iraq? No; they took off from American airports. So why is Afghanistan being struck? The terrorists were not Afghans or Taliban or Iraqis. Why are we silent? We must never be war devils: anyone who does not speak the truth is a silent devil. We are committed to international peace and security. We do not wish to scorn or ridicule humankind. We want to save humanity.

Assassinating Leaders

As President of the General Assembly, Mr. Ali Treki should open an investigation of the assassinations file — in addition to the war files. Who killed Patrice Lumumba, and why? We merely want to record it in the annals of African history; we want to know how an African leader, a liberator, came to be assassinated. Who killed him? We want our sons to be able to read the history of how Patrice Lumumba, the hero of Congo’s liberation struggle, was assassinated. We want to know the facts, even 50 years on. That is one file that should be reopened. And who killed Secretary-General Hammarskjöld? Who fired on his aero plane in 1961, and why? Then, there is the assassination of United States President Kennedy in 1963. We want to know who killed him and why. There was somebody called Lee Harvey Oswald, who was then killed by one Jack Ruby. Why did he kill him? Jack Ruby, an Israeli, killed Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed Kennedy. Why did this Israeli kill Kennedy’s killer? Then Jack Ruby, the killer of the killer of Kennedy, died in mysterious circumstances before he could be tried. We must open the files. The whole world knows that Kennedy wanted to investigate the Israeli Dimona nuclear reactor.

Assassinating Civil Rights Leaders and Israel

This involves international peace and security and weapons of mass destruction. That is why we should open this file. Then there is the assassination of Martin Luther King, the black reverend and human rights activist. His assassination was a plot, and we should know why he was killed and who killed him. Then Khalil Wazir, or Abu Jihad, a Palestinian, was attacked. He was living peacefully in Tunisia, a Member State, and that country’s sovereignty was not respected. We cannot keep silent. Even though submarines and ships were detected along the coast of Tunisia, where he was killed, no one was accused or tried. Abu Iyad was also killed, and we should know how he was killed. He was killed in ambiguous circumstances. In Operation Spring of Youth, Kamal Nasser, a poet, Kamal Adwan and Abu Youssef al-Najjar, three Palestinians, were killed in Lebanon, a country that is a free, sovereign State member of the General Assembly. They were attacked and killed while sleeping peacefully. We should know who killed them, and he should be tried so that those crimes against humanity are not repeated. We have already talked about the size of the force used in the invasion of Grenada — 7,000 troops, 15 battleships and dozens of bombers — and President Bishop was killed even though Grenada was a Member State. Those are crimes, and we cannot keep silent.

Genocides and Massacres

Otherwise, we will look like sacrificial beasts. We are not animals. Year after year, we are attacked. We defend ourselves, our sons and our children, and we are not afraid. We have the right to live, and the Earth is not destined for violence, but for us all. We can never live on this Earth in such humiliation. So those are the wars. The last file is that of the massacres. In the Sabra and Shatila massacre, 3,000 people were killed. That area, under the protection of the occupying Israeli army, was the site of a huge and calamitous massacre in which 3,000 Palestinian men, women and children were killed. How can we keep quiet? Lebanon is a sovereign State; a member of the General Assembly was occupied, Sabra and Shatila were under Israeli control, and then the massacre took place. Then there was the 2008 massacre in Gaza. There were 1,000 women and 2,200 children among the victims killed in the massacre in Gaza in 2008. Sixty United Nations facilities and another 30 belonging to non-governmental organizations were damaged. Fifty clinics were destroyed. Forty doctors and nurses were killed while carrying out humanitarian activities. This took place in Gaza in December 2008. The perpetrators are still alive, and they should be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

International Criminal Court

Should we try only the underdogs, the weak and the poor of third-world countries, and not important and protected figures? Under international law, they should all face trial for the consequences of the crimes that they have committed. Otherwise, the role of the ICC will never be recognized. If the decisions of the ICC are not respected or implemented, if the General Assembly and the Security Council mean nothing, and if the International Atomic Energy Agency serves only certain countries and organizations, then what is the United Nations? It would mean that the United Nations is nothing and is insignificant. Where is it? There is no United Nations. Then, while piracy may be a phenomenon of the high seas, a form of terrorism, we talk about the piracy in Somalia. Somalis are not pirates. We are the pirates. We went there and usurped their economic zones, their fish and their wealth. Libya, India, Japan and America — any country in the world — we are all pirates. We all entered the territorial waters and economic zones of Somalia and stole.

Somalia

The Somalis are protecting their own fish, their sustenance. They have become pirates because they are defending their children’s food. Now, we seek to address that matter in the wrong way. Should we send warships to Somalia? We should send warships to the pirates who have attacked and seized the economic zones and wealth of the Somalis and the food of their children. I met the pirates, and I told them that I would negotiate an agreement between them and the international community that respects the 200-mile exclusive economic zone under the law of the sea, that protects all marine resources belonging to the Somali people, and that stops all countries from disposing of toxic waste along the Somali coast. In return, the Somalis would no longer attack ships. We will propose and draft such an international treaty and submit it to the General Assembly. That is the solution. The solution does not lie in sending more military ships to fight the Somalis. That is not the solution. We are addressing the phenomena of piracy and terrorism in the wrong way. Today there is swine flu.

Vaccines and Bio-Weapons

Perhaps tomorrow there will be fish flu, because sometimes we produce viruses by controlling them. It is a commercial business. Capitalist companies produce viruses so that they can generate and sell vaccinations. That is very shameful and poor ethics. Vaccinations and medicine should not be sold. In The Green Book, I maintain that medicines should not be sold or subject to commercialization. Medicines should be free of charge and vaccinations given free to children, but capitalist companies produce the viruses and vaccinations and want to make a profit. Why are they not free of charge? We should give them free of charge and not sell them.

Landmines and Gaddafi’s Blog

The entire world should strive to protect our people, create and manufacture vaccinations and give them free to children and women, and not profit by them. All those items are on the agenda of the General Assembly, which has only to exercise that duty. The Ottawa Convention on Landmines forbids the production of landmines. That is wrong. Landmines are defensive weapons. If I place them along the border of my country and someone wants to invade me, they may be killed. That is all right, because they are invading me. The Convention should be reconsidered. I am not taking that defensive weapon to another country. The enemy is coming to me. On the Al-Qadhafi website, I call for that treaty to be modified or annulled. This treaty should be modified or annulled. I want to use anti-personnel mines to defend my home against invasion. Eliminate weapons of mass destruction, not landmines, which are defensive weapons.

Israel-Palestine

With regard to the Palestinian situation, the two-state solution is impossible; it is not practical. Currently, these two States completely overlap. Partition is doomed to failure.

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These two States are not neighbors; they are coextensive, in terms of both population and geography. A buffer zone cannot be created between the two States because there are half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank and a million Arab Palestinians in the territory known as Israel. The solution is therefore a democratic State without religious fanaticism or ethnicity. The generation of Sharon and Arafat is over. We need a new generation, in which everyone can live in peace. Look at Palestinian and Israeli youth; they both want peace and democracy, and they want to live under one State. This conflict poisons the world. The White Book actually has the solution; I hold it here. The solution is Isratine. Arabs have no hostility or animosity towards Israel.

We are cousins and of the same race. We want to live in peace. The refugees should go back. You are the ones who brought the Holocaust upon the Jews. You, not we, are the ones who burned them. We gave them refuge. We gave them safe haven during the Roman era and the Arab reign in Andalusia and during the rule of Hitler. You are the ones who poisoned them; you are the ones who annihilated them. We provided them with protection. You expelled them. Let us see the truth. We are not hostile; we are not enemies of the Jews. And one day the Jews will need the Arabs. At that point, Arabs will be the ones to give them protection, to save them, as we have done in the past. Look at what everybody else did to the Jews.

Hitler

Hitler is an example. You are the ones who hate the Jews, not us. In brief, Kashmir should be an independent State, neither Indian nor Pakistani. We must end that conflict. Kashmir should be a buffer State between India and Pakistan. With regard to Darfur, I truly hope that the assistance provided by international organizations can be used for development projects, for agriculture, for industry and for irrigation. You are the ones who made it a crisis; you put it on the altar; you wanted to sacrifice Darfur so that you could interfere in its internal affairs. You have turned the Hariri problem into a United Nations problem. You are selling Hariri’s corpse. You just want to settle scores with Syria.

Lebanon and Syria

Lebanon is an independent State; it has laws, courts, a judiciary and police. At this stage, it is no longer the perpetrators that are being sought; the real wish is to settle scores with Syria, not ensure justice for Hariri. The cases of Khalil al-Wazir, Lumumba, Kennedy, and Hammarskjöld should also have been turned over to the United Nations, if the Hariri case merits such attention. The General Assembly is now under the presidency of Libya. This is our right. Libya hopes that you will assist in making the transition from a world fraught with crises and tension to a world in which humanity, peace and tolerance prevail. I will personally follow up on this issue with the General Assembly, President Treki and the Secretary-General. It is not our habit to compromise when it comes to the destiny of humanity and the struggles of the third world and the 100 small nations, which should live in peace always.

Reading through this it’s very clear why the duopoly of my country killed this guy as a lesson for anyone else who decides to ask the same type of questions.

This man missed nothing! Unfortunate. Don’t ever forget:

Thank you for reading!

Editor-in-Chief

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Now it’s almost three years later. Donald Trump is back in office, for how long, I’m not sure, he is, after all, their greatest foe. Populist candidacy is sweeping around the world, and the scolds are trying to stay ahead of it.

In the name of Democracy, they’re canceling elections. In the name of truth, they’re perpetuating lies. In the name of free speech, they are censoring the voices of the masses. And in the name of freedom, you will never be free again.

This is spreading globally, it’s more destructive and infectious than anything ever spun up in Wuhan, China, and the vaccination to it is dissent. No. Matter. What.

That is the context of the shockingly beautiful words spoken by Vice President J.D. Vance in the following. This is the Munich Security Conference, 2025. Enjoy:

P.S. Aside from my citations throughout, if you’d “like to know more” about this issue dealing with Europe’s push for censorship worldwide, you’re in luck because our own has put together in his Library a timeline for the Global Censorship Laws we all must evade.

J.D. Vance

Well, thank you. And thanks to all the—the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals. And thank—thanks especially to the host of the Munich Security Conference for being able to—to put on such an incredible event. We’re, of course, thrilled to be here. We’re happy to be here. And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to—to talk about today is, of course, our shared values.

And, you know, it’s—it's great to be back in Germany. As—As you heard earlier, I was here last year as a United States Senator. I saw Foreign Minister—excuse me—Secretary David Lammy and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now.

But now it’s time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples to use it wisely to improve their lives. And I want to say that, you know, I...was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours. And I’ve been so impressed by the hospitality of the people, even, of course, as they’re reeling from yesterday’s horrendous attack.

And the first time I was ever in Munich was with—was with my wife, actually—who’s here with me today—on a personal trip. And I’ve always loved the city of Munich, and I’ve always loved its people. And I just want to say that we’re very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich, and everybody affected by the evil in—inflicted on this beautiful community. We’re thinking about you. We’re praying for you. And we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.

The “Threat From Within”

Now—[audience applause]. Thank you. I hope that’s not the last bit of applause that I get, but—we—we gather at—at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally, we mean threats to our external security. (I see many great military leaders gathered here today.) But while the Trump Administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China; it’s not any other external actor.

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And what I worry about is the “threat from within”: The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

Now, I was struck that a—a former European commissioner [Thierry Breton] went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that, if “things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too.”

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we’ve been told that everything we fund, and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.

The Censors are Never the Good Guys

Now within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.

And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty: the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build. As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected.

And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners:

I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, “hateful content.”

Or to this very country [Germany], where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.”

Religious Liberty

I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Qur'an burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant, and I’m quoting, “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply “it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.” Now, the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called “safe access zones,” warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

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We’re Guilty Too

And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior Administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called “misinformation”—misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaped—leaked from a laboratory in China, our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.

So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. Just as the Biden Administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump Administration will do precisely the opposite—and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.

Now we’re at the point, of course, that the—the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight-up canceled the results of a presidential election, based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.

Romanian Elections Lives Matter

Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.

Trust The People You Fools

Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear. And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still—which of course brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations.

Now again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.

Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like “misinformation” and “disinformation” who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion; or, God forbid, vote a different way or even worse, win an election.

Now, this is a security conference. And I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don’t think—you hear this term “burden sharing,” but we think it’s an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.

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But let me also ask you: How will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we’re defending in the first place? I’ve heard a lot already in my conversations—and I’ve had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room—I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from. And, of course, that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for? What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?

Freedom to Fear-Democratic Mandates

And I believe deeply that there is no security if you’re afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you; nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people, who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing—that thin mandates produce unstable results?

Freedom From Fear-Democratic Norms

But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern, because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things (and, of course, we know that very well in America). You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail—whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, “Who gets to be a part of our shared society?”

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And of all the pressings challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all-time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone; and, of course, it’s gotten much higher since.

The Munich Massacre of 2025

And we know the situation—it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a—a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place? It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and, unfortunately, too many times in the United States as well: An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-twenties, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.

How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit—and agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.

Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me. I just think that people care—about their homes; they care about their dreams; they care about their safety; and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children. And they’re smart. I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy.

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Destroying Democracy for Democracy’s Sake

And it’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. It is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process, protects nothing. In fact, it is the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy. And speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American Democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

But what German democracy—what no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.

Europeans, the people, have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future. You can embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you. And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy.

“Do Not Be Afraid”

It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we have built together as a shared society. To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.

As Pope John Paul II, in my view one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, “Do not be afraid.” We shouldn’t be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.

Thank you all.

Good luck to all of you.

God bless you.

I know as of this week there has been some issues from the Trump Administration for not enforcing the values presented in this speech. However, never forget that this was where it all started. I’ll have to write about the Massie bit, he’s my favorite politician and one of my own here in Kentucky, but all that aside. If they ruin everything they touch from here on out, remember what you voted against, and it wasn’t in vain. The other side was the status quo that Vice Vance is speaking out against in this speech. This is a reaction to the storm of censorship showing just above the horizon.

Remember, this is where he started, if we continue to push our leaders and lawmakers, we can keep them here and remain free.

This is brought to you and “Crystallized in Stone” by

Editor-in-Chief

Thank you for reading.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned Economist and professor at Columbia University. When Poland broke away from Communism Jeffrey Sachs was one of the guys sent to change Poland’s economic system from communism to capitalism, and it worked.

So, when the Soviet Union fell and was planning to do the same thing Jeffrey was called in. He was extremely positive about it. He said, “Poland did so well, we’ll just follow the same steps.” But in the West, they had other plans. It was immediately clear to Professor Sachs that they were being treated much differently than Poland. He does well to explain this in a piece on titled “How the Neocons Subverted Russia’s Financial Stabilization in the Early 1990s.”

Racket News

A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations

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2 years ago · 1285 likes · 270 comments · Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Taibbi

After 32-years of treating Russia like a vassal state, Russia does the unthinkable and invades its neighbor Ukraine, because they cannot invade the U.S.

Now, three years in, over 1,000,000 lives lost and a Ukraine at the ugly end of the stick, and the U.S. attempting to broker a deal to bring this war to an end. Jeffrey Sachs appears in front of the European Parliament, who I must say is much nicer than U.S. Congress. At least they let him talk. He tells the story, in full.

This article is part of a series called “Crystallized in Stone.” This is part of my attempt to make sure a hard copy always exists of great speeches.

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The Geopolitics of Peace

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Michael, thank you so much, and thanks to all of you for the chance to be together and to think together.

This is indeed a complicated and fast-changing time and a very dangerous one. So we really need clarity of thought. I’m especially interested in our conversation, so I’ll try to be as succinct and clear as I can be. I’ve watched the events very close-up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia, very closely for the last 36 years. I was an adviser to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin in 1991 to 1993, to President Kuchma of Ukraine in 1993, 1994.

I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. I’ve watched the events very close-up for 36 years. After the Maidan, I was asked by the new government to come to Kyiv, and I was taken around the Maidan, and I learned a lot of things firsthand. I’ve been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years.

I know the American political leadership close-up. Our previous Secretary of Treasury was my macroeconomics teacher 51 years ago. Here just to give you an idea. So, we were very close friends for a half century. I know all of these people.

I want to say this because what I want to explain in my point of view is not secondhand. It’s not ideology. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period. In my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many contexts, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent that would surprise you, perhaps, and would be denounced about what I’m about to say.

U.S. Foreign Policy

These are wars that the United States led and caused. And this has been true for more than 40 years now. What happened, more than 30 years, I should say, to be more precise. The United States came to the view, especially in 1990, 1991, and then with the end of the Soviet Union, that the US now ran the world and that the US did not have to heed anybody’s views, red lines, concerns, security viewpoints, or any international obligations or any UN framework. I’m sorry to put it so plainly, but I do want you to understand.

I tried very hard in 1991 to get help for Gorbachev, who I think was the greatest statesman of our modern time. I recently read the archived memo of the National Security Council discussion of my proposal, how they completely dismissed it and laughed it off the table when I said that the United States should help the Soviet Union in financial stabilization and in making its reforms. And the memo documents, including some of my former colleagues at Harvard in particular, saying we will do the minimum that we will do to prevent disaster, but the minimum. It’s not our job to help. Quite the contrary.

It’s not our interest to help. When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the view became even more exaggerated. And I can name chapter and verse, but the view was we run the show. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and many other names that you will have come to know literally believed this is now a US world, and we will do as we want. We will clean up from the former Soviet Union.

We will take out any remaining allies. Countries like Iraq, Syria, and so forth will go. And we’ve been experiencing this foreign policy for now essentially 33 years. Europe has paid a heavy price for this because Europe has not had any foreign policy during this period that I can figure out. No voice, no unity, no clarity, no European interests, only American loyalty.

There were moments where there were disagreements and very, I think, wonderful disagreements, especially in the last time of significance was 2003 in the Iraq war when France and Germany said we don’t support the United States going around the UN Security Council for this war. That war, by the way, was directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the US Pentagon. I’m not saying that it was a link or mutuality. I’m saying it was a direct war. That was a war carried out for Israel.

It was a war that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith coordinated with Netanyahu. And that was the last time that Europe had a voice. And I spoke with European leaders then, and they were very clear, and it was quite wonderful. Europe lost its voice entirely after that, but especially in 2008. Now what happened after 1991 to get to 2008 is that the United States decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to Vladivostok, step by step.

There would be no end to eastward enlargement of NATO. This would be the US unipolar world. If you play the game of risk as a child like I did, this is the US idea to have the piece on every part of the board. Any place without a US military base is an enemy, basically. Neutrality is a dirty word in the US political lexicon.

Perhaps the dirtiest word, at least if you’re an enemy. We know you’re an enemy. If you are neutral, you’re subversive, because then you’re really against us because you’re not telling us. You’re pretending to be neutral. So this was the mindset, and the decision was taken formally in 1994 when President Clinton signed off on NATO enlargement to the east.

You will recall that on February 7, 1991, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and James Baker III spoke with Gorbachev. Genscher gave a press conference afterwards where he explained, NATO will not move eastward. We will not take advantage of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. And understand that was in a juridical context, not a casual context. This was the end of World War II being negotiated for German reunification.

And an agreement was made that NATO will not move one inch eastward. And it was explicit, and it is in countless documents. And just look up National Security Archive of George Washington University, and you can get dozens of documents. It’s a website called “What Gorbachev Heard About NATO.” Take a look because everything you’re told by the US is a lie about this, but the archives are perfectly clear.

So the decision was taken in 1994 to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine. This is a project. This is not one administration or another. This is a US government project that started more than 30 years ago. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote “The Grand Chessboard.”

That is not just musings of Mr. Brzezinski. That is the presentation of the decisions of the United States government explained to the public, which is how these books work. And the book describes the eastward enlargement of Europe and of NATO as simultaneous events. And there’s a good chapter in that book that says, what will Russia do as Europe and NATO expand eastward? And I knew Zbig Brzezinski personally.

He was very nice to me. I was advising Poland. He was a big help. He was a very nice and smart man, and he got everything wrong.

So, in 1997, he wrote in detail why Russia could do nothing but accede to the eastward expansion of NATO and Europe.

In fact, he says the eastward expansion of Europe and not just Europe, but NATO. This was a plan, a project. And he explains how Russia will never align with China. Unthinkable. Russia will never align with Iran. Russia has no vocation other than the European vocation.

So, as Europe moves east, there’s nothing Russia can do about it. So, says yet another American strategist. Is it any question why we’re in war all the time? Because one thing about America is we always know what our counterparts are going to do, and we always get it wrong.

And one reason we always get it wrong is that in game theory—that the American strategists play—you don’t actually talk to the other side. You just know what the other side’s strategy is. That’s wonderful. It saves so much time. You don’t need any diplomacy.

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The Black Sea Strategy

So, this project began, and we had a continuity of government for 30 years until maybe yesterday, perhaps. Thirty years of a project. Ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project. Why? Because America learned everything it knows from the British.

And so, we are the wannabe British Empire. And what the British Empire understood in 1853, Mr. Palmerston, Lord Palmerston, excuse me, is that you surround Russia in the Black Sea, and you deny Russia access to the Eastern Mediterranean. And all you’re watching is an American project to do that in the 21st century. The idea was that there would be Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia as the Black Sea littoral that would deprive Russia of any international status by blocking the Black Sea and essentially by neutralizing Russia as more than a local power. Brzezinski’s completely clear about this.

And before Brzezinski, there was Mackinder. And who owns the island of the world owns the world. So, this project goes back a long time. I think it goes back basically to Palmerston. In 19, and again, I’ve lived through every administration.

I’ve known these presidents. I’ve known their teams. Nothing changed much from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden. Maybe they got worse step by step. Biden was the worst in my view.

Maybe also because he was not compos mentis for the last couple of years. And I say that seriously, not as a snarky remark. The American political system is a system of image. It’s a system of media manipulation every day. It is a PR system.

And so, you could have a president that basically doesn’t function and have that in power for two years and actually have that president run for reelection. And one damn thing is he had to stand on a stage for 90 minutes by himself, and that was the end of it. Had it not been that mistake, he would have gone on to have his candidacy, whether he was sleeping after 4 PM in the afternoon or not.

So, this is actually the reality. Everybody goes along with it. It’s impolite to say anything that I’m saying because we don’t speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now.

Regime Change Wars

So, this project went on from the 1990s, Bombing Belgrade 78 straight days in 1999 was part of this project. Splitting apart the country when borders are sacrosanct, aren’t they indeed? Except for Kosovo. That’s fine.

Because borders are sacrosanct except when America changes them. Sudan was another related project. The South Sudan rebellion. Did that just happen because South Sudanese rebelled? Or can I give you the CIA playbook?

So please understand as grown-ups what this is about. Military events are costly. They require equipment, training, base camps, intelligence, finance. That comes from big powers. That doesn’t come from local insurrections.

South Sudan did not defeat North Sudan or Sudan in a tribal battle. It was a US project. I would go often to Nairobi and meet US military or senators or others with deep interest in Sudan’s politics. This was part of the game of unipolarity. So, the NATO enlargement, as you know, started in 1999 with Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

And Russia was extremely unhappy about it, but these were countries still far from the border. And Russia protested, but, of course, to no avail. Then George Bush Junior came in. When 9/11 occurred, President Putin pledged all support. And then the US decided on September 20, 2001, that it would launch seven wars in five years.

U.S. Foreign Policy and NATO Expansion

And you can listen to General Wesley Clark online talk about that. He was NATO’s supreme commander in 1999. He went to the Pentagon on September 20, 2001. He was handed the paper explaining seven wars. These, by the way, were Netanyahu’s wars.

