StephenKMackSD's Blog

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Apr 17, 2026

‘Trial by jury in Britain is a cornerstone of the legal tradition, evolving over 800 years from the 12th-century reforms of Henry II and the 1215 Magna Carta. Originally, jurors were witnesses tasked with reporting local crimes, later shifting to impartial arbiters of fact. Today, it remains a cornerstone for serious criminal cases.’

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The Growth of Trial by Jury in England

J. E. R. Stephens

Harvard Law Review, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Oct. 26, 1896), pp. 150-160 (11 pages)

https://doi.org/10.2307/1321755•https://www.jstor.org/stable/1321755

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Starmer faces rebellion over plan to cut jury trials

18 December 2025

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Harry Farley,Political correspondentandSam Francis,Political reporter

Nearly 40 Labour MPs have warned the prime minister they are not prepared to support proposals to limit jury trials in England and Wales.

In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, MPs largely from the left of the party said restricting juries to major offences carrying three-year terms was “madness and will cause more problems than it solves”.

Former shadow attorney general Karl Turner, who organised the letter, said he will vote against Labour for the first time since Sir Keir took charge, branding the plans “simply unworkable”.

The government insisted it would go ahead with the plans, adding they were needed to stop victims “waiting years for justice” amid unprecedented delays in the court system.

Sir Keir’s spokesman said latest official figures published on Friday detailing a record 79,619 backlog in crown court cases showed that “merely tinkering at the edges is simply not enough”.

Speaking earlier to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Turner said the changes were “unjust” and the “right to be heard before a tribunal of their own people” had “existed for something like 800 years”.

“It won’t work and I’m afraid the government are going to have to realise that and change their tune,” he said.

In the letter 39 MPs suggest a number of other ways to reduce the courts backlog, including increasing sitting days, hiring more barristers as part-time judges called Recorders and asking the Crown Prosecution Service to consider bringing some cases in the backlog on a lower charge.

While not enough to overturn the government’s 148 seat majority, the letter represents a step up in Labour opposition to the government’s plans.

Those who signed the letter include senior figures such as Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary who is currently suspended from Labour, leading member of the Tribune group of Labour Vicky Foxcroft and Dan Carden, who leads the Blue Labour group of backbenchers.

‘Total system collapse’

Justice Secretary David Lammy, announced the measure on 3 December.

It scraps jury trials in England and Wales for crimes that carry a likely sentence of less than three years, removing the right for defendants to ask for a jury trial where a case can be dealt with by either magistrates or a new form of judge-only Crown Court.

Volunteer community magistrates, who deal with the majority of all criminal cases, will take on more work and new “swift courts” will be set up.

Lammy told MPs the new system would get cases dealt with a fifth faster than jury trials.

He added that it was necessary as current projections have Crown Court case loads reaching 100,000 by 2028.

This means that a suspect being charged with an offence today may not reach trial until 2030. Among the impacts of this are that six out of 10 victims of rape are said to be withdrawing from prosecutions because of delays.

The reforms are based on a review by former High-Court judge Sir Brian Leveson – which suggested ending jury trial for most crimes attracting sentences of up to five years and diverting offences to a new intermediate court called the Crown Court bench division.

In July of this year, Sir Brian said “fundamental” reforms were needed to “reduce the risk of total system collapse”. His proposals also included more out-of-court settlements like cautions.

There are around 1.3 million prosecutions in England and Wales every year, and 10% of those cases go before a Crown Court. Of those, three out of 10 result in trials.

Turner said that while Sir Brian was “eminent”, as a High Court judge he had not been in a criminal Crown Court for a long time.

“Speak to the men and women at the criminal bar they were there every single day of the week and they will identify the problem is not juries,” said Turner, a former criminal barrister.

Instead closed courts and late prisoner deliveries were behind the backlog, he said.

Speaking to broadcasters on Friday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Labour ministers were “not being imaginative enough” on how to clear the backlog, arguing that courts should sit for longer hours instead.

“Scrapping jury trials is just one extra step that takes away freedoms and liberties. Judges don’t always get it right,” she added.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93w771g14go

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader comments.

