Victoria Nuland, or How the Cookie Crumbled

March 1, 2023 Mendelssohn Moses

Ah, Vikki Nuland! Did ever Woman unite so many qualities, whether physical or moral? Those noble features, as though sprung from an ancient frieze, the shimmering ringlets, the tiny rows of teeth, that, were they not so sharp and jagged, were veritable pearls, the graceful walk like a ship breaking the waves, the grave, musical tones. Not to forget her understated elegance (who, pray, is the happy, happy tailor who may approach the august bosom with his pins?) of her attire, of her every thought and word.

Were Paris to return and judge a contest of the fairest public figure, even Prof. Dr. Sahra Wagenknecht, or the polemicist Elsa Mittmansgruber, reputed to be amongst Europe’s most beautiful women, would cut a most sorry figure.

But let not beauty blind us to Miss Nuland’s intelligence and clear judgment!

So refreshing was Miss Nuland’s frankness in the Nord Stream tempest in a teapot that one might all too easily forget her masterful role in the little matter of the murder of Ambassador Stevens at Benghazi. In the old days, was it a century or so ago? the French press noted:

(Nuland’s) interlocutors reveal unmistakably their true concerns in the course of their e-mail exchanges; for example… that one must avoid all impression that the State Department had underestimated warnings from the CIA on terrorist threats in Eastern Libya.

An e-mail from Victoria Nuland states that [certain talking points] ‘could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned.’“

As the correspondence moves on, the language is altered, to the point that a “Light” version acceptable to all emerges:

All reference to Al-Qaida is struck out.

All reference to eventual implication of the Islamist group Ansar Al-Charia disappears.

The text no longer refers to the quantity of arms and experienced fighters present in Libya.

The reference to the many warnings and reports drafted by the CIA prior to the attack and the risk of an incident owing to extremists being present at Benghazi and in the East, vanishes completely.

Now, THAT deserves promotion for a Vikki who knows where the monkey sleeps, and how to shovel under his droppings. It goes without saying that one would not dream of quoting from a nasty piece designed to dissuade Joe Biden from appointing her Under-Secretary of State, but then again, we might.

The muscle for Nuland’s $5 billion coup was Oleh Tyahnybok’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the shadowy new Right Sector militia. During her leaked phone call, Nuland referred to Tyahnybok as one of the “big three” opposition leaders on the outside who could help the U.S.-backed Prime Minister Yatsenyuk on the inside. This is the same Tyanhnybok who once delivered a speech applauding Ukrainians for fighting Jews and “other scum” during World War II.” (Cf. Another little reminder from the Old Days in the French press).

Amongst Vikki’s many talents is of course her ability to choose a spouse, the Neo-Con Robert Kagan, an entourage, and thus to know how far back in modern history one need turn, for guidance in dealing with the ectoplasmic, eternal, ineffable enemy, Russia.

Alfred Rosenberg or Adolf Hitler? An Embarrassment of Riches?

Cutting it short, as we are all so terribly busy in these times of war, allow us to quote a few lines from Nicolas Werthe’s 1990, Histoire de l’URSS, starting at page 326. (One could tootle about fitting in You Know Who for “Germany” and replacing the term USSR by Russia but why deconstruct the obvious, as Seymour Hersh might say?):

As Hitler saw it, invading the USSR was not simply a military gambit. His aims were specific: liquidating Bolshevism, destroying the Soviet State, conquering vital areas to the East where Germany could move in as colonizer… Hitler considered Bolshevism to be a Great Russian and Jewish phenomenon, two equally-despicable epithets. He believed in an eternal struggle between the Teuton and the Slav, a struggle wherein Russia, no matter her political regime, was a threat to Germany. Furthermore, he considered the Slavic race to be inferior, for which reason all form of political organization was to be liquidated in Russia, forever. Slaves need no State.

As for Alfred Rosenberg, the Ostpolitik’s theoretician (A. Rosenberg), who headed the Ostministerium from 17th July 1941… his theses were more nuanced… His origins were in the Baltic States; he saw sharp racial and cultural differences between the USSR’s peoples… and suggested that the Russians be isolated, roped into their ‘historical territory” of Muscovy and walled-in by non-Russian nations (the Ukraine, the Baltic States, the Caucasus) whose State and Governmental structures were to be tightly run from Germany.

There was also a third tendency, in addition to Hitler who objected to any compromise with the USSR’ s peoples of any stripe, and to Rosenberg’s selective approach; this third tendency was for a time backed by General Jodl: the Soviet authorities had to be split from the people, whose discontent, especially amongst the peasantry, was to be leveraged…

In turn, and quite incoherently, the Nazis tried all three approached to the problem of the ‘East territories.

Germany’s Ostpolitik having shewn itself to be such a resounding triumph, Vikki and Friends have opted to deploy all three approaches at one and the same time. Where there’s a War, There’s a Way!

The kicker: although Vikki is notoriously contemptuous of Europe, she has nonetheless made Brussels, or perhaps its NATO HQ, her home, according to Wikipedia, alongside the Kagan. Would the magnet be the city’s famed restaurants? Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean?

Which begs the question: thanks to the bombing of Nord Stream and Vikki’s War, eating one’s fill in Europe costs an arm and a leg, whereas the Kagan bellies are reassuringly well-upholstered. Heigh-ho! What is the couple’s monthly revenue, and Who pays for What? As Private Eye would have said, in its glory days, We should be told.

Cf Michael Tracey’s remarkable piece, and Professor John Mearsheimer, very recently, on the USA’s “upcoming” war on China.

Post Scriptum: Michael Tracey, now attending the Munich Security Conference, has just looked up the US Government Manual from Vikki’s Early Days. The Vice-President was Dick Cheney. Vikki was his Principal Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs: “There cannot be enough reminders given of who’s actually running US foreign policy. From the US Government Manual circa 2004.”

Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

Tales from Nulandia: Uncle Sam Wants You!

March 1, 2023 Mendelssohn Moses

🗣️ Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century

❝We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.❞

[9/10] pic.twitter.com/HBji5RoWws
— NATO (@NATO) February 23, 2023

Images from the Munich Security Conference this February shew Odessa MP Alexei Goncharenko tenderly entwining a bracelet fashioned from spent ammo-cartridges round the wrist of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and then pressing up against the motherly bosom of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. (Now that I think of it, Goncharenko so much resembles the latter physically, might he be her eighth child? Just a thought.)

Safely ensconced on the other side of the Atlantic, Goncharenko’s alter ego, US civil servant Paul Massaro, has posted on his Twitter account a likeness of himself swagging with the Azov Bataillon flag—although his jubilant Hey, Look What I’ve Got! (sic) Tweet, thrusting the Stepan Bandera insignia sewn to his sleeve into the viewer’s face has, for some reason, vanished—though not before his admirers had immortalized it.

An alumnus of the National Endowment for Democracy and the Robertson Foundation for Government (its in-house slideshow portrays Secretary Anthony Blinken inter alia), Massaro is also a Hudson Institute associate.

That read and done, so to speak, one cannot but surmise that the “Paul Massaro” publicly-accessible webpages have been scrubbed of all clue as to his true mentors, sponsors and income-sources; the latter may well be substantial, given Massaro’s overseas trips, smart attire and gleaming array of teeth.

Paul Massaro: Statesman, Thinker, Banderovite

Whatever. Beamed from these “prestigious”, certainly official sites, the Massaro pages have apparently been drafted by their Subject Himself, so carefully crafted are they to glorify the polymath, workhorse and above all, statesman endowed with every gift of nature.

Thus we learn from the National Endowment for Democracy site that he serves the OSCE (Helsinki Commission ) as Senior (!) Policy Advisor at the venerable age of 32, with a portfolio including “topics such as anti-corruption, sanctions, finance, trade, Arctic issues, and energy security. He is also responsible for Mongolia and the OSCE Asian Partners for Cooperation (Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia, and Afghanistan).”

Now, bearing in mind that a career diplomat of rank will not, as a rule, intervene into more than one or two major regions or policy areas, one inclines to the view that Massaro, with an MA from the Maryland School of Public Policy, and speaking only English and some German, cannot by any stretch of the imagination master “topics such as anti-corruption, sanctions, finance, trade, Arctic issues, and energy security. He is also responsible for Mongolia and the OSCE Asian Partners for Cooperation (Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia, and Afghanistan).”

Dwarfing Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov no doubt.

Accordingly, one would suggest that like Alexei Goncharenko, Massaro is a paid buffoon, deployed abroad to finger potential adversaries of Nulandia, while winkling out bounders, so sorry I meant allies, such as Anastasia Colosimo. The latter, a self-righteous little blonde aged all of 30 or so, has just been appointed advisor to President E. Macron in a diplomatic capacity, while lacking all experience in international relations. Miss Colosimo’s previous day job was as Office Manager to Mme. Sarkozy’s latest spouse at New York

Turning next to what appears, again, to be a Massaro Samizdat (self-published) page on the C SCE site, one encounters flattery that breaks all bounds.

Dixit the OSCE page, Massaro’s work “has advanced the recognition of corruption as a national security threat. He has been described in the media as ‘one of America’s foremost corruption experts’ and an ‘endless source of democratic ingenuity.’ His work has been similarly described as “breathtakingly prescient.” He has worked on over 13 pieces of counter-corruption legislation and facilitated the founding of the Congressional Caucus against Foreign Corruption and Kleptocracy and the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance against Kleptocracy.

“His work on the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, a landmark law redefining doping as fraud… has for the first time held to account the authoritarian actors who use sport as a tool of foreign policy. His work on the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act was similarly groundbreaking, serving as the first-ever U.S. law to respond to abuse of INTERPOL by authoritarian regimes.”