The idea was partly to clean up old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Because Netanyahu’s idea was there will be one state thank you. Only one state. It will be Israel. Israel will control all of the territory.

And anyone that objects, we will overthrow. Not we exactly, our friend, the United States. That’s US policy until this morning. We don’t know whether it will change. Now the only wrinkle is that maybe the US will own Gaza instead of Israel owning Gaza.

But the idea has been around at least for 25 years. It actually goes back to a document called Clean Break that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the idea of the two-state solution. You can also find it online. So, these are projects. These are long-term events.

These aren’t, is it Clinton? Is it Bush? Is it Obama? That’s the boring way to look at American politics as the day-to-day game. But that’s not what American politics is.

So, the next round of NATO enlargement came in 2004 with seven more countries, the three Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At this point, Russia was pretty damn upset. This was a complete violation of the post-war order agreed with German reunification.

Essentially, it was a fundamental trick or defection of the US from a cooperative arrangement, is what it amounted to, because they believe in unipolarity. So as everybody recalls, because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week.

In 2007, President Putin said, stop. Enough. Enough. Stop now. And, of course, what that meant was in 2008, the United States jammed down Europe’s throat, enlargement of NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia. This is a long-term project.

I listened to Mr. Saakashvili in New York in May of 2008, and I walked out, called Sonia, and said, this man’s crazy. And a month later, a war broke out because the United States told this guy, we save Georgia. And he stands at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Georgia’s in the center of Europe. Well, it ain’t, ladies and gentlemen. It’s not in the center of Europe.

And the most recent events are not helpful for Georgia for its safety and your MPs going there or MEPs going there and European politicians, that gets Georgia destroyed. That doesn’t save Georgia. That gets Georgia destroyed. Completely destroyed. In 2008, as everybody knows, our former CIA director William Burns sent a long message back to Condoleezza Rice.

“Nyet means nyet” about expansion. This we know from Julian Assange. Because believe me, not one word is told to the American people about anything or to you or by any of your newspapers these days. So, we have Julian Assange to thank, but we can read the memo in detail. As you know, Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010 on the platform of neutrality.

Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there during these years. What Russia was negotiating was a 25-year lease to 2042 for Sevastopol naval base. That’s it.

Not for Crimea. Not for the Donbas. Nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire, this is childish propaganda. Excuse me.

If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So, no designs at all. The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.

There have been about a hundred of them by the United States, many in your countries and many all over the world. That’s what the CIA does for a living. Please know it. It’s a very unusual kind of foreign policy.

But in America, if you don’t like the other side, you don’t negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably, covertly. If it doesn’t work covertly, you do it overtly. You always say it’s not our fault. They’re the aggressor. They’re the other side.

They’re Hitler. That comes up every two or three years. Whether it’s Saddam Hussein, whether it’s Assad, whether it’s Putin, that’s very convenient. That’s the only foreign policy explanation the American people are ever given anywhere. Well, we’re facing Munich 1938.

Can’t talk to the other side. They’re evil, implacable foes. That’s the only model of foreign policy we ever hear from our mass media. And the mass media repeats it entirely because it’s completely suborned by the US government.

The Maidan Revolution and Its Aftermath

Now in 2014, the US worked actively to overthrow Yanukovych. Everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University colleague, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador, Peter Pyatt. You don’t get better evidence. The Russians intercepted her call, and they put it on the Internet. Listen to it. (Below)

It’s fascinating. I know all these people. By the way, by doing that, they all got promoted in the Biden administration. That’s the job.

Now when the Maidan occurred, I was called immediately.

“Oh, Professor Sachs, the new Ukrainian prime minister would like to see you to talk about the economic crisis.” Because I’m pretty good at that. And so, I flew to Kyiv, and I was walked around the Maidan. And I was told how the US paid the money for all the people around the Maidan. Spontaneous revolution of dignity.

Ladies and gentlemen, please, where do all these media outlets come from? Where does all this organization come from? Where do all these buses come from? Where do all these people called in come from? Are you kidding?

This is an organized effort. And it’s not a secret, except to citizens of Europe and the United States. Everyone else understands it quite clearly. Then came Minsk, and especially Minsk II, which, by the way, was modeled on South Tyrolean autonomy. And the Belgians could have related to Minsk II very well.

It said there should be autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions in the east of Ukraine. It was supported unanimously by the UN Security Council. The United States and Ukraine decided it was not to be enforced. Germany and France, which were the guarantors of the Normandy process, let it go. And it was absolutely another direct American unipolar action with Europe as usual playing completely useless subsidiary role even though it was a guarantor of the agreement.

Trump won, raise the armaments. There were many thousands of deaths in the shelling by Ukraine in the Donbas. There was no Minsk II agreement. And then Biden came into office. And, again, I know all these people.

I used to be a member of the Democratic Party. I now am strictly sworn to be a member of no party because both are the same anyway. And because this is, the Democrats became complete war mongers over time, and there was not one voice about peace. Just like most of your parliamentarians, the same way.

At the end of 2021, Putin put on the table a last effort to reach a modus operandi with the US, in two security agreement drafts, one with Europe and one with the United States. He put the Russia-US draft agreement on the table on December 15, 2021.

Following that, I had an hour-long call with [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan in the White House, begging, “Jake, avoid the war. You can avoid the war. All the US has to do is say, ‘NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine.’” And he said to me, “Oh, NATO’s not going to enlarge to Ukraine. Don’t worry about it.”

I said, “Jake, say it publicly.”

“No. No. No. We can’t say it publicly.”

I said, “Jake, you’re going to have a war over something that isn’t even going to happen?”

He said, “Don’t worry, Jeff. There will be no war.” These are not very bright people. I’m telling you, if I can give you my honest view, they’re not very bright people. They talk to themselves. They don’t talk to anybody else. They play game theory. In noncooperative game theory, you don’t talk to the other side. You just make your strategy. This is the essence of non-cooperative game theory. It’s not negotiation theory. It’s not peacemaking theory. It is unilateral, noncooperative theory, if you know formal game theory.

That’s what they play. That kind of game theory started [in application] at the RAND Corporation. That’s what they still play. In 2019, there’s a paper by RAND, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.” Incredibly, the paper, in the public domain, asks how the US should annoy, antagonize, and weaken Russia. That’s literally the strategy. We’re trying to provoke Russia, trying to make Russia break apart, perhaps have regime change, maybe unrest, maybe an economic crisis.

That’s what you in Europe call your ally. So, there I was with my frustrating phone call with Sullivan, standing out in the freezing cold. I happened to be trying to have a ski day. “Oh, there’ll be no war, Jeff.” We know what happened next: the Biden Administration refused to negotiate over NATO enlargement. The stupidest idea of NATO is the so-called open-door policy, based on Article Ten of the NATO Treaty (1949). NATO reserves the right to go where it wants, as long as the host government agrees, without any neighbor—such as Russia—having any say whatsoever.

Well, I tell the Mexicans and the Canadians, “Don’t try it.” You know, Trump may want to take over Canada. So, the Canadian Government could say to China, “Why don’t you build a military base in Ontario?” I wouldn’t advise it. The US would not say, “Well, it’s an open door. That’s Canada’s and China’s business, not ours.” The US would invade Canada.

Yet grownups, including in Europe, in this Parliament, in NATO, in the European Commission, repeat the absurd mantra that Russia has no say in NATO enlargement. This is nonsense stuff. This is not even baby geopolitics. This is just not thinking at all. So, the Ukraine War escalated in February 2022 when the Biden Administration refused any serious negotiations.

The Ukraine War and Nuclear Arms Control

What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. This happened within days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this basic point, not the propaganda that’s written about the invasion claiming that Russia’s aim was to conquer Ukraine with a few tens of thousands of troops.

Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Please understand something basic. The idea of Russia’s invasion was to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And what is NATO, really? It is the US military, with its missiles, its CIA deployments, and all the rest. Russia’s goal was to keep the US away from its border. Why is Russia so interested in this? Consider if China or Russia decided to have a military base on the Rio Grande or in the Canadian border, not only would the United States freak out; we’d have war within about ten minutes. When the Soviet Union tried this in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear Armageddon.

All of this is gravely amplified because the United States unilaterally abandoned the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and ended the relative stability nuclear arms control framework by doing so. This is extremely important to understand. The nuclear arms control framework is based, in large part, on trying to deter a first [decapitation] strike. The ABM Treaty was a critical component of that stability. The US unilaterally walked out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. This blew a Russian gasket.

So, everything I’ve been describing about NATO enlargement has occurred in the context of the US destruction of the nuclear framework. Starting in 2010, the US began to put in Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and then later in Romania. Russia doesn’t like that.

One of the issues on the table in December and January, December 2021, January 2022, was whether the United States claimed the right to put missile systems in Ukraine. According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Blinken told Lavrov in January 2022 that “the United States reserves the right to put missile systems in Ukraine.”

That, my dear friends, is your putative ally. And now the US wants to put intermediate missile systems in Germany. Remember that the United States walked out of the INF treaty in 2019. There is no nuclear arms framework right now. Essentially, none.

When Zelensky said a few days after Russia’s invasion that Ukraine was ready for neutrality, a peace agreement was in reach. I know the details of this because I talked to key negotiators and mediators in detail and have learned much from public pronouncements of others. Shortly after the start of negotiations in March 2022, a document was exchanged between the parties that President Putin had approved, and that Lavrov had presented. This was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to hear first-hand and in detail what happened in the mediation. The bottom-line is this: Ukraine walked away, unilaterally, from a near agreement.

The End of the Ukraine War

Why did Ukraine walk away from the negotiations? Because the United States told them to and because the UK added icing to the cake by having BoJo [Boris Johnson] go to Kyiv in early April to Ukraine to make the same point. Keir Starmer turns out to be even worse, even more of a warmonger. It’s unimaginable, but it is true. Boris Johnson explained, and you can find it on the website, that “what’s at stake here is nothing less than Western hegemony!” Not Ukraine but Western hegemony. Michael von der Schulenberg and I, met at the Vatican with a group of experts in Spring 2022, and we wrote a document explaining that “nothing good can come out of continued war.” Our group argued strenuously, but to no avail, that “Ukraine should negotiate immediately, because delays will mean massive deaths, risk of nuclear escalation, and possibly an outright loss of the war.”

I wouldn’t want to change one word from what we wrote then. Nothing was wrong in that document. Since the US (Boris Johnson) talked Ukraine out of the negotiations, perhaps one million Ukrainians have died or been severely wounded. And American senators who are as nasty and cynical as imaginable say this is a wonderful expenditure of US money because “no Americans are dying.” “It’s the pure proxy war.” One of our senators, nearby me, (Connecticut’s Richard) Blumenthal, says this out loud. Mitt Romney says this out loud. “It’s the best money America can spend. No Americans are dying.” It’s unreal.

Now, just to bring us up to yesterday, this failed. The idea of the project was that Russia would fold its hand. All along was Russia can’t resist, just as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in 1997. The Americans thought we have the upper hand. We’re going to win, because we’re going to bluff them.

(The Russians) are not really going to fight. They’re not really going to mobilize. We’ll deploy the economic “nuclear option” of cutting Russia out of SWIFT. That will destroy the economy. Our sanctions will bring Russia to their knees. The HIMARS will do them in. The ATACMS, the F-16s, will do them in. Honestly, I’ve listened to this for more than 70 years. I’ve listened to it semi-understanding, I’d say for about 56 years. They speak nonsense every day, my country. This is so familiar to me. Completely familiar, I begged the Ukrainians, and I had a track record with the Ukrainians, I advised the Ukrainians. I'm not anti-Ukrainian. I'm pro-Ukrainian, completely! I said, “save your lives, save your sovereignty, save your territory, stay neutral, don’t listen to the Americans.” I repeated to them the famous adage of Henry Kissinger, that “to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

Let me repeat that for Europe: “To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

The Trump Administration

Let me end with a few words about President Donald Trump. Trump does not want Biden’s losing hand. This is why Trump and President Putin are likely to agree to end the war. Even if Europe continues with its warmongering, it won’t matter. The war is ending. So, please, get it out of your system. Please tell your colleagues. “It’s over.” It’s over because Trump doesn’t want to hold on to a loser. The one that will be saved by the negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine. The second is Europe.

Your stock markets rising in recent days by the “horrible news” of negotiations and potential peace. I know this prospect of a negotiated peace has been met with sheer horror in these chambers, but this is the best news that you could get. I’ve tried to reach out to some of the European leaders. Most don’t wanna hear anything from me at all, but I’ve said, “don’t go to Kyiv, go to Moscow. Discuss with your counterparts. Are you kidding? You’re Europe. You’re 450 million people. You’re a $20 trillion economy. Act like it.”

The European Union should be the main trading partner of Russia. Europe and Russia have complementary economies. The fit for mutually beneficial trade is very strong.

By the way, if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nord Stream, I’d be happy to talk about that too.

The Trump administration is imperialist at heart. Trump obviously believes that the great powers dominate the world. The US will be ruthless and cynical, and yes, also vis-à-vis Europe. Don’t go begging to Washington. That won’t help. It would probably spur the ruthlessness. Instead, have a true European foreign policy.

So, I’m not saying that we’re at the new age of peace, but we are in a very different kind of politics right now, a return to great power politics. Europe needs its own foreign policy, and not just a foreign policy of Russophobia. Europe needs a foreign policy that is realistic, understands Russia’s situation, understands Europe’s situation, understands what America is and what it stands for, and that tries to avoid Europe being invaded by the United States. It’s certainly not impossible that Trump’s America will land troops in Greenland. I’m not joking, and I don’t think Trump is joking. Europe needs a foreign policy, a real one. Europe needs something different from, “Yes, we’ll bargain with Mr. Trump and meet him halfway.” Do you know what that will be like? Give me a call afterwards.

Please have a European foreign policy. You’re going to be living with Russia for a long time, so please negotiate with Russia. There are real security issues on the table both for Europe and Russia, but the bombast and the Russophobia is not serving your security at all. It’s not serving Ukraine’s security at all. This American adventure that you signed on to and for which you are now the lead cheerleader has contributed to around 1 million Ukrainian casualties.

On the Middle East and China

On the Middle East, by the way, the US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago. The Israel lobby dominates American politics. Just, have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It’s very dangerous. I’m hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration, and worse, the Palestinian people, because of Netanyahu, whom I regard as a war criminal (who has been) properly indicted by the ICC.

The only way for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East is the two-state solution. There is only one obstacle to it, and that is the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council, at the behest of the Israel Lobby. So, if you want the EU to have some influence, tell the United States to drop the veto. In this the European Union would be together with around 160 other countries in the world. The only ones that oppose a Palestinian state are basically the United States, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Argentina, and Paraguay.

The Middle East is a place where the European Union could have a big geopolitical influence. Yet, Europe has gone silent about the JCPOA and Iran and around half of Europe has gone silent over Israel’s war crimes and blockage of the two-state solution.

Netanyahu’s greatest dream in life is the war between the United States and Iran. And he’s not given up. It’s not impossible that a US-Iran War will also come. Yet Europe could stop it – if Europe has its own foreign policy. I’m hoping that Trump will end Netanyahu’s grip on American politics. Even if not, the EU can work with the rest of the world to bring peace to the Middle East.

Finally, let me just say with respect to China, China is not an enemy. China is merely a great success story. That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy, because China has a bigger economy than the United States (measured in international prices). The US resists reality. Europe should not do so. Let me repeat, China is no enemy and no threat. It is a natural partner with Europe in trade and in saving the global environment.

That’s all. Many thanks.

That’s all. Very well.

Q&A Session

MICHAEL VON DER SCHULENBURG: Now questions. Please don’t make any statements. Just make questions because we are too many, and we don’t have that, all that much time.

So, where do I start? I start with on the left side. I have a preference to the left. As you know, you come over. Yeah. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you, Jeffrey Sachs. From the Czech Republic, we are glad we have you here. We have a problem. We were caused by a witch who told mugged the EU and the EU is mugged.

So, it won’t be improved until 2029. But what we, the Central Europeans, should do in the meantime, especially if the Germans don’t happen to vote for Sarawakeng next enough, are we supposed to create some kind of neutrality for the Central Europe? Or what would you suggest us to do?

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: So, first of all, all my grandchildren are Czech, I want you to know. And Sonia is Czech born and Czech citizen, so we’re very proud.

I’m the trailing spouse in this, but I’m a Czech wannabe. Europe needs to have a foreign policy that is a European foreign policy. And it needs to be a realist foreign policy. Realist is not hate. Realist is actually trying to understand both sides and to negotiate.

There are two kinds of realists, a defensive realist and an offensive realist. My dear friend, John Mearsheimer, who is the offensive realist, we’re very close friends and I love him. But I believe more than he does, you talk to the other side and you find a way to make an understanding. And so basically, Russia is not going to invade Europe. This is the fundamental point.

It may get up to the Dnieper River. It’s not going to invade Europe. But there are real issues. The main issue for Russia was the United States because Russia, as a major power and the largest nuclear power in the world, was profoundly concerned about US unipolarity from the beginning. Now that this is seemingly possibly ending, Europe has to open negotiations directly with Russia as well Because the United States will quickly lose interest, and you’re going to be living with Russia for the next thousands of years.

Okay? So what do you want? You want to make sure that the Baltic states are secure. The best thing for the Baltic states is to stop their Russophobia. This is the most important thing.

Estonia has about 25 percent Russian citizens or Russian speaking citizens, ethnic Russians. Latvia, the same. Don’t provoke the neighbor. That’s all. This is not hard.

It really isn’t hard. And, again, I want to explain my point of view. I have helped these countries, the ones I’m talking about, trying to advise I’m not their enemy, I’m not Putin’s puppet, I’m not Putin’s apologist. I worked in Estonia. They gave me I don’t it’s not I think it’s the second highest civilian honor that a president of Estonia can bestow on a non-national because I designed their currency system for them in 1992.

So I’m giving them advice. Do not stand there, Estonian, and say, we want to break up Russia. Are you kidding? Don’t. This is not how to survive in this world.

You survive with mutual respect, actually. You survive in negotiation. You survive in discussion. You don’t outlaw the Russian language. Not a good idea when 25 percent of your population has the first language of Russian.

It’s not right. Even if there weren’t a giant on the border. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do. You’d have it as an official language. You’d have a language of, in lower school.

You wouldn’t antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church. So, basically, we need to behave like grown-ups. And when I constantly say that they’re acting like children, Sonia always says to me, that’s unfair to children. Because this is worse than children. We have a six-year-old granddaughter and a three-year-old grandson, and they actually make up with their friends.

And we don’t tell them, go. Just just ridicule them tomorrow and every day. We say go give them a hug and go play, and they do. This is not hard. By the way well, anyway, I won’t belabor the point.

Thank you. So elect a new government. No, I shouldn’t say that. What all I should say is change policy. I don’t want to have a political Does that work? Yeah.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hi. My name is Keira. I’m a reporter with The Brussels Times. Thank you for the fascinating talk, Jeffrey.

I just wanted to ask you about Trump’s statements about wanting NATO members to increase their spending by five percent, and we’re now seeing lots of countries scrambling to prove that they’re going to do that, including Belgium. And given that Belgium is also the NATO headquarters, I wanted to ask you what the appropriate response to those statements by NATO members would be. Thanks.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: We don’t see exactly eye to eye on this question. So let me let me give you my own, my own view.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: My first recommendation, with all respect to Brussels, is move the NATO headquarters somewhere else. I mean it seriously because one of the worst parts of European policy right now is a complete confusion of Europe and NATO. These are completely different, but they became exactly the same. Europe is much better than NATO. In my opinion, NATO isn’t even needed anymore.

I would have ended it in 1991. But because the US viewed it as a instrument of hegemony, not as a defense against Russia, it continued afterwards. But the confusion of NATO and Europe is deadly. Because expanding Europe meant expanding NATO. Period.

And these should have been completely different things. So this is the first point. My own view, again, with all respect to Michael, we only had a brief conversation about it, is that Europe should have Europe basically should have its own foreign policy and its own military security, its own strategic autonomy, so called. And it should. I’m in favor of that.

I would disband NATO, and maybe Trump is going to do it anyway. Maybe Trump’s going to invade Greenland. Who knows? Then you’re really going to find out what NATO means. So I do think that Europe should invest in its security.

Five percent is outlandish, ridiculous, absurd, Completely absurd. No one needs to spend anything like that amount. Two to three percent of GDP, probably under the current circumstances. What I would do, by the way, is buy European production. Because, actually, strangely, weirdly, unfortunately in this world, and it’s a true truism, but it’s unfortunate, so I’m not championing it, a lot of technological innovation spins off from the military sector because governments invest in the military sector.

So Trump is a arms salesman. You understand that. He’s selling American arms. He is selling American technology. Vance told you a few days ago, don’t even think about having your own AI technology.

So please understand that this increase of spending is for the United States, not for you. And in this sense, I’m completely against that approach. But I would not be against an approach of Europe spending two to three percent of GDP for a unified European security structure and invested in Europe and European technology and not having the United States dictate the use of European technology. It’s so interesting. It’s the Netherlands that produces the only machines of advanced semiconductors, extreme ultraviolet lithography.

It’s ASML. But America determines every policy of ASML. The Netherlands doesn’t even have a footnote. I wouldn’t do that if I were you, hand over all security to the United States. I wouldn’t do it.

I would have your own security framework so you can have your own foreign policy framework as well. Europe stands for lots of things that the United States does not stand for. Europe stands for climate action. By the way, rightly so because our president is completely bonkers on this. And Europe stands for decency, for social democracy, as an ethos.

I’m not talking about a party. I’m talking about an ethos of how equality of life occurs. Europe stands for multilateralism. Europe stands for the UN Charter. The US stands for none of those things.

You know that our secretary of state Marco Rubio canceled his trip to South Africa because on the agenda was equality and sustainability. And he said, I’m not getting into that. That is an honest reflection of deep Anglo-Saxon libertarianism. Egalitarianism is not a word of the American lexicon. Sustainable development?

Not at all. You probably know, by the way, that of the 193 UN member states, 191 have had SDG plans presented as voluntary national reviews. 191. Two have not. Haiti and the United States of America.

The Biden administration wasn’t even allowed to say sustainable development goals. The treasury had a policy not to say sustainable development goals. Okay. I mentioned all of this because you need your own foreign policy. I issue a report two reports each year.

One, the World Happiness Report. And 18 of the top 20 countries, if I remember correctly, are European. This is the highest quality of life in the whole world. So you need your own policy to protect that quality of life. The United States ranks way down.

And the other report where’s my colleague Guillaume, is somewhere in the room. Here there he is. Guillaume La Fortunes is the lead author of our annual sustainable development report. And almost all of the top 20 countries are European countries because you believe in this stuff. And that’s why you’re the happiest except in geopolitics, but quality of life.

So you need your own foreign policy, but you won’t have it unless you have your own security. You just won’t. And so and by the way, 27 countries cannot each have their own foreign policy. This is a problem. You need a European foreign policy and a European security structure.

And by the way, although Michael assures me it’s dead, I was the greatest fan of OSCE and believed that OSCE is the proper framework for European security. It could really work. Thank you very much. Yeah. Okay.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Well, thank you, professor. I’m from Slovakia, and my prime minister Robert Fritze was almost shot dead because the opinions you had, the similar with him. Yes. We are, as a Slovakia, a Slovak government of the few countries in the European Union, we are talking to Russians. Two months ago, I was talking with Mr. Medvedev.

In two weeks, I will be talking, in Duma with Mr. Slutsky, who is the chairman of the Russian Foreign Affairs Committee in Moscow. Maybe my question is, what would you be your message to Russians in this moment? Because as I heard, they’re on the victorious wave. They have no reason to not to conquer the Donbas because that’s their war aim. And what can Trump offer to them, to stop the war immediately?

