Bulletin N° 961

“JULIUS CAESAR”

by William Shakespeare

(FULL AudioBook)

https://youtu.be/rctuRBjcDUc

(2 :25:12)

 

 

Subject:  Revolution from Above :  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

 

 

March 16, 2021

150th Anniversary of the Paris Commune (18 March -  28 May 1871)

Grenoble, France

 

 

Dear Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,

 

History is littered with rebellions and failed revolutions. The first imperative of political power is to maintain its control, and this has been done in a variety of ways. In the case of the ruling class during the Roman Republic, for example, the assassination of Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC) was thought necessary to maintain the power stucture. At the start of the Third Republic in France (between Sunday, May 21 & Sunday, May 28), Paris became a slaughterhouse as the mass murder of more than 20,000 Communards in the streets and parks of the city continued throughout what became known as "Bloody Week," in order to preserve ruling-class capitalist control over the state. In Cold War America, the assassination of the President Kennedy (1917-1963) was ordered, carefully planned, and professionally covered up by vested interests in order to protect profitable investments in the expanding military-industrial complex which was threatened by Kennedy's secret peace initiatives with leaders of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

 

When we look at revolutionary attempts – whether from above or below – we find in history a corresponding mobilization of the ruling-class interests preparing to control or destroy them with a variety of instruments at their disposal.


James W. Douglass’ book,
JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters (2008) is a 400-page tome of detailed information presented in six chapters of page-turning narrative that defies summary. In this case, the U.S. ruling-class response to “a possible revolution from above” against capitalist militarism and the “mutually assured destruction” of nuclear war, following the Second World War, contains many useful lessons about the society we live in today, and about its political economy.

 

With this book we are invited to look within ourselves and at the altered paradigm which now insures our collaboration with mass murder and makes us oblivious to our self-deceptions.

 

Who murdered Kennedy? We all did, and we continue to do so ….  

 

At the same time, JFK is “Everyman” - the system’s creation and its victim.

 

The discomfort this book inspires is colossal, and the lessons it offers are numerous. The author, a student of theology, is skilled at penetrating our psyche to drive us out of our miserable minds and to alert us to this creation of the "Unspeakable," a tyrannical silence which now exists like a dark hole silently assigning all enlightened thought to an infinity of darkness, with the destructive force of antimatter reducing to non-existence everything it touches.

 

 

The elephant in the living room.

 

In the Preface and Introduction of this book, Douglass formulates an original problematic for his research project:

 

          As recent polls indicate, three out of four Americans believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. The evidence has long pointed toward our own government. Yet with recurrent defenses of the Warren Commission, conjectures of Mob plots, and attacks on Kennedy’s character, we in this media-drenched society drink the waters of uncertainty. We believe we cannot know . . . a truth whose basic evidence has been presented since the work of the Warren Commission’s earliest critics. Could there be a deeper reason for our reluctance to know the truth?

 

     Is our wariness of the truth of JFK’s assassination rooted in our fear of truth’s consequences, to him and to us? For President Kennedy, a deepening commitment to dialogue with our enemies proved fatal. If we are unwilling as citizens to deal with that critical precedent, what twenty-first-century president will have the courage on our behalf to resist the powers that be and choose dialogue instead of war in response to our current enemies?(p.x)  

    

 

The author then introduces us to Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk, living in a monastery in rural Kentucky who is publishing and corresponding regularly with people around the world and from all walks of life. Douglass first contacted Merton after reading a poem he had published in the Catholic Worker in 1961. The words of this poem were spoken by the commandant of a Nazi death camp; it was entitled, “Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site with Furnaces.”

 

Merton’s ‘Chant’ proceeded matter-of-factly through the speaker’s

daily routine of genocide to these concluding lines: ‘Do not think

yourself better because you burn up friends and enemies with

long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.’(p.xiii)

 

After reading his poem, Douglass wrote Merton. This was the start of a long correspondence on nonviolence and the nuclear threat. Merton sent Douglass a copy of his manuscript, “Peace in the Post-Christian Era,” which his superiors had forbidden him to publish.  Merton feared the US would launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union, and he wrote:

‘There can be no question that at the time of writing what seems to be the most serious and crucial development in the policy of the United States is this indefinite and crucial development of the necessity of a first strike.’(p.xiv)

In this book on the assassination of JFK, Douglass tell us in his preface that Merton became “my Virgil on this pilgrimage….”

Although this book is filled with history and biographical reconstruction, its ultimate purpose is to see more deeply into history than we are accustomed. If, for example, war is an unalterable reality of history, then we humans have a very shot future left. Einstein said, ‘The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.’ Unless be turn our thinking (and acting) away from war, we humans have had our day. Thomas Merton said it again and again at the height of the Cold War, as did Martin Luther King – and John Kennedy. What the contemplative Thomas Merton brought to that fundamental truth of our nuclear age was ontology of nonviolence, a Gandhian vision of reality that can transform the world as we know it. Reality is bigger than we think. The contemplative knows this transforming truth for experience.

     Thomas Merton has been my guide through a story of deepening dialogue, assassination, and a hoped-for resurrection. While Kennedy is the subject of this story, Merton is its first witness and chorus from his unique perspective in a monastery in the hills of Kentucky. In terms of where this narrative began and how it has been guided, it is contemplative history. Thanks to Merton’s questions and insights, founded on a detachment few other observers seemed to have, we can return to the history of JFK, the Cold War, and Dallas on a mind-bending pilgrimage of truth. Reality may indeed be bigger than we think.

     What is the reality underlying the possibility of nonviolent change? I believe the story of JFK and the unspeakable, a story of turning, is a hopeful way into that question.(pp.x-xii)

 

The first chapter, following an eleven-page chronology from January 17, 1961 to November 24 1963, takes up the theme of the President’s transformation from “Cold Warrior” to “anti-nuclear peace advocate.”  This attempt at “change from above” was perilous business, and he knew it. Vested interests in war had created a political culture in Washington, D.C. against which any opposition could be destroyed in a variety of ways. Even the chief executive of the US government could find himself isolated and vulnerable.

