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Mar 06, 2026

Excerpts from the Nuremberg Opening Statement Robert H. Jackson Chief of Counsel for the United States Nuremberg, Germany November 21, 1945

Wednesday, November 21, 1945 marked the second day in the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), more commonly known today as the Nuremberg Trials. For the first time in history, military, economic, and political leaders identified as Major Offenders would be held to account for the actions of their government and military and its crimes against humanity and peace. Beginning the proceedings in the Palace of Justice on this, the second day of a trial that would not end for 293 subsequent days, was the opening statement for the prosecution delivered by American Supreme Court Justice and US Chief of Counsel, Justice Robert H. Jackson. Jackson’s opening statement, consisting of nearly 25,000 words and taking nearly three-and-a-half hours to read, remains one of the most famous and influential oratories in the canon of international law and criminal jurisprudence.

Appointed by President Truman and taking a leave of absence from the bench of the US Supreme Court, Associate Justice Jackson, along with other members of the IMT, labored for many months over the summer and fall of 1945 in an attempt to codify the legal precedents required to try individual members of the Nazi regime. Building off the framework of statements and declarations from the 1943 Moscow and 1945 Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, the task facing Jackson and the IMT remained a daunting one. All of the Allies agreed that Nazi Germany must be punished for the unprecedented nature of its crimes. However, it was also agreed that a predetermined ‘show trial’ was to be avoided to dispel as much as possible the idea of a vindictive victor’s justice. As such, each of the 22 Nazi defendants present at Nuremberg stood accused of one or more of the following four new categories of crimes outlined by Jackson and the IMT: “Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace,” “Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace,” “Participating in war crimes,” and “Crimes against humanity.”

Justice Jackson Delivering the Opening Statement at Nuremberg. Courtesy of the US Army Signal Corps. Katherine Fite Lincoln Papers, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Just as the IMT strove to define the new legal landscape, Jackson spent months drafting his opening statement which not only introduced these new concepts of international law to the Nuremberg court, but also indicated to a worldwide audience that justice for the victims of Nazi aggression would be served. In his statement, Jackson’s tone was analytical, deliberate, and extraordinarily thorough. Jackson’s tone matched the basis of the argument for the prosecution which chose to rely on documentary evidence, eschewing possibly volatile eyewitness testimony. Despite his dispassionate approach, Jackson began by acknowledging that he well understood the momentous nature of the trial both for himself and for world leaders to come.

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“The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

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Speaking of the defendants, “twenty-odd broken men…their fate of little consequence to the world,” Jackson focused on the actions of the Nazi leaders rather than their identities. The defendants embodied and signified all of the evils of Nazism which must be extinguished lest they arise again in the future.

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“What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war-making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life…. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively with the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.”

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Justice Jackson Delivering the Opening Statement at Nuremberg. Courtesy of the US Army Signal Corps. Katherine Fite Lincoln Papers, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

For more than three hours, Jackson relentlessly made his argument, condemning the Nazi regime and its actions as criminal from the very moment of their inception to the arrival of their defeat. Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments and War Production, was both impressed by Jackson’s “grand, devastating address,” but also comforted somewhat “from one sentence in it which accused the defendants of guilt for the regime’s crimes, but not the German people.” At the conclusion of his statement, Jackson was honest in his assessment of human history, but also hopeful in his appraisal for humanity’s future.

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“Civilization asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have “leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law.”

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Chief American prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson delivers the opening speech of the American prosecution at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Gerald (Gerd) Schwab.

Seventy-five-years later, Justice Jackson’s opening statement at Nuremberg remains one of the most significant and one of the most often cited affirmations on the role and responsibility of international law and human rights. Jackson’s opening statement continues to serve as a foundation for the course of international law and international criminal trials to the present day.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JBwutHKoFhM?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

The Nuremberg Trial and its Legacy

The first international war crimes tribunal in history revealed the true extent of German atrocities and held some of the most prominent Nazis accountable for their crimes.

LEARN MORE

This article is part of a series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II made possible by the Department of Defense.

Contributor

Collin Makamson

Collin Makamson is the former Assistant Director of Education for Curriculum at The National WWII Museum.

Cite this article:

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MLA Citation:

Collin Makamson . “’The Grave Responsibility of Justice’: Justice Robert H. Jackson’s Opening Statement at Nuremberg” https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/robert-jackson-opening-statement-nuremberg. Published November 20, 2020. Accessed March 6, 2026.

