Only A Masochistic Cuck Would Consider Fighting And Dying For This....,

CTH  |  It is hard to think the unthinkable – but there comes a time when there’s nothing else for it. People raised to trust the powers that be – who have assumed, like I once did, that the State, regardless of its political flavour at any given moment, is essentially benevolent and well-meaning – will naturally try and keep that assumption of benevolence in mind when trying to make sense of what is going on around them.

People like us, you and me, raised in the understanding that we are free, that we have inalienable rights, and that the institutions of this country have our best interests at heart, will tend to tie ourselves in knots rather than contemplate the idea those authorities might actually be working against us now. I took that thought of benevolent, well-meaning authority for granted for most of my life, God help me. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was as gullible as the next chump.

A couple of years ago, however, I began to think the unthinkable and with every passing day it becomes more and more obvious to me that we are no longer being treated as individuals entitled to try and make the most of our lives – but as a barn full of battery hens, just another product to be bought and sold – sold down the river.

Let me put it another way: if you have been driving yourself almost demented in an effort to think the best of those in charge – those in senior positions in government, those in charge of the great institutions of State, those running the big corporations – but finding it increasingly impossible to do so … then the solution to the problem might be to turn your point of view through 180 degrees and accept, however unwillingly, that we are … how best to put this … being taken for a ride.

When you find a stranger’s hand on your wallet, in the inside pocket of your jacket … rather than trying to persuade yourself he’s only making sure it doesn’t fall out … it might be more straightforward to draw the conclusion you’re in the process of being robbed.

Once the scales fall from a person’s eyes, the resultant clarity of sight is briefly overwhelming. Or it is like being handed a skeleton key that opens every locked door, or access to a Rosetta Stone that translates every word into a language instantly understood.

Take the energy crisis: If you’ve felt the blood drain from your face at the prospect of bills rising from hundreds to several thousands of pounds while reading about energy companies doubling their profits overnight while being commanded to subsidise so-called renewables that are anything but Green while listening to this politician or that renew their vows to the ruinous fantasies of Net Zero and Agenda 2030 while knowing that the electricity for electric cars comes, in the main and most reliably, from fossil fuels if you can’t make sense of it all and just know that it adds up to a future in which you might have to choose between eating and heating then treat yourself to the gift of understanding that the powers that be fully intend that we should have less heat and less fuel and that in the planned future only the rich will have cars anyway. The plan is not to fix it.

The plan is to break it, and leave it broken. If you struggle to think the best of the world’s richest – vacuous, self-obsessed A-list celebrities among them – endlessly circling the planet on private jets and super yachts, so as to attend get-togethers where they might pontificate to us lowly proles about how we must give up our cars and occasional holiday flights – even meat on the dinner table … if you wonder how they have the unmitigated gall … then isn’t it easier simply to accept that their honestly declared and advertised intention is that their luxurious and pampered lives will continue as before while we are left hungry, cold and mostly unwashed in our unheated homes.

Here’s the thing: if any leader or celeb honestly meant a word of their sermons about CO₂ and the rest, then they would obviously lead by example. They would be first of all of us willingly to give up international travel altogether … they would downsize to modest homes warmed by heat pumps. They would eschew all energy but that from the sun and the wind. They would eat, with relish, bugs and plants. They would resort to walking, bicycles and public transport.

If Net Zero and the rest was about the good of the planet – and not about clearing the skies and the beaches of scum like us – don’t you think those sainted politicians and A-listers would be lighting the way for us by their own example? If the way of life they preach to us was worth living, wouldn’t they be living it already? Perhaps you heard Bill Gates say private jets are his guilty pleasure.

And how about food – and more particularly the predicted shortage of it: the suits and CEOs blame it all on Vladimir Putin. But if the countries of the world are truly running out of food, why is our government offering farmers hundreds of thousands of pounds to get out of the industry and sell their land to transnational corporations for use, or disuse unknown? Why aren’t we, as a society, doing what our parents and grandparents did during WWII and digging for victory? Why is the government intent on turning a third of our fertile soil over to re-wilding schemes that make life better only for the beavers? Why aren’t we looking across the North Sea towards the Netherlands where a WEF-infected administration is bullying farmers off their land altogether, forcing them to cull half the national herd.

Those Dutch farmers are among the most productive and knowledgeable in the world, holding in their heads and hands the answers to all manner of questions about how best to produce food, and yet their government is so intent on scaring them out of the business that a teenage boy in a tractor, taking part in a protest to defend ancient rights and traditions, was fired on by police.

Why do you think it matters so much, to the government of the second most productive population of farmers in the world, to gut and fillet that industry? Why? Why have similar protests, in countries all across Europe and the wider world, been largely ignored by the mainstream media – a media that would have crawled on its hands and knees over broken glass just to report on a BLM protester opening a bag of non-binary crisps. Why the silence on the attack on farming?

Valodya Welcomes Attendees At The 10th Moscow Conference On International Security

 en.kremlin.ru |  President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,

Esteemed foreign guests,

Let me welcome you to the anniversary 10^th Moscow Conference on International Security. Over the past decade, your representative forum has become a significant venue for discussing the most pressing military-political problems.

Today, such an open discussion is particularly pertinent. The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.

These objective processes are being opposed by the Western globalist elites, who provoke chaos, fanning long-standing and new conflicts and pursuing the so-called containment policy, which in fact amounts to the subversion of any alternative, sovereign development options. Thus, they are doing all they can to keep hold onto the hegemony and power that are slipping from their hands; they are attempting to retain countries and peoples in the grip of what is essentially a neocolonial order. Their hegemony means stagnation for the rest of the world and for the entire civilisation; it means obscurantism, cancellation of culture, and neoliberal totalitarianism.