Kennedy understood this danger, and negotiated the waters knowingly. He left behind him a torrent of verbal contradictions and murderous concessions to the military and the arms industry. Nevertheless, he soon came under suspicion and the phalanx of militarists and anti-Communists, using extremist rhetoric, attempted to flush him out.

One day, it was brought to his attention that a new book had just come out. Seven Days in May, by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel was published in hardcover by Harper & Row in 1962. Seven Days in May was political thriller novel, whose plot concerned an attempted military coup in the United States. Kennedy read the book immediately and assured his advisors “this will not happen on my watch.” He nevertheless took the precaution to actively encourage the production of a film based on this book, “as a warning to the republic.” A screenplay, by the same title, was written by Rod Serling, and the film was produced by Edward Lewis, and by John Frankenheimer in 1964. Seven Days in May is the story of U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) who hopes to bring an end to the Cold War by signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets, much to the displeasure of the hawkish General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Scott's aide, Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) stumbles on shattering evidence that the General is plotting a coup to overthrow Lyman in seven days, "Jiggs" alerts the President, setting off a dangerous race to thwart the takeover.

 

Following the Cuban missile crisis, James Douglass describes an increasingly dogmatic pro-war political culture in Washington, D.C.

     Kennedy was fiercely determined but not optimistic that the [nuclear] test ban treaty [with the USSR] would be ratified by the defense-conscious Senate. It was on August 7, 1963, that he made his comment to advisers that a near-miracle was needed. He said that if a Senate vote were held right then it would fall far short of the necessary two-thirds. Larry O’Brien, his liaison aide with the Congress, confirmed the accuracy of the president’s estimate. Congressional mail was running about fifteen to one against a test ban.

. . .

The president and his committee of activists hoped that in a month public opinion would be on their side.

     In the meantime, they were bucking the military-industrial complex, which had become alarmed at the president’s sudden turn toward peace and his alliance with peace activists in support of the test ban. The August 5, 1963, U.S. News and World Report carried a major article headlined; ‘Is U.S. Giving up in the Arms Race?’ The article cited “many authorities in the military establishment, who now are silenced?” as thinking that the Kennedy administration’s ‘new strategy adds up to a type of intentional and one-sided disarmament.’

     The alarm was sounded even more loudly in the August 12 U.S. News with an article headlined, ‘If Peace Does Come – What Happens to Business?’ [This article concluded that,] ‘Talk of peace is catching on. Before shouting, however, it is important to bear some other things in mind.’

. . .

[It] went on to reassure its readers that defense spending would be sustained by such Cold War factors as Cuba remaining ‘a Russian base, occupied by Russian troops’ and ‘the guerrilla war in South Vietnam’ where ‘the Red Chinese, in an ugly mood, are capable of starting a big war in Asia at any time.’

However, an insider could have asked, what would it mean to defense contractors if Kennedy extended his peacemaking to Cuba and Vietnam?

     The president’s peacemaking had moved beyond any effective military control or even monitoring. In the test-ban talks, the military weren’t in the loop. Kennedy had made a quick end run around them to negotiate the teatyt. As JFK biographer Richard Reeves observed, ‘By moving so shiftily on the Moscow negotiations, Kennedy politically outflanked his own military on the most important military question of the time.’

     Kennedy pointed out to [Norman] Cousins that he’ and Khrushchev had come to have more in common with each other than either had with his own military establishment. ‘One of the ironic things about this entire situation is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I’ve got similar problems.(pp.52-53)

 

The chickens come home to roost.

Chapter Two deals with “Kennedy, Castro, and the CIA.”

In this chapter, Douglass discusses Kennedy’s seeming hipocracy as he is dreawn into a confrontation with the CIA. The political context of this duplicity is essential for understanding the President’s policy toward Castro and the Cold War. At the end if this chapter, the author cites Castro’s question about Kennedy’s motives.

     In the 1970s, Fidel Castro reflected on a peculiar fact of Cold War history that related closely to the story of John Kennedy. Thanks to the decisions made by Khrushchev and Kennedy, “in the final balance Cuba was not invaded and there was no world war.”

‘We did not, therefore, have to suffer a war like Vietnam – because many Americans could ask themselves why a war in Vietnam, thousands of miles away, why millions of tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam and not in Cuba? It was much more logical for the United States to do this to Cuba than to do it ten thousand kilometers away.’(p.92)

 

Chapter Three is a detailed description of Kennedy’s stratagems in the Vietnam War. Again, the historic context provides perspective and understanding.

     Ten years before he became president, John F. Kennedy learned that it would be impossible to win a colonial war in Vietnam.

     In 1951, when he was a young member of Congress, Kennedy visited Vietnam with his twenty-two-old brother, Robert. At the time France was trying to reassert control over its pre-World War II colony of Indochina. Although the French army’s commander in Saigon insisted to the Kennedys that his 250,000 troops couldn’t possibly lose to the Viet Minh guerrillas, JFK knew better. He was convinced by the more skeptical view of Edmund Gullion, an official at the U.S. Consulate. Kennedy knew and trusted Gullion, who had helped him earlier as a speechwriter on foreign policy.

     At an evening meeting on top of a Saigon hotel, in a conversation punctuated by distant blasts from the Viet Minh’s artillery, Gullion told Kennedy: ‘In twenty year’s there will be no more colonies. We’re going nowhere out here. The French have lost. If we come in here and do the same thing, we will lose, too, for the same reason. There’s no will or support for this kind of war back in Paris. The homefront is lost. The same thing would happen to us.’

