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Author: Jeff Schubert

Psychological Ability to Deceive!

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Psychological Ability to Deceive!

While I have been the victim of several instances of very significant deception by people theoretically close to me, I was very struck by a television appearance by Kouri Richins a month before her arrest for the murder of her husband, Eric — who was also the father of their 3 young children!

About a year after Eric’s death, Kouri published a children’s book – apparently with the help of a ghost writer — titled “Are You With Me?” about helping children cope with grief. She promoted it on local news station KTVX-TV of Salt Lake City, saying she wrote the book after she saw her three children struggle with their father’s death.

In May 2023, a month after that interview, she was arrested and charged in connection with Eric’s death by poisoning him. In March 2036 a Utah, USA, jury convicted Kouri of murder after deliberating for less than 3 hours. Kouri’s legal team did not attempt to present a formal defence after a very comprehensive prosecution based on extensive circumstantial evidence involving opportunity a series of motives – both financial and personal.

I followed the case quite closely and believe that Kouri did kill her husband by poisoning him. Despite this, she was psychologically able to ask for and front up for an amazing TV appearance which can be seen and is discussed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHsuMj4xWcE

This interview with a female juror in the Kouri Richins case is interesting in that this obviously very intelligent juror focussed on data (telephone records and financial records) in deciding that Kouri was guilty. This data focus is not surprising because Kouri showed little emotion during the court case. However, the juror — who expressed some empathy for Kouri — also saw the book and television interview as an attempt to make money (data) whereas I tend to see it more in terms of image management (which is something much of Kouri’s life seems to have been about).

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPGtk29CX_c

This body language analysis was done AFTER Richins was arrested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW0vIHjk-qQ

I don’t like the presenter of this podcast, but some very interesting things emerge from police bodycams. Kouri’s physical reactions seem excessive (and performative), and she is incredibly unconcerned about dealing with the children:

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH4Xh3XBiZE

Is Eric Richins family partly responsible for his death? Kouri Richins, after years of marriage and 3 children (the oldest being 9) lived in a “family” home that was entirely owned by Eric — ie Kouri had no direct title to it. Moreover, Eric’s family seem to have all been very close to each other and protective of him (some reports suggest a pre-nuptial agreement was presented to Kouri on the day of the wedding by Eric’s mother), and Kouri complained that Eric himself wanted to control her desire to work and have a business.
It seems that if there was a divorce, Kouri would have had a fight for part or all of the “family” home and probably custody of her children. If all this is true, Eric and his family attitudes to Kouri probably contributed to his death!

While I think Kouri’s desire to escape her existing circumstance was the main driving force for murder, this podcast by a psychologist asks if Kouri’s “addiction” to seeking happiness through love was the motive for the murder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MutqHzQk1d8

How children’s book affected verdict:

Deputy’s Body Cam Reveals Kouri Richins’ Words the Night Eric Richins Died

 

Trump is doing in Iran what Putin did in Ukraine”, says former head of British spy agency M16

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Trump is doing in Iran what Putin did in Ukraine", says former head of British spy agency M16

“What Trump is doing in Iran is not vastly different to what Putin did in Ukraine”, according to Sir John Sawers, former head of British spy agency M16, speaking with Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Sarah Ferguson on 11 March.

Putin will thank Sawers for his honesty!

At a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Russia on 27 October 2016, Putin was asked about Russia’s fight against terrorists, particularly Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and the destruction of much of the city of Aleppo. Putin’s earlier actions again Grozny in Chechnya were also on people’s minds.

Putin said: “We keep hearing Aleppo, Aleppo, Aleppo. But what is the issue here? Do we leave the terrorists in place, or do we squeeze them out? Look at Israel’s example. Israel never steps back but fights to the end.”

Read more at
https://www.jeffschubert.com/putin-says-he-follows-israeli-gaza-example/

Trump officials asked: “Why Australian Jews aren’t carrying guns”

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Trump officials ask "Why aren't Australina Jews carrying guns?"

According to a Sydney Morning Herald article by Michael Koziol on 8 March,  “Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin met US officials, including President Donald Trump’s antisemitism envoy, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, during a visit last week, and briefed staff at the National Security Council, the State Department and Congress.”

Ryvchin said the Trump administration officials showed a lot of interest in whether the Bondi Beach event was sufficiently resourced and whether it had been “left vulnerable” by being unarmed. “But [it] makes you think: Are we still living in an old world, thinking that threats are contained and police and ASIO have everything under control when they clearly don’t? “I’m not saying the solution is for Jews to arm themselves, but I think we need to modernise our thinking about the threats and how to meet those threats.”

In my view, Australia would be better off without Jews like Ryvchin.