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APA Citation:

Collin Makamson . (November 20, 2020). ‘The Grave Responsibility of Justice’: Justice Robert H. Jackson’s Opening Statement at Nuremberg Retrieved March 6, 2026, from https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/robert-jackson-opening-statement-nuremberg

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Chicago Style Citation:

Collin Makamson . “’The Grave Responsibility of Justice’: Justice Robert H. Jackson’s Opening Statement at Nuremberg” Published November 20, 2020. Accessed March 6, 2026. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/robert-jackson-opening-statement-nuremberg.

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Topics

European Theater of Operations

The Nuremberg Trials

The Holocaust

The End of World War II 1945

Newspaper Reader.

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Mar 06, 2026

Newspaper Reader.

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Mar 05, 2026

Middle East war

Be glad of Starmer’s caution over Iran

Bellicose critics of the UK prime minister have learnt nothing from the recent past

Janan Ganesh

Newspaper Reader.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-03-04/iran-war-dials-us-economic-danger-up-to-11?srnd=phx-opinion: March 4, 2026 at 2:00 AM PST. Newspaper Reader.

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Mar 04, 2026

Editor: Clive Crook’s sedate commentary on the feckless and illfated attack on Iran opens with a first paragraph, that then metaticises, as if the first and its sucessor are mirrors of each other, with this ‘The immediate danger is a setback in financial markets that gets out of hand’

President Trump’s extraordinary gamble in attacking Iran and risking a wider conflagration in the Middle East dials up the economic hazards facing the US economy from “very high” to “extreme.” The point is, this new stress compounds a series of other severe pressures already facing the economy, which is now even more unlikely to emerge unscathed.

The immediate danger is a setback in financial markets that gets out of hand. In many ways, some such reversal was already overdue, given the apparent overvaluation of US equities, the weight that the administration’s tariffs had already put on the economy’s back, a still-deteriorating fiscal outlook and a stubbornly persistent rate of inflation. Now let’s add the possibility of spiking energy prices, interrupted trade flows and global political turbulence.

Editor: Mr. Crook does not explore the pressing question of Trump as the political creature of Miriam Adelson! Mr. Crook spends his time via my selections of the economic questions he articulates as pressing – yet Adam Smith in his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ and his ‘The Wealth of Nations’ viewed these two imperatives as congruent with each other!

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Last week’s new inflation numbers were already cause for concern. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy, increased by 0.8% in January, markedly higher than expected. Its main components feed into the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric, core PCE inflation.

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Last week’s new inflation numbers were already cause for concern. The core producer price index, which excludes food and energy, increased by 0.8% in January, markedly higher than expected. Its main components feed into the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric, core PCE inflation.

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Echoes of the 1970s: A lasting spike in oil prices would mean stagflation – higher inflation plus slower growth, a combination that the Fed is powerless to defeat.

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Even before the Supreme Court overturned the administration’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, the outlook for public borrowing was testing limits. Budget deficits at 6% of gross domestic product, even with the economy at full employment and comfortably quiescent interest rates, mean that public debt (already near records) will continue to grow faster than the economy. That’s what “unsustainable” means.

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To make good the shortfall, Trump has announced a new global tariff of 10% rising to 15% under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act; he also promised new “investigations” that could lead to new taxes under other authorities – actions that threaten to upend trade deals already made with numerous partners. In short, the court’s ruling guarantees two things: less revenue than previously expected, combined with even greater uncertainty about the future tariff regime.

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(The US has a big current-account deficit, financed by an equally big capital-account surplus, but no “balance-of-payments deficit” in the usual meaning of that term.)

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As long as import taxes can’t be relied on, and until Congress is forced to take budget control seriously, the revenue shortfall will worsen and maximum fiscal uncertainty will prevail. As a result, Washington will have little or no “fiscal space” to respond to a big economic setback with tax cuts and extra public spending.

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How much disruption can the US economy, for all its amazing strengths, absorb? The Trump administration’s trade and budget policies were already gambling with financial disaster. Now, with the Iran strikes, the White House has just doubled down again.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Readed: Let me focus on the final paragraphs of this obituary.

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Mar 03, 2026

Editor: The reader might wonder at the fact that the Iranian Revovution was codified on February 1979 and it is March 3, 2026 : 43 years have elapsed: what might the reader think of the longevity of Iran, in historical terms? And that it is fighting a war against Israel and America, and doing so with dispatch!