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Apr 15, 2026

Editor: The final paradraphs of Stephens propganda: don’t name it a blitz, but a whimper of chatter box with zero experience of war: but was trained buy The Jerusalem Post! The reader grows weary, yet Stephens in the final paragraph reaches for the political shopworn as his flaccid denouement!

The principle is simple: Israel will get out of Lebanon the moment Iran gets out of Lebanon. Failing that, the United States should give Israel a green light to continue degrading Hezbollah’s capabilities until it can no longer initiate wars against Israel, as the group did in 2006, 2023 and again this year. If other states, particularly France as Lebanon’s former colonial power, object to this, they can always volunteer to send their own troops to enforce the U.N. Security Council resolution that Hezbollah has been violating for nearly 20 years.

Finally, Trump can offer the regime a grand bargain: what I’ve long called “normalization for normalization.”

Iran could get an end to both war and blockade, full relief from international sanctions, the resumption of diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States and every other benefit that Tehran used to enjoy before the Islamic revolution of 1979. In return, all that would be asked of Iran is to behave like a normal country: no efforts to support armed militias throughout the region, or harbor Qaeda leaders, or send hit squads to kill or kidnap enemies abroad, or declare “death to Israel” and “death to America” as foundational principles of the regime while trying to build nuclear weapons.

Does any of that sound outrageous? Of course not. The outrage is that the regime’s current leaders would almost certainly dismiss the proposal out of hand because ideological militancy, rather than fidelity to the interests of the Iranian people, is what has defined them for the past 47 years.

The moment an Iranian government, including the current one, accepts these terms, we’ll know that we are dealing with a fundamentally different regime. It would be statesmanlike of Trump to propose it — and wise of him to keep turning the screws on the regime’s leaders until they accept it.

Newspaper Reader.

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Apr 15, 2026

After the searches, nearly a third of the algorithmically recommended content on the teenage users’ feeds was explicit, with some appearing to depict children and animals, CCDH said.

The accounts were also able to join adult sexual communities and received unsolicited explicit messages. A feature that restricted direct messages was easily turned off by the researchers.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/social-media/article/x-porn-teenager-online-safety-act-s9f8xbnvw

Newspaper Reader: What the reader is offered is warmed over Atlantic Council ‘experts’ that reades like ?

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Apr 15, 2026

Experts react: Hungary just voted out Viktor Orbán. Here’s what to expect in Europe and beyond.

By Atlantic Council experts April 13, 2026 9:45 a.m. ET

Experts react: Hungary just voted out Viktor Orbán. Here’s what to expect in Europe and beyond.

Daniel Fried: A tale of how to overcome authoritarian nationalism

Jörn Fleck: Hungary will remain conservative but will be more constructive in the EU

Emma Nix: Magyar will tend first to economic and political reforms—not rebuilding damaged foreign ties

Emerson T. Brooking: Europe has dodged a bullet

Andras Simonyi: How Magyar did it

Oleh Shamshur: Hungary-Ukraine relations have a new start, but don’t expect a full embrace

Will Mortenson: Orbán leaves Hungary weaker in political freedom and the rule of law

Editor :

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Daniel Fried short answer to the question of the defeatr of Orbán’ ignores the fact that of all the political actors who made the defeat of Orbán’ possible! To begin think of ‘The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ !

April 15, 2026 | Washington Examiner

Americans shouldn’t cry for Orban

Never ignore the voters. After 16 years in power, Hungary’s corpulent Prime Minister Viktor Orban lost touch with the conservative base that supported him from the start, believing he could gerrymander his way to permanent victory. A smarter conservative, incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar, did the opposite. He used retail politics to listen to Orban’s voters and responded to their constant refrain: “Russia go home!”

Magyar’s victory is a win for Hungary, the United States, and smart campaigning. His victory created a political earthquake in Hungary. Conservatives in America should cheer this result in one of our most important Central European allies. Magyar’s new supermajority means he can amend the Hungarian constitution and roll back Orban’s worst political excesses while keeping the conservative movement alive in Hungary.