He thinks that Jews are a special species of people (he really would love to see them given special permission to carry guns) and tries to use US pressure to control Australian domestic policies.

Jews like Ryvchin will always put Jewish and Israeli interests ahead of Australian interests.

See my own experience with the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC):
https://www.jeffschubert.com/me-and-colin-rubenstein-an-australian-traitor/ 

Iran’s military defeat could echoe the 1920s-30s in Germany and Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Iran's military defeat could echoe the 1920s/30s in Germany and Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s.

What comes after Iran’s military defeat and possible partial (economic, social, political) collapse could have echoes of events the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Russia’s economic defeat in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Israel just wants chaos (while protected by the USA) and gets some enjoyment — as we see in Gaza — killing inferior (not God’s chosen) people.

Trump, in addition to his basic desire for attention and fame, has a demonstrated enjoyment in being cruel to anyone — domestic or foreign — who disagrees with him. He has now learnt — again domestically and in foreign policy — the joys of using force.

I spent many years living and working in Russia between 1991 and 2022 and saw how an underlying bitterness toward foreigners helped certain people such as Putin build their power and go to war.

The majority of people who helped Hitler to power expressed bitterness about Germany’s defeat in the First World War or attributed Germany’s economic hardships to it. The ultimate result was war.

Neither Putin nor Hitler could have acted on their personal fantasies if there had not been the support or acceptance of much of the population.

Iran has a large well educated population and inevitably there will be a section of society that will now truly hate the West and its Gulf state neighbours. They will seek revenge — to some extent by terrorism but ultimately they will conclude that Iran needs nuclear weapons.

AFR article about Greg Moriarty

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

AFR article about Greg Moriarty

AFR has an article about Greg Moriarty by Michael Read, “Why Canberra has chosen this man to take over from Kevin Rudd”, in which many people extol Moriarty virtues. 

The one exception is Michael Shoebridge, who says:

 “He has been unwilling to bring the government to make the hard decisions. How can we have the government saying defence procurement is in such a mess that it needs the biggest shake-up in decades and the head of the department is an unalloyed high achiever? The two things don’t fit.” Shoebridge says Moriarty “has presided over the defence department for long enough to be fully accountable for its problems, and yet he seems to have escaped scot-free”. “He’s a bureaucrat who has done what his political masters directed at every stage of his career and has been rewarded for that.”

A public service colleague speaking on the condition of anonymity said there was a recent history of department’s bosses who excelled at policy and strategy but not at project delivery. “Greg is not a program guy,” they said. “He’s a superb geopolitical guy. But that’s not the same as when the minister says I need 100 missiles by Friday. He would understand why we’d need 100 missiles. He would be superb on the policy question of why we need 100 missiles by Friday. But he’s not the guy to push people hard, partly because of his character.”

In my varied career — Australia, Russia, China — in public service, business and academia, I have often come across people who confidently advocate some exceptional strategy but, when pressed, cannot clearly explain how it would work in practice. Examples include the role of monetary aggregates in Australian monetary policy, business taxation reform in the case of Tax Value Method (TVM), and IMF and “shock therapy” ideas for economic reform in Russia in the 1990s. 

I understand that one individual cannot have a good understanding of all aspects of an issue. But, often the big strategy-type people just do not want to accept that there may be problems with their ideas. It makes them uncomfortable — so best to dismiss such problems as “details”.

More generally, invading Iraq and building a new society there is an example!

In my view, this is a problem with AUKUS and why Moriarty is a bad choice for Ambassador to the USA. He is an enthusiastic advocate with little idea of the difficulties of practical application — particularly building nuclear submarines in Adelaide!

Jo Tarnawsky on Richard Marles USA Obsession!

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Jo Tarnawsky on Richard Marles USA obsession!

“The walls of the defence minister’s parliamentary office are lined with his enlarged photographs of American landmarks. Shelves are devoted to US history and politics, topped with White House memorabilia and gift-boxed flags from the Pentagon. Richard Marles’s ministerial office in Geelong displays a framed certificate signed by the then Kentucky governor when Marles was commissioned a Kentucky colonel. Heavy volumes of American history and biographies of US political and military figures travel with Marles on his flights.”

Prior to being elected to parliament, Marles worked as a lawyer and trade union official. This obsession with the USA and narrow real world experience makes him ill-suited to independent thinking about the AUKUS submarine project. 

Australian defence officials and officers may be patriots but above all they want to play with expensive toys, wear nice uniforms, and if possible get an overseas trip and postings. Like Marles, they are generally not equipped for independent thinking. In most cases they chose the military specifically to avoid having to think independently, and were promoted because of their willingness to conform!