     After becoming president, Kennedy would cite Edmund Gullion’s farsighted analysis to his military advisers, as they pushed hard for the combat troops that JFK would never send to Vietnam. Instead, on October11, six weeks before he was assassinated, President Kennedy issued his secret order for a U.S. withdrawal for Vietnam in National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263. It was an order that would never be obeyed because of his murder.

     Kennedy had decided to pull out one thousand members of the U.S. military by the end of 1963, and all of them by the end of 1965. In the month and a half before his death, this welcome decision received front page headlines in both the military and civilian press . . . .

     However, because of the president’s assassination, even the first phase of his withdrawal plan was quietly gutted. The Pentagon Papers, a revealing Defense Department history of the Vietnam War that was made public by defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, points out: ‘Plans for phased withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. advisers by the end-1963 went through the motions by concentrating rotations home in December and letting strength rebound in the subsequent two months.

     JFK’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was part of the large strategy for peace that he and Nikita Khrushchev had become mutually committed to, which in Kennedy's case would result in his death. Thomas Merton had seen it all coming. He has said prophetically in a Cold War letter that if President Kennedy broke through to a deeper, more universal humanity, he would before long be ‘marked out for assassination.’ Kennedy agreed. As we have seen, he even described the logic of a coming coup d’état in his comments on the novel Seven Days in May. JFK felt that his own demise was increasingly likely if he continued to buck his military advisers. He then proceeded to do exactly that. After vetoing the introduction of the U.S. troops at the Bay of Pigs, he resisted the Joint Chiefs’ even more intense pressures to bomb and invade Cuba in the October 1962 missile crisis. Then he simply ignored his military  and CIA advisers by turning sharply toward peace in his American University address, his Partial Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev, and his a quest for a dialogue with Fidel Castro. His October 1963 decision to withdraw from Vietnam once again broke the Cold War rule of his national security state. As Merton had noted, Kennedy was breaking through to deeper humanity – and to its fatal consequences.

     Yet for those who could see beyond the East-West conflict, Kennedy’s high-risk steps for peace made political sense. Four decades after these events we have lost their historical context. It was a time of hope. JFK, like many, was inspired by the yearning for peace spanning the world like a rainbow after the barely averted storm of the Cuban Missile Crisis. John Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and even Khrushchev’s Caribbean partner Fidel Castro were, in the relief of those months, all beginning to break free from their respective military establishments and ideologies As 1963 began, political commentators sensed a new morning after the long night of the Cold War.

     For example, Drew Pearson in his Washington Merry-Go-Round column datelined January 23, 1963, headlined the presidential challenge of the year ahead, ‘Kennedy Has Chance to End the Cold War.’ Pearson stressed the need for the president to seize the time for peace:

     ‘President Kennedy today faces his greatest opportunity to negotiate a permanent peace, but because of division inside his own Administration, he may miss the boat.

     ‘That is the consensus of friendly diplomats long trained in watching the ebb and flow of world events.’

. . .

The diplomats Pearson was drawing upon could already discern a massive shifting of political fault lines beneath the Kennedy-Khrushchev settlement of the missile crisis. At the same time they had identified the primary obstacle to an end of the Cold War – powerful forces in the U.S. government who did not believe in such a change, and who were throwing their weight against it.(pp.93-95)

 

Douglass goes on to underscore Kennedy’s ideological contradictions.

      As a committed Cold Warrior, John Kennedy from the first moments of his presidency has wanted to ‘let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.’ Kennedy was a true believer in his inaugural’s collective adaptation of Patrick Henry’s ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ He was articulating a vision of political freedom however one-sided its implication that not only most Americans but hundreds of millions of allies believed in fervently at the time. It was set against a countervision of economic freedom believed by hundreds of millions of Communist opponents. Thus the thousand-day-long series of crises between those two opposite believers, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, who almost unwillingly then became co-creators of a new, more peaceful vision. Both the crises, which were beginning to fade away, and the new vision that was taking their place ended with Kennedy’s assignation.

     From Kennedy’s side of their dogmatic battle, the saving factor was what few commentators have remembered from his inaugural address but what he believed in just at profoundly as he did freedom – peace in the nuclear age, through negotiation with the enemy . . . .(p.113)

 

     John Kennedy contradicted his commitment to a peaceful settlement of the Laos crisis by his decision to deploy CIA and military advisers there and to arm covertly the members of the Hmong tribe (known by the Americans as the ‘Meos’). On August 29, 1961, following the recommendations of his CIA, military, and State Department advisers, Kennedy agreed to raise the total of U.S. advisers in Laos to five hundred and to go ahead with the equipping of two thousand more ‘Meos.’ That brought to eleven thousand the number of mountain men of Laos recruited into the CIA’s covert army. From Kennedy’s standpoint, he was supporting an indigenous group of people who were profoundly opposed to their land’s occupation by the Pathet Lao army.  . . . But he was working within Cold War assumptions and playing into the hands of his own worst enemy, the CIA.(pp.115-116)

. . .

. . . Kennedy was making piecemeal concessions to the military on Vietnam. That fall marked one of the worst: on October 2n 1963, he authorized a ‘limited crop destruction operation’ in Phu Yen Provence by South Vietnamese helicopters spray U.S.-furnished herbicides. Dean Rusk had argued against the military’s push for crop destruction, saying that even though ‘the most effective way to hurt the Viet Cong is to deprive them of food,’ nevertheless those doing it ‘will gain the enmity of people whose crops are destroyed and whose wives and children will either have to stay in place and suffer hunger or become homeless refugees living on the uncertain bounty of a not-too-efficient government.’ While sensitive to Rusk’s argument, Kennedy had to the pressures of McNamara, Taylor, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and approved a criminal action.

     By going along with the military on crop destruction, Kennedy was violating both his conscience and international law. In August he had already approved a separate herbicide operation whose purpose of defoliation, as recommended by McNamara, was to ‘deny concealed forward areas, attack positions, and ambush sites to the Viet Cong.’ However, in his August approval, Kennedy has asked ‘that every effort be made to avoid accidental destruction of the food crops in the areas to be sprayed.’

