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solarpunkpresentspodcast · 5 months

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Some Thoughts On the Work of Peace

One of the most vexing problems on every human social scale is not just conflict, but the peace that could follow it if we could just get it right. It’s not easy for people to live side by side with each other after they’ve inflicted horrors on each other.

Just imagine it.

You have to learn to live side by side with the people who shot your spouse or raped you or destroyed the home and business you spent your entire life building up. Or you did that to the people who have to find a way to live with you. How can such rifts be healed? How can such people put aside their pain or their guilt to live peacefully as neighbors for the rest of their lives and the lives of their children? So that the conflict that defined the relationship between those two groups of people fades away into the fog of history.

There are as many pathways through this as there are conflicts. And there are a lot of conflicts! We can be an aggrieved species, full of violence, anger, the need for power and wealth, and the need for revenge. In terms of armed conflict alone, there are currently more than 45 active armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, 35 in the rest of Africa, 21 in Asia, 7 in Europe, and 6 in Latin America (mainly in Mexico and Colombia).

To bring an end to those conflicts, people need not only to stop fighting, but they have to want to stop fighting. And then they have to learn to live with each other again.

There are so many questions to ask.

Take the situation in Ukraine. The people of Ukraine had deep personal, cultural, economic, and historical ties to Russia, for better and for worse. I can remember standing in line at the airport in Los Angeles about a month before Russia invaded in 2022, having to actually physically check in for a flight because of the crazy COVID restrictions. I ended up behind a young pair of Ukrainians but in front of a young pair of Russians who lived in Ukraine. Or maybe it was the other way around. As soon as they discovered each other, they let me go ahead of them so they could chat their wait merrily away. As the storm clouds of war were gathering, I was nothing short of shocked by the camaraderie between people who were about to become enemies. Since then I have wondered what has become of these four people and what would happen if they had met in that line right now, after nearly two years of brutal fighting.

Will there ever be close ties between the Russian people and the Ukrainian people again? What would it take to let go of the hate created by the killing of 400,000 people (admittedly, most of them belonging to the invading force), the destruction of the homes, livelihoods, and life’s work of so many Ukrainians, and the abduction, torture, rape, and murder of countless Ukrainian civilians?

It’s hard for me to imagine it happening in our lifetime. But, then, people can be full of surprises.

Case two is Myanmar. Remember the tanks rolling in during the coup in 2021? That was just one of the latest big events in more than seven decades of civil war during which more than 200,000 lives have already been lost. In the event that a lasting democracy finally comes to Myanmar, how will the people of the various different ethnic groups and cultures involved find a way to work together to fairly administrate their country? It’s hard to imagine them all saying, fine, we’ll all just be fair to one another! I won’t try to favor my people over yours.

Likewise, will the various ethnic groups and cultures whose massacre of each other in the Ethiopian civil “conflict” that broke out in 2018 ever find a way to share their country with one another? Imagine how much hate that has created. That conflict has killed something between 200,000 and 700,000 people in just five years. Then there are all the atrocities that went along with that. If, at some point, everyone with a weapon decided to put it down, there would still be the hard work of the survivors (and the surviving perpetrators) learning to co-exist harmoniously.

Lastly—except not really lastly, given that we have nowhere near exhausted the list of major ongoing conflicts—there is the question that is at the forefront of everyone’s mind at the moment. What will it take to stop the fighting between Israel and Palestine?

Between 1947 and 2019, that conflict claimed roughly 50,000 lives and displaced 700,000 people. The last few months of war between Israel and Hamas have added more than 20,000 more deaths, most of them of Palestinian civilians. And that’s to say nothing of the resentment, dehumanization, and acts of violence that have built up over the decades as both sides of the conflict have failed to pursue a peace that involves sharing their corner of the world with each other. Given how heated the conflict currently it and how angry and righteous both sides feel, how could even a two–state solution be possible? These do not appear to be two groups of people who could ever tolerate living side by side in a relatively small patch of Earth.

All of these conflicts seem unsolvable. There are so many grievances involved at this point and so many wrongs that can never be made right. What hope is there for ever permanently ending any of these wars?

If there is anywhere to look for hope for an end to such conflicts, it is in an absolutely amazing documentary that came out earlier this year. It’s called Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, and you can find it here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0ff7cg0/once-upon-a-time-in-northern-ireland or here https://www.pbs.org/show/once-upon-time-northern-ireland/ or, if you’re a German–speaker, here https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/RC-024552/es-war-einmal-in-nordirland/ in somewhat abbreviated form.

By documenting the pain and experiences of individuals on both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland, this documentary ends up having a lot to say about the work people who’ve reached the point where they’re tired of conflict have to do for peace.

You won’t find this in the first several episodes of the documentary, though. They wade through the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland that pitted the people who more strongly identified as Irish, were generally Catholic, and wanted to see Northern Ireland united with the Republic of Ireland against the people who more strongly identified as British, were more generally Protestant, and wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom. These first few episodes are there to show you how horrific the whole thing was, how much pain it caused people, and the extent of the injustice involved.

It would take a long time to explain it all and I’m not really qualified to do that. So I’ll just say that the conflict between the Irish and the British goes back hundreds of years, involving battles, wars, rebellions, famine, repression, terror, assassinations, disappearances, paramilitary groups, bombings, imprisonment, propaganda, and more tit–for–tat than you’d think could ever have been put a stop to. The 30 years from 1968 to 1998, known as The Troubles, are the bit most seared into living memory. Between the pro-Irish paramilitary groups, the pro-Britain paramilitary groups, and the British Army, a number of people equivalent to 2% of the population of Northern Ireland had been killed or wounded between 1966 and 1998. The sort of wound that tends to fester, not heal.

To look back at it, it feels like very decade was more violent than the one before. The bombings got bigger. And so did the retaliations.

And then, when the bombings seemed to reach their peak, the prospect of peace began to raise its head.

It took a lot of political will and international support to broker the political end to the fighting. Two impermanent cease-fires made way for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. This was the political document that stated that Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, but that this would only be the case until the majority of the people in Northern Ireland decided they’d rather unite with the Republic of Ireland. It was also the political document that laid out how the various fractions that make up Northern Ireland could share power in the government.

