WARNING: RABBIT HOLES AHEAD!

 

I’VE BEEN READING about the 1963 assassination of the American president, John Kennedy, and to read anything that goes beyond the Warren Commission conclusions of 1964 or the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) findings, which also reviewed the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, or the released files from 1992’s Assassination Records Review Board and subsequent releases, is to step into any number of rabbit holes. The big one, of course: did Oswald act alone or was there a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy? On that point, the jury is still out, but 2007’s JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass outlines a scenario in which Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the “patsy” he claimed to be when shouting to reporters as he was brought into custody by Dallas police. Douglass suggests the CIA or rogue Deep State elements used a “fake” Oswald to ‘place’ the hapless Oswald in key locations before and after the assassination so police could track and presumably shoot and kill him, making for a tidy end to any investigation. For example, Douglass reports that “fake” Oswald was seen getting into a station wagon outside the Texas School Book Depository and less than a half-hour later was observed several miles from Dealy Plaza, just blocks from the Texas Theatre (where patsy real-Oswald was captured). Did “fake” Oswald shoot and kill police officer J.D. Tippet before fleeing on foot to the theatre? Did real-Oswald make the journey from Dealy Plaza by bus and cab? What about the Oswald seen getting into a station wagon minutes after the assassination? Was it a case of mistaken identity by witnesses or evidence of a conspiracy?

The movie theatre may have been a rendezvous point given to Oswald by his ‘handlers’. And so, fake-Oswald fades from the scene while real-Oswald awaits his impending arrest inside the movie theatre. Douglass suggests the desired scenario envisioned by the Deep State actors was for Oswald to be killed by the police following the murder of their fellow officer. Real-Oswald was armed with a handgun and initially resisted arrest, so by not shooting Oswald, the Dallas police may have inadvertently foiled the carefully constructed plot of the planners.

    Real or Fake?

IT SHOULD BE NOTED that the forensic evidence around the handgun found in Oswald’s possession was not entirely conclusive. Interestingly, in his book, On the Trail of the Assassins, New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison—who in 1969 unsuccessfully prosecuted businessman Clay Shaw for conspiring in the murder of President Kennedy—accuses Dallas police of mishandling the forensic analysis of handgun. In fact, Garrison says real-Oswald did not shoot Tibbit.

 

🐇THAT’S JUST A TASTE of the rabbit holes surrounding the Kennedy assassination.  I should say that I found such a conspiracy as Douglass envisions unwieldy, with too much that could go wrong. Such a plan would entail a rigorous timetable, for example, having fake-Oswald shoot Tibbit, flee on foot to the Texas Theatre, be seen entering, then vanish before the police arrived, leaving real-Oswald inside the movie house holding the bag. It seems way too complicated, with too many things that could go wrong. Note: from the time Kennedy was killed to when Oswald was arrested was just over 1½ hours. 

He or his double was seen on the sixth floor of the Book Depository before the three shots were apparently fired from at Kennedy's motorcade. However, real-Oswald was seen in a lower floor cafeteria minutes after the shooting, having somehow gotten there via stairs where he would have been seen by co-workers. So, does that mean real-Oswald had been in the cafeteria during the shooting? It's an intriguing possibility.  He was seen waiting for a bus near the Depository shortly after the assassination. The driver of the cab he later hailed identified real-Oswald as his passenger. Later, he was seen entering the Texas Theatre. There were numerous witnesses that day, but one wonders what they truly saw. Or heard. Or understood what their senses told them. An audio recording taken from a police motorcycle radio at the scene seems to capture the sound of four shots being fired. But, only some witnesses along the parade route recall hearing four shots.

 

🐇 WAS THERE A CONSPIRACY or is that pure fantasy? Was Oswald the lone gunman or the fall guy? The Warren Commission investigating Kennedy’s assassination, in tracking Oswald’s movements in the weeks and months before he got a job* at the Book Depository, concludes:

 

“[T]he Committee agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald had visited Mexico City and concluded that "the majority of evidence tends to indicate" that Oswald visited the consulates, but the Committee could not rule out the possibility that someone else had used his name in visiting the consulates.” 

