Tag: history
Prof John J. Mearsheimer: Who Really Started Ukraine War?
There’s no ‘disinformation’ exception to the First Amendment
Misinformation and disinformation retain the basic characteristics of speech. Unless they fall into one of very few exceptions, they are protected from censorship under the First Amendment.
Consistent with those very limited exceptions, any effort by the government to prevent the dissemination of ideas or opinions, even if they are based on untruths, is unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld an injunction that prohibits the government from pressuring social media platforms to de-escalate or remove speech that the government identifies as misinformation or disinformation.
On Thursday, Sept. 14, that injunction was put on pause by the Supreme Court until Sept. 22, to give the Court more time to consider the issue.
The injunction resulted from a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and others accusing the federal government of strong-arming social media companies in order to amplify government-approved points of view and muffle or silence opposing views.
Free speech makes civilizations thrive. It is the rational as well as constitutional only option. Anyone who wants to limit free speech is a POS. Covid proved this point and also proved that the worst enemies of free speech were and still are governments, Big Media and other vested interests. ABN
NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu).
The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”[1] The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”
President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests; but neither Bush nor Gorbachev at that point (or for that matter, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) expected so soon the collapse of East Germany or the speed of German unification.[2]
The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.[3]
How the US, Through the Greens and the Reds, Is Destroying Europe
[The excerpt below is preceded by a description of the decline of Europe. I recommend the whole piece but have posted this snippet because it is the core point. The essay is not long and clearly written. ABN]
…Now with the events in the Ukraine serving as a catalyst, it is becoming increasingly clear what is actually at hand: the planned and organized destruction of Europe for the benefit of the United States. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism in Eastern Europe was it finally possible for the Washington regime to initiate the final phase of a project begun early in the 20th century.
Few realize that after the US conquest and occupation of much of Europe from 1943 to 1945, the Americans set up a local political organization primarily loyal to the US. Nothing new here, as all conquerors and colonizers have always done this throughout history. The US occupation authorities decided to turn the various European Social Democratic parties into their local loyal supporters. This choice was rather obvious, because Europe’s political conservatives and Roman Catholic and Protestant political parties were in favor of the US anyway. They were counting on the US to protect them from Communism.
As a matter of fact in the mid-1940s, Communists were a formidable political force all over Europe. In elections in 1945 and 1946 (in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Denmark and Norway), between one eighth and a quarter of the electorate voted Communist. In Czechoslovakia (1946) it was almost forty percent, a record. When between 1944 and 1949 the Iron Curtain had been let down across the continent, the US needed a more solid counterweight to neutralize the communist danger in the lands it occupied. Hence the choice fell on the Social Democrats. Although marxist, they rejected revolutionary tactics in order to achieve political ascendancy.
From that moment, ambitious young and promising Social Democrats were made beneficiaries of travel grants and scholarships to the US and of assorted other junkets, turning them into the most loyal supporters of the US. That is, until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing collapse of the USSR. At that point, all Western European Social Democratic parties embraced neoliberalism (inherently at odds with their original political philosophy), thus becoming merely a kind of conservative parties. The ideological difference between the political Left and the political Right disappeared on the process and the terms were shorn of their political meaning.
However, with the Communist danger out of the way and the Social Democrats having lost their role as a barrier against Communism, the US still needed a reliable and loyal political support base inside their European vassal states. Reinforcement was soon found in the so-called “green” parties, a kind of Social Democratic parties, but with an added environmental platform and often with a decided feminist equity twist as well. These new parties appealed to the growing category of politically naive young urban professionals with romantic notions about “health food” and other fashionable issues. With their insistent clamor for “development aid” for the “Third World” they were also quintessentially racist, though hidden behind a veil of paternalism.
The above essay reminds me to recommend the book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty. This book overturns conventional views of US and European history. I am only halfway through but very impressed. The chapter on the founding of the US Federal Reserve, which I read last night, is a masterpiece of brevity and historical analysis. The British Empire never ended. It morphed into a combo British-American Empire. It is controlled by the Big Banks, legacy families with immense fortunes, and nouveau riche billionaires willing to join the elite cabal, which the most visible ones all have done, or so it seems. ABN
American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion — Ron Unz
Israel Shahak and the Middle East
About a decade ago, I happened to be talking with an eminent academic scholar who had become known for his sharp criticism of Israeli policies in the Middle East and America’s strong support for them. I mentioned that I myself had come to very similar conclusions some time before, and he asked when that had happened. I told him it had been in 1982, and I think he found my answer quite surprising. I got the sense that date was decades earlier than would have been given by almost anyone else he knew.
