Political Observer offers the last three paragraphs of Brook’s self-congratulatory chatter, & his genuflection to Ronald Reagan, that I have highlighted, and his swipe against Gavin Newsom!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 28, 2025

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A survey this year sponsored by the Reagan Institute found that 83 percent of Americans believe America should stand up for human rights and democracy around the world. A large majority believe that America should take the lead in international events, including 69 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans.

A study done by Seamus A. Power, Richard A. Schweder and others and published this year in the journal Ethos, found that Americans still love diversity. Two-thirds of them want a more ethnically and racially diverse nation than exists even now. A majority of white Christians have a multicultural conception of America. Only a tiny percentage believe in the “great replacement: theory. Only 1.1 percent believe that America should be ethnically and racially homogenous.

Some Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California seem to think they can win the White House by behaving more like Trump, by thinking more like Trump, by adopting that dark American carnage vibe. This strikes me as political lunacy. Look at history. Americans lost faith in themselves in the 1970s, after the failures of the Great Society, the retreat from Vietnam, the corruption of Watergate, the impotent presidency of Jimmy Carter, the rising crime and divorce rates, the awful stagflation, the decay of our largest cities. But was this loss of faith permanent? No, Americans elected Ronald Reagan president in 1980. They elected optimism, patriotism and hope. There is still, deep inside the nation’s core, a little engine that knows no rest.

Political Observer.

https://stephenkmacksd.com/2016/02/18/at-the-economist-a-scalia-obituary-a-comment-by-political-reporter/

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 27, 2025

11/27/2025

Who can forget the utterly bumptious Antonin Scalia ?

Stephen K. Mack

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There is no doubt that the author of this obituary is schooled in the Scalia patois, in fact she/he is adept at sounding the notes of witless bulling insult that is the hallmark of that Scalia style!
But was Scalia an ‘Originalist’ Or as Scalia described himself as a ‘faint-hearted originalist’? Here is a partial answer provided by Bruce Allen Murphy,the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

‘When I teach about the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion at Lafayette College, which used to occupy a routine pair of classes, I now wheel into the classroom a large white board that will occupy us for weeks, filled with all of the exceptions that the Court has created here restoring, in piecemeal fashion, the pre-Scalia, 1990 decision, world. I explain what has become the “Swiss Cheesing” of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, allowing, among others, for claims to be considered for exceptions for federal prisoners and others being held in government institutions, for a religious group in Hialeah, Florida seeking to sacrifice animals in religious ceremonies, and for a small religious group seeking to drink ceremonial hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon. The string of exceptions to Scalia’s Smith rule has created so many holes that there is almost no cheese left. After the Hobby Lobby decision, I will have to make one more change to the top of my board, one which risks doubling the number of exceptions, adding next to the words “person’s Free Exercise of Religion rights,” the phrase “and closely-held corporations’ religious rights” Even though the majority in Hobby Lobby has further limited Scalia’s Smith case holding, since that result comports with his pro-religious accommodation, pro-corporation constitutional rights, viewpoint, he silently votes with them. While Scalia likes to say in his public speeches that his version of the Constitution is “Dead. Dead. Dead,” once more his reading of Founding era history to construct his originalist interpretation of the Constitution is very much an evolving work in progress.’- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156300#sthash.BWyZ4mgK.dpuf

The idea of ‘Originalism’ and or its renaissance is connected to Brown v. Board I &II as made plain in John Dean’s book The Rehnquest Choice:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rehnquist-Choice-Appointment-Redefined/dp/0743233204

Confirmed by The Partisan by John A. Jenkins:

http://www.johnajenkins.com/BookpageThePartisan.html

Also read Joan Biskupic’s barley disguised hagiography American Original:

http://us.macmillan.com/americanoriginal/joanbiskupic

Here is a report from Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen on Justice Scalia’s final Supreme Court rant, which is nothing less that reprehensible:

‘Critics of affirmative action, (including the court’s only black justice, Clarence Thomas,) have long argued that the policy backfires on black students, claiming that placing unprepared students in elite academic settings is setting them up for failure. Still, Scalia drew “muted gasps in the courtroom” for his indelicate comments at the end of oral argument, according to The New York Times. From the transcript:

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.

I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer. Maybe it ought to have fewer.

Bloggier outlets like the Hill reported that Scalia “surprised” the court, while Mother Jones tersely remarked that they would “really be looking forward to his opinion in the case.”

