What's Up With Russia?

I've got an interesting take on the whole Russian election-meddling issue. I've been reading Australian far-left progressive blogger Caitlin Johnstone for the past few months, and she's been providing some interesting perspectives on things. For example, the title of her July 18 post "Russiagate Is Like 9/11, Except It’s Made Of Pure Narrative" gives you an idea of where she's coming from. She doesn't bother with Australian politics because she realizes that Australia is merely a vassal state of America, and like me, she's profoundly concerned with the survival of human civilization, and she knows that the key to saving the very lives of everyone on Earth (including her children and her American expat husband) is American politics. So she's deeply concerned with what we do here, but at the same time, as an Australian living somewhat out of the prevailing atmospheric jet streams that would spread WW3's nuclear radiation around the northern hemisphere, she's able to write as someone who doesn't have a dog in this fight. I also love her because, like me, she links enlightenment (meditation, yoga, self actualization, a direct experience of oneness with our fellow beings) with geopolitics. She's sticking to her guns in her assertion that, so far, zero credible proof of Russian interference in our election has been released to the public, and that we should be very leery of allowing a very few government spokesmen to create a narrative for us.

Here she is doubling down on it just yesterday -- "Lying Bigot James Clapper Assures World The Russia Narrative He Built Is Legit" -- even after dozens of her most ardent fans, including me, had asked her to reconsider her stance.

You've got Rachel Maddow / MSNBC and John McCain / Fox BOTH condemning Trump for being too soft on Russia. I'm too cynical NOT to be distrustful of that. Intelligence agencies totally lied to us about Iraq and its nuclear and WMD programs, and this time, unlike just about everybody I read in the media, I've been keeping this fact very, very prominently in mind. In the past, whenever Fox and MSNBC have had the same agenda, it has usually spelled disaster for Americans. 

But then a few days ago, I heard information on one podcast that revealed that there has actually been DETAILED evidence released by the Mueller investigation showing that those "12 Russian military officers" are not just generic soldiers but actual intelligence officers, each with a name, unit name, rank, and ID number obtained by the investigation. Evidence has been made public that shows where and for how long each of these Kremlin based officers had been stationed and what types of cyber attacks each officer had made against the DNC and our voting system computers. One of my many huge pet peeves is when the media leave out something that EVERY intelligent person must be wondering about. And thankfully, this one podcast (I think it was the New York Times "The Daily") mentioned this key piece of the puzzle. And yesterday I found an article on line that does the same: "What Mueller Knows About the DNC Hack—And Trump Doesn’t", by Thomas Rid in Politico.

I've been right with Caitlin Johnstone for the past few months. Like Caitlin, I've been somewhat disgusted at the liberals of the "McResistance" for trying to rekindle the Cold War with Russia. It seems incredibly strange to me to see liberals suddenly loving and trusting the intelligence agencies that have basically been our enemies for the past few decades (think surveillance of MLK, surveillance of John Lennon, COINTELPRO, helping Bush sell the 2003 Iraq invasion, spying on all Americans (and lying about it to Congress), and don't forget all the cruel dictators our CIA has placed in power in poor countries). I asked Caitlin yesterday in a comment I typed in response to one of her latest blog posts if she weren't a little bit afraid of having to eat crow. I reminded her that there are SOME good and smart people in our intelligence agencies who take their jobs seriously, and I asked her, "Don't you think that it's possible, this time, that they're NOT lying to us?"

Having just now finished the third of what I'm pretty sure are THE 3 KEY BOOKS* about humanity's BIGGEST problem (impending nuclear war by accident or on purpose), I'm especially sympathetic to Trump's desire to be friends with Russia. He has always been interested in the incredibly real and pressing danger of nuclear weapons, even long before he was President. Both Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg say that it is nothing less than miraculous that we are still alive, and they warn that our present nuclear strategies are almost the same as they were in the 1950's, despite the fact that nukes have gotten 1,000 times stronger since the days of Little Boy and Fat Man. Chomsky and Ellsberg believe that it's literally insane to continue a strategy that DEPENDS upon a miracle. I see it as playing Russian roulette once a day for a month, luckily surviving, and then deciding to try it again for another month! When you count the 6 times (that we know of) that Russia and USA have been within 5 minutes of total nuclear war and then factor in the hundreds of less-serious close calls*, it's not a matter of IF but WHEN nuclear holocaust occurs, unless humans somehow manage to get past the tribalism of nations and find a way to somehow federate as one world with separate states, something like what was achieved through the European Union, a great accomplishment in light of centuries of bloody warfare between European nations.

But now we know (or do we?) that Putin has "attacked the United States". From the get-go I've hated the media calling the alleged Russian hacking and meddling in our 2016 election an "attack", when, as Caitlin kept reminding us, we've NEVER seen conclusive evidence to prove it. But if the very specific information about Russian hacking obtained by the Mueller investigation IS true, which it now seems to be, I think even Caitlin should call an attack an attack. Based on the fact that Trump had already been briefed on this evidence, what he just did at the Helsinki summit -- taking Putin's word over that of our own intelligence agencies -- is treason. If Putin's agents actually stole emails from the DNC (even though by releasing them Russia alerted progressives about the DNC treason of pushing Bernie out of the competition), and if they actually attempted to hack into our voting system computers as alleged, then we should impose ultra-strict sanctions on Russia and treat them like a Third World pariah who just happens to have a lot of nukes but won't dare use them. And I guess we should probably strengthen NATO.