Anthony Albanese, as Prime Minister, presently sits above them all. But, like all of these people, he hardly has a brilliant mind or wide real world experince.

Combining the limited minds of Marles, Albanese and carear security and defence officials is a recipe for “group think”. 

These people are tying Australia to a defence strategy that may cost this country dearly in the future.

As far as I can tell, nobody has been able to identify an “independent expert” who believes it possible to build AUKUS nuclear submarines in Adelaide. On the contrary, there a plenty of doubters.

Muslims Should Not Trust Australian Courts!

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Muslims Should Not Trust Australian Courts!

This week two Australian hospital nurses, Sarah Abu Lebdeh and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, will begin the process of becoming convicted criminals because of what they said – “hate speech” — only because they are Muslims! If Jewish nurses said similar things they would be given a free pass and even lauded by a Murdoch media that Russia’s Putin would admire!

In February 2025 the nurses, who worked at Bankstown Hospital in Sydney, made emotional and exaggerated comments about murdering Jewish patients under their care and sending them to hell in a private – and I emphasis private — video conversation after being goaded by Israeli online provocateur named Max Veifer who was looking for Muslim targets that he could boost his profile on social media. The nurses are charged with a number of offences including threatening violence to a group and using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.

These convictions will occur because the courts will feel pressured to punish Muslims — particularly after the Bondi shootings in which many Jewish people were killed!

At the same time police took no action against Murdoch owned newspaper, “The Telegraph”, which sent journalist Danielle Gusmaroli to the Cairo Takeaway in Sydney’s Newtown suburb in an attempt to create a physical confrontation involving a “Jewish” man and Muslims.

Several years ago, similar media obsessions led to Cardinal George Pell being convicted in several lower courts of child sex offences which were later overturned in the High Court by a seven to zero decision. Some of the accusations against Pell were almost impossible, but a “secret” accuser was accepted by the Victorian Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. According to some claims, Cardinal Pell’s accuser may have received money from Pell opponents in the Vatican, a typical Putin Russia trick – yet the Australian courts do not want to know about such secrets!

Things might not go so well for the two Muslim nurses if they appeal to the Australin High Court! Jayne Jagot, a virtue signaling High Court Judge, gave the 2023 “Sir Zelman Cowen Lecture entitled “Trying to understand antisemitism today”. Jagot’s main talent seems to have been passing exams and winning various prizes rather than any particular qualities as a person. Acording to Wikipedia, “at her Federal Court swearing-in ceremony, it was remarked that during her time at university, “she appears to have won every available prize in law”. None of these law prizes had anything to do with people psychology. All were about administrative law. And her career followed the same path. She is the sort of word processing mind that can be replaced by AI spewing out discovered word combinations!

Now, in early 2026, Phillip Boulten SC, a criminal barrister, is only being allowed elevation to the New South Wales Supreme Court because the Chief Justice Andrew Bell has promised that Boulton will not deal with cases if Israeli aligned Jewish organizations and individuals object.

Why ICE agents continue shooting & shooting!

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Why ICE agents continue shooting & shooting!

Why did ICE agents continue shooting at Alex Pretti and Renee Good after it was clear that they were not threats?

At least part of the reason is that they enjoyed shooting at a human being!

5.10.1941 “There’s still something else I have to tell you. I was in fact also present at the enormous mass killings the day before yesterday. For the first truckload my hand trembled slightly when shooting, but one gets used to it. By the time the tenth truck arrived I was already aiming steadily and fired surely at the many women, children and infants. Bear in mind that I also have two babies at home, to whom these hordes would do the same, if not ten times worse. The death we gave them was a nice, short death, compared to the hellish torture meted out to thousands upon thousands in the dungeons of the GPU. Infants flew in a wide arch through the air and we blew them away while still in flight, before they then fell into the pit and the water. Let’s get rid of this brood which has plunged the whole of Europe into war and is still mongering in America until it drags them into the war as well. Hitler’s words are coming true, what he once said before the war began: if Jewry believes to be able to incite a war in Europe again, it won’t be the Jews who’ll triumph, but it will herald the end of Jewry in Europe. […] M.[ogilev] has now lost a number with 3 zeroes, but that’s of no consequence here. I’m already looking forward to it, and many here are saying that when we return home, then it’s the turn of our local Jews.

Letters sent by the police secretary Walter Mattner, an administrative officer for the SS and Police Garrison Commander at Mogilev, to his wife (excerpts), 22 September 1941 – 19 April 1942
From: https://lnkd.in/gd4wgSgf

EHRI Online Course in Holocaust Studies https://lnkd.in/gXP4Syt7

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Appointment of Greg Moriarty as Ambassador to the USA will damage Australia’s national security.