     In October, the actual purpose of the program he approved was crop destruction. Why did he do it? According to Michael Forrestal, ‘I believe his main train of thinking was that you cannot say no to your military advisors  all the time.

JFK had in fact said yes in 1961 to a policy of widening military support to South Vietnam. The consequences were adding up. By November 1963, there would be a total of 16,500 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Although they as ‘advisers,’ many were fighting alongside the South Vietnamese troops they were advising. In spite of JFK’s having ruled out U.S. combat units, he was being moved along step by step by the military command toward the brink of just such a commitment. (pp.122-123)

. . .

     Even as Kennedy turned toward a withdrawal from Vietnam, he continued to say publicly that he was opposed to just such a change in policy. At his March 6, 1963, press conference, a reporter asked him to comment on Mansfield’s recommendation for a reduction in aid to the Far East.

     The president responded: ‘I don’t see how we are going to be able, unless we are going to pull out of Southeast Asia and turn it over to the Communists, how we are going to be able to reduce very much our economic programs and military programs in South Viet-Nam, in Cambodia, in Thailand . . . .’

     As Mansfield knew, Kennedy was in fact changing his mind in favor of a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam. . . . President John F. Kennedy was not only thinking the unthinkable. He was on the verge of doing it. But he wanted to be able to do it – by being reelected president. So he lied to the public about what he was thinking.

Kenny O’Donnell recounts Kennedy’s words at meeting with Mike Mansfield in spring 1963:

     “‘But I can’t do it until 1965 – after I’m reelected,’ Kennedy told Mansfield.

    “President Kennedy explained, and Mansfield agreed with him, that if he announced a withdrawal of American military personnel from Vietnam before the 1964 election, there would be a wild conservative outcry against returning him to the Presidency for a second term.

“After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, ‘In 1965, I’ll become one of the lost unpopular Presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make dammed sure that I am reelected.’ ”(pp.125-126)

 

In Chapter Four, James Douglass suggests more fully why President was “marked out for assassination.” American corporate leaders were familiar with the president’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who “while being a businessman himself, had also been President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As a former Wall Street insider who knew the system, the senior Kennedy had cracked down on Wall Street profiteers. Some of  the finical titans of the thirties regarded JFK’s father as a class traitor, “the Judas of Wall Street,” for his work on behalf of FDR.”

It was in the light of Joseph Kennedy's fight to initiate government controls over Wall Street, and the opposition he encountered, that he made his all-businessmen -are-s.o.b.'s remark to JFK.

     That opinion of his father, President Kennedy told the press, ‘I found appropriate that evening [when] we had not been treated altogether with frankness. . . . But that’s past, that’s past. Now we’re working together, I hope.’

It was a vain hope. John and Robert Kennedy had become notorious in the ranks of big business. JFK’s strategy of withdrawing defense contracts and RFK’s aggressive investigating tactics toward men of power were seen as unforgivable sins by the corporate world.

. . .

As Shakespeare had it, Caesar was warned of his coming assassination by the soothsayer: ‘Beware the ides of March.’ Fortune [magazine] gave Kennedy a deadly warning of its own by the title of its editorial: ‘Steel: The Ides of April.’

     Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department continued its anti-trust investigation into the steel companies. U.S. Steel and seven other companies were eventually forced to pay maximum fines in 1965 for their price fixing activities between 1955 1961.The steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies. The president was seen as a state dictator. As the Wall Street Journal put it in the week after Big Steel surrendered to the Kennedys, ‘The Government set the price. And it did this by the pressure of fear – by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police.’ U.S. News and World Report gave prominence in its April 30, 1962, issue to an anti-Kennedy article on ‘Planned Economy’ that suggested the president was acting like a Soviet commissar.

. . .

     We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy. That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious. The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it.

The head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Branch form 1954 to 1974 was James Jesus Angleton, known as the ‘Poet-Spy.’ As an undergraduate at Yale in the early forties, Angleton had founded a literary journal, Furioso, which published the poetry of Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, and Archibald MacLeish. After he went on to Harvard Law School, Angleton was drafted into the U.S. Army. He became a member of the Counterintelligence Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II predecessor to the CIA. The OSS and CIA suited Angleton perfectly. Counterintelligence became less a wartime mission than a lifelong obsession. For Angleton, the Cold War was an anti-communist crusade, with his CIA double agents engaged in a battle of light against darkness.

    Investigative journalist Joseph Trento testified in a 1984 court deposition that, according to CIA sources, James Angleton was the supervisor of a CIA assassination unit in the 1950s. The ‘small assassination team’ was headed by Army colonel Boris Pash. At the end of World War II, Army Intelligence colonel Pash had rounded up Nazi scientist who could contribute their research skills to the development of U.S. nuclear and chemical weapons. The CIA’s E. Howard Hunt, while imprisoned for the Watergate break-in, told the New York Times that Pash’s CIA assassination unit was designed especially for the killing of suspected double agents. That placed Pash’s terminators under the authority of counterintelligence chief Angleton. Joseph Trento testified that his sources confirmed, ‘Pash’s assassination unit was assigned to Angleton.’

     In the 1960s, Angleton retained his authority over assassinations. In November 1961, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans, Richard Bissell, directed his longtime associate William Harvey to develop an assassination program known at ‘ZR/RIFLE’ and to apply it to Cuba, as the Senate’s Church Committee later discovered. Among the notes for ZR/RIFLE that Harvey then scribbled to himself were: ‘planning should include provisions for blaming Sovs or Czechs in case of blow. Should have phony 202 [a CIA file on any person ‘of active operational interest’]in RG [Central Registry] to backstop this, all documents therein forged and backdated.’ In other words, in order to blame an assassination on the Communists, the patsy should be given Soviet or Czechoslovakian association. (Oswald’s would be Soviet and Cuban.) An appropriate fraudulent CIA 201 personnel file should be created for any future assassination scapegoat, with ‘all documents therein forged and updated.’ Harvey also reminded himself that (the phony 201’should look like a CE [counterespionage] file,’ and that he needed to talk with ‘Jim A.’