(Wikipedia) [italics mine]

 

The above HSCA quote refers to an October 1963 visit that (real or fake) Oswald made to Mexico City to obtain travel visas for his family to travel to Cuba and the USSR. Was this Oswald? And if it was someone impersonating him, as Douglass writes and as members of both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations speculate, then the “lone gunman” thesis gets tossed out the window.

Additionally, in 1992, the newly formed Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) which collated the Kennedy files held by various agencies, also suggests the possibility of a conspiracy:

 

“In 1992, following popular political pressure in the wake of the film JFK, the ARRB…was created by the “JFK Records Act” to collect and preserve the documents relating to the assassination. In a footnote in its final report, the ARRB wrote: "Doubts about the Warren Commission's findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission's basic findings." (Wikipedia) ¹

 

Even President Johnson, Kennedy’s successor as Vice President, in a post-presidential interview with CBS News, told Walter Cronkite he had never been convinced that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. And while I’m not entirely convinced by Douglass’s “fake Oswald" scenario, there are other suggestive observations he makes that do indeed point to a conspiracy.

🐇 FOR EXAMPLE, Oswald seems to have had contact or interactions of some sort with the CIA (and FBI) beginning in the mid-1950s. What's up with that? 

[Incidentally, he was only 24 when Jack Ruby murdered him on live television, two days after Kennedy's assassination. And Ruby's motivations and involvement in all this is another rabbit hole that will suck you right in. Beware! Ed.]

 

Oswald was born in New Orleans in 1939 and grew up there and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He was characterized as a loner by those who knew him, a troubled teen with a spotty high school record, though he did read voraciously.  At 17 he joined the U.S. Marines and was stationed in Mississippi where he studied radar and aircraft surveillance systems and was, incidentally, an above average marksman. In 1957 he was transferred to the Naval Air Facility Atsugi, near Tokyo, Japan. This was the base where the CIA operated its U-2 spy plane missions over the Soviet Union. It is conceivable that Oswald acquired important, classified signals information on U-2 flight patterns and operation specs, after all he had a security clearance to access “sensitive” information in the performance of his job. He was in Japan for over 1½ years, then transferred to California, again as a radar operator, when he resigned his position in 1959. That year he defected to the USSR. Douglass speculates that the information he possessed on U-2 flight operations contributed to the famous May 1 downing of Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over the USSR in 1960 and his capture by Soviet authorities. As an aside: the revelations of American spying operations inside the USSR scuttled the upcoming Nuclear Arms Control talks between the U.S. and the USSR that were scheduled to be held later that spring in Geneva, and from which an angry Chairman Khrushchev withdrew. It was only in the last months of his presidency, in the fall of 1963, that Kennedy was able to ink the Nuclear Test Ban treaty, the first one of its kind, with the USSR's Khrushchev. 

Riddle me this: Who might benefit from sinking the upcoming summit? Hint: the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) and cold warriors on both sides. Oswald may have been instrumental in this outcome.

🐇 ANOTHER PUZZLE is how easily he returns to the United States in 1962 with his new Russian wife and young daughter, after their ship docked in New York. Recall that he had previously renounced his U.S. citizenship when he entered the USSR in 1959. He may have left the United States with information on classified radar technology, and spent two years in the USSR, yet upon his return, American security agencies apparently had no interest in him. He was allowed to return and there were no red flags on his file. Why? Douglass speculates Oswald was a CIA asset and that he was involved in a “double agent” confabulation. His defection to the USSR was seemingly genuine, so much so that he was recruited by the KGB, Douglass continues, to return home to the U.S. and to spy for them. Was Oswald part of a CIA covert operation and his embrace of communism and the Soviet Union merely a ruse? Reading Douglass’s book gives the reader the impression that the CIA and FBI were around Oswald like a bad smell.