Presented by Rep. Steven Cohen of Tennessee, the TRAP act’s explicit targets are Russia and similar recalcitrants—Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkey—and its aim, to bring INTERPOL to heel—the US heel.

Alexei Goncharenko: From Russophile to Terminator

Born in 1980, Massaro’s alter-ego Goncharenko though actually a Russian-speaker, now affects the Ukrainian spelling Oleksyi and has succeeded, with which funds one knows not, to get himself elected MP for Odessa, a Russian city currently spelled “Odesa” in Nulandia.

Goncharenko came to fame or rather notoriety, for the bizarre role he played during the ritual sacrifice by fire of trades-unionists on May 2nd, 2014 at Odessa.

In his native city, what is said of Goncharenko would not, perhaps, be music to Vikki Nuland’s ears.

On September 20, 2021, a Ukrainian journalist, Sergei Shilov, penned a psycho-profile of this little thug for the on-line Klymenko Times, intitled “Oleksiy Goncharenko: Poroshenko’s parliamentary jester.”

Written in English, the article reveals some background to the disorders that define Goncharenko’s personality. He is one of the numerous progeny of Alexei Koktusev, MP from 1998-2001, former Mayor of Odessa, former Chair of the Anti-Monopoly Commission (2001-2008) and serial seducer, bouncing from one marriage to the next. According to reporter Shilov, on leaving the conjugal domicile, Koktusev left his own fecal matter in the breadbasket as a parting gift. Goncharenko was aged 3 at the time; this must have been a most edifying scene for a toddler.

After medical studies at Odessa, Goncharenko was somehow elected or appointed President of the regional Green Party, before leaving for Moscow to study economics (2002-2005). On his return, he became municipal Chairman of the Union Party (Soyuz), then headed by pater familias Koktusev. As a member of Soyuz, an overtly pro-Russian party, Goncharenko became favourably known to locals by pledging to grant the Russian language and its speakers equitable, official status.

From 2005 to 2013, now onto his third political party, the Party of Regions, Goncharenko continued to lobby for Russian-speakers, and succeeded – again, doubtless thanks to the pater who then owned television stations – to join Odessa’s municipal council as an opponent to the Mayor Edward Hurwitz, a self-described Ukrainian patriot.

Suddenly however, pater Koktusev returned to Odessa from Kiev, with his sights trained on Town Hall. Father-son oedipal battles ensued, with the police occasionally called in.

Cut to the year 2013, the year before the Maidan coup d’état. From a steady flow, US money swelled to a torrent (according to Vikki Nuland, the USA had invested $US 5 billion into Ukrainian politics), and Goncharenko’s fingers inched towards the butter on the sliced white bread.

For an outsider to unravel the labyrinth of Odessa’s ultra-corrupt politics is no easy thing. In a nutshell, then-President Yanukovich intervened to demand that the city’s Mayor, pater Koktusev, resign. Since that time, our attempts to trace Koktusev have proven fruitless – he seems to have evaporated (gone fishing, or to Russia?).

On 19th February 2014, as US winds blew to gale force, Alexei Goncharenko quit the Party of Regions to find, as Shilov explains, a new sugar daddy in the person of Pietr Poroshenko, soon to be President of the 51st US State, along with a brand-new identity as a fire-breathing Ukrainian “patriot”.

By 25th March 2014, Goncharenko was found parading in a PUTIN-HITLER T-shirt at Strasburg during the Council of Europe’s Congress of Regional Authorities. Two short months later, on 2nd May 2014, this Russophile and Russian-speaker was sighted sporting a smart little cap and a twisted smile, as trades-unionists were trapped and burnt to cinders in the Trades Unions House.

“The Kulikovo Field Has been Cleared of Separatists”

*Aleksey Goncharenko (in cap) watching the Trades Union House burn.* Credit: *Klymenko Time*.

That same day, 2nd May 2014, a day of mourning for the guiltless dead, when mentally-healthy Ukrainians were reeling in shock and disgust, Goncharenko appeared on live television, to giggle that “the Kulikov Field has been cleared of separatists” (Shuster-Live). Thereafter, his every word made him hosts of enemies, save for Pietr Poroshenko and Co., who got him into Parliament for Odessa.

Sergei Shilov’s piece proceeds to set out a long list of variously puerile or repellent incidents involving Goncharenko, of which we shall report only one:

“… on September 7, 2021, the Verkhovna Rada met for an extraordinary meeting to consider address to the US Congress with a request to grant Ukraine the status of an ‘ally outside NATO’. The author of this idea was Aleksey Goncharenko, who collected 150 signatures of people’s deputies, but only 24 voted in favor. And it was not only that after the US left Afghanistan, the status of an “ally outside NATO” lost all meaning. The State Department itself spoke out against it, using its levers of influence in Ukraine to “dissuade” politicians controlled by itself from supporting this appeal…”

Since then, one finds Goncharenko everywhere—notably in England, or at the PACE Commission to which he was appointed Vice-President by “acclamation” (sic). Here, there, and everywhere—Goncharenko has only to open that gaping maw to reveal the extent of his psycho-pathology, the latest Make Russia Small Again podcast with fellow-buffoon Paul Massaro being a case in point.

Hush! Sadistic Clowns at Play!

And so, on the Massaro Method (sic) Podcast Make Russia Small Again (February 22, 2023, one hears Goncharenko utter the word bloodshed perhaps six times in half-an-hour – bloodshed, inevitable as Russia is to be carved up, Siberia thrown to the Chinese wolf, the Caucasus to revolt – bloodshed! Serbia’s goose will have to be cooked, since she acts as Russia’s Trojan Horse (sic), even were that to mean bloodshed. Fortunately Yugoslavia splintered, although at the cost of bloodshed.

How foolish a thing, says Paul Massaro, that some at Washington DC still balk at splintering Russia, fearful of unleashing a thousand times the Yugoslavian wars—bloodshed? No problemo! Hee-hawing like the ass he is, Massaro bares his row of giant teeth.

Press on!

Spilling the gut on his “father” fantasies, Goncharenko then portrays Russia as a maniac who kills women (sic !), “it’s a hunger” he says, a maniac who will go on and on if not halted. Russia cannot stop, she will invade, she threatens the entire world. She will throw herself on Moldavia, she’s spent millions to subvert Moldavia. Russia is the last empire left standing, all the others have happily been dismembered—the Ottomans, the Germans—and now Russia’s turn has come. Her weak link: the non-Slavic peoples, who must be stirred up into revolt. Chechenya and Daghestan must join NATO.

The two buffoons agree on one further, not inconsequential point: do not expect the Russian people to rise up against their President. Indeed, says Goncharenko, since but 10,000 of Moscow’s ten million inhabitants ever demonstrate against him, Vladimir Putin must be overthrown by exploiting every crack in his entourage, while closing every sanctions loophole. Neither can repress their Schadenfreude as Massaro cackles: “at least, the Germans are no longer buying their natural resources [sic] from Russia. You’ve gotta starv’em out!” Natural resources, yeah.

In a word, these individuals are sycophants, propitiators out for the main chance. Neither are possessed of any inner strength – their entire being is premised on propitiating whomever they perceive to hold the key to power and money. The moment power passes elsewhere, they will hasten to switch sides.

A buffoon is amusing, only when his master is not murderous. These buffoons’ masters are in the business of getting others killed.

Now, Goncharenko will likely come a cropper at the hands of Someone whose toes he has trod upon once too many – amongst Massaro’s Banderovite heroes there’s no lack of such Someones. Thieves DO fall out. As for Paul Massaro, if things go belly up with the Banderovites, he’ll ply his networks right lift and centre for a lucrative post retailing gibberish in the Ivy League, tucked up all safe and warm in the US of A.

And A Message from Dr. Sherwin Nuland né Nudelman, Vikki’s Pater Familias

Amongst the buffoons’ managers, one suspects Under-Secretary of State Vikkie née Nudelman Nuland, In 1995, her father, Dr. Sherwin Nuland né Nudelman, surgeon, wrote a best-seller on—you guessed it—DEATH, intitled How we Die. Very strangely, although by the year it appeared cancer treatment had made such strides that a diagnosis no longer meant a death sentence, Dr. Nuland fairly revels in the sheer wantonness of cancer, and in a way that would nicely fit our two Banderovites:

Cancer. “The disease pursues a continuous, uninhibited… barn-burning expedition of destructiveness, in which it heeds no rules, follows no commands, and explodes all resistance in a homicidal riot of devastation. Its cells behave like the members of a barbarian horde run amok…

“…the uncontrolled mob of misfits that is cancer behaves like a gang of perpetually wilding adolescents…. There comes a point at which home turf is not enough—offshoots of the gang take wing, invade other communities, and, emboldened by their unresisted depredations, wreak havoc on the entire commonwealth of the body. But, in the end, there is no victory for cancer. When it kills its victim, it kills itself. A cancer is born with a death wish.”

Charming, I’m sure.

By the way, and lastly—as a Jew, I must ask: how comes it that Jews like Victoria née Nudelman Nuland or Anthony Blinken, Jews of Slavic origin no less, have sold their soul to overtly-Nazi killers? Mendelssohn Moses has attempted an answer here.

Mendelssohn Moses writes from France.

1993: The Barry R. Posen Plan for War on Russia via Zombie State Ukraine

February 1, 2023 Mendelssohn Moses

“We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, January 24, 2023.

(For an unauthorised biography of Baerbock, see here).