They are using all expedients. The United States and its vassals grossly interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states by staging provocations, organising coups, or inciting civil wars. By threats, blackmail, and pressure, they are trying to force independent states to submit to their will and follow rules that are alien to them. This is being done with just one aim in view, which is to preserve their domination, the centuries-old model that enables them to sponge on everything in the world. But a model of this sort can only be retained by force.

This is why the collective West – the so-called collective West – is deliberately undermining the European security system and knocking together ever new military alliances. NATO is crawling east and building up its military infrastructure. Among other things, it is deploying missile defence systems and enhancing the strike capabilities of its offensive forces. This is hypocritically attributed to the need to strengthen security in Europe, but in fact quite the opposite is taking place. Moreover, the proposals on mutual security measures, which Russia put forward last December, were once again disregarded.

They need conflicts to retain their hegemony. It is for this reason that they have destined the Ukrainian people to being used as cannon fodder. They have implemented the anti-Russia project and connived at the dissemination of the neo-Nazi ideology. They looked the other way when residents of Donbass were killed in their thousands and continued to pour weapons, including heavy weapons, for use by the Kiev regime, something that they persist in doing now.

Under these circumstances, we have taken the decision to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine, a decision which is in full conformity with the Charter of the United Nations. It has been clearly spelled out that the aims of this operation are to ensure the security of Russia and its citizens and protect the residents of Donbass from genocide.

The situation in Ukraine shows that the United States is attempting to draw out this conflict. It acts in the same way elsewhere, fomenting the conflict potential in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As is common knowledge, the US has recently made another deliberate attempt to fuel the flames and stir up trouble in the Asia-Pacific. The US escapade towards Taiwan is not just a voyage by an irresponsible politician, but part of the purpose-oriented and deliberate US strategy designed to destabilise the situation and sow chaos in the region and the world. It is a brazen demonstration of disrespect for other countries and their own international commitments. We regard this as a thoroughly planned provocation.

It is clear that by taking these actions the Western globalist elites are attempting, among other things, to divert the attention of their own citizens from pressing socioeconomic problems, such as plummeting living standards, unemployment, poverty, and deindustrialisation. They want to shift the blame for their own failures to other countries, namely Russia and China, which are defending their point of view and designing a sovereign development policy without submitting to the diktat of the supranational elites.

We also see that the collective West is striving to expand its bloc-based system to the Asia-Pacific region, like it did with NATO in Europe. To this end, they are creating aggressive military-political unions such as AUKUS and others.

It is obvious that it is only possible to reduce tensions in the world, overcome military-political threats and risks, improve trust between countries and ensure their sustainable development through a radical strengthening of the contemporary system of a multipolar world.

I reiterate that the era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. No matter how strongly the beneficiaries of the current globalist model cling to the familiar state of affairs, it is doomed. The historic geopolitical changes are going in a totally different direction.

And, of course, your conference is another important proof of the objective processes forming a multipolar world, bringing together representatives from many countries who want to discuss security issues on an equal footing, and conduct a dialogue that takes into account the interests of all parties, without exception.

I want to emphasise that the multipolar world, based on international law and more just relations, opens up new opportunities for counteracting common threats, such as regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and cybercrime. All these challenges are global, and therefore it would be impossible to overcome them without combining the efforts and potentials of all states.

As before, Russia will actively and assertively participate in such coordinated joint efforts; together with its allies, partners and fellow thinkers, it will improve the existing mechanisms of international security and create new ones, as well as consistently strengthen the national armed forces and other security structures by providing them with advanced weapons and military equipment. Russia will secure its national interests, as well as the protection of its allies, and take other steps towards building of a more democratic world where the rights of all peoples and cultural and civilisational diversity are guaranteed.

We need to restore respect for international law, for its fundamental norms and principles. And, of course, it is important to promote such universal and commonly acknowledged agencies as the United Nations and other international dialogue platforms. The UN Security Council and the General Assembly, as it was intended initially, are supposed to serve as effective tools to reduce international tensions and prevent conflicts, as well as facilitate the provision of reliable security and wellbeing of countries and peoples.

In conclusion, I want to thank the conference organisers for their major preparatory work and I wish all participants substantial discussions.

I am sure that the forum will continue to make a significant contribution to the strengthening of peace and stability on our planet and facilitate the development of constructive dialogue and partnership.

Thank you for your attention.

Shoigu Welcomes Attendees At The 10th Moscow Conference On International Security

 

india.mid.ru | The opening of the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security took place at Avangard Centre for Military and Patriotic Education of Youth within the framework of ARMY 2022 IMTF. Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, addressed the participants of the event:

Ladies and gentlemen!

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security.

This conference comes at a time of radical change in global and regional security. The unconditional dominance of the US and its allies is a thing of the past. On February 24, 2022, the start of the special military operation in Ukraine marked the end of the unipolar world.

Multipolarity has become a reality. The poles of this world are clearly defined. The main difference between them is that some respect the interests of sovereign states and take into account the cultural and historical particularities of countries and peoples, while others disregard them. There have been numerous discussions on this topic during previous sessions of the Moscow conference.

In Europe, the security situation is worse than at the peak of the Cold War. The alliance's military activities have become as aggressive and anti-Russian as possible. Significant US forces have been redeployed to the continent, and the number of coalition troops in Eastern and Central Europe has increased manifold.

It is important to note that the deployment of additional NATO Joint Force formations on the bloc's "eastern flank" had already started before the start of the special military operation in Ukraine.