 

IT’S ALSO INTERESTING to note the number of people in Lee and Marina Oswald's lives with CIA connections. For example, the Traveler's Aid Society volunteer worker, a Bulgarian émigré and academic named Spas T. Rankin, who assisted and met the Oswalds upon their arrival in New York in 1962, belonged to organizations with known CIA ties. When Oswald and his pregnant wife moved to Dallas in early 1963, they were assisted by the flamboyant oil industry executive George de Mohrenschildt who had even more CIA connections than Rankin. The Russian-born de Mohrenschildt was part of the “White Russian” (i.e. anti-communist/USSR) émigré community in Dallas that took care of the newly arrived Oswalds, seeing to their living arrangements and finding work for Lee.

Ruth Paine and her husband Michael aided Oswald and his wife in Dallas. And Ruth, a Quaker, shared her home with Marina and her two young children in early 1963 when Lee was in New Orleans looking for work. [Warning! there's a major rabbit hole in Oswald's stay in the "Big Easy"! Ed.]. She also found Oswald a job at the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald’s sixth-floor “sniper’s nest” was located.² It should be noted that Ruth had family members working at the CIA and Michael’s family had similar familial connections to the spy agency. So, the question: Were Ruth and Michael CIA “assets”, used from time to time by the agency? Were they ‘handlers’ of Oswald, used to support him as he was shunted from one set of “spooks” to the next, bringing him ever-closer to Kennedy’s orbit and that fatal day in November of 1963?

🐇 JUST ONE MORE ODDITY in this complex story that I’ll mention (there are many more!) was Oswald’s apparent trip in late September 1963 to Mexico City where someone identifying themselves as “Lee H. Oswald” contacted both the Soviet and Cuban Embassies trying to get visas to travel to Cuba and then to the USSR. Did real-Oswald spend a week in Mexico City as part of a plan to flee Dallas following the assassination or was fake-Oswald attempting to link real-Oswald’s future crime to Cuban or Soviet origins. Recall, there was considerable animosity toward the Soviet Union and communist Cuba at the time, and a war with Cuba or even the USSR would suit the MIC agendas of war profiteering and global hegemony. And Kennedy was seen as an impediment to such plans. The president was becoming a roadblock the Deep State needed to get around. THE THESIS of a “fake” Oswald in Mexico City is more convincing to me than the Dallas or New Orleans³ fakes. Author James Douglass suggests there may be evidence that it was not Oswald who visited those two embassies in Mexico. I envision a cabal of intel/military/state department plotters debating and deciding to load onto their Oswald narrative—that he was a loner, a communist sympathizer, anti-Kennedy—the blame for the assassination with the Cubans or Soviets as the main perps, and Oswald being merely their 'hired gun'. Spooks like to have things nicely tied up in a bow, in this case after the assassination there was to be a dead Oswald, and the Soviets or Cubans fingered as the brains behind the operation. 

[One thing the Warren Commission shied away from was making any connection between Kennedy's death and the USSR, something that might prove dangerous, in terms of escalation and heating up the cold war. If the Deep State actors who planned and plotted Kennedy's assassination couldn't have Russia or Cuba blamed as the brains behind the operation, at least they could have a dead-end to the investigation with Oswald out of the picture. Ed.]

 

HONESTLY, I like the idea that Oswald was a bamboozled innocent, led around by spook handlers and set up as the fall guy. That he was not the assassin, as James Douglass proposes; that he did not fire on Kennedy’s motorcade that day; that he didn’t hate Kennedy; that he was following orders by unknown persons to be at the Book Depository then to go to the Texas Theatre; that he didn’t murder Officer Tibbit⁴ along the way. Was Lee Oswald tricked into believing he was on some other kind of mission—perhaps even to save Kennedy?  Recall, the under-reported story about a Chicago assassination plot, just weeks before Kennedy's fateful Dallas tour, that was foiled when a man telephoned authorities, identifying himself as “Lee” and warned of the murderous plot set for Kennedy’s November 2 visit to the city. The Secret Service cancelled Kennedy’s trip based on what they, the FBI and the police uncovered in their investigations. Oswald as "a patsy" is a compelling narrative. And if Kennedy was killed by unidentified gunmen, then a big bull’s eye was painted on Oswald at the same time.

