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EUROPE UKRAINE CRISIS FASCISM
America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis
Neo-fascists play an important official or tolerated role in US-backed Ukraine.
By Stephen F. CohenMAY 2, 2018


The John Batchelor Show, May 2


Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussion of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Cohen begins: The orthodox American political-media narrative blames “Putin’s Russia” alone for the new US-Russian Cold War. Maintaining this (at most) partial truth involves various mainstream media malpractices, among them lack of historical context; reporting based on unverified “facts” and selective sources; editorial bias; and the excluding, even slurring, of proponents of alternative explanatory narratives as “Kremlin apologists” and carriers of “Russian propaganda.” An extraordinary example appeared on May 1, when Jim Sciutto, CNN’s leading purveyor of Russiagate allegations, tweeted that “Jill Stein is…repeating Russian talking points on its interference in the 2016 election and on U.S. foreign policy.” To the extent that Sciutto represents CNN, as he does almost nightly on air, it is useful to know what this influential network actually thinks about a legitimate third party in American electoral democracy and its presidential candidate. And also about many well-informed Americans who have not supported Stein or her party but who strongly disagree with CNN’s orthodox positions on Russiagate and US foreign policy. No less important, however, is the highly selective nature of the mainstream narrative of the new Cold War, what it chooses to feature and what it virtually omits. Among the omissions, few realities are more important than the role played by neofascist forces in US-backed, Kiev-governed Ukraine since 2014. Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:

§ That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014, thereby triggering a “democratic revolution” that overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American regime—it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the streets with high-level support—were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported, but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its co-conspirators.

United We Rise
§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.

§ That the Azov Battalion of some 3,000 well-armed fighters, which has played a major combat role in the Ukrainian civil war and now is an official component of Kiev’s armed forces, is avowedly “partially” pro-Nazi, as evidenced by its regalia, slogans, and programmatic statements, and well-documented as such by several international monitoring organizations. Congressional legislation recently banned Azov from receiving any US military aid, but it is likely to obtain some of the new weapons recently sent to Kiev by the Trump Administration due to the country’s rampant network of corruption and black markets.

§ That stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other “impure” citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s. And that the police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neofascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kiev has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorializing Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms and their leaders during World War II, renaming streets in their honor, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.

§ Or that Israel’s official annual report on anti-Semitism around the world in 2017 concluded that such incidents had doubled in Ukraine and the number “surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined.” By the region, the report meant the total in all of Eastern Europe and all former territories of the Soviet Union.



Americans cannot be faulted for not knowing these facts. They are very rarely reported and still less debated in the mainstream media, whether in newspapers or on television. To learn about them, Americans would have to turn to alternative media and to their independent writers, which rarely affect mainstream accounts of the new Cold War. One such important American writer is Lev Golinkin. He is best known for his book ‘A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,’ a deeply moving and highly instructive memoir of his life as a young boy brought to America by his immigrant parents from Eastern Ukraine, now the scene of tragic civil and proxy war. But Golinkin has also been an unrelenting and meticulous reporter of neofascism in “our” Ukraine and a defender of others who try to chronicle and oppose its growing crimes. (Many of us seeking reliable information often turn to him.)

The significance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and the at least tacit official U.S support or tolerance for it should be clearly understood:

§ This did not begin under President Trump but under President George W. Bush, when then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s “Orange Revolution” began rehabilitating Ukraine’s wartime killers of Jews, and it grew under President Obama, who, along with Vice President Joseph Biden, were deeply complicit in the Maidan coup and what followed. Then too the American mainstream media scarcely noticed. Still worse, when a founder of a neo-Nazi party and now repackaged speaker of the Ukrainian parliament visited Washington in 2017, he was widely feted by leading American politicians, including Senator John McCain and Representative Paul Ryan. Imagine the message this sent back to Ukraine—and elsewhere.

§ Fascist or neo-Nazi revivalism is underway today in many countries, from Europe to the United States, but the Ukrainian version is of special importance and a particular danger. A large, growing, well-armed fascist movement has reappeared in a large European country that is the political epicenter of the new Cold War between the United States and Russia—indeed a movement that not so much denies the Holocaust as glorifies it. Could such forces come to power in Kiev? Its American minimizers say never because it has too little public support (though perhaps more than has Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today). But the same was said of Lenin’s party and Hitler’s until Russia and Germany descended into chaos and lawlessness. And a recent Amnesty International article reports that Kiev is losing control over radical groups and the state’s monopoly on the use of force.