On July 27, 1993, the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation on Defense and Military Relations, establishing a programme of defence cooperation at the Department-Ministry-level, with “substantive activities” between those offices being launched in July 1994 (Cf. Lt. Col. Frank Morgese, US-Ukraine Security Cooperation 1993-2001: A Case History). Since that date, the Ukraine has teemed with US military advisors of every stripe.

The Morgese case study is a blow-by-blow review of the US military activity in the Ukraine between 1993 and 2001, designed to set up the Ukraine for her destruction. So detailed a review, that it would swamp the layman. Accordingly, we propose another document dating from 1994, readable by the laymen amongst us, and which spells out thirty years in advance, the full-blown War Plan for a zombie Ukraine.

Its author, Barry R. Posen (Rand, CFR, MIT, Woodrow Wilson Foundation), belongs to the leather-armchair school of strategy the US so excels in: arranging for others to die for the US living standard.

For obvious reasons, only Posen’s assessment of Russian military strength is dated. The remainder of his study predicts with such ghastly exactitude both events in the Ukraine over the last 20 years and the expected, indeed hoped for, Russian response, that one readily perceives that this is no prediction, but rather a fully-formed proposal for War—complete with Posen’s dismay, very faintly-veiled, at Operation Barbarossa’s failure, and his pleasure at the “high cost” Barbarossa exacted on Russia.

To give our readers the flavour of Posen’s text, we have selected a few, notable paragraphs from this Must-Read, one which Russia surely cannot have missed. All quotations are so marked and in italics.

Manoeuvring the Ukraine into Demanding the US Armed Forces Intervene

The problem here is that if Russia were to attack Ukraine, or threaten it conventionally, the US is not obliged to do anything. Ukrainian diplomats could, however, try to argue that any act of war or threat of war by a nuclear superpower involves an implicit nuclear threat sufficient to warrant US action. Even if this argument were accepted, however, Security Council action would be thwarted by the Russian veto. Nevertheless, it should be part of Ukraine’s diplomatic strategy in the event of trouble.

Partnership for Peace Designed to “impose considerable costs on Russia”

Even if Partnership for Peace (PFP) does not come through for Ukraine, it still holds the potential to impose considerable costs on Russia, which adds to Ukraine’s overall deterrent power. Paragraph 8 of NATO’s ‘Framework’ document for PFP states “NATO will consult with any active participant in the Partnership if that partner perceives a direct threat to its territorial integrity, political independence, or security. The precise action that would follow such consultation is unspecified. Nevertheless, NATO would look pretty sorry if it either failed to consult, or failed to take any action after consultation. Some politicians and pundits will trumpet the credibility costs of a failure to act. NATO might, of course, compensate for a failure to act on Ukraine’s behalf by stronger measures elsewhere, though this would be cold comfort to Ukraine. Fear of these stronger measures elsewhere are, however, another element of Ukraine’s dissuasive power.

If the Russian Government Reject further Western “Reforms,” NATO Must Act

The Partnership for Peace can be viewed as ‘NATO’s Waiting Room.’ The tacit bargain with Russia is that many central European states remain in that waiting room so long as Russia remains a good neighbor. If-and-as Russia begins to try to expand its power, the din in the waiting room will become disturbingly loud. The elements are in place for the rapid extension of NATO to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, even if a threatened Ukraine is tossed to the wolves. Russia can, by its own acts, bring NATO to its doorstep. Stephen Oxman, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs virtually stated this rationale.

…should reform experience a reversal of fortune in Russia, we can re-evaluate NATO’s needs and those of the Central and Eastern Europeans. At the same time, active participation in the Partnership will go a long way toward enhancing their military preparedness and allow partners to consult with NATO in the event of a threat.

Confrontation with Russia “Probable” and She can be Provoked into the Ukraine

Moreover, as noted above, complete inaction would damage NATO’s credibility for a probable future confrontation with Russia. If, as some now argue, NATO expands eastward more-or-less as a matter of course, this useful sanction will have been lost. Nevertheless, it seems that any near term NATO expansion will be accompanied by only limited military redeployments, so long as Russia-US relations remain moderately amicable. Russian policy makers might still calculate that aggression against Ukraine can leave them worse off because of the countervailing actions it would precipitate.

Moreover, near term candidates for NATO membership are only a subset of the PFP participants. Again, Russian action can precipitate more energetic alliance expansion. A word of caution is in order, here, however. If near term NATO expansion is accompanied by energetic military preparations that Russian policy makers view as unprovoked, they may be stimulated to try to reabsorb Ukraine out of their own defensive impulses.

The Ukraine Must be Shifted towards “Ethnic Nationalism”

…Ukraine has one other diplomatic asset. Thus far, the “state ideology” is organized largely around the idea of “civic” rather than “ethnic” nationalism. Anybody can be a citizen of Ukraine, and a good “Ukrainian.” Russians are not a persecuted minority. There are small ethnically Ukrainian elements who might wish to change this orientation. But “civic nationalism” is congenial to the West. Insofar as any future struggle can be portrayed as the “ethnic” Russians against the “civic” Ukrainians, the path of western intervention is eased. Moreover, it is not inconceivable that other states will draw a tragic lesson from an unopposed Russian “liberation” of its brethren in Ukraine. One is better off expelling such potential irredenta.

“Diplomacy Profits from Ghastly Television Footage”—Bucha, Anyone?

Ukraine must organize its military power to ensure the greatest probability of outside intervention. Russian fear of outside intervention could add greatly to Ukraine’s dissuasive power. Diplomacy needs time to work; it also profits from ghastly television footage. This means Ukraine must, as a matter of priority, organize its military forces to avoid the kind of catastrophic defensive collapse often associated with armored warfare.

The West could assist Ukraine in many important ways short of direct military intervention. But all assistance will have to move through Poland, Slovakia, or Hungary. It is improbable that these countries will be willing to cooperate without full fledged membership in NATO, so membership would have to be extended during the crisis. Ukraine will require outside sources of oil and gas if it is to hold out very long. Replacements for weapons lost in the initial battles would be very helpful. Given that many eastern European countries will, for the foreseeable future, have similar equipment to the Ukrainians, they are a ready source of easily usable replacements and munitions.

Give the Ukraine “Many More Opportunities to Inflict Disproportionate Casualties on the Russians”

One of the most useful forms of assistance that could be provided to Ukraine is intelligence. If Ukraine regularly knows where large Russian ground formations are, its forces will be much less vulnerable to catastrophe, and have many more opportunities to inflict disproportionate casualties on the Russians. (Similar assistance may be possible against enemy air forces.). Direct military intervention from the West will be very problematical. One suspects that some secret planning has been done for this contingency, but the task must seem daunting. NATO ground and air forces would have to cross vast distances to reach even central Ukraine.

The distance from the old inter-German border to Kiev is roughly 1500 km. NATO’s relatively few divisions would be swallowed up in the vast spaces of the East, even if they could get there. The optimum direct military assistance would probably be in the form of air strikes. Effective, sustained, tactical air strikes cannot efficiently be flown from existing NATO air bases in western Europe; 2000 km range sorties could just reach central Ukraine, but would be hard on pilots and would require high levels of aerial tanker support.12 (These sorties would also require Polish permission.) Another option would be to fly from bases in Turkey, a NATO ally. Sorties could be flown directly across the Black Sea to Ukraine. Ranges would vary depending on bases and targets, but it is unlikely that any sortie would need to go further than 1500 km. The problem here, of course, would be whether Turkey believed its vital interests were engaged, since the NATO treaty does not oblige them to come to the assistance of a non-NATO country, even if other NATO countries wish it.

Move NATO Ground and Air Forces into Poland

NATO ground and air forces might move into Poland and NATO aircraft could fly from Polish bases. (This would have to be negotiated, of course, and the cost would certainly be immediate full membership in NATO for Poland.) Unfortunately, most Polish bases were built to be close to the old “inner-German” border, the expected zone of east-west conflict. There are only about a half-dozen military airfields in the southeastern quadrant of the country that would meaningfully reduce sortie ranges, and thus the need for tankers. Even these would require sorties of over 1000 km, which is still demanding.for sustained tactical air attacks.

…It seems unlikely that NATO commanders would want to put their very valuable aircraft and support equipment onto Ukrainian bases, without the benefit of a large scale NATO ground force shield.A more arcane, but nevertheless extremely important problem would be the coordination of NATO fighters with Ukraine’s own air defenses to ensure that Ukrainians do not shoot at NATO aircraft. This should prove very difficult to improvise.

The West will Need to Repudiate its High Minded Principles Publicly in a Series of Venues, All Ostensibly Designed for the very Purpose of Protecting these Principles

Because NATO countries lived for nearly a half century with Soviet control over Ukraine, Ukrainians ought not to have confidence that NATO will come to its aid out of narrow strategic interest. Nevertheless, this assistance becomes more plausible, the longer Ukraine can resist, and the longer Ukrainian diplomacy can work. Ukraine should thus try, through its military strategy, to maximize Russian fear of this outcome. Ukraine has available to it a series of for a where it can present its case. Thus, the West will need to repudiate its high minded principles publicly in a series of venues, all ostensibly designed for the very purpose of protecting these principles. Since Munich already happened, this policy has a name and a historical meaning that will provide some additional leverage for Ukrainian diplomats.

The Ukrainian Defence will be a “Catastrophic Failure” and the Army, Destroyed

Even if the Russians start out with a limited aims strategy–with the intent of conquering Crimea, and the three or four easternmost oblasts of dense Russian settlement, the likely catastrophic failure of these forward defense or mobile defense strategies would incur the destruction of most if not all of the Ukrainian army.