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The rulers’ resilience is not just due to ideology. The regime is more complex than other Middle Eastern dictatorships and has more organisational depth. And it was always going to be a tall order to topple the regime from the air. But the extent of the appeal to the Shia tradition of martyrdom could yet be a factor in determining how long and how desperately the Islamic Republic keeps fighting and how many casualties Iran’s forces can endure. Around 1,300 Iranian soldiers have been killed in the first three days of the bombardment, according to a field report from a Kurdish human-rights group with a presence on the ground. Iranian officials acknowledge that their arsenal is no match for American and Israeli armoury. But ideology, they argue, can sustain a prolonged and asymmetrical war of attrition, just as in the 1980s when for eight years it drove hundreds of thousands to their deaths on the battlefield against Iraq.

An internet blackout makes public opinion hard to gauge. The loathing for Khamenei has surely not dissipated but those who once chanted death to the dictator are now indoors, sheltering from American and Israeli bombardment. Fear that their cities could be reduced to rubble like those of Gaza may also have swayed some against supporting the attackers. It has also galvanised ideologues, including the 6m Iranians Mr Mamouri estimates followed Khamenei’s fatwas, or religious opinions. And it has given a new lease of life to the regime’s anti-American and anti-Zionist slogans, of which most Iranians had tired.

Beyond Iran’s borders, the imagery of martyrdom resonates, too. Millions of Shias worldwide recognised Khamenei’s spiritual authority. Clerics with followers across the Shia world have declared a jihad to avenge his killing. In Karachi, in southern Pakistan, protesters attempting to storm the American consulate were killed; in Baghdad, in Iraq, crowds tried to breach security cordons near the American embassy. Iran’s allies abroad may be stirring. The Houthis in Yemen, which previously lobbed missiles at Israeli and Saudi Arabia and severely disrupted shipping in the Red Sea, remain poised. Hizbullah has resumed limited missile fire at Israel. Iraqi militias have struck near Erbil, the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, where American forces are based. Fears that a triumphant region-wide Sunni coalition—backed by America, Turkey and Israel—might again threaten Shia communities are prompting preparations for a broader sectarian conflagration.

The restraints that Khamenei’s “strategic patience” put on his hardliners are also gone. Since his death, Iran has attacked its Gulf neighbours with hundreds of missiles and drones. Iran-watchers predict they will ditch his fatwa against nuclear weaponisation, and seek to produce inter-continental missiles he opposed. The balance of power in Tehran has shifted accordingly. Before his killing, pragmatists had topped Iran-watchers’ lists of Khamenei’s likely successors. Hassan Khomeini, the reformist grandson of the republic’s founder, and Hassan Rouhani, the former president who negotiated the nuclear deal with America and other global powers in 2015, were front-runners. Both favoured a rapprochement with the West.

Instead, Alireza Arafi, the cleric elevated to the three-man committee that took power on Khamenei’s death, is an ideological hardliner. He was the head of al-Mustafa, the seminary in Qom that trains foreign students to export Iran’s revolution. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s praetorian guard, has also tightened its grip. It has replaced Iran’s border guards with its own forces in vulnerable provinces such as Kurdistan, and replaced its assassinated chief with Ahmad Vahidi, the first commander of the IRGC’s foreign arm, the Quds Force. He is accused of building up Hizbullah and orchestrating attacks against Jewish targets abroad. “He’s a very bad person, even worse than the one who was assassinated,” says Sima Shine, a former Mossad operative and Iran watcher.

Editor: This paragraph can be called by its actual name: ‘Wishful Thinking’ or better yet mendacity!

It is possible that, once the guns fall silent, Iran’s many resolutely secular-minded people will again assert themselves. A post-Khamenei—or even post-regime—Iran might yet seek reconciliation with the West. A pragmatic commander could emerge, intent on a smooth transition to salvage what remains of the republic’s considerable assets at home and in the Gulf principalities it has been bombing. Ethnic insurgencies on the periphery might fracture a defeated state. For now the war has postponed such reckonings. But by dying what his followers hail as a martyr’s death Khamenei may have prolonged the life of the system he built, even if he cannot save it.