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§ For four years, the US political-media establishment, including many prominent American Jews and their organizations, has at best ignored or tolerated Ukrainian neo-Nazism and at worst abetted it by unqualified support for Kiev. Typically, The New York Times may report at length on corruption in Ukraine, but not on the very frequent manifestations of neofascism. And when George Will laments the resurgence of anti-Semitism today, he cites the British Labor Party but not Ukraine. When Ukrainian fascism is occasionally acknowledged, a well-placed band of pro-Kiev zealots quickly asserts—maybe, but the real fascist is America’s number one enemy, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whatever Putin’s failings, this allegation is either cynical or totally uninformed. Nothing in Putin’s statements over 18 years in power are akin to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the alleged superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of a vast multiethnic state, such statements by Putin would be inconceivable and political suicide. There are, of course, neofascist activists in Russia, but many of them have been imprisoned. Nor is a mass fascist movement feasible in Russia where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Germany, a war that directly affected Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several uncles perished. Still more, there is no anti-Semitism evident in Putin. Indeed, it is widely said, both in Russia and in Israel, that life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country’s long history.

§ We are left, then, not with Putin’s responsibility for the resurgence of fascism in a major European country, but with America’s shame and possible indelible stain on its historical reputation for tolerating it even if only through silence.

At least until recently. On April 23, a courageous first-term congressman from California, Ro Khanna, organized a public letter to the State Department, co-signed by 56 other members of the House, calling on the US government to speak out and take steps against the resurgence of official anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism in both Ukraine and Poland. In the history of the new and more perilous Cold War, “Ro,” as he seems to be known to many in Washington, is a rare profile in courage, as are his co-signers. We will see what comes of their wise and moral act. In a righteous representative democracy, every member of Congress would sign the appeal and every leading newspaper lend editorial support. But not surprisingly, the mainstream media has yet even to report on Representative Khanna’s certainly newsworthy initiative, though, also not surprisingly, he has been slurred —and promptly defended by the inestimable Lev Golinkin.

The previous 40-year experience taught that Cold War can corrupt even American democracy—politically, economically, morally. There are many examples of how the new edition has already degraded America’s media, politicians, even scholars. But the acid test today may be our elites’ reaction to neofascism in US-supported Ukraine. Protesting it is not a Jewish issue, but an American one. Nonetheless, it is fitting to paraphrase again the Jewish philosopher Hillel: If not now, when? If not us, who?

Stephen F. CohenStephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year, are available at The Nation.


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Jeffrey Harrison says:
May 3, 2018 at 6:54 pm
I have no idea why anyone with two brains to rub together would be surprised here. The US has long supported and promoted fascist, authoritarian governments from Sygman Rhee in S. Korea in the early 50s to Shahnshahi Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the various absolute monarchs in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE et al to include the likes of el Sisi in Egypt. Not to mention Batista in Cuba, Samoza in Nicaragua, as well as a panalopy of tin pot dictators we installed in El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

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Louis Proyect says:
May 3, 2018 at 8:09 am
Cohen: " Fascist or Neo-Nazi revivalism is underway today in many countries, from Europe to the United States, but the Ukrainian version is of special importance and a particular danger."

Yeah, and in every instance except Ukraine it supports Putin and Assad fully. And, in many cases, vice versa. A Russian bank with close ties to Putin provided the loan that Marine Le Pen needed to run for president. More on the Kremlin/fascist ties:

The Fascist in the Kremlin – POLITICO

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Valera Bochkarev says:
May 3, 2018 at 2:03 pm
forgetting to mention that " it supports Putin and Assad fully" DESPITE the fact that NEITHER is a fascist ?
Biased much, Louie ?

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Louis Proyect says:
May 3, 2018 at 9:22 pm
You obviously didn't understand me. Putin certainly is not a fascist, nor is Assad (even though he is a monster.) I was only pointing out that Jobbik, The National Front in England, Golden Dawn, The Freedom Party in Austria, the AfD in Germany, and others *are* fascist and are pro-Putin and pro-Assad.