As much as I despise and revile Trump and what he represents, I've been sympathetic about his wanting to reform NATO. I've been trying to think outside the box about NATO, an old-fashioned alliance, predicated on the proposition that if Russia so much as inches over the border of even one of our tiny new NATO allies, such as Montenegro, we'll try our very best to launch off as many nuclear missiles at them as we can before they have a chance to retaliate with sufficient missiles to destroy us, and for good measure, we'll destroy all major Chinese cities as well*. Back in the early 1950's when this strategy was being formulated, we were willing to lose maybe 1/4 of our own population immediately and another 1/4 within the next few years to cancer caused by radiation (plus sacrifice the whole nation of China and, ironically, most of our European allies) in order to "win" a war against Russia. And who knows? Maybe the Russians were so insane and the chess game had gotten so incredibly intense and dangerous that this was a reasonable response. Even Daniel Ellsberg thought so! That's why he worked as a nuclear planner from the 1950's until he released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. But in reality, war became OBSOLETE on July 16, 1945, the moment the first atom bomb was successfully detonated at Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. So it's possible even for strong progressive Trump haters to see pre-nuclear-war style alliances as something outdated and dangerous.

It seems profoundly obvious that Trump should be impeached immediately. Almost everything he said during his press conference with Putin was about protecting his own legitimacy as President, with no care at all about US national security. Still, I wish the investigators would hurry up and nail him, if he's so guilty, before he appoints another psychopath to our Supreme Court.

It's conceivable Trump will have to resign soon. If so, we'll be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. How will we deal with Medieval Mike (Pence) and the frightening, sickening line of presidential succession Trump has in place. We are so f*cked unless we can excise the whole Trump administration like the one gigantic cancer that it is. But if Trump weathers this storm and somehow avoids being destroyed by the Mueller investigation, it's likely that he could be re-elected in 2020. This little video shows me stocking up ammunition just in case (I'm corking some good Cabernet Franc).  

There seems to be so little will amongst our representatives to take down Trump! We are all experts at our various jobs -- teaching school, installing plumbing, selling real estate -- but our REPRESENTATIVES are supposed to be expert at constitutional law, and it would SEEM that we have enough evidence to impeach Trump right now. Michael Moore sent out a great mass mailing insisting on immediate impeachment. We actually have MORE than enough on Trump -- his bungling of the disaster in Puerto Rico all by itself is grounds for impeachment.

Only 26% of eligible American voters actually chose Trump, and those voters comprise only .03% of the worlds population. Isn't it mind-blowing that such a tiny percentage of people were able to break our country AND break the world?!

* The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell
  Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel Ellsberg
  Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

Geraldo, Brian Williams, and Amerikans 💖 War

On Fox Propaganda, regarding the dropping of the MOAB on militants in Afghanistan last Thursday:

“And that’s what happens when a 21,000-pound bomb explodes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, where at least 36 ISIS fighters have lost their lives,” ‘Fox and Friends’ host Brian Kilmeade said on Friday.

“That is what freedom looks like,” fellow host Ainsley Earhardt said. “That’s the red white and blue.”

"One of my favorite things!"

“Well, one of my favorite things in the 16 years I’ve been here at Fox News is watching bombs drop on bad guys,” Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera added.

(The MOAB, our largest non-nuclear bomb, kills or fucks up everybody in a 2-mile circle, and costs $16 million a pop. We had 20 of them, now we have 19.)

Brian waxes poetic about the beauty of the rockets’ red glare

Another great patriot, Brian Williams, the former top news anchor in the United States, rhapsodized about the beauty of the 59 missiles Trump launched earlier this month at a military air base in Syria. The total cost of the missiles was about $60 million. 10 soldiers and 4 civilians were killed. Some of the missiles totally missed their targets, and the air base was useable the next day. The few military aircraft that were hit were already out of service.
The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air . . .

Hillary the Shape Shifter, Flint Water, Fukushima, and Pussy Riot

A rule I follow in my personal life, and also in my political life, is to deal with the biggest problem first. I believe that this approach often results in the smaller problems being solved automatically. Sometimes it's easy to figure out what Job One is, but when there are dozens of huge Job Twos looming, it's not so easy.  

There was a time when the obvious Job One on the whole planet was to impeach Bush Jr and Dick Cheney. Now, with terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Syrian refugees pouring into Europe, and ISIS spreading far and wide, we're seeing the result of our failure to accomplish this.