 

🐇 So, was Oswald the lone gunman? Did he fire those three fateful bullets into Kennedy’s motorcade? Perhaps. Was there a fourth bullet fired by someone else from the infamous “grassy knoll”? Possibly. But, it is unlikely we’ll ever know for sure, even when the last tranche of Kennedy files is released (if ever). But the documented instances of spooks in Oswald’s life—for years—suggests he was an “asset” of the spy agencies, available for use by rogue elements as they plotted to assassinate their president and pin the blame on other actors. (Russia, Cuba, Cuban exiles, "the mob")  Conspiracy or fact? The jury’s still out.      

 

Cheers, Jake. ___________________________________________

 

* Ruth Paine is credited for getting Oswald a job at the Texas School Book Depository in early October. Conspiracy critics say that neither Paine nor Oswald would have known that Kennedy's motorcade route would run through Dealy Plaza, where the limousine  needed to slow down negotiating a sharp left-hand turn. Critics say that travel plans for Kennedy's entourage had not even been made at that point. But if it had been planned, perhaps months earlier by the Secret Service (which is tasked with presidential security), then leaks of the parade route must have come from them or from Dallas authorities who would have been in the loop. That information would then have been passed on to Ruth Paine who secured Oswald's position at the Book Depository giving him an ideal spot to construct his "sniper's nest" on the sixth-floor. 

Note: Ruth may not have known the reason she was tasked with getting Oswald a job there. She, like Oswald, may have been "useful idiot" moved about the chessboard by hidden actors.

  

1. The ARRB released a tranche of previously redacted Kennedy assassination files in 1992, holding back a final batch for another 25 years until 2017 when President Trump allowed the release of 19,000 files. However, there remains an undetermined number of files still locked away. Though Trump promised to release all the Kennedy files, he changed his mind, holding back those deemed “too sensitive” to national security. He ordered the release of the remaining files be made in 2021. The Biden administration released an additional 13,000 files, leaving roughly 5,000 in the vault, again for ‘national security’ purposes. What is in the remaining files and when will they be released is anyone’s guess.     

 

2. For another twist down this rabbit hole, note that there was a little-reported earlier assassination plot. Douglass provides information that on Kennedy’s upcoming tour of Chicago on November 2, four Cuban exiles (who hated Kennedy because of his decision not to send U.S. forces into Cuba following the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion) were planning to murder him as he rode in his motorcade along the proposed parade route into the city. A tip from someone calling himself “Lee” alerted authorities to the plot, but the Secret Service, along with the police and FBI managed let the gunmen ‘slip’ through their fingers. It is also interesting that one Thomas Valee, an unstable “loner” and brain-damaged Korean War vet who publicly threatened to kill Kennedy in the weeks prior to the president's scheduled visit to the Windy City, was on hand. Valee, a skilled marksman, seemed like strong “patsy”  material in a  situation mirroring the one Oswald found himself in Dallas a few weeks later.

 

3. OMG! Don’t get me started on Oswald’s time in New Orleans where he was ostensibly looking for work. There were so many spooks floating around that it was hard to walk down a sidewalk without tripping over one! Mega rabbit hole! Or the rushed autopsy at  Parkland Memorial Hospital, the missing notes taken by medical staff at the time observing and recording the injuries Kennedy sustained. 