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Valera Bochkarev says:
May 3, 2018 at 10:29 pm
I misunderstood the insinuation ?
Silly me.
I reckon those entities you mentioned might have same set of legitimate grievances against the militarized globalization of capital at the expense of the deplorables everywhere, all at hand of US.
Putin's only sin was that he refused to let Russia to be a vassal of US and became a hero to others.
If you think the "nazism" is the the common tie, with the nationalists being a minority you're in for a rude awakening. Most of the masses are on the same page without admitting to it and no amount of pussyhatting is going to fix it.

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ELECTION 2020THE CONSTITUTIONCONGRESS
Will a 300-Year-Old Legal Clause Get Lindsey Graham Off the Hook?
Graham cited the Speech and Debate Clause in an attempt to avoid testifying about Trump’s apparent election fraud in Georgia. He might get away with it.
By Elie MystalTwitterTODAY 8:33 AM
Lindsey-Graham-America-First-getty
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) speaks on a panel at the America First Policy Institute's America First Agenda summit on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

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EUROPEUKRAINE CRISISFASCISM
America’s Collusion With Neo-Nazis
Neo-fascists play an important official or tolerated role in US-backed Ukraine.
By Stephen F. CohenMAY 2, 2018


The John Batchelor Show, May 2

Subscribe To The Nation
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussion of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Cohen begins: The orthodox American political-media narrative blames “Putin’s Russia” alone for the new US-Russian Cold War. Maintaining this (at most) partial truth involves various mainstream media malpractices, among them lack of historical context; reporting based on unverified “facts” and selective sources; editorial bias; and the excluding, even slurring, of proponents of alternative explanatory narratives as “Kremlin apologists” and carriers of “Russian propaganda.” An extraordinary example appeared on May 1, when Jim Sciutto, CNN’s leading purveyor of Russiagate allegations, tweeted that “Jill Stein is…repeating Russian talking points on its interference in the 2016 election and on U.S. foreign policy.” To the extent that Sciutto represents CNN, as he does almost nightly on air, it is useful to know what this influential network actually thinks about a legitimate third party in American electoral democracy and its presidential candidate. And also about many well-informed Americans who have not supported Stein or her party but who strongly disagree with CNN’s orthodox positions on Russiagate and US foreign policy. No less important, however, is the highly selective nature of the mainstream narrative of the new Cold War, what it chooses to feature and what it virtually omits. Among the omissions, few realities are more important than the role played by neofascist forces in US-backed, Kiev-governed Ukraine since 2014. Not even many Americans who follow international news know the following, for example:

§ That the snipers who killed scores of protestors and policemen on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014, thereby triggering a “democratic revolution” that overthrew the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and brought to power a virulent anti-Russian, pro-American regime—it was neither democratic nor a revolution, but a violent coup unfolding in the streets with high-level support—were sent not by Yanukovych, as is still widely reported, but instead almost certainly by the neofascist organization Right Sector and its co-conspirators.

United We Rise
§ That the pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa shortly later in 2014 reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during World War II has been all but deleted from the American mainstream narrative even though it remains a painful and revelatory experience for many Ukrainians.

§ That the Azov Battalion of some 3,000 well-armed fighters, which has played a major combat role in the Ukrainian civil war and now is an official component of Kiev’s armed forces, is avowedly “partially” pro-Nazi, as evidenced by its regalia, slogans, and programmatic statements, and well-documented as such by several international monitoring organizations. Congressional legislation recently banned Azov from receiving any US military aid, but it is likely to obtain some of the new weapons recently sent to Kiev by the Trump Administration due to the country’s rampant network of corruption and black markets.

§ That stormtroop-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other “impure” citizens are widespread throughout Kiev-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s. And that the police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neofascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kiev has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorializing Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms and their leaders during World War II, renaming streets in their honor, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.

§ Or that Israel’s official annual report on anti-Semitism around the world in 2017 concluded that such incidents had doubled in Ukraine and the number “surpassed the tally for all the incidents reported throughout the entire region combined.” By the region, the report meant the total in all of Eastern Europe and all former territories of the Soviet Union.