Today, I believe Job One for Americans is to get Bernie Sanders elected. It may seem that Hillary would be a fairly innocuous president, and in the scheme of things, we know that she would be a competent president. But what kind of country do we want to live in? An oligarchical empire that crushes millions of lives and destroys Earth's environment in order to add to the wealth of billionaires, while forcing us pay its bills? Do we want to continue living under our present system of soft fascism, in which TV's are used in place of gulags and America is slowly transformed into a Third World nation right before our eyes? 

The main purpose of my blog post today is simply to share this video (2 minutes) of Hillary helping Bush Jr sell his illegal, immoral, and unwarranted 2003 invasion of Iraq. This invasion and occupation has resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqi people and 5,000 brave American soldiers, destroyed the whole country of Iraq, and recruited millions more terrorists, all while stealing about $3 trillion dollars from our Treasury, or more accurately, from our children's future labor! 

Every minute our children and grandchildren work to pay taxes to cover the cost of this war crime will be a minute that they will be in slavery, having their labor stolen from them to pay for crimes of which they are totally innocent! We too are enslaved, every minute we work to pay the percentage of our taxes that goes to the Pentagon, that pays Bush's and Obama's war debts, that pays for the hundreds of F-35's that can't even fly correctly (over $100 million each!--the software required to fly them is already more than 24 million lines long, and programmers are finding it impossible to make the plane fly at night!). Hillary is very good at making people forget who she really is, but this old video, just 2 minutes long, is a good reminder that Hillary is a shape shifter.

We must avoid automatically caving in and voting for Hillary. If we vote for Hillary while Bernie still has a shot, it will be an admission that we live in a country where the government is absolutely no longer a servant but a master. We will be admitting that we have no choice but to be party to murder and to be complicit in the further breakdown of our country's culture and infrastructure. And we will be gladly accepting our position of privilege while knowing that millions of our fellow Americans are going without healthcare, without affordable college, without decent jobs, without safety in their neighborhoods, and even without enough food to eat. 

How would Hillary handle the present Flint, Michigan infrastructure EMERGENCY? Would Hillary go after the perpetrators, who have knowingly poisoned tens of thousands of (mostly black) children? Here’s How Hard It Will Be to Unpoison Flint’s Water. There's a huge looming Job Two for you! What is the United States government going to do about this emergency affecting tens of thousands of Americans? This is staggering! And how many other of our cities, with their aging water, sewer, and natural gas systems, are on the brink of similar problems? 

I think it's doubtful that the oligarchs will allow Bernie, a self avowed socialist, to actually win the presidential election, but people thought it was impossible for a Catholic (JFK) and for a black to become president, and yet these things happened! The prospect of Bernie winning is very exciting! How could young voters not be totally excited about voting for Bernie? His wining would be an actual revolution. Checkmate, elite .001 percent! We didn't like the only two flavors you made available to us, Trump/Rubio/Cruz or Hillary (Coke or Pepsi?), and you have been trumped! The elites lose! We win!

After losing Iowa, will Trump now deflate like a stupid looking balloon full of hot air and blow out of sight? My intuition tells me that many Americans are becoming willing and able to look at reality instead of meekly allowing politicians to trigger their feelings and control their loyalty by pushing their pre-programmed buttons--about gays, immigrants, abortion, socialism, etc. People are finally starting to notice what most of you reading this have been able to notice instinctively for years--that is, when a politician is talking total bullshit. 

A quick check of videos on YouTube, such as Stephen Colbert's excellent Trump vs Trump debate, shows that Trump is all over the board on every issue. Electing Trump president would embarrass America before the whole world! And allowing Trump to have the keys to our nuclear arsenal would literally endanger every human on Earth. What a humiliating, insecure, frightening position to put people from other countries in, who didn't have the opportunity to vote for or against him. This election is important, brothers and sisters!

The Hillary vs Bush video I've linked you to here shows that Hillary is in no way a progressive, but truly just a neocon in Democrat's clothing.

Bernie is the only viable candidate, the only one actually talking about the wellbeing of the people. If he won, he'd still have to beat his head against the brick wall of Congress, but by the same token, we would have restored sanity to one of the three branches of our government! That's something we didn't achieve with Obama, who immediately appointed Goldman Sachs' Tim Geithner Secretary of the Treasury and doubled the size of the war in Afghanistan. 

Another huge Job Two is Fukushima. The media behave as if the the earthquake and tsunami that disabled the Fukushima reactors 5 years ago were the disaster, but actually the disaster is just getting started, the biggest industrial accident in history, threatening Japan and ultimately the world. Can I interest you in a tuna sandwich? What will happen if they have to evacuate Tokyo?

And last but not least, Pussy Riot is back in the news! From the New York Times:

The Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot sashayed back into the public eye on Wednesday with the release of a music video savaging the country’s prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika, who locked up three members of the group in 2012. 

It is a black satire of the Russian criminal justice system, in which the women, playing prison guards, rap lustily about money and torture a man with hot clothes irons.

Unlike Pussy Riot's previous videos, this one features high production values and choreography! And the young women aren't wearing ski masks! The whole NY Times article is here.

What do you think? Are we being naive if we once again let ourselves believe that a president can make a difference? Please click the comments link below and let me know.