Or, how come the Dallas police, in two days of interviewing Oswald, took no notes or kept no audio recordings of their conversations with the man at the centre of one of the great crimes of the Twentieth-Century. WTF!? YGTBKM!! 🤯

 

4. Officer Tibbit was shot when he attempted to question Oswald (real or otherwise) because he fit the description in a police BOLO (“be on the lookout”) following Kennedy’s murder.  

 

👉FOR A SHARP BIT of political satire see Seinfeld’s classic spoof of the “single bullet” theory (dubbed by skeptics the “magic bullet”) that made its way into the 1964 Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of President Kennedy. The NBC comedy sketch was aired February 12, 1992, in an episode entitled “The Boyfriend”. The scene features actor Wayne Knight (“Newman!”) who’d also appeared in the movie JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, a year earlier. The Seinfeld TV episode spoofs the movie’s courtroom re-enactment of the Kennedy shooting which called into question the veracity of the “single bullet” theory. Instead of a bullet, the Seinfeld skit centers around the impossible gyrations of "one magic loogie!"  😆

In 1964, the Warren Commission adopted the “single bullet” scenerio in its deliberations which concluded that John Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally were struck by the same bullet. This fits the scenario of Lee Oswald having fired three bullets from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, killing the president and wounding Connally, and where three empty shell casings were found. Evidence of a fourth bullet fired at the presidential motorcade would suggest there was a second shooter and a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. [The “single bullet” hypothesis is one of the most controversial findings of the Warren Report and remains contested to this day. Ed.]   

SEINFELD EPISODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl-Qp8RPOtI

OLIVER STONE’S JFK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwFIOPMBzqI If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, check out the courtroom scene near the end where District Attorney for New Orleans Jim Garrison (portrayed by Kevin Costner) demonstrates to the jury the likelihood there was more than one shooter in the Kennedy assassination by debunking the "magic bullet"/lone shooter narrative. The 1991 movie is based on Garrison’s real-life probing into the dark truths surrounding the 1963 assassination.

IN 1969, Garrison brought an unsuccessful court action against businessman Clay Shaw, claiming he was part of a conspiracy to murder the American president. The movie, JFK, is based on his investigations and follows the twists and turns Garrison and his prosecution team make going down what is arguably last century’s most audacious rabbit hole.

 

THE MOVIE, EXECUTIVE ACTION: is a fictional account of Kennedy’s assassination from the perspective of a cabal of wealthy elites who saw the president as a threat to their power and affluence and conspired to murder him. The 1973 film has a great cast: Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster, and Will Geer, as well as an edgy and unrelenting portrayal of one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in the United States.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK2jxL7SBf4&t=29s

 

👉I've already suggested who I feel planned and orchestrated Kennedy's murder, here. Just how much Oswald knew and what actions he took in Dallas that fall day in 1963 have yet to be conclusively determined. He may have fired those three bullets including the "magic bullet", and later killed Officer Tibbit. There may or may not have been a second shooter. But, there most probably was a wider conspiracy behind it all. 

 

 

Douglass, James, W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he Died and Why it Matters. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2008.

 

 

 

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD: BITS AND BITES FOR THE NEW YEAR

  

👉FOR SOME TIME NOW, most of us have come to the realization that the American president, Donald Trump, is either demented or senile or both. He has become, in a remarkably short time, an emperor with no clothes; butt-naked, self-absorbed, capricious, whose ire is easily aroused against friend and foe alike. It's quite possible that Trump is not his own man and is beholden to donors, or members of the deep state, or the MIC (Military-Industrial Complex). His uncompromising support of Israel, clearly guilty of war crimes and genocide, seems inexplicable unless you assume there’s some “compromat” about, perhaps beach-blanket-bingo pics from Epstein Isle that found their way into the hands of Israeli security services. Who knows?