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/03/03/why-ali-khamenei-may-have-welcomed-the-nature-of-his-death?utm_content=ed-picks-image-link-1&etear=nl_today_1&utm_campaign=r.the-economist-today&utm_medium=email.internal-newsletter.np&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=3/3/2026&utm_id=2166865

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Mar 03, 2026

Stocks Fall and Oil Prices Surge on Warning of Extended War

LIVE

March 3, 2026, 12:27 p.m. ET5m ago

U.S. Closes 2 Gulf Embassies; Israel Seizes Sites in Lebanon

• U.S. and Israel strike Iran security agencies that helped crush protests.
• U.S. closes embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and tells nonessential staff in other countries to leave.
• Israel claims more areas in southern Lebanon as the fight with Hezbollah escalates.

Analysis

Iran’s Strategy: Expand the War, Increase the Cost, Outlast Trump

Iran is aiming to draw out the conflict and broaden the fighting. That would force President Trump to risk more casualties and more political capital.

The Mood in Iran’s Capital: ‘Pray We Make It Through’

4 min read

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Mar 02, 2026

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Tom Friedman is the Political Twin of Bret Stephens!

To think clearly about Middle East wars, you need to hold multiple thoughts in your head at the same time. It’s a complicated, kaleidoscopic region where religion, oil, tribal politics and great power politics interweave in every major story. If you are looking for a black-and-white narrative, you might want to take up checkers. So, here are my four thoughts on Iran — at least for today.

First, I hope this effort to topple the clerical regime in Tehran succeeds. It is a regime that murders its people, destabilizes its neighbors and has destroyed a great civilization. There is no single event that would do more to put the whole Middle East on a more decent, inclusive trajectory than the replacement of Tehran’s Islamic regime with a leadership focused exclusively on enabling the people of Iran to realize their full potential with a real voice in their own future.

To think clearly about Middle East wars, you need to hold multiple thoughts in your head at the same time. It’s a complicated, kaleidoscopic region where religion, oil, tribal politics and great power politics interweave in every major story. If you are looking for a black-and-white narrative, you might want to take up checkers. So, here are my four thoughts on Iran — at least for today.

Second, this will not be easy, because this regime is deeply entrenched and is hardly going to be toppled from the air alone.

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Third, we must remember that the timing of the end of this war will be determined as much by the oil markets and the financial markets as by the military state of play inside Iran.

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Fourth, we must not let this war to bring democracy and the rule of law to Iran distract us from the threats to democracy and the rule of law posed by Trump in America and by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.

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Editor: Reader there are only 1795 words left in Tom Friedman’s political chatter at full gallop. Yet Friedmans final paragraphs, awash in well worn platitudes resembles Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, well past rot!

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It is way too early to predict how this war will impact two critical 2026 elections — one in Israel and one in the United States.

For Trump it is simple. He does not want to see the word “quagmire” in any headline with his name in it ahead of the midterms in November. As for Netanyahu, I could imagine him calling for early elections to use the downfall of the Iranian regime to keep himself in power. But victory over Iran could also complicate his politics. Netanyahu has notched short-term military defeats over Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran, but he has not translated a single one of them into long-term diplomatic or political gains. To do so would require him to agree to negotiate again with the Palestinians based on a framework of two states for two peoples.

The opportunity for Israel could be enormous: If the Islamic Republic of Iran is either toppled or defanged, I have little doubt that Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and maybe even Iraq would feel much more comfortable normalizing relations with Israel — on the condition that Netanyahu does not annex Gaza or the West Bank, but agrees instead to a plan for separation and a two-state solution. Would Netanyahu rise to that opportunity? Would Israeli voters punish him if he doesn’t?

But I get ahead of myself. I expect by Wednesday there will be at least three more points competing in my head to make sense of it all, because this is the most plastic, unpredictable moment in the Middle East since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Everything — and its opposite — is possible.

Newspaper Reader excumes the remaines of the Strausian Political Mythology, via Stephens toxic political refraction.

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Mar 01, 2026

Headline: Trump and Netanyahu Are Doing the Free World a Favor

Editor: Stephens applys both soothing and reviling tones to his critics

President Trump is being criticized from many quarters for his decision to join Israel in a war to topple the Iranian regime, which on Saturday yielded the killing of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The reasons vary.