. . .

As we shall see in the Oswald project under Angleton’s supervision, the CIA’s Counterintelligence head blended the powers of assassination and disinformation. Deception was Angleton’s paradoxical way toward a victory of the light. In the war against Communism, Angleton thrived on deceiving enemies and friends alike in a milieu he liked to call ‘the wilderness of mirrors.’ His friend e.e. cummings suggested the contradictions in James Angleton in a letter he wrote to Angleton’s wife: ‘What a miracle of momentous complexity is the Poet.’

     In the mid 1970s, the Senate’s Church Committee on intelligence and he House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) opened the CIA’s lid on Lee Harvey Oswald and discovered James Jesus Angleton.(pp.140-144)

 

We have only touched the surface of these first four chapters of Jame Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable. This work is filled with little-know facts that point to the general failure of American culture to perform its essential function, i.e. to provide a mirror for the population to see themselves. Instead, we have “the Unspeakable” – a black hole into which the light of humanity and human creativity is forever vanishing.

 

The 23 + items below are a selection of articles and essays which reflect contemporary attitudes and behaviors in response to the multiple crises we are now facing. From this chaos we can only hope that a rational libertarian order will evolve and new voluntary associations will be supported by a political economy that serves the interests of human beings rather than simply driven by the pathological quest for maximum private profits.

 

 

Sincerely,

Francis Feeley

___

Professeur honoraire de l'Université Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur de Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org  

 

 

 

a.

The Pentagon's Failure To Protect Congress Is Coming Into Chilling Focus

https://youtu.be/uOYbv8_FJqI

with Stephen Colbert

(12:34)

+

Mindblowing Corruption At FBI’ - NSA Whistleblower Reveals

https://youtu.be/bGYSuULFzt0

with Jimmy Dore

(34:57)

+

 “Who Controls the Gates Family

https://youtu.be/dX9O3Yi-Nn0

with reallygraceful

(16:02)

+

Global Capitalism: March 2020-March 2021: “Covid and the Crash”

https://youtu.be/GE6s9HK_F6o

with Richard Wolff

(1:28:55)

+

From: Cat McGuire [mailto:cat@catmcguire.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2021
Subject: MUST LISTEN - Alison McDowell interview on the "Great Reset"

 

This interview on Guns & Butter by Bonnie Faulkner with Alison McDowell is extremely important.  It’s one of the best, most easy-to-understand overviews I’ve heard explaining the radical dystopian transformation beginning to be implemented worldwide across all dimensions of society, especially education, health, and the environment – much of it hidden in plain view as it comes to us via non-profits, social services, and the healthcare system.

 

Alison weaves in how the colonial-settler mentality against indigenous peoples is being extended to an artificial intelligence (AI) settler colonialization of all humanity.  I love how she ends her talk on a positive, spiritual, manifesting note.

 

FYI for those in the New York City area – The first meeting of our monthly Great Reset study group will be Wednesday, March 24, 4:00-6:00 at a private office space in Dumbo, Brooklyn.  Please RSVP to me if you (or anyone you know) are interested in probing deeper into Alison’s research to understand the alarming next steps being planned for humanity, especially our children.

 

Conversation on militarized gaming and human capital futures markets tied to global surveillance and the Internet of Bodies – 1 hour

 

===========

 

b.

From: Richard Greeman [mailto:rgreeman@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Subject: Maati Monjib on Hunger Strike

 

Professor Maâti Monjib, the well-known historian, journalist and human rights defender has  been held in prison in Rabat, Morocco since December 29 on trumped up charges. Deprived of justice, he has begun and open-ended hunger strike – despite his age (60) and poor health. Support committees have been organized in Morocco, France, the U.S.and elsewhere to pay his legal expenses. Please support him by contributing to the Free Maati Monjib campaign at the following address.

 

https://association-justice-et-liberte-au-maroc.s2.yapla.com/fr/campaign---2651/detail/soutenez-la-liberation-de-maati-monjib/2651 

 

For more information, please visit the Free Maati Monjib website in English at this address: https://maatimonjib.net/?cat=712009957&lang=en 

 

Here is an update:

·         Home

·         Update about Dr. Maati Monjib’s Imprisonment

 