His kooky trade policies: sanctions on again, off again. Most recently, because Carney seemed to criticize him in Davos (he did) the day before he came and delivered his usual rambling, cranky, talking points, now he's “decertified” several types of Bombardier business-class jets to get even. (Maybe he was pissed that Carney got a standing ovation and he received only sparce applause?) We'll see where this goes. His domestic clusterfuck around his ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) brownshirts officers killing innocent American citizens while searching for illegal immigrants in Minneapolis is eroding support among younger voters. As is his criminal support for the beyond-the-pale administration of “Bibi” Netanyahu as the prime minister of Israel conducts a genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza before the eyes of the world.

BTW, young people are fleeing TikTok, now that it’s been bought by Zionist billionaire Larry Ellison and coverage of cute kittens dancing competes with tips on how to tighten one’s derriere. Under thirty-fives are finding other venues and platforms to gather news of the world, like the latest from Gaza and other crimes scenes.

What will happen in the next while around Venezuela? Greenland? Canada? Will Trump continue half-heartedly supporting Zelensky or drop him like a hot potato? And what about the New START arms limitation treaty which ends in five days?! Will Trump renew it for a year while the U.S. and Russia negotiate a new one? I doubt it, and that may be another sign he is not his own man and bows to behind-the-scenes pressures. Will TACO Trump launch an attack on Iran even with the danger of a major Iranian response against American bases in the region and Israel? Can Israel survive an all-out missile and drone attack from Iran? Will it resort to nuclear weapons if it appears it is losing? It's quite possible. And then the world will change in ways we can’t yet apprehend. 

So, stop fucking around Mr. TACO! Man-up and do what is necessary to end this dangerous sabre-rattling. There’s already enough blood spilled on your watch.

Screw it for now. A hit of Soma, the latest feelie, and I'm right as rain.

 

👉AT THE DAVOS CONFAB earlier this month, Canada’s PM, Mark Carney, gave a memorable speech that went viral a couple of weeks ago. I know what many of you are thinking: ‘Jake, how can you say with a straight face that a Canadian politician could give a speech that was in any way memorable?’ True enough, dear readers. So, it goes without saying that I was more than a little surprised when our Prime Minister laid bare in Davos a couple of whopping truths rarely spoken by Western politicians and their hangers-on. His speech came after months of roiling and thrashing about on the part of the American president, with buckets venom upended on his neighbours, friends and foes. Including Canada. Carney’s Davos debut (as Canadian PM) came after a career in finance (at the giant, “vampire-squid” investment bank, Goldman-Sachs), and serving as head of both Canada’s and England’s central banks. On 23 April 2025 he was installed as Canada’s twenty-fourth Prime Minister, following Justin Trudeau’s departure from politics in late January 2025.

 

FUN FACT: Originally, in the mid-Twentieth Century, during the Cold War, global economies were divided into the ‘First World’, composed of democratic, capitalist, industrialized NATO countries aligned with the United States; the ‘Second World’ was composed of the USSR, other communist countries, and Warsaw Pact countries aligned with the USSR; and the ‘Third World’ originally referred to non-aligned countries that were members of neither bloc. Today, the ‘Third World’ usually refers to impoverished and mostly Global South countries. 

 

MARK CARNEY IS NO RADICAL—he’s very much an ‘insider’, an elite member in the globalist, neo-liberal, IMF, World Bank, de-industrialism, financialization, free trade, post-WWII economic order. He’s a banker; he doesn’t want to tear down the system that, for decades, benefited ‘First World’ countries and their elites. Yet, his Davos speech, in which he said the world order was entering a “rupture” with the past, was interesting because he said the quiet part out loud to an audience of his peers. He said the system, also dubbed the “rules-based international order” is no longer working. Instead, “Great Power” rivalry, where the use of military force and economic sanctions has eroded the fiction that Western governments, particularly the United States (though Carney doesn’t mention it by name), all act in accordance with international law or promote rules that facilitate trade and regulate interactions between countries in a fair and equitable manner.😆

CARNEY SAID it had all been a lie—that we were not the ‘good guys’, that actions taken by powerful nations against weaker ones were not done because they were upholding “democracy” or “freedom” or “good governance”. They were done to advance Great Power dominance, period, and operated less from United Nations’ principles and international laws than from rules made by stronger nations for their own benefit. It was a convenient and profitable fiction for the countries promoting it, including nations within the hegemon's orbit.