What would he what would be the message, for Russians from your side? Thank you very much.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Lots of important things are now on offer and on the table. And I believe that the war will end quickly because of this. And this will be at least one blessing in a very, very difficult time.

Exactly what the settlement will be, I think, is now only a question of the territorial issues. And that is whether it is the complete four Oblast, including all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia or whether it is on the contact line and how all of this will be negotiated. I’m not in the room of the negotiations, so I can’t really say more. But the basis will be there will be territorial concessions, there will be neutrality, there will be security guarantees for Ukraine for all parties, there will be, at least with the U.S, an end of the economic sanctions.

But what counts, of course, is Europe and Russia. I think that there are and maybe there will be a restoration of nuclear arms negotiations, which would be extraordinarily positive. I think that there are tremendously important issues for Europe to negotiate directly with Russia. And so I would urge, President Costa and the leadership of Europe to open direct discussions with President Putin because European security is on the table. I know the Russian leaders, many of them, quite well.

They are good negotiators, and, you should negotiate with them, and you should negotiate well with them. I would ask them some questions. I would ask them, what are the security guarantees that can work so that this war ends permanently? What are the security guarantees for the Baltic states? What should be done?

Part of the process of negotiation is actually to ask the other side about your concerns, not just to know what they know as you think is too true, but actually to ask, we have a real problem. We have a real worry. What are the guarantees? Well, I want to know the answers also. By the way, I know Mr. Lavrov, Minister Lavrov, for 30 years.

I regard him as a brilliant foreign minister. Talk with him. Negotiate with him. Get ideas. Put ideas on the table.

Put counter ideas on the table. I don’t think, all of this can be settled, by pure reason because, of oneself. You settle wars by negotiating and understanding what are the real issues. And you don’t call the other side a liar when they express their issues. You work out what the implications of that are for the mutual benefit of peace.

So the most important thing is stop the yelling, stop the warmongering, and discuss with the Russian counterparts. And don’t beg to be at the table with the United States. You don’t need to be in the room with the United States. You’re Europe. You should be in the room with Europe and Russia.

If the United States wants to join, that’s fine. But to beg, no. And by the way, Europe does not need to have Ukraine in the room when Europe talks with Russia. You have a lot of issues. Direct issues.

Don’t hand over your foreign policy to anybody, not to the United States, not to Ukraine, not to Israel. Keep a European foreign policy. This is the basic idea.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Hans Neuhoff from the Sovereignists political group in this parliament, alternative for Germany as political party. First of all, let me thank you, Mr. Sachs, for being here and sharing your ideas with us. And be assured that many of your ideas and of your colleague, John Mersheimer, have well been received by political groups here and have been integrated into our agenda. I widely share your views. Yet, there’s one question regarding the historical account that you gave where I would like to go in some detail. This concerns the beginning of NATO expansion.

You reported from the website what Gorbachev heard that there are many quotations from Genscher, for example, that NATO will not move one-inch eastwards. Now the two plus four treaties has been signed in September 1990, right, in Moscow. So at that point in time, the Warsaw Pact still existed. And countries like Poland, Hungary and Czechia were not part of the negotiations for the two and four treaty. So the Warsaw Pact actually dissolved in July 1991, and the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991.

So nobody who was present in the negotiations could speak for Poland, could speak for Hungary, could speak for Slovakia, that they would not try to become member of NATO once the overall situation has changed. So the counterargument, which we have to counter, is that it was on the will of these countries, of Poland, of Hungary, of Slovakia, that they wanted to join NATO because of the very history they had with the Soviet Union. And, of course, Russia was still perceived in a way as a follower of the Soviet Union. So how do you counter that argument?

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PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: I have no doubt of why Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia wanted to join NATO.

The question is what is the US doing to make peace? Because NATO is not a choice of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, or Slovakia. NATO is a US led military alliance. And the question is, how are we going to establish peace in a reliable way? If I were making those decisions back then, I would have ended NATO altogether in 1991.

When those countries requested NATO, I would have explained to them what our defense secretary William Perry said, what our lead statesman George Kennan said, what our final ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, said. They said, well, we understand your feelings, but it’s not a good idea because it could provoke a new cold war with Russia. So that’s how I would have answered it. When those countries joined, in the first wave, I don’t think it was that consequential, in fact, except that it was part of a bigger project. And the project was spelled out already in 1994.

There’s a very good book by Jonathan Haslam by Harvard University Press called Hubris, which gives a detailed historical documentation of step by step what happened. And, it’s really worth reading. So this is now but the point I would really make is that Ukraine and Georgia were too far. This is right up against Russia. This is in the context of the complete destabilization of the nuclear framework.

This is in the context of the US putting in missile systems on Russia’s borders. If you listen to President Putin over the years, probably the main thing, if you listen carefully, that he’s concerned about is missiles seven minutes from Moscow, is a decapitation strike. And this is very real. The US not only would freak out, but did freak out when this happened in the Western Hemisphere. So it’s the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse.

And fortunately, Nikita Khrushchev did not stand up and say, open door policy of the Warsaw Pact. We can go wherever we want. Cuba’s asked us. It’s none of America’s business. What Khrushchev said is war, my god.

We don’t want war. We end this crisis. We both pull back. That’s what Khrushchev and Kennedy decided in the end. So this is the real consequential.

Russia even swallowed with a lot of pain the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It is Ukraine and Georgia. And it’s because of geography. It’s because of Lord Palmerston. It’s because of the first Crimean War.

It’s because of the missile systems that this is the essence of why there was this war.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you very much, Professor Sachs, for coming. You’ve mentioned that the European Union needs to formulate its own foreign policy. In the past, the German Franco Alliance was a big driver for those policies. Now with the Ukraine war, arguably, that receives a crack.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Do you think that in the future, when the European Union is going to formulate its new foreign policy, that they’re going to be again in the front seat? Or should it be other countries or other blocks trying to make that change?

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Oh, it’s hard. It’s hard because, of course, you don’t yet have a constitution for Europe, which really underpins a European foreign policy. And it can’t be by unanimity.

There has to be a structure in which Europe can speak as Europe, even with some dissent, but with the European policy. I don’t want to oversimplify how to get there exactly, but even with the structures you have, you could do a lot better with negotiating directly. The first rule is your diplomats should be diplomats, not secretaries of war. Honestly, that would go halfway, at least, to where you want to go. A diplomat is a very special kind of talent.

A diplomat is trained to sit together with the other side and to listen, to shake hands, to smile, and to be pleasant. It’s very hard. It’s a skill. It’s training. It’s a profession.

It’s not a game. You need that kind of diplomacy. I’m sorry. We are not hearing anything like that. I’ll just make a couple complaints.

First, Europe is not NATO, as I said. I thought Stoltenberg was the worst, but I was wrong. It just keeps getting worse. Could someone in NATO stop talking, for God’s sake, about more war? And could NATO stop speaking for Europe And Europe stop thinking it’s NATO.

This is the first absolute point. Second, I’m sorry, but your high representative vice presidents need to become diplomats. Diplomacy means going to Moscow, inviting your Russian counterpart here, discussing this doesn’t happen till now. So this is really my point. Now I believe that Europe should become more integrated and more unified in the years ahead.

I’m a strong believer in subsidiarity. So we were discussing, I don’t think housing policy is really Europe’s main issue. I think this can be handled at the local level, or at the national level. I don’t see it as a European issue. But I don’t see foreign policy as being a 27 country issue.

I see it being as a European issue. And I see security being at a European level. So I think things need to be readjusted. But I’d like to see more Europe for truly European issues and maybe less Europe for things that are properly subsidiary to Europe at the national and the local level. And I hope that such an evolution can take place.

You know, when the world talks about great powers right now, they talk about US, Russia, China. I include India. And I really want to include Europe. And I really want to include Africa as an African Union, and I want that to happen. But you’ll notice on the list, Europe doesn’t show up right now, and this is because there is no European foreign policy.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you very much, and thank you very much, professor, for this very courageous speech, very clear speech also that you made. I’m an MEP from Luxembourg. My question is the following. What are the long term consequences of this lost war? We lost the war.

Now we have an uncertain future for NATO. We have also clearly, and you referred to it, the marginalization of Europe. We have, a strengthening of the BRICS countries, which can be rivals in many respects. So will there be a future for a collective West over the next 20 or 30 years? Thank you very much.

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: I don’t believe there is a collective West. I believe that there is a United States and Europe that are, in some areas, in parallel interests and in many areas, not in parallel interest. I want Europe to lead sustainable development, climate transformation, global decency. I believe if the world looked more like Europe, it’d be a happier, more peaceful, safer world. And long longevity and better food, by the way.

But, just saying, in any event, Europe has a vocation that is rather different from the American tradition and, frankly, from the Anglo Saxon tradition because it’s been 200 years of Anglo Saxon hegemony or aspirational hegemony. The British still believe they’ve run the world. It’s amazing what nostalgia means. They don’t even stop. It’s almost like a Monty Python skit, actually.

But in any event, where was I? I’m thinking of Monty Python when the night gets all his limbs cut off and says, Everything’s fine. I’m victorious. That’s Britain, unfortunately. And so it’s, it’s really terrible.

So, no, I don’t believe in the collective West. I don’t believe in the global south. I don’t believe in, all these geographies don’t even make sense because I’m actually I look at maps a lot and the global south is mostly in the north and the west is not even west. And so I don’t even understand what this is about. I do believe that we could be in a true age of abundance if we got our heads on straight.

We’re in the biggest technological advance in human history. It’s truly amazing what can be done right now. You know, I marvel at the fact that somebody who knows no chemistry won the Nobel Peace Prize for chemistry because he’s very good at deep neural networks, a genius, Demis Hassabis. They figured out protein folding that generations of biochemists spent their whole lives on. And now DeepMind figured out how to do it by the thousands of proteins.

We have friends that spent their entire life on one protein, brilliant friends. And now what we can do. So if actually and same with renewable energy, as everybody knows, the prices come down by more than two orders of magnitude, the costs. We could transform the planet, we could protect the climate system, we could protect biodiversity, we could ensure every child gets a good education, we could do so many wonderful things right now. And so what do we need to do that?

In my view, we need peace, most importantly. And my basic point is there are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere because every conflict I study is just a mistake. It’s not we are not struggling for Lebensraum. That idea that came from Malthus and that became a Nazi idea was always a wrong idea. It was a mistake, a fundamental intellectual mistake.

An intellectual mistake, by the way, because leading scientists adopted the idea that we had race wars. We had national wars. We had wars of survival because we don’t have enough on the planet. As an economist, I can tell you, we have plenty on the planet for everybody’s development. Plenty.

We’re not in a conflict with China. We’re not in a conflict with Russia. If we calm down, if you ask about the long term, the long term is very good. Thank you. The long term, if we don’t blow ourselves up, is very good.

And so this is what we should aim for, a positive shared vision under international law. Because of our technology, things operate at a regional scale now. It used to be it was villages, then it was, it was small areas, then it was unification of countries. Now it’s regional. That’s not just because regions are wonderful.

It’s because the underlying technological reality say Europe should be an integrated area by transport, by fast rail, by digital, by and so there’s Europe. The politics follows the technological realities to a very important extent. We’re in a world of regions now. So Europe should be Europe with subsidiarity. Don’t lose all of the wonderful. wonderful national and local elements.

But Europe should be Europe. So, the good side is, let’s I want Europe to have diplomacy, for example, with ASEAN. I spend a lot of time with the ASEAN countries. If the EU green deal, wonderful idea. I said many years ago, okay, to the ASEAN leaders, make an ASEAN green deal.

And then talk with the Europeans so that you have this wonderful relationship, trade, investment, technology. So last year, they announced an ASEAN green deal. What did Europe do about it? Nothing. It said, sorry.

We’re in the Ukraine war. Thank you. No interest. So, this is my point. The prospects are very positive if we construct the peace.

MICHAEL VON DER SCHULENBURG: Because we have to go, I get all the time messages that I sort of leave the room. Short. Can you start with something very short?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes. Thank you, a lot, for the lecture.

I wanted to ask, do you think where out of the conflict is some sort of style of Finlandization? And then also, do you think that’s what’s is that the way you would have liked to see, for example, Finland and Sweden’s nature process that, like is that what you would have like to see in, like, Sweden and Finland’s foreign policy as an example? Like, is that instead of them becoming members of NATO, is that the way that you would have liked to see these countries handed off foreign policy? And do you think that these countries that border Russia should just kind of succumb to their faith that, okay, we can’t provoke Russia, like this is the way we have to live?

PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Very good. Excellent question.

And let me just report one part about Finlandization. Finlandization landed Finland number one in the World Happiness Report year after year. Rich, successful, happy, and secure. That’s pre-NATO. So Finlandization was a wonderful thing.

Number one in the world. When Sweden and Finland and Austria were neutral, bravo. Smart. When Ukraine was neutral, smart. If you have two superpowers, keep them apart a little bit.

You don’t have to be right, with your nose up against each other, especially if one of them, the US, is pushing its nose into the other one. And so, Finlandization, to my mind, has a very positive connotation. So does Austria. Austria, 1955, signed its neutrality. The Soviet army left.

And Austria is a wonderful place, by the way. Absolutely wonderful. And so, this is basic how to avoid conflict. If the United States had any sense at all, it would have left these countries as the neutral space in between the US military and Russia, but that’s where the US lost it.

MICHAEL VON DER SCHULENBURG: Thank you very much.

I just want to end with an appeal. I think we both agree that we will have a—the war will end within a month or two. That means the fighting will end. It doesn’t mean that we will have peace in Europe. The peace in Europe, that has to be done by us, by Europeans, not by a president from the United States.

We have to create this peace. And that is Europe, which includes, of course, Belarus, Russia, and all these other countries. So, we have to do something. And we are here at parliament. We have as parliamentarians, we represent people.

We are the only legitimate democratic and legitimate institution in the European Union. Maybe we should have become, all a little bit more proactive in trying to move this peace process forward, across party lines. I think, I don’t know how many parties there really are, but that, we can talk to each other without saying, oh, you’re from this party, you’re from this party. I think we really have to concentrate. If here, we could not take more initiative from the parliament vis-a-vis the commission and saying, we are presenting the people, not you.

We are presenting the people. And these people in Europe, one piece, and that’s what we should go. So maybe this is the beginning of when we will make every month, I will organize with my colleagues the same thing here about different topics, which were all around it. And we hope that this one we get in discussion. That is different. What we have in the plenum where we basically don’t have a discussion, but that we have a discussion and take, also across the party and invite, also, people from other political parties.

We don’t invite anybody. Let’s discuss it. In the end, we want—all want this, the same peace for the next generation. And I have plenty of children, grandchildren, you too, and that’s what we need. Okay.

Thank you for reading.

Editor-in-Chief

WELCOME BACK TO 2024, WE’VE MISSED YOU… TIME IS TICKING AWAY

Hello there Reader’s, astounding and esteemed. I hope the half time show was to your liking, now back to the story about the Year of Years: 2024. Right when things start to really heat up. This is part one of the back nine, or the next three, or for Christ's sakes, the second half! This was absolutely supposed to close out the year, but every month there was so many stories! I’m just hitting what I believe is important to remember and there was just SO MUCH! So, this will be covering from “the debate” to “the election” and hopefully soon, I will be finishing “the election” to the new year.

Anyone who missed the first six you can find it here, but the back nine is a story that could exist by itself. Future historians, this last half of the year could be a 4-book series but I’m going to try make it poignant and succinct as possible because let’s be honest, time is valuable, we don’t have a reset button, I mean, we don’t…right???

Anyways, we left off at the close of June, and the narrative machine was breaking down and needed maintenance. Maybe Pelosi, or Obama…

So, there was a debate between the president-elect and the incumbent, we know who they are, if you don’t, we’re talking about Donald Trump v. Joe Biden.

Joe Biden had the worst debate performance in American history. It was so bad that Donald Trump called Joe a “Palestinian” as a derogatory term and no one even noticed! Not even the race-baiters! I think the only people who took issue with this are the people like me, who are excessively anti-war.

And President Biden’s longtime scapegoat artists turned on him immediately.

The following days the chatter was deafening, “Is he gonna stepdown?” “He must step down!” “Who’s gonna replace him?” “He won’t make it 4 more years!” “25th Amendment” “Anew Primary.” “Kamala Harris.” “What about Newsom?” “Well, that's racist!” “Dementia.” “Pelosi.” “Obama!” “George Clooney!” Then a voice broke through, “I’m not stepping down!”

The chatter of voices, stunned, said, “Wait, what?!” I looked back at the screen.

He said, “I’m not stepping down! I can win!” I couldn’t believe it, and neither could the chatter boxes, but Joe believed it. And with that, the decision was made for Joe, to stay in the race!

Joe went on to run a miraculous campaign, like no one believed he could! At the end he came up short, but that’s okay, because he gave it his all and he did great but, in the end, the other guy did a little better. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but at least Joe’s legacy will show, he never backed down, even when the danger lights are blinking red and the whole world is against you, if you believe in yourself that’s all that matters.

We lived, happily ever after…

Right?

Wrong…. More on that after these messages…

• What’s happening to Elon in Europe?!

  • The European Union has been taking part in an extortion campaign against big tech companies for not censoring enough speech.

  • Facebook and Google agreed to start censoring to avoid fines. Twitter however refused.

  • Elon Musk said “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: If we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.” This is censorship by proxy and illegal. The EU is using extortionary tactics to quiet dissenting speech.

  • According to sources inside my head, “Based on my expertise on the subject, I’d say the EU should be prosecuted for racketeering if this statement is true. And according to the documents, it seems to be true.”

  • MOVING ON…

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July (Fight, Fight, Fight…)

• Joe Biden has a press conference after meeting with lead Democrats and Big money donors to announce his post-debate decision. He announces he will be staying in the race much to Nancy Pelosi’s chagrin.

Trump has been rallying non-stop, making appearances anywhere that will have him, and beginning to make appearances in the podcast circuit.

• Joe Biden, as the youngest person ever elected to the Senate, second to Frank Church, the Democrat who opposed imperialism and was extremely important in passing Lyndon B. Johnson’s Civil Rights Act in the 50’s, Joe Biden was the exact opposite.

  • He voted to expand wars, killing “woman and children” in the 1967 Israel War, voted against busing and for segregation.

  • He wanted more secrecy from the CIA and believed COINTELPRO was a necessary evil.

  • Joe Biden was the evil version of Frank Church, who brought these agencies to heel with his “Church” Committee. Without him we’d still not know what MKULTRA is. Thinking of MKULTRA, let’s continue the recap….

• ***BREAKING NEWS*** THERE’S BEEN AN ATTEMPT ON THE PRESIDENTIAL FRONTRUNNER HOPEFUL OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY…..

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS EARLIER

The day is warm, the sky is clear. It’s a typical mid-July day. Light breeze, blue sky, it’s the best-case scenario for a Summertime event, near Butler, Pennsylvania, the heat is hot, the event is hotter, here in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign set up shop to host a rally, at the local fairgrounds in the rural area of Pennsylvania:

The young man had been working tirelessly in the days leading up to the day of the rally. Using a drone to map the layout, and a range finder for the distance, a plan was starting to form.

You see, this young man didn’t have many friends. He spent all his time watching surfing the only channels his television had, one of them was MSNBC, and Rachel Maddow was his favorite personality. In fact, you might say, she was his only friend in the world. When her show came on, it was like being visited by an old friend.

He thought, “isn’t this great? I don't care what those kids at school say, or the stupid therapist, with her stupid medicine. I have Rachel, and nothing can ever keep us apart!”

It’s primetime on MSNBC; Thomas sits down in front of the TV to watch his favorite show. Rachel Maddow's voice rings out from the speakers of the television, Rachel has a guest, it’s Thomas Crooks!

Thomas can’t believe it; he finally made it on the show! He walks out onto the set; he can’t stop smiling. He’s greeted with cheers and applause, from the studio audience. He sits down in the guest-seat opposite of Rachel. He thinks my goodness isn’t this great! I’m on the set of The Rachel Maddow Show, with my best friend Rachel Maddow:

Thomas: How are you, Rachel!

Rachel Maddow: I’m doing great Thomas, how are you?

TC: I’m doing very well, I’ve been really busy today, working out our plan.

Rachel: Oh, that’s excellent! The sooner the better. Did you see your therapist today?

TC: I did, she’s upset because I stopped taking my medicine, like you told me to.

RM: You should. That lady is just no good for you.

TC: Rachel, when can I see you… in private?

RM: I'm afraid that won’t be possible, if Donald Trump wins the presidency. He’s gonna put me in jail. He’s a fascist, ya know. Fascists imprison their critics. If only there was some way to stop him from tearing us apart. Did you meet with the “Men in Black?”

TC: Yes, I did. They said as long as I do my part they’ll take care of the rest.

RM: This must work or I’m afraid we won’t be able to see eachoth—

TC: I’ll help. I’m going to help. I will make this work Rachel. I’ve been going to the range with my father, I’m a pretty good shot, you should come down some time and se—

RM: “—Thomas, I’m sorry to cut you off, I can’t stress how important this is. It might be our only chance. We MUST get rid of Donald Trump—”Electorally” of course,” She whispers, in a voice that’s starting to fade.

TC: “What was that last part?”

RM: “I need you, Tommy!

TC: “—I can do it Rachel, for you…”

His mind drifts back to the present. He’s on the roof, in position, just like he planned. The 45th President of the United States is in his crosshairs. His heart is pounding, he can feel it in his eyelids. This moment, is the moment of truth…

• Thomas Crooks flew his drone over the campgrounds one last time as the event was starting. Everything was in place.

  • He climbed on top of a building outside of the fence around the fairgrounds, using a ladder he had planted earlier. Rifle over his shoulder. He was 450-feet away from the stage where Donald Trump is giving his speech.

  • As he approached the building with the gun many people noticed him and alerted authorities. He had to act fast. When he got on top of the building, he was spotted by several people who called out to authorities, “There’s a man with a gun, on top of the roof.”

  • As he positioned himself to take the shot, an officer ascended to the roof, where he turned the gun at the man and fired, the man jumped down. He must’ve felt like this was the moment, he got into position and fired.

    

  • In the split second it took for him to fire off 3 rounds, a Secret Service sniper from another roof fired and took him out before he had the chance to try again.

  • Although Thomas missed his target, Donald J. Trump, he managed to shoot three other people and kill one. A local firefighter named Corey Comperatore, who had his arms around his wife and daughters, protecting them in case more shots were to come. In the videos taken that day you can hear a gut-wrenching scream after the shots were fired. That was the wife of Corey Comperatore, realizing her life partner and protector had just been killed.

  • Thomas Crooks was killed before he could get another shot off, and the “Scene of the year” took place on that stage.

  • In a moment before the shots were fired, and I mean less than a moment, it was a millisecond, DJT turned his head to talk about a graph on immigration that was being presented, then there it was, three little “bzzz” sounds, he smacked his ear, obviously feeling the sting of one of the bullets hitting his ear. With that, Donald ducked down. Secret Service agents surrounded him in a circle. He’s still mic’d so we could hear his voice, he says “Lemme get my shoes.” His face appears above the circle. There is blood on his face. The audience is stunned. The Secret Service circle around DJT for protection—comprised of 80% SS woman officers that are shorter than Trump—starts to move. You can hear them through the mic, “are we ready”, “Let’s go”, as they move their “impenetrable circle”, with Donald in the middle, upper body towering above the agents, he raises his fist in one final move act of defiance, that history will not soon forget, Donald Trump pumps his fists, yelling “Fight, fight fight!” Blood on his cheek from the bullet that grazed his right ear, Donald Trump just cheated death…

• Many things take place in the following 24 hours. After accusing Trump of being a Hitler-like figure, Joe Biden makes a statement denouncing the shooter. In fact, everyone did.

