The kings of Europe used to pay intelligent males to faux to be fools so as to make jokes to amuse the monarch and his court docket. They have been known as jesters. A person who pretends to be cleverer than he’s, and who tells jokes so as to idiot others into making himself wealthy – they’re hucksters.
Within the Jewish garment commerce their merchandise is called schmattes. This implies “rags”; it was a Polish phrase earlier than it was picked up in Yiddish — one thing low-cost to make to be offered pricey. By extension, peddling something low-cost and quick on false pretences is schmatte enterprise. The Gentile phrase for it is a hustle.
For the merchandise Sir Lawrence Freedman of London has been promoting, he has been nicely paid personally, and the company he used to run when he was a professor of “conflict research” at King’s School is now a multimillion-pound enterprise. To gather cash for himself, and likewise for his son, Freedman has used firm identities whose monetary studies might be learn on the UK Corporations Home registry. The operation optimizes on its tax liabilities to the UK Inland Income by following the recommendation of Judith Freedman, a professor of taxation at Oxford; she is Freedman’s spouse.
The turnover, prices, tax, and revenue strains of the Freedman companies give a glimpse into the way it potential for him to look often in books, newspapers, and company conventions so as to announce, as he marketed final week in a London newspaper, that the brand new US army provides for the Ukraine will give the allies time to “restore [Kiev’s] battlefield fortunes”; resolve the Ukrainian “manpower issues…as new recruits don’t face the prospects of being despatched to struggle with inadequate ammunition”; “time earlier than they are going to have the power to begin liberating substantial quantities of territory”; and time to compel President Vladimir Putin to “ponder the likelihood that [the war] may but once more swing in the direction of Ukraine”.
The subjunctive “may” on the punchline is Freedman’s slip – he reveals he isn’t positive of the worth of what he’s promoting.
Freedman was the British authorities’s official historian of the Falklands Warfare after which a member of the Chilcot committee of inquiry on the British conflict in opposition to Iraq. He has additionally been a career-long Russia menace faker and fighter of the conflict his facet retains dropping, as he retains insisting on the reverse.
This isn’t jestering, it’s huckstering. Freedman is for rent by an organ known as All American Leisure (AAE), which describes itself as “a full-service expertise reserving company, particularly targeted on the wants of occasion professionals seeking to e book keynote audio system and company leisure for his or her occasions.” His pro-US credentials for combating the conflict in opposition to Russia, and his pro-Israel credentials for combating the conflict in opposition to the Arabs and Iran have earned him an engagement at a Zionist-financed think-tank in Australia which calls Freedman “the foremost authority on fashionable conflict within the English-speaking world.” Small world, if seen from Sydney, Tel Aviv, or London.
Beginning with a PhD entitled “The definition of the Soviet menace in strategic arms selections of america: 1961–1974” – that’s the US focusing on model of Russia — Freedman has monetized his war-fighting line by incorporation of an organization known as King’s School Enterprise Restricted, UK firm quantity 02714181. Based in 1992 with the title KCL Enterprises Ltd, it mentioned it was an funding and industrial buying and selling firm with out an categorical objective, aside from earning money. Freedman grew to become a director in 1998 when he gave a house deal with in Wimbledon. On Freedman’s avenue, native realtors worth the typical home value in the intervening time to be £1.9 million; that is down 15% from its peak in 2017.
Warfare with Russia has been rather more worthwhile for Freedman. Shedding the conflict, that’s to say.
In 2007 Freedman was chairman of the board of administrators of KCL Enterprises when it was determined to make the King’s School model title extra seen. Based on the audited monetary report for that 12 months, the aim of the corporate was “to help King’s School London to market its analysis and consultancy capabilities.” The report reveals that turnover in 2007 was £2.3 million; it then grew by 55% in 2008 to £3.5 million. “Administrative bills” got here to nearly the identical complete, that means the corporate was working for tax and expense optimization by which administrators and King’s School lecturers like Freedman have been operating their consultancy and different charges. When Freedman retired from King’s School on the finish of 2008, he additionally left the corporate board. It has gone on to quadruple its turnover in 2023 to £12.6 million. Warfare in opposition to Russia is excellent for enterprise.
Supply: UK Corporations Home
Freedman in the meantime stored a seat as director of a subsidiary of the US government-funded RAND suppose tank known as RAND Europe. This registered as a charity within the UK in 2001. In 2010 it was turning over £5.4 million in consultancy charges, together with Freedman. In more moderen years the charity’s official submitting studies subsequent to no cash coming in or going out.
One other director’s seat was ready for Freedman at an entity known as the Worldwide Centre for the Examine of Radicalisation and Political Violence. This was additionally a by-product from King’s School, but it surely reported no workers, no turnover when Freedman joined in 2015. It has changed into a partnership with US universities and a non-public Israeli college.
Freedman created his latest buying and selling id simply after Russia launched the Particular Navy Operation in February 2022. That is named by Freedman along with his personal title.
Supply: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/
This entity describes its enterprise as “publishing of client and enterprise journals and periodicals [and] media illustration providers.” Aside from Freedman and son Samuel as administrators, there are not any workers. In its first 12 months the corporate has reported holding money on the financial institution of £105,669. On the identical time, it reported owing collectors £60,556 and the tax and social safety authorities £19,952. Certainly one of its merchandise on the market is this. Based on Freedman junior, there are 41,000 patrons paying £35 each year – that ought to quantity to £1.4 million on the steadiness sheet.