Orban’s political defeat is historic. Back in 1989, he jumped into politics as an agile, free-market friend of America. He learned how to talk like an American conservative.

…

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/04/15/americans-shouldnt-cry-for-orban/

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Editor: The George Soros Foundation toxic meddling in the affairs of how many countries is a fact! His apologists look to him as a modern day righter of wrongs!

The Open Society Foundations in Ukraine

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has thrust the Open Society Foundations’ Kyiv-based International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) onto the frontlines of the country’s struggle for survival. As the largest independent funder of Ukraine’s vibrant array of civil society and citizen’s groups for more than three decades, IRF was immediately engaged in the vast emergency response to the Russian assault. Its evolving work has included: supporting the evacuation and relocation of civilians; funding efforts to deliver emergency medical supplies and to protect emergency personnel; backing efforts to protect independent journalists and media; and supporting investigations of war crimes committed during the conflict.

In addition to expanding its direct funding of IRF, Open Society also launched the $50 million Ukraine Democracy Fund, making a $25 million pledge in March 2022, that was then matched by other funders. Internationally, the fund has worked to expand international support for Ukraine. Within the country, it has supported a range of civil society groups, around priorities that include promoting accountable government decision making, and advocating for people most directly affected by the Russian full-scale invasion.

Open Society has contributed over $230 million in grants to Ukraine, benefiting millions of people—including more project funding over the past decade than to any other country in Europe.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/newsroom/the-open-society-foundations-in-ukraine

Newspaper Reader.

Luce’s Lunch with Henry Kissinger from July 21, 2018.

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Apr 14, 2026

Lunch with the FT Life & Arts

Henry Kissinger: ‘We are in a very, very grave period’

The grand consigliere of American diplomacy talks about Putin, the new world order — and the meaning of Trump.

https://www.ft.com/content/926a66b0-8b49-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543?syn-25a6b1a6=1

@EdwardGLuce & The Great Man. Political Observer comments

Posted on July 21, 2018 by stephenkmacksd

While babies in Vietnam are still being born with catastrophic birth defects from the effects of Agent Orange, decades after the end of the American Anti-Communists crusade or just call it mass slaughter, The Great Man is treated to lunch by a pundit who disingenuously call him consigliere, as the-in-order-too of not sounding too much like what he is, a sycophant to The Great Man. Did Luce even mention his book ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ ? Isn’t there some kind of obligation, on the part of the guest to know something of your host’s latest accomplishment? Or is the aged Great Man above that kind of social obligation?

The essay unfolds in an almost comic mode with Luce planning to waylay The Great Man into ‘spilling the beans’ on the Know-Nothing Trump. The dramatic tension is non existent, as this 95 year old is more interested in having an audience who simply listens, in awe, to his estimation and opinions about the wider historical scope of his intelligence: his specialty is Foreign Policy Metaphysics. The Great Man doesn’t disappoint himself .

Mr. Luce knows the Party Line by heart, as he helped to construct it: Russian revanchism, the end of the ‘rules based order’ meaning the erosion of NATO, in sum the ‘decline of American Power’. Or rather, the fact that Europe is no longer in need of American tutelage. The burning question is TRUMP and his chaotic practice politics and his disturbing propinquity for another political monster Putin.

This little melodrama ends with Luce helping The Great Man to his car in the rain, and the ‘server’ speaks to Luce with some pertinent information: “Dr Kissinger has been looking forward to this lunch for days,”

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/926a66b0-8b49-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

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@Cusanus @StephenKMackSD @Tickytl

Thank you for your comment. Having read Habermas’ ‘The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity’, ‘The New Conservatism’ , ‘Postmetaphysical Thinking’ and Specter’s intellectual biography, your : Habermas is a weak sociologist from the Frankfurt School and their near-communist ilk dressed up as a weighty philosopher. Is not just overwrought, but reflective of ideological myopia, to be polite. Intellectuals/writers/philosophers, in Europe, don’t seem to share the animus to Marx and his epigones, that is given full cry in your brief against the heretical Habermas.