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Americans cannot be faulted for not knowing these facts. They are very rarely reported and still less debated in the mainstream media, whether in newspapers or on television. To learn about them, Americans would have to turn to alternative media and to their independent writers, which rarely affect mainstream accounts of the new Cold War. One such important American writer is Lev Golinkin. He is best known for his book ‘A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka,’ a deeply moving and highly instructive memoir of his life as a young boy brought to America by his immigrant parents from Eastern Ukraine, now the scene of tragic civil and proxy war. But Golinkin has also been an unrelenting and meticulous reporter of neofascism in “our” Ukraine and a defender of others who try to chronicle and oppose its growing crimes. (Many of us seeking reliable information often turn to him.)

The significance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and the at least tacit official U.S support or tolerance for it should be clearly understood:

§ This did not begin under President Trump but under President George W. Bush, when then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s “Orange Revolution” began rehabilitating Ukraine’s wartime killers of Jews, and it grew under President Obama, who, along with Vice President Joseph Biden, were deeply complicit in the Maidan coup and what followed. Then too the American mainstream media scarcely noticed. Still worse, when a founder of a neo-Nazi party and now repackaged speaker of the Ukrainian parliament visited Washington in 2017, he was widely feted by leading American politicians, including Senator John McCain and Representative Paul Ryan. Imagine the message this sent back to Ukraine—and elsewhere.

§ Fascist or neo-Nazi revivalism is underway today in many countries, from Europe to the United States, but the Ukrainian version is of special importance and a particular danger. A large, growing, well-armed fascist movement has reappeared in a large European country that is the political epicenter of the new Cold War between the United States and Russia—indeed a movement that not so much denies the Holocaust as glorifies it. Could such forces come to power in Kiev? Its American minimizers say never because it has too little public support (though perhaps more than has Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today). But the same was said of Lenin’s party and Hitler’s until Russia and Germany descended into chaos and lawlessness. And a recent Amnesty International article reports that Kiev is losing control over radical groups and the state’s monopoly on the use of force.

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§ For four years, the US political-media establishment, including many prominent American Jews and their organizations, has at best ignored or tolerated Ukrainian neo-Nazism and at worst abetted it by unqualified support for Kiev. Typically, The New York Times may report at length on corruption in Ukraine, but not on the very frequent manifestations of neofascism. And when George Will laments the resurgence of anti-Semitism today, he cites the British Labor Party but not Ukraine. When Ukrainian fascism is occasionally acknowledged, a well-placed band of pro-Kiev zealots quickly asserts—maybe, but the real fascist is America’s number one enemy, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Whatever Putin’s failings, this allegation is either cynical or totally uninformed. Nothing in Putin’s statements over 18 years in power are akin to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the alleged superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of a vast multiethnic state, such statements by Putin would be inconceivable and political suicide. There are, of course, neofascist activists in Russia, but many of them have been imprisoned. Nor is a mass fascist movement feasible in Russia where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Germany, a war that directly affected Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several uncles perished. Still more, there is no anti-Semitism evident in Putin. Indeed, it is widely said, both in Russia and in Israel, that life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country’s long history.

§ We are left, then, not with Putin’s responsibility for the resurgence of fascism in a major European country, but with America’s shame and possible indelible stain on its historical reputation for tolerating it even if only through silence.

At least until recently. On April 23, a courageous first-term congressman from California, Ro Khanna, organized a public letter to the State Department, co-signed by 56 other members of the House, calling on the US government to speak out and take steps against the resurgence of official anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism in both Ukraine and Poland. In the history of the new and more perilous Cold War, “Ro,” as he seems to be known to many in Washington, is a rare profile in courage, as are his co-signers. We will see what comes of their wise and moral act. In a righteous representative democracy, every member of Congress would sign the appeal and every leading newspaper lend editorial support. But not surprisingly, the mainstream media has yet even to report on Representative Khanna’s certainly newsworthy initiative, though, also not surprisingly, he has been slurred —and promptly defended by the inestimable Lev Golinkin.

The previous 40-year experience taught that Cold War can corrupt even American democracy—politically, economically, morally. There are many examples of how the new edition has already degraded America’s media, politicians, even scholars. But the acid test today may be our elites’ reaction to neofascism in US-supported Ukraine. Protesting it is not a Jewish issue, but an American one. Nonetheless, it is fitting to paraphrase again the Jewish philosopher Hillel: If not now, when? If not us, who?

Stephen F. CohenStephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year, are available at The Nation.