NATO has dropped its masks. The aggressive nature of the bloc was no longer concealed by the wording of the coalition's purely defensive orientation. Today, the alliance's strategic planning documents enshrine claims to global dominance. Alliance's interests include Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

In the West's view, the established system of international relations should be replaced by a so-called rules-based world order. The logic here is simple and ultimatumatic. Either the alliance's "democratic partner" candidate loses sovereignty and becomes supposedly on the "right side of history". Or it is relegated to the category of so-called authoritarian regimes, against which all kinds of measures, up to and including coercive pressure, can be used.

Given that the Conference is attended by heads of defence agencies and security experts from different regions of the world, I would like to highlight some aspects of the special military operation in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, the Russian military is being confronted by combined Western forces that run the leadership of that country in a hybrid war against Russia.

The supply of weapons and military equipment to Ukraine is being stepped up, and training of the Ukrainian army is being carried out. Huge financial resources are transferred to maintain the viability of the nationalist regime.

The actions of Ukraine's armed forces are planned and coordinated by foreign military advisers. Reconnaissance data is supplied from all available NATO sources. The use of armaments is supervised by Western specialists.

NATO's efforts are aimed at prolonging the agony of the Kiev regime. However, we know for a fact that no one in NATO has any doubt that the goals of the Russian leadership's special military operation will be achieved, and that plans to strategically and economically weaken Russia are failing. The dollar has not reached the ceiling of 200 roubles, as predicted by the US president, the Russian economy has stood firm. 

Discredited FBI Unit That Led Trump Russiagate Is Leading Mar-a-Lago Fishing Expedition

realclearpolitics |  The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump's handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham's investigation of the bureau's alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

The FBI's nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president's Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington – not Miami, as has been widely reported – according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau's counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia "collusion" investigation of Trump, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane."

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau's disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team – Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden's son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian "disinformation," an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

 

Do You Imagine That A Rebellion Of The Belly Would Support (Or Even Spare) Trump?

trysterotapes  |  Bacon begins with this highly relevant, relatable point: “when discords, and quarrels, and factions are carried openly and audaciously, it is a sign the reverence of government is lost.”3 This briefly touches on a point made over at John Ganz’s Unpopular Front, namely the liberal fear of “going too far,” trepidation around the optics of “looking political” that has become associated with Barack Obama on Russia and Comey on “her emails.” If we follow Bacon’s logic here, then the liberal tolerance for these kinds of abuses carries its own dangers, not only of demoralization (when we witness powerful people committing the worst kinds of crimes openly, especially in contrast with the Reality Winners of the world), but of a loss of respect or “reverence of government.” There’s no question that we live in the kind of world that Bacon describes: various forms of revolt are at least discussed openly, and until recently with very little fear of reprisal at least on the MAGA right. And yet, conditions are not ripe for widespread revolt, for the material reasons that Bacon discusses next:

Concerning the materials of seditions. It is a thing well to be considered; for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them. For if there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell, whence the spark shall come, that shall set it on fire. The matter of seditions is of two kinds: much poverty, and much discontentment.4

No question: the current conjuncture positively requires Baconian “discontentment,” and as I have argued elsewhere, the widespread, systemic sense of disillusionment with the neoliberal experiment happened first on the “nationalist” MAGA right. But what Bacon says next clinches the point I want to make 

(I)f this poverty and broken estate in the better sort, be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great. For the rebellions of the belly are the worst.5

Translated into contemporary language, Bacon here is making the (Machiavellian) point that if leaders of state are concerned with sedition and revolt, they need to watch out for interclass alliances between those “in the better sort” and those whose lives are ruined by scarcity and precarity, the truly marginal and damned. In the end, in other words, we always come back to the politics of thumos, belly-politics, the visceral, gut-level reaction to material deprivation as a primal “danger” to sovereign control over territory and order.6 Bacon’s point that “(r)ebellions of the belly are the worst” is a warning to those in power, but it should also remind us that the MAGA phenomenon remains one of relatively comfortable, white, middle-class men and women. MAGA is an ideology which breaks from neoliberal globalism, in order to prioritize the values of a heartland petit bourgeoisie.

 

Trump Had Amassed A Paper Trail Documenting Snitches And Switches Used Against Him

Newsweek  |  The two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the situation tell Newsweek that while some of the intelligence documents might have dealt with nuclear weapons, that was not the main focus.

"Trump was particularly interested in matters related to the Russia hoax and the wrong-doings of the deep state," one former Trump official tells Newsweek. "I think he felt, and I agree, that these are facts that the American people need to know." The official says Trump may have been planning to use them as part of a 2024 run for the presidency.

The high-level U.S. government officials explain that it was not necessarily the classification level of the documents nor even their subject matter that investigators were focused on.

But it is accurate to think about what was retrieved at Mar-a-Lago as two distinct sets of documents—those that are being openly sought under the Presidential Records Act and those that formed part of Donald Trump's stash.

"What we're talking about here is not just documents that the Archives was seeking to fulfill the provisions of the Act," one of the officials says. "They were also after some number of documents that they considered more sensitive, but also documents that they felt the former president had no intention to return."

The decision to search Mar-a-Lago was prompted by concern that the documents might be moved as the negotiations dragged on, or that former President Trump might use them, revealing secrets or revealing intelligence sources and methods (including agents on the U.S. payroll or other secrets, such as what was being intercepted electronically).

The Affidavit, Justice said in their opposition to unsealing the Affidavit, would reveal "highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques; and information required by law to be kept under seal."

In laymen's terms, the Affidavit reveals human sources ("witnesses") and the possibility that "specific investigative techniques," including information from the intelligence community about what they believed Donald Trump had, or about surveillance of Mar-a-Lago, would be compromised.