If you read ‘ Theodor W. Adorno, One Last Genius’ by Detlev Claussen, you can read Horkheimer’s scathing letter to Adorno, about Habermas failure to meet his standards as a member of the Frankfurt School. The letter is published as an appendix to the book. Habermas went his own way, as his ‘Public Sphere’ demonstrated over time.

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

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@Kali

Thank you for your revelatory post and the link! A quotation from the summery :

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• Kissinger ignored a recommendation from his top deputy on the NSC, Viron Vaky, who strongly advised against covert action to undermine Allende. On September 14, Vaky wrote a memo to Kissinger arguing that coup plotting would lead to “widespread violence and even insurrection.” He also argued that such a policy was immoral: “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat to us, e.g. to our survival. Is Allende a mortal threat to the U.S.? It is hard to argue this.”
• After U.S. covert operations, which led to the assassination of Chilean Commander in Chief of the Armed forces General Rene Schneider, failed to stop Allende’s inauguration on November 4, 1970, Kissinger lobbied President Nixon to reject the State Department’s recommendation that the U.S. seek a modus vivendi with Allende. In an eight-page secret briefing paper that provided Kissinger’s clearest rationale for regime change in Chile, he emphasized to Nixon that “the election of Allende as president of Chile poses for us one of the most serious challenges ever faced in this hemisphere” and “your decision as to what to do about it may be the most historic and difficult foreign affairs decision you will make this year.” Not only were a billion dollars of U.S. investments at stake, Kissinger reported, but what he called “the insidious model effect” of his democratic election. There was no way for the U.S. to deny Allende’s legitimacy, Kissinger noted, and if he succeeded in peacefully reallocating resources in Chile in a socialist direction, other countries might follow suit. “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on — and even precedent value for — other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”

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Viron Vaky made the unforgivable faux pas of making a ‘moral argument’ against Kissinger’s plan: the Policy Technocrat, in due deference to the benighted Herman Kahn legacy, only formulates policy within the frame of ends,means and possible outcomes. That has proven to be utterly catastrophic, to the a world subjected to the machinations of Great Men like Kissinger, and his apologists.

Best regards,

StephenKMackSD.

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My reply as posted by The Financial Times :

Posted on July 21, 2018 by stephenkmacksd

While babies in Vietnam are still being born with catastrophic birth defects from the effects of Agent Orange, decades after the end of the American Anti-Communists crusade or just call it mass slaughter, The Great Man is treated to lunch by a pundit who disingenuously call him consigliere, as the-in-order-too of not sounding too much like what he is, a sycophant to The Great Man. Did Luce even mention his book ‘The Retreat of Western Liberalism’ ? Isn’t there some kind of obligation, on the part of the guest to know something of your host’s latest accomplishment? Or is the aged Great Man above that kind of social obligation?

The essay unfolds in an almost comic mode with Luce planning to waylay The Great Man into ‘spilling the beans’ on the Know-Nothing Trump. The dramatic tension is non existent, as this 95 year old is more interested in having an audience who simply listens, in awe, to his estimation and opinions about the wider historical scope of his intelligence: his specialty is Foreign Policy Metaphysics. The Great Man doesn’t disappoint himself .

Mr. Luce knows the Party Line by heart, as he helped to construct it: Russian revanchism, the end of the ‘rules based order’ meaning the erosion of NATO, in sum the ‘decline of American Power’. Or rather, the fact that Europe is no longer in need of American tutelage. The burning question is TRUMP and his chaotic practice politics and his disturbing propinquity for another political monster Putin.