Then it was up to the people. They had to agree with this solution. And then they had to find a way to live peacefully with their neighbors for the first time in living memory. They had to learn to let go of their hatred of the other side and they had to decide to let go of any desire they had for retribution for wrongs that had been done to them. They had to decide that living in peace and prosperity was more important than these things.

This last aspect… the work that people had to do to co-exist in peace since 1998 in Northern Ireland… is what the final episode of the documentary addresses. It achieves this through a powerful set of interviews with people who had lost a someone dear to them, such as their father or mother, one of their children, or a sibling, to the violence or had been maimed by it. Through these interviews, we hear how they grappled with their hate and their anger and their sadness or their desire for revenge. Choosing peace was not trivial for these people. They gave it deep thought and years of work. And it took courage.

One of these people, a man who, when he was a young boy, had had his eyes shot out by a British soldier, tracked down and befriended the remorseless man who had intentionally injured him. Although this was yet another bitter pill to have to swallow, that even after all these years, the former soldier did not feel he’d done anything wrong, in the end the two of them worked through it. It took years, but they came to understand each other and for the one who’d been forgiven to find it in himself to say he was sorry for what he’d done. And then life was better for both of them. They could co-exist, not simply in peace, but as honest friends.

These stories that these people have to tell of how they gave up rage for peace so that they could share territory with their former enemy are all deeply moving. My feeble writing can’t even begin to convey the depth of it. You need to watch this final episode of the documentary and hear these people speak for yourself. You, too, will be moved. What these people have to say should be a lesson to us all, no matter now small nor major the conflict we are embroiled in. For we are all touched by conflict of some sort almost every day.

But, again, I don’t mean to say that peace is easy. I’m definitely saying that it takes determined work, and not simply on the part of politicians.

Yes, for war to end, war must first end and people must have some reasonable political possibility for self–rule, even if it requires power–sharing. There are also grievances and injustices that must be addressed, even if addressing all of them would be impossible. Only then can the very real, very hard, and very personal work of establishing and maintaining peace between people who were enemies begin. Because otherwise no conflict would ever end. Not even after centuries. It would just keep flaring up again and again and again.

#Christina #conflict #conflict resolution

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atlanticcanada · 1 year

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Halifax Ukrainian Store seeking Christmas-related donations for refugees

A store in Halifax dedicated to helping Ukrainian refugees is looking to share some Christmas cheer with those who were forced to flee their war-torn country.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly eight months ago, about 100,000 Ukrainians have fled their home country to Canada.

The Ukrainian Store in Halifax has helped hundreds of people displaced by the war find items from living room furniture to footwear.

"Things are going quite well. I mean, we are very busy and we have newcomers at the store every day, so lots of people are still coming from the Ukraine," said Nanette Dean, the store's managing director.

According to Dean, the store still sees about 30 to 40 people each day, keeping the demand for donated items high.

"We're looking pretty much for everything. Furniture is big, beds if they're in good condition. We're looking for financial contributions, which really helps because then I go out and we buy some items, household items like kettles, toasters, frying pans, cutlery, that kind of thing. So, we need also linens, hair dryers, and gas cards would be nice to help our volunteer drivers as well," said Dean.

"We've also had some requests for food items. Some people are going to food banks. So, it would be nice to have anything people can help out with, we'll take."

Now, those who operate the store, located at 7071 Bayers Road, are asking for help with donations of holiday items.

"Christmas is a big holiday in Ukraine, so looking for trees, lights, decorations. Everything Christmas," said Dean.

For anyone who is unable to donate holiday or other items, but would still like to help, monetary donations can be emailed to [email protected] or dropped off in-person.

The Halifax Ukrainian Store is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays.

Ukrainians who are in need of items can also fill in a request form on the store's website.

The Halifax Ukrainian Store opened in June, and offers refugees items to help start their lives over for free.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/ONGp28P

#new brunswick #prince edward island #nova scotia #news #politics #canada #CTVAtlantic

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vlada-voronova · 2 years

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=38= If you want to understand Russia, you must start from corruption. And you will in a jiff see why someone whose mental health is doubtful ended up at the pinnacle of power, why no one ever objects to him and why there is no change of power. * And why should both small and large officials object and change something if they cut out money for themselves from the state budget on crazy ideas? The crazier the idea, the more money they cut out. * Officials are indifferent to the result of the implementation of the idea. They have real estate in Europe and the USA, they have a lot of money. * Petty officials aren't under sanctions, and big and famous, ones who are under sanctions will go to Europe and the USA through neutral countries, changing their name and face along the way. And ones will buy new palaces. * Why do ordinary people change laws and officials if: 30% dream of stealing a toilet bowl from a neighbor and don't want to know that a bowl requires sewerage and running water. 30% steal money wherever they can and are happy to be able to quickly resolve the issue through a bribe and ignoring all laws. 29% are only busy with their move to other countries, and half of them are members of previous groups. 1% want to change the laws of Russia and the thinking of 74.4% of Russians. * So if Putin dies right now, it won't affect anything. 74.5% of Russians will instantly find another one like him to replace him. Or hundred like him. And everything will continue as how is it going at this moment. * What to do with it? I don't know. I'm not a political scientist or an economist. But I know that when the USSR collapsed, my family's life has become much better, and therefore I don't want Russia made us go back to USSR. * And I also know that when the USSR collapsed, 99% of the inhabitants of my region didn't care about it. * They rejoiced at the opportunity to do business legally, earn good money in someone else's business, buy worthy various goods brought from all over the world and enjoyed trips abroad which the USSR didn't allow them. * There are several countries in our region. And everyone is very different. But no one needs the USSR, no one wants to remain satellites of Russia. These countries have no strength to resist. And there is no help for them. * A hostage can never resist a terrorist. There are special services to protect for (s)he. There is also an international protection service in interstate relations. But there is not action on its part. * Now Russia is killing Ukraine and destroying the economy of small weak countries. And the big and strong do not give Ukraine everything necessary for the liberation of weapons and spit on the fate of small weak countries. * I have never been to Russia. And I didn't want to visit. I'm not bound with Russia just because Russian is my mother tongue. I don't want my country and neighboring countries to die. But the strong don't help us. * Could World War III start? World War already going on, you idiots! АО3 Wattpad Twitter

#thoughts_on_twitter #роздуми_у_твіттері #размышления_в_твиттере #Влада Воронова

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bechloeislegit · 2 years

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When The Green-Eyed Monster Comes A-Knockin'

Thank you to @wordsofmyreality for participating in the Pitch Perfect Fandom Drive! For more information visit https://ppfandomdrive.tumblr.com/post/677587307639996416/ukraine-is-currently-being-invaded-by-russia

Tumblr PP for Ukraine Let’s all help.