Update about Dr. Maati Monjib’s Imprisonment

On January 27, Moroccan historian, journalist, and human rights activist Maati Monjib was sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of 10,000 Dirhams. Monjib is the founder of the Ibn Rochd Center for Studies and Communication, a think tank he was forced to close in 2014, as well as co-founder of the Moroccan Association for Investigative Journalism. Although the Moroccan regime has accused Monjib of fraud and threatening the safety of the state since 2015, he had neither a hearing nor a fair trial. In fact, Monjib has been in El Arjat 2 prison since December 29, 2020 for additional accusations of money laundering because of the funding he lawfully received from international donors to fund the activities of the Ibn Rochd Center. The publication of his sentence in the official website mahkama.ma coincided with his appearance in the prosecutor’s office on January 27, 2021. Neither Monjib nor his lawyers had a chance to attend his sham “trial”. The sentence is baseless. It is a flagrant abuse of power destined to silence Dr. Monjib and remove him from the public sphere. Dr. Monjib’s persecution by the Moroccan regime is part of a familiar practice that reemerged in the country after a period of promising openness between 1999 and 2013. Ever since the end of the term of the first government formed after the 2011 revised Constitution, Moroccans have witnessed a rise in police brutality and the use of subtle mechanisms of repression through the justice system, to intimidate and silence journalists, human rights activists, and opposition figures. In this regard, the Moroccan security apparatus has exploited the autonomy of the Prosecutor’s Office, which used to be under the purview of the Minister of Justice, to prosecute, even by fabricating charges, all those who hold independent opinions vis-à-vis the regime’s iron grip on the country, and continued violation of Moroccan people’s rights. Moreover, the security regime, established under the leadership of Mohammed VI, has encouraged the mushrooming of a powerful yellow press that specializes in exposing opposition figures’ sexual lives. Videos of the supposedly extramarital affairs of these activists are used to threaten them and their families with scandal. Even more damaging is the fact that these videos could be used to force human rights activists to cooperate with the police. Since Dr. Monjib did not fall into this category, the police regime resorted to the fabricated charges of money laundering to “neutralize” him . The regime opened two court cases against Dr. Monjib—a strategy that the new version of Moroccan authoritarianism has been using to exhaust its opponents and keep them under the sword of a justice system that is entirely enthralled to the state. We, the members of the Movement for Solidarity with Maati Monjib in America, condemn the Moroccan regime’s dictatorial and unjust use of the justice system to silence its opponents. We firmly remind the world public opinion that Morocco has returned to its notorious practices during the “Years of Lead,” which were the object of the detailed, official report of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission in 2006. We also would like to remind all those who defend human rights and dignity that Dr. Monjib suffers from a heart condition as well as diabetes—two chronic illnesses that require constant medical care. We hold the Moroccan regime responsible for any danger that may threaten Dr Monjib’s life in jail.

The members of the Movement for Solidarity with Maati Monjib in America

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From: Richard Greeman [mailto:rgreeman@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021
Subject: Defend Maâti Monjib

 

Dear friends,

 

My dear friend and human rights activist Maati Monjib is in the eleventh day of his hunger strike while in prison in Morocco. Maâti, a distinguished historian and professor of journalism, was arrested without a warrant on Dec. 29.  Without Monjib or his attorneys being present at his trial, Maati was sentenced to one year in prison on fabricated charges of "attacking state security" and of "financial fraud." He was sentence to a year in prison.

 

 Faced with humiliation and injustice, Monjib began an open-ended hunger strike on March 4 – despite his age (60) and poor health. Defense committees have  been organised in Morocco, France, and the US as well as through NGOs like Amnesty. They have been quite effective, but we are now on day eleven and time is running out. 

 

Please make a donation to Maâti's legal defence via the link below (for which you can use your credit card):

 

https://association-justice-et-liberte-au-maroc.s2.yapla.com/fr/campaign---2651/donate/soutenez-la-liberation-de-maati-monjib/2651/#don-form-box

 

For more information on his case, please consult his website and send the link to as many people as possible.

 

https://maatimonjib.net/?lang=en

 

Please give us generously as you are able. In addition, in the link above is a way to sign a petition on Maati’s behalf.

 

Solidarity forever,

Richard 

 

 

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Julian Assange's Partner, Stella Moris, Speaks Out

https://youtu.be/TnbxOF41_jM

with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper

(1 :33 :57)

The Suppressed History of the United States

https://youtu.be/5uIN4ZjwBO8

with reallygraceful

(54:29)

+

 “Crossroads of US Politics Today”

https://youtu.be/7pgSTYBfqJQ

with Richard Wolff

(8:34)

 

===========

 

c.

Marc Lamont Hill & Mitchell Plitnick on ICC Probe & the “Palestine Exception” in Progressive Politics

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/3/4/except_for_palestine_marc_lamont_hill

with Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh

(13:20)

+

“Voice of Hope in a Time of Crises” Symposium

https://youtu.be/GW8hmhA7J08

with Chris Hedges

(21:40)

+

“Microsoft Forms Ministry of Truth”

https://youtu.be/QrTYtts8ZRA

with reallygraceful

(6:26)

 

===========

 

d.

Squad WON'T Force $15 Minimum Wage In Stimulus Bill

https://youtu.be/xfyMmEdEQ40

with Jimmy Dore

(16:14)

+

‘Progressives’ Sell Out Workers on $15 Minimum Wage

https://youtu.be/efLr9rker88

with Jimmy Dore

(25:15)

+

 “New York families in crisis”

https://youtu.be/Lyz0U57s_es

with Richard Wolff

(3:31)

+

Nomadland captures the contradictory heart of the American dream

https://therealnews.com/nomadland-captures-the-contradictory-heart-of-the-american-dream

with Marc Steiner

(20:55)

+

Award-winning ‘Nomadland’ documents poverty and survival in America

https://therealnews.com/award-winning-nomadland-documents-poverty-and-survival-in-america

with Marc Steiner

(20:32)

+

“Something Strange

Is Happening to Our DNA”

https://youtu.be/PXLHdNlU3F8

with reallygraceful

(32:35)

 

===========

 

e.

Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: China's Economic Rise

Part 2

https://youtu.be/3CEkvjzDtz4

with David Harvey

(20:13)

+

Marxism 101: “How Capitalism is Killing Itself”

https://youtu.be/6P97r9Ci5Kg

with Abby Martin

(35:46)

+

What You Need To Know About MONEY

https://youtu.be/c-AK1RdRzLc

with Jimmy Dore

(30:41)

+

 “Imagining a Real American Rescue”

https://youtu.be/qpc4umCxGgE

with Richard Wolff

(31:12)

 

===========

 

f.

