Tea at Trianon: Release the JFK Files

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Release the JFK Files

From Tierney's Real News:

You see, by 1963, the Central Intelligence Agency had become increasingly eager to involve the United States in Southeast Asia. Unfortunately for them, they were faced with a President who had decided to withdraw the small number of troops they had there. With Vietnam and its potential profits slipping away, the CIA was confronting its second failure, the most significant in its unchecked history.
Why Vietnam? Vietnam represented more in terms of raw materials than any other location available to them in the world. They HAD to get into Southeast Asia and control it.
Today, China controls 36.7% of global rare earth reserves. Brazil and Vietnam are next with 18.3% each. They are followed by Russia, with 10%. Raw materials are the basic resources indispensable for producing key technologies of the green transition – such as wind turbines, solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles– and the digital transition. The countries that control these resources - and the distribution of them - will control the ‘digital’ world of the future. Make sense now? (Read more.)