Author’s Summary: This fic is set 7 months after the end of Pitch Perfect 3. Beca is in L.A. working for DJ Khaled. Chloe is still in New York waiting for the fall semester to start Vet school. Beca’s 25th birthday was coming up and the label is throwing a huge bash to celebrate Beca’s birthday and the release of her EP. And all the Bellas are coming to L.A.

Beca is excited which is a rarity these days. She had put together four songs that she was really proud of for her EP which the label was releasing on her birthday. They were planning a huge birthday/EP release party and, with Fat Amy’s newfound wealth footing the bill, all the Bellas were coming to L.A. for a long weekend.

“When does Chloe’s plane get in?” Beca asked Amy for what felt like the millionth time.

“About 4:30,” Amy says with a roll of her eyes. “I have a car scheduled to drive you to the airport to pick up Chloe and bring you both back here. That way you two can get reacquainted in the backseat if you know what I mean.”

“Ew, gross,” Beca muttered. “I can’t believe how nervous I am. I haven’t really seen any of the Bellas, except you, since I left France.”

“Are you sure you’re not just nervous about seeing one particular Bella?” Amy asked, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“I’m beginning to regret telling you about our confessing our feelings to each other,” Beca said.

“Are you still planning to ask her about moving to LA to be with you?” Amy asked. “You have all the information for Vet schools in the area, too, right?”

“Yep. It’s all part of the plan,” Beca said with a big smile. Her smile falters a bit. “Do you think she still has feelings for me? I mean I know we kind of said we really liked each other in more than a best friend way and kissed. But we haven’t really had a chance to talk more about it. And she did kind of have that thing with Chicago when we were on the tour.”

“She said he was just a fling,” Amy said. “So you have nothing to worry about. I think you’re going to have the best birthday weekend ever.”

“Good,” Beca said. “I need to get to the studio. I should be back here a little after six with Chloe. If the Bellas get hungry, order Chinese or something and just get me and Chloe our usual order.”

“You got it,” Amy said as Beca headed out the door.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

The day dragged by for Beca and she must have checked the clock a thousand times before Max, Fat Amy’s driver, texted to let her know he was waiting outside for her. She grabbed all her stuff, including the flowers she picked up at lunchtime for Chloe, and ran out her office door. She yelled to Theo that she’d see him tomorrow night and rushed out to meet Max.

They made it to the airport, and Beca jumped out of the car and ran into the terminal. She checked the arrivals screen and squealed a little when she saw that Chloe’s plane had already landed. She made her way to the baggage claim knowing that Chloe would have had to check her bags because the redhead did not pack light even if she was only going to be gone for a weekend.

The airport was busy and there were a lot of people. Beca weaved her way through the crowd towards baggage claim. The smile never left her face even with all the pushing and shoving she had to endure. She could see the baggage claim sign and suddenly there was a gap in the crowd. She stopped and couldn’t help but smile when she saw the redhead. Just twenty more feet and she’d be wrapped up in a famous Beale hug.

She hadn’t even taken a step when the smile dropped from her face and tears pricked her eyes. Chloe hadn’t come alone. A man walked up and put his arms around her shoulders. A man Beca recognized as the soldier that Chloe said was just a fling when they were on the USO Tour. Chloe brought Chicago with her.

Beca swallowed the lump that was in her throat and quickly turned and left the terminal. She found Max and told him that Chloe was at baggage claim and he should go find her. She showed him Chloe’s picture and walked away with her head down, fighting back the tears. She threw the flowers into the first trash bin she came to and grabbed a cab to take her to the studio.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

Aubrey, Stacie, Jessica, Ashley, and Cynthia Rose were sitting in Beca’s living room talking with Fat Amy while they waited for Beca and Chloe.

“Beca said she was talking to her this weekend,” Fat Amy insisted as she talked to Aubrey.

“I can’t wait for those two to be together for real,” Stacie said. “Beca told me she confessed to Chloe while they were in France and Chloe said she felt the same. And that they shared a kiss.”

“Chloe told me the same,” Aubrey said with a smile.

“I thought Chloe was into that Chicago guy,” Ashley said.

“Chloe said he was just a fling,” Jessica said.

“Beca was so excited this morning,” Fat Amy said. “I’ve never seen her smile like that before. Bhloe is finally happening guys.”

“You mean BeChloe,” CR said, causing everyone to laugh.

It was the same ‘argument’ they always had with Fat Amy insisting Beca and Chloe’s ship name was Bhloe. Amy’s phone pinged with a message and she quickly read it.

“Hey, guys,” Amy said, causing them to all look at her. “Beca just texted that she was at the studio and not to wait up. She said to tell you all she’d see you tomorrow.”

“Nooo,” Stacie whined. “I wanted to have a Bellas night tonight and let loose. It won’t be the same without her.”

“Is Chloe with her?” Aubrey asked.

Fat Amy’s phone pinged again and she read the text. Her smile fell from her face and she looked a bit angry.

“Oh, no,” Fat Amy said. “Chloe, what the hell are you doing?”

“What’s wrong?” Aubrey asked.

“Looks like Bhloe isn’t happening,” Fat Amy said harshly. “According to Beca, Chloe AND Chicago should be here any minute.”

“What?!?!” five voices ask in unison.