One could defend Scalia by pointing out that justices often float devil’s advocate–type statements during an oral argument in order to test the lawyer’s arguments, and that the only opinion that matters is the one they eventually write down. But even Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog, an elite law reporter who knows a thing or two about not jumping the gun when analyzing the court, found Scalia’s statement “quite clumsy.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/scalia-affirmative-action-blacks-admission

Is this encomium to the Originalist Eminence a surprise? Which doesn’t quite eschew substance, but relies on the argot of Scalia, which had its origin, or at least paid homage to the Hollywood Gangster films of the 1930’s.

Political Reporter

http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21693161-originalist-chief-devout-and-colourful-end-was-79-obituary-antonin-scalia

My reply to guest-lawelsj

Political Observer wonders: When will the shit hit the fan?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 27, 2025

https://www.ft.com/

Newspaper Reader

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 27, 2025

In Abigail Green’s review of Mark Mazower’s ‘On Antisemitism A word in history’ of November 28, 2025 not one mention of The Gaza Genocide, should not surprise the reagular reader of the ‘Times Newspaper’ in its various iterations: Reader recall the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, and The Economists that engaged in in like-mimded pictorial defamation:

Leaders | Britain’s Labour Party

Backwards, comrades!

Jeremy Corbyn is leading Britain’s left into a political timewarp. Some old ideological battles must be re-fought

Sep 19th 2015|5 min read

Editor: Reader note the use of the IHRA as the cudgel of choice, while the Genocide In Gaza continues unabated!

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Inevitably, Mazower’s account of this situation is not neutral. It was, he writes, increasingly clear to him “that the constant invocation of antisemitism [against those protesting for Palestinian rights] needed to be understood as a refusal to acknowledge other things … that is to say, the existence of a suffering Palestinian people and their desire for freedom”. I want to let that stand; it may well be true, just as it may be true that those concerned with the “weaponization” of antisemitism refuse to acknowledge the ways in which the Palestinian movement is acting as a conduit for antisemitism into “our” society, however just its core aspirations. After all, the IHRA and the Jerusalem Declaration both agree that anti-Zionism is sometimes a form of antisemitism.

To publish such a book at this particular juncture is inevitably to intervene in a highly charged political debate. On Antisemitism is, the back cover tells us, “a vitally important attempt to draw a line that must be drawn”. Unlike Mark Mazower, whose scholarship I admire, I have not chosen to intervene in that debate, preferring instead to review his book as a work of history, which is what it purports to be. Nevertheless, I want to conclude by querying the implicit “we” that runs through its entire enterprise. “What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism?”, it asks. To answer that question in today’s global world, “we” need to consider a broad range of agents and publics. The narrative provided here does centre Jewish voices, but it consistently privileges European, American and (in Israel) Ashkenazi players and perspectives over those of others.

Newspaper Reader.

Ricky Hale of Council Estate Media, answers your many pressing questions!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 27, 2025

Israel seems strangely reluctant for the truth about Jeffrey Epstein to come out…

Ricky Hale and Council Estate Media

Nov 27

Council Estate Media

Obviously, we all know it’s a conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent running a honeypot to blackmail our politicians, but weirdly, it turns out Epstein was behaving exactly like a Mossad agent. Personally, I can’t work out why that might be…

We now know that Epstein brokered deals for Israeli intelligence, such as “security agreements” with Côte d’Ivoire and Mongolia to turn them into mass surveillance states. The goal was to build a “cyber weapons empire” for Israel with the help of the Rothschild Group.

You would hope that similar could not possibly happen in the UK, but consider how the government is attacking civil liberties to protect Israel, how peaceful protesters are treated as terrorists, how we are losing the right to trial by jury, how we need ID to access websites, and how digital ID is coming, thanks to a push from Zionists such as Larry Ellison.

Obviously, Epstein is not behind any of this (unless he’s still alive somewhere), but that doesn’t mean the same dark forces are not at play. The intelligence agency behind a paedophile ring is still pulling the strings…

It seems not a day goes by when we are not learning more about Epstein’s connections to Israel. For example, the outstanding Drop Site News has revealed that Epstein worked with lawyer Alan Dershowitz back in the 2000s to attack academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. The pair had co-authored a paper that was published by Harvard Kennedy School that was titled: “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

As you all know, we are supposed to pretend the Israel lobby doesn’t exist, even while AIPAC hosts events, bragging about how it shapes US policy. However, Mearsheimer and Walt somehow got an academic paper published that breaks down exactly how the Israel lobby influences US policy towards the Middle East. Honestly, I’m surprised they weren’t jailed or suicided for this.