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Jeffrey Harrison says:
May 3, 2018 at 6:54 pm
I have no idea why anyone with two brains to rub together would be surprised here. The US has long supported and promoted fascist, authoritarian governments from Sygman Rhee in S. Korea in the early 50s to Shahnshahi Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the various absolute monarchs in places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE et al to include the likes of el Sisi in Egypt. Not to mention Batista in Cuba, Samoza in Nicaragua, as well as a panalopy of tin pot dictators we installed in El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

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Louis Proyect says:
May 3, 2018 at 8:09 am
Cohen: " Fascist or Neo-Nazi revivalism is underway today in many countries, from Europe to the United States, but the Ukrainian version is of special importance and a particular danger."

Yeah, and in every instance except Ukraine it supports Putin and Assad fully. And, in many cases, vice versa. A Russian bank with close ties to Putin provided the loan that Marine Le Pen needed to run for president. More on the Kremlin/fascist ties:

The Fascist in the Kremlin – POLITICO

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Valera Bochkarev says:
May 3, 2018 at 2:03 pm
forgetting to mention that " it supports Putin and Assad fully" DESPITE the fact that NEITHER is a fascist ?
Biased much, Louie ?

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Louis Proyect says:
May 3, 2018 at 9:22 pm
You obviously didn't understand me. Putin certainly is not a fascist, nor is Assad (even though he is a monster.) I was only pointing out that Jobbik, The National Front in England, Golden Dawn, The Freedom Party in Austria, the AfD in Germany, and others *are* fascist and are pro-Putin and pro-Assad.

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Valera Bochkarev says:
May 3, 2018 at 10:29 pm
I misunderstood the insinuation ?
Silly me.
I reckon those entities you mentioned might have same set of legitimate grievances against the militarized globalization of capital at the expense of the deplorables everywhere, all at hand of US.
Putin's only sin was that he refused to let Russia to be a vassal of US and became a hero to others.
If you think the "nazism" is the the common tie, with the nationalists being a minority you're in for a rude awakening. Most of the masses are on the same page without admitting to it and no amount of pussyhatting is going to fix it.

upimg(38)downimg(8)


--------------------------------------



ELECTION 2020THE CONSTITUTIONCONGRESS
Will a 300-Year-Old Legal Clause Get Lindsey Graham Off the Hook?
Graham cited the Speech and Debate Clause in an attempt to avoid testifying about Trump’s apparent election fraud in Georgia. He might get away with it.
By Elie MystalTwitterTODAY 8:33 AM
Lindsey-Graham-America-First-getty
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) speaks on a panel at the America First Policy Institute's America First Agenda summit on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

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Iimagine that future historians, when pondering the failure of the American Republic, will find it strange that a number of Republican elected officials sought to avoid accountability for their role in the failed coup of 2020 by referencing a protection that traces its roots to the 1689 English Bill of Rights. How did truth and accountability come to be constrained by a 330-year-old copypasta designed to protect the Lord of Bumblemuckshire from a tyrannical king? Yet here we are, with Republicans like Trump-boot-licker Lindsey Graham arguing that the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause grants him immunity from a lawful subpoena asking him to testify about his role in Trump’s apparent attempt at election fraud in Georgia.

The Speech and Debate Clause appears in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution. It reads: “The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” It means that members of Congress cannot be arrested or sued because of statements they make or actions they take as part of their legislative duties. It can be traced back to the Bill of Rights that was signed after the English Revolution to ensure that the new monarchs didn’t follow the old monarchs’ handbook of arresting legislative bodies or trying legislators for treason. In 1689, preventing the king from rounding up members of Parliament and throwing them in a dungeon was a pretty big deal.

In present-day America, however, we’re not talking about the Speech and Debate Clause because Joe Biden is threatening to put Kyrsten Sinema in jail until she detoxes from all the Big Pharma money she’s addicted to. Instead, the clause is in the news because a number of Republican members of Congress and the Senate are in the hot seat for their insurrection-related activities. There’s debate about whether some could face prosecution; others are already being asked to testify. In both cases, there’s chatter about whether the the Speech and Debate Clause shields them from either of those eventualities—prosecution or testifying.