A Divided Ukraine Would then Assume the Role in a New Cold War that Divided Germany Assumed in the Last One

Western Ukraine, though weak industrially, is agriculturally rich and ought to be able to feed itself. It does have considerable light industry which could be turned to military uses. Most importantly, it borders Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, all potential sources of supply if NATO admits these countries, applies diplomatic pressure, and provides resources. These are big “ifs,” but for the diplomatic reasons outlined above, there are reasons for hope. If Ukraine makes its western reaches strong enough to resist for a lengthy period, at least several months, and employs its mobile forces effectively to generate serious combat from the outset of the war, Ukrainian diplomacy will have a chance. If the Ukrainian bastion can garner enough western European logistical assistance to survive, Russia will face the prospect of having to employ large active forces to contain it. It will go even worse for them if western Ukraine can get into NATO. A divided Ukraine would then assume the role in a new Cold War that divided Germany assumed in the last one. But the “inner-Ukrainian border” would be much closer to the centers of Russian power than was the “inner-German” border.

Encourage the Ukrainians to Blow Up their Own Cities and Infrastructure

Extensive demolitions would supplement more conventional military operations to slow the attackers’ progress, and complicate their subsequent logistics. Much of this could be organized well in advance; critical facilities can be “pre-chambered” to speed the placement of explosives. Necessary explosives can be cached close to the designated targets, under the control of local police forces or reserve military formations, as is done in Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, and even Germany. As the Ukrainians retreat into geographical areas where Ukrainians constitute a greater ethnic majority, it may prove possible to organize “stay-behind” forces to collect intelligence on the Russians and engage in partisan warfare. This too should be planned in advance.

The Ukraine Must “Convince its Neighbours that It has a Million Men Willing to Die”

A word of candor is in order on the nature of the combat that would be necessary to make this military concept work. The essence of the combat power of the organization I propose is the willingness of the Ukrainian soldier to fight and die for his or her country, in a war that may seem a hopeless cause. This is not a US or even an Israeli military system that strives to beat its adversary mainly through technological superiority, highly trained people, enormously competent leadership, and brilliant tactics. As noted elsewhere, the Ukrainian Army has no chance of achieving this. and they will be substantially outweighed in major items of combat equipment. Historically, the kind of fighting proposed here has taken a terrific toll in casualties–thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would die. This organization can only inflict casualties on a mechanized adversary if it is willing to accept casualties itself. The mind of the individual Ukrainian soldier is the key. What is the commitment to an independent Ukraine? How untense is Ukrainian patriotism, or nationalism? The answers to these questions are already in doubt in many parts of Ukraine. If Ukraine cannot devise a host of ways to convince its neighbors that it can find a million soldiers willing to die on any day for the sovereignty of the country, then the deterrent power of this military system will be weak.

The Ukraine Must Learn to Love Poland, and Become A Dumping-Ground for Old Weapons

To increase the Russian perception that Ukraine might actually get western assistance to execute this strategy, there are a range of requests the Ukrainians might make of NATO in the context of the Partnership for Peace. Ukraine should seek joint air defense exercises that would familiarize western and Ukrainian air force officers and air defense officers with the coordination problems they would face in a real war. Ukraine should suggest that the Polish air bases closest to it are seen as assets, not threats, and should encourage the Polish air force and NATO to practice forward movement of NATO aircraft into these bases, again in the guise of joint “peacekeeping” exercises. They should also note their interest that these bases remain in good shape. Ukrainian Army personnel should seek joint training opportunities with NATO that would familiarize them with NATO anti-armor weapons. And Ukraine should suggest that anti-armor weapons that NATO armies might intend to retire could still find a useful life in Ukraine.

Alternatively, they could simply ask that such weapons be stockpiled, rather than sold or destroyed. The railroad gauge change yards that transshipped cargo from Russian to European trains should be well maintained so that supplies could be moved East expeditiously. Some might object that these kinds of exercises go beyond what is implied in the Partnership for Peace. But it does not seem beyond the creative powers of diplomats to rationalize them. Ukrainian diplomats are in a position to argue quite strenuously for these measures.

“Inherent Irrationality” of a “Violent Struggle of the Magnitude Envisioned Here” No Obstacle!

The third argument is implicit in the peculiar character of post-Cold War discourse on international politics. Violent struggles of the magnitude envisioned here among great and middle sized advanced industrial powers have come to be viewed as “inconceivable.” There is a widespread inclination to view them as beyond the organizational, economic, social, and political capabilities of these countries. The inherent irrationality of such struggles against the backdrop of modern societies that prize rationality has come to be viewed as a barrier to such conflicts. Many believe that the spread of democracy also makes such wars unlikely among democracies, since “median voters” will demand alternative solutions from their leaders on both sides. In short, while limited uses of military force remain possible, deliberate large-scale aggression of the type discussed here is simply not something Russia could or would do.

And if all else Fail, Nuke ’em

A useful next analytic step would be a systematic consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of this conventional strategy vs a nuclear one.… The strategy I have developed gives the Ukrainians almost no ability to stop a determined Russian attempt to conquer territories populated by ethnic Russians. It is moderately good at raising the costs of an attempt to conquer the entire country, but without outside assistance, it will ultimately fail. Presuming that Ukraine could generate a small, secure second strike capability against Russia, what problems might nuclear deterrence solve?

Ukraine would think of itself as trying to deter attacks on its territory. Russia might think of itself as trying to protect its countrymen–accidentally marooned on territory that has historically been Russian, but which is now incidentally Ukrainian.

Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

A “Pitiful Thriver, in his Gazing Spent”: Vice-Admiral Chevallereau

February 1, 2023 Mendelssohn Moses

If you liked the Moscow Purges 1936-37, you’ll love the Paris Purges 2023!

On Sunday January 18th, the Journal du dimanche (JDD), a Paris weekly, published an op-ed by Vice-Admiral Patrick Chevallereau, a figure little known to the general public or even to most of the military, having spent much of his career cultivating Those Who Succeed, as President Macron once famously said.

Over in the USA, the Vice-Admiral’s latest foray into literature, coming on the heels of dozens of mainstream-press articles targetting alleged French Russophiles, would perhaps qualify as a journalistic hit piece, whilst in the Ukraine, readers might fear its targets end up on Myrotvorets (Myrotvorets’ IP address, we are told, is NATO HQ at Brussels—small world?). The novelty here is that Chevallereau is “squealing,” if that is the word, on his very own comrades in arms.

“BEWARE!” reads the JDD article’s header: “French army officers (ret.) strive to forward the Kremlin’s interests… Patrick Chevallereau is a senior fellow and Board Member of the Open Diplomacy Institute, and he raises the alarm on backing from high-ranking French military men (ret.) of the pro-Russian narrative concerning the war in the Ukraine.”

Thereupon Vice-Admiral Chevallereau painstakingly lists or rather blacklists, a number of his erstwhile comrades. Apart from one or two dullish traditionalists like General de la Chesnais, he hones in, as one would expect, on independent thinkers: the Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement (CF2R), staffed and led by retired, top-ranking intelligence officers such as Éric Dénecé, Prof. Dr. Col. Caroline Galactéros of the War College, General Vincent Desportes, PhD, former head of the War College, Ayméric Chauprade.

Politically Chevallereau’s targets represent a grab-bag of views, ranging from the Rassemblement national, to the vaguely communistic left, to monarchists, to wildly anti-communist and to no politics at all. They do however have one thing in common: some such as Col. Moreau, who is on the Myrotvorets list, have frankly reported receiving death threats, while others have so implied.

How odd! Rather than threaten, would not those certain of a cause coolly debate an opponent—in public?

Anyway, Chevallereau’s piece is all very blood-curdling, and in short, just awfully scary. So, one rushes to check whether Russian tanks be massing on the Rhine, or Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying overhead. Nothing on mainstream news. Or Russia invading Martinique? Nothing, neither. Unsettling.

Back-track. Unless we have missed something, the last major armed confrontation between France and Russia occurred in 1854, when France leapt on board yet another British colonial expedition, namely the Crimean War. Despite that and France’s involvement with the White Armies during the Russian Civil War, she reopened diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1924. The terms of Prime Minister Herriot’s telegramme to the Soviet Executive’s President Kalinin on 28th October 1924 may be worth recalling:

“from now on, non-interference in domestic affairs will become the rule regulating the relationship between the two countries”. France acknowledges the Soviet Government “as the Government of the territory of the former Russian empire, wherever its rule be recognized by the population, and as successor to the previous Russian Governments.”

Over the past century, Franco-Russian relations have thus tended, in the main, to the cordial, including during the Cold War. In a nutshell, one is hard put to find a single, serious hostile act by Russia against France in recent history—on the contrary, she has been supplying the whole of Western Europe with cheap gas for over sixty years, and has been cooperating on fusion research and the space programme.

But nothing daunted neither, three days after the aforesaid JDD piece, on January 21st the Vice-Admiral, waving the “don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is made up” flag, popped up like a Jack-in-the-Box on the private television station BFM TV, again in squeal-mode.

Without a single source being cited save for “our sources” (sic), the BFM TV news clip went on to portray an alleged Russian “hybrid war” (new buzz word for Any Old Thing) hacker onslaught on Office national des anciens combattants (Army Veterans) software.

Then, unfurling a tendentious header in the form of a rhetorical question, to which to which BFM TV provided neither answer nor a shred of evidence, namely “Have the Russians contacted ex-French military men to turn them as agents of influence?” The clip purported to “name and shame” Col. Xavier Moreau, Colonel Alain Corvez, Lt. Col. J-M. Cadenas and Col. Jacques Hogard.