Drop Site News describes the paper as follows:

The paper, which ran in the London Review of Books and became the basis for a book published the following year, was an unflinching analysis of the impact of pro-Israel advocacy and lobbying groups on the U.S. political system, and the role of organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in shaping U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East.

While the paper was entirely factual, the details were largely ignored by the media, and Mearsheimer and Walt were smeared as antisemites for writing it. The Atlantic commissioned the piece then paid Mearsheimer and Walt a $10,000 “kill fee” when the publication backed out due to “sensitivity concerns”. Note how it’s always insensitive to tell the truth about Israel…

The Anti-Defamation League called the paper an “anti-Jewish screed”, which is interesting because when evidence emerges of other countries, such as Russia or China, meddling in western politics, no one is accused of racism. It’s almost like we have a massive double-standard…

The evidence has revealed that Epstein used his extensive social networks to push talking points, smearing Mearsheimer and Walt. That evidence comes in the form of a trove of emails obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets. The email cache has been authenticated by Bloomberg via cryptographic verification.

The emails show that Epstein was the recipient of drafts of an attack piece written by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, titled: “Debunking the Newest – and Oldest – Jewish Conspiracy.” The email chain confirms that Epstein distributed the piece for Dershowitz. Yes, it looks like the Israel lobby conspired to… debunk the conspiracy theory of the Israel lobby. What do you even say?

Dershowitz’s ties to Epstein run much deeper than the attack piece, as he represented Epstein as a lawyer. In 2005, a 14-year-old girl reported to police that she had been sexually assaulted at Epstein’s mansion. Epstein hired a private investigator to look into the girl and sent information to Dershowitz to undermine her testimony.

In the correspondence, Epstein accused the girl of being sexually active and using drugs, and he attacked the character of her family members. Epstein later pleaded guilty to watered down charges and served 13 months in prison where he was bizarrely allowed out for 12 hours per day, six days per week.

Consider that a man, who later became a convicted sex offender, was conspiring to ruin the careers of two academics for being critical of Israel. In doing so, he inadvertently proved the claims of Mearsheimer and Walt to be correct.

Now consider how the powerful people, who line up to discredit figures like Mearsheimer and Walt, have been so determined to protect Epstein’s clients. Seems strange that they would choose that hill to die on, doesn’t it?

If you’ve ever wondered what Epstein was up to, I’m gonna use my psychic powers to suggest that his contacts in the media and political circles were so willing to push Zionist propaganda, precisely because most of them visited his rape mansions.

Of course, Epstein’s influence also came from his considerable wealth so let’s not discount the possibility of bribery. For example, Epstein was considered an influential figure at Harvard, despite holding no official role, because he donated $9 million over a ten-year period. Why should anyone have influence over a university, simply because they have deep pockets? Can you see how western governments and institutions can be so easily captured by foreign state actors?

Epstein had strong ties to Israeli politicians such as former prime minister Ehud Barak, which was proven through hacked emails released by Palestinian group Handela. Epstein met with CIA Director William Burns and Barack Obama’s top lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler dozens of times. An Israeli spy lived for weeks in one of his mansions in Manhattan.

…

Council Estate Media

Political Cynic on the final paragraphs of Stephens self-serving Thanksgiving Meditation.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 26, 2025

Editor: Mr. Stephens is given to playing many roles, and all of them not just self-serving, but execises in a reliable moral/political mendacity, and in this case heavely garnished with historical/political kitsch!

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That’s the genius of the holiday. Nobody — except your uncle — likes to talk about politics at the Thanksgiving table. Nobody should need to, either, because the occasion itself is inherently political. It’s an opportunity for families and friends and, by extension, communities, states and the country itself, to have a national reset. It’s when we remember that we can still be capable of setting everyday arguments aside, of recalling common bonds, of indulging a soft patriotism that’s also potent because it’s so unobjectionable. Thanksgiving, far more than the star-spangled Fourth of July, is what makes us Americans all over again.

That was also the spirit of the Gettysburg Address, another purported act of remembrance of the dead that is, in fact, an opportunity for rededication by the living — a “new birth of freedom.” The question for successive generations of Americans is: What kind of freedom should it be?

For Lincoln, the new birth meant saving government of, by, and for the people, and a nation where all are equal. For Hale, it meant extending the boundaries of opportunity for women. For Thomas Edison, it was about advancing the reach of science: In 1877, just 14 years after the first national Thanksgiving and while Hale was still alive, he read “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for the first-ever phonograph recording.

Down the generations, what we can most give thanks for isn’t just abundance. It’s the abundance of freedom, created by people for whom possibility and renewal, even in a world of bitterness, was theirs — and ours — to seize.