Just then there was a knock on the door. Six heads whipped around to look at the door. No one moved until there was a second knock. Fat Amy looked sadly around at the other girls and plastered on a fake smile as she went to answer the door.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

Beca sat alone in her studio just fiddling with the knobs and bars on the soundboard. The tears had stopped and now there was just a dull ache in her chest. Her head snapped up when there was a light knocking on the door. She wiped her face with her hands and went to see who it was. She was surprised to see Demi Lovato standing there with a smile on her face and a laptop bag over her shoulder.

“Lovato,” Beca said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was just working on my album when someone said you were up here,” Demi said. “Just thought I’d say hi.”

“Come on in,” Beca said and stepped aside.

“So, how are you?” Demi asked as she sat on the sofa lining the wall across from where Beca was sitting at the soundboard.

“Um, fine,” Beca muttered. “I’m good.”

“Beca,” Demi said. “I know we’ve only known each other for a few months, but I call bullshit. What’s wrong?”

Beca looked at Demi and couldn’t stop the tear that escaped and rolled down her face. She reached up to wipe it away but Demi was already kneeling in front of her, using the pad of her thumb to wipe away the tear.

“Hey,” Demi said softly. “Come sit with me and tell me what’s going on. I’m a really good listener.”

Beca nodded her head and let Demi lead her to the sofa. The two sat and Beca sniffled a bit and then spent the next half hour telling Demi all about Chloe. From their first meeting to the last time she spoke to her in France to seeing her at the airport with Chicago.

“So, Chloe brought this Chicago guy to L.A. with her without you knowing he was coming?” Demi asked.

“Yep,” Beca said softly.

“And Chloe is staying at your place for the weekend?” Demi asked.

Beca just nodded and wiped another tear away.

“Where is Chicago staying?” Demi asked.

“I don’t know,” Beca said. “I guess he’ll be staying with Chloe at my place.”

“And you’re jealous because he’s here with her?”

“Well, yeah,” Beca said. “She said he was just a fling and now she’s bringing him to a Bellas weekend reunion in honor of MY birthday. How else should I feel?”

“Maybe you should talk to her and find out why he’s here with her,” Demi said.

“I can’t stand in the way of her being happy,” Beca said. “Besides, he’s so much better for her than I am.”

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

Fat Amy opened the door to find a smiling Chloe. “Hey, Chloe.”

“That’s all the greeting I get?” Chloe asked as she grabbed Amy in a hug. “I’ve missed you.”

Fat Amy patted Chloe on the back. “Yeah, yeah,” Fat Amy said. “Missed you, too.”

Fat Amy pulled away from Chloe and walked back inside the apartment, leaving a confused Chloe standing at the door.

Chloe finally moved when Chicago came up behind her, carrying their luggage. She walked in and squealed again when she saw the other Bellas there.

“Oh, my God,” Chloe exclaimed, running over to the girls. “I didn’t know you all were going to be here tonight.”

She hugged Ashley, Jessica, CR, and Stacie. She saved Aubrey for last.

“Brey,” Chloe gushed. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Chlo,” Aubrey said, returning the hug and pulling back.

Chloe looked around. “Where’s Beca?”

“Hey, girls,” Chicago said, joining the group. “It’s good to see you all again.”

Fat Amy picked up the luggage and started carrying it toward the stairs.

“Follow me,” Amy told Chicago.

“Wait,” Chicago said, taking both suitcases. “This one’s mine and can stay right here.”

He set the one suitcase down and looked at Amy. Fat Amy nodded and led the way upstairs with Chicago following behind her. Chloe watched them leave with a smile.

“Seriously, guys,” Chloe asked as she turned back to the girls. “Where’s Beca?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stacie spits out at Chloe.

“Stacie, don’t,” Aubrey said.

“Does someone want to fill me in on what’s happening right now?” Chloe asked, looking around at everyone.

“We were just going to ask you the same thing,” CR said.

“What?” Chloe asked, confused.

“I’m beginning to think you failing Russian Lit for four years,” Ashley said with a bit of sadness, “is because you really are that dumb.”

“Excuse me?” Chloe asked, getting angry. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Chloe,” Aubrey said, trying to be the voice of reason. “Why is Chicago with you?”

“Yeah, Chloe,” Stacie said, stepping toward the redhead. “Why is the guy you said was ‘just a fling’ in Beca’s apartment? You know, Beca the girl you told you loved, and then sealed it with a kiss. The girl who, right now, is hiding away from you, from all of us, because she saw you and him at the airport together.”

Chloe chuckled, realizing what the girls must be thinking.

“It’s not what you think,” Chloe said. “He’s been transferred back to the States and was coming to LA see his sister. We ran into each other at JFK when he was waiting for the same plane I was. He was hoping to see Beca while he was here, so I invited him to come with me from the airport. If I had known she was coming to the airport, he could have seen her there and then gone on to his sister’s house.”

“So, you two aren’t together?” Stacie asked.

“Nope,” Chloe said. “I want to be with Beca.”

Amy and Chicago came back downstairs. Amy was laughing at something and looked at the girls.

“Beca’s jealous for no reason,” Fat Amy said. “It’s just a coincidence that these two are here together. Chicago just explained everything.”

“We know,” Aubrey said. “Chicago, if you can you should stick around. I don’t think Beca will be too late. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you, once she knows you’re not actually here for Chloe.”

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

Demi held Beca while she cried more. Beca finally sniffled and sat up.

“I’m sorry to be such a mess,” Beca said, grabbing some tissues and wiping her face.

“Don’t be sorry,” Demi said. “I don’t even know Chloe and I already hate her.”

Beca just chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they hated Chloe Beale.”

“Okay, maybe I don’t actually hate her,” Demi said. “But, I’m not very fond of her right now.”

The two singers sat in silence for a few minutes. Demi was the first to speak up.

“I’ve written this song and I think you should record it,” Demi said. “I think it fits you better.”

“You know what, I need a distraction,” Beca said. “Let’s hear it.”

Demi pulled a jump drive and her laptop out of her bag. She opened her laptop and plugged in the jump drive. She found the song she wanted and pressed play. Beca listened intently and started nodding. Beca stopped the music and looked at Demi.