Biden Continues Destabilizing Middle East As Corporate News Cheerleads

https://youtu.be/7Lis_hzSLVc

with Jimmy Dore

(8:40)

+

Is Biden plotting a soft coup in Saudi Arabia?

https://youtu.be/RgEYTWz9tK0

with Rick Sanchez

(25:22)

+

The Lies They Told Us About Syria

https://youtu.be/jNhdy7VuSZ0

with reallygraceful

(14:47)

+

Biden's First Act Of War Hits 3 Countries

https://youtu.be/W4hLfURevxc

with Abby Martin

(5:23)

+

Airstrikes in Syria Illegal?

https://youtu.be/tRzT2w74u94

with Jesse Ventura and Brigida Santos

(23:00)

+

More Than 40 Organizations Call on Biden Administration To Abandon "Virtual Wall" Immigration Bill

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/more-than-40-organizations-call-on-biden-administration-abandon-virtual-wall-immigration-bill/

by Derrick Broze

 

===========

 

g.

Economic Update: “The System Implodes: Amazon, Evictions, Tax Abuses, & Minimum Wages”

https://youtu.be/wc3MToWD69Y

with Richard Wolff

(29:45)

+

Amazon workers demand to be treated like human beings

https://therealnews.com/amazon-workers-demand-to-be-treated-like-human-beings

with Maximillian Alvarez and Jennifer Bates

(1:14:10)

+

Interview 1621 – “New World Next Week with James Evan Pilato

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1621-new-world-next-week-with-james-evan-pilato/

with James Corbett and James Pilato

(22:45)

+

The Pain of ‘The Pandemic’

https://youtu.be/5mIWZpbtS3U

with Rachel Blevins

(25:21)

 

===========

 

h.

Why Use the word ‘Socialism’

https://youtu.be/ULmC17PPO7I

with Richard Wolff

(11:29)

+

Marxism and the Slogan “Abolish Billionaires”

https://youtu.be/iTrDdOA40i4

with Richard Wolff

(5:49)

+

Why Capitalism Reproduces Inequality & a Solution

https://www.democracyatwork.info/eu_why_capitalism_reproduces_inequality_and_a_solution

with Richard Wolff

(29:15)

 

===========

 

i.

Palestine in Pictures:

February 2021

https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-pictures-february-2021/32456

by The Electronic Intifada

 

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j.

NFU – NEWS FROM UNDERGROUND

https://markcrispinmiller.com/category/nfu/

 

·        Abandon ship (of fools)! Governors all over (“red”) American are scrambling to end lockdowns and mask mandates

 

·        A 10-point rebuttal of Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan’s “Vaccine Apartheid”

 

·        Swedish epidemiology professor quits the field amid mass fury at his findings

 

===========

 

k.

Capitalism has become 'techno-feudalism'

https://youtu.be/_jW0xUmUaUc

with Yanis Varoufakis

(25:25)

+

 “The Richest Family in America You've Never Heard of”

https://youtu.be/rgT-wk680Oo

with reallygraceful

(14:38)

+

Surveillance Capitalism

https://youtu.be/hIXhnWUmMvw

with Shoshana Zuboff

(49:59)

 

===========

 

l.

Govt-Linked CSIS Urges DC To Partner with Social Media Firms To “Promote Protests Movements”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/csis-urges-dc-social-media-firms-promote-protests-movements/275994/

by Alan MacLeod

+

 “Why Public Schools and the Mainstream Media Dumb Us Down”

https://youtu.be/6CDaflxJJ0g

by The Academy of Ideas

(10:46)

+

"The Never-Ending List of Hypocrisy"

https://youtu.be/bCbTcpRB0dI

with reallygraceful

(7:15)

+

NATO Video Talks ‘Diversity, Respect, Embrace’ But Critics See Through the Wash Job

https://www.mintpressnews.com/nato-panned-for-woke-imperialism-in-latest-wearenato-video/275921/

by Alan MacLeod

+

Aurora Police Killed Without Consequence, Now Their Protestors Face 48 Years for “Kidnapping” Cops

https://www.mintpressnews.com/elijah-mcclain-protestors-face-48-years-kidnapping-aurora-police/275866/

by Alan Macleod

 

The cops and the district attorneys want people to see what we are going through — the conditions of our arrests, our experiences in jail, and our legal battle — and to think that this is what you risk when you stand up against them. – Lillian House, Aurora Activist and Defendant

+

Why Finland's schools outperform most others across the developed world

https://youtu.be/7xCe2m0kiSg

by ABC News (Australia)

(6:47)

 

===========

 

m.

What the Media Won't Tell You About China

https://youtu.be/VxTNWxvRnBQ

with really graceful

(16:07)

+

As leaks expose UK op to 'weaken' Russia, suppression of Grayzone reporting backfires

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/25/as-leaks-expose-uk-op-to-weaken-russia-suppression-of-grayzone-reporting-backfires/

by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté

+

Greek political prisoner is at death’s door

https://therealnews.com/greek-political-prisoner-is-at-deaths-door

by Eddie Conway

 

===========

n.

Tulsi Gabbard calls out the US dirty war on Syria that Biden, aides admit to

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/05/tulsi-gabbard-calls-out-the-us-dirty-war-on-syria-that-biden-aides-admit-to/

by Aaron Maté

+

America's Longest War

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahMUgX5rVZs

with Chris Hedges and Erik Edstrom

(27:04)

+

Coup-supporting academics spread lies to censor The Grayzone reporting exposing Ecuador's pseudo-left

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/01/academic-letter-censor-grayzone-ecuador-yaku-perez/

by Ben Norton

 

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o.

Israeli ambassador seeks to exploit Black struggle in US

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/israeli-ambassador-seeks-exploit-black-struggle-us

by Michael F. Brown

+

Israel: Orthodox Parties Shaken by Court Ruling on Law of Return

https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-orthodox-religious-parties-shaken-by-supreme-court-ruling-on-law-of-return/275897/

by Miko Peled

+

“The trial of Leo Frank … [and] the inception of

the Anti-Defamation League

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0sNB8uWAUs

with reallygraceful

(13:49)

 

===========

 

p.