"I know it is hard for people to understand that the classification of the documents was not the main concern per se," says one of the high-level government officials. "It is Donald Trump's potential law-breaking that is the focus. That applies to the Records Act stuff. As for his private stash? I don't know what that material is, but Justice was alarmed that Trump was planning to keep his possession secret."

"People are too focused on sensitivity and not the law," says the other official. It is what they knew (or believed) about Donald Trump's plans that prompted the search now. The official, who is confident that the search was legally valid, questions whether it was the smartest move. "We've still got to unpack all of these terms—nuclear, espionage, classified—so the public understands. That will be tricky because the issues and technicalities are in fact extremely complicated."

Certain Cause Of Trump's Predicament

johganz |  “But, John, are you saying we should use the Justice Department politically? With the express purpose of getting rid of someone you don’t like.” Kind of! As Trump’s intellectual defenders love to remind us, there’s ultimately no neutral administration of justice, everything is political, and when you get the state apparatus in your hands you use it beat up on your enemies and help out your friends. So, in part, these are their rules. (If you start talking about how you are gonna apply the thought of Carl Schmitt when you administer the state, I may start to get the sense you are my enemy.)

Also, let’s not play innocent. Historically speaking, the F.B.I. has always been used “politically:” it was used against Reds, Nazis, Reds again, the KKK, civil rights leaders, black power leaders, Nazis again etc. A lot of this was abusive and terrible and you know where my political sympathies lie, but this was because the political establishment implicitly or explicitly viewed these groups as threats to the United States itself. In many cases, they were not. (Yeah, yeah, I know what you are gonna say, “but J. Edgar Hoover, blah, blah, blah”—The fact is that Hoover lasted so long because powerful people thought he was useful and mostly right.) But here is a case where the real deal has come along: a bonafide domestic threat to the constitution. People these days are willing to call everything from annoying college students to crummy D.E.I. consultants “totalitarian threats to democracy” or whatever, but when a big, fat threat to democracy is standing right there, suddenly everyone is like, “Well…it’s a little complicated, isn’t it?” No, it really isn’t. And, in this case, we don’t have to break the law or do anything underhanded: just actually try to uphold the law for a change and stop playing little political games around it.

A political class that can’t defend the constitutional order and the rule of law is worse than useless: it’s actually conspiring with its enemies. Trump attacked the very heart of our system of government. If the system can’t respond to that forcefully it doesn’t deserve to exist anymore. Let’s stop pretending Trump is anything but a mobster and a would-be tyrant. In this case, prudence demands action.

Probable Cause Of Trump's Predicament

Politico  |  “Part of the MAGA movement is kind of a ‘fuck you’ to the government bureaucracy, which you can interpret as the Deep State,” said one former Trump staffer. “People were really dissatisfied with the transition and the outcome of the election. This is the last piece of control that they had [while] in power.”

The weeks after the November elections were among the more chaotic for a Trump White House that had been defined by chaos. The West Wing was left reeling by Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, and the president’s refusal to concede largely froze the transition process in place.

Some aides recalled that staff secretary Derek Lyons attempted to maintain a semblance of order in the West Wing despite the election uncertainty. But he departed the administration in late December, leaving the task of preserving the needed records for the National Archives to others. The two men atop the office hierarchy — then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump — took little interest in it, aides and advisers recalled. Meanwhile, responsibility for overseeing the pack up of the outer Oval and dining room, an area where Trump liked to work when not in the Oval Office, was left to Trump’s assistants, Molly Michael and Nick Luna, according to multiple former aides.

Trump, Eggleston surmised, was a victim of his own political impulses. “[H]e denied being defeated so they didn’t really engage in a transition process because he refused to let it happen,” he said. “So that meant that they were in a fairly frantic situation as the inauguration day came.”

For outgoing White Houses, there is typically a debriefing process about classified documents, and then a procedure to turn over government phones and computers. But for many of the last Trump holdouts, that process came after the Capitol riot, a stunning day of violence which triggered heightened security throughout Washington. The security obstacles erected around the White House, aides recalled, created more logistical hurdles for an already exhausted and hollowed-out staff.

Sloppiness ensued in many departments. Many staffers seemed more interested in securing copies of “jumbos” — the giant photos that adorned the West Wing’s walls — than sorting and packing up their files. Those who stayed focused on juggling the operational demands of running a country with the political whims of a president who, until just days before, was trying to cling to power.

There was, simply, not much care for protocol.

“Compared to previous administrations of both parties,” conceded a person familiar with the process, “there was less of a willingness to adhere to the Presidential Records Act.”

 

Who Knew Reinhart's A Jew Until Dan Rather Made It An Issue?

steady  |  Amid the discussion around the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and what it might mean for Trump and the rule of law in America, there is a detail that I worry isn’t receiving enough attention but that points to a dangerous reality in the United States today. 

It centers on Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who signed the FBI's search warrant. As his name became public, he has faced a withering volume of threats from those who believe Trump should be above the law. In today’s America, with the MAGA crowd revved up for attack, that was to be expected. But that attacks were to be expected should not obscure the fact that they are dangerous. Very. The possibility of their leading to violence should not be underestimated. 

Many of these threats focused on the fact that Judge Reinhart is Jewish. It got to the point that the synagogue where Judge Reinhart sits on the board had to cancel Shabbat services:

Antisemitism is on the rise in America, as those who track such nefarious trends will tell you. It can be found in some form across the political spectrum, but it has become a particular hallmark of elements of the Republican Party, especially in the age of Trump. 