“Do you have the lyrics written down?” Beca asked.

“Of course,” Demi said with a smile and pulled out the sheet music.

“Do you mind if I strip this down and remove your vocals?” Beca asked. “I’d like to give it a shot.”

“Go for it,” Demi said. “I love watching you work.”

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

A short while later, Beca came out of the recording booth.

“Thanks for letting me hear the song,” Beca said excitedly. “It sounds good but I don’t think it’s right for me.”

“You sounded great on it,” Demi said. “How do you feel about the lyrics?”

“Everything was perfect,” Beca said with a smile. “The lyrics, the music. It just all comes together really well.”

“Yeah,” Demi said. “It is really good.”

“I agree,” Beca said. “And, it’s going to be a hit. For you.”

Beca sat back with a sad smile and looked over Demi.

“Come on, mopey,” Demi said. “We’re going out.”

“I don’t want to go out,” Beca whined.

“I didn’t ask,” Demi said and dragged Beca out of the studio and down to her car.

Demi told her driver they were going to Lure Nightclub. When they arrived, the valet opened the door for the two women and Demi grabbed Beca’s hand to lead her into the club. The paparazzi were out in full force and got plenty of pictures of the two holding hands as Demi dragged Beca into the club.

Beca and Demi got drunk and stumbled out of the club around 2:00 am. Demi took Beca to her place so she didn’t have to deal with Chloe and Chicago at hers. Both girls crashed as soon as they got to Demi’s bedroom.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

It was a little after ten the next morning when Demi and Beca were awakened by the ringing of both their phones. Each girl fumbled around until they found their phones.

“Hello,” Beca mumbled.

“Beca, where the hell are you?” Fat Amy yelled.

“Stop yelling,” Beca said, sitting up and holding her head. She looked and saw that Demi had left the room. “What’s going on?”

“Where are you?” Fat Amy asked. “There’s some serious shit going down at your apartment. You might want to get over here.”

“What kind of shit?” Beca asked, still unfocused.

“The Bellas all showed up here around 9:00 this morning,” Fat Amy said. “They’ve been going on and on about how you and Demi Lovato are a thing.”

“What?” Beca asked. “Why would they think that?”

“Google your name,” Fat Amy said. “You’ll see why. And, we also have one pissed-off and angry ginger that looks like she’s ready to kill somebody.”

“What is she so pissed off about?” Beca asked fully awake and pissed off now. “She’s with Captain America. It’s none of her fucking business who I’m with.”

“Come on, Beca,” Fat Amy said pleadingly. “It’s not like that. Just come home. Please?”

“I’ll be there soon,” Beca said with a sigh and ended the call.

She looked down at her phone and noticed she had a bunch of texts from most of the Bellas, several of them from Chloe. She decided to ignore them for now and crawled out of bed to search for Demi. She found her standing in front of her TV with the phone to her ear.

“We’re friends who went out and got drunk together,” Demi said into the phone. “That’s all.”

Beca looked at the TV and her eyes got wide. TMZ had a video of the two of them inside Lure and they were dancing and hanging all over each other.

“Oh, shit,” Beca mumbled.

Demi looked at her and smiled a genuine smile as she ended her call. “My publicist,” Demi explained. “Apparently, we are the couple to watch now.”

“Shit, Demi,” Beca said, running her hand through her hair. “I’m sorry about this.”

“Don’t be,” Demi said. “I’m not. It’s good publicity. Plus, you’re hot. I could do worse.”

“Gee, thanks,” Beca said. “Way to boost a girl’s ego, Lovato.”

“Shut it, Mitchell,” Demi said with a laugh. “You know if you weren’t in love with Chloe you’d be all over this.”

“I need to go home,” Beca said, blushing. “Fat Amy called and apparently all the Bellas are there and Chloe’s having a fit.”

“Let me come with you,” Demi said, her eyes bright with mischief. “Maybe you’ll find out exactly where you stand with Chloe if you show up with me. I’ll just tell them nothing happened.”

“Sure, why not? What could possibly go wrong?” Beca asked sarcastically.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

Demi and Beca made it to Beca’s apartment around 1:00 pm to find the Bellas sitting around Beca’s living room. As soon as Beca walked in Amy ran over and grabbed her in a hug.

“I was worried about you, shorty,” Amy said before letting Beca go.

“Yeah, well, as you can see, I’m fine,” Beca said.

“Where the hell have you been?” Chloe yelled at Beca. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”

Beca looked at Chloe and frowned.

“I don’t answer to you,” Beca snarked. “You’re not my girlfriend.”

Chloe’s mouth dropped open in shock at Beca’s anger toward her.

“Why are you acting like this?” Chloe asked. “Are you and Demi a thing now? So, you’ve forgotten everything you said to me in France.”

“Demi and I are not a thing,” Beca said. “Why is Chicago with you anyway?”

“He came out to visit his sister,” Chloe said. “He wanted to see you to congratulate you. But since you didn’t come home last night, he left.”

“Yeah, right,” Beca scoffed.

“Beca,” Aubrey said. “Maybe you should hear Chloe out before you say something you’ll regret. Why don’t you two go upstairs and talk.”

Beca and Chloe stood glaring at each other. Chloe was the first to fold.

“Can we talk?” Chloe asked. “Please?”

“Sure,” Beca said and headed for the stairs.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

“So, are you replacing me with Demi Lovato?” Chloe asked as soon as Beca closed her bedroom door.

“What? No,” Beca responded. “Are you really not with Chicago?”

“I don’t want Chicago,” Chloe said. “I only want you.”

“I only want you, too,” Beca said.

Chloe smiled and stared at Beca.

“So, uh, what happens now?” Beca asked.

“I'm going to kiss you,” Chloe said, stepping toward Beca.

“Who’s stopping you?” Beca asked.

Chloe didn’t say anything, she just grabbed Beca by the front of her shirt and pulled her into a kiss.

Beca moaned into the kiss and grabbed Chloe around the waist, pulling her closer and deepening the kiss.