 

THAT FICTION Carney ripped away, leaving the ugly scar exposed for all to see. The PM stated, bluntly, that everyone knew* the ‘rules based international order’ was a fiction but we went along with it because we benefited, were made rich by it. We rode the coattails of the United States for decades, “comfortably numb” to how often America’s actions benefited us at the expense of blood and treasure levied against other nations. Trump’s actions in the first year of his second presidency exposes the hypocrisy so evident in the West’s preeminent nation—that it wasn’t a good-faith actor abiding by rules along with the rest of us.

Carney said that we in the West promoted the lie when we claimed we believed in the so-called rules-based international order. We didn’t, actually, but we went along with the masquerade. The Prime Minister made his Davos speech at a time when it's becoming clear that the United States no longer wishes to pretend it abides by international laws when they prove inconvenient. As a global hegemon since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States uses military force, sanctioning and coercion against whomever it considers an enemy or peer competitor. Even countries once considered allies are now being targeted with sanctions or by threats of invasion or by other coercive methods. 

Since he’s returned to office, Trump has taunted Canada about becoming the fifty-first state. His actions vis-à-vis Venezuela and potential actions against Greenland no doubt convinced Carney that Canada needs to diversify its trading networks and to form new alliances and not be so dependant on the US market. In his speech, he said middle-powers like Canada need to come together with other middle-powers to push back, or better weather the times when hegemons, old and new, begin using their power untempered by law, rule or morality.

 

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” (Joseph Goebbels Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff. CNN interview, with Jake Tapper 3 January 2025.)

 

AND IF ANYONE THINKS the above quote is hyperbolic and not representative of the Trump administration or of Trump himself, think again. Listen to what Trump himself has been saying about acquiring Greenland, “the easy way or the hard way,” to name just one piece of real estate the president is interested in adding to his portfolio. He sounds like he’s channeling Don Corleone these days more than anything else. So, keep your head down and don’t fly your kite in stormy weather.¹

 

👉RECALL the case of Montrealer, Eves Engler—political activist, author, and recent NDP leadership candidate who, in 2025, was charged with “harassment” of the pro-Israel social media influencer, Dahlia Kurtz, and spent five days in jail while the charges were processed. The complaint stemmed from Engler’s social media replies to Kurtz’s posts on X, some months prior to his arrest. Kurtz is a rabid Israeli apologist and Engler challenged her assertions by replying to some of her posts. He says: “I’ve had no other interaction with Dahlia Kurtz in my life except for responding to her anti-Palestinian and pro-genocide messages on X.” (Rabble.ca) He was told by the arresting officer he would be granted bail with the stipulation he does not write about police actions in his case, a requirement both Engler and his lawyer rejected. He was released on bail after a few days. Subsequently, he wrote posts critical of the police in their zeal to defend Kurtz’s right to publish pro-Israel posts while denying Engler’s right to challenge her positions. 

 

His supporters started a letter writing campaign after Engler suggested in his blog one be started for which he was charged with “harassment” of the arresting officer who received about two-thousand emails supporting Engler. The officer complained that having to deal with so many emails limited her ability to perform other police duties. [Set up an email filter. Easypeasy. Ed.] He was subsequently charged with four offences including “intimidation” of the snowflake officer in question. IIUC, he was found guilty and has an upcoming sentencing date in April.

This is an example of “lawfare” used by the state to intimidate and silence critics, especially critics of Israel and its Hasbara minions in Canada like Kurtz. If Yves receives anything more than a slap on the wrist or a small fine, it will be obvious that the government is trying to silence his voice and that censorship is alive and well in Canada. Who’s next? Keep your eyes open, folks.   