It’s “a betrayal of the American people,” says Elizabeth Warren, who warns that the intervention risks dragging “yet another generation into a forever war.” It’s a betrayal of MAGA principles, says Marjorie Taylor Greene, who denounced Trump for putting “America last.” It’s unconstitutional, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, because it’s being conducted without authorization from Congress. It’s unnecessary, according to the writer Andrew Sullivan, who (quoting me, albeit misleadingly) thinks that Iran isn’t much of a threat and the war is being waged for Israel’s sake.

Editor: notice that Stephens becomes the victim of these toxic actors, its victimology is varian tones!

And so on. But one country where the United States and Israel are garnering broad support is the same country that’s being bombed.

Editor: What might a reader, listener, viewer make of the two reports not from Zionist Front Man Bret Stephens?

Dr Mohammad Marandi LIVE From Iran + Military Analyst Haim Bresheeth Zabner:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/vcFD_9A_5Dg?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

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Iran’s Missiles SMASH US Bases, Trump-Israeli War BACKFIRES | Elijah Magnier & Mohammad Marandi

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iSju36iLcr4?start=1670s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

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Editor: The next 696 words of Stephens self-serving political chatter, makes way for self-adutatory chatter, featuring himself as thinket, writer, expert, not to speak of his singular attachment to the Genocidal State of Israel!

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The United States is stronger when anti-American dictators have solid reasons to fear our wrath: It restores deterrence and, in doing so, makes diplomacy more effective. Israel and the Arab world are safer when Iran is weaker: Notice that, at least so far, Hezbollah, fearing for its position in Lebanon, has not joined the war against Israel. Finally, even if the regime doesn’t fall, it will be under heavy internal pressure to modify its behavior as a pragmatic concession to reality, much as Venezuela has under Delcy Rodríguez, its (hopefully) interim president.

That may not be the optimal outcome. But it’s considerably better than what came before.

Finally, the United States and Israel have taken considerable military and political risks to do the right thing. And that’s no small thing.

They have rid the world of an odious tyrant, and of several layers of his equally odious deputies. It’s odd that the same people who fault Trump for divorcing U.S. foreign policy from its democratic values now fault him for going to war for the sake of advancing democratic values. Still, millions of ordinary people around the world — not just in Tel Aviv or Tehran or Tehrangeles but also, perhaps, in Taipei and Tallinn — will notice that the United States, for its many warts, still stands for freedom.

My column has never been shy about denouncing either Trump or Netanyahu. It won’t be shy to criticize them in the future. But on Saturday this much-maligned duo did the free world a courageous and historic favor. It will be remembered long after the petulant criticism dies down.

Newspaper Reader.

Old Socialist on Ferguson and South Park!

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Mar 01, 2026

Editor: Mr. Fergusons latest fore into Pop Culture: compare and contrast with this collection of Fergusons commetaries that follow this The Free Press chatter! ‘South Park’ is the measure of an utterly re-imagined Ferguson? A collection of those highbrow commetaries will follow!

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On the Inconvience Of History: the case of Niall Ferguson from May 08, 2013!

Posted on March 18, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Newspaper Reader: A case of bad judgement or someting else? stephenkmacksd.com/ Mar 16, 2025 The historian Niall Ferguson has denied being an “gay-basher”, claiming that his friendship with the prominent homosexual blogger Andrew Sullivan showed that he could not be … Continue reading →

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On the Inconvience Of History: the case of Niall Ferguson from May 08, 2013!

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Niall Ferguson opines: ‘Biden Can’t Pay His Way Out of Fighting Cold War II’

Posted on May 22, 2024 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer comments. The regular reader of Mr. Niall Ferguson’s cumbersome , bloated historical panoramas, the word count in this instance is 2596 -The Straussian method is to drown the reader in verbiage, ideas, actors, as a strategy to make … Continue reading →

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Niall Ferguson opines: ‘Biden Can’t Pay His Way Out of Fighting Cold War II’

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Katy Balls interviews Niall Ferguson & Freddy Gray: They discuss the Trump Conundrum, on YouTube of May 11, 2023

Posted on June 16, 2023 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer comments. This discussion begins at the 01:20 point and ends before the 21:18 point. Katy Balls asks questions of her two guests Ferguson and Grey act the parts of Political Technocrats, relying on ‘Polling Data’ as a reliable source- … Continue reading →

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Katy Balls interviews Niall Ferguson & Freddy Gray: They discuss the Trump Conundrum, on YouTube of May 11, 2023

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Niall Ferguson in three keys. Political Skeptic reads the irrepressible ‘expert’ !