In the wake of the FBI search, the New York Young Republican Club resorted to well-worn antisemitic tropes, for example. “Internationalist forces and their allies intent on undermining the foundation of our Republic have crossed the Rubicon,” read their statement, in part. The conspiracy theory that Trump is being thwarted by a global cabal of “elites” funded by “George Soros” in ways that will undermine traditional American “values” represents coded language (and by "coded," I mean as subtle as a marching band through a library) that is pushing a dangerous line of attack. Dangerous on a personal level and dangerous for our country as a whole.

While there are extreme fringe groups who speak bluntly and declaratively of hating Jews, most American antisemitism is less obvious. Republican supporters of Trump say they can’t possibly be antisemitic because Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is Jewish, as were many members of his administration. They say Republicans have strong supporters in Israel, including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They point to Democratic politicians who have been critical of Israel, or others with ties to more overt antisemites. 

All of this is true. But it is not an excuse for what is taking place now. 

It should be noted with emphasis that antisemitism isn’t limited to one political party or ideology. Furthermore, the Israel issue complicates the discussion, because criticism of Israel as a country is not necessarily antisemitic. Many American Jews object to Israeli policy. But there are also ways Israel is spoken of that clearly cross into antisemitic language.

 

Bruce Reinhart Presided Over Trump v. Clinton - And - Authorized The Mar-A-Lago Raid Warrant?

kunstler  |  It should be pretty obvious that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was an attempt to seize evidence likely to be used in former President Donald Trump’s civil lawsuit in the Southern Florida Federal District Court against Hillary Clinton and associated defendants in and out of government for the defamation and racketeering operation known as RussiaGate — AND in any future criminal proceedings that might grow out of congressional investigations-to-come against officials past and present in the DOJ and FBI. The idea is to tie up all those documents in a legal dispute about declassification so they can’t be entered in any proceeding.

Over the weekend, independent journalist Paul Sperry reported that many of the same FBI officers involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid happen to be subjects of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of RussiaGate. Have some of them already been hauled into grand juries? We don’t know. But, with the Mar-a-Lago caper, it looks like the law enforcement apparatus of the federal government is seeking to suppress evidence of its own long-running criminal enterprise.

The parallel purpose of the raid was to find — or perhaps plant — documents that might be used in a scheme to disqualify Mr. Trump from running for office again. The January 6^th show-trial in Congress has failed to galvanize the country’s attention, and may have foundered in its attempt to find grounds for a criminal referral against the former president that would take him off the playing field. So, now this.

Momentous legal quarrels that arise out of the Mar-a-Lago raid may evolve into a constitutional crisis that the captive news media can use as a smokescreen to divert the public’s attention from any balloting shenanigans going into the November election. At least it will shove any other issues off-stage in the run-up to the midterm. Is it a miscalculation?

The choice of going to federal magistrate Bruce Reinhart for the Mar-a-Lago warrant sure looks crude and desperate. Only weeks ago, he was presiding over the Trump v Clinton lawsuit. How did that even happen, given Mr. Reinhart’s role defending Jeffrey Epstein’s associates — many of them Clinton-connected — in the 2007 sex-trafficking case? And only after the spectacularly weird act of switching sides from the federal prosecution team to Epstein’s defense team. Not to mention Mr. Reinhart’s record of public statements denouncing Mr. Trump. There are twenty-five other magistrates who rotate their duties in the Southern District of Florida, why pick him?

It all shapes up as a systematic effort to obstruct justice by the US Department of Justice. They’ve been doing it consistently since 2016 in all matters pertaining to Mr. Trump, and it is a big reason that the country is now viciously coming apart. This is just a continuation of the same seditious treachery that went on with James Comey releasing his classified interview memo concerning Mr. Trump to The New York Times via his attorney friend from Columbia University, Daniel Richman; and the ensuing dishonest Mueller investigation the leak provoked; and the Crossfire Hurricane operation run by Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and Rod Rosenstein; and the illegal entrapment and prosecution of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; and the serial misrepresentations to the FISA court; and the illegal coordinated maneuvers in impeachment #1 between Rep. Adam Schiff, ICIG Michael Atkinson, the National Security Council, and CIA-agent Eric Ciaramella posing as a “whistleblower”; and more recently, the mischief around the FBI’s conjured-up Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping scheme; and the FBI’s role in turning the January 6, 2020, election protests into a riot at the US Capitol.

Mar-A-Lago Raid Was An "Insurance Policy" Taken Out By High-Ranking Democrat Officials

jonathanturley |  In the cult classic, “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” the character Scott Stuart is caught in a thick fog that causes him to gradually shrink to the point that he lives in a doll house and fights off the house cat. At one point, Stuart delivers a strikingly profound line: “The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle.”

If one image sums up the incredibly shrinking stature of Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is that line in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search.

Two years ago, I was one of many who supported Garland when he was nominated for attorney general. While his personality seemed a better fit for the courts than the Cabinet, he is a person with unimpeachable integrity and ethics.

If there are now doubts, it is not about his character but his personality in dealing with political controversies. Those concerns have grown in the past week.

In the aftermath of the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida, much remains unclear. The inventory list confirms that there were documents marked TS (Top Secret) and SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) —two of the highest classification levels for materials. The former president’s retention of such documents would appear to be a very serious violation.

However, the status of the documents is uncertain after Trump insisted that he declassified the material and was handling the records in accordance with prior discussions with the FBI. While the declassified status of these documents would not bar charges under the cited criminal provisions, it could have a significant impact on the viability of any prosecution.

I have not assumed that the search of Mar-a-Lago was unwarranted given that we have not seen the underlying affidavit. Yet in another controversy, Garland seemed largely reactive and rote in dealing with questions over bias or abuse in his department.

In his confirmation hearing, Garland repeatedly pledged that political considerations would hold no sway with him as attorney general. Yet, in just two years, the Justice Department has careened from one political controversy to another without any sign that Garland is firmly in control of the department. Last year, for example, Garland was heavily criticized for his rapid deployment of a task force to investigate parents and others challenging school boards.