Samuel Freedman has listed himself in a number of parallel employments. Certainly one of them is as senior advisor and trustee of the Ambition Institute, a £21 million contractor to the UK authorities for teaching lecturers; and director and government on the Holocaust Academic Belief. Created as a charity in 2019, three years later in 2022 it took in additional than £6.5 million; spent £2.8 million; and grew richer with £8.4 million within the financial institution or in investments.
This cash was spent on selling the defence of Israel and of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and combating political, media and courtroom criticism by labelling it antisemitism of the German type. In its newest monetary report, Freedman junior’s group claims “the Hamas bloodbath on the 7th October [2023] in Israel was the deadliest day for Jews for the reason that Holocaust. There was an enormous surge of antisemitism on our streets, on-line and even within the classroom…we’ll proceed to work to make sure that younger individuals know the place antisemitism can lead, and that this hatred has no place in British society.”
Freedman senior’s hatred for Russia has an official place in that society – his purchasers embody the British authorities and the Crown, which has rewarded him with a knighthood and different medals. These have been formally gazetted “for service to Defence Research” That’s army camouflage — Freedman teaches offence and assault in opposition to Russia, not defence.
Why pursue the Freedman cash path so exactly? As a result of jesters don’t get levels and tenured professorships from universities; Buckingham Palace doesn’t create knights of the realm with seats on its Privy Council for ignoramuses. Cash, nonetheless, can clarify how a profession of constructing errors within the conflict in opposition to Russia can final so lengthy, and of repeating the errors so lucratively that there is no such thing as a revenue in correcting them.
For instance, in 2018 Freedman revealed a e book known as The Way forward for Warfare: A Historical past. 4 years into the NATO advance throughout the Ukraine in the direction of the Russian border, these have been the teachings Freedman aimed to inculcate:
- US air superiority — “It’s a very long time since [US forces] have confronted severe threats from the air”.
- US firepower – “in most contingencies [the US] would take pleasure in an awesome benefit in firepower.”
- US technological superiority in precision-guidance weapons, drones, and robots allows the US army to conduct wars which don’t danger widespread resistance or Congressional disapproval as a result of there may be “minimal danger of casualties.”
Supply: https://johnhelmer.internet/
On Freedman’s desk of most frequent references to his proof, there’s himself on high; adopted by a former Marine colonel and a number of other others from Pentagon and NATO-financed suppose tanks. References Freedman doesn’t agree with, he disparages; for instance, he tags Noam Chomsky as a “left-wing polemicist”. Edward Luttwak, an American strategist of Israeli background and consultancy rival of Freedman’s, is dismissed with the road: “there have been apparent counter-examples to Luttwak’s examples.”
In 2023, following the primary 12 months of the Particular Navy Operation, Freeman produced a e book he known as Command: The Politics of Navy Operations from Korea to Ukraine. On this work Freedman’s principal supply of army proof is himself: 24 citations. As his supply on the Russian Common Employees, solely the New York Instances is extra usually cited – 37 occasions. After the newspaper and himself, the licensed state reporter Bob Woodward will get 15 cites; the Washington Put up, 15; RAND and the BBC tie with 7 every; adopted by NATO’s Bellingcat disinformation operation with 4. Learn extra right here.
Supply: https://johnhelmer.internet/
Because the 20th century American hustler (jester) Larry Flynt as soon as taught to the US Supreme Courtroom, a hustle might be repeated again and again to nice revenue if it attracts laughter, criticism, and acrimony. There was no criticism of Freedman’s conflict in opposition to Russia, and no acrimony over his defeats. Additionally no laughter — besides in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Damascus.
In final week’s Monetary Instances, the Japanese-owned mouth organ for conflict in opposition to Russia, China, Iran, and Palestine, Freedman continues irrepressibly for the clientele, unstoppable by the proof:
- “Continual shortages in ammunition and air defences had led to restricted however doubtlessly important Russian advances.”
- “Manpower issues, which stay continual, must be eased as new recruits don’t face the prospect of being despatched to struggle with inadequate ammunition.”
- “Quite a lot of tasks to get additional ammunition, Patriot air defence programs and F-16 plane to Ukraine are transferring forward.”
- “It’s going to take time to recuperate from the tough first months of this 12 months… it’s going to be a while earlier than they are going to have the power to begin liberating substantial quantities of territory.”
- “For now, Ukraine’s greatest method of maintaining the struggle in opposition to Russia is to hold on with the form of assaults it has been mounting often of late. These have used long-range drones in opposition to oil refineries and different targets with some strategic worth in Russia…”
- “Putin should now ponder the likelihood that it would but once more swing in the direction of Ukraine.”
Supply: https://www.ft.com/
Freedman reveals no proof that he has studied the place maps of every of the 5 Russian military group operations alongside the road of contact, the day by day Ukrainian air alarm maps and strikes of the Electrical Warfare marketing campaign, and the reporting from either side of the deep penetration assaults between Kiev and Lvov. Freedman seems to not learn the Russian army bloggers, their Ukrainian counterparts, or the US aggregators republishing each. The issue of masking up the westward acceleration of the defeat is seen throughout the frontier in Poland. Afraid of a brand new surge of Ukrainian refugees into Poland, the Polish Border Guard stopped publication of its cross-border counts on April 19.
As long as that is the battlefield evaluation of “the foremost authority on fashionable conflict within the English-speaking world”, what extra must be mentioned in English? Battlefield Russian isn’t a language Freedman can perceive. It’s unprofitable for him to click on for automated translation by Translate.ru.