This little melodrama ends with Luce helping The Great Man to his car in the rain, and the ‘server’ speaks to Luce with some pertinent information: “Dr Kissinger has been looking forward to this lunch for days,”

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/926a66b0-8b49-11e8-bf9e-8771d5404543

Newspaper Reader is reminded those Science Fiction Movies he watched in the 1950’s, at the Movie Theatre just a block away from our house, after my brother and I mowed the lawn!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Apr 14, 2026

Opinion Artificial intelligence

Mythos and the cyber security risk facing all states

AI is like the atomic bomb — once you invent the means to build one, you live in a different world

https://www.ft.com/content/4334460f-b599-4578-8840-d1c7ecf01e08?_gl=1*158zt7a*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gbraid=0AAAAAC_ArBvogxhdZj_NxYV2-dWQH0eLb&gclid=Cj0KCQjwy_fOBhC6ARIsAHKFB7_Tcr88gTL0pqKQ4Ai9K8jVsO8f7BqFgTVv-r7C8P22YplPBTpnDcMaAozaEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&syn-25a6b1a6=1

Editor: The Bush Diagnosis of the problem of AI:

The reason AI is such a disruptive invention is that it sharply reduces the cost of intelligence. It could unlock great increases in productivity, or induce mass unemployment or violent revolution — because if a skilled professional working with AI agents can now produce as much as 500 of their peers, social and economic models are in for quite a shock.

For example, Anthropic says its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, can find vulnerabilities in cyber defences at a speed beyond most human intelligence. But does Mythos live up to the hype? Maybe, maybe not, but even if it is overhyped, something like it is around the corner. AI is already really good at coding, and will only get better. It will also, therefore, get better at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in cyber security.

The good news for anyone worried about AI taking their job is that Mythos also provides a demonstration of how the technology may create employment opportunities. As AI improves cyber security, and as deepfakes and generative AI do an ever better job of impersonating human beings online, in-person verification is going to have to bear more, not less, weight.

It’s a reminder that the development of AI is not necessarily good news for everyone else in tech — it may lead to a permanent reduction in the number of jobs in coding, and increasingly smart technology may render the internet less and less useful for everyday use, if it becomes the location of ever more sophisticated crime.

Editor: Mr. Bush hits his hysterical stride :

AI is like the atomic bomb: once you invent the technology to build one, you live in a different, and more dangerous, world than before. But it is potentially more dangerous because fission weapons didn’t possess the ability to improve the ability of a random passer-by to develop a thermonuclear weapon, but AI does reduce the gap between the professionally qualified and the “unskilled”. Even before the launch of Mythos, AI tools not only make it easier for cutting-edge companies or states to launch cyber attacks, they make it easier for otherwise unimpressive minor criminals and lone wolf terrorists to do so. Technology with the capacity to do severe damage to critical digital infrastructure will, sooner or later, become at least as easy to buy online as it is to use the dark web to purchase cannabis or cocaine.

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Editor : The final paragraphs of Mr. Bush’s wan diagnostic intervention!

The future envisaged by the creators of so-called cyberpunk science fiction may come to fruition — a world in which computers that are smarter than humans go hand in hand with technological and physical infrastructure that has more in common with the 1980s than the 2020s.

For AI companies themselves, there is a new risk. AI is already unpopular enough due to fears about what it means for people’s jobs. On top of that, there are new worries about what the technology means for cyber security. The benefits are very real, but they are less tangible and obvious to most people than their job being at risk or having to shell out for cyber security. The political backlash when either a politician has to explain that the technology means more public spending, or when an AI-boosted cyber attack takes down critical infrastructure, may be greater still.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader offers the Front Page of April 14, 2026 !

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Apr 14, 2026

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Apr 13, 2026

Editor: The Economist enters The Confessional?

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Who owns The Economist?

The Economist is part of The Economist Group, a private company with a special ownership structure designed to preserve editorial independence. Its shareholders date back more than a century, and include great names in British business, such as the Sainsburys, Cadburys and Schroders. Other shareholders today include funds owned by the Agnelli and Rothschild families. Many staff of The Economist Group also own shares, which are privately traded twice a year.

The company’s constitution does not permit any individual or group to gain a majority shareholding, and no shareholder can exercise more than 20% of voting rights. The editor is appointed by trustees, who are independent of commercial, political and proprietorial influences. This structure ensures that The Economist can take an independent view of the world—free to challenge conventional thinking and concentrations of power. Its role is to inform, not to serve vested interests.

If you’re not already a subscriber, explore our subscription offers, which include Digital only, a Digital + Print bundle or Economist Podcasts+. The Economist provides clarity in a complex world.