When Garland has faced clear demands for independent action, he has folded. For example, Garland has refused to appoint a special counsel in the investigation of Hunter Biden. But there is no way to investigate Hunter Biden without running over continual references to President Biden.

By refusing a special counsel, Garland has removed the president’s greatest threat. Unlike the U.S. Attorney investigating Hunter Biden, a special counsel would be expected to publish a report that would detail the scope of the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling and foreign contacts.

Likewise, the Justice Department is conducting a grand jury investigation that is aggressively pursuing Trump associates and Republican figures, including seizing the telephones of members of Congress. That investigation has bearing on the integrity and the status of Biden’s potential opponent in 2024.

The investigation also has triggered concerns over the party in power investigating the opposing political party. It is breathtaking that Garland would see no need for an independent or special counsel given this country’s continued deep divisions and mistrust.

Democrats often compare the January 6 investigation to Watergate but fail to note that the Watergate investigation was led by an independent counsel precisely because of these inherent political conflicts.

Then came the raid. While Garland said he personally approved the operation, he did little to help mitigate the inevitable political explosion. This country is a powder keg and the FBI has a documented history of false statements to courts and falsified evidence in support of a previous Trump investigation.

Turley Been Busy On The FBI's Mar-A-Lago Fishing Expedition...,

jonathanturley |   Fox News is reporting that the FBI seized boxes containing attorney-client privileged and potentially executive privileged material during its raid Mar-a-Lago. When the raid occurred, I noted that the legal team had likely marked material as privileged at the residence and that the collection could create an immediate conflict over such material. Now, sources are telling Fox that the Justice Department not only took attorney-client material but has refused Trump requests for a special master to review the records.

The request for a special master would seem reasonable, particularly given the sweeping language used in the warrant. It is hard to see what material could not be gathered under this warrant.

Attachment B of the warrant has this provision:

“Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are located, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes; b.. Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material”

Thus, the agents could not only take an entire box if it contained a single document with classification markings of any kind but could then take all boxes around that box.

It is not surprising that dozens of boxes were seized.

Given that sweeping language (and the various lawsuits and investigations facing Trump), it would seem reasonable to request a special magistrate. That is why the reported refusal is so concerning. What is the harm from such a review? The material is now under lock and key. There is no approaching deadline in court or referenced grand jury.

Moreover, many have accused the Justice Department of using this search as a pretext. While saying that they were seeking potential national security information, critics have alleged that the real purpose was to gather evidence that could be used against Trump in a prosecution over his role in January 6th riot. I have noted that such a pretext would be deeply disturbing given the documented history of Justice Department officials misleading or lying to courts in prior Trump-related investigations.  The continuation of such subterfuge could be disclosed in a later oversight investigation.

The use of a special master could have helped quell such claims of a pretextual search. Conversely, the denial of such a protective measure would fuel even greater concerns.

The refusal to take this protective measures is almost as troubling as the sweeping language in the search warrant itself. We need to see the affidavit that led to this search warrant. I am not going to assume that the search was unwarranted until I see that evidence. However, in the interim, Attorney General Merrick Garland could have allowed accommodations for this review to assure not just the Trump team but the public that the search was not a pretext for seeking other evidence like January 6th-related material.

I Was Unaware Trump Is Suing The Clinton Mob Over Russiagate And The 2016 Election

CNN  |  Former President Donald Trump filed a sprawling federal lawsuit on Thursday against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and 26 other people and entities that he claims conspired to undermine his 2016 campaign by falsely tying him to Russia.

The lawsuit names a wide cast of characters that Trump has accused for years of orchestrating a "deep state" conspiracy against him -- including former FBI Director James Comey and other FBI officials, the retired British spy Christopher Steele and his associates, and a handful of Clinton campaign advisers.

 

"Under the guise of 'opposition research,' 'data analytics,' and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public's trust," says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida. "They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump."

 

Over 108 pages, the lawsuit rails against many of Trump's political opponents and highlights the grievances that he has complained about for years. It claims Democrats and government officials perpetrated a grab bag of offenses, from a racketeering conspiracy to a malicious prosecution, computer fraud and theft of secret internet data. The lawsuit asks for more than $24 million in costs and damages.

The suit also contains some factual inaccuracies and some of the same grandiose or exaggerated false claims that Trump has made dozens of times. 

 

The civil suit alleges that Clinton and top Democrats hired lawyers and researchers to fabricate information tying Trump to Russia, and then peddled those lies to the media and to the US government, in hopes of hobbling his chances of winning in 2016. Trump claims they were assisted by "Clinton loyalists" at the FBI, who abused their powers to investigate him out of political animus.

 

John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's 2016 campaign and one of the lawsuit's defendants, tweeted that part of the suit might be a "hoot."

 

"Do you think Trump filed this case with the hope of calling Vladimir Putin as a character witness? Trump deposition ought to be a hoot," Podesta wrote.

 

CNN has reached out to many of the defendants for comment. Some attorneys for defendants named in the lawsuit were still digesting it on Thursday.

Hintonian Cubism: Training The Imagination

higherspace |  Most visitors to this blog – and, indeed, to my academia.edu profile – come seeking Charles Howard Hinton and his system of cubes. No surprises there. Hinton’s biography is quite something and his work on visualising – or, perhaps more accurately, imagining – the fourth dimension of space was innovative, influential and almost completely out of its time.

The purpose of this post is to update a project I began almost four years ago and am only really now in a position to continue: the construction of a set of Hinton’s cubes, the material demonstration models that anchored his pedagogical enterprise.