~ WHEN THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER COMES A-KNOCKIN’~

“It’s kind of quiet up there,” Ashley said. “Do you think we should check on them?”

“Let’s leave them alone for a bit,” Jessica said. “I’m not sure I want to walk into whatever is happening right now.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Fat Amy said with a knowing smile. “I’m pretty sure BeChloe is happening.”

“I agree,” Aubrey said.

“We’ll have to put a stop to whatever is happening soon,” Stacie said. “Beca will need to get ready for her party.”

“Maybe we should go to the hotel and get ready ourselves,” CR suggested. “Hopefully, they’ll be done making up by the time we come back.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Emily said. “I’ll text Beca and let her know.”

“I’ll text Chloe, too,” Aubrey said.

“Yes, yes!” They suddenly hear Beca scream, followed by an “Oh, my God!” from Chloe.

The girls looked at each other and made a mad dash toward the door. Emily pulled the door open as Jessica, Ashley, CR, and Flo, practically fell over each other trying to get out.

Stacie smirked as she looked up toward Beca’s room.

“Let’s go, Stacie,” Aubrey said, grabbing Stacie’s arm and dragging her toward the door.

“Wait for us,” Fat Amy yelled as she and Demi ran out after them.

#ukraine #ppfandomdrive #admin #bechloe #wordsofmyreality

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the-daily-tizzy · 2 years

Text

Tucker on FoxNews

“…Yesterday morning, Joe Biden's secretary of state, a man called Tony Blinken, went on to the Sunday show over at CBS News to announce new policy toward Russia. Going forward, Blinken explained, the Biden administration will use Poland as a cutout to send fighter jets to the government of Ukraine. Those jets will be used to fight the Russian military. Blinken announced this in a calm, even tone that suggested this was conventional procedure, business as usual, nothing to worry about, just another weekend at the State Department. But in fact, it's not typical. It's a very big step. It could turn out to be a pivot point in history and for that reason, we want you to know entire exchange. CBS ANCHOR: If, for instance, the Polish government, a NATO member, wants to send fighter jets, does that get a green light from the US or are you afraid that that will escalate tension? SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: No, ...that gets a green light. In fact, we're talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs if, in fact, they choose to provide these fighter jets to..the Ukrainians. What could we do? How can we help to make sure that they get something to backfill the planes that they're handing over to…the Ukrainians? "Are you afraid that will escalate tension?," asks the scriptwriter, because even a CBS News anchor knows that sending fighter jets to a war usually does that. "No," replies Tony Blinken, "that gets a green light." It's a remarkable exchange. What are we watching here, apart from a conversation between two incredibly shallow people who have limited contact with reality? What we're watching is the beginning of a war between the United States and Russia. If that sounds jarring, what else would you call it? Now you may support everything that Tony Blinken just said. Maybe you do support it, but let's not lie about what's happening. Let's be as honest and clear-eyed as we can be, especially now, because it matters. The Biden administration just inserted itself with force into the middle of a hot war between two foreign powers. That means the United States is now an active participant in a war. We are at war with Russia. Whether or not that war has been officially declared, whether or not Congress has authorized that war, all of that is irrelevant. That war is happening right now as we watch. Why is no one in Washington saying anything about this? Because they support it. They always have. Almost five years ago, way back in 2017, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California came on this show for another Russiagate debate, one of many. He came to let us know how Vladimir Putin had gotten Donald Trump elected president. It was all as stupid as you remember, it until the end of the interview when Swalwell said something odd and interesting. Swalwell explained that because Putin had installed Donald Trump secretly in the White House, the United States should now "do everything we can to expand NATO's role." In other words, we should let Ukraine join NATO. That's odd. Why would he say that? Why would a policy so seemingly obscure— NATO, Ukraine, What?— Why would that be a priority for some forgettable congressman from the East Bay? Well, simple, because getting Ukraine to join NATO was the key to inciting war with Russia. We didn't get it at the time. Now it's obvious. Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine because he didn't want Ukraine to join NATO. Putin certainly had other motives as well. People always do have multiple motives, but that's the main reason Russia invaded. The Russians don't want American missiles on their border. They don't want a hostile government next door. Now that's true, whether you're allowed to say it in public right now or not, it has been true for a long time. A lot has been written about this over many years by serious people. No one who knows anything and is honest will tell you Putin invaded Ukraine simply because he is evil. Putin may be evil. He certainly seems to be, but he also has strategic motives in doing that, whether or not you agree with those motives, that's irrelevant. Those are the facts. So, with those facts in mind, the Biden administration's behavior in the days before the Ukraine invasion tells you a lot about what motivated them. With Russian troops amassed by the thousands on the Ukrainian border, Joe Biden sent Kamala Harris, the least capable diplomat in Washington, to explain America's policy to European heads of state. At a public press event at the Munich Security Conference, Kamala Harris encouraged Ukraine to become a member of NATO. "I appreciate and admire President Zelenskyy's desire to join NATO." Message: Up yours, Vladimir Putin, go ahead and invade Ukraine. And of course, Vladimir Putin did that just days later. So, the invasion was no surprise to the Biden administration. They knew that would happen. That was the point of the exercise. We watched all this happen. We missed it. How? Honestly, because it was insane and therefore very hard to take seriously. Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war? We still don't know the answer to that question, but it is obvious that permanent Washington has been fixated on war with Russia for a very long time. A couple of years ago, you may remember, we'd forgotten, they impeached a sitting president. Why? For threatening to withhold military aid to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. Failing to back a proxy war in Ukraine was the one thing Donald Trump was not allowed to do as president. Again, they impeached him for it and no one said much about it, even in his own party, because, of course, they supported war with Russia too— maybe even more than the Democrats did. As far back as 2016, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina— hysterical little Lindsey Graham— was jumping around, acting out his war fantasies in front of foreign soldiers in Ukraine. If we saw this tape at the time, we don't remember seeing it - back in 2016, Ukraine seemed like a faraway place. We should have paid more attention. SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of … Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price. "Your fight is our fight." That's a very strange thing for an American lawmaker to say to a foreign military. Why would the Ukrainian