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Appointment of Greg Moriarty as Ambassador to the USA will damage Australia's national security.

Appointment of Greg Moriarty as next Australian Ambassador to the USA, to replace Kevin Rudd, will damage Australia’s national security.

Prime Minister Albanese said: “He’s been secretary of the Department of Defence and the AUKUS deal is central to our relationship with the US. And he’s in a very strong position to be on top of all of that detail.”

Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor of “The Australian”, is a very strong supporter of the Australia-US alliance, but on 9 December he wrote about the reality of AUKUS under the heading, “AUK-ward truth: the sinking feeling behind our subs pact”:

“AUKUS is adrift, and even if everyone on the planet says ‘full steam ahead’, it doesn’t change the underlying realities.” “The US companies involved have been stubbornly unable to meaningfully lift the rate of production of nuclear-powered submarines. By 2032, when Australia is scheduled to get its first Virginia-class submarine, the US will be gravely short of such boats.” “Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary for Policy at the Pentagon, is inclined to face that reality now and talk about it clearly. But doing that explodes the happy fantasies of AUKUS, which for now suit all the players. So Colby was overruled in the report he could write.”

In Britain, the third member of AUKUS, Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, who was at one time head of ­nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence, has said the UK was no longer capable of running a fleet of nuclear submarines. The latest British nuclear sub to enter service, HMS Agamemnon, took a catastrophic 13 years to build. Admiral Mathias said: “The SSN-AUKUS is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale.” (Mathias has actually called for the UK to pull out of the AUKUS deal.)

Sheridan added: “It’s also virtually inconceivable that the Brits will actually be building nuclear subs with Australia in Adelaide in the 2040s” and “nothing much is happening in Pillar Two of AUKUS – defence technology co-operation.” “Given how irrelevant we’ve become, the Americans are willing to continue to accept our money with good grace. That’s the summit of Albanese defence achievement so far.”

Albanese said that Kevin Rudd “can look back with real pride on taking AUKUS from an idea in to a reality”. I do not know if Rudd is a true believer in AUKUS or just a dutiful public servant, but Moriarty appears to be a religious true believer! Albanese, on the other hand, is little more than an idiot!

Read more on AUKUS here:
https://www.jeffschubert.com/foreign-affairs-magazine-on-aukus/

Trump will Not give up Power – A Scenario!

Posted on by Jeff Schubert

Trump will Not give up Power – A Scenario!

I have written much about historical dictators – and their rise to power — and lived for many years in Russia under Putin. In my view, Trump will increasingly reject limits of his power by any decisions of the Supreme Court, Congress, or election results!

While there may be more instances of this in coming months the biggest test may be the November mid-term Congressional elections. If they go badly for Trump he may use his physical control of Washington DC to prevent Congress meeting – probably by use of the Insurrection Act combined with claims of a foreign threat to the USA.

He would also use ICE! Words and actions of Trump and his officials following the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis suggest the shooter will not be prosecuted and ICE agents – who are likely to be strong supporters of Trump – will become more loyal to him and willing to be his enforcers.

The alternative would be for Trump to wait for likely impeachment, but he – like historical dictators in my book — and Putin tend to act proactively. Moreover, people around Trump will be urging him to do this while he has the chance.

Some will argue that this scenario is unlikely because traditional US lawful institutions would eventually exert themselves. But Trump, more than Putin or any historical dictator in my book, increasingly lives for the moment of his personal vanity and longer-term details are often not part of his thinking. He will just believe that because he has ploughed through many difficult situations in the past things will turn out OK!

Louis Bourreinne, Napoleon’s first secretary, later wrote about such accumulation of power: “Without any shock, and in the short space of four years, there arose above the ruins of the short-lived Republic a Government more absolute than ever was Louis XIV’s. (While) this extraordinary change is to be assigned to many causes. I had the opportunity of observing the influence which the determined will of one man exercised over his fellow men.”

Trump seems to have the same effect on much of the USA population as Napoleon’s Minister of Navy, Denis Decres, recalled: Napoleon “enslaved us all” because “he held our imagination in his hand, sometimes a hand of steel, sometimes a hand of velvet; one never knew how it was going to be from day to day, so that there was no means of escaping.”

This video presentation and text considers the way many dictators obtain and keep power. The are two main factors: good use of PR to convince many people that they are necessary for the future of their country; and the elimination of alternative sources of power — be it individuals, groups or institutions. This is what Trump is attempting to do.

https://www.jeffschubert.com/video-and-text-comparing-putins-rise-and-consolidation-of-power-to-other-historical-dictators/