Jan 29, 2026

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The Economist is owned by The Economist Group, a private company with a specialized structure to ensure editorial independence. The largest shareholder is Exor N.V. (the Agnelli family’s investment firm) with 43.4%, followed by other private investors including the Cadbury and Schroder families. Canadian businessman Stephen J.R. Smith acquired a major 26.9% stake in March 2026.

Wikipedia +3

Key Ownership and Structure Details:

• Exor N.V.: Led by John Elkann, this investment firm became the largest shareholder after buying a 50% stake from Pearson in 2015.
• Rothschild Stake: The Rothschild family previously held a major stake, which has been in the process of being sold as of late 2025.
• Other Shareholders: Shares are held by various family interests (Cadbury, Schroder) and staff.
• Independent Trustees: The editorial independence is safeguarded by a board of trustees, who appoint the editor.
• Ownership Rules: The constitution prevents any single individual or group from holding a majority, and no single shareholder can hold more than 20% of the voting rights.

Wikipedia is an unrealisble source of ‘information’ , just like Zanny Minton Beddoes and her cadre of Oxbridger Males! This reader of The Economist all most longs for the days of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge? Although their ‘The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America’ was a long apologetic for Donald H. Rumsfeld & ‘Turd Blossom’ Karl Rove!

Yet there are these stake holders of The Economist : Exor N.V. (the Agnelli family’s investment firm), the Cadbury and Schroder families, Canadian businessman Stephen J.R. Smith acquired a major 26.9% stake in March 2026. Name this collection of invertors by there proper name oligarchy

Newspaper Reader & Political Cynic

Janan Ganesh on Joe Biden as Political Redeemer. Angry Cosmopolitan comments. Posted on February 23, 2021 by stephenkmacksd

stephenkmacksd.com/

Apr 12, 2026

Headline:Joe Biden can save global migration from the deep freeze

Sub-headline: Through example and sheer numbers, an open US could bring an open world

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‘This criminally undersells it. Whatever their content, previous reforms were of national or perhaps regional interest. This one, by dint of timing, could nudge the world into openness at a hinge moment in history.’

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What can be wrong with this paragraph? Has Mr. Ganesh started reading John F. Kennedy’s ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ , probably ghosted by one of his Camelot Coterie? Recall ‘No Irish Need Apply’ ? Ganesh should read Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity’ in which the Mestizo Hordes are about to engulf ‘American Protestant Virtue‘. It’s focused his hysterical xenophobia.

Should the reader look to how America treated the Braceros, that picked crops beginning in WWII till 1964, as factual evidence of bad faith and mendacity. America still owes these workers $500 Million , not updated to reflect today’s accumulation of interest. Most of these Guest Workers are dead, or near it, such is/are the quioxitic nature of America’s Legal/Moral obligations?

Trump campaigned on the ‘fact’ that Mexico would pay the cost of The Wall, the realization of Fortress America, on the Southern Border. No Wall for the Northern Border, because Canadians are not Mestizos. Slavery, the Concentration Camps for Japanese citizens, the Supreme Court decisions in Korematsu v. United States, and Hirabayashi v. United States- this an historical record that demonstrates xenophobia even against its own citizens, of different ethnicities/races.

What sense can the reader make of this New York Times report?

Headline:At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror

Sub-headline: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II.

The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies.

The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate — the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

That American Wars of Empire has produced a Refugee Crisis of World Historical proportions, in the last two decades, demonstrates what ‘Values’? Mr. Ganesh political intervention featuring Joe Biden as Political Redeemer will not do!

Angry Cosmopolitan

https://www.ft.com/content/2b6a03a6-6b16-4888-9131-5ad29a91fd4a

_________________________________

In reply to EdwardDeVere:

Thank you for your comment. Xenophobia is about Tribalism in its many iterations, permutations. The Reader need only look to Trump and Trumpism, and the Wall that never got built! Or in the world of respectable academia Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash’ and his ‘Who Are We’ are just examples of the toxic American Exceptionalism in extremis.