Posted on May 11, 2021 by stephenkmacksd

In the May 7, 2021 edition of the the TLS, Charles King’s reviews Niall Ferguson’s new book ‘Doom: The politics of catastrophe’. Some revelatory excerpts: … At its best, Doom is a vade mecum to misery. Whatever readers are facing … Continue reading →

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Niall Ferguson in three keys. Political Skeptic reads the irrepressible ‘expert’ !

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The American Election 2020, as refracted through the Financial Times Editorial Board, Edward Luce & an assist from Niall Ferguson . Political Observer comments

Posted on November 4, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

I woke up at 4:30 AM PST, this morning, and checked twitter for the latest Election News, not knowing what to expect, other than bad news. Now at the breakfast table, I’ve read first the Editorial Board of The Financial … Continue reading →

The American Election 2020, as refracted through the Financial Times Editorial Board, Edward Luce & an assist from Niall Ferguson . Political Observer comments

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Neo-Con Niall Ferguson on the Crisis in California: Fires, One Party Rule, ‘Decadence/Decline’. Political Skeptic comments

Posted on September 22, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

The reader can only wonder at Mr. Ferguson’s – what reads like nostalgia for George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, of Prop 87? Oh! sorry he is just a late arrival to California, 2016, in its advanced state of ‘Decadence/Decay’ the … Continue reading →

Neo-Con Niall Ferguson on the Crisis in California: Fires, One Party Rule, ‘Decadence/Decline’. Political Skeptic comments

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Niall Ferguson on The Pandemic & other pressing questions. Political Observer comments

Posted on June 22, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

I came here from The Financial Times. Just looking at Gideon Rachman’s latest essay, made me a bit queasy: Headline: India picks a side in the new cold war Sub-headline: It is folly for China to drive its rival into … Continue reading →

Niall Ferguson on The Pandemic & other pressing questions. Political Observer comments

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Niall Ferguson takes the measure of the collapsing American Neo-Liberal State. Political Observer comments

Posted on June 8, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Mr. Ferguson left the august Times ? ‘He is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm.’ Mr. Ferguson is another peddler, with his vaunted ‘expertise’ like … Continue reading →

Niall Ferguson takes the measure of the collapsing American Neo-Liberal State. Political Observer comments

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Niall Ferguson & Gideon Rachman on ‘Sleepy Joe’. Political Observer comments

Posted on March 9, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

In his column of Sunday March 8, 2020, Niall Ferguson: Headline: Sleepy Joe Biden has given Donald Trump a wake-up call Sub-headline: Despite his senior moments, the comeback codger has a real shot I know Joe Biden. Not well, but … Continue reading →

Niall Ferguson & Gideon Rachman on ‘Sleepy Joe’. Political Observer comments

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Niall Ferguson & Edward Luce on Michael Bloomberg. Old Socialist comments

Posted on February 24, 2020 by stephenkmacksd

Compare Mr. Luce’s ‘political wisdom’, or should it be properly named a collection of reportorial, rhetorical cliches, a product of lazy thinking, that could have been written in haste? to that of Niall Ferguson’s essay of Sunday 23, 2020: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2020-02-23/comment/michael-bloomberg-leads-in-cash-but-trails-in-charisma-hvjd33zxm … Continue reading →

Niall Ferguson & Edward Luce on Michael Bloomberg. Old Socialist comments

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Old Socialist.

Newspaper Reader.

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Mar 01, 2026

Editor: A selection from Bret Stephens toxic commentary:

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It’s a bad theory. To listen to the regime’s rhetoric is to be reminded of the Black Knight of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” who loses limb after limb while insisting he’s still winning. The regime has lost much of its nuclear infrastructure; watched its regional proxies be overthrown, decimated and incapacitated; presided over the implosion of its economy; and lost whatever domestic and international legitimacy remained to it.

No wonder protests in Iran have resumed, this time among university students who are bravely undaunted by the terrifying risk. Their protests seem connected to the 40-day memorials for the victims of last month’s massacres. But it’s not a stretch to assume those protests are also a signal to Trump that his promise last month to Iranians that “help is on its way” hasn’t been forgotten, and that ordinary Iranians are prepared to join the fight for their own liberation.