Hinton began working with cubes early in his career. The essay ‘On the Education of the Imagination’ (1888) may well have been written before ‘What is the Fourth Dimension?’ was first published in 1880. In this he describes working with a system of cubes with his school students, and he began teaching in 1876. The system is also based on what he termed ‘poiographs’ in a paper presented before the Physical Society in 1878, so it seems likely to have been a foundation stone for his project. Certainly, his proficiency with it was advanced by 1887, when he was able to claim that he’d memorised a cubic foot of his named cubes.

He refined the system of cubes over the course of his career. The system described in A New Era of Thought (1888), taking up the entire second-half of that remarkable, visionary text, described cubes with a different colour and name for each vertex, line and face. Relying on description and line drawings it is, unsurprisingly, fiendishly complicated. By 1904’s The Fourth Dimension he had developed a system of ‘catalogue’ cubes and plates to enable a more step-by-step working through of cubic training. There are also many more and far clearer illustrations in this text, so this is the version I’ve followed.

The first task is to paint the correct number of one inch cubes the correct colours, which are as follows:

Null	16
White	8
Yellow	8
Light yellow	4
Red	8
Pink	4
Orange	4
Ochre	2
Blue	8
Light blue	4
Green	4
Light green	2
Purple	4
Light purple	2
Brown	2
Light brown	1

I used model paints of the kind you use to paint Airfix aeroplanes. As a newbie to this game this process caused me more problems than you might imagine. For example, metallic paints sound exciting in the shop – wooh-hooh, electric pink! – but they are more liquid, don’t necessarily look all that great on wood, and can even look largely indistinguishable from lighter, non-metallic shades. Also, on which side do you rest a painted cube to dry? I never discovered the answer to this gnomic poser so my cubes are slightly messy. But hey! They’re my cubes – and they don’t need to be perfect.

After the set of 81 coloured cubes there are the catalogue cubes. These are coloured to distinguish vertices, lines and faces and the fold-out colour-plate at the front of The Fourth Dimension shows how they should look.

As you can see, painting lines a fifth of an inch proved beyond me, either freehand or using tape to mask off. In the end I decided to print out coloured nets of the cubes onto card and cut these out and tape them together. Again, slightly imperfect, but I think they do the job nicely.

 

 

Hinton Cubes

Hinton Cubes by Celephaïs Press / Unspeakab...

The Fourth Dimension

publicdomainreview |  In April 1904, C. H. Hinton published The Fourth Dimension, a popular maths book based on concepts he had been developing since 1880 that sought to establish an additional spatial dimension to the three we know and love. This was not understood to be time as we’re so used to thinking of the fourth dimension nowadays; that idea came a bit later. Hinton was talking about an actual spatial dimension, a new geometry, physically existing, and even possible to see and experience; something that linked us all together and would result in a “New Era of Thought”. (Interestingly, that very same month in a hotel room in Cairo, Aleister Crowley talked to Egyptian Gods and proclaimed a “New Aeon” for mankind. For those of us who amuse ourselves by charting the subcultural backstreets of history, it seems as though a strange synchronicity briefly connected a mystic mathematician and a mathematical mystic — which is quite pleasing.)

The coloured cubes — known as "Tesseracts" — as depicted in the frontispiece to Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

 

Hinton begins his book by briefly relating the history of higher dimensions and non-Euclidean maths up to that point. Surprisingly, for a history of mathematicians, it’s actually quite entertaining. Here is one tale he tells of János Bolyai, a Hungarian mathematician who contributed important early work on non-Euclidean geometry before joining the army:

It is related of him that he was challenged by thirteen officers of his garrison, a thing not unlikely to happen considering how differently he thought from everyone else. He fought them all in succession – making it his only condition that he should be allowed to play on his violin for an interval between meeting each opponent. He disarmed or wounded all his antagonists. It can be easily imagined that a temperament such as his was not one congenial to his military superiors. He was retired in 1833.

Janos Bolyai: Appendix. Shelfmark: 545.091. Table of Figures - Source.

Mathematicians have definitely lost their flair. The notion of duelling with violinist mathematicians may seem absurd, but there was a growing unease about the apparently arbitrary nature of "reality" in light of new scientific discoveries. The discoverers appeared renegades. As the nineteenth century progressed, the world was robbed of more and more divine power and started looking worryingly like a ship adrift without its captain. Science at the frontiers threatened certain strongly-held assumptions about the universe. The puzzle of non-Euclidian geometry was even enough of a contemporary issue to appear in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov when Ivan discusses the ineffability of God:

But you must note this: if God exists and if He really did create the world, then, as we all know, He created it according to the geometry of Euclid and the human mind with the conception of only three dimensions in space. Yet there have been and still are geometricians and philosophers, and even some of the most distinguished, who doubt whether the whole universe, or to speak more widely, the whole of being, was only created in Euclid’s geometry; they even dare to dream that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid can never meet on earth, may meet somewhere in infinity… I have a Euclidian earthly mind, and how could I solve problems that are not of this world?

— Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamzov (1880), Part II, Book V, Chapter 3.

Well Ivan, to quote Hinton, “it is indeed strange, the manner in which we must begin to think about the higher world”. Hinton's solution was a series of coloured cubes that, when mentally assembled in sequence, could be used to visualise a hypercube in the fourth dimension of hyperspace. He provides illustrations and gives instructions on how to make these cubes and uses the word “tesseract” to describe the four-dimensional object.