Apart from Colonel Moreau, a former Gendarme living in Russia who is baldly, blatantly and unashamedly pro-Russian—as though that were a crime—none of the others would seem to have any particular truck with any country except France, unless they be like everyone else, mad keen on Italy.

Annoying from the Vice-Admiral’s standpoint perhaps, is what most of these officers do have in common: intellectual and physical courage, and good standing in the armed forces.

Wisely enough, lest someone actually read it, both Vice-Admiral Chevallereau and the anonymous BFM TV editors refrained from mentioning an Open Letter to Jens Stoltenberg, intitled “Ward off the train wreck whilst there yet be time.” Published in the business monthly Capital on 11th March 2021, the Letter takes down the NATO 2030 strategic planning document stone by stone. Signed by Air Force General (ret.) Grégoire Diamantidis on behalf of the Cercle de Reflexion Inter-armées, reprinted in several languages and journals, it caused an absolute sensation, and concludes with these words:

“In strict accordance with the principles laid down half-a-century ago by General de Gaulle, France cannot, lest she fail gravely, engage in the hazardous adventure of conceding US control over Europe.”

Has France Declared War on Russia? Or, When Did that Happen?

Now, so far as we know, and despite France’s de facto role as co-belligerent through her arms shipments and financial support to the NATO armies masquerading as the “Ukraine,” she has never declared war on Russia, nor officially proclaimed Russia to be an enemy state.

(Notwithstanding the massive influence of Carl Schmitt on President Macron’s advisors: one need only peruse the President’s thoroughly bizarre New Year’s “Hybrid War” Greeting to the French armed forces, where the term “brutal” appears half-a-dozen times.)

Accordingly, one is at pains to grasp to what strategic end the Vice-Admiral has drawn up his black-list, unless it be a personal settling of accounts?

Be that as it may, the four reasons the Vice-Admiral suggests for his comrades’ alleged Russophilia reveal only his awe before the Hegemon’s altar:

1/ Russophilia in traditional French circles, Russia being seen as an ally in the struggle for civilisation
2/ the military’s penchant for discipline, turned to fascination with authority in Russia
3/ “wrongly-understood patriotism” (sic), and the “ideal of a sovereign France,” which to Chevallereau is a ghastly flaw, obstructing as he would have it “a powerful, united Europe and a strong transatlantic alliance.”
4/ and then (which had this subject of His Britannic Majesty falling about laughing) “these same officers may have come to anti-Atlanticism through their ignorance of NATO and perhaps, through frustration at finding themselves working within NATO without however, mastering the subtleties, the codes and sometimes not even the (English) language, the sine qua non to make oneself heard.”

Er, quite. As in the UK, a significant percentage of the French officer corps are either sons of the nobility or of the upper middle classes; some even favour monarchical restoration. For the rest, they are highly-educated, failing which they would unlikely have been promoted. To suggest that men from these rarefied circles might fail to grasp fashionable sous-entendres or irony, have no idea how to behave in public, or – shock, horror, disbelief—have poor table manners, simply reveals the Vice-Admiral for the bounder he is.

“Pitiful Thriver, in his Gazing Spent”

Straightaway, the piece had some of France’s foremost military men seething with anger, as one sees from this short item by General Dominique Delawarde. Given Chevallereau’s notorious Anglomania, Delawarde suggests that those who Live in Glass Houses were well advised Not to Throw Stones at purported “Russophiles” in the French armed forces; furthermore, he points to a recent, anonymous survey of rank-and-file military. On average, 80 to 90 % of the respondents want no part of a war against Russia, would be willing to demonstrate against such a war, and believe the Ukrainian conflict redounds solely to the profit of the USA.

Urge for a Purge?

So, what’s with the Vice-Admiral’s Urge for a Purge? Put otherwise, who pulls his string?

Although Chevallareau may put up front his role as a “fellow” of the Open Diplomacy Institute, that can scarcely be where the monkey sleeps.

Headed by Thomas Friang, amongst Emmanuel Macron’s perfervid, or opportunistic, supporters, the heretofore-unknown Open Diplomacy Institute is purportedly a non-profit society pushing the déjà-vu Climate Change etc. agenda; however, no up-front address appears on the site nor does one find a call for donations. Whether it might be yet another Soros-front is a moot point. As for the rest of the Open Diplomacy Fellows, the Usual Suspects: well-connected, smooth-talking graduates of the swanky Business Schools which liquidate a nation’s wealth at the stroke of a pen.

What advantage the Vice-Admiral might seek there remains unclear. Where his true advantage and allegiance lie is found elsewhere. Rather than mere Anglophilia, the watchword is Anglomania.

What Happens in a Great Purge?

What does a nation, what does the world lose, when an officer is shot or disappeared? Which is to say, what does it take, to become an officer?

Mastery of one or two light-fantastic disciplines faintly more complex than basket-weaving: geometry, physics, mathematics, ballistics, topography, geography, diplomacy, history and military history, geology, mechanics, electronics, IT, AI, logistics, psychology of men and war, tactics, inter-arms coordination plus the officer’s own particular specialty on air, sea or land… Kill off or disappear a few hundred officers and they just spring back by sowing dragon’s teeth, n’est-ce-pas?

Backtrack once more, to the Moscow Purges, 1936. US military historians themselves readily own that by the 1920s, the Russian officer corps had produced some of the most remarkable minds in the entire history of strategy. The best-known is Tukachevsky, but he was not alone: Frunze, Svechin, Triandifillov, Isserson and so on.

According even to bog-standard accounts, such as Wikipedia, during the 1936-37 Moscow purges “three of five marshals were shot, 13 of 15 army commanders… eight of nine admirals, 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.”

In total, as many as 35,000 officers may have been shot or “lost” in exile. Had Josef Stalin—a psychopath who never should have come to head the Russian State—not conducted those purges, the German General Staff, well aware of the massed brain-power amongst the Russian officer corps, would scarcely have been so fool-hardy as to attempt Operation Barbarossa.
Like the loss of the entire German élite in the unsung German Resistance (of whom, an illustration here), which threw Germany to the wolves devouring her today, the loss of these Soviet officers was a loss to all mankind. Anyone who cares to use their noggin, will care to understand that.

Is that what Vice-Admiral Chevallereau and his Friends in High Places seek?

France is now virtually as corrupt as the Ukraine. Is she to become, thanks to Purges of the military intelligentsia, the next expendable battle-ground? Dr. Andrea Segatori’s clinical scrutiny of Emmanuel Macron’s psychopathology, in a filmed interview which has now been seen by several million viewers, should give us pause.

Now, were Chevallereau’s longed-for Great Purge to decimate the ranks of France’s military minds, who shall defend her? Emmanuel Macron’s cronies in McKinsey’s cushioned offices? Finnish PM Sanna Marin’s nightclub bouncers? Interior Minister Darmanin’s libertine-club doormen? We should be told.

Chevallereau, pitiful thriver—Beware what you wish for.

Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

Featured: In the NKVD’s Dungeon, by Nikolai Getman, ca. late 20th century.

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi… Rabble-Rouser?

December 1, 2022 Mendelssohn Moses

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi of Kiel, Germany, who has spearheaded the campaign against the “Covid” dictatorship and the MRNa “vaccines,” has recently been indicted on flimsy charges that boil down to rabble-rousing. What is more, a change to the German Criminal Code has just been waved through the Bundestag, one designed to facilitate a clamp-down on dissidents of every stripe, including those who do not buy the “Satanic Putin” tale. We review the issues here.

Since the 16th Century and the crusade waged by a certain ex-Augustinian and heavy feeder, unredeemed by his undeniable literary skills, and going by the initials ML, Germany’s enthusiasm for freedom of speech and freedom tout court, has been at best, lukewarm. Mendelssohn Moses, author of these lines, would merely remark that the views of that monk on the subject of my co-religionaries, though notoriously unflattering were perhaps less immediately disastrous than his views on the peasantry—8,000 murdered in the Peasant Wars of 1524 to 1526.

The fact remains that from the days of the bizarre ML, the German-speaking world, like England since the day of that other heavy feeder Henry VIII, has squirmed in fear of the authorities.

However, while in 2022, the entire German state apparatus is seen to fawn and simper before its NATO oppressors, Germany is not quite Sodom and Gomorrah: she has righteous men in her midst.

Such as Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, standing straight as a poplar. Although born a Thai, he has been a German citizen for decades, while his endless CV points to perhaps the most-decorated natural scientist in the contemporary German-speaking world:

1979 Justus Liebig University Giessen Prize
1980 Konstanz Medicine Prize
1987 German Society for Microbiology Prize
1988 Dr. Friedrich Sasse Prize
1989 Ludwig Schunk Prize for Medicine
1989 Robert-Koch-Förderpreis of Clausthal-Zellerfeld
1991 Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize
2001 Aronson Prize
2005 H. W. Hauss Award
2005 Verdienstorden des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz
2009 Rudolf-Schönheimer Medal of the German Society for Arteriosclerosis Research

From the outset of the Scamdemic, Bhakdi spoke out on every occasion against the irrational “anti-Covid” measures, and then, well ahead of the curve, against the so-called MRNa-based anti-Covid “vaccines,” foreseeing precisely what forms of harm would likely arise. Suddenly, he and his wife Karina Reiss became international celebrities, and their books on the matter, best-sellers. (Separately, there is also an excellent dissection of the “Covid” scam networks by two intelligence specialists).