 

👉BITE OF GOOD NEWS: The Appeals Court of Canada ruled the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act in February 2022 to break up the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests in Ottawa and several key border towns infringed on protestor’s Charter rights. Three Court of Appeals Justices agreed with Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley² in his earlier ruling that the threat posed by the protestors did not rise to a level that warranted the federal government’s invocation the Emergencies Act. [That’s the updated version of the War Measures Act, invoked by Trudeau senior in 1970 during the “October Crisis”. The Emergencies Act (1988) had never been used before young Justin wielded it to batter the protesting truckers. Ed]. The federal government appealed Justice Mosley’s ruling and on 23 January 2026 the Appeals Court upheld Mosley’s ruling.

 

The Emergencies Act’s purpose is to give a range of additional powers to the federal government in situations that, “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” It may be invoked when “an emergency arises from threats to the security of Canada that is so serious as to be a national emergency.” The Act uses the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) definition of a serious threat “which includes serious violence against persons or property, espionage, foreign interference or an intent to overthrow the government by violence.” Hardly the characteristics of the Ottawa protests. Though they were unruly, noisy and disruptive, the Federal Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling that the protests fell well short of a threat to national security and should have been dealt with through regular policing and laws.

   

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

* Perhaps I’m being unfair. Given the thick swamp of propaganda that Western publics are forced to wade through, particularly since 2001, it is understandable that most people still swallow the mainstream pap fed to them 24/7. Politicians, military leaders, academics, analysts, etc., should  know better, and Carney is saying most do know the “rules-based international order” story was hooey, but they went along to get along. Carney says the lies we told ourselves and the world—endlessly! —that we were the good guys, that it was those evil [take your pick] doing bad things to their populations, to other countries etc., that those lies hid the truth: It was Great Power machinations and little fish devilry that roiled beneath the fiction of international laws that prove inconvenient and vexatious to hegemons. 

The powerful accept the rule of law when it favours them. And they ignore it when it doesn’t. Now, it seems, the United States no longer needs to use such fictions, or excuses, couching their real-politic actions as “defending democracy” or some other vacuous and meaningless trope. For example, Trump says he wants Greenland because it is “necessary for U.S. security”, period. Never mind that its part of Denmark, a NATO ally. And never mind that Denmark would welcome any additional American bases or investments in Greenland.

 

👉SO here we are today with institutions, laws, agreements, treaties, legal processes fair and unbiased and, most recently, laws guaranteeing the sovereignty of nations (Gaza, Venezuela, Greenland, Canada?), that are being shredded by the country that once exemplified and promoted the rule of law and unbiased, international ‘rules of the road’ for all. It’s a sorry state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree.

 

1. Critics of Carney's speech call it hypocritical because it’s only now, when Canada is 'on the menu', that he speaks out, denouncing the system that for decades Canadians and other Western sycophants benefited from, with our obsequiousness before the hegemon’s court extending to the unwritten rule never to speak about the emperor and the fact he has no clothes.

A further criticism of Carney is his solution to defend against our great neighbour to the south—that other middle-powers need to act in concert to push back or soften the harms done, but keeping intact the visibly failing system of late-stage capitalism, with all its inequities, instead of looking for other ways to organize our economies and our foreign and domestic affairs. Nevertheless, the first half of Carney’s Davos speech came as something akin to a breath of fresh air. Stay tuned.🙋

 

2. The legal advocacy group, Canadian Constitution Foundation took the government to court. The case was heard by Justice Mosley who ruled in 23 January 2024 that the government failed to provide convincing arguments the trucker protests were a threat to Canadian security, and that its actions to shut down and remove trucks outside Parliament Hill, and in particular the freezing of protestors’ and supporters’ bank accounts in order to break the blockades, was an overreach by the government and unlawful. The government subsequently appealed the decision, but the Federal Court of Appeals upheld Justice Mosey’s ruling last week.