‘Often it is very rational and you ignore it at your peril.’ The fear and hatred of ‘The Other’ is the murderous toxin, that has infected ‘Western Civilization’ since the Greeks and Romans. Aristotle and his defense of Slavery: The Politics Chapter 4 Slavery under the rubric of the Association of the Household.

Cicero and his xenophobia: ‘Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory’ by Ann Vasaly and ‘ Romans and Aliens‘ by J.P.V.D. Balsdon Chapters 2 through 4

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

StephenKMackSD!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Apr 11, 2026

Stephanson-Kennan Correspondence

Introduction

‘Know the adversary’ is the first law of politics, as of war. But how should such knowledge proceed? In examining the thought-worlds that informed American foreign-policymaking, the young Anders Stephanson was drawn to the moments of flux, when the country’s overseas stance was in contention; pre-eminently, the turn of 1945–47, from war-time military and economic alliance with the Soviet Union to nuclear confrontation and high Cold War. A key figure in articulating the premises for that switch—and endowing them with the force and urgency that could animate an ideology—was George Frost Kennan. Wisconsin born, an unlikely recruit for the us Foreign Service, he was a staunch conservative and trained Russianist who had been posted to Moscow after stints in Geneva, Hamburg, Riga, Prague, Berlin, Lisbon. A convinced opponent of the Soviet regime from the 1920s, Kennan had described the Bolsheviks as ‘spiteful Jewish parasites’, declared when Hitler invaded in 1941 that the ussr had no claim on Western sympathy and observed in 1945 that ‘ten good hits with atomic bombs’ could finish its war-making capacity for good. Asked by the State Department in February 1946 for an interpretive report, he dictated from his sickbed in the Embassy the 5,000-word Long Telegram that electrified Truman’s Washington with its account of a regime fanatically committed to the destruction of the American way of life (somewhat contradicted by its reading of Stalin as ‘cautious’). Returning to the us as an intellectual hero, Kennan expanded in his ‘X’ article in Foreign Affairs on the Soviet leaders’ particular brand of fanaticism and the Russian-Asiatic world from which they had emerged, making them impermeable to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of compromise. Active us ‘containment’ and the use of counterforce at every juncture—ideally with measures short of war—was the indicated response.

Whatever the Bolsheviks’ hopes in 1918–21, this was an empirically false description of the ussr in 1947, exhausted from the War, whose main aim was to retain its defensive buffer against a resurgent Germany and to carry on the Big Three understanding affirmed with Churchill at Yalta. Yet the notion of an inherently expansionist Soviet threat, which only America’s superior power and vigilance could prevent from overrunning the world, would be a core claim of Cold War ideology for the next twenty years. Meanwhile us expansionism had ringed the ussr, its forces implanted in Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Turkey, Greece, the Persian Gulf and Western Europe. Within a year of the X article, however, Kennan, alarmed by Truman’s belligerence and America’s new global role, began to change his mind. The leading spirit of the early Cold War became one of its most powerful critics, shocking Western establishments with his eloquent case for military disengagement and nato drawback from Germany; later, from his berth at Princeton, opposing the renewed drumbeat against Moscow under Carter and Reagan. When Stephanson approached the old man for permission to quote his papers, he was therefore something more complicated than an opponent.

In the selection of letters between the student and the grandee, published below, Stephanson rather disarmingly shares the conceptual harvest he has gleaned from, broadly speaking, the Western Marxist world, as more productive than either Anglo-Saxon empiricism—mere reporting—or an ideological reductionism that fails to register the relative autonomy of mid-level structures. In Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy, Stephanson’s lethally precise use of his voluminous writings, expertly stitched together by the running contextualization and courteous but highly critical evaluative commentary, provides a fully historical portrait of both his sensibility and his function, illuminating why he was—and where he wasn’t—in tune with us global expansion. It is an achievement that makes Kennan’s respectful reception of the book and recognition of himself in it, registered in these letters, all the more remarkable.

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii156/articles/anders-stephanson-george-kennan-stephanson-kennan-correspondence

StephenKMackSD