Diagram from Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

The term “tesseract”, still used today, might be Hinton’s most obvious legacy, but the genesis of the word is slightly cloudy. He first used it in an 1888 book called A New Era of Thought and initially used the spelling tessaract. In Greek, “τεσσάρα”, meaning “four”, transliterates to “tessara” more accurately than “tessera”, and -act likely comes from “ακτίνες” meaning "rays"; so Hinton’s use suggests the four rays from each vertex exhibited in a hypercube and neatly encodes the idea “four” into his four-dimensional polytope. However, in Latin, “tessera” can also mean “cube”, which is a plausible starting point for the new word. As is sometimes the case, there seems to be some confusion over the Greek or Latin etymology, and we’ve ended up with a bastardization. To confuse matters further, by 1904 Hinton was mostly using “tesseract” — I say mostly because the copies of his books I’ve seen aren’t entirely consistent with the spelling, in all likelihood due to a mere oversight in the proof-reading. Regardless, the later spelling won acceptance while the early version died with its first appearance.

Diagram from Hinton's The Fourth Dimension (1904) - Source.

Hinton also promises that when the visualisation is achieved, his cubes can unlock hidden potential. “When the faculty is acquired — or rather when it is brought into consciousness for it exists in everyone in imperfect form — a new horizon opens. The mind acquires a development of power”. It is clear from Hinton’s writing that he saw the fourth dimension as both physically and psychically real, and that it could explain such phenomena as ghosts, ESP, and synchronicities. In an indication of the spatial and mystical significance he afforded it, Hinton suggested that the soul was “a four-dimensional organism, which expresses its higher physical being in the symmetry of the body, and gives the aims and motives of human existence”. Letters submitted to mathematical journals of the time indicate more than one person achieved a disastrous success and found the process of visualising the fourth dimension profoundly disturbing or dangerously addictive. It was rumoured that some particularly ardent adherents of the cubes had even gone mad.

He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidian, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.

— H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1928)

Charles Howard Hinton

alchetron  |  Charles Howard Hinton (1853, United Kingdom – 30 April 1907, Washington D.C., United States) was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled Scientific Romances. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension. He is known for coining the word "tesseract" and for his work on methods of visualising the geometry of higher dimensions.

 

Hinton taught at Cheltenham College while he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained his B.A. in 1877. From 1880 to 1886, he taught at Uppingham School in Rutland, where Howard Candler, a friend of Edwin Abbott Abbott's, also taught. Hinton also received his M.A. from Oxford in 1886.

In 1880 Hinton married Mary Ellen, daughter of Mary Everest Boole and George Boole, the founder of mathematical logic. The couple had four children: George (1882–1943), Eric (*1884), William (1886–1909) and Sebastian (1887–1923) inventor of the Jungle gym. In 1883 he went through a marriage ceremony with Maud Florence, by whom he had had twin children, under the assumed identity of John Weldon. He was subsequently convicted of bigamy and spent three days in prison, losing his job at Uppingham. His father James Hinton was a radical advocate of polygamous relationships, and according to Charles' mother James had once remarked to her: "Christ was the saviour of Men but I am the saviour of Women and I don't envy him a bit." In 1887 Charles moved with Mary Ellen to Japan to work in a mission before accepting a job as headmaster of the Victoria Public School. In 1893 he sailed to the United States on the SS Tacoma to take up a post at Princeton University as an instructor in mathematics.

Fourth dimension

In an 1880 article entitled "What is the Fourth Dimension?", Hinton suggested that points moving around in three dimensions might be imagined as successive cross-sections of a static four-dimensional arrangement of lines passing through a three-dimensional plane, an idea that anticipated the notion of world lines. Hinton's explorations of higher space had a moral basis:

Hinton argues that gaining an intuitive perception of higher space required that we rid ourselves of the ideas of right and left, up and down, that inheres in our position as observers in a three-dimensional world. Hinton calls the process "casting out the self", equates it with the process of sympathizing with another person, and implies the two processes are mutually reinforcing.

Hinton created several new words to describe elements in the fourth dimension. According to OED, he first used the word tesseract in 1888 in his book A New Era of Thought. He also invented the words kata (from the Greek for "down from") and ana (from the Greek for "up toward") to describe the additional two opposing fourth-dimensional directions (an additional 4th axis of motion analogous to left-right (x), up-down (y), and forwards-backwards (z)).

Hinton's Scientific romances, including "What is the Fourth Dimension?" and "A Plane World", were published as a series of nine pamphlets by Swan Sonnenschein & Co. during 1884–1886. In the introduction to "A Plane World", Hinton referred to Abbott's recent Flatland as having similar design but different intent. Abbott used the stories as "a setting wherein to place his satire and his lessons. But we wish in the first place to know the physical facts." Hinton's world existed along the perimeter of a circle rather than on an infinite flat plane. He extended the connection to Abbott's work with An Episode on Flatland: Or How a Plain Folk Discovered the Third Dimension (1907).

Influence

Hinton was one of the many thinkers who circulated in Jorge Luis Borges's pantheon of writers. Hinton is mentioned in Borges' short stories "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "There Are More Things" and "El milagro secreto" ("The Secret Miracle"):

Hinton influenced P. D. Ouspensky's thinking. Many of ideas Ouspensky presents in "Tertium Organum" mention Hinton's works.

Hinton's "scientific romance," the "Unlearner" is cited by John Dewey in "Art as Experience", chapter 3.

Hinton is the main character of Carlos Atanes's play Un genio olvidado (Un rato en la vida de Charles Howard Hinton). The play was premiered on Madrid in May 2015 and published in May 2017.

Hinton is mentioned several times in Alan Moore's graphic novel From Hell; his theories regarding the fourth dimension form the basis of the book's final chapter. His father, James Hinton, appears in chapters 4 and 10.

He is mentioned twice in Aleister Crowley's novel Moonchild. The first mention mistakenly names his father, James Hinton.