Sometimes it is quite difficult to pinpoint when one’s world view on a contentious topic undergoes sharp transformation, but at other times it is quite easy. My own perceptions of the Middle East conflict drastically shifted during Fall 1982, and they have subsequently changed only to a far smaller extent. As some might remember, that period marked the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and culminated in the notorious Sabra-Shatila Massacre during which hundreds or even thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered in their refugee camps. But although those events were certainly major factors in my ideological realignment, the crucial trigger was actually a certain letter to the editor published around that same time.
A few years earlier, I had discovered The London Economist, as it was then called, and it had quickly become my favorite publication, which I religiously devoured cover-to-cover every week. And as I read the various articles about the Middle East conflict in that publication, or others such as the New York Times, the journalists occasionally included quotes from some particularly fanatic and irrational Israeli Communist named Israel Shahak, whose views seemed totally at odds with those of everyone else, and who was consequently treated as a fringe figure. Opinions that seem totally divorced from reality tend to stick in one’s mind, and it took only one or two appearances from that apparently die-hard and delusional Stalinist for me to guess that he would always take an entirely contrary position on every given issue.
In 1982 Israel Defense Minister Ariel Sharon launched his massive invasion of Lebanon using the pretext of the wounding of an Israeli diplomat in Europe at the hands of a Palestinian attacker, and the extreme nature of his action was widely condemned in the media outlets I read at the time. His motive was obviously to root out the PLO’s political and military infrastructure, which had taken hold in many of Lebanon’s large Palestinian refugee camps. But back in those days invasions of Middle Eastern countries on dubious prospects were much less common than they have subsequently become, after our recent American wars killed or displaced so many millions, and most observers were horrified by the utterly disproportionate nature of his attack and the severe destruction he was inflicting upon Israel’s neighbor, which he seemed eager to reduce to puppet status. From what I recall, he made several entirely false assurances to top Reagan officials about his invasion plans, such that they afterward called him the worst sort of liar, and he ended up besieging the Lebanese capital of Beirut even though he had originally promised to limit his assault to a mere border incursion.
I skipped this essay when it first came out because Ron can be long-winded and I was short on time. I just read it this morning and believe it will be of interests to readers of this site. ABN
Departments of Hate Studies, and Other Stupid Developments
Immigration destroyed the Roman Empire. Now it could bring down Europe
Woke bureaucrats see opposition to migration as knuckle-dragging racism. They should not be so quick to dismiss the public’s concerns
In the end, many Romans concluded that civilisation was simply not worth the price they were being asked to pay for it … it is only a matter of time before our own populations decide that the price we pay for civilisation simply isn’t worth it anymore
The Evidence for the Holocaust: An Introduction
I am hardly the most likely person to pen an article for the Unz Review. As a PhD student in history, I seek a career in academia, and run a modest history account on social media entitled History Speaks. My politics are mainstream, as are my views on the Nazi Holocaust. But while I recognize that the mainstream historical understanding of the Holocaust is established beyond any reasonable doubt, I part ways from mainstream historians when it comes to my preferred approach to Holocaust denial. I believe that open discussion with and debate against deniers is the most effective way of combating denial, and have repeatedly engaged deniers through my History Speaks handle.
Rational discourse is hardly a foolproof antidote to Holocaust denial. Confirmation bias being what it is—particularly on such an emotionally charged topic—one can only hope to persuade a minority of the other side. Yet dialogue remains the most ethical and effective tool of persuasion at hand.
In the spirit of dialogue, I thank Ron Unz for allowing me the opportunity to write what will be a two-part piece against Holocaust denial. This first piece will outline—in highly abbreviated form—some of the positive evidence for the Holocaust. The second piece will refute the views and arguments Unz himself has made on the Holocaust.
Abusers attack happiness, talent, brains
Bill Alexander Art — Majestic Wilderness
Bill is the man who taught Bob Ross. ABN