If so, then there is at least a reasonable chance that a sustained military operation that not only further degrades the regime’s nuclear, missile and military capabilities — a desirable outcome in its own right — but also targets its apparatus of domestic repression could embolden the type of sustained mass protests that could finally bring the regime down. Even more so if the leaders who give the orders, including the supreme leader and his circle, are not immune from attack.

For all of its willfulness and the evil it has wreaked over 47 years, the regime does not stand 10 feet tall. It nearly fell during the 2009 Green Movement against that year’s fraudulent elections. It nearly fell again in 2022 during the Women, Life, Freedom protests.

The difference on those occasions was the absence of external military support. Donald Trump now has a unique opportunity to provide it. Despite the risk that military strikes entail, the bigger risk, in the judgment of history, would be to fail to take it.

Editor: Bret Stephens is a Zionist Loyalist, his time from 2002 to 2004, as editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post demostrates his political loyelties? Or can that be construed as an instance of ‘Anti-Semitism’ the fallback position of a political opportunist ? Yet with no experience of war, but an utter penchent for sending others to fight his chosen battles: The Neo-Consevative calling card is strewn with the blood of others!

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The New Your Times of March 1, 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET:

A Tyrant Falls. Dangerous Uncertainty Begins.

Editor : The New York Times like it’s hireling Stephens relpay the Old Cold War platitudes that are replayed again and again: Vietnam, The Iraq War, The War in Afghanistan.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei governed Iran with the vigilance and brutality of an autocrat convinced that his own people and the world’s superpower sought to unseat him — and in the end, they did. With President Trump’s announcement that Ayatollah Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader, was killed in joint American and Israeli airstrikes on Saturday, his reign has come to a close, cementing a lost half-century for his nation. As the Middle East confronts an unpredictable void, let us be clear: No one should mourn the death of a dictator who spent decades inflicting misery and bloodshed.

Ascending to power in 1989, Ayatollah Khamenei organized his existence around an obsession with the West. As a ruler, he squelched dissent, labeling demands for reforms as Western “sedition,” and expanded the intelligence apparatus of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to repress his own people. He impoverished his citizens to bankroll foreign interventions and a nuclear program that brought Iran only isolation. When faced with citizens’ protests, he answered with force, including the slaughter of thousands earlier this year. Abroad, his legacy is one of destabilization, having constructed a so-called axis of resistance across Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Editor: The first paragraps of the NYT Opinion The Editorial Board

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Editor: The final paragraps of this ‘Editorial’ again repeats the perenial tropes of American Hegemony/Imperiaism!

The president still has not offered an explanation for why this campaign will end any better than the 21st-century regime change efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan did. Those wars also toppled governments. Yet their disappointing, bloody legacies left Americans understandably skeptical of open-ended military operations.

Amid the chaos this strike will cause in Iran, Americans should brace for the possibility of retaliation. True, Iran has failed to exact almost any meaningful damage on the United States in recent years, and its military has been degraded. But it maintains an arsenal of missiles capable of overwhelming defense systems, and this weekend it hit a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, among other targets in the region. Iran may also be capable of launching cyberattacks and proxy strikes against American forces and allies.

The bigger risks may lie in the future. The president of the United States has just helped assassinate a foreign leader without the approval of Congress, the support of most allies or a plan for the future. History suggests that unilateral American involvement along these lines often has consequences that are not immediately apparent. When American officials helped orchestrate the 1953 coup, they surely did not imagine that they were planting the seeds for the Middle East’s most radical anti-American government.

Managing the future in Iran will require thoughtfulness, attention and international cooperation. We urge Mr. Trump to work with Congress, but at this point we have little expectation that he will. Given this reality, Congress should play a leadership role; lawmakers from both parties are right to demand briefings and force a debate on war powers to ensure the president is constrained and held accountable.

Finally, the United States cannot navigate the uncertainty alone. The Trump administration, which has frequently treated our allies with scorn, should bring international partners into the fold, too. Confronting a post-Khamenei Iran requires strategic clarity and a global coalition, not isolated decision-making.

For decades, the Iranian people have sacrificed greatly for the prospect of a more open society. After enduring years of autocracy and international isolation, they deserve the opportunity to chart a freer, more stable future.

Editor: The reader must wonder at the inabilitiy of the these self-presented ‘experts’ who across time have caused more human suffering : Vietnam, The Iraq War, The War in Afghanistan. Yet wisdom wedded to self-congatulation is the vocabulary of political bankruptcy!

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