Where NATO Stalkers, Playing Goodie Two-Shoes, Make the “Law”

But in Germany, the hyena, not the bear, roams the wilds. The moment an intellectual pokes his head above the parapet, an army of hyena-like Goodie Two-Shoes pore over his every word, in hopes of finding a nano-particle of that catch-all substance, “anti-semitism.” (As an aside, allow me to add that Palestinians and “Arabs” are every bit as much the Semite as Papa Mendelssohn, save that anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and of course anti-Muslim sentiment is actively encouraged… one wonders why?)

Be that as it may, one day in April 2021, bursting out in disappointment at the lamb-to-the-slaughter attitude of Israel’s citizens in the face of the vaccine lobby, Professor Bhakdi exclaimed:

“Here we have a people who fled Germany, a Germany racked by outright Evil, and we find they have made (of their country) something worse even than was Germany then (…) What is disturbing with the Jews, is how quickly they learn. No other people learns so readily. But they have learnt what is Evil—and they have put it to work. Israel has become hell on earth.”—Die lebende Hölle.

On September 24, 2021, at an election meeting whilst campaigning for office on the Die Basis party ticket, Bhakdi declared that the “anti-Covid” injections were to be analysed in the context of an Endziel, a “final solution” or second holocaust.

If one can still speak of “law” in Germany’s current state of disarray, we are to believe that merely referring to a second holocaust would amount, in legal terms, to “relativising” that which struck the Jews in WWII. One fails to see how such a ludicrous argument might hold, but the point, of course, is to muzzle all opposition.

And so, in July 2021 we find the Public Prosecutor at Kiel, the town of Bhakdi’s residence, examining whether the Professor should be indicted for “relativisation” (sic) and “incitement to hatred” (Volksverhetzung), which roughly corresponds to that legal UFO known to the English-speaking world as “hate crime.” To the keen disappointment of some, in November 2021 the Prosecutor dropped the case for lack of suitable grounds.

The air resounded with relentless howling from the hyenas however, and by May 2022, Kiel’s superior, the Public Prosecutor for the State of Schleswig Holstein, had been got to file a complaint against Bhakdi for “incitement” to hatred and contempt, which was accepted by the Plön Circuit Court (Amtsgericht) in November, just in time for Bhakdi’s birthday. By the way, the legal position has been dealt with on several occasions and very competently, by a group of “dissident” Judges and Prosecutors, KriSTA.

In any event, assuming that poor Germany, littered with US bases and atomic weapons, may still exist in May 2023, the case will be tried in March 2023.

Bhakdi Attempts to Head Off the “Covid” Disaster

Allow me a digression here: Professor Bhakdi is a practising Buddhist, and something of a visionary, foreseeing the consequences of acts and events years, even decades in advance. For us Jews, Bhakdi is the very definition of a prophet. Like the vaccinologist Stefan Hockertz, who has had, literally, to flee Germany, or his colleagues Professors Vélot, Peronne or Toubiana in France, or the medical doctors Carlo Giraldi, Dario Giacomini and Giovanni Vanni Frajese in Italy, Bhakdi was right about “Covid,” right about the “anti-Covid” scam, right about masking, right about the D-dimer tests, right about the MRNa vaccines—while most of the Western world was hiding under the bed.

Fearing for the future of Man, and to crack us out of mass-hypnosis, Professor Bhakdi has a penchant for harsh, even ruthless language – prophetic if you prefer. Upon this being who suffers for Man and who is therefore vulnerable, unlike the grinning enforcers of this world, falls the latter’s rage, as they attempt to drive him to bankruptcy through legal fees, and to despair.

Wailing and Teeth-Gnashing? The Rest of the World has had Enough

Before looking at the changes to German law on Volksverhetzung, voted up shortly before midnight on October 20, 2022, allow me to return to the allegedly unique character of what happened to European Jewry between 1939 and 1945, the incessant droning repetition of which is designed to keep Germans cowed and on the leash for eternity.

Most historians would put the figure for the dead amongst my co-religionaries at roughly six million. WHAT then shall we say of the 26 to 40 million Slavs, Hungarians and Gypsies of various nations “lost in death’s dateless night” during Operation Barbarossa? Entirely burnt up, sacrificed—that is what the Greek word “holocaust” means. For Russia alone, though the exact figure remains unknown, 20 million civilians at least are thought to have been lost, and well over ten million soldiers, as the Wehrmacht broke over her borders. What if Operation Barbarossa had succeeded? Would there yet remain a single Slav on earth? Bear in mind that we are meant to believe that the Western Ukraine is not “Slav”. Therefore, what of the current alliance between Germany, NATO and the Stepan-Banderites in the Ukraine—is this not Operation Barbarossa II?

Accordingly, Papa Mendelssohn has a message to his co-religionaries: Watch your step. The peoples of the rest of the world have had it up to here with our non-stop wailing and gnashing of teeth over the events of 1939-1945, used to justify the many and varied crimes perpetrated before our eyes—or, face it, by us. Get to work on the veterinarian Albert Bourla and his bosses first. Given the kill-rate in Israel from the vet’s injection campaign, saving what’s left of us Jews is going to be a tall order. So, deal with it. (As an aside—have we yet the right to call ourselves “Jews,” as we blithely ignore Yahve’s Sixth and most fundamental Order to Moses? Which is THOU SHALT NOT KILL).

Professor Bhakdi is Not, nor Ever Has Been, a Volksverhetzer

On no account whatsoever, neither in the ancient nor in the modern sense of the term, can Professor Sucharit Bhakdi be said to be a “Volksverhetzer.”

The term Volksverhetzung is an ancient one, referring to acts that deliberately cause disturbance amongst the people. It is made up of the term Volk (people), and the ancient verb hetzen or verhetzen, which means “to stir up” or “incite.” Might there be some sort of relation between the verb hexen, to cast an evil spell, and hetzen? Whatever—the fact remains that in modern times, the legal purview of such an offence must always be very narrow indeed, and restricted to those rare circumstances where an agitator willfully stirs the crowd to perpetrate a crime against persons or property. A very recent and telling example of Volksverhetzen and Hexerei (witchcraft) is when provocateurs excited the crowd to burn fifty Russian-speaking trade unionists alive in their offices at Odessa on May 2, 2014.

And so we have the latest wording (October 20, 2022) of Section 130 para. 5 of the German Penal Code:

“Whosoever shall approve of, deny or crassly downplay whether in public or at a demonstration, a gesture amongst those referred to at Sections 6 to 12 of the International Criminal Code directed at a group referred to at paragraph 1, point 1 (of the German Criminal Code), or against an individual on account of his belonging to that group, in such fashion as to incite to hatred or violence against such persons or group and to disturb the peace, may be sentenced to fines or to three years’ goal.”

As the Göttingen legal scholar Dr. Wolfgang Bittner observes, Sections 6 to 12 of the International Criminal Code concern genocide, crimes against Mankind, against persons, operations and humanitarian emblems, and war crimes that involve forbidden methods of means of war. That Section’s purview is so vast, that a Prosecutor or Magistrate will enjoy virtually unrestricted latitude faced with dissidents of any stripe. What of Demonstrator X marching down the street, whilst somewhere lost in the crowd Demonstrator Y, a hirsute fanatic or provocateur, waves about a sign with irresponsible scribblings? Might X be prosecuted for marching in the same crowd? With the new wording of Section 130, the answer may very well be Yes.

“Political convictions” and New Section 130

Neither is Colonel (Reserve) Edgar Siemund a happy camper—as one sees from his remarkable commentary, published on November 3rd in the on-line Austrian weekly Wochenblick.

Col. Siemund, a practising lawyer, notes that the German Government claims to have had new Section 130 para 5. voted up, only further to grievances raised by the EU, when Germany “failed” to implement EU Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JAH dated 28th November 2008 on various forms of racism and xenophobia. That Framework Decision however, dates from 2008, while the Bundestag was called upon to vote in October 2022—out of the blue and near midnight—on this rider, smack in the midst of NATO’s Operation Barbarossa II.

Secondly, Col. Siemund pointed to a fascinating little “Whereas” (N° 10) of that Framework decision, where one reads:

“This Framework Decision does not prevent a Member State from adopting provisions in national law which extend Article 1(1)(c) and (d) to crimes directed against a group of persons defined by other criteria than race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin, such as social status or political convictions.”

Are we to understand that harsh critics of the Ukrainian Banderites such as Arno Klarsfeld, may henceforth be indicted for Volksverhetzung, having objected to the Banderites’ “political convictions?”

As one will readily perceive, like most of what passes for EU legislation, these self-proclaimed “legal” texts are so poorly drafted, as to admit of virtually any interpretation or rather, manipulation. That this is precisely the aim, is scarcely conjecture.

Following Col. Siemund’s lead, we shall skim through the all-purpose terminology offered up on a platter to Prosecutors, terminology for which the new German Section 130 does not trouble to propose a definition, whether linguistic or legal.

leugnet (to deny) : should a researcher express doubt as to a received “truth”, has he ipso facto become a “denier?”
gröblich verharmlosen (crassly relativise or minimise): who shall define the semantic field of the adverb “crassly”? What does “relativising” a murder mean? Merely placing it into a military or social context? Would a silly, vulgar joke brawled out at a drunken get-together suffice ?
zu Hass aufzustacheln (inciting to hatred) : what is “hatred”? Lack of respect for a Banderite? How does one “incite” third parties to hatred? Does that take years? Months? Minutes? Must the inciter hold sway and authority over the incited?