The latter possibility is the reason Lindsey Graham is testing the limits of the clause. Graham was subpoenaed by Fulton County DA Fani Willis to testify about his role in helping Trump try to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into “finding” 11,000 more votes so Trump could win the election. In court documents, Graham claimed total legal immunity from this inquiry; he said his actions, which allegedly included getting on the phone with Raffensperger, were part of his legislative duties and were thereby protected by the Speech and Debate Clause. He asked the court to “quash” (which means dismiss) the subpoena.

The district court rejected Graham’s request for total immunity, ruling that Willis was looking at post-election activity that likely fell outside of Graham’s legislative chores. But a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Court—a panel that included two judges appointed by Donald Trump—partially overruled the lower court and asked it to revisit Graham’s case to see if he was entitled to partial immunity. The 11th Circuit believes that some testimony could be protected by the Speech and Debate Clause if Graham’s action involved a legitimate legislative purpose; Graham had to submit his arguments for partial immunity to the district court today.

I don’t think the 11th Circuit made the right call, but it’s not necessarily as flagrantly illegitimate as it might seem. The 11th Circuit applied the most important precedent on this issue, Gravel v. United States, to the Graham situation. Gravel was the 1971 case involving the leak of the Pentagon Papers to Senator Mike Gravel and his subsequent inclusion of the papers in the Congressional Record. Since the Pentagon Papers were classified, a federal grand jury subpoenaed one of Gravel’s aides and tried to make him testify about how those documents came to be included in the Congressional Record. The Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4, ruled that the aide could not be compelled to testify, because the aide (and the senator) were protected by the Speech and Debate Clause. That protection, the court said, extended to discussions about the motivations behind legislative acts (like the reasons Gravel put the documents in the record).


However, the Supreme Court did not rule that the Speech and Debate immunity was absolute. Instead, the court said that it extended only to legitimate legislative acts and couldn’t be used to prevent testimony about actions that had nothing to do with legislation. In the Gravel case, that meant the aide could be questioned about Gravel’s decision to leak the Pentagon Papers to the press. The four dissenters disagreed on this last point and would have granted Speech and Debate immunity even for talking with the press.



Gravel was decided over 50 years ago. The difference, of course, between Gravel and Graham is that Senator Gravel was exposing the development of a war strategy specifically designed to circumvent congressional approval, while Senator Graham is suspected of trying to strong-arm a state official into stealing an election.

Unfortunately, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure—and therein lies the potential problem: Legislative purpose can be construed broadly. A range of actions might be considered legitimate legislative acts, but illegitimate conduct should not be protected just because the bad actor happens to be a legislator. Beating the snot out of a senator filibustering a bill, for instance, might have the legitimate legislative purpose of making him shut the hell up, but we all intuitively understand that physical intimidation is not protected by Speech and Debate immunity. I doubt the 11th Circuit would have entertained Graham’s claim for fisticuffs immunity; why is suspected election fraud any more legitimate?

The deeper problem here is that applying the Speech and Debate Clause to subpoenas and testimony is an antiquated protection that makes it even easier for politicians to avoid telling the truth—to stall, as Graham is currently succeeding in doing, if not to escape it altogether. I think the American Republic would be perfectly functional and tyranny-free if legislators merely had the same free speech rights as everybody else. If legislators like Graham don’t want to testify in an ongoing criminal investigation, they should invoke their right against self-incrimination, just like anybody else. One thing we should have learned from the English is that having a special class of citizens with more rights than everybody else is stupid.









Imagine that future historians, when pondering the failure of the American Republic, will find it strange that a number of Republican elected officials sought to avoid accountability for their role in the failed coup of 2020 by referencing a protection that traces its roots to the 1689 English Bill of Rights. How did truth and accountability come to be constrained by a 330-year-old copypasta designed to protect the Lord of Bumblemuckshire from a tyrannical king? Yet here we are, with Republicans like Trump-boot-licker Lindsey Graham arguing that the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause grants him immunity from a lawful subpoena asking him to testify about his role in Trump’s apparent attempt at election fraud in Georgia.

The Speech and Debate Clause appears in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution. It reads: “The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.” It means that members of Congress cannot be arrested or sued because of statements they make or actions they take as part of their legislative duties. It can be traced back to the Bill of Rights that was signed after the English Revolution to ensure that the new monarchs didn’t follow the old monarchs’ handbook of arresting legislative bodies or trying legislators for treason. In 1689, preventing the king from rounding up members of Parliament and throwing them in a dungeon was a pretty big deal.