Political Cynic.

Newspaper Reader almost wonders!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 26, 2025

https://www.ft.com/?&segmentId=545558d1-28bd-7e3b-d0b7-30af6ea2eb94&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20859060617&gbraid=0AAAAAC_ArBtMszNrUhydQqIYPAJU2zRaU&gclid=CjwKCAiA55rJBhByEiwAFkY1QDWdQ3jdZxb-MqrLwq_5VL1OoSGW5vGj7abKCv8Y2eP9-nFJl0j_uBoCkDIQAvD_BwE

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 25, 2025

Editor: Do not miss Peter L. Winkler essay on Philip Wylie’s ‘Generation of Vipers’ it is truly worth your time and attention!

The Man Who Hated Moms: Looking Back on Philip Wylie’s “Generation of Vipers”

Wylie’s moms were middle-aged and menopausal Cinderellas, hirsute and devoid of sex appeal.

By Peter L. WinklerAugust 13, 2021

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-man-who-hated-moms-looking-back-on-philip-wylies-generation-of-vipers/

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Jonathan Haidt: The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation

I asked ChatGPT how it would destroy America’s youth. Its answers were unsettling—and all too familiar.

The Free Press

Jonathan Haidt: The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation

Earlier this year, someone started a viral trend of asking ChatGPT this question: If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation, without them even knowing it…

Read more

3 hours ago · 195 likes · 131 comments · Jonathan Haidt

Editor: What actual writer/thinker would resort to the notion that the Devil is an active presence in the life of Americans or ‘Others’ ? The title of Haidt book is laced with respectable Academic Chatter and features The Devil and ChatGPT, as reliable source of viable information about the possible Future of American Youth? Some of us might conger up the Orson Wells movie classic of ‘Black Magic’as a kind of enterainment that hides what Haidt embraces?

Editor : Haidt’s confession featuring ‘Our Better Angels’ kitch!

I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. Our “better angels” call us upward and out of our daily concerns.

Editor: In the rest of this essay, I reprint Chat’s seven-step plan, in italics, followed by my own commentary.

1. Erode Attention and Presence

2. Confuse Identity and Purpose

3. Flood Them with Information, Starve Them of Wisdom

4. Replace Real Relationships with Simulacra

5. Normalize Hedonism, Pathologize Discipline

6. Undermine Trust Across Generations

7. Make Everything a Marketplace

Editor: Mr. Haidt missed the toxic assent of Neo-Liberalism inagurated by Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and their epigones across The West!

Conclusion: Learning from the Red Team

Editor: The final paragraphs of Haights essay crowned with ‘We can save future generations from spiritual devastation’ reeks of a Billy Graham crusade!

When enacted together, these four norms roll back the phone-based childhood and give children time and opportunities to play, develop friendships, read books, grow a stable identity, and learn to pay sustained attention.

We can save future generations from spiritual devastation. We can bring down those high rates of agreement that “life often feels meaningless.” We can—and must—defeat the Devil and reclaim childhood in the real world.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 25, 2025

Is the world at “peak Trump”? John Bolton on American foreign policy

Tuesday Nov 25th, 10am PST · 45 min

Newspaper Reader.

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Note: can the reader hope for a transcript ?

Newspaper Reader: Mr. Snyder willfully forgets that some of his readers have followed the ‘Ukrain Crises’ since February 2014!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 24, 2025

Russian Unreality and American Weakness

Notes from a bizarre moment of diplomatic history

Timothy Snyder

Nov 24

Editor: Robert Silvers, of the New York Review of Books, provided space for Timothy Snyder’s hysteria mongering about Putin’s War against Ukraine that is reaching it’s toxic end stage: Silvers and Snyder were/are the not quite vestages of a ‘Cold War’ that was rekindled by Bush The Younger’s ‘War Against Terror’? Not quite proximate enough? Snyder opening paragarphs are revelatory of his ‘History Made To Measure’!

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The history of diplomacy is full of strangeness. Touch the surface of the dusty books and peculiar characters spring forth to demand that their tales be heard. And yet the American diplomacy of the past few days, I believe, will stand out as something peculiarly gruesome — not simply incompetent, but openly courting national and global catastrophe.

A document suddenly appeared a few days ago under the inapplicable (and too-often repeated) heading of “peace plan” regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war. It would be more accurately described as a plan to intensify the war to the profit of a few Russians and Americans. It seems to have produced entirely or mostly by Russians, and then leaked by a Russian negotiator to an American outlet. It was then claimed by a fraction within the White House, endorsed (sight unseen) by the president of the United States, who insisted (at least at first) that Ukraine had to accept it.