government's fight in 2016 possibly be our fight? On what grounds is it our fight? What does that even mean? We don't know. And yet now it is demonstrably true. Ukraine's fight is our fight. Ukraine's war is our war. It's here, but most Americans did not see that coming—yet permanent Washington certainly did. Permanent Washington understood that the second Vladimir Putin's forces rolled across the border into Ukraine we would inevitably be on a course toward war with Russia. They knew. Here's the president of the August Council on Foreign Relations on the day of the invasion. RICHARD HAASS: We need now a response of necessity to his war of choice, and there's got to be to raise the economic costs at home, to raise the military costs on the ground. I hate to be so blunt, but, you know, the most vulnerable thing that the Putin's vulnerable to is dead Russian soldiers. So, we have to make sure Ukraine has the means to...resist. "Dead Russian soldiers." At the time, that seemed a little bellicose right out of the gate. It had just happened. Maybe there's some way to deescalate this. The invasion is terrible, but isn't America's role as steward of the West to make things better? Wouldn't a prompt Russian withdrawal from Ukraine be the wisest course for everyone, including and especially the Ukrainians on whose behalf we claim to speak, but whose country would be leveled by a protracted war? You would think so, but that's not what anyone in Washington wanted. They wanted a war and now they have one. So, where's this going? That's the question for the rest of us who had no role in making these decisions. Well, it's worrisome. You should keep in mind that the U.S. government is currently run by the same people who planned the Afghanistan withdrawal, the ones who tanked the U.S. dollar, the people who run Baltimore, the ones who tried to send crack pipes to junkies, these are people with a long history of destroying things and no history at all of building anything. So, a lot could go wrong. They tell us that Vladimir Putin is unbalanced. We'll take that at face value. We know that Putin has thousands of nuclear weapons. Putin has said that if he is pushed, he will use nuclear weapons. It could be wise to believe him. Harry Kazianis does believe him. Kazianis is a foreign policy analyst in Washington. Like a lot of people in his business, he regularly participates in government-sponsored war games. These are designed to map out what would happen if various countries fell into conflict with one another. A couple of years ago, not long ago at all, Kazianis participated in a war game predicated on a war with Russia. He wrote about this the other day in The Federalist. "In the course of what we call the NATO-Russia War of 2019, we estimated one billion people died." One billion. "And if we aren't careful, what happened in a simulation could happen if a NATO-Russia war erupts over Ukraine." That war has just erupted. The fact that no one in charge seems to worry about where this could go should concern you quite a bit, but nuclear war is not the only risk. The economic consequences of this war are already profound. They're history changing, actually and if you don't believe it, check out commodity prices. They're out of control. Wheat is up nearly 60% over last year. That's the highest price ever recorded for wheat. It's not good news if you plan to eat and it won't get better. Russia is one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world. So, for example, a ton of Urea fertilizer that cost American farmers $265 per ton last January now goes for $846 this year. And thanks to sanctions, that number will get much higher. No one who farms has ever seen anything like this. You probably don't farm, but you do buy groceries. It'll be obvious to you soon. In fact, thanks to Biden's foreign policy, everything you buy is shooting up in price and shockingly fast. Gasoline is now higher than it's ever been in the history of gasoline. In Los Angeles, it is selling for $7.29 a gallon. So if you make under $100,000 a year and most people in this country do, that qualifies as a crisis for you, but for the people in charge, it's not high enough. They'd like to make it worse. Their latest idea, that a lot of people seem to be buying, is that we have a moral obligation somehow to stop buying Russian oil. It's tainted. OK. What would happen if we did that? Well, needless to say, oil prices would jump likely to over a $150 a barrel, even higher prices for you, but then if that boycott spread and moral boycotts tend to and Europe joined it, buckle your seatbelt. We talked to someone in the energy business this morning, energy traders, to get a little perspective on this. He said a total boycott of Russian energy would cause "an absolute global disaster." That means recession, depression, uncontrollable inflation and the rest—economic devastation to us and our allies. And at that point, in fact, we're already there, we'd be forced to make up the difference by getting more oil from other countries because we need the energy. Batteries aren't going to supply it. So what would those countries be? Well, let's see. They would be pretty clear: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela. To repeat, in order to wage a moral boycott, we become more dependent on Saudi Arabia, governed by Sharia law; Iran, a rogue state; and Maduro's Venezuela because this is a moral statement we're making. This is a moral victory so feel good about it as you go bankrupt. That's the short term picture. The long term picture of war with Russia is even scarier than that. Thanks to Biden's policies, Russia and China now form a bloc against the United States. This was the nightmare scenario, now it's real. Just today, the Chinese foreign minister described Vladimir Putin as China's "most important strategic partner." So are we going to see a boycott of Chinese goods in the United States? They're making this war possible. Oh, don't bet on it, that would be racist. But we should prepare to lose our position as holder of the world's reserve currency. That is happening in slow motion. It's unmistakable. Now the Biden people seem to have no idea this is going on, or maybe they want it to happen. Joe Biden was up there at the State of the Union bragging about how he took 30 points off the Russian ruble in a single day. Hurray! Good for us, but once we stop celebrating our win, the destruction of the Russian economy, they deserve it, you got to wonder, is there a downside to this? Could it be a pyrrhic victory? Let's see. These policies have driven Russia, China, India, Turkey and other countries to accelerate their flight from the U.S. dollar. Now, to be clear, that's the majority of the global economy. This may be the most reckless and destructive thing any American president has ever done to the United States. If the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow, we would live with the consequences of that loss of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency for the rest of our lives. No one in Washington is even acknowledging this is happening. They're looking for more moral victories to win. And the companies love it, the woke companies, Apple, MasterCard, lots of other American companies, are taking victory laps for their role in punishing Russia. Great. Punish Russia. We're not against that, but you've got to wonder. You've just seen a handful of woke corporations crash a country and impoverished its citizens indiscriminately. Now that country is Russia, so most of us aren't even thinking about the precedent it sets. We're fine with it. It's Russia. Who cares? But is it possible these same techniques might be used someday against someplace or somebody that you care about? What if one morning you woke up and they decided