In present-day America, however, we’re not talking about the Speech and Debate Clause because Joe Biden is threatening to put Kyrsten Sinema in jail until she detoxes from all the Big Pharma money she’s addicted to. Instead, the clause is in the news because a number of Republican members of Congress and the Senate are in the hot seat for their insurrection-related activities. There’s debate about whether some could face prosecution; others are already being asked to testify. In both cases, there’s chatter about whether the the Speech and Debate Clause shields them from either of those eventualities—prosecution or testifying.

The latter possibility is the reason Lindsey Graham is testing the limits of the clause. Graham was subpoenaed by Fulton County DA Fani Willis to testify about his role in helping Trump try to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into “finding” 11,000 more votes so Trump could win the election. In court documents, Graham claimed total legal immunity from this inquiry; he said his actions, which allegedly included getting on the phone with Raffensperger, were part of his legislative duties and were thereby protected by the Speech and Debate Clause. He asked the court to “quash” (which means dismiss) the subpoena.

The district court rejected Graham’s request for total immunity, ruling that Willis was looking at post-election activity that likely fell outside of Graham’s legislative chores. But a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Court—a panel that included two judges appointed by Donald Trump—partially overruled the lower court and asked it to revisit Graham’s case to see if he was entitled to partial immunity. The 11th Circuit believes that some testimony could be protected by the Speech and Debate Clause if Graham’s action involved a legitimate legislative purpose; Graham had to submit his arguments for partial immunity to the district court today.

I don’t think the 11th Circuit made the right call, but it’s not necessarily as flagrantly illegitimate as it might seem. The 11th Circuit applied the most important precedent on this issue, Gravel v. United States, to the Graham situation. Gravel was the 1971 case involving the leak of the Pentagon Papers to Senator Mike Gravel and his subsequent inclusion of the papers in the Congressional Record. Since the Pentagon Papers were classified, a federal grand jury subpoenaed one of Gravel’s aides and tried to make him testify about how those documents came to be included in the Congressional Record. The Supreme Court, by a vote of 5-4, ruled that the aide could not be compelled to testify, because the aide (and the senator) were protected by the Speech and Debate Clause. That protection, the court said, extended to discussions about the motivations behind legislative acts (like the reasons Gravel put the documents in the record).


However, the Supreme Court did not rule that the Speech and Debate immunity was absolute. Instead, the court said that it extended only to legitimate legislative acts and couldn’t be used to prevent testimony about actions that had nothing to do with legislation. In the Gravel case, that meant the aide could be questioned about Gravel’s decision to leak the Pentagon Papers to the press. The four dissenters disagreed on this last point and would have granted Speech and Debate immunity even for talking with the press.

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Gaby Petito

kiely rodni

[h=Daria Dugina]1[/h]
Kiely Rodni, 16ni



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Starland Vocal Band - Wikipedia

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"But my people have lived in the Amazon region , there are around 6000 years old. My father ... he taught me that we must listen to the stars, the moon, the animals and the trees. Today, the weather is warming up and the animals are disappearing, the rivers are dying, and your plants will not flourish as it did before. The world is talking about it, and it tells us that we don't have any more time," he said in an interview, the follow-up of such participation

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What programming language

do you use for your IoT development?

The languages used for IoT development

remain more or less unchanged from last year.

C/C++ (44%) is the most popular, followed by Python (28%) and then JavaScript (17%).

Several respondents used more than one language in their development.

Other languages used include C#,

Rust (a language that is very similar to C++,

but which guarantees memory safety),

and Squirrel (a lightweight scripting language).

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As someone who has also been the target of a sustained harassment I can testify this is a real phenomenon. The people carrying it out are usually members of a cult controlled ultimately by the Khazarian Mafia. This needs to be the subject of public hearings.

As for the kids in the DUMBS, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. This may sound weird but it is as if several different timelines are merging and when this process is finally finished we will get full disclosure about that and so many other things.

In the meantime, we all need to directly fight any injustice we personally experience in order to make sure justice is done.

– Benjamin Fulford

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CBS Radio Workshop "Heaven is in the Sky" Pacoima Plane Crash January 31, 1957 - YouTube

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200 Years Together : Alexander Solzhenitsyn : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive