Sidus Space (NASDAQ: SIDU) Emerging Growth Conference, February 8th, 2023
Via Emerging Growth Conference, February 8th, 2023
Sidus Space (NASDAQ: SIDU), located in Cape Canaveral, Florida, operates from a 35,000-square-foot manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing facility focused on commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection. The company’s rich heritage includes the design and manufacture of many flight and ground component parts and systems for various space-related customers and programs.
Keynote speaker: Carol Craig, Founder, CEO
February 9, 2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sidus Space to Present at the @EmergingGrowthC Conference on Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Sidus Space to Present at the @EmergingGrowthC Conference on Wednesday, February 8, 2023. Founder and CEO, Carol Craig will be presenting at 9:05 AM EST for 30 minutes, followed by questions. Full release: https://t.co/UJg69HhZ6I#Sidusnews #investorconference #spaceindustry
— Sidus Space (@SidusSpace) February 7, 2023
February 8, 2023 | Permalink | Comments (0)
THE SEVENTH OR SABBATH DAY OF REST by Ralph M. de Bit
THE SEVENTH DAY OR THE SABBATH DAY OF REST. (By Ralph M. de Bit.)
Among the many Christians throughout the civilized world of today, there is shown forth a deep concern regarding the question as to which day of the week God intended us to observe as the Sabbath, or in other words, as a special day of worship. There are many who firmly believe that Sunday is the appointed day, while others just as firmly believe they are following the instructions set forth in the Bible when they worship on Saturday. Many arguments, having for their basis, a purely intellectual premise, could be brought to bear, showing that it would be impossible for all the people everywhere on this earth to observe the same Sabbath at exactly the same time, because, when the sun is shining on one side of the planet, the other side is in darkness, and then think of those living near the North Pole and the South Pole, who only have one day and night in a whole year.
But it is not our purpose to advance any arguments whatever, or to set forth any belief that may be held by any person or persons. What we most desire just now, is to show you by pure reason and logic, that God never could have appointed any “day” or time in which we should be required to labor or finish our labor, or appointed any day on which we should rest and worship. In the light of pure reason and logic we desire to show you the utter impossibility of God having a conception of a “day,” as the finite being in mortal form would understand the divisions of time, which we call “days.”
A little reflection will convince you that time and space exist only in the imagination of man; that is, in his concept. In common with all other conditions which man holds in his consciousness as realities, is the belief that space can be walled in or divided, and the measurement of space is time. We will admit that just so long as a person is conscious of these things and conditions as realities, he is constantly receiving back into his consciousness the reaction of his belief, which as constantly suggests to him the reality of the so-called thing or condition. The objective world with all of its ramifications of “things” and “conditions” does not exist separate or apart from the consciousness of the individual. In fact all these so-called objectified forms and conditions are but the reflection of qualities in the consciousness of the individual. All these ideas – the objective world with all its conditions – have only a conditional existence, always dependent entirely upon the individual to hold the idea in consciousness. The individual changes the objective world just in proportion as he changes his consciousness regarding it. So time and space exist to us as realities only so long as we hold the idea of time and space in the consciousness, as realities, and then, consequently a division of time which we are pleased to term a “day” will also exist as part of that conditional idea of consciousness.
Tomorrow never comes, so the next moment is never realized.
We Live Now.
It is always in the present that we are conscious of anything or any condition, in the so-called past or future.
Above the plane of conditional existence – the plane of ideas or illusion – exists Consciousness, freed from all ideas, and this Consciousness is the Eternal, Absolute God. In that Absolute plane, time or space does not exist, and if they do not exist there in God, we can clearly and readily perceive that there can be no “day” to God, that there is no day appointed by Him.
If we accept the premise that God is Perfect and All-in-All, we are, at the same time, forced to concede that All (God) is Perfect. God can never be more or less than what God Is, which is Perfect, and, being All, He can never know anything else existing outside of Himself, because, there is nothing else; God being All. So by the purest and most simple logic, we see that God is forever knowing Himself in the eternal Now; and there is nothing else for Him to know.
And then, if we see things and conditions subject to change or changeable, we at once arrive at the conclusion that if a thing can change, it must necessarily have something to change for, and therefore, it lacks that now for which it is going to change. Now, if it lacks anything it is imperfect. To remain logical, we see that if anything is imperfect, it cannot be of God, or of Perfect.
God, Perfect only knows Itself, there being nothing else for It to know in a world of All-God. If it were possible for God to know anything imperfect it would show imperfection in the Perfect God; and would also show that God could know something outside and apart from Himself, either of which would destroy our premise and would also destroy the God who is Perfect and All. So in order not to destroy our premise and to realize the Truth of the statement, that God is Perfect and knows no imperfection, we must find a solution within the bounds of logic and reason which will account for this imperfect world of form-creation.
This has been so clearly brought forth in the “Life and the Way,” the Christian Yoga Metaphysics by A. K. Mozumdar, that we will not take the time now to make the explanation. We have told you enough, however, to show you from a logical point of view, that God as a Whole cannot know us as we know ourselves, and therefore, in consequence could not possibly be conscious of “days,” as we ourselves conceive of “days.”
And now, my friends, there is a “day” of rest.
The Sabbath is that condition of consciousness of the individual when the individual has ceased to hold wrong ideas in consciousness – when the consciousness of the individual is freed from form-creation. In that condition of the consciousness of the individual it becomes filled to the very limit of its capacity of formless God, and this condition of Consciousness is the Sabbath Day; it is rest from holding changeable ideas in consciousness through six periods, or through six “days” of labor.
If we worship God on any particular day, let us not attach any significance whatever to the day itself. For the more significance we attach to a day the more we are giving recognition to an idea temporarily existing in the race consciousness.
Our purpose in life is to become freed from these conditional things and conditions, and, by giving any one idea a particular significance, we, knowingly or unknowingly, employ a well-known law of psychology “that with whatever we associate ourselves, of that we shall manifest like quality.” So if we should give conscious recognition to a relative measurement of time, which we term a day, we shall manifest more material or relative conditions of consciousness. But if we keep our mind and consciousness on That which is above all relativity and conditions, we shall manifest a Spiritual quality of being.
In common with the race, and in accordance with the long established condition of racial consciousness, we devote one particular day, more than other days, to services, devotion to God and to meetings. But we, as students of Truth, should never attach any significance to the day on which we worship. If we do attribute any special significance to a particular day, it should be in the manner of performing a symbolical rite in remembrance of, or anticipation of, that condition of consciousness which we shall enjoy when freed from all misconceptions, ignorance, or ideas in illusion. In other words, (relatively considered) there being seven days in the week and having the concept of seven states or stages of consciousness in this journey through illusion, if we attached any significance whatever to one of the seven days of the week, it should be as a symbolical rite in refreshing the consciousness of the individual, or holding before the consciousness, that seventh period or condition of consciousness above the plane of illusion. This full grasp of God above the plane of conditional things and conditions is the real Sabbath Day of Rest. Within our conception of things and conditions we can attached that significance to any one of the seven days of the week. It makes no difference whether it be Saturday or Sunday.
If the race, among whom we are living, have an idea that Sunday or Saturday, as the case may be, is the most convenient day to discontinue material pursuits, let us conform to that concept outwardly, but inwardly; that is, in the inner conscious plane, if we attach any significance whatever to any day, let it be as a symbol of that condition of the individual’s consciousness above the plane of illusion. And this we can do by imagination – or realization – on any day of the week.
The true worship of God is on no particular day, but in constantly seeing through everything and every condition One Consciousness, which is God Eternally. Yes, it is even more than this. The Consciousness which is the individual, is part of the Whole-Consciousness, and back of every concept-form or idea is also another part of the Infinite Whole; so the true worship of God is to let God see God in everything, and, as All there is, until we realize living, moving and having our Being in the Omnipresent Ocean of Divine Consciousness. This is the All-in-All, or the worship of God upon one nightless day.
As that Divinely inspired book, “The Aquarian Gospel,” has so beautifully and concisely expressed it -
“When all the essences of carnal things have been transmuted into soul, and all the essences of soul have been returned to Holy Breath and man is made a perfect God, the drama of Creation will conclude. And this is all.”
Many passages of Scripture are quoted to prove that one or the other day of the week has been Divinely appointed. Let us consider these scriptural passages in the light of Christian Yoga.
“And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.”
“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Gen. ii:2-3.
We have seen in reason and logic, that God as a Whole does not and cannot create. In these passages it definitely states that “God created and made,” and this is easily reconciled when we remember that all power or any power cannot exist outside of All. Therefore it is God Power that is the creator, but the God Power creates through the idea held in the consciousness of the part or individual. The individual consciousness gets the reaction of the idea within itself; and God Power or the Self knowing-power of God, is self manifested. Like the sun and its rays, the rays will shine through any medium set up for the light to pass through and will cast a shadow corresponding to the image in the medium. If it was conscious the sun would shine on in all its splendor unconscious of the medium, image or the shadow cast. So God knows Himself and is unconscious of an idea, image or concept existing in the consciousness of part of Himself. The part, while in illusion, only sees the shadow.
Considering these two verses in another light we see that God creates a world by the activity of His self-knowing power, which is above the plane of illusion. And in the highest, or seventh condition of consciousness, is rest. As a rapidly revolving wheel appears to stand still, owing to its terrific revolutions, so it is the individual’s consciousness of God above the plane of illusion which is creating a perfect image of Itself; therefore by the very tremendous rapidity of vibrations it comes to perfect rest, the part knowing the All, to the limit of its capacity to grasp God.
Adhering to our statement that the “six days of creation” are states or stages of the individual’s consciousness in its journey through illusion or form-concept, and the “seventh day” is the state or condition of the individual’s consciousness freed from all false opinions or ideas of itself, therefore it is at rest in knowing God; we can now consider the individual as part of the Whole, therefore in essence, God.
On the seventh day, or, in the last state of consciousness; God (as the part) rests from the imaging of ideas of itself in wrong significance.
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day; and hallowed it.” Exodus xx.11.
Back of every apparent atom and cell in this universe is the One ever self-manifested Consciousness; what we see as a stupendous aggregation of electrons, atoms or cells, that which we call this phenomenal or objective universe, is the reflection of ideas held in the consciousness of the individual Parts of God. All idea that we ever can be conscious of in “heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is,” is the creation of the knowing power of God through the image in the consciousness of these individual parts. And when the part, (which is God in part, therefore God), at the final stage, “the seventh day,” stops creating ideas or images for God power to manifest through, the “day” will indeed be “blessed” and “hallowed” for it is the complete dispelling of all conditions of darkness, ignorance, bondage and illusion.
December 18, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hat tip to Robert Morrow re: previous post information
Jefferson Morley: https://jfkfacts.substack.com/p/major-break-coming-in-the-jfk-assassination?utm_medium=email
JFK Expert Robert Morrow’s bullet points on the JFK assassination (updated 5/01/2022)
I have read or skimmed 1,500 books that relate to the JFK assassination, Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys, Hoover, the FBI, the CIA and various other friends and enemies of both LBJ and the Kennedys. Also, I have examined countless web sites and I have a longtime working relationship with the top researchers/authors on/analysts of the JFK assassination.
My blog has much documented evidence in the form of many essays on the serial and non-ending crimes of Lyndon Johnson while he was alive. I also have much information that relates to the JFK assassination: http://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/
In other words I have a professional knowledge of this material on par with and probably greater than anyone in the world. I would like to make a few basic points, without offering proofs, on the JFK assassination.
1) Oswald was a fake defector to the USSR and fake pro-Castro Marxist.
2) Oswald was a low level CIA asset, FBI asset and a pawn in COINTELPRO.
3) Oswald was completely innocent of the JFK assassination.
4) Oswald was not physically on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the moment of the JFK assassination. He was likely on the second floor.
5) Oswald did not shoot either JFK, John Connally or anyone else.
6) Oswald, unlike LBJ, Hoover, Allen Dulles, Edward Lansdale, Texas power broker friends of LBJ (Ed Clark, D.H. Byrd), loved and admired John Kennedy and his family.
7) Oswald did not attempt to assassination Gen. Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963. The government tried to posthumously frame him for this.
8) Oswald did not murder Officer J.D. Tippit and was physically not at the Tippit murder scene. The government tried to posthumously frame him for this.
9) Jack Ruby was not a lone nut. LBJ indirectly sent him (probably through H.L. Hunt and Dallas mafia chief Joe Civello) to murder Oswald.
10) Jacky Ruby - like Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy and Evelyn Lincoln who believed this immediately - believed that LBJ murdered JFK.
11) Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK because the Kennedys were out to utterly destroy him in November of 1963, not merely remove LBJ from the 1964 Democratic ticket.
12) LBJ’s elite Texas political power broker and lawyer Ed Clark, LBJ pal D.H. Byrd (oilman, military contractor, founder of the Civil Air Patrol and owner of the Texas School Book Depository), Gen. Edward Lansdale, CIA David Atlee Phillips were involved in the JFK assassination.
13) CIA E. Howard Hunt and other proteges of Allen Dulles (namely Gen. Lansdale and the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips) were involved in the JFK assassination.
14) Elements of CIA anti-Castro Cubans, likely roped in by Gen. Lansdale who ran Operation Mongoose, were involved in the JFK assassination.
15) Any wealthy man in Texas who was close personal friends with Lyndon Johnson knew that LBJ murdered JFK, even if they were not personally involved in JFK’s murder. I am thinking of people like George Brown of Brown and Root, the businessmen Frank Late of Dallas, Clint Murchison & H.L. Hunt of Dallas.
16) FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, a 19- year neighbor of Lyndon Johnson in Washingon, D.C.(1943-1961) and a fellow front row seat Kennedy-hater, immediately started covering up the JFK assassination and blaming it on a lone nut with absolutely no good reason to do this. It is possible that Hoover was in on the JFK assassination beforehand but I doubt it, but he definitely knew LBJ was behind the JFK assassination and covered it up for him. Hoover’s reward: a lifetime exemption from federal forced retirement at the age of 70.
17) LBJ placed Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission to run the cover up of JFK’s murder. Proteges of Allen Dulles were definitely involved in the JFK assassination thus it is possible though not probable that Allen Dulles was involved beforehand in the planning of JFK’s murder. At a minimum, Allen Dulles was an accessory-after-the-fact to JFK’s murder.
18) LBJ, FBI chief Hoover, the FBI’s Deke DeLoach (a top LBJ lackey), FBI in general, CIA in general, CIA’s Cord Meyer, Allen Dulles all had personal friendships with the owners, executives and reporters of all the national TV networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) and major newspapers and national magazines (Time, Life, Saturday Evening Post) - this is why the media was so easy to fool into going along with the cover up of the JFK assassination. The media were willing suckers for people (such as LBJ) who had a direct hand in the JFK assassination.
19) Lyndon Johnson, who had opposed Civil Rights for pretty much his entire career, came out strong for civil rights within a week of the JFK assassination as a way of inoculating himself from the piercing eyes of the Democratic Left who already deeply suspected him in the JFK assassination. With Lyndon Johnson leading the charge on the nation’s and the Left’s top political issue, LBJ effectively neutralized is former opponents from digging deep into his role in the JFK assassination, which many of the nation’s and Texas’ insiders suspected.
20) People affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations – academics, journalists, government officials and businessmen – have played a big role in the cover up of the JFK assassination since its inception. John J. McCloy when he was on the Warren Commission was at that time the Chairman of the CFR (a spot he held from 1953-1970) and JFK’s fired CIA director Allen Dulles had been president of the CFR from 1946-1950. Most members of the CFR I would classify as grotesquely willfully ignorant of the facts of the JFK assassination.
21) The vast majority of journalists today and legions of university academics peddle the burning pile of hot garbage lie that a lone nut killed JFK and that Oswald was a "pro Castro Marxist." This needs to stop. There is a better explanation for the JFK assassination and Lyndon Johnson is in the very middle of that answer.
Sincerely,
Robert Morrow 512-306-1510 Austin, TX
Presidential Historian and Distinguished Fellow at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime
The World’s Foremost Authority on the JFK Assassination
The Top Historian in the World on Lyndon Johnson (sorry Robert Caro, it is not you …)
The Greatest Presidential Historian in American History
One of the World’s leading public intellectuals due to my sparkling expertise in the JFK assassination
America’s Premier Living Historian
Knows more about the JFK assassination than every Presidential Medal of Freedom winner EXCEPT Lyndon Johnson (1980 posthumous recipient) who orchestrated the murder of JFK.
One of the top Menches in the United States. “Mensch” being a person of integrity, honor and noble character.
The “Muhammed Ali of the JFK Assassination research community” meaning, I am the Greatest analyst in the world of JFK research and I know it.
One of the top two of the Greatest JFK Assassination Researchers of all time, superceded only by Joachim Joesten who nailed the JFK assassination in real time in the 1960’s.
Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Oliver Stone who can’t figure out that LBJ murdered JFK because “Vietnam” is Stone’s hammer and he thinks everything is a nail.
Nation’s #1 Opposition Researcher on the Clintons & the author of The Clintons’ War on Women (published 2015)
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors of history and politics who have ever taught at Princeton University combined.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than every “credentialed” or “degreed” journalist or academic in this World of 7,983,378,450 people (as of 10/24/2022)
Up and Coming Scholar on the USS Liberty Murders which were orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson and the leaders of Israel and were to be blamed on Egypt to give the USA a pretext to enter the Six Day War
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the 27 Smartest People on the Planet combined. (See “Here is a List of the 27 Smartest People On the Planet,” by Osien Kuumar)
Smarter by a country-mile, generously better informed and significantly less egotistical than the New Yorker’s (lone nutter) Lawrence Wright.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors at Princeton, Harvard , Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin and SMU and anyone who has ever written for the New York Times or Washington Post combined.
Can out-debate 40 Ivy League professors of history and politics on the topic of the JFK assassination at one time.
Knows far more about the JFK assassination than anyone who has ever posted at Education Forum, although that can be a very useful web site.
Obviously, I know more about the JFK assassination than every professor, fellow and expert at the Univ. of Virginia's Miller Center on the Presidency combined.
Generously better informed and significantly more intelligent than EVERY journalist I have ever met, spoken with or interacted with, with the exception of the legendary Wayne Madsen.
Runs the best blog on the internet on the many crimes of Lyndon Johnson and the topic of the JFK assassination at “Robert Morrow Political Research” blog
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of all 2,000 members of NYC’s The Century Club which was founded in 1847
A lot smarter than anyone who has ever written for Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast or the Washington Post; or who has ever reported for WFAA Dallas or KLBJ radio Austin, but not the Midlothian Mirror.
Understands Texas politics better than anyone else has in the past 60 years.
**One of the USA’s leading thought leaders.**
Far more knowledgeable and accurate than the Sixth Floor Museum on the topic of the JFK assassination. Executive director hilarious (lone nutter) Nicola Langford and curator Steve Fagin do not know a tenth of a thimble compared to what I know.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the 8,000 scholars and scientists combined who have been fellows at the Princeton, NJ Institute for Advanced Study in its 90-year history
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of all recipients of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science which has been awarded since 1995
Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Ken Jennings (lone nutter), who won 74 consecutive Jeopardy contests and is the highest earning American game show contestant of all time.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined membership of the ultra high IQ Mega society which is only composed of people with an IQ level of one in a million.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever been members and subject matter experts at the Council on Foreign Relations combined except for those members who were involved in the murder of JFK from their roles in U.S. intelligence
Knows more about the JFK assassination that all the people who have received MacArthur Fellow “genius grants” combined since the program began in 1981.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever received a Whiting Writers’ Award or a Guggenheim Fellowship combined.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than any single person alive since 1963 who has a tested IQ score of 175 and above.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than Mel Kiper knows about the NFL draft.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the entire lot of the living 4,500 Rhodes Scholars who are in over 100 countries around the world.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than all 250 members of the Texas Philosophical Society combined.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined membership of the Society of Fellows at the Aspen Institute as well as the entire Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the collective knowledge of all pathologists, medical examiners and ballistic experts who have ever practiced in the history of the USA.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of the current and past members of the American Historical Association, the Society of American Historians or Organization of American Historians.
Knows more and is a far more “stable genius” than Donald Trump who says that a lone nut killed JFK.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has won a Pulitzer Prize.
Knows more about the JFK assassination and Lyndon Johnson than the combined knowledge of everyone who has ever won: a Century Association Archives medal, a National Book Foundation medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a Los Angeles Book Prize in Biography, a Plutarch Award from the Biographers International Organization, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, The New York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize, a Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity from the National Institute of Social Sciences, Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography, a Biographers International Organization Award for major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography, a History Makers Medal (the highest honor of the New York Historical Society, a Bookend Award (the highest honor of the Texas Book Festival), a Gold Medal in Biography (awarded once every six years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Ambassador Book Award for Distinguished Achievement from the English-Speaking Union, the John Steinbeck Award, Carl Sandburg Literary Award (from the Chicago Public Library Foundation), the National Book Award in Nonfiction, a Pulitzer Prize, a New School for Social Research – Doctor of Humane Letters, Lifetime Achievement Award for the Guild Hall Academy of Arts, a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Washington Monthly Political Book Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, H.L. Mencken Award for Best Book, an American Institute of Architects Special Citation, Francis Parkman Prize (awarded by the Society of American Historians), a Carnegie Fellowship at the Columbia University School of Journalism, a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, a Deadline Club Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a Society of Silurians Award for outstanding achievement in the field of public service or been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters or been inducted into any state’s or country’s Writer’s hall of fame or who has been made an honorary member of the Texas Rangers or been named a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has received a Nobel Prize in any field.
If Professor K. Anders Ericsson (deceased) were alive, this internationally renown “experts on experts” would sure proclaim me as the “World’s Greatest Expert on the JFK Assassination.”
Unlike CFR member Max Boot I have never written a biography which proves that Gen. Edward Lansdale murdered JFK (“The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam”) and then hollered at the top of my lungs that a lone nut commie killed JFK.
Knows spectacularly more about the JFK assassination than former Dallas Morning News reporter Bill Minutaglio (later a professor) and whose knowledge and analysis of the JFK assassination is a TAD LACKING, to say the least.
Unlike Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith, I was not personal friends with the wife of the murderer of JFK, Lyndon Johnson, nor did I ever chum up to her and call her “Mrs. J” and nor have I taken money from the daughter of Lyndon Johnson, Luci Baines Johnson. [“Mrs. J,” Evan Smith, Texas Monthly, September 2007 and Texas Tribune All Time List of donors: Luci Baines Johnson & her husband Ian Turpin - $149,097 as of 1/5/2022.]
Unlike longtime columnist Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman I don’t pal around with ultra wealthy Luci Baines Johnson while somehow weirdly forgetting to mention in the Austin paper for literally decades that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK.
Unlike LBJ biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, I have never had the man who murdered JFK – Lyndon Johnson – ask me to marry him (“A Tale of Hearts and Minds, Sally Quinn, Washington Post, 8-24-75)
Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Caro, I have was never co-opted by one of the men – LBJ crony Ed Clark – who murdered JFK (see “Blood, Money, and Power” by Barr McClellan, published 2003)
Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Dallek, I do not endorse the ludicrous, machine gun-riddled Warren Report fantasy that Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, the KGB, Gerald Ford, Sen. Richard Russell, Sen. John Sherman Cooper, Cong. Hale Boggs, Sen. Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, CIA chief William Casey, JFK aides Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, and LBJ’s inner circle mistress Madeleine Brown, LBJ kickbacks king Billie Sol Estes and and JFK’s longtime secretary Evelyn Lincoln never believed.
Unlike LBJ biographer Michael Beschloss, I was never a personal friend of Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of the man Lyndon Johnson, who murdered JFK and I have never implied that Fidel Castro might be behind the JFK assassination.
Unlike LBJ biographer Randall Woods, I have never slandered completely innocent CIA patsy Lee Harvey Oswald for the JFK assassination which was orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson (Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 417-418)
Unlike LBJ biographer Julian Zelizer, I have never defamed Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of JFK, a crime that Lyndon Johnson committed.
Unlike historian Douglas Brinkley I have never shat in my pants telling a national TV audience “Look, it’s clear Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy” – and imploring everyone to honor the legacies of Gerald Ford, John McCloy and Arlen Specter in regards to their work covering up the JFK assassination (ABC’s “Face the Nation,” Nov. 17, 2013)
Unlike Senior News Reporter Jason Whitely of WFAA (Dallas) I have never pushed the fantasy that a lone nut named Oswald killed JFK.
Unlike the LBJ Library, I have not erected museum exhibits that endorse the validity and accuracy of the truly bonkers Warren Report that not even Lyndon Johnson believed for one minute.
Has an IQ closer to 140 than 130
Princeton, A.B. – History, 1987
Univ. of Texas at Austin -- MBA, 1990
Tuscaloosa Academy, graduated #3 out of 40 students. Recipient of TA’s highest academic honor, 1983
Star basketball player for Tuscaloosa Academy from 1980-1983, leading my teams to a 114-5 record over 4 years. Scored 2,003 career points. The last years were an unblemished 90-0 with 3 consecutive private school state championships. I was my teams’ MVP as a freshman, junior and senior. I like losing less than Nick Saban, Vince Lombardi, Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Brady and Lyndon Johnson combined.
On top of ALL that, I found the “golden egg” at the Indian Hills Country Club (Tuscaloosa, AL) Easter Egg hunt TWICE in approximately 1974 and 1975 (back to back years) which meant that I received a very large stuffed bunny each time.
December 6, 2022 | Permalink
The CIA is concealing a secret operation (initiated 3 months before the JFK assassination) that involved accused assassin Oswald
Major Break Coming in the JFK Assassination Story
The CIA is concealing a secret operation that involved accused assassin Oswald.
Jefferson Morley, Dec 5
Many Americans wonder why the CIA is still concealing records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which happened nearly 60 years ago.
We now have the answer. The CIA is hiding something terribly embarrassing, if not incriminating, about its role in the JFK story. In mid-1963, senior Agency officials approved a covert operation that used Lee Harvey Oswald for intelligence purposes, three months before Oswald allegedly shot and killed the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The CIA hid this operation from the Warren Commission in 1964, from the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, and from the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1998. The explosive story is told in 44 JFK records that the CIA has “denied in full” to the public.
In an Oct. 2021 memo President Biden set December 15 for federal agencies to disclose all records related to the assassination. Whether the CIA will release records related to the undisclosed Oswald operation is a test of Biden’s order and the 1992 JFK Records Act, which mandates release of all assassination-related information in the government’s possession.
I will explain what we know—and do not know—about the undisclosed Oswald operation at a press conference at the National Press Club tomorrow, Tuesday December 6.
The event, sponsored by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, puts this major development in the Dallas tragedy into legal, political, and historical context.
Foundation president Rex Bradford will speak about what has been learned about JFK’s assassination in the past 25 years and what remains to be done.
Attorney Larry Schnapf will speak about the foundation’s lawsuit against Biden and the National Archives for failure to enforce the JFK Records Act.
Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the ARRB, will speak about the board’s work and about how the CIA misled the review board on the still-secret records.
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, former CIA officer, will comment on the evidence of the undisclosed Oswald operation.
Fernand Amandi, pollster and MSNBC analyst, will present the results of a nationwide poll on Americans’ attitudes toward JFK’s assassination and President Biden order on JFK files.
For more information on the Mary Ferrell Foundation event, click here.
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Featured_NationalPressClubEvent.html
Watch the livestream on YouTube on Dec. 6 at 9:30am EST
https://youtu.be/To5UEvb5jQU
December 6, 2022 | Permalink
Sign up for your FREE Fold Debit Card today! You can now buy and withdraw bitcoin without paying fees directly on Fold!!!
Fellow Folders! We are so excited to announce...
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As a Spin+ user you're getting early access to this feature, so of course we've got some bonus rewards in store for you:
Earn Extra Spins for each $50 bought in a single transaction
Flash Smash Buys - random giveaways that pay out bonus rewards when you buy bitcoin in a certain timeframe, announced on Twitter or via push notification (Early Access only -- details to come)
Lastly, in true Fold fashion, we're building this feature with community feedback. After you've bought any amount of bitcoin you can fill out our feedback survey from within the app; it takes 5 minutes, will help us build a better experience for you, and we'll award you with sats for your time and thoughts.
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Sign up and get 20,000 satoshis (sats) (0.0002 bitcoin) when you sign up for Fold's FREE bitcoin rewards debit card using my referral link: https://use.foldapp.com/r/YTP7NPPV
More details re: above and the benefits: After signing up with my referral link, when you refer a friend and they sign up for the FREE Fold Card, they get 20,000 sats; you, in turn, will get 10,000 sats for the referral and 1-50 sats randomly every time they make a qualifying purchase from their Fold Card.
December 1, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Helbiz Unlimited Days + Helbiz Unlimited Days Black Friday Promo
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November 22, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump adds new feather in his "conspiracy in commiting election fraud on the U.S." cap
In a December 2020 lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court, Trump claimed 10,315 dead people, 2,560 felons and 2,423 registered voters cast ballots illegally in the presidential election. He later incorporated those claims when he contested the Fulton County proceedings in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. But correspondence among his attorneys shows Trump knew the statistics were false by the time he vouched for them in the federal lawsuit.
More here:
Politico:
Newsweek:
CNBC:
Note from Teknosis: @realDonaldTrump 's arrogance, his megalomaniacal inability to gracefully accept a defeat, consciously and willingly conspiring with others in committing Federal crimes against the U.S. in planning to trample, stubbornly and persistently trampling [albeit unsuccessful in their mission, thank God] over the will of the people that in their sacred duty definitively and overwhelmingly spoke via the "voting booth" - like some megalomaniac "mafia Don" in his neverending, flouting the rule of law - appears to like flying too close to the Sun with his waxen wings, his ultimate downfall, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”.
October 20, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Trump indictment odds skyrocket after bombshell Mar-a-Lago report, legal experts say
A bevy of legal experts, reacting to new explosive reporting about the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, are convinced there is now enough evidence to charge former President Donald Trump with crimes.
Fresh details about the politically charged Justice Department inquiry, reported by the Washington Post and others on Wednesday, revealed a Trump employee told federal investigators that Trump himself ordered the moving of boxes stocked with records following a May subpoena for classified material, and security footage corroborated the account.
Read more here: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/trump-indictment-odds-skyrocket-legal-experts
October 13, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
EXPEL RUSSIA FROM U.N. NOW! - A U.N. Security Council Permanent Member’s De Facto Immunity From Article 6 Expulsion: Russia’s Fact or Fiction?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech to the United Nations on April 5 was the besieged nation’s latest call to the international community for unified aid from the nations that have already vigorously condemned Russia’s so-called special military operation. Zelenskyy questioned the legitimacy and value of the Security Council itself in the face of the most severe, systematic war crimes since World War II: “Where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee? It is not there, though there is a Security Council,” clearly pointing out the dilemma: Russia itself sits on this council as a permanent member, exercising its veto authority, effectively making this body impotent. The impotence is even more jarring in the face of the most significant international armed conflict in generations.
The conventional wisdom says that Russia cannot be expelled from the U.N., let alone kicked off its seat on the Security Council, because it is a permanent member of that council. In the weeks since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, much has been said and written on its legal implications. From an international law perspective, this failure in diplomacy and deterrence is a case study for students and observers of just war theory, economic warfare, “lawfare,” treaty obligations, jus in bello principles of the law of armed conflict, and the effect of modern technology on the proliferation of propaganda and misinformation as well as on the documentation of unlawful use of force in real time. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack has been so explicitly worthy of public condemnation and political sanction that reasonable people might expect that one simple and predictable consequence would be to expel Russia from the U.N., the important international organization devoted to protecting “peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity” across the globe. But the resounding, though reluctant, retort has been to say that such expulsion is legally impossible. In syllogistic form, the argument says:
1. The General Assembly may expel a member from the United Nations.
2. But a Security Council vote to expel a member of the United Nations is required before the General Assembly can vote on it.
3. That preliminary council vote requires the unanimous consent of its permanent members.
4. Russia is a permanent member.
5. Russia will exercise its veto to prevent the General Assembly from having the opportunity to vote on its own expulsion.
This post questions the key premise: premise number 2. Rather than swiftly dismissing the ability of the U.N. to expel Russia, a close reading of the U.N. Charter’s text and a mostly forgotten decades-old discussion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) may reasonably suggest that the General Assembly does have that legal authority, regardless of any vote taken or not taken by the Security Council.
Can we? and Should we? are, of course, different questions. This post concerns only the narrower subject of interpreting the expulsion provision of the U.N. Charter; it also avoids the distinct legal and policy matter of whether the Russian Federation is, lawfully, a member of the Security Council at all when the charter itself assigned the responsibility to the U.S.S.R. and was never amended to reflect its dissolution. This interesting argument is raised and debated elsewhere. Nor will this post argue whether Putin and his military commanders are committing war crimes—also a critically important discussion occurring elsewhere. The single question here is this: Assuming legitimate cause for expulsion can be demonstrated, can the Russian Federation be legally removed from the General Assembly? The conventional wisdom says no. This post offers a basis for saying yes.
The Terms of a Social Contract of Article 4
Consider the U.N. Charter’s membership admissions rule. According to Article 4:
- Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
- The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Foremost, Article 4 is like a social contract. Article 4(1) establishes that membership is conditional, and that condition is the acceptance of all the charter’s obligations, and willingness to carry out those obligations. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, a continuation of Putin’s unlawful militant action beginning with his government’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, should force the world community to consider what consequences follow in the face of a broken social contract. Putin’s order, and the Russian military’s subsequent breaches of international humanitarian law, by tacitly condoning or expressly ordering attacks on noncombatants and civilian property, is an unambiguous illustration of the very state conduct prohibited by the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions. If the rule of law is to mean anything, then Putin’s attack on Ukraine deserves the global condemnation he has received and the punitive social and economic consequences he and his country feel. But there is something to be said for also denying such bad actors a place on the international stage as punishment for their abusive behavior, as a general deterrent, and as an expressive signal to other members of the international community that certain conduct crosses a red line of dignity and respect—one that separates members from nonmembers.
So, in addition to the tangible consequences of government-imposed sanctions, private commercial pressure, and a nonbinding resolution from 141 countries in the U.N., the question of whether the Russian Federation also deserves to keep a seat among other states on the Security Council, or even as a member of the General Assembly, has been raised. It is severely problematic for a nuclear nation endangering global peace by attacking a sovereign neighbor under demonstrably false pretenses to be a permanent member of the committee charged with “the maintenance of international peace and security” (Article 24 of the U.N. Charter). It is even more abhorrent and is a strike to the dignity of the organization and its members when that offending state commits the very acts it is expected to prevent and punish. Such a view was recently adopted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said it was “reasonable” to question Russia’s continued membership on the Security Council following news of the apparent war crimes committed in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
The Expulsion Provision of Article 6
Can the Russian Federation be unilaterally removed from its position on the Security Council, demoting it to a two-year term member or even excluding it from the council altogether? The answer is a pretty clear “no, not directly.” Nothing in the U.N. Charter expressly confers on the General Assembly, or other members of the Security Council, the authority to strip “permanent member” status or expel one such member even for good cause, like grossly “egregious” and repeated violations of the law of armed conflict and the U.N. Charter.
The obvious mechanism would be to amend the U.N. Charter to pointedly strike Russia from its permanent council seat or its membership in the General Assembly. This path, however, is merely a tempting mirage. While an amendment (according to Article 108) requires only two-thirds of the organization’s members to ratify it, the amendment still requires unanimous consent of the permanent members of the Security Council. In effect, Russia has the bizarre power to act like a criminal defendant who, with farcical impunity, single-handedly vetoes his own indictment or refuses to submit to the sentence the jury hands down upon convicting him.
Aside from amending the U.N. Charter itself, can Russia be removed, through regular expulsion mechanisms, from the General Assembly? The conventional wisdom says no (moreover, no member state has ever been removed under Article 6, despite numerous resolutions to expel offending nations raised by member nations over the decades). But upon closer inspection of the succinct Article 6, the answer is not so definitive:
A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
The reason for the expulsion is straightforward: persistent violation of the charter’s principles. It is an ironic historical fact that it was the Soviet Union, in discussion and negotiation over what would become the U.N. Charter, that first “insisted” on a mechanism for expelling members, arguing it was “essential as a disciplinary measure.”
But the key phrase for this present purpose is what appears to be a contingent trigger for that expulsion: “upon recommendation of the Security Council.” In the usual rendering of this article, the Security Council’s recommendation necessarily precedes the General Assembly’s vote for expulsion, and that vote can begin only if the council voted in favor of expulsion. The discussions of the parties during the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, which would become the basis for the charter’s text, do not suggest otherwise. Under this interpretation, Russia can veto any such council recommendation, effectively preventing its removal from the U.N., essentially serving as a judge in its own case who dismisses the charges before trial. However, later commentators have sensibly emphasized—even assuming a Security Council vote was a required preliminary step—that the General Assembly’s discretion to expel a member was not controlled by the outcome of that earlier vote.
The Security Council Offers Advice or Grants Permission? Two Theories of Expulsion
In 1961, the General Assembly debated whether or not the cost of operations it had authorized in the Congo and the Middle East were to be paid by apportioning that cost across the member states of the U.N. The General Assembly asked the ICJ for a formal advisory opinion interpreting the charter’s text. In its July 1962 opinion answering this question, the court affirmed that the phrase in Article 17 “expenses of the Organization” and its requirement for defraying the cost of doing business across the member states did apply to the General Assembly’s expenditures for those specific operations. In drawing this conclusion, the court discussed a much larger concept: the General Assembly’s relationship with the Security Council. Notably, the court described the Security Council as having “primary” responsibility, not “exclusive” responsibility, for the maintenance of international peace:
The Charter makes it abundantly clear ... that the General Assembly is also to be concerned with international peace and security. Article 14 authorizes the General Assembly to “recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, including situations resulting from a violation of the provisions of the present Charter setting forth the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
The word “measures” implies some kind of action, and the only limitation which Article 14 imposes on the General Assembly is the restriction found in Article 12, namely, that the Assembly should not [emphasis added by the author] recommend measures while the Security Council is dealing with the same matter unless the Council requests it to do so. Thus while it is the Security Council which, exclusively, may order [emphasis added] coercive action, the functions and powers conferred by the Charter on the General Assembly are not confined to discussion, consideration, [or] the initiation of studies and the making of recommendations; they are not merely hortatory.
Concerning the legal authority for Russia’s potential expulsion, it should be noted carefully what the court said next:
In connection with the suspension of rights and privileges of membership and expulsion from membership under Articles 5 and 6, it is the Security Council which has only the power to recommend and it is the General Assembly which decides and whose decision determines status; but there is a close collaboration between the two organs.
I will emphasize the point: “[T]he Security Council ... has only the power to recommend ...[.] [I]t is the General Assembly which decides and whose decision determines status.”
It is difficult to square the conventional and widespread assumption about Russia’s de facto immunity with this ICJ opinion. Article 6 must be read as meaning something more than just an occasion for the General Assembly to vote on a nation’s expulsion only when the Security Council has first raised it, debated it and recommended it. It does not read—and this ICJ opinion makes the point clear—that the General Assembly may only vote on expulsion after a preceding vote by the Council, and one that positively recommended that punitive action.
Indeed, if the power and responsibility for global security rest with both bodies of the U.N.—each with independent and overlapping roles—then it would defy logic and the intention of the U.N. Charter to permit a small group of nations to function as the gatekeeper of all expulsion or suspension actions regardless of which nation is at risk for such a sanction or why it has come within the organization’s cross-hairs. It would further defy the charter’s clear intentions to afford one nation within that already exclusive club a perpetual shelter that remains secure even if that nation is the one violating international law and the foundational principles (see Article 2) and purposes (Article 1) of the charter.
A Structural Interpretation of the U.N. Charter
This reasonable reinterpretation of Article 6 is strengthened by reading the expulsion rule in light of the charter’s related provisions. There are at least four places in the document to consider. To begin, there is clear enough evidence that the parties well understood and appreciated the potential scenario of a Security Council member having a conflict of interest in a matter it was responsible for resolving: Article 27(3) expressly requires that such a member abstains from voting on the investigation and pacific settlement of disputes in which it is a party. There is no exception available for a permanent member. Not dispositive of the expulsion question, but suggestive.
Next, recall the charter’s membership admissions rule in Article 4 quoted above. It complements the warning in Article 6 that “persistent violations” of the charter justify expulsion from the organization. Note that Article 4’s set of qualifications for admission to the U.N. and Article 6’s permission to expel a member for persistent violations of the charter have something in common. They both speak of the Security Council’s recommendation. More conspicuously, they both lack something in common—neither article says explicitly whether a recommendation by the Security Council must be made before a vote to admit or remove a member.
This plain reading of the text faces at least one obstacle. In 1950, the ICJ rendered an advisory opinion directly addressing the meaning of Article 4. The ICJ unequivocally determined that it limited the General Assembly’s admission discretion: that decision could only follow on the heels of a Security Council affirmative vote, which thus implied that no permanent member had exercised its veto power:
The text under consideration means that the General Assembly can only decide to admit upon the recommendation of the Security Council; it determines the respective roles of the two organs whose combined action is required before admission can be effected: in other words, the recommendation of the Security Council is the condition precedent to the decision of the Assembly by which the admission is effected.
To the court, this was the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the words. Nevertheless, the ICJ was not unanimous in its opinion: The dissent observed that conditions of modern international relations, the very conditions that led to the creation of the United Nations, force a reconsideration of how to interpret international law:
The text must not be slavishly followed. If necessary, it must be vivified so as to harmonize it with the new conditions of international life. When the wording of a text seems clear, that is not sufficient reason for following it literally, without taking into account the consequences of its application.
In other words, when a literal reading would lead to “unreasonable or absurd results,” and “run counter to the purposes of the institution,” the interpretation of the text must be read more broadly and contextually.