As an aside, it is my conviction that the notion of “hate crime” has no place, in any form, in any modern legal system. Either the hater undertakes an overt, criminal act against persons or property, or engages in an overt, criminal conspiracy to commit such acts. What he may think, whom he may hate, will always remain irrelevant to the law—unless actual harm be done. Or unless we intend to carry on policing Thought—a trend which cannot but lead to mass psychosis, outbreaks of rage and thus criminality on an unheard-of scale.

Surprise!—The Non-Existent “Russian” Lobby and Sundry “Dissidents”—The Law’s Real Target

On November 5th, 2022, Ulrich Heyden, a formerly mainstream and now “controversial”, Moscow-based reporter, observed in Rubikon Magazin
that the German Parliament, manifestly intent on setting up a legal grey-zone, expressly declined to restrict the notion of Volksverhetzen in criminal law, to those rare cases where a domestic or international Court had already found that some form of war crime or crime against humanity was indeed involved.

According to Heyden, a prominent Green Party MP, Canan Baryam, after expressing delight at the opportunities the new Section 130 might afford against the opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), let the cat out of the bag to Legal Tribune: “one can full well imagine a state of affairs,” where the new Section 130 might be relied upon against those who fail to toe the NATO line on “Putin’s” war in the Ukraine. “For example”, she said “in the context of the Russian war of aggression, endorsing a war crime against the Ukrainians as a group via slogans or signs carried aloft at a demonstration, could become an indictable offence.”

New Section 130 Cunningly Interwoven with the G10 Act

As though the above were not enough, on to the hidden nasties. Like Dr. Hans-Georg Maassen, former head of the Bundesverfassungsschutz (domestic intelligence services) now considered to be a “dissident” and a “conspiracy theorist”, Col. Siemund has happened on another worm in the bud. Section § 3 para. 1 S. 1 Nr. 6A of the Act dealing with limits on the secrecy of private correspondence (Gesetz zur Beschränkung des Brief-, Post- und Fernmeldegeheimnisses)10, known as the G10 Act, refers back to the aforesaid Section 130.

Given the rarefied responsibilities Dr. Maassen held until very recently, it may not be found amiss to cite his Tweet from October 26th in full:

“Take a close look at the new wording of Section § 130… it’s an onslaught on freedom of opinion. Few realise that Section § 3 para. 1 S. 1 Nr. 6A of the G10 Act refers back to it. (…). The latter Section deals with monitoring telephones, WhatsApp, e-mails etc. and the post by the intelligence services, which monitoring may be set up as soon as someone even thinks of Volksverhetzung. Since we now have a broader purview of Section § 130 of the Criminal Code, Section § 3 of the G10 Act may be implemented without restriction. The law as it stands today, was already unworthy of a free democracy, since the intelligence services may listen in to someone on mere suspicion of Volksverhetzung (as opposed to some capital crime). With the broadened purview of the offence under Section § 130 and consequently, extension of Section § 3 of the G10 Act, not a shred remains of the secrecy of private correspondence.”

Just perhaps, writes Col. Siemund, those who live in glass houses might not want to throw stones – while 12 million Germans have been forced or coerced into taking the “anti-Covid” shots with the disastrous known effects, the unvaccinated have been ostracised and deprived of basic rights. One day rather sooner than one might imagine, these twisted laws may be twisted back against the perpetrators of these new forms of injustice … such as one Nils Dampz, who, from German public television’s ARD studios at Los Angeles, in an article attacking Elon Musk, went on to refer to non-conformists as “rats, racists or conspiracy theorists”.

Meanwhile, back at the Ramstein air base in Hessen, the earth trembles at the arrival of US bombers, whilst Foreign Minister “Miss Piggy” Baerbock baldly states that the Ukraine’s interests must prevail over those of Germany’s citizens. Behind the back of Chancellor Scholz, away in China attempting to patch up the broken crockery, Miss Piggy then receives US Secretaries Blinken and Vikki “Cookie Handout” Nuland.

Keep calm and carry on. As the Gauleiters winkle away at their work of death and destruction, a shadow government is arising in every nation of Europe, made up of those who like Sucharit Bhakdi, are Thomas Mores who will keep their head.

[On November 30, 2022, Professor Bhakdi spoke, via video, to a sold-out conference in Austria, to which Herbert Kickl head of the FPÖ, sent a message of greetings when he was unable to attend at the last minute].

Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

Paul Cantor (1945-2022): The Philosopher, Tricked out as Clown

November 1, 2022 Mendelssohn Moses

By a twist of fate, our eulogy of Professor Paul Cantor was first drafted shortly after the death of Elizabeth II. [Note: This article assesses Mr. Cantor’s contribution to Shakespearean scholarship—it is not an endorsement of his politics].

Struck down by the same malady which killed Paul Cantor, only now have I learnt of his death. Professor of English Literature at the University of Virginia and guest Professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he died in February 2022 at the age of 76, having devoted his life to teaching Shakespeare.

Here is our first enigma: for 45 years and to over ten thousand students, Cantor taught a Shakespeare and Politics seminar, erudite and above all, thought-provoking. That notwithstanding, he was greeted with stony silence in Europe and even in England. Not once, saving error, was he engaged as consultant to a history play, not once was he invited to speak before a European scholarly society.

Through all those years, Cantor’s international contacts were restricted, if that is the word, to hundreds of telephone and e-mail exchanges with foreign students, including students from the PR of China. What could possibly explain the void in academe?

As it happens, Paul Cantor lived a double-life: one as a neo-conservative ideologue in economic matters, a friend to avowed war-mongers such as William Kristol. Apologist to Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, Cantor espoused the Austrian School of Economics, notorious for players like Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher, who would have wreaked rather less harm in vaudeville.

That said, Cantor’s role in that côterie was rather that of the Court Fool, whom he much resembled physically. Short, well-padded and ever-jolly, Cantor spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent and wore his coat-sleeves dangling to the fingertips. Hardly the image projected by notable Shakespeareans such as Jonathan Bate, now Sir Jonathan—tall, slender, elegant, with thoughts as gracefully policed as their every gesture.

Court Fool, perhaps. But another enigma: how did a scholar and polymath of such calibre (at Harvard, he nearly opted to study astronomy), take up with a clique of the gimlet-eyed fanatics who lie behind every major US policy disaster since Dallas, November 22, 1963?

Scroll back the decades.

Paul Cantor’s birth-year was 1945, the year of the US atomic firestorm at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Meanwhile, in a New York putatively at peace, the child Cantor had access to his father’s and grand-father’s large private libraries. Very evidently a victim neither of material nor cultural deprivation, Cantor’s childhood and teenage years were nevertheless marked by two other firestorms sowing fear amongst American Jews, of whom many had recently fled Germany or Eastern Europe: the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage in 1953, and the allegedly “anti-Communist” terror campaign (circa 1949-1955), spear-headed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. The targets were “Communists,” or “homosexuals”—whether real or imagined is irrelevant—largely Jewish intellectuals from the East Coast, theatre people and Hollywood script-writers, as well as leading academics and State Department career diplomats; what that motley crew had in common was opposition to the Doctor Strangeloves of this world.

The elephant in the room in Cantor’s youth was thus the hell unleashed by HUAC; its figure-head was a drug-addict and doubtless blackmail victim, Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose substances for abuse are now known to have been procured by the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

HUAC’s hearings in the US Senate led to suicides, countless dismissals, and exile for some of the country’s most remarkable citizens. Amongst HUAC’s celebrated victims one finds the actor and producer Sam Wanamaker (Wattenmacher in Yiddish), who left for London with his family and never returned; it was Wanamaker who had the Globe Theatre, of which Shakespeare had been shareholder, rebuilt on Bankside. Another victim was Jerome (Rabinowitz) Robbins, dancer and choreographer of West Side Story. Crumbling under the pressure, Robbins denounced to HUAC a string of real (?) or make-believe (?) “Communists” among his fellow artists, with disastrous results.

From a press release by a HUAC victim, the blacklisted Shakespearean actor Morris Carnovsky, one gets a whiff of the pornography of violence that typifies HUAC: “an inquisition into the inviolable areas of one’s deepest manhood and integrity—the end result is the blacklist, the deprivation by innuendo of one’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in work. And here we have what the black opera singer and actor Paul Robeson threw back at HUAC.

As it happens, Paul Cantor knew Carnovsky well, of whom he recalls: “at the then flourishing American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, among the many performances I experienced there, the highlight was seeing Morris Carnovsky in the role of King Lear (twice!). To this day, I consider this the greatest Shakespeare performance I ever saw and it inspired my devotion to King Lear and Shakespeare in general.”

In 1956, a sensational film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, was released. Cunningly disguised as a horror-film, it is an allegory of the conformism disfiguring US society, turning citizens into zombies, as HUAC’s Iron Curtain slammed down on independent thought.

Thence emerged what now goes by the terms “Wokism” and “Political Correctness”: once the thought-police had dealt with so-called “Communists,” or whatever, backing into the same tight corner the so-called Right and traditionalists was like taking candy from a baby.

Moreover, something one might readily forget here in Europe: until the year 1965, Apartheid reigned in the USA under the term “Segregation”—and again, amongst the White activists in the Civil Rights Movement, Jews were the majority. Slandered, assaulted and sometimes murdered, these intellectuals, dixit Earl Lively of the John Birch Society, intended to set up an “independent Negro-Soviet Republic”[sic] (Invasion of Mississippi).

As for Cantor’s adolescence in the 1960s, it was marked by a series of murders designed to throw open the citadel to the Strangeloves: John F. Kennedy (November 22, 1963); Malcolm X (1965), Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King (1968), and a host of small-fry such as Jack Ruby, “disappeared” for having gleaned bits and pieces of the puzzle.