  • We of course received reports that he’s ok.

  • RFK Jr. finally receives a Secret Service detail which the Biden Admin had been denying for-ever!

  • Authorities try to figure out how this happened.

  • Reports came out that the adjacent roof didn’t have a sniper on it because it was “Too sloped” to have a sniper on it.

• Kim Cheadle was the director of the Secret Service, and the responsibility of any breach rests at her feet, especially, what I’d assume to be, in the top five of highest priority targets of the Secret Service:

  • See, there was already supposed be an extra detail on Donald Trump’s events because, be it credible or not, there was a threat from Iran against Donald Trump after he had made several hawkish statements at his rally’s. Not only was there not extra detail, but they also didn’t send enough agents to cover the rally he was holding.

  • Kim Cheadle denied that there wasn’t enough agents to cover the detail, but many current and former Secret Service agents have come out with details of the way things are supposed to go, and according to them, this was much more lax than the way things traditionally work, and regardless of whether they are credible sources or not, it happened, so without doubt there was a failure of management that rests at the feet of Kimberly Cheadle. If he had gotten killed, on live television, this would have changed the trajectory of the country toward more of—as my mother calls it—a “police state,” whether you love him, or hate him, this fact does not change.

  • Piers Morgan Hosts many debates, in the year 2024 his show Piers Morgan Uncensored has emerged as a show of formidable value. He hosts these debates several times a week on his show, and millions tune in, me included. One of the biggest fights he took up at this time in 2024, was this assassination attempt. His position was this, “Don't you feel responsible for this after calling him Hitler and a fascist all the time???”

  • Destiny, who has emerged as a formidable vector on the left, his roots in the gaming/livestreamer sector, opened a new door by turning a, primarily gaming, livestream thing, into political debates covering all of the current events of the day and “culture on the internet” world, he appears on Uncensored and basically says, “Fuck that firefighter, he shouldn’t have been at a Trump rally.”

    The left-wing media establishment says, “Listen to how he talks, wasn’t he asking for this to happen?”

    And the right-wing media establishment is saying, “Listen to the way you all talk about him, you make him out to be an evil dictator! Aren’t you all asking for it???”

  • Piers takes real issue with this, he believes the massive media coverage referring to Donald Trump as a Hitler-like figure caused the radicalization that would lead to a kid, that doesn’t understand that it’s their job, as they see it, to oppose Republican leadership, only Republican leadership and take Destiny to task on this point.

Truth is they’re both right.

Every speech, or news report, from the left has been that Donald Trump is the enemy. An enemy of Democracy. A “Fascist.” This remains to be seen.

However, every speech, and news report from the other side says the “left is evil and want your children.”

It was the thing to say when Donald Trump got elected the first time, to very cynically state, “They’re gonna kill him”, or “he’ll get assassinated”, it was what people said.

The truth is this is a sick act. Only sick people do things like this and if we go on blaming one side or the other for things they said, we are giving the state bipartisan ammunition for censorship, that is our true enemy.

Back to the timeline…

• Thomas Crooks was registered as a Republican but also donated $15 to the Democratic Party through Act blue.

• Biden, on the campaign trail, there’s constant pressure on him to step down:

  • During interviews since interviews among the constant oddities, poll after poll was coming out showing Donald Trump in the lead, Joe didn’t seem to be hearing the same news as everyone else, he was very adamant that he is going to win, and made sure no one forgets that he’s the “Only one who can beat trump.”

    • In the third clip down after a reporter asks, “If your team came back and showed you data that she (Kamala Harris) would fare better against former president, Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race?” To this Biden arrogantly replies, “No, unless they came back and said there's no way you can win. Me!” (obviously believing he is unbeatable)

      (Then in his loudest whisper voice). “No one is saying that. No poll says that.”

    • Since then, it’s been reported that his team was keeping the actual poll numbers from him and only allowing Biden to see fabricated polls with him winning. The actual internal polling was seeing “Trump winning with 400 electoral votes.”

• The non-endorsement debacle: After simply saying that he “liked” Robert Kennedy jr on his podcast this happened:

  • Donald Trump makes a silly Truth post criticizing Joe Rogan after seeing a clip of him praising after Robert Kennedy Jr. It’s quite an amazing rant if you listen to it in whole, here’s the transcript and video of Joe, on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, that Trump reacted to, Joe rogan on Bobby Kennedy:

    Joe Rogan: (t)hat's politics, they do it on the left, they do it on the right, right? They Gaslight you, they manipulate you, they—they promote narratives, and um, the only one who's not doing that is Robert F Kennedy Jr.

    Bob Gymlan: You a fan?

    Joe Rogan: Yeah, I am a fan. Yeah, he's the only one that makes sense

    to me, he's the only one that… he doesn't attack people.

    He attacks actions and ideas, but he's much more reasonable, and intelligent.

    I mean, the guy was an Environmental Attorney and cleaned up the East River!

    He's—he's a legitimate guy you know? Before anybody started calling him an “antivaxxer”, which I thought he was, I thought he was this nut, this like conspiracy theorist nut!

    Until I read his book; I read “The REAL Anthony Fauci” and I'm like, what is… how much of this is real?

    Because if it's all real this is fucking insane!

    And we live in a world where, we're being manipulated by these health organizations that are being paid by the pharmaceutical drug interests, and these pharmaceutical drug companies are pumping these products out into the population, and telling us that we need them, and then making insane amounts of money!

    And then also, the government is in on it, and also, they share a patent with Moderna and also, they share profits and there's $700 million, 700!

    I mean, however much money was made, whatever the number is that these guys made off of these products, like this is, all of it is fucking crazy!

    There's the revolving door between the CDC & FDA, and then these pharmaceutical drug companies, so the people that make the regulations then go on to have these cushy jobs with the pharmaceutical drug corporation!

    It's like, “oh, nothing to see here!”

    It's like, it's open, it's right out in the open, right?

    And when he talks about all that stuff in his book, you're just like, what the fuck man?!

    If this wasn't true, he would be sued! So, it seems to be true, it's a scary thing!

    People don't want to talk about it! Because they don't want to be attacked you know? They don't want to be called an “antivaxxer” that's a big one, right?

    DJT makes a post on Truth Social referring to Joe, he says “It will be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC Ring??? MAGA2024,”

  • Joe has been a staple of the UFC since it was in its infancy. It would be really interesting to see which one they boo first.

  • Joe takes the “bigger man approach”, he says CHIIIIIIIILL!! I wasn’t endorsing anyone! END OF STORY…

• Kim Cheadle, Director of the Secret Service, appears in front of Congress to give her explanation of what went wrong in Butler, and every member of the committee, in an act of bipartisanship, usually saved for special occasions, such as banning things, supporting wars, and censoring speech, all agreed, “Kimberly Cheadle had to GO!”

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CONVENTION TIME: Republican Side

• July 15th-18th is the Republican National Convention, and quite a convention it was, my eyes were peeled that whole week. With Donald coming off an assassination attempt, his speech at the RNC is his first public appearance since it happened. Leading up to it there was a notion of unity… supposedly, but all unifying was over once the speeches started. Crazy enough however, is how opened the RNC was to reporters of all kinds, viewpoint, backgrounds, I started to think that’s how these things work, until the DNC came about, but that will come later.

  • Tucker gave the best speech of the night, a lot of people hate him, but I love the guy, he’s one of the few Republicans that fell for the Iraq War lies in ‘03, and actually, admit he fell for it and never runs from it. He says it at every opportunity, most of the others doubled down, he did not.

“Let's pay attention to what people actually want! And the lack of interest in that question, in Washington, is something that ultimately drove me out of the city after 35 years. Lawmakers stepping over the prostrate bodies of their fellow citizens, OD’ing on drugs, to go cast votes to send money to some foreign country. We've lost more Americans from drugs, in the past 4 years, than we lost in World War II! Yeah, Our bloodiest war! More than we lost in World War II. Does anybody care? It is pathetic! And do you hear a single word from Washington, about doing anything about it? We know where the drugs are coming from! We know the supply routes! The US military spent billions bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. You don't see our commander and chief suggesting that we use our military to protect our country, or the lives of its citizens! No! That's for Ukraine!”

• J.D. Vance is officially picked as Trump’s running mate. And his acceptance speech:

• And DJT’s first speech since Butler, Pennsylvania:

• But the best part of the RNC were the journalists covering it, and all my favorites were there, besides Glenn who was covered by another favorite of mine, :

Where he goes from congressman to congressman finding out what they think about the outlook of war policies, and & are doing morning and evening streams live from the RNC:

• Day One

• Day Two-Morning:

• Day Two-Evening:

And this was a special one with all 3, I think either early day 3, or late day 3:

• Day Three-Joe Biden Emergency Stream.

  • That morning, of the RNC, day three, reporting came out that 23 senior members of the Democratic Party, including Democrat loyalist and highest-ranking Democrat, Adam Schiff, have called for Joe Biden to step down, at the same time that this interview with BET was released:

• Back to the RNC, Day Four:

The Unofficially “Official” Dropout

On day four:

• Thursday, July 18th, the conference closes as they always do with the speech from the nominee, Donald J. Trump. Either right before he went on stage—as some have said—or during, Mark Halperin, a Washington insider and Reporter, releases a column saying, Joe Biden is stepping down. The letter to the public was currently being drafted.

• Friday, July 19th- CHAIR OF THE BIDEN/HARRIS CAMPAIGN, JEN O'MALLEY DILLON appears on Morning Joe and says Joe is as committed as ever to stay in the race:

Unfortunately, I can’t find the video, it seems to of been scrubbed, but on Sunday, July 22nd, the morning news shows a Biden Aide furiously arguing “He’s not dropping out! He’s the nominee, now get over it!” They were still planning fundraisers as recent as that morning, then the shows go off and all hell proceeds in the White House wing, and the media wing. It was a flurry, but only one person I cared to hear from on this…

Racket News

Who's Running This Country?

If it happened in Belarus, Burundi, or Myanmar, Joe Biden’s blitzkrieg withdrawal from the presidential race would have inspired eye rolls. We jettisoned an incumbent president’s re-election campaign with all the pomp of an NFL practice squad transaction, announcing the move via a blip of a social media post. Only in America is anyone tempted to take such head-scratching events at face value…

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2 years ago · 1566 likes · 882 comments · Matt Taibbi

And the same way I broke up with my first girlfriend because she didn’t approve of my benzo intake at the high school football games, Joe Biden dumped us with a letter, the poor man’s ‘text message’…

But as points out here, shit doesn’t seem right. Signature looks different, although mine changes all the time, but mine isn’t important. I just squiggle to get it done, and where’s the seal, this was the biggest announcement of your “hundred-year career” Mr. President! Who’s twisting your arm here!?

Seymour Hersh

LEAVING LAS VEGAS

In late 1967, as the Vietnam War was raging and President Lyndon B. Johnson was becoming increasingly unpopular, I was recruited to handle the press and write speeches for Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, the only Democrat gutsy enough to run against the Democratic president…

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2 years ago · 1390 likes · Seymour Hersh

So, as RNC weekend comes to an end Joe Biden officially, in the most unofficial capacity, passes the buck on re-election, to the most obvious loser Kamala Harris, his Vice President.

In 2020, she was crushed by one bad debate and got 0 primary votes. Her only qualification was Joe had chosen her, but why had he chosen her. We look back to Joe’s campaign of 2020:

There was the charge of racism from his decimation of the black community after his ‘94 Crime Bill. People wanted to know if he was that same racist man. He’d been Vice under Barack Obama, but people also said he was picked for that to make the “White’s happy”.

Joe appeared on the Breakfast Club with Charlamagne to reach black voters, and they want to know what they get for their vote. After hemming and hawing with him for upwards of 20 minutes, in an interview that seemed to be going okay for Joe, he, in a moment of mistaken arrogance makes a statement that would tell everyone everything they needed to know and would haunt Joe for the rest of his career, “If you don’t know whether you should vote for Donald Trump or me, you ain’t black!” In shock, Charla stammered, ******“wel—ll, it’s not that Vice President Biden, we want to know that you are gonna earn our vote.”

It was very obvious what this implied to black people. They owe him their vote; they owe it to the Democratic party. Their vote is already bought and paid for; they don’t need to offer black people anything for their vote because they already have it all. Joe Biden has always believed this way, nothing new there, but his campaign knew the optics immediately, so very quickly the campaign came out with this statement, “Joe Biden pledges that who he picks for his running mate will be a woman of color.” And the way running mates go, is the Vice President must be less impressive than the President, otherwise they would be at the head of the ticket. So, he was immediately taking on, that by design, not merit, his running mate must be a woman of color who is less impressive than Joe Biden. They knew just where to find this unicorn. Kamala Harris.

So, Kamala Harris’ run for the White House begins almost immediately with her refusing interviews for 2 weeks in the media, and zero in unfriendly media, while doing odd little PR videos such as the strangest phone call to Joe Biden on camera, you know, the one where Joe Biden pretends to hang up and she pretends to not know it:

• The media begins whitewashing the Vice President’s record, saying things like “She was never the ‘Border Czar’” as they had bragged on her being deemed just months before.

  This the close to the most action-packed month in politics this century, nothing could match that, right?

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  August

• Excellent speech at Young Americans for Liberty by Dave Smith:

• After an attack in Southport, Britain leave 8 dead of knife attacks at a “Taylor Swift-Themed” dance, Keir Starmer addresses the question, “What about Taylor Swift music make these kids act out so violently???”

Bad joke, he actually called for a combination of intelligence and facial recognition to stop these people before even consider breaking the law.

These thugs are mobile, they move from community to community, and we must have a policing response that can do the same shared intelligence, wider deployment of facial recognition technology and preventative action: criminal behavior orders to restrict their movements before they can even board a train, in just the same way that we do with football hooligans…

• Continuing the move of picking running mates less impressive than the head of the ticket, to make the head of the ticket seem impressive, Tim Walz, ex-Coviditarian extraordinaire and Governor of the “freest” state in the Union, Minnesota is picked as Kamala Harris’ running mate.

Just a quick Vice recap, Joe Biden was picked by Obama to make Obama seem more impressive, in turn, Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris to make him seem more impressive, next to her. Now, Kamala is up to bat. She had many good options to choose from, including Shapiro, and my governor Andy Beshear, who is a beloved Democrat in a Republican state, she had good options but they were ALL more impressive than her, so she picked “snitch-line”, “stolen valor”, “Lies about being in China during Tiananmen square”, “ASSISTANT” Coach Tim Waltz, and a piece of work, he is.

They called it “reaching out to the mid-west”. Unfortunately, the mid-west let the call go to voicemail.

• Kamala Harris begins her campaign based on the following:

  • Joy. Lots of joy.

  • “What I said during primary season, I didn’t really mean.”

  • I’m a very tough prosecutor, much tougher than Donald Trump.

  • Donald Trump is a fascist, equal to Hitler.

  • Don’t let me forget her famous tagline, “Unburdened by what has been,” and “I’m from a Middle-Class family.”

• Uncover DC, an independent publication reported that the TSA has been following Tulsi Gabbard with the Marshall Service, using their Quiet Skies Program. Substack’s own , ’s publication catches up with Miss Gabbard to confirm this story, and it is true.

Racket News

American Stasi: Tulsi Gabbard Confirms "Quiet Skies" Nightmare

Tuesday night, while self-styled Democratic nominee Kamala Harris pledged to defend “freedom, compassion, and the rule of law” to cheers in Philadelphia, Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard described being tracked by teams of government agents in a surveillance regime more reminiscent of East Germany than a free country. Whistleblowing Air Marshals…

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2 years ago · 4643 likes · 854 comments · Matt Taibbi

• First look at the, now fully formed, relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk takes place on August 12th, by way of an interview on X of Trump done exclusively by Elon and apparently Europe threatened Elon with the “Digital Services Act” for conducting this interview:

• Courtesy of :

  Public

  Media Elites Are So Self-Obsessed And Power-Mad They Lie Even To Themselves

  You might have seen this amazing exchange between CBS Late Night host Stephen Colbert and CNN’s Kaitlyn Collins on Monday night…

  Listen now

  2 years ago · 693 likes · 121 comments · Michael Shellenberger

• Here’s the censorious letter sent to Elon by Thierry Breton, warning Elon ahead of time about the interview above:

  

As always, Taibbi and Kirn covered this the best:

• Now for the next political conference taking place on the other side, the Democratic National Convention takes place starting on 8/20/24.

  • The theme of the conference? Joy, Indifference, and Censorship, meaning Joy for all invited, indifference for anyone not, and censorship of all institutions not known to play ball. Oh, and lest we forget, Trump is a fascist. One thing was so clear, the RNC puts on a show and the DNC, people only watched because they also watched the RNC and don’t want to feel like a partisan hack.

• It started with the worst. Night one after numerous unknowns, the first face I recognized was Kamala Harris doing a quick 3-minute drop-in at 2:56:45 into a 6-hour broadcast. Then, AOC at 3:23:00 when she made her now infamous statement selling out Palestinians, “she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home” as the DNC was being protested for not allowing a single Palestinian speaker to the stage. AOC is opening for devil lady herself, Hillary Clinton, a face we never get tired of seeing… The real controversy of the night, inside the convention is Joe Biden being left on night one with the nobodies and washed-up whites, at the very end of the convention night after most have tuned out and they cut his time, which I’m sure they weren’t upset about that:

  The keynote address, in which the elderly president officially passed on the baton to Kamala Harris and wound up a 50-plus year career in politics, was delivered in the middle of the night. He began at almost 10:30 p.m. local time at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago, Illinois, on Monday, which meant those hoping to watch until he finished speaking had to stay up until after midnight on the East Coast.

  That was night one.

  • Night two: you know these were best covered by taking a look at our favorite journalists-at-large on America this week from with Substack’s own & :

    • Michelle Obama, the hundred-millionaire, said, in other words “rich people aren’t paying enough, but not her. Those other rich people.”

    • Barack Hussein Obama:

  • Night Three (still sucks):

    • Tim Walz and Oprah:

      • Bill Clinton:

  • Night Four (Is it over yet?!):

    • (Dixie) Chicks sang the national anthem:

    • Gretchen Whitmer (of Coviditarian fame):

    • They hyped up a Beyonce appearance to keep people watching through the fourth night.

    • Kamala Harris’ acceptance fell short of any future plans:

  • Outside the convention it wasn’t so joyful. This is where the real action was taking place:

  • All this reminds us of another time the DNC was protested in Chicago, that time was for what we could call a genocide in Vietnam:

    “Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history.”

    That was the issue being protested outside the convention in 1968. This time the issue is, what every protestor on the ground, and members of the Israeli government, have referred to as a genocide in Palestine. At this moment, Donald Trump, who is supposedly, “a fascist dictator”, is trying to stop the war, which was not even being considered inside the DNC. They wouldn’t even allow a Palestinian speaker in their lineup, which was what part of the protests were about. Robert F. Kennedy was the great hope, and he was murdered as soon as they started to see hope.

    1968 was a fucking terrible year. It was one of the worst years we can ever imagine. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. There were riots about the anger over having a modern prophet murdered for his [search for] justice. Then two months later Bobby Kennedy, the only candidate articulating what America might be, was murdered. And in Chicago [at the Democratic National Convention] everybody was, as journalists, and as political officials, violently beaten. Then Nixon won after all of that. It was ridiculous. [But] to take all of the emotion of the present and throw it at the past, and deal with how hard it was then, was easier than dealing with how hard it is now.

    • Hunter S. Thompson on the Convention in 1968: "I went there as a journalist,” he recalled in Kingdom of Fear, “but I left Chicago in a state of hysterical angst, convinced by what I’d seen that we were all in very bad trouble.”34 Years,” he later recalled: “I still have trouble when I think about Chicago. That week at the Convention changed everything I’d ever taken for granted about this country and my place in it.”

  • The single “real” moment that came from the entire convention was from an unexpected source, here’s Chris Cuomo reporting for NewsNation:

• Damn near immediately, after whatever high they might’ve gotten from the dullest convention in history, news was stolen by RFK jr. announcing the end of his presidential run and his full endorsement of the Republican Party, which lead to the greatest political alliance in American history. A lifetime Democrat had joined ranks with the Trump Administration forming the MAHA Movement, Make America Healthy Again, and gave a speech that should be remembered through the ages. I’m going to include a link to the full transcript of the speech, because if the video ever disappears, the text will remain. His speech is piece by piece how the Democratic Party lost the people in the 2020’s (if you’d prefer to read it or the video doesn’t work, follow the link following the video, this speech is a historical record. (“HEAR THAT FUTURE HISTORIANS!? THIS ONE’s for THE BOOKS):

  • Video:

• Full Transcription:

So, this was a bombshell story at the time and there was a media-propaganda machine immediately unleashed on Kennedy the moment he made this announcement. Funny, they didn’t go after him for stating the truth, that NATO has carried on an encirclement campaign against Russia since the 90’s. They didn’t have to, they had enough ammo already in the chamber to take him out, so they thought, but first there was a backstory leading up to this announcement, let’s talk about that first:

• Bobby’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has been a big money donor to the Democratic party for years. She ran in their circles. She is known as a Bay Area lawyer, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

  • “According to Politico”, she was “raised on welfare in a single-parent household in Oakland, California, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant, Shanahan went from a successful career as a patent lawyer and entrepreneur to marrying into uber-wealth after meeting Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a yoga festival. The two divorced in 2022.”

    • She has described herself as a “progressive through and through.”

    She has donated over $250,000 to different criminal justice reform efforts in California over the past decade.

    • She was a major donor toward Measure J in Los Angeles County, a ballot initiative that passed in 2020 and will require more funds to be diverted away from the carceral system and toward “community programs and alternatives to incarceration”.

    • Shanahan, who struggled with infertility, has invested heavily in the Bucks Institute Center for Female Reproductive Longevity and

    Equality through Bia-Echo. She has pledged $100 million toward research in reproductive longevity to the Bucks Institute and other entities. The center is focused on understanding the molecular basis of “ovarian aging, including impaired DNA repair, metabolic/energetic disorders, and mitochondrial dysfunction.”

  • So, with all that being said, it was big news when she announced on the Impact Theory Podcast w/ Entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu, that her and Bobby were struggling to decide if they should keep going with their campaign or drop out and throw their support behind Donald Trump:

Uh, the DNC made that impossible for us. They have banned us, shadow-banned us, kept us off stages, manipulated polls, used lawfare against us, sued us in every possible state. They've even planted insiders into our campaign! To, um, disrupt it, and to create actual legal issues for us. I mean, the extent by which the sabotage they've unleashed upon us is, it’s mind-blowing! I mean, we're still learning new ways that they have sabotaged us. I really wanted a fair shot at this election, and I believed in the America that I, as a little girl, pledged allegiance to…. (Later on)

…I would say that I trust the future of this country more, under the leadership of the Trump’s and the Thiel’s and the J.D. Vance’s, than I do right now of the Harris's and Reid Hoffman's….

…. definitely not in talks with Harris, definitely never have brought up this idea of an endorsement with Harris. Definitely have never brought up a cabinet position with Harris. So, those are the MSM (Mainstream Media), just taking something, and spinning it in a way that makes you know their chosen political group. Good fake news. With that being said, we have offered to talk to everybody about what your policies are, who's going to be in your cabinet, do you want to hear any of our takes on policy, and what might work. We've up sourced our platform very proudly, and I will say that Trump has taken genuine, sincere interest, in our policies around chronic disease. He takes it seriously. For that reason, I think it behooves us to sit, and see if we can actually make some real change…... AND FINALLY…

…I need to focus on a vision that goes beyond November, and if that means that we stay in, and you know, there's benefits to staying in. If we get over 5% of the vote, we actually establish ourselves as a party. 71% of Americans want a strong third party with a real shot at winning. There're even public funds available if we get over 5% of the vote, so we could get, I think it's like $13.5 million dollars in public funds to keep the party going, and that's, you know, that's worth something. That means that we can position for a real third-party election in 2028. Where we don't have to go around and spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot access. Which means that we can spend all of that time and money campaigning. So, you know, there's two options that we're looking at, and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz presidency. Because we draw votes from Trump, or more votes from Trump, or we walk away right now, and join forces with Donald Trump and you know, we walk away from that, and we explain to our base why we're making this decision. Um… not easy, clearly.