Israeli-US Airstrikes On Syria Part Of Battle Over Iran Nuclear Deal Decision

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/israeli-us-airstrikes-syria-part-battle-over-iran-nuclear-deal-decision/

by Robert Inlakesh

+

“Bioethics and the New Eugenics”

https://www.corbettreport.com/bioethics/

with James Corbett

(39:13)

 

===========

 

q.

From Standing Rock and J20 to the US Capitol: Who gets treated like the enemy?

https://therealnews.com/from-standing-rock-and-j20-to-the-us-capitol-who-gets-treated-like-the-enemy

with Marc Steiner

(52:38)

 

===========

 

r.

The Story of ‘Sodom & Gomorrah’

https://youtu.be/uVWRSrPVa_E

with reallygraceful

(22:34)

 

===========

 

s.

“Ask Me Anything,

with Noam Chomsky,

on Jung, Wittgenstein, and Gödel”

Dec. 21, 2020

https://youtu.be/pUWmTXkpHjE

with Curt Jaimungal

 (1:17:44)

&

transcript

@

https://drive.google.com/file/d/141Z0iSFaMn_vJQleFMeNNZrWHzAB6EL-/view

+

“A Conversation with Bertrand Russell”

1952

https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA

with Romney Wheeler

(30:56)

 

===========

t.

“How to Present Information

 for Visual Learners”

https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-present-info-for-visual-learners-solutionswatch/

 

with James Corbett and Keith Knight

(52:28)

 

===========

 

u.

“The Rise of Digital Currencies and Human Capital Markets”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/raul-diego-digital-currencies-human-capital-markets-covid-19-lockdowns/275924/

by Raul Diego and Mnar Adley

(37:06)

 

The latest anti-Chinese lockdown narrative is obscuring a much broader effort by the financial and tech sector to create state-backed digital currency that will turn humanity into data assets.

+

Bill Gates Funded 'DNA Mining' Through COVID Tests, MSM Lies & Netanyahu’s ‘Global Vaccine Empire' and much more. . .

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bill-gates-funded-dna-mining-through-covid-tests-msm-lies-netanyahus-global-vaccine-empire/

with Ryan Christian

March 6, 2021

(4:40:49 )

 

As always, take the information discussed in the video below and research it for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. Anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant.

+

The Bits and Bytes of The Great Reset: COVID-19 and the Scaling Up of Data-Capitalism

https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-bits-and-bytes-of-the-great-reset-covid-19-and-the-scaling-up-of-data-capitalism/275831/

by Raul Diego

 

The so-called Great Reset amounts to little more than a campaign to turn humanity into datasets, which the world’s most powerful hedge funds and transnational corporations can use to create more profits for themselves and their clients.

+

Whistleblower Video Exposes Dementia Patients Forcefully Vaccinated In Nursing Home - 8 Dead

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/whistleblower-video-exposes-dementia-patients-forcefully-vaccinated-in-nursing-home-8-dead/

with Ryan Christian

(26:57)

+

“The Age of Social Murder”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-age-of-social-murder-ruling-elites/275801/

by Chris Hedges

 

The ruling elites, despite the accelerating and tangible ecological collapse, mollify us, either by meaningless gestures or denial.

+

‘Is This Who We Are?’: Gitmo is America’s Enduring Shame

https://www.mintpressnews.com/joe-biden-close-guantanamo-america-enduring-shame/275966/

by Ramzy Baroud

 

Even if Biden is able to overcome pressure from the military, from the CIA, and from Congress to shut Guantánamo down, justice will still be absent, not only because of the numerous lives that are forever shattered but because America still refuses to learn from its mistakes.

 

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v.

From: The Corbett Report

Sent: Friday, March 12, 2021
Subject: Hello, I Must Be Going!

 

Hello, I Must Be Going!

 

 


Hello, I Must Be Going!

Posted: 12 Mar 2021 04:21 AM PST

 

I'm one strike away from having my main YouTube channel deleted and Patreon has permanently "suspended" my account, so if you're only following my work through these controlled platforms then all I have to say is: It was nice knowing you! For everyone else, here's how you can continue watching The Corbett Report even after YouTube pulls the plug...

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Vaccine Lawsuit, Cyberwar On, Fukushima 10 – New World Next Week

Posted: 12 Mar 2021 04:17 AM PST

 

This week on the New World Next Week: New Mexico leads the way with the first US lawsuit against mandatory vaccinations; the US loudly announces their super secret cyber offensive on Russia; and the UN claims no adverse health effects ten years after Fukushima.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Investing in Agorism – #SolutionsWatch (video)

Posted: 12 Mar 2021 04:14 AM PST

 

We all want to stop feeding the beast, but how do we go about doing it? Today Patrick writes in to ask about the ins and outs of agorist investing. Joining us to start the conversation on agorist investment solutions are Tim "The Liberty Advisor" Picciott, Jack "The Survival Podcast" Spirko and Sal "The Agorist" Mayweather.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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w.

A Guide to US Empire in Africa: Neocolonial Order & AFRICOM"

https://youtu.be/_HEs2CnVQUs

with Abby Martin

(53:59)

 

Abby Martin speaks to Eugene Puryear to discuss the big picture of US imperialism in Africa: From the Berlin Conference to the subversion of liberation movements to neocolonial puppets and the current sprawl of AFRICOM "counterterrorism."

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Dear Historians for Peace and Democracy,

Renate Bridenthal, Molly Nolan and I from the Empire Working Group have finished at last the syllabus on economic sanctions--their forms, legality, and effectiveness, their history across the twentieth century and their current deployment, as well as blowback from and resistance to them. The syllabus can be used in whole or individual weeks or parts can be selected.  All materials are readily available online.

Thanks for the help many of you gave as we developed the syllabus which  is now downloadable from the HPAD website.  Here is the link.

https://www.historiansforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Empire-of-Sanctions-Syllabus.pdf

Best,
Prasannan Parthasarathi