But assuming, arguendo, that a Security Council recommendation must be made first, neither provision reads as a constraint on the General Assembly’s discretion and decision afterward. Article 97, regarding the appointment of the U.N.’s secretary-general, follows a similar pattern: “appointed by the General Assembly upon recommendation by the Security Council.” This, also, looks like an affirmative recommendation from the council must precede the assembly’s opportunity to vote and appoint the secretary-general. In practice, this is usually the case. However, as early as 1950, the U.N. demonstrated its flexibility and broad understanding of the plenary power of the General Assembly: The Security Council was deadlocked over the reappointment of Norway’s Trygve Lie as the first secretary-general; despite the Soviet Union’s threatened veto, the General Assembly reappointed him to the office anyway.
Just as the ICJ observed six decades ago (“it is the General Assembly which decides and whose decision determines status”), the assembly need not submit to the council’s recommendation. Otherwise, the word “recommendation” is hollow, and not just in one article but in several. It would, inevitably and always, lead to “absurd results” and “manifest injustice” that “run counter to the purposes of the institution.” And if the General Assembly can disregard that recommendation, it is not obvious at all that a recommendation must be made, one way or the other, first.
There is a foreseeable, though relatively weak, objection to this view—one that also considers context and the changing character of international relations. It would say the particular phrasing or word choice of these two provisions is—in the real world of politics and diplomacy—irrelevant, or at best an academic puzzle. It would insist that the clause “upon the recommendation of the Security Council” should be construed, as most observers conclude today, as a limiting constraint on the General Assembly’s freedom of decision and its timing. This broad interpretation, empowering the Security Council at the expense of the General Assembly, is—the thoughtful objector would say—the most natural one when considering the gravity of the council’s peacekeeping mission and accepting the scope of its responsibilities. In other words, the Security Council does wield tremendous authority and can speak for the U.N. as a whole by ordering punitive economic sanctions or authorizing military force. Therefore, presuming the Security Council must vote first and must vote in favor of admission or expulsion before the General Assembly may consider the course of action is a normatively coherent and pragmatically consistent reading of Article 4’s admissions criteria and Article 6’s expulsion process.
That presumption, however, fails in the face of the structural interpretation of the U.N. Charter; and its inappropriateness is even clearer when giving due regard to the drafters’ intentions and the very purpose of the charter outlined in Articles 1 and 2. During the Yalta Conference in 1945, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius of the American delegation described in a memorandum the U.S. position on how future Security Council voting, relative to action taken by the General Assembly, would proceed. The memo explained that when it came to the issues of admitting new members, suspending or expelling members, and selecting a secretary-general, the action by the council was explicitly categorized as a “recommendation” and distinguished from decisions that would be left to the ultimate discretion of the council itself, like punitive enforcement actions.
So why the confusion? The procedural requirement that an expulsion vote within the Security Council must include the unanimous consent of each permanent member (regardless of whether one of those members was the problem) has been misinterpreted by some scholars as proof that a problematic permanent Security Council member could effectively block its own removal before the decision could be made by the General Assembly: One commentator asserted unequivocally that “the General Assembly cannot expel a Member without first receiving a recommendation to that effect from the Security Council.” This might be called the “Security Council Permission Theory of Expulsion.”
But if the drafters of the U.N. Charter wanted a preliminary Security Council vote to be both required and binding on the General Assembly for admission or expulsion of a member, they could have said so explicitly. They certainly knew how to draft text in this fashion: They did so in several other areas in the charter. For example, in Article 12:
- While the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests. [emphasis added]
- The Secretary-General, with the consent of the Security Council [emphasis added], shall notify the General Assembly at each session of any matters relative to the maintenance of international peace and security which are being dealt with by the Security Council and shall similarly notify the General Assembly, or the Members of the United Nations if the General Assembly is not in session, immediately the Security Council ceases to deal with such matters.
And in Article 25: “the Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”
If words matter at all, then two points are paramount and largely obvious. First, a “recommendation” by the Security Council is not the same as a “decision” by the Security Council. Second, no conditional triggers or caveats like “unless the Security Council so requests” or “with the consent of the Security Council” are found to hinder the actions of the General Assembly permitted by Articles 4 and 6. The “Security Council Permission Theory of Expulsion” is long-entrenched. But it is also wrong.
Conclusion
Engaging Article 6 of the U.N. Charter to expel Russia is not, in fact or law, prevented by Russia’s status as a permanent member of the Security Council. Whether Putin and his agents in the government and military on the ground in Ukraine ought to be prosecuted as war criminals, or even whether Russia should be expelled from the U.N. for directly endangering international peace by waging an unlawful war of aggression against the territorial integrity of a sovereign neighbor and its noncombatant citizens, are deeply complicated geopolitical questions for which this post admittedly offers no hint of an answer. Instead, there is some reason to be optimistic, rather than cynical, about the global community’s legal right to hold even a Security Council permanent member accountable for its illegality by removing that offender from the community itself, as both a deterrent and an expressive signal of how much the global communities values the principles of the U.N. project. I suspect that this view does not appeal to the governments of any of the other four permanent members. But one consequence of making expulsion a real possibility is that it would shift attention to the justification required—the evidence of “persistent violations” that must be presented for the consideration of the General Assembly.
Expulsion has always been considered a drastic remedy, fraught with the risk that it would delegitimize the very concept of a global community of nations united in a process to peacefully resolve disputes and advance mutual interests, or at least cast out a member and force it to the fringe of global society, the periphery of cooperation and the sidelines of decision-making. That such action has never occurred in the U.N.’s history does not render the individual U.N. Charter’s meaning and purpose irrelevant, though. The charter is understood to be a “constitutional framework” that structures the rights and responsibilities of the member states. Just as one would interpret the U.S. Constitution in the absence of binding precedent, the charter’s rules, including rules creating the rights and responsibilities of the Security Council, ought to be read in a way consistent with the charter’s purpose and design. Article 6, demonstrated by its text and by its relation to other articles, does provide for the very kind of accountability that intuition demands but that conventional wisdom has, so far, prematurely deemed procedurally impossible.
October 11, 2022 | Permalink | Comments (0)