So, this was background news to the Democratic National Convention. RFK keeps it quiet all week, comes out with it on Sunday, then Monday comes the propaganda storm:

Then, the very best came from The Atlantic:

• “RFK Jr. was my Drug Dealer,” hahahahahahahaha! It was like, “ooooh, sick burn.” The guy’s in Narcotics Anonymous, and, by the way, not anonymous about his past with addiction. If you’re not subscribed to “The Atlantic”, don’t bother subscribing for this, I’ll save ya the money. I read it before my subscription ran out:

  • The author is in college.

  • He wants to score a gram of coke.

  • A friend introduces him to Bobby.

  • They both live on campus and RFK is selling coke.

  • He sells him a gram.

  • End of story… like what? Nothing weird? Nothing crazy? But it continues:

  • I think every single establishment publication put out a hit-piece from several different authors following immediately following his endorsement. I’ve been working on this piece for two months, there’d no way they didn’t have these already banked:

• Tulsi gives her MAGA endorsement after the Biden Administration’s “Quiet Skies” TSA Program was surveilling her and treating her as a terrorist:

  Racket News

  The Worm Turns: House, Senate Investigate TSA Surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard

  Two weeks ago, former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard found out she’d been placed on the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” watch list, and put under “Special Mission Coverage” surveillance by Federal Air Marshals. A Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves who enlisted and served in Iraq after 9/11, Gabbard was almost speechless at reports of her placement on a terror list. She felt “the deepest sense of betrayal…

  Read more

  2 years ago · 1832 likes · 543 comments · Matt Taibbi

  Two weeks ago, former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard found out she’d been placed on the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” watch list and put under “Special Mission Coverage” surveillance by Federal Air Marshals. A Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves who enlisted and served in Iraq after 9/11, Gabbard was almost speechless at reports of her placement on a terror list. She felt “the deepest sense of betrayal,” she said, adding: “It cuts to the core." The Worm Turns: House, Senate Investigate TSA Surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard

  Since then, multiple Air Marshals came forward as whistleblowers and their firm, Empower Oversight, sent letters to eight House and Senate Committees of jurisdiction. Each was asked to “get to the bottom” of why Gabbard was surveilled and look into Quiet Skies more generally. Today, Racket learned members of at least three of those Committees decided to investigate, giving deadlines to Transportation Security Administrator David Pekoske to answer a range of queries, and not just about Gabbard.

  Gabbard herself also just heard from the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP) report she completed back on July 31st. The letter doesn’t confirm or deny that Gabbard was ever on a list but does say “corrections” were made that may assist in avoiding “misidentification” errors in the future. As the Department wrote:

  DHS TRIP can neither confirm nor deny any information about you which may be within federal watchlists… However, we have made any corrections to records that our inquiries determined were necessary, including, as appropriate, notations that may assist in avoiding incidents of misidentification.

  Leading to this:

• Next Zuck comes all the way out of the badass closet and proves what we’ve been yelling about for three years, that they swore wasn’t real. Zuckerberg writes a public letter to Jim Jordan exposing the truth. Being, the Biden administration was pressuring Facebook to censor posts that were “True but inconvenient.” And he’s ready to defy them this time:

  Racket News

  Zuckerberg Defies the Borg

  On April 9th, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reminding him of a subpoena in search of communications between Meta, the FBI, and “alleged foreign influence or election integrity.” Jordan’s office subsequently released a …

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  2 years ago · 2415 likes · 868 comments · Matt Taibbi

For many, me included, this was a small chunk of vindication after 3 years of being called crazy. The truth always comes out in the wash.

We close out the month with the long-awaited first interview of Kamala Harris, as the Democratic nominee, complete, with her tag-team partner, Tim Waltz, who sits in the back, looking awkward, waiting to ruin everything, and he delivered. Professionals at using empty words, whole paragraphs that mean nothing:

She totally flubbed the easiest question, “What are your plans for day one?”

And oh, boy! I forgot about this next one:

BASH: Governor Walz, the country is just starting to get to know you. I want to ask you a question about how you’ve described your service in the National Guard.

WALZ: Yeah.

BASH: You said that you carried weapons in war, but you have never deployed actually in a war zone. A campaign official said that you misspoke. Did you?

WALZ: Well, first of all, I’m incredibly proud. I’ve done 24 years of wearin’ uniform of this country. Equally proud of my service in a public-school classroom, whether it’s Congress or — or the governor. My record speaks for itself, but I think people are coming to get to know me. I — I speak like they do. I speak candidly. I wear my emotions on my sleeves, and I speak especially passionately about — about our children being shot in schools and around — around guns. So, I think people know me. They know who I am. They know where — where my heart is, and again, my record has been out there for over 40 years to — to speak for itself.

BASH: And the — the idea that you said that you were in war, did you misspeak, as the campaign has said?

WALZ: Yeah, I said — we were talking about in this case, this was after a school shooting, the ideas of carrying these weapons of war. And my wife the English teacher told me my grammars not always correct. But again, if it’s not this, it’s an attack on my children for showing love for me, or it’s an attack on my dog. I’m not gonna do that, and the one thing I’ll never do is I’ll never demean another member’s service in any way. I never have and I never will.

BASH: And just one other question, because, again, this is all new. This was not — however many days ago, this was not on either of your bingo cards, especially yours. You had to clarify that you had said that you and your wife used IVF, but it turned out you used a different kind of fertility in order to have children. And then when you ran for Congress in 2006, your campaign repeatedly made false statements about a 1995 arrest for drunk and reckless driving. What do you say to voters who aren’t sure whether they can take you at your word?

WALZ: Well, I’ve been very public. I think they can see — my students come out — former folks I’ve served with, and they — and they do, they vouch for me. I certainly own my mistakes when I make ‘em. The one thing I’ll tell you is I wished in this country we wouldn’t have to do this. I spoke about our infertility issues ‘cause its hell, and families know this. And I — I spoke about the treatments that were available to us that — that had those beautiful children there. That’s quite a contrast in folks that are trying to — to take those rights away from us.

And so, I — I think people know who I am. They know that record. They’ve seen that I’ve taught thousands of students. I’ve been out there. And I — I won’t apologize for speaking passionately, whether it’s guns in schools or protection of reproductive rights. The contrast could not be clearer between what we’re running against. The vice president’s position on this has been clear. And I think most Americans get it, if you’ve been through that. I don’t think they’re cutting hairs on IVF or IUI. I think what they’re cutting hairs on is an abortion ban and the ability to be able to deny families the chance to have a beautiful child.

Jeez, you hear that at the end? He can’t even call Trump a “Fascist” right, hahahahahahahaha! What a joke. “They know me!” “I talk like them!” What. The. Fuck!

Gah! August! I can’t get out of August! Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, an app that I use at least a couple times a week to see what happening in Ukraine. The guy was arrested in France for posts that other people made on his platform:

Racket News

France: What Happened to You, Man?

On Monday, October 21, 2013, the U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry in Paris on urgent business. Le Monde published excerpts of revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden showing that across thirty days, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted “70.3 million recordings of French citizens’ telephone data,” revealing surveillance on a “massive scale…

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2 years ago · 1230 likes · 558 comments · Matt Taibbi

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SEPTEMBER (wake me up when it ends…)

A good start for the month, courtesy of :

American liberalism railed against Bush conservatives who said those who didn’t break the law had nothing to hide. Now, once-liberal voices are tripping over each other to make more extreme versions of the same argument. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich published a guide to how to “rein in” Elon Musk in The Guardian that includes a recommendation that “regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest,” adding cheerfully that “global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov.” Following up its July article about how “The First Amendment is Out of Control,” the New York Times also has a piece titled, “The Constitution is Sacred. Is it Also Dangerous?”

My old employers at Rolling Stone described defenders of Durov as “far-right extremists” and Musk as a “grandstanding” charlatan seeking to evade “consequences.” All this is in line with views of Kamala Harris, who’s argued that “there has to be a responsibility that is placed” on social media sites to prevent misuse of speech “privileges.” The Harris take previewed the complaint this year by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government,” despite this being its purpose.

Racket News

Liberalism Removes its Mask

In the Washington Post today, under the headline, “Musk and Durov are facing the revenge of the regulators…

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2 years ago · 2219 likes · 906 comments · Matt Taibbi

• Netanyahu, sabotaging a possible ceasefire deal:

• Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the most brilliant truth-teller, almost a whistleblower from the depths of the swamp, comes up to tell us what actually happened with America and Russia in the 90’s that led us to where we are today with Ukraine, and who was there during the fall of the USSR, discuss what he got wrong and why, this discussion brought to life by Counter Points, from the Breaking Points YouTube Channel:

(f)rom the first moments after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the US government prepared for war with the Soviet Union. They turned on what was an ally during the war and made it (in)to the great enemy. We came close to global annihilation between 1945 and 1989 in the Cold War. I, uh, played a role as a, much younger, economist, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Cold War was ending, or so I thought. I advised the Polish government. I advised the Gorbachev government, his economic team. I advised the Yeltsin government. I advised the (Leonid) Kuchma government of Ukraine. So, I was there during that period, had front row seats, at least. And what I saw was that the United States was eager to cooperate, and to support the likes of Poland, for example, or the Central European countries, that had been under the Soviet Sphere, and Soviet domination, but when it came to the Soviet Union, and then, later to Russia, uh, they remained an enemy. Even at the end of the Cold War. Completely contrary to what I saw, what I understood, what I believed, till today. That what Gorbachev and Yeltsin were offering, was normalcy, peace, cooperation, the chance for a very different, and vastly safer World.

Well, the United States would have none of it, in fact. What the US wanted was domination. It wanted hegemony. It wanted “full spectrum dominance”, as the Defense Department famously put it. What the US wanted was, expanding NATO. Even breaking apart Russia, because that was a part of the CIA ideas, that we can intervene in the periphery of Russia, and perhaps, break it apart, on ethnic lines. Just like the Soviet Union had broken apart.

So, this is what I did not understand, as I was trying to give economic advice at the end of the 1980’s, and early 90’s, my advice was help! Help the Soviet Union, help Russia, help! Because that's what, I understand, uh, good economics, and good geopolitics and security to be, but all my recommendations were rejected! Basically, whenever I said help the Soviet Union, or help Russia. (They said) NO! (What) are you kidding?! No way we're gonna to do that! Uh, and uh, I didn't quite believe them! That they would be so blind to the usefulness of this, but you know, if you look back and, uh, and now with a lot of documents that—are, have been exposed, and explained, we never ended the Cold War in 1991, we continued to prosecute the war against Russia!

Already by 1994, in the Clinton Administration, the decision was taken that NATO would enlarge, contrary to promises solemnly given in 1990 to Gorbachev, and to the Russian leaders, to Yeltsin, and others, that we would “not move one inch Eastward.” 1994, Clinton already agrees, not only will NATO move Eastward, but it will also move to Ukraine, to the 2,100-kilometer border with Russia, and that is the provocation that has gotten us into this mess. —Jeffrey Sachs, Counter Points

Racket News

A True Shock? Economist Jeffrey Sachs Reveals Secret at Heart of U.S.-Russian Relations

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2 years ago · 1255 likes · 270 comments · Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Taibbi

Racket News

What I Got Wrong About "Shock Therapy"

In Moscow on the morning of July 24th, 1993 I fixed a cup of tea, rubbed the hangover out of my eyes, and walked out to look for breakfast. I was living then above the Metro station at VDNKh, the ex-Soviet equivalent maybe of New York’s World’s Fair grounds, and saw right away something was wrong. Old women on the street were bawling, a group of men was shouting at a beat cop, and sidewalks were full of people walking in a daze, as if a neutron bomb had gone off…

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2 years ago · 1313 likes · 421 comments · Matt Taibbi

• Russiagate reaches my information landscape by way of “Right Wing” Podcasts targeting youtubers who I’ve been listening to for years.

  

  Just, by the way, I’ve never used them as a source, they’re just good, entertaining, reliable shows. By the way, it’s not propaganda if it’s the truth. Maybe something comes out that works in favor of another countries position, it does not matter. If it’s true, it’s true.

  • So, Tenet Media was the company. The founder’s name is Lauren Chen, I’ve listened to podcasts with her, never heard anything overtly “Pro-Russian” but apparently, she received millions of dollars as sponsorship money to start an online media publication, which she used to pay some of the biggest creators to produce content to be uploaded to the Tenet Media YouTube Channel, and I am a regular listener to all of the talent, HEY! We cover all sides here! This is an Objective News Source, so, I might have to consume some “Russian talking points” to get the full story!

  • All joking aside, I don’t know how they came up with the names of the talent listed by the media because they are not listed anywhere in the indictment. But, quickly after the indictment came out, they all outed themselves on X, immediately posting about it. They are Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, all respectively right wing, except Tim Pool, who, who knows, he got famous livestreaming the Occupy protests. Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, God rest her soul, once named him the “Busiest creator on YouTube.” As a regular viewer of it, Tim Pool has a regular show, Timcast IRL, which has its own YouTube channel. It’s on M-F 8-10 PM Eastern Standard Time, really big, been on for years, and a daily morning news show, been around even longer. A couple years ago he started another show, a debate show, called The Culture War, that hosts debates on everything from skateboarding to Israel-Palestine, it was on his personal YouTube channel, named “Tim Pool,” every Friday. One week I tried to find it and didn’t, I searched for it and it popped up on this Tenet Media YouTube Channel, I thought, “hmm… Why is that?” Couldn’t find an answer, so I gave up on the question. Now I know, apparently, he was getting paid $150K to put the show on the Tenet Media channel.

  • To be clear: It makes it crystal clear in the indictment that the talent was totally unaware that the money was even coming from Russians. They had no idea. The Russians had paid, who’s known as “Founder one” and “Founder two,” through a fabricated person, and fake business, which didn’t appear to be Russian. And all of the talent has corroborated these facts. The only one who might’ve known was the founder’s, Lauren Chen and her husband, but fuck all the hater’s. I could turn this Substack into a damn, successful, multimedia news publication with $150k, and I’d take the donation from any nationality. If you’re telling the truth, you’re telling the truth, no matter who it benefits.

• September 12th, the wind is murdering our sea creatures:

  Public

  Wind Industry Is Killing Sea Life On East Coast, Fishermen Say

  Over the last three years, we have been documenting the ecological catastrophe quietly unfolding on the East Coast. With the support of the US government, the wind industry is killing whales and other sea life. If nothing changes, the wind industry will make the North Atlantic right whale go extinct…

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  2 years ago · 383 likes · 55 comments · Donna Andersen

  WHAT WORLD IS THIS?!?

• September 17th: A man is arrested at an apparent campsite in the edge of the woods at a golf course where Donald Trump was playing golf. Discovered by the Secret Service, he was caught with his rifle, setup and pointed at the spot that Donald Trump would soon be teeing off. Upon further investigation into his social media imprint, it became clear that he was there to assassinate President Donald J. Trump.

  

According to the AP:

Ryan Wesley Routh portrayed himself online as a man who built housing for homeless people in Hawaii, tried to recruit fighters for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia, and described his support and then disdain for Donald Trump — even urging Iran to kill him.

“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published book in 2023, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” which described the former president as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.

Routh wrote that he once voted for Trump and must take part of the blame for the “child that we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless.”

Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday after authorities say he stalked the GOP presidential nominee as he golfed in West Palm Beach, Florida, with an SKS-style rifle in an apparent assassination attempt thwarted by the Secret Service.

• Routh also made 19 small donations totaling $140 since 2019 through ActBlue, a political action committee that distributes donations to Democratic candidates, according to federal campaign finance records.

  • Actblue was also the same committee that Thomas Crooks, the first attempted assassin, had donated $15 to before he made the attempt. I’ve not heard anyone else make this connection. Why?!

  • In a tweet in June 2020, after the police killing of George Floyd, Routh said then-President Trump could win reelection by issuing an executive order to prosecute police misconduct. However, in recent years, his posts appear to have soured on Trump, and he expressed support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

• Routh conveyed his support for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying in April 2024, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot, and we cannot lose,” according to The Associated Press. And following the first assassination attempt on Trump in July, Routh is said to have urged Biden and Harris to visit Butler, Pennsylvania, where the shooting took place, to visit those injured, reportedly saying that “Trump will never do anything for them.”

  • He was also charged and prosecuted for “Illegal Possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction” in the early 2000’s stemming from him possessing a rifle, modified to become fully automatic, with the plan of using it for a mass shooting.”

• The campaign heats up as Trump starts to embrace the Podcast World starting with Theo Von on August 20th:

These three podcasts led to the biggest electoral win, and biggest comeback in American history. It happened to me; I felt it firsthand. I hated the guy, and throughout these three podcasts I started to understand who this person is. And Americans across the country who considered Donald J Trump out of bounds for them, this was the final, should I say Vibe Shift?

• September ends with Rage Against the War Machine and Rescue the Republic. It was such a big event that I made a separate post just for this entry. This was a bipartisan coalition of MAHA, MAGA, and Independant voices alike speaking out against the corporatization of war, health, censorship, and safety for the good of all people. Organized by Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying of the Dark Horse Podcast and ’s here on Substack and Angela McArdle, the Libertarian National Chairperson (Now former).

To Be Continued…

This was supposed to close out 2024, but this was such an eventful year! Another Volume, it will have to be. Stay Tuned for “2024: The Vibe Shift”

As always, thank you for reading, I am grateful for every person who notices my writing exists, you’re making my dreams come true.

Editor-in-Chief

“Speech is mentioned in “reputable” media only as a possible vector for the informational disease known as misinformation. Soon all that will remain of the issue for most people, is a little flutter of nerves reminding them not to think about it.

“That's why it's important to understand the endgame of the censors is not controlling speech, they're already doing that. The end game is getting us to forget that we ever had anything to say.” —Matt Taibbi, Rescue the Republic

“Bob Dylan, late in his career and, well past the peak of his powers, recorded the forgettable blues tune “you got to serve somebody”. The conceit was that no matter who you are, laborer or King, you have to bend the knee to something, or someone. A lot of people seem to believe this. And as the election approaches, like a meteor set to strike the last of our illusion of “American Exceptionalism”, with its choice between a “half-bright narcissist” and a “Deep State hologram”, we can see formerly sturdy knees Hit the Dirt, one by one, and formerly sensible mouths speaking the most ridiculous justifications for their service to one of these two exemplars of social collapse.” —Russel Dobular, Rage Against the War Machine, 2024

On September 28th & 29th of 2024 a unified group of intellectuals and activists from all across the political spectrum met on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, across from the Washington Monument in Washington, DC to Rage Against the War Machine and Rescue the Republic.

A creation of Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying in collaboration with Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle this group of America First conservatives, Anti-war leftists, Unity partytarians, Intellectuals of the “Dark Web”, peace activists, free speech activists, and all-around warriors for Civil Rights, and thousands in attendance, was just what America needed in Fall, 2024. Real heroes, what the most prominent of the intellectual class would look like if we had a more perfect Union. With professions ranging from Psychology to Investigative Journalism to Comedian to Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Attorneys—on the environments side—and every one of them have an astute ability to carry out political analysis in their own right.

Rage Against the War Machine was held on the first day and was year two of a, hopefully, annual event. Although, last year it had more name recognition, supposedly because some people did not want to appear against the war in Gaza, I don’t know if that is true since most of the names that didn’t appear are known to be sufficiently critical of the Israeli Government, I think it might be more possible that some couldn’t appear at Rescue the Republic and Rage, also. And others didn’t want to be attached to so many “right-wingers” this close to the election. I’m sure some were just busy, nevertheless, they were both memorable to say the least, I’d have given anything to be there. Maybe next time I will.

Last year’s Rage Against the War Machine only corporate media coverage was, as you can guess, very negative! Someone took photos of “Pro-Kremlin” flags and said it was a Russian operation, apparently someone did have a Russian flag, but due to that and the appearance of , and people like Madea Benjamin was slandered into not showing and Scott Ritter, who I consider to be someone who the Military-Industrial Complex came after over his pushback on the “WMD’s in Iraq” in the leadup to the invasion. He was, after all, one of the weapon’s inspectors who knew that Iraq had been compliant with all of their inspections. By the way, Iraq had volunteered to let the inspectors in, but according to official reports they had resisted, knew better. And just like Russel Brand, and Julian Assange, he was hit the crimes that it’s hard to come back from. Sexual crimes. And for that, it gave to corporate slugs more ammo, but we should all know what their real disagreement was, an attack in Washington on the Complex that built it.

So, anyone could guess that I thought had the best speech overall between the two events, but it was really fucking good. It had history, you learned new shit, and in a clear, concise way, you come to the other side of it knowing what he said was true.

Second in line was of the podcast on the first day, Rage Against the War Machine. They were all quite amazing, but those two really did it for me.

Racket News

My Speech in Washington: "Rescue the Republic"

Thank you…

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2 years ago · 4503 likes · 1049 comments · Matt Taibbi

Thank you.

This is every amateur speaker’s dream, to follow Russell Brand. Thanks a lot, God!

I was once taught you should always open an important speech by making reference to a shared experience.

So what do all of us at “Rescue the Republic” have in common? Nothing!

In a pre-Trump universe chimpanzees would be typing their fourth copy of Hamlet before RFK Jr., Robert Malone, Zuby, Tulsi Gabbard, Russell, Bret Weinstein and I would organically get together for any reason, much less an event like this.

True, everyone speaking has been censored. The issues were all different, but everyone disagreed with “authoritative voices” about something.

Saying no is very American. From “Don’t Tread on Me!” to “Nuts” to “You Cannot Be Serious!” defiance is in our DNA.

Now disagreement is seen as threat, and according to John Kerry, must be “hammered out of existence.” The former Presidential candidate just complained at a World Economic Forum meeting that “it’s really hard to govern” and “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to the important work of hammering out unhealthy choices.

In the open he said this! Kerry added that it’s “really hard to build consensus,” and told Forum members they need to “win the right to govern” and “be free to implement change.”

What do they need to be free of? The First Amendment, yes, but more importantly: us. Complainers. That’s our shared experience. We are obstacles to consensus.

My name is Matt Taibbi. I’ve been a reporter for 35 years, covering everything from Pentagon accounting to securities fraud to drone warfare. My little son a few years ago asked what I do. I said, “Daddy writes about things that are so horrible they’re interesting.”

Two years ago, I was invited by Elon Musk to look at internal correspondence at Twitter. This led to stories called the Twitter Files whose main revelation was a broad government effort to suppress speech.

I was invited to talk about risks to the First Amendment, but to spare the suspense: that battle is lost. State censorship is a fact in most of the West. In February our European allies began observing the Digital Services Act, which requires Internet platforms to enforce judgments of state-appointed content reviewers called “trusted flaggers.”

Everything we found in the Twitter Files fits in a sentence: an alphabet soup of enforcement agencies informally is already doing pretty much the same thing as Europe’s draconian new law.

Now, is it against the law when a White House official calls Facebook and asks to ban a journalist for writing that the Covid vaccine “doesn’t stop infection or transmission”? I think hell yes. It certainly violates the spirit of the First Amendment, even if judges are found to say it keeps to the letter.