Since then there have been many denials, denials of denials, and obfuscations. The scandal will perhaps clarify problems of process in Washington. It is not that we — America — are trying to sell out Ukraine. American public opinion is favorable to Ukraine. Republican voters support Ukraine. A majority in Congress supports Ukraine. It is rather that a few Russians and a few Americans have the ability to define as a “peace plan” what is essentially the furtherance of personal economic interests combined with a strengthening of Russia’s capacity for warfighting and a weakening of Ukraine’s. Along the way, it contradicts every major principle of international law and furthers a world dominated by China and its Russian ally.

This suggests the absence of American statecraft.

It looks a lot like (details below) that Russians are seeking to bribe Americans to allow Russia to win a war it would otherwise lose. Having allowed Russians in this instance to design our policy, we then rely on our European and Ukrainian allies to serve as a check on us. We (or rather some powerful Americans) scold them for doing what they have to do, not only in their own interests but in ours and in the interest of avoiding general disaster. A

So much for procedure.

This document that begins in a Russian unreality. Rather than summarizing what has actually happened, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the authors work instead to communicate the implicit premises that the war was caused by the West, and that Ukraine is not in fact a real country. Its total silence on the basic facts of the Russian invasion leads to the conclusion that Russia should be celebrated and rewarded — as should specific American individuals.

…

Editor: In a mere 28 paragraphs Snyder exhausts the readers patience! Reader here is a reminder of the Bad Actors in the beginning of the Ukraine Coup melodrama of 2014!

Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call

7 February 2014

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

An apparently bugged phone conversation in which a senior US diplomat disparages the EU over the Ukraine crisis has been posted online. The alleged conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared on YouTube, external on Thursday. It is not clearly when the alleged conversation took place.

Here is a transcript, with analysis by BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus:

Warning: This transcript contains swearing.

Voice thought to be Nuland’s: What do you think?

• Jonathan Marcus: At the outset it should be clear that this is a fragment of what may well be a larger phone conversation. But the US has not denied its veracity and has been quick to point a finger at the Russian authorities for being behind its interception and leak.

Voice thought to be Pyatt’s: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. Especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister and you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.

• Jonathan Marcus: The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that “ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future”. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. Russian spokesmen have insisted that the US is meddling in Ukraine’s affairs – no more than Moscow, the cynic might say – but Washington clearly has its own game-plan. The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow’s message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.

Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Nuland: My understanding from that call – but you tell me – was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a… three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it?

Pyatt: No. I think… I mean that’s what he proposed but I think, just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko has been the top dog, he’s going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point, so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

Nuland: OK… one more wrinkle for you Geoff. [A click can be heard] I can’t remember if I told you this, or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?

• Jonathan Marcus: An intriguing insight into the foreign policy process with work going on at a number of levels: Various officials attempting to marshal the Ukrainian opposition; efforts to get the UN to play an active role in bolstering a deal; and (as you can see below) the big guns waiting in the wings – US Vice-President Joe Biden clearly being lined up to give private words of encouragement at the appropriate moment.

Pyatt: Yeah I saw that.

Nuland: OK. He’s now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

• Jonathan Marcus: Not for the first time in an international crisis, the US expresses frustration at the EU’s efforts. Washington and Brussels have not been completely in step during the Ukraine crisis. The EU is divided and to some extent hesitant about picking a fight with Moscow. It certainly cannot win a short-term battle for Ukraine’s affections with Moscow – it just does not have the cash inducements available. The EU has sought to play a longer game; banking on its attraction over time. But the US clearly is determined to take a much more activist role.

Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I’m still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych (garbled) that. In the meantime there’s a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I’m sure there’s a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden’s willing.

Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.

• Jonathan Marcus: Overall this is a damaging episode between Washington and Moscow. Nobody really emerges with any credit. The US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on. There is some embarrassment too for the Americans given the ease with which their communications were hacked. But is the interception and leaking of communications really the way Russia wants to conduct its foreign policy ? Goodness – after Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and the like could the Russian government be joining the radical apostles of open government? I doubt it. Though given some of the comments from Vladimir Putin’s adviser on Ukraine Sergei Glazyev – for example his interview with the Kommersant-Ukraine newspaper the other day – you don’t need your own listening station to be clear about Russia’s intentions. Russia he said “must interfere in Ukraine” and the authorities there should use force against the demonstrators.

Newspaper Reader.