The Articles of Faith, 1536—2022

As a subject of His Britannic Majesty, the author of these lines is well-acquainted with the leaden cape cast over the Kingdom since Henry VIII and his Articles of the Faith (1536) which were imposed by extortion, intolerance and violence. A Kingdom, where since the theocrat Henry, freedom of thought and political action have lived on only in Shakespeare’s theatre.

Although the USA may for a moment in history, have been a temple of liberty, since that day at Hiroshima in 1945, the people of the USA have cowered in a Don’t-Go-There mind-set, feverishly seeking to comply with whatever the day’s Articles of the Faith may enjoin.

Accordingly, and without pressing the point, I would venture to suggest that Paul Cantor may have unconsciously sought shelter under the wings of a clique seen as both fearsome and eminently respectable. And as Cantor lived in the cool shade of the Ivy League’s ivy leaves, he had never to confront in person the reality of the dead, the mutilated, the bankrupt, the exiled, strewn in the wake of his self-satisfied, war-mongering friends.

In Europe, the academic milieu, leaning “centre-left,” appears to have resolved to stonewall a Shakespearean who, unlike his more duplicitous colleagues, owned very frankly to such untoward acquaintances. Error! For Paul Cantor—another enigma—is amongst the few who have understood why Shakespeare wrote what he did, and among the few who have inspired tens of thousands of youths to serious study.

Academic, and Mountebank

To his students, Paul Cantor was an interpretative artist like Dinu Lipatti or Pau Casals; he neither “explained” Shakespeare, nor “criticised” him, but tried to think his way into his thoughts.

In the best sense of the term, Cantor remained a child all his life, gazing at the world through the eyes of his idol. He rejoiced like a child at a student’s awkward question; riding the waves of his idol’s ideas, he cheerfully took a slap in the face whenever Shakespeare wrecked a fond neo-con belief. When William Kristol asked whether Shakespeare might be neo-con compatible? Cantor retorted—no—would have been nice, but Shakespeare will not be pigeon-holed.

As mountebank, Cantor, who wrote extensively on US television, had seen classical theatre collapse through lack of subsidy and an apprentice-system, and had realised that for his own lifetime, the class-room would have to be the theatre, and the professor, an actor on that stage.

The groundlings standing on their own two feet before the stage, and who in Shakespeare’s day made up the bulk of the audience—were Cantor’s students, lucky to have access to a master free of cynical utilitarianism. The good news for posterity is that while Cantor’s writings may not perhaps be ground-breaking, his true and irreplaceable contribution, those marvelous in-person seminars where Cantor, thinking out loud, revels in the to-and-fro with students, have largely been filmed.

“Idiocene” or Ideas?

In his life as a Shakespearean, Cantor knew that it was the average citizen’s intellect would decide the fate of the republic. In July, the Italian politician Pino Cabras summarized the point thusly: “though the notion of staking our hopes on the optimism of will-power may be attractive, I would nonetheless suggest that this crisis is without precedent, and that consequently, the ruling classes, frightened out of their wits, will concede nothing, not an inch. Meanwhile, those who object to their rule suffer from backwardness, be it cognitive, cultural or political, while we are the ‘first generation which cannot afford to make mistakes.’” (See also Teresita Dussart). Taking on that backwardness was Cantor’s mission, and this is what he said of his 40 years’ teaching:

“…the only thing I teach where the students continue to respond with the same enthusiasm is Shakespeare. With other things, things vary in time—and you can see trends and fashions—but Shakespeare is a sure-fire hit. Shakespeare doesn’t need our help. You know it’s John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, they need our help; that’s where you see the curriculum collapsing.

“Shakespeare stands on his own two feet and basically you can’t keep students away from Shakespeare courses. They’re the most heavily enrolled at the University of Virginia… The poetry is so beautiful, the drama is so powerful, and they all can relate to it on some of the most basic levels.”

(Of course, Cantor refrains from concluding that it was his seminars that had students piled to the rafters).

Cantor, an Anti-Exceptionalist on the US Island

Through Cantor’s study of Shakespeare, he came to see that the USA was a sort of island, remote from the realities of this world, and that his students needed to grasp this as a peril rather than a privilege: “Shakespeare understood that different forms of government shape different kinds of people … his Romans are different from his Englishmen and in fact his Republican Romans are different from his Imperial Romans. He understood that not all human types are available at all times. So, for example, he’s very aware of how living in a pagan republic as his characters do in Coriolanus is very different from living in a Christian monarchy as, say, his characters do in his history plays.”

Thus, in Cantor’s seminars on the Venetian plays—Othello, The Merchant of Venice—he notes that Shakespeare weighs arguments asserted variously by Muslims, Jews and Christians. Taking no sides, he scrutinises the impact on public life of each thought-system, comparing Venice, a thoroughly oligarchical republic practising religious tolerance for commercial motives, to the tottering theocracy of Elizabeth I, as the latter took the worst possible path to stabilise the state, i.e., empire-building.

In so doing, Cantor led his students to wonder whether their own, American personality, sprung from a given time and place in the reign of imperial exceptionalism, might truly be an Ideal of Man, in an Ideal State?

“Not all human types are available at all times” … Quite. But would the American Regina Dugan perhaps be a latter-day replica of the condottiere Gilles de Ré? A point to ponder.

Monarchist? Republican?

Which brings us to the republican question. From Cantor’s standpoint, neither was Shakespeare Calvin, nor England, his Geneva:

“Now, traditionally in literary criticism, people assume Shakespeare was an uncritical supporter of the English monarchy. I think he really was thinking about the monarchy and how it might be reformed.… I think he understood the greatest defect of monarchy was succession. That no matter how good a king might be, there was no guarantee that his son or daughter would be equal.… Moreover, I think Shakespeare was interested in the way being brought up to the throne is a corrupting influence, and something he shows about Richard II, and much of the Henry IV plays, I think, are designed to show how a king might get a good education.

“So, I don’t think Shakespeare was an uncritical supporter of monarchy as a form of government in the abstract.… he shows an unusual interest in republics for someone who’s supposed to be just supporting monarchy.

“I think that Shakespeare is accepting the fact that England is a monarchy. He’s not going to try to bring about a revolution and institute a republic … But he was interested in how could we reform the monarchy and maybe move it more in the direction of a republic? And that I think is the key to the story of Henry IV and Henry V.”

The Professor remarks that Shakespeare was well aware of the keen interest with which the élite, up to the Monarch herself, followed his plays (on Richard II, Elizabeth I famously declared in private conversation “I am Richard, know you not that?”), and that accordingly, his scrutiny of Rome’s systems of government from the primitive Republic (Coriolanus), to its fall and the premises of Empire (Julius Caesar) and the Empire itself (Anthony and Cleopatra) would—eventually—most likely have political repercussions.

To Cantor, Shakespeare is a tough realist, who saw England as too immature politically for a republican revolution in his time without smashing the crockery; pig-headed and pitiless, Malvolio in Twelfth Night is a kind of premonition of Oliver Cromwell, dictator. Conversely, how might one sow the seeds of an ideal republic and throw a few sops to the nobility, without cracking the State’s foundations? Can this succeed with a starving, desperate, dangerous people? In Coriolanus, Shakespeare concludes that where a purportedly republican élite holds its own people to be “rabble,” they will give the State over to treachery, civil war and war. A state of affairs we are currently come up against.

Philosopher in a Clown Suit

Despite being surrounded, some might say fenced in, by neo-cons entangled with a certain small state in the Middle East, Professor Cantor was anything but a Professional Jew, and he always refused to howl with the wolves. Few save Cantor have noted that in The Merchant of Venice, the Christians are depicted as liars, hypocrites and self-righteous in their cruelty, whereas Shylock unashamedly advertises his nastiness. Translated into Yiddish in 1900, the play had the great Jewish actors all vying to play Shylock, including the aforesaid Morris Carnovsky.

Cantor had no time for the ludicrous authorship controversy. Perusal of the abundant and coherent documentation and especially, the internal evidence, left him in no doubt that William Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. In this context, we cannot resist quoting Robert Gore-Langton’s delightful article on the launch of Shakespeare North; here he is questioning the Trust’s Chairman, Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby: “Is there any belief in the family that Shakespeare was actually a cover name for the 6th Earl of Derby, as some believe? The short answer is an emphatic no. “I once asked my uncle and he said: ‘have a straightforward answer to that: we could have never been bright enough; it couldn’t have been any of us.’”

Bright, Paul Cantor certainly was. In an essay he penned in 2014 on Arthur Melzer’s Philosophy between the Lines, intitled “Philosophy in a Clown Suit,” and which I came across only after formulating the thoughts above on his double life, Cantor appears to give us the key:

“Imagine, then, the plight of philosophers who commit their dangerous thoughts to writing and thereby threaten to publicize their disagreements with the political and religious establishments. Philosophers had to learn an art of writing that would enable them at one and the same time to conceal and reveal their thoughts—to conceal their unorthodox ideas from a potentially hostile public and yet reveal them to like-minded, potential philosophers whom they wished to develop as students. The result was the famous ‘double doctrine of the ancient philosophers.’ They learned to write in such a way that their works had an exoteric and an esoteric meaning, a conventional meaning on the surface that would placate would-be censors and persecutors, and an unconventional meaning tucked away between the lines.”

Mendelssohn Moses is a Paris-based writer.

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Paul Cantor (1945-2022): The Philosopher, Tricked out as Clown