But this is post-9/11 America. Whether about surveillance or torture or habeas corpus or secret prisons or rendition or any of a dozen other things, WE IGNORE LAWS. Institutional impunity is the chief characteristic of our current form of government.

We have concepts like “illegal but necessary”: the government may torture, the public obviously can’t. The state may intercept phone calls, you can’t. The state may search without warrants, assassinate, snatch geolocations from your phones, any of a hundred things officially prohibited, but allowed. This concept requires that officials have special permission to ignore laws.

Ten years ago, we were caught spying on three different French presidents as well as companies like BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Peugeot, Renault, and Total. Barack Obama called the French to apologize, but did we stop? We did indict the person who released the news, Julian Assange.

Congratulations to Julian on getting out, by the way. And shame on every journalist who did not call for his release.

WE IGNORE LAWS. It’s what America does. With this in mind, our government has moved past censorship to the larger project of changing the American personality. They want a more obedient, timorous, fearful citizen. Their tool is the Internet, a vast machine for doling out reward and punishment through likes and views, shaming or deamplification. The mechanics are complicated but the core concept is simple: you’re upranked for accepting authority, downranked for questioning it, with questions of any kind increasingly viewed as a form of disinformation.

Let me pause to say something about America’s current intellectual class, from which the “anti-disinformation” complex comes. By the way: there are no working-class censors, poor censors, hungry censors. The dirty secret of “content moderation” everywhere is that it’s a tiny sliver of the educated rich correcting everyone else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it.

America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police.

In prerevolutionary France even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword duel to the death. Our aristocrats pee themselves at the sight of mean tweets. They have no honor, no belief, no poetry, art, or humor, no patriotism, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They’re simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.

They have one idea, not even an idea but a sensation: fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat; they’re afraid of each other, but they’re also terrified of everyone outside their social set and live in near-constant fear of being caught having an original opinion. They believe in the manner of herd animals, who also live whole lives without knowing an anxiety-free minute: they believe things with blinding zeal until 51% change their minds, and then like deer the rest bolt in that direction. We saw that with the Biden is sharp as a tack/No, Biden must step aside for the Politics of Joy switch.

I grew up a liberal Democrat and can’t remember having even most of the same beliefs as my friends. Now, millions of alleged intellectuals claim identical beliefs about vast ranges of issues and this ludicrous mass delusion is the precondition for “disinformation studies,” really the highly unscientific science of punishing deviation from the uniform belief set — what another excommunicated liberal, my friend Thomas Frank, calls the “Utopia of Scolding.”

“Freedom of speech” is a beautiful phrase, strong, optimistic. It has a ring to it. But it’s being replaced in the discourse by “disinformation” and “misinformation,” words that aren’t beautiful but full of the small, pettifogging, bureaucratic anxiety of a familiar American villain: the busybody, the prohibitionist, the Nosey Parker, the snoop.

H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as the “haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy.” That streak of our early European settlers unfortunately survives in us and keeps surfacing through moral panics. Four hundred years ago it was witches, then it was Catholic immigrants, then “the devil’s music,” comic books, booze, communists, and now, information.

Because “freedom of speech” is now frequently described as a stalking horse for hate and discrimination — the UN High Commissioner Volker Türk scolded Elon Musk that “free speech is not a free pass” — it’s becoming one of those soon-to-be-extinct terms. Speech is mentioned in “reputable” media only as a possible vector for the informational disease known as misinformation. Soon all that will remain of the issue for most people is a flutter of the nerves, reminding them to avoid thinking about it.

The end game is not controlling speech. They’re already doing that. The endgame is getting us to forget we ever had anything to say.

To small thinkers free speech is a wilderness of potential threats. The people who built this country, whatever else you can say about them, weren’t small thinkers. They were big, big thinkers, and I mean that not just in terms of intellect but arrogance, gall, brass, audacity, cheek.

Kurt Vonnegut called the Founding Fathers Sea Pirates. He wasn’t far off. These people stole a continent from the King of England. And got away with it. Eminem* said there ain’t no such thing as halfway crooks — there was nothing halfway about the Constitution authors.

James Madison, who wrote the First Amendment, foresaw the exact situation of a government that IGNORES LAWS. In fact, he was originally opposed to the Bill of Rights because he didn’t think “paper guarantees” could stop a corrupt government. So he put together a document designed to inspire a personality type that would resist efforts to undo the experiment.

Here an important quality came into play: Madison was a great writer. The 44 words of his First Amendment were composed with extraordinary subtlety:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment didn’t confer rights or entrust government with guaranteeing them. Instead, the Founders stood to the side and, like an old country recognizing a new country, simply acknowledged an eternal truth: the freedom of the human mind.

This is what censors never understand. Speech is free. Trying to stop it is like catching butterflies with a hammer, stopping a flood with a teaspoon… Choose your metaphor, but a fool’s errand. You can apply as many rules as you want, threaten punishment, lock people up. The human mind always sets its own course, often in spite of itself. As the poet William Ernest Henley explained:

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Unlike the busybodies of the Internet Age, to whom words are just another overproduced, over-plentiful, unnecessary, and vaguely hazardous commodity like greenhouse gases or plastic soda bottles, people like Madison understood the value of language.

In 1787 you might have to walk a mile or five just to see a printed word. It was likely to be the Bible. I’m not religious, but I’ve read the Bible, and so of course did they. They knew the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.”

That was a reference to Genesis: In the beginning, God said “Let there be light,” and the world was born. For them, the idea of the word was suffused with the power of creation itself. This wasn’t law. This was metaphysics. It was cosmogony.

A little country run by a bunch of jumped-up tobacconists and corn farmers needed an ally to withstand the wrath of European royalty. They got it by lighting a match under human ingenuity and creativity and passion. It was rash, risky, reckless, and it worked.

What was the American personality? Madison said he hoped to strengthen the “will of the community,” but other revolutionaries weren’t quite so polite. Thomas Paine's central message was that the humblest farmer was a towering moral giant compared to the invertebrate scum who wore crowns and lived in British castles.

Common Sense told us to stand up straight. Never bow, especially not to a politician, because as Paine explained — I want you to think of John Kerry and Hayden and Cheney here — “Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey… are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”

Oscar Wilde noted ours was the only country in the world where being a kook was respectable. Every other country shunned the tinkerer or mad inventor and cheerfully donated them to us, turbocharging our American experiment.

We welcomed crazy and the world has light bulbs, the telephone, movies, airplanes, submarines, the Internet, false teeth, the Colt .45, rock and roll, hip-hop and monster dunks as a result. Wilde lampooned our ignorance and lack of artistic sophistication and tolerance for ugly words — hilariously he refused to speak at a town that named itself “Grigsville” — but his final observation was a supreme compliment:

The Americans are the best politically educated people in the world. It is well worth one’s while to go to a country which can teach us the beauty of the word FREEDOM and the value of the thing LIBERTY.

In my twenties, while traveling through the former Soviet Union, I noticed that people from other cultures often had hang-ups about authority. Men from autocratic countries in the Middle East always seemed to whisper out of the corners of their mouths, as if they were afraid someone might hear, even about meaningless things. They would say: “Listen, my friend, the only good song George Michael ever wrote was ‘Faith…’”

“Why are we whispering?” I’d ask. “I don’t know,” they’d say.

People who grew up in places with the Queen on their money were class-conscious and calibrated what they could say according to who else was at the table. Russians were like us, expressive and free-spirited and funny, but infected with terrible fatalism: they froze around badges and insignias and other symbols of authority as if they had magic power.

Over time I realized: I liked being an American. For the first time I was seeing the American experience through the eyes of foreigners. I did an interview once at a restaurant in Moscow called Scandanavia. A group of European diplomats was having a conference and complained about a table of loud American businessmen. A young Swedish waiter was sent to deal with them.

He leaned over to the biggest and loudest of these finance bros and said, “If you could keep your voice down, sir…”

The American turned and said:

“Is that a question?”

The kid froze. The American said: “You mean ‘Be quiet,’ right?”

“Yes.”

The American got up. “Look, you’re over here because a bunch of Belgians are too afraid to come over here themselves. You’re carrying that like the weight of the world. I can see it your shoulders. Let it go, man.”

Now those diplomats grew spines. “Hey,” they said. “We are not Belgians. We’re—”

“You’re Belgians,” the American snapped. Then he gave the floor to the kid who said, “Please be quiet.” The American took out a $100 bill and stuck it in the kid’s vest pocket. He walked around the rest of the night like he owned the place. He might have gone on to do just that.

After that I realized every American has a little bit of asshole in him. William Blake said, “Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you.” Some struggle with this concept. Americans are born knowing it.

Incidentally propaganda is the same trick I saw in that restaurant. It’s always someone trying to make you feel bad for their weakness, their mistakes. Don’t be ground down by it. Stand up straight and give it back.

Which is why I say: Kerry, Hayden, Cheney, Adam Schiff, Craig Newmark, Reid Hoffman, Pierre Omidyar, Leon Panetta, and especially that Time editor turned self-appointed censor Rick Stengel should be packed in a rocket and launched into the fucking sun.

Let's be clear about our language. Madison famously eschewed the word toleration or tolerance when it came to religion and insisted on the words freedom or liberty instead. This became the basis for the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which in turn became the basis for the Bill of Rights. That's why we don't have “toleration of religion” or “toleration of speech.” We have freedom of speech. The right word for the right time.

To the people who are suggesting that there are voices who should be ignored because they're encouraging mistrust or skepticism of authority, or obstructing consensus: I'm not encouraging you to be skeptical of authority. I'm encouraging you to DEFY authority. That is the right word for this time.

To all those Snoops and Nosey Parkers sitting in their Homeland Security-funded “Centers of Excellence,” telling us day after day we must think as they say and vote as they say or else we’re traitorous Putin-loving fascists and enablers of “dangerous” disinformation:

Motherfucker, I’m an American. That shit does not work on me. And how can you impugn my patriotism, when you’re sitting in Klaus Schwab’s lap, apologizing for the First Amendment to a crowd of Europeans? Look in the mirror.

I’m not the problem. We’re not the problem.

You’re the problem.

YOU SUCK.

Thank you.

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Bob Dylan, late in his career and, well past the peak of his powers, recorded the forgettable blues tune “you got to serve somebody”. The conceit was that no matter who you are, laborer or King, you have to bend the knee to something, or someone.

A lot of people seem to believe this. And as the election approaches, like a meteor set to strike the last of our illusion of “American Exceptionalism”, with its choice between a “half-bright narcissist” and a “Deep State hologram”, we can see formerly sturdy knees hit the dirt, one by one, and formerly sensible mouths speaking the most ridiculous justifications for their service to one of these two exemplars of social collapse.

The Palestinian people, who have been bought and sold, and traded and betrayed, so many times already, are now being sold out again by many self-described progressives, for the promise of a free school lunch, and legal weed. With Kamala’s selection of Stolen Valor candidate, and serial-liar, Tim Waltz, being just the fig leaf they needed to go home to the corrupt Democratic party, that they only pretend to leave between election seasons.

Some saw gold in them there genocide hills! Many of the commentators who have been racking up clicks, and ad revenue off the exploitation of Arab death, have run from their cause, like Matthew Miller from a crucifix and sunlight!

Now that the better opportunity of the Kamala campaign has come along, of course, nobody says, “outright” that they are abandoning the Palestinians to their fate. Instead, they pretend to be reading subtle messages, hidden in Kamala’s selection of Waltz, and in her occasional “acknowledgment” of the untold horrors that the Biden Administration continues to fund, and equip. The subtext being, “it's the old white guy's fault”, “just wait until a black woman is in that white house, she'll show them!” This in spite of the fact, that insofar as we can infer, anything from Kamala's record it's that she will be the “perfect puppet” that the Deep state has been after since Kennedy caught a bullet for thinking he was in charge!

This offers a tremendous opportunity for a rival campaign, to set a different course. Unfortunately, the Trump campaign is not that campaign. Many say they like Trump for his honesty, and one does have to admit, no other politician at his level of the game would stand in front of a bank of flags representing a foreign country, in this case Israel, and brag about how billionaire advocates for that country, in this case the Adelson’s, told him, “what to do on that country's behalf”, and then go on to describe, “how quickly he got it done”, as he did last week, declaring his intention to “Make Israel Great Again” for good measure. The American people seem to have slipped his mind, in the heat of the moment, as he danced for those sweet AIPAC dollars! And how sweet they are!

So sweet, that many who would speak at a “rage against the war machine” focused on Ukraine, last year, will not speak at one who's declared aims include ending the “War in Gaza”, others do not want to be associated with its sister event “Rescue the Republic”, but I believe, as do our hosts, Angela and Nick, that we should speak to those with whom we disagree.

In that spirit, it is truly remarkable how many people who saw clearly that the “War in Ukraine” is something we have no business being involved in, European country, though it may be, a vowed Bastion of the western values, that so many here this weekend claim to adore so much, have revealed themselves as rabid and unreasoning supporters of Israel after October 7th. “No, this is not our fight,” they said rightly, when it came to Ukraine, “and besides this country is so corrupt they gave Hunter Biden a job! Who knows how many BMWs and back waxes our money is going to end up paying for!”

But, when it comes to a country so corrupt, that its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would rather keep on slaughtering children than negotiate a peace that would allow ongoing criminal proceedings against him to resume they're all-in!

When it comes to a racist apartheid state that blocks food aid as a weapon of war, that attacks hospitals, houses of worship, and its own declared-safe-zones.

That openly executes journalists, and activists, some of them American citizens! They say, “we have to stand with Israel”, “it's an oasis of Western values in the Middle East.”

Well, if by “Western values” we're thinking of “King Leopold's tenure” in the Congo? Spain's gay romp through South America? The US genocide of its native population? Australia, where an aboriginal scalp, could fetch you a few pounds. Well, then yes, a country full of white Europeans, dropped in the middle of a non-white, indigenous population, whose land they steal, and whose people they slaughter. All the while, blaming their “savages” for their “savagery”, when they attempt to fight back. Israel is a true “Bastion of Western values in the Middle East”, and God help the indigenous people there, if history is any guide!

To all of this, the Israelis have an answer: “the Bible.” In this, they are of one mind with their Christian Zionist supporters. They only differ on Canon.

For Jews, there is only “Episode One, The Phantom Hebrews:” in which they take the land from the unwashed Philistine.

If they contemplate the sequel, in which they function as “Jesus-bait” before those Jews who continue to reject the “Prince of Peace” are thrown into the “Lake of Fire”, upon his return. They have the good taste not to mention it, as they indulge the apocalyptic fantasies of their Christian counterparts.

In the words of the great Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, “most Israelis are secular, but they all believe God promised them Palestine.”

So, do you really have to serve somebody? Do you really have to get behind an “establishment Avatar” or a “trust-fund plutocrat?” There is something slavish in human nature that tells us, “It is so,” but there is also something noble in us that tells us, “To resist!”

It was not the “nobility” that was most devoted to the king, it was the “Peasants” that took the most pride in their connection to the big man in the castle on the hill. Who saw their place in the world as being inextricably linked to their acceptance and celebration of their place in the feudal order.

It's the same impulse that drives people to think that union-busting-Netanyahu-knee-pad-wearing Elon musk is their Champion!

That Trump is a friend to “The Working Man” in spite of all the working men he stiffed over the years!

That Kamala is anything more than a cutout for the anti-human agenda of her handlers, or the fact that the country is running just the same without a president, as it ever has with one, doesn't prove, once and for all, that the job has become ceremonial, with the Military- Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us of ruling through bloodless ghouls like Jake Sullivan.

Some say you have to decolonize your mind. That may be so, but what you also have to do is depeasantize your mind!

You don't have to bend the knee to any of these warmongering narcissists that wouldn't piss on you, and yours if you were on fire!

Whether you're talking about Nancy Pelosi, Dick Cheney, Kamala Harris, or yes Donald Trump!

We need to get off our knees, because when the people come together, and stop accepting the way things are, that's when they truly change, and that's exactly what they're afraid of!

That's why they keep us bogged down, fighting about drag queens, and D.E.I. hires, while they laugh their asses off and count their cash!

Whether it's from the house on the hill or from the podcast studio where the most money is to be made catering to cultural grievance!

While the rich get richer and you keep on getting poorer.

The CIA and the FBI used to send agents out to infiltrate political groups, and get them fighting. They don't have to do that anymore, for the most part, the social media algorithms do the job for them, and there are plenty of folks with a microphone happy to help!

If we want to stop these wars we have to stop playing their game, we need to stop accepting their framing, we have to call an election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump out as the disgrace that it is!

We need to reject a system that tells us we have no better choices than these and that we don't deserve better choices than these.

We do have a choice! It's a choice between endorsing this system or coming together to shut it down, to shut down a system that thinks so little of us that it expects us to take these disgusting freaks that pass themselves off as our leaders seriously! And don't let the new commentariat tell you otherwise, those folks are getting fat off your desperation, while they funnel you right back into the system! Whether it's the grifters telling you to vote Kamala for the free school lunch, or the grifters telling you that Donald Trump is your Champion!

When someone tells you either of those things you should put your hand on your wallet, because there about to steal it!

Depeasantize your mind! Because when we listen to that other voice, the voice that tells us to stand up and resist,

that's when castles fall,

that's when old corrupt systems crumble,

that's when revolutions are made!

Thank you

The great :

So this is where you all end up, when you do your own research!

My name is Walter Kirn. I’m a novelist. That’s the reason you don’t know who I am, and I’ve come here to tell you a little bedtime story.

When I was a kid in rural Minnesota, the land of the deplorables in the late sixties and early seventies, my mother had a little record player. The problem was, she only had five records, and all were protest music. Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary. I used to listen to the records, and I had a favorite song. Maybe you know it: “If I had a Hammer.”

It was very strange that my mother had these records, because she was a young Republican. Anyway, I was eight years old, and I had no idea what this song meant. It seemed to have something to do with being powerless, and dreaming or fantasizing that you had power. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer out justice. I’d hammer out freedom all over this land. I’d hammer out love between the brothers and the sisters…

That was my favorite line, because it was so puzzling. Isn’t love between brothers and sisters incest? As I said, I found this song confusing, and the thing that confused me most about the song was: Why didn’t the singer have a hammer? What had happened? Who’d taken it away?

This morning, I was reading Twitter and I was reminded of this song in the most unlikely way. I saw a clip of a discussion at one of those big international conferences that you and I are never invited to, and on this video was John Kerry, former Secretary of State, former Skull and Bonesman, that secret society at Yale — the same secret society that George W. Bush belonged to. The guy who ran against John Kerry for president in 2004: Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones. Talk about the illusion of choice.

Anyway, what Kerry was talking about was the First Amendment, and how it was a problem. A big, big problem. He had a peculiar complaint about it.

The First Amendment stopped people like him, he said, from trying to “build consensus.” Now, that’s how these people think about themselves, as builders of consensus. What does that make you and me? We’re construction materials!

John Kerry, master builder, had a complaint. The First Amendment, he said, was a “major block” for people like him from stopping what he now calls disinformation. It kept him from, he said, “hammering it out of existence.”

Now, I’m pretty sure that in 1949 when Pete Seeger wrote, “The Hammer Song,” or “If I Had a Hammer,” he didn’t mean if John Kerry had a hammer. He didn’t mean if they had a hammer:

If they had a hammer,

They’d hammer out disinformation.

They’d hammer out vaccine hesitancy,

All over this land.

They’d hammer out Kennedy.

They’d hammer Matt Taibbi….

That is not the song, and John Kerry has it wrong. The hammer does not belong to him.

That hammer belongs to us. It’s ours. But why don’t we have it? That’s the mystery.

That’s the question I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out. Look at this gray hair. It’s been a lifetime. Why doesn’t the singer have a hammer? Why? Why do we have to dream to fantasize? Why do we have to wish we had one?

Well, I think I’ve finally answered it. We have it right in front of us. The question is, will we pick it up? The question is, will we use it? So, I have a request for you. When you go home tonight, when you get home, pick up your hammer. Pick up your hammer and use it. It’s time to build.

My mother had one other record. It was by Simon and Garfunkel. It also had a song I loved called El Condor Pasa. I think you remember its greatest line: “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.”

Don’t be a nail. Pick up your hammers. Go home. Let’s build a New America.

2024:

1st Annual (hopefully) Rage Against the War Machine courtesy of News2Share:

Following this is all the videos I could find from both events.

Thank you for reading, .

This is , Editor-in-Chief

Courtesy of The Sinju Post, who did the actual transcribing, and it seems to be what they do. Thank you to them.

I’m going to start saving speeches like this. Speeches that need to remain in the historical record. If ever our video platforms were to crumble, these things must be preserved. Just like his father and his uncle before him, here is Robert F. Kennedy jr:

Breaking Away from The Party of Fear and Authoritarianism: MAHA is Born

I’m sorry to keep everybody waiting. 16 months ago in April of 2023, I launched my campaign for President of the United States. I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote. I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of six in 1960.

Back then, the Democrats were the champions of the Constitution, of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism, and unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment.

Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money.

When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an independent. The mainstream of American politics and journalism derided my decision. Conventional wisdom said that it would be impossible even to get on the ballot as an independent because each state poses an insurmountable tangle of arbitrary rules for collecting signatures. I would need over a million signatures, something no presidential candidate in history had ever achieved.

The Power of Grassroots Movements

And then I’d need a team of attorneys and millions of dollars to handle all the legal challenges from the DNC. The naysayers told us that we were climbing a glass version of Mount Impossible. So the first thing I want to tell you is that we proved them wrong. We did it because beneath the radar of mainstream media organs, we inspired a massive independent political movement.

More than 100,000 volunteers sprang into action, hopeful that they could reverse our nation’s decline. Many worked 10-hour days, sometimes in blizzards and blazing heat. They sacrificed family time, personal commitments, and sleep month after month, energized by a shared vision of a nation, healed of its divisions. They set up tables at churches and farmers markets.

They canvassed door to door. In Utah and in New Hampshire, volunteers collected signatures in snowstorms, convincing each supporter to stop in the frigid cold, to take off their gloves, and to sign legibly. During a heat wave in Nevada, I met a tall athletic volunteer who cheerfully told me that he had lost 25 pounds collecting signatures in 117-degree heat. To finance this effort, young Americans donated their lunch money, and senior citizens gave up part of their Social Security checks.

Our 50-state organization collected those millions of signatures and more. No presidential campaign in American political history has ever done that. And so I want to thank all of those dedicated volunteers and congratulate the campaign staff who coordinated this enormous logistical feat. Your accomplishments were regarded as impossible.

You carried me up that glass mountain. You pulled off a miracle. You achieved what all the pundits said could never be done. You have my deepest gratitude, and I’m never going to forget that, not just for what you did for my campaign, but for the sacrifices you made because you love our country.

You showed everyone that democracy is still possible here. It continues to survive in the breath and in the idealistic human energies that still thrive beneath a canvas of neglect and of official and institutional corruption. Today I’m here to tell you that I will not allow your efforts to go to waste. I’m here to tell you that I will leverage your tremendous accomplishments to serve the ideals that we share, the ideals of peace, of prosperity, of freedom, of health, all the ideals that motivated my campaign.

The State of Democracy

Now, in an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election. In a system that my father and my uncles thrived in, a system with open debates, with fair primaries, with regularly scheduled debates, with fair primaries, and with a truly independent media untainted by government propaganda and censorship, in a system of nonpartisan courts and election boards, everything would be different. After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates, both in favorability and also in head-to-head matchups.

But I’m sorry to say that while democracy may still be alive at the grassroots, it has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly at all for me, the Democratic Party. In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it, lacking confidence that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth.

The DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each time that our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court, state after state, attempting to erase their work and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed those petitions.

It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden. Then when a predictably bungled debate performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election. They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate.

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The Decline of Democratic Principles

My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas. They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic.

How are people to choose when they don’t know whom they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world? My father and my uncle were always conscious of America’s image abroad because of our nation’s role as the template for democracy, a role model for democratic processes, and the leader of the free world. Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon nothing.

No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus. There, in Chicago, a string of democratic speakers mentioned Donald Trump 147 times just on the first day. Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate? In contrast, at the RNC convention, President Biden was mentioned only twice in four days.

I do interviews every day. Many of you have interviewed me. Anybody who asks gets to interview me. Some days I do as many as 10. President Trump, who actually was nominated and won an election, also does interviews daily. How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answers. They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.

Censorship and Media Control

What most alarms me isn’t how the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies. When a U.S. president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression. And that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest.

President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot. But here in America, the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot. And our television networks expose themselves as Democratic Party organs.

Over the course of more than a year in a campaign where my poll numbers reached at times in the high 20s, the DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintain a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me. During his 10-month presidential campaign in 1992, Ross Perot gave 34 interviews on mainstream networks. In contrast, during the 16 months since I declared, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN combined gave only two live interviews from me.

Those networks instead ran a continuous deluge of hit pieces with inaccurate, often vile pejoratives and defamatory smears. Some of those same networks colluded with the DNC to keep me off the debate stage. Representatives of those networks are in this room right now. And I’ll just take a moment to ask you to consider the many ways that your institutions have abdicated this really sacred responsibility, the duty of a free press to safeguard democracy and to challenge always the party in power.

Instead of maintaining that posture of fierce skepticism toward authority, your institutions have made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power. You didn’t alone cause the devolution of American democracy, but you could have prevented it.

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The First Amendment Under Attack

The Democratic Party’s censorship of social media was even more of a naked exercise of executive power. This week, a federal judge, Terry Doughty, upheld my injunction against President Biden, calling the White House’s censorship project, “the most egregious violation of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”

Doughty’s previous 155-page decision details how just 37 hours after he took the oath of office, swearing to uphold the Constitution, President Biden and his White House opened up a portal and invited the CIA, the FBI, CISA, which is a censorship agency. It’s the center of the censorship industrial complex, DHS, the IRS, and other agencies, to censor me and other political dissidents on social media.

Even today, users who try to post my campaign videos to Facebook or YouTube get messages that this content violates community standards. Two days after Judge Doughty rendered his decision this week, Facebook was still attaching warning labels to an online petition calling on ABC to include me in the upcoming debate. They said that violates community standards, their community standards.

The mainstream media was once the guardian of the First Amendment and democratic principles and has joined this systemic attack on democracy. Also, the media justifies their censorship on the grounds of combating misinformation. But governments and oppressors don’t censor lies. They don’t fear lies. They fear the truth, and that’s what they censor.

And I don’t want any of this to sound like a personal complaint, because it’s not. For me, it’s all part of a journey, and it’s a journey that I signed up with. But I need to make these observations because I think they’re critical for us doing the thing that we need to do as citizens of democracy to assess where we are in this country and what our democracy still looks like and the assumptions about U.S. leadership around the globe. And are we really still a role model for democracy in this country, or have we made it a kind of a joke?

Suspension of the Campaign

Here’s the good news. While mainstream outlets denied me a critical platform, they didn’t shut down my ideas, which have especially flourished among young voters and independent voters, thanks to the alternative media. Many months ago, I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler. A spoiler is someone who altered the outcome of the election but had no chance of winning.

In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless systematic censorship and media control. So I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours or ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the White House.

Furthermore, our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential issues, censorship, war, and chronic disease.

I want everyone to know that I am not terminating my campaign. I am simply suspending it and not ending it. My name will remain on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states, the same will apply. I encourage you to vote for me. And if enough of you do vote for me, and neither of the major party candidates win 270 votes, which is quite possible. In fact, today our polling shows them tying at 269 to 269, and I could conceivably still end up in the White House in a contingent election.

But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name, and I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me. It’s with a sense of victory and not defeat that I’m suspending my campaign activities. Not only did we do the impossible by collecting a million signatures, we changed the national political conversation forever. Chronic disease, free speech, government corruption, breaking our addiction to war, have moved to the center of politics. I can say to all who have worked so hard in the last year and a half, thank you for a job well done.

Key Issues and Future Direction

Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place primarily, and these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent. And now, to throw my support to President Trump, the causes were free speech, a war in Ukraine, and the war on our children. I’ve already described some of my personal experiences and struggles with a government censorship industrial complex.

I want to say a word about the Ukraine war. The military industrial complex has provided us with a familiar comic book justification like they do on every war.

The Ukraine War: A Complex Geopolitical Struggle

At this one is a noble effort to stop a supervillain, Vladimir Putin, invading Ukraine and then to thwart his Hitler-like march across Europe. In fact, tiny Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the U.S. neocons for American global hegemony. I’m not excusing Putin for invading Ukraine. He had other options. But the war is Russia’s predictable response to the reckless neocon project of extending NATO to encircle Russia, a hostile act.

The credulous media rarely explained to Americans that we unilaterally walked away from two intermediate nuclear weapons treaties with Russia and then put nuclear-ready Aegis missile systems in Romania and Poland. This is a hostile, hostile act.

The Biden White House repeatedly spurned Russia’s offer to settle this war peacefully. The Ukraine war began in 2014 when U.S. agencies overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installed a hand-picked pro-Western government that launched a deadly civil war against ethnic Russians in Ukraine. In 2019, America walked away from a peace treaty, the Minsk Agreement, that had been negotiated between Russia and Ukraine by European nations.

And then in April of 2022, we wanted the war. In April of 2022, President Biden sent Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President Zelenskyy to tear up a peace agreement that he and the Russians had already signed and the Russians were withdrawing troops. Kiev and Donbas and Luhansk. And that peace agreement would have brought peace to the region and would have allowed Donbas and Luhansk to remain part of Ukraine.

President Biden stated that month that his objective in the war was regime change in Russia. His Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin simultaneously explained that America’s purpose in the war was to exhaust the Russian army to degrade its capacity to fight anywhere else in the world. These objectives, of course, have nothing to do with what they were telling Americans about protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty. Ukraine is a victim in this war and it’s a victim of the West.

The Devastating Consequences of the War

Since then, we have since tearing up that agreement, forcing Zelenskyy to tear up the agreement. We’ve squandered the flower of Ukrainian youth, as many as 600,000 Ukrainian kids and over 100,000 Russian kids, none of whom, all of whom we should be mourning, have died. And Ukraine’s infrastructure is destroyed. The war has been a disaster for our country as well.

We squandered nearly $200 billion already, and these are badly needed dollars in our communities, suffering communities all over our country. The Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and the sanctions have destroyed Europe’s industrial base, which formed the bulwark of U.S. national security. A strong Germany with a strong industry is a much, much stronger deterrent to Russia and a Germany that is de-industrialized and turned into just an extension of the U.S. military base.

We pushed Russia into a disastrous alliance with China and Iran. We’re closer to the brink of nuclear exchange than at any time since 1962. And the neocons and the White House don’t seem to care at all. Our moral authority and our economy are in shambles, and the war gave rise to the emergence of BRICS, which now threatens to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency. This is a first-class calamity for our country.

Judging by her bellicose, belligerent speech last night in Chicago, we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic advocate for this and other neocon military adventures. And President Trump says that he will reopen negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight as soon as he becomes president.

Aligning with Trump: A Surprising Turn of Events

This alone would justify my support for his campaign. Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, to tackle chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of our government, or to defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism. But now one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration. I’m speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.

Less than two hours after President Trump narrowly escaped assassination, Calley Means called me on my cell phone. I was then in Las Vegas. Calley is arguably the leading advocate for food safety, for soil regeneration, and for ending the chronic disease epidemic that is destroying America’s health and ruining our economy. Calley has exposed the insidious corruption at the FDA, the NIH, the HHS, and the USDA that has caused the epidemic.

Calley had been working on and off for my campaign, advising me on those subjects since the beginning. And those subjects have been my primary focus for the last 20 years. I was delighted when Calley told me that day that he had also been advising President Trump. He told me President Trump was anxious to talk to me about chronic disease and other subjects, and to explore avenues of cooperation.

He asked if I would take a call from the President. President Trump telephoned me a few minutes later, and I met with him the following day. A few weeks later, I met again with President Trump and his family members and close advisors in Florida. In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues.

In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately, and fiercely if need be, on issues over which we differ, while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance. I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences.

But we are aligned with each other on other key issues, like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemic, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the U.S. intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans, and interfering with our elections. Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris. Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me.

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The Decision to Suspend the Campaign

Suspending my candidacy is a hard-rending decision for me, but I’m convinced that it’s the best hope for ending the Ukraine war and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside, and for finally protecting free speech. I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of American children, above all things.

In case some of you don’t realize how dire the condition is of our children’s health and chronic disease in general, I would urge you to view Dr. Carlson’s recent interview with Calley Means and his sister, Dr. Casey Means, who is the top graduate of her class at Stanford Medical School. This is an issue that affects all of us far more directly and urgently than any culture war issue and all the other issues that we obsess on and that are tearing apart our country. This is the most important issue. Therefore, it has the potential to bring us together.

The Chronic Disease Epidemic: A National Crisis

So let me share a little bit about why I believe it’s so urgent. Today, we spend more on health care than any country on Earth. Twice what they pay in Europe. And yet, we have the worst health outcomes of any nation in the world. We’re about the 79th in health outcomes behind Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Mongolia and other countries. Nobody has a chronic disease burden like we have. And during the COVID epidemic, we had the highest body count of any country in the world. We had 16% of the COVID deaths and we only have 4.2% of the world’s population.

And CDC says that’s because we are the sickest people on Earth. We have the highest chronic disease rate on Earth. And the average American who died from COVID had 3.8 chronic diseases. So these were people who had immune system collapse, who had mitochondrial dysfunction. And no other country has anything like this. Two-thirds of American adults and children suffer from chronic health issues. Fifty years ago, that number was less than 1%. We’ve gone from 1% to 66%.

In America, 74% of Americans are now overweight or obese and 50% of our children. 120 years ago, when somebody was obese, they were sent to the circus. Literally, there were case reports sent out. Obesity was almost unknown.

In Japan, the childhood obesity rate is 3% compared to 50% here. Half of Americans have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. When my uncle was president, I was a boy. Juvenile diabetes was effectively nonexistent. A typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes during his entire career, a 40- or 50-year career. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through his office door is diabetic or prediabetic. And the mitochondrial disorder caused diabetes, also causing Alzheimer’s, which is now classified as diabetes. And it’s costing this country more than our military budget every year.

There’s been an explosion of neurological illnesses that I never saw as a kid. ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD, Asperger’s, autism. In the year 2000, the autism rate was 1 in 1,500. Now autism rates in kids are 1 in 36, according to CDC, nationally.

Nobody’s talking about this. One in every 22 kids in California has autism. And this is a crisis that 77% of our kids are too disabled to serve in the United States military. What is happening to our country? And why isn’t this in the headlines every single day? There’s nobody else in the world that is experiencing this. This is only happening in America. About 18% – and by the way, you know, there has been no change in diagnosis, which the industry sometimes likes to say.

There has been no change in screening. This is a change in incidence. In my generation, 70-year-old men, the autism rates are about 1 in 10,000. In my kids’ generation, 1 in 34. I’ll repeat, in California, 1 in 22. Why are we letting this happen? Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? These are the most precious assets that we have in this country.

How can we let this happen to them? About 18% of American teens now have fatty liver disease. That’s like one out of every five. That disease, when I was a kid, only affected late-stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and the old. Young adult cancers are up 79%. One in four American women is on antidepressant medication. Forty percent of teens have a mental health diagnosis, and 15% of high schoolers are on Adderall, and half a million children are on SSRIs.

The Culprits Behind the Chronic Disease Epidemic

So what’s causing this suffering? I’ll name two culprits. The first and the worst is ultra-processed food. About 70% of American children’s diet is ultra-processed. That means industrial, manufactured in a factory. These foods consist primarily of processed sugar, ultra-processed grains, and seed oils. Laboratory scientists who have formed many of them formally worked for the cigarette industry, which purchased all the big food companies in the 1970s and 80s, and employed thousands of scientists to figure out chemicals, new chemicals, to make the food more addictive. And these ingredients didn’t exist 100 years ago.

Humans aren’t biologically adapted to eat them. Hundreds of these chemicals are now banned in Europe, but ubiquitous in American processed foods. The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food, our medicine, and our environment. Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic waste permeate every cell of our bodies.

The assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting. And to name just one problem, many of these chemicals increase estrogen. Because young children are ingesting so many of these hormone disruptors, America’s puberty rate is now occurring at age 10 to 13, which is six years earlier than girls were reaching puberty in 1900. Our country has the earliest puberty rates of any continent on the earth.

And no, this isn’t because of better nutrition. This is not normal. Because cancer is also estrogen-driven and now strikes one in eight women, we are mass poisoning all of our children and our adults. Considering the grievous human cause of this tragic epidemic of chronic disease, it seems almost crass to mention the damage it does to our economy.

But I’ll say it is crippling the nation’s finances. When my uncle was president, our country spent zero dollars on chronic disease. Today, government health care spending is almost all for chronic disease. And it’s double the military budget. And it is the fastest growing budget item in the federal budget. Chronic disease costs more to the economy as a whole. It costs at least $4 trillion, five times our military budget. And that’s a 20% drag on everything we do and everything we aspire to.

Poor and minority communities suffer disproportionately. People worry about DEI or about bigotry of any kind. This dwarfs anything. We are poisoning the poor.

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The Systemic Poisoning of the Poor

We are systematically poisoning minorities across this country. Industry lobbyists have made sure that most of the food stamp lunch program, about 70% of food stamps, 70% or 77% of school lunches are processed foods. There’s no vegetables. There’s nothing that you would want to eat.

We are just poisoning the poor citizens, and that’s why they have the highest chronic disease burden of anybody, any demographic in our country, and the highest in the world. The same food industry lobbied to make sure that nearly all agricultural subsidies go to commodity crops that are the feedstock of processed food industry. These policies are destroying small farms, and they’re destroying our soils. We give about, I think, eight times as much in subsidies to tobacco than we do to fruits and vegetables.

It makes no sense. We want a healthy country. The good news is that we can change all this, and we can change it very, very quickly. America can get healthy again.

Three Steps to Change

To do that, we need to do three things:

1. We need to root out the corruption in our health agencies.

2. We need to change incentives in our health care system.

3. We need to inspire Americans to get healthy again.

Eighty percent of NIH grants go to people who have conflicts of interest. These are the people, virtually everybody who sits, and Joe Biden just appointed a new panel to NIH to decide the food recommendations, and they’re all people who are from the industry. They’re all people who are from the processed food companies. They’re deciding what Americans, you know, hear is healthy, and the recommendations on the food pyramid, and what goes through our school lunch programs, which go to the program, the Swiss program, the food stamp programs.

They’re all corrupted and conflicted individuals. These agencies, the FDA, USDA, and CDC, all of them are controlled by giant for-profit corporations. Seventy-five percent of the FDA’s funding doesn’t come from taxpayers. It comes from pharma. And pharma executives and consultants and lobbyists cycle in and out of these agencies.

With President Trump’s backing, I’m going to change that. We’re going to staff these agencies with honest scientists and doctors who are free from industry funding. We’re going to make sure the decisions of consumers, doctors, and patients are informed by unbiased science.

The Pharmaceutical Industry’s Profit from Chronic Disease

A sick child is the best thing for the pharmaceutical industry. When American children or adults get sick with a chronic condition, they’re put on medication for their entire life. Imagine what will happen when Medicare starts paying for Ozempic, which costs $1,500 a month, and it’s being recommended for children as young as six. All for a condition, obesity, that is completely preventable and barely even existed 100 years ago.

Seventy-four percent of Americans are obese. The cost, if all of them took their Ozempic prescription, is $3 trillion a year. This is a drug that is made by Novo Nordisk. The biggest company in Europe is a Danish company, and the Danish government does not recommend it.

It recommends change in diet to treat obesity and exercise. And in our country, the recommendation now is for Ozempic to children at age six. Novo Nordisk, the biggest company in Europe, and virtually its entire value is based upon its projections of what it’s going to sell, of the Ozempic it’s going to sell to America. And we have the food lobbyists have a bill in front of Congress today that is backed by the White House, backed by Vice President Harris and President Biden to allow this to happen, this $3 trillion cost that is going to bankrupt our country.

For a fraction of that amount, we could buy organic food for every American family, three meals a day, and eliminate diabetes altogether. We’re going to bring healthy food back to school lunches. We’re going to stop subsidizing the worst foods with our agricultural subsidies. We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our food.

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The Need for New Leadership

We’re going to reform the entire food system. And for that, we need new leadership in Washington, because unfortunately both the Democrats and the Republican parties are in cahoots with the big food producers, Big Pharma and Big Ag, which are among the DNC’s major donors. Vice President Harris has expressed no interest in addressing this issue. Four more years of democratic rule will complete the consolidation of corporate and neocon power, and our children will be the ones who suffer most.

I got involved with chronic disease 20 years ago not because I chose to or wanted to. It was essentially thrust upon me. It was an issue that should have been central to the environmental movement. I was a central leader at that time, but it was widely ignored by all the institutions, including the NGOs, who should have been protecting our kids against toxins.

It was an orphaned issue, and I had a weakness for orphans. I watched generations of children get sicker and sicker. I had 11 siblings, and I had seven kids myself. I was conscious of what was happening in their classrooms and to their friends, and I watched these sick kids, these damaged kids.

In that generation, almost all of them are damaged, and nobody in power seemed to care or to even notice. For 19 years, I prayed every morning that God would put me in a position to end this calamity. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president, along with ending the censorship in the Ukraine war. It’s the reason I’ve made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump.

A Spiritual Journey and a Difficult Decision

This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends, but I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do, and that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms. If I’m given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years, we will watch chronic disease burden lift dramatically. We will make Americans healthy again. Within four years, America will be a healthy country.

We will be stronger, more resilient, more optimistic, and happier. I won’t fail in doing this. Ultimately, the future, however it happens, is in God’s hands, in the hands of the American voters, and those of President Trump. If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that now demoralizes and bankrupts the country will disappear.

This is a spiritual journey for me. I reached my decision through deep prayer, through a heart-nose logic, and I asked myself, what choices must I make to maximize my chances to save America’s children and restore national health? I felt that if I refused this opportunity, I would not be able to look myself in the mirror, knowing that I could have saved lives of countless children and reversed this country’s chronic disease epidemic. I’m 70 years old.

I may have a decade to be effective. I can’t imagine that President Harris would allow me or anyone to solve these dire problems. After eight years of President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me that he wants this to be his legacy.

I’m choosing to believe that this time he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, his closest friends, all support this objective. My joining the Trump campaign will be a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children, but worthwhile if there’s even a small chance of saving these kids. Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.

Unifying America: A Call for National Love

That’s why I launched my campaign to unify America. My dad and uncle made such an enduring mark on the character of our nation, not so much because of any particular policies that they promoted, but because they were able to inspire profound love for our country and to fortify our sense of ourselves as a national community held together by ideals. They were able to put their love into the intentions and hearts of ordinary Americans. And to unify a national populist movement of Americans, blacks and whites, Hispanics, urban and rural Americans, inspired affection and love and high hopes and a culture of kindness that continue to radiate among Americans from their memory.

That’s the spirit on which I ran my campaign and that I intend to bring into the campaign of President Trump. Instead of vitriol and polarization, I will appeal to the values that unite us, the goals that we could achieve if only we weren’t at each other’s throats. The most unifying theme for all Americans is that we all love our children. If we all unite around that issue now, we can finally give them the protection, the health, and the future that they deserve.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Bobby.

And thank you my wonderful reader! Have a wonderful day, on purpose.

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Editor-in-Chief

Above is a debate by the comic Dave Smith, of Libertas fame. It’s an excoriation of the Libertarian Party Chairman in 2019, , but Sarwark aside, there is a moment—well, a few moments—in the opening by Dave Smith that every time I hear it makes my hair stand up on end. He says:

“We need to recognize the moment that we are living in right now, we are, this country is on a god damn suicide mission right now, I am not being hyperbolic, were on a fucking suicide mission right now, $20+ trillion dollars in debt ($36 trillion now), not to mention the unfunded liabilities, the public sector union—you know, pensions that make that look like nothing, a warfare state that can’t find a conflict it doesn’t wanna get bogged down in, an economy that’s regulated every nook and cranny, a prison-industrial complex, and a police state that would make Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin impressed, I know some of you think I’m a little too radical, just tell me when I’m wrong, what am I wrong about in what I just said? You think Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler wouldn’t look at what we have and say, ‘god damn, they gave the Department of Education a SWAT Team, these bastards are good.’ Ok? That is the moment we are living in right now….”

He goes on to explain how Libertarianism has the solution to all of this which I very much identify with. If you’re interested in increasing liberty in the world, I implore you to watch this whole thing and dig into the philosophy of Libertarianism, it’s the philosophy of peace, prosperity, and civilization. But that’s not what has me revisiting it this morning, Dave continues his position:

“You know, something you have to understand about the moment we’re living in right now, and if we don’t grapple with this, we do it at our own cost. There is an insurrection going on against the center, that’s what’s happening in politics right now, it’s been building FOR YEARS! Do you guys know that movie ‘Loose Change’, the documentary about 9/11 that said that 9/11 was an inside job? by the way, I don’t agree with that movie, that’s not the point I’m making, but it was viewed over 100 million times. The idea that the government was responsible for 9/11 was something a lot of people in this country were willing to accept, at least be intrigued by, then Barack Hussein Obama got elected. Barack Hussein Obama ran against Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the two MOST centrist candidates you could imagine, and he won. Then you had the Tea Party movement, the Occupy movement, the Ron Paul campaign of 2008, the Ron Paul campaign of 2012, the Bernie Sanders campaign of 2016, and oh yea, Donald Trump’s the president!

“I don’t know if you notice what’s going on, but there is a war on the center! There’s a revulsion against the center and by the way, that’s a good thing! So often we criticize the populist left—the AOC, the populist right—the Steve Bannon, but the message of CNN is basically, I don’t think we need to go as far as AOC, we DEFINITELY don’t wanna go with Bannon! Let’s meet in the middle with Hillary Clinton and Lindsay Graham, THE BLOOD-SOAKED MONSTERS WHO PUT US ON THIS PATH TO NATIONAL SUICIDE!”

So, what landed me here this morning was a line in a recent speech by , and although I loathe her positions on foreign policy, she is an extremely gifted wordsmith, as long as the word is not “toady.” The debates does with FIRE, who I am a card-carrying member of, always has an excellent introduction by her, and her “the world has gone mad” moment on CNN was maybe the last good moment Brian Stelter had on any medium.

She did a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, or ARC Conference titled “Against the Vandals” and in a large part she addressed the “war on the center” starting with the global reconstruction of civilizations by demolition and casualty that was the “moderate” left, through the embrace of the loudest and most destructive:

A few years ago, nearly every millennial in nearly every influential seat in America decided that police departments descended from slave patrols. So we were told we had to abolish the police. We had to abolish prisons.

They said the existence of America was a crime. That we had to do “land acknowledgments” before every meeting and declare our gender in our email signatures. They said that degrowth and socialism were the only way to go and that too many kids would kill the planet. They said that Marx, who none of these people actually bothered reading, must be revered, and that our founders, who m they had no interest in outside of a Broadway show, must be reviled.

There were riots. They tore down statues. What didn’t get renamed got transformed entirely from within.

Eventually, people got tired of this insanity. Normal people—the people who decide elections—have their limits.

But elections in America are only every four years. And in the meantime, this movement destroyed more things than it’s possible to capture in a single speech. It came after our largest companies, our media, our universities, our medical schools, our law schools, our hospitals, our local governments, our elementary schools. Our friendships. Our families. Our language.

They ousted good people for fake thought crimes and tried to ruin their reputations and their lives. Many of those who publicly refused—heroes, each one—are in this room. But others went to ground or left public life, traumatized by the experience of witch burning.

The other thing that it destroyed—at least for the time being—was the Democratic Party. It became unrecognizable. The Democratic candidate for president promised the American Civil Liberties Union in writing that her White House would pay for sex-change surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison for violent crimes. It became utterly detached from reality.

In a line: What happened was that the far left destroyed the center-left in America.

Which is an excellent explanation. I have another line for it:

The center failed to hold.

So, who was this mysterious center and why didn’t they hold. Well, Dave did well to point to John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Lindsay Graham, I’d add to that by saying Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Ron Desantis, most American’s hate these people! The American experiment was never a moderate project. There is nothing more radical than elections in the 1700’s. Now, the last hundred years we’ve just remained in the middle. In a world of exponential growth, the idea that leadership was supposed to remain exactly the same, admin after admin, decade after decade, war after war, is crazy.

After years and years of being subdued by these “moderates” it’s entirely clear that this destruction of the “center” is for all of our benefit.

It was time. The center has been destroying our society for decades, much longer than I’ve been around. If we don’t do something about this now, we might never get another chance. Reading Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” for the third time, I was struck by a passage. The sting of it felt like a fresh wound, because it was. Hunter is talking with a Democrat campaign manager and has a thought:

“Thats the real issue this time,” he said “Beating Nixon! It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me, and the, at least 20 million people I tend to agree with, a chance to vote for something? Instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils. I have been through three Presidental elections, now, but it has been twelve years since I could look at a ballot and see a name I wanted to vote for.

In 1964, 1 refused to vote at all, and in ’68 I spent half a morning in the county courthouse getting an absentee ballot so I could vote, out of spite, for Dick Gregory. Now, with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer.

I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in I960 —and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

This was in 1972, 52 years later and it’s exactly the same. “The right is Hitler” says the left. “There’s nothing more important than defeating Hitler.”

“So, if you get elected what will you do different than your opponent?”

“Kill more people, with more wars and more poverty. Did I mention that he’s Hitler?”

To be clear Hillary Clinton was always a State Department crony. John McCain literally ran on “staying in Iraq for a hundred years.” Lindsay Graham has called for war with every country short of ourselves. In 1982 Joe Biden shocked the hardline Likudnik Prime Minister Menachem Begin during a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Begin had invaded Lebanon. All the Senators on the committee were badgering Begin with things like “how could you do this?” and “You're destabilizing the Middle East” and Biden, being the lone Senator to support him, actually shocked Begin by saying, “I would go even further than you. I would be willing to kill women and children.” When Muammar Qaddafi was sodomized on camera by CIA-backed (meaning trained, armed, and funded) “freedom fighters” in Libya her reaction was a devious cackle followed by “we came, we saw, he died!”

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The Deep State is the Swamp, The Swamp is the Center

The Deep State is neither far left, nor far right. The deep state is the center. They are who ensures things don’t move any further in either direction. “More of the same” is the name of their game.

They make sure there is enough war to keep Raytheon and General Dynamics happy. Enough fraud to keep Goldman Sachs and Citi Group happy. Enough crooked politicians to keep FISA and the FBI in need. Enough “threats” to the homeland for a busy Department of Homeland Security. Enough disease for a healthy Center for Disease Control.

They make sure we’re afraid enough that we might need an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), and a Border Patrol. What are they protecting!? How much money goes into that, I wonder, for American politicians to bypass the whole thing to bring the people over by caravan and drop them in the middle of New York City??? Put them up in luxury hotels that my whole privileged life being born here couldn't cover a weekend at.

That was just a skim through memory and the USA.gov/agencies site. Let me be clear, the people who work at these agencies are just doing a job. When we talk about “the deep state” we are not talking about them. That’s a common misconception; regular Federal workers are not the deep state. However, a lot of them will have to get a new job if the deep state is ever dismantled. I’m sorry. You're like the secretaries and regular workers for companies passing out “subprime mortgages” to people without jobs leading up to 2008. I know it sucks, but that job wasn’t going anywhere, anyways. Different from 2008 is I can direct you to three jobs off the top of my head right now! Wanna make exhaust systems for Ford? Plastic liners for food service companies? Or repackage Reynolds Wrap? All three hiring now, decent pay, and probably weren’t hiring after the ‘08 housing crash.

The war against the center might just be the first noble war of history! What else? WW2, sure, but the optics were pretty ugly, ask a native of Dresden, Germany how they felt…. Oh yea! You can’t, we killed them all! Hit em so hard that our bombs sucked the oxygen out of the air and turned the pavement into molten lava. The bombs could completely miss you, but the rising temperature or oxygen suck left you blue and lifeless. I know of no other wars which are still considered “noble.”

This is the war they said the “War on Terror” was to be. Who is they? The enablers of the Deep State. It couldn’t exist without them. They are the corporate media, and myth makers themselves. They are the ones who told us “Iraq had weapons of mass destruction”, when it was not so, and “Russian Warships were seen near the Russian-owned Nordstream Pipeline before it blew up” after Joe Biden had announced publicly that “There will be no more Nordstream pipeline if Russian invades Ukraine.” They said, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says” although “Intelligence” was not intelligent, they were fraudulent. They told us a “white supremacist” named “Kyle Rittenhouse” had “crossed state lines” with an assault rifle to kill black people at a protest in a town he’d never been to. On the contrary, he lived in Kenosha, was a volunteer firefighter in Kenosha, the gun was registered and bought there, in the same town, he was guarding a local business for an immigrant family, and he shot 3 white people who were known criminal in the act of attempting to kill him. One of them was even a registered sex offender. And the rifle was semi-automatic. They told us we were fools for doing our own research, and that MRNA vaccine for COVID-19 was 100% effective at spreading transmission. They told us Joe Rogan was causing gunshot victims to bleed out in line due to cases of poisoning from his listeners taking “horse paste” that contained the non-toxic Nobel prize winning drug Ivermectin. They said there was hidden Russians subverting our elections with Facebook ads, and our President had been a secret Russian intelligence asset since 1987, and they referred to a comic known for roast comedy as a “speaker at a Trump rally” and that rally as a “Nazi rally” since Nazi’s had also held a rally at the same venue, Madison Square Garden's, in the 1930’s leaving out that so has Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The New York Nicks a lot, Hendrix, The Doors, and this was on the 142nd page of their list of artists who have appeared there. In the same year as the Trump “Nazi” Rally there was J. Cole, Andrea Bocelli, Creed/Three Doors Down, Dave Matthews Band, Duran-Duran, Cyndi Lauper, Billie Eilish, Jelly Roll, Meghan Trainor, Charli XCX, Sabastian Maniscalco, Weezer, Nikki Minaj, Cage the Elephant, Jennifer Lopez, Slipknot, and oh by the way, Tony Hinchcliffe (the “speaker”) himself. A pretty damn diverse Nazi Rally, not to mention all the Israeli flags they were flying! The corporate media is the enforcement arm of the center. The “more of the same” class. The Deep state, in the flesh. Without the corporate media in full persuasive swing, they never would have had the control they’ve held for half a century, and so much evil could’ve been avoided. They need them at the frontlines promoting fear. Control can only come through fear. , if you don’t know he’s a long-time member and observer of the Corporate Press’ role in reinforcing the center and spreading their fear campaign and does just fabulous explaining how they pull it off in the following video:

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Make Politics True Crime Again

At a former job I would get in trouble for wearing earbuds while I was working. I had gotten into politics, and I had come up with that between the time that I was at work and back home it was worth all that I learned by listening to news and history podcasts in that eight hours to simply continue doing it and take a chance at having to find another job. I never did, for that anyways, and my current job is much laxer than the old job. One of the times my boss asked me “what is it you are listening to?”

To her I replied, “a podcast about politics.” It was Part of the Problem w/ Dave Smith, and she said, “God, that would put me to sleep!” I remember being so surprised by this, knowing the largest genre of podcasts is quickly becoming True Crime, so someone finds this interesting. I realized that she seen politics as it was being portrayed for decades, dull, aching, noise that doesn’t make anyone’s lives a bit better, but I was seeing this as more of a True Crime story. I came home from school one time and asked my father if he was a Democrat or a Republican and he wasn’t sure. He seen it as a dull paradigm that doesn’t do anything for people at our level. The same way Hunter seen it way back in 1972. Hunter S. Thompson would love the way things are going here in this country. He seen these malignant moderates totally content with “more of the same” as a cancer that needed to be cut out, and maybe if it had been then we wouldn’t have to toss out the baby with the bath water today, but we’re in Stage 3 of malignancy, and these centrist deep state cancers who have refused to do an audit ever for fear of the people finally seeing what’s been happening behind the scenes, must be cut out. Zapped with chemotherapy, to make room for new healthy cells to develop. It’s the only chance that out civilization has.

There’s a war on the center, and the center has lost.

Thank you for reading! Editor-in-Chief

2024 YEAR IN REVIEW (Ur-Ine Re-V-Yoo)

Hello Newcomers, welcome to our land. Never mind the noise about invasions, trust me, we’re not talking about you. Please, please, don’t zap Lindsey Graham, please, I don’t know who, but someone likes him and as much as I do endorse him being turned to dust, my government will overreact. You’re not the invaders we’re worried about, Americans are more worried about those…darker skinned invaders. The ones from earth, and those sneaky snakes in our White House right now. I know everyone seems rather hysterical, but if we knew you weren’t from China or Iran, or carrying fentanyl in your hubcap—It’s an earth thing, I’ll explain—the hysterics will die down I assure you. However, for now, let me fill you in on our contemporary politics and our world as it currently stands. I know you’ve come a long way, take a load off, listen to my dribbling’s, or trail off and take a good nap, if that’s your thing, it’s all for your entertainment anyways….

2024

This year is one for the history books. Future historians will write books addressing the events of this year. Maybe it will be called, 2024: A Wrinkle in Time, or as ’ s latest post was called 2024: The Year of the Coverup, which best describes this unbelieveable year.

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It was a year of hysteria, a year of carnage, but in some ways a year of unity and acceptance. Never in history have more truths come to light, have more alliances been formed, and more people crossed the Rubicon to unify on the other side of the aisle, and one side was left completely exposed for everyone to see who they really are. The establishment figures are dying out, and a populist movement on the left and a populist movement on the right are starting to see that they are not as far apart as they once believed. Consider this, Russel Brand shared a stage with Jordan Peterson, at an event organized by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, where gave the most beautiful defense of free speech in the world today, and Jimmy Dore excoriated the war state followed by Tulsi Gabbard warning of nuclear war. If you don’t know, Jordan Peterson and Matt Taibbi were as far apart politically as Chicago and Timbuktu!

(The “Visitors” stare blankly in obvious confusion) I continue…

Or consider this, a radical libertarian, Dave Smith and center-left Democrat Cenk Uyghur, were on the same side of many debates on Israel-Palestine, because they might disagree on everything in the world but one thing, they can agree on is that shit is wrong!

Or the real wild one, Silicon Valley of all places, decided it was in their best interest the first time ever to vote Republican, like the whole thing. David Sacks-Democrat, Elon Musk-Democrat, Marc Andreesen-Democrat, that’s it, that’s the only ones I know, lol, ok, better example, Elon Musk, a Biden and Obama voter, Robert F. Kennedy Jr-of the famous Democratic Kennedy dynasty, Tulsi Gabbard-the recent Democratic Committee Chairman, all decided to join forces with Donald Trump-the Republican candidate and winner, while the Democrat Candidate Kamala Harris joined forces with establishment Republican war criminals like Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, and as crazy as this sounds, 7 out of 10 chances, the second one wins.

Last year you were a kook, a conspiracy theorist or a flat earth dum dum if you said there might be life on other planets, this year award winning Journalists are tracking down UAP’s and testifying in front of Congress.

This year brought the rise of alternative media, like we do here at Substack, and the crash of corporate network media who told us what to think and what to believe. This is the Information age, and I hesitate to say 2024 is the peak because that would assume it can’t get better, but it can, and it will. So, future historians and creatures from the unknown, here’s a breakdown of the events of 2024. From a writer, I’m sure you heard of, reporting from ground zero.

January

• The new year opened with the resignation of Claudine Gay, after the infuriating congressional hearing which was clipped and taken out of context, where she was defending, not expelling students for protesting the War in Gaza and a pressure campaign for plagiarizing work she did for Harvard which, she was wrong for that, it was very stupid, and although I hated her treatment by Elise Stefanik, it did beg the question, how did this lady end up the president of Harvard? Who knows!

• Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean-American Journalist, reporting from Ukraine, was highly critical of Volodymyr Zelensky for his prosecution of the war and connection to Ukrainian Neo-Nazi’s like Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and its founders Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiy while the West feeds more bombs to keep the war moving ahead and the Ukrainians dying “(t)o the last Ukrainian.” The Journalist Gonzalo Lira was detained for posts on Twitter against the war, non-violent post but expressing dissent.

  

• Ron Desantis ended his campaign. Nikki Haley ended her career.

• The World Economic Forum took place, and we got to see those psychos on stage. With the normal cast plus, Zelensky and the new president of Argentina Javier Milei, the first libertarian economist, ever made president in world history. The lizard people thought he was weird.

• New Jeffrey Epstein file release that was underwhelming to say the least, but did put on blast Dr. Stephen Hawking, kinda, and Alan Dershowitz, not kinda at all! Here’s the Guardian:

An additional 19 documents, comprising roughly 300 pages, are in addition to the more than 900 pages of records that were unveiled on Wednesday evening, causing an internet frenzy that crashed a website holding the documents.

High-profile names in the court documents have included Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and David Copperfield, though many of the persons identified are not accused of any sexual wrongdoing.

But many are, including Alan Dershowitz.

• Substack is accused of having a “nazi problem” after Jonathan Katz at the Atlantic makes the claim of “numerous nazi’s and white nationalist writing and profiting from Substack.” Numerous turned out to be 16. Most of that 16 just said something subversive and all of them added together made a grand total of $0 from Substack. was on that list because he…talked about BLM and the destruction caused during the riots under a pseudonym??? He’s made money on Substack, sure, but is he a Nazi? I’m still trying to figure out if he is a he…. Anyways, other outlets like Business Insider and the NYT piled on.

  • Inside Substack an “Open letter to and ” was published calling for them to stop supporting these people. Hundreds signed it.

  • In response, a counter letter went around asserting that “free speech is not for speech you like; it’s for speech you don’t like.” Thousands signed.

  • There was a minor exodus of people we don’t need, and I had an interaction with an Atlantic writer, which was very cool, even though he was retarded. I also has an interaction with German’s who argued that “the ability to buy the book Mein Kampf should be banned”, I guess because their worried about corrupting the minds of the simpletons, and I had an interaction with a lady who, for some reason kept restacking a screenshot of my argument with Katz, and saying, “Will you teach your son to be a nazi?” “Will you teach your son to be a school shooter?” I don’t believe there has ever been a school shooting where the parents told them to do it. Maybe an atmosphere corrupted a kid. But never taught him.

• The month ends with Boeing planes being grounded around the world due to numerous quality issues.

• acquitted in Germany for the charge of “Using Nazi insignia”. Did he say, he loved Hitler? Nope. He wrote a book about the authoritarianism of our government here in the Western Hemisphere during COVID. Yea? So did many authors, what was different with him? Well, he was in Germany. Here is the book cover, the actual charge stemmed from using a swastika on the cover.

  

• releases the UK Files Part II which brings to light an NGO that will continue to be part of the news as a quasi-villain all the way up to the election this fall, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, CCDH, sounds nice, right? Wrong.

Racket News

“UK Files” Exclusive, Part 2: The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) Told the IRS It Was A Charity. Documents Say Otherwise

Explosive documents from the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) show that one of the world’s most powerful “anti-disinformation” groups, the Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc. (“CCDH Inc.”), provided incorrect information to the IRS in its application to receive tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status…

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2 years ago · 554 likes · 117 comments · Paul Holden

February

• Joe Biden wins South Carolina primary, after icing out all other contenders using lawfare and a street putsch through the court system.

• Democrat activists and Democrat super-PAC’s assert that they will stop at nothing to prevent a 3rd party candidate from making it to the election and being a spoiler for the Democrats.

“Based on the evidence No Labels has presented to the Department of Justice,” said Dan Webb, a leader for the organization and former U.S. Attorney in Chicago. “No Labels is alleging these groups are participating in a racketeering conspiracy to use fear and threats of force to intimidate and harass representatives of No Labels, potential No Labels political candidates and No Labels supporters nationwide.”

No Labels is a party, like the Green Party, they oppose the current Dem-Rep duopoly that currently dominates politics, and they run 3rd party candidates. Because of being tied up in this suit, they didn’t run a 3rd party candidate this election season, but they planned to. At this time, RFK jr, Jill Stein, and Cornel West were running 3rd party, this threat was directed at all of them.

Here is the letter from ‘No Labels Party’ to the Justice Dept:

(Note: I had to use the Internet Archive to get this since it had been scrubbed from the internet, but never fear, online is FOREVER)

Moving on….

• Tucker Carlson interviews Vladimir Putin in Russia, and establishment war hawks who lied us into killing a million Iraqi’s, like Bill Kristol, should shut the fuck up forever! But they are not! Bill Kristol literally called for an American journalist to not be allowed back in the country for interviewing a world leader, because no one would ever interview Saddam Hussein, or Osama Bin Laden or even Fidel Castro.

  

Anyways, excellent interview…

• After Colorado refused Donald Trump ballot access last year his case reaches the Supreme Court for the final decision.

• Bombshell four-part story, and possibly the final piece to the puzzle that is Russiagate.

  • “Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

    “In truth, the US IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

    “After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.” — News,

    Public

    CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say

    Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016…

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    2 years ago · 1085 likes · 187 comments · Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag

  • There is a hidden “Binder” that could incriminate Gina Haspel, former CIA Director, and others in the intelligence community, for the botched Russiagate investigation:

    Public

    U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources

    Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump…

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    2 years ago · 904 likes · 158 comments · Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag

  • Uncovered documents prove that intel agencies fixed, or “cooked”, intelligence in 2016 to make it appear that Russia, and Vladimir Putin preferred a Donald Trump presidency as opposed to Hillary Clinton, the truth was much more obvious, of course they preferred Hillary Clinton, everyone knew what she would do, she has decades of nightmarish foreign policy experience behind her, no one knew what trump would do!

    Racket News

    WMD, Part II: CIA "Cooked The Intelligence" To Hide That Russia Favored Clinton, Not Trump In 2016

    It was all a lie…

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    2 years ago · 1009 likes · 313 comments · Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag

  • And part 4, John Brennan manipulated the Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections, to change the outcome, which was one of the threads holding Russiagate together here’s a quote from it.

    Some have suggested that the report, as it was authored by the majority staff of HPSCI, which was Republican at the time, is untrustworthy.

    But the report was based on raw intelligence and extensive interviews with CIA officials and “did not seem like a partisan document,” the former staffer said. “It took a particular view. But it delivered the analysis and intelligence to back it up.”

    The man was reassured by the report’s authors, whom he met with after he read it. “They said they spent an enormous amount of time talking to CIA people about the ICA. They were level-headed and credible. They lent legitimacy to the report because I got to size them up.”

    Pressed further, he said, “They were pleasant, introverted people. Not political hacks. Professionals. Somewhat wonky and nerdy.”

    What the HPSCI staff report showed was that the former CIA Director Brennan had manipulated the ICA.

Public

Obama Partisan Wrote False 2017 Russia Intelligence Assessment, Says Insider

Around 10 a.m. on a Saturday in August 2018, someone made the extraordinary decision to show a White House staff member a top-secret report written by investigators working for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), which is universally pronounced as “hip C…

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2 years ago · 522 likes · 68 comments · Michael Shellenberger

• On 16 February 2024, Russian Federal Penitentiary announces that Russian opposition activist and political prisoner Alexei Navalny died while serving a 19-year prison sentence incarcerated at the corrective colony FKU IK-3, in the village of Kharp in the Russian Arctic. His official death was pneumonia. This was unanimously blamed on Vladimir Putin. It happened at the same time that a security conference was happening where Zelensky was arguing for more weapons. It this was Putin it would’ve been strategically retarded because it have the West all the ammo they needed insure Ukraine got more weapons. In fact, nobody benefited more for the death of Navalny than the Ukraine military benefits*******

• Robert K. Hur drops 388-page report on Joe Biden’s misuse of classified documents case. After interviewing him for hours and hours, which I’m sure really meant, one hour, he came to the decision not to press charges because the judge will seem him as a “well-meaning old man with a bad memory”, how bad are we talking? He forgot his son passed away. He thought he was still the Vice President, and asked, “When did I stop being Vice?” The truth we have all been aware of, is beginning to be next to impossible to hide, but they do. While referring to Bob Hur as a partisan hack and a fascist to cover it up.

• United States strikes in Iraq, and Yemen, at the behest of Israel

• Nikki Haley, since corporate defense companies, Military-Industrial Complex donors, and corporate Super-PAC’s dropped $100 million dollars on her campaign in case of an accidental win, Haley is refusing to drop out, even after being smoked in her own state, but these Republican Primary debates do bring a new question to light and maybe the most important question in politics, between Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie, who is more unlikable?

  Which of them truly makes American faces contort with disgust. The best quote came out of these Republican Primary “Nikki Haley will send your children to die in war so she can buy a new house”

• New York Times’ Adam Entous drops exposé in the paper laying out how the CIA has been training soldiers and providing intelligence to prepare and carry out warfare on Russia for years leading up to now, “Limited Hangout”? It MUST be. Click Here to Read the Article for Free, if you're looking to feel more cynical.

• Joe Biden’s Hitler-esque drug fueled, propaganda piece, packaged into the worst State of the Union, in my life, and his press lap dogs slop it up! During which he refers to people who cross the border illegally as—get this—”Illegals”, the following day he has a press conference to apologize for “Using that derogatory term”. If he had called them “super predators” however, it would’ve been just fine, right Hillary?

• Early talks on ATACMS missiles being authorized for Ukraine hits the mainstream

• State Department threatens Congress after the Global Engagement Center and the Disinformation Index are exposed by Gabe Kaminsky in the Washington Examiner. The series is called “Disinformation Inc.”

Racket News

State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs

The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the…

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2 years ago · 1618 likes · 379 comments · Matt Taibbi

• After being convicted of war crimes by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in South Africa, Israel’s deadline to concede to the guidelines set by the court— “Stop KILLING Everyone!” —was surpassed the same week that Israel bombed the refugee camp in Rafah that they told Palestinians in Northern Gaza to retreat to.

  

• Nate Silver, following an exceedingly grim outlook at the polls, called for Joe Biden to step down.

• Vice.com officially shuts down.

• Rogan shuts down Kid Rock on Israel warmongering.

• Michigan Democrat Primary shows 100K+ voted uncommitted due to Israel. We’ll talk more about that in November. Trump wins Republican Primary.

• Justin Trudeau introduces the Online Harms Act. Another piece to the puzzle on Global Censorship is found, an outline appears, and the first amendment is one step closer to eradication, hyperbolic? What is the bill?

  Public

  Trudeau Demands Life In Prison For Speech Crimes

  To protect children from sexual exploitation, Canada must pass the Online Harms Act, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. “I am the parent of two young boys,” said Justice Minister Arif Virani. “I will do whatever I can to ensure their digital world is as safe as the neighborhood we live in. Children are vulnerable online. They need to be protected from online sexual exploitation, hate, and cyberbullying…

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  2 years ago · 674 likes · 151 comments