that you're Vladimir Putin and you must be erased? Could that happen? Don't think about it. You probably aren't able to think about it clearly right now, even if you try. Why? Because there's a moral panic in progress. For the record, this is the third moral panic we have had in the United States of America in less than two years. You don't want to live in a country in which moral panics break out regularly, by the way. Moral panics diminish the people engaged in them and hurt the people who don't. They're degrading. They're crazy. They're the opposite of what you want. You want to live in a country where wisdom and restraint and rational behavior and decency determine the outcomes, not screaming. But we live in a country of moral panics. The first one began in May of 2020 with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. That changed America completely. The second moral panic was COVID. You've lived through that. So for nearly two years, the shouting has not ended. Hysteria is now the official language of public discourse in the United States. That's not good for anyone, except those benefiting from it. Who is benefiting? Anyone who lives for a living. The liars have perfect cover. Ask yourself: How much of what you first heard about BLM, and then about the coronavirus turned out in the end to be true? How many of the first stories were true? Not many. It was almost all lies, but you didn't know that at the time because you were busy being yelled at. If you dared to point out that actually all lives matter, they denounced you as a racist. If you expressed concern about vaccine mandates, of course, they called you an anti-vaxxer. Sound familiar? The pattern never changes. Hey, maybe war with Russia is not a good idea for the United States. Say that out loud some time. It's not an extreme position. Most Americans would agree with you, but you will immediately be denounced as a tool of Putin. What is this? It's name-calling as a means of social control. The people in charge have decided their primary job is to decide who you should hate. In an environment like this, everything feels like propaganda and that's because much of it is. On Thursday, we told you that Russian forces had bombed a nuclear reactor in Ukraine. That seemed to be true. President Zelenskyy of Ukraine had said it repeatedly, but it was not true. No reactors were hit. An unnamed Ukrainian official claimed that radiation levels in the area had risen. That turned out to be untrue as well. In the words of Mark Nelson, who is a nuclear energy analyst, "I'm afraid to say, this looks like a coordinated effort to induce panic." Of course. It was what we call disinformation and it was designed to get you to support a war against Russia. Now, maybe you support a war against Russia anyway, but you should at least know that you're being lied to and manipulated, which you are. Read this from Good Morning America the other day: ABC CORRESPONDENT: Ukraine's mothers, daughters, teachers, politicians, beauty queens, now on the front lines defending their country under siege and there is Anastasiia Lenna, a former Miss Grand Ukraine. Photos of her on Instagram in fatigues, rifle in hand. Underneath, patriotic hashtags. Miss Ukraine with a rifle defending her homeland. Is there anything more inspiring than that? It would be more inspiring if it was real. It wasn't. It was fake. Miss Ukraine was not defending her homeland. That wasn't a rifle. It was an airsoft gun. So the whole thing was not a news story, though you read it as such. It was a propaganda shoot. It was meant to deceive you. It was meant to make you want war with Russia. Sympathize with one side over the other. It works. That's why they do it. It's why the tech companies have censored so many news sites recently, including from Russia, but not exclusively from Russia. Now we're supposed to think this is a victory over Putin or something, but a victory for what? Less information? Fewer perspectives? If getting to the truth was the point of the exercise, we as American citizens would be able to read whatever we wanted to read. That was the rule for centuries in this country. It no longer is because truth is no longer the point. Instead, Twitter and Facebook are proudly censoring any information that might "undermine trust in Ukrainian government." Really? Since when are we required to trust the Ukrainian government or any government? Don't ask. By the way, over the weekend, because everything in America is unintentionally hilarious now, the New York Times attacked Vladimir Putin for censorship. Turns out he engaged in censorship and tries to control his people can read. Lost in the relentless focus on war in Ukraine, by the way, is any perspective about the world or war, which is always lacking in D.C., but never more so than now. The fighting in Ukraine is terrible, of course, you're seeing it happen. No decent person could fail to be moved by the images, but it's not unique. It's not the only war in recent memory or even currently in progress right now. Many thousands died in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war that was between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Ever heard of it? It ended less than a year and a half ago. No coverage. There's been a gruesome war underway in Ethiopia for a couple of years now. It's n progress as we speak. Tens of thousands, women have been raped by militiamen, many of them intentionally infected with AIDS. Can it get worse than that? How many people have died in the war in Ethiopia? We don't really know, because no one in our media cares enough to keep track. It's just Ethiopia. We do know that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the war in Yemen. It's a war the Biden administration has continued to fund. It doesn't get a lot of attention. It's just Yemen. Who cares? All human life is equal. All of us are equal in the eyes of God. The death of someone in Ukraine is exactly equivalent to the death of someone in Yemen in its importance, period. But hardest of all to ignore, though our media have pulled it off and ignored it, is the civil war that's underway 100 hundred yards from El Paso, Texas, right now: the Mexican drug war. That's what we call it. It's likely killed more than 100,000 people. In 2019 alone, close to 10,000 Mexican citizens just disappeared, most of them young men. More journalists are murdered in Mexico every year than in any other country in the world. The pictures are awful, but it's not a crisis. It's totally normal, says the Biden administration. Open the southern border. The border we care about is Ukraine's. Now, Republicans in Washington, to their eternal shame, have no problem with any of this. In fact, many of them are more for war with Russia than Joe Biden seems to be. That is a disgrace. It will hurt them in the midterms. It will hurt them on some deeper level because it does not serve the interests of this country, a war fought on behalf of democracy that ignores the will of the country fighting it? At some point soon, we'll explain exactly what's going on here, but it's enough to know Republicans are not representing their voters when they move to a position that's way more warlike than Joe Biden's, when they embrace the lunacy that could really hurt this country, that aren't representing people like Bryce Mitchell. Bryce Mitchell seems like a Republican voter. He's a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter. He is a cattle farmer from Cabot, Arkansas. The other day, someone asked him what he thought about Ukraine at a press event. Here's what he said: REPORTER: Well, I just wanted to get your thoughts on the whole Russia and Ukraine situation. BRYCE MITCHELL: You know, here's my first thought, is I'm not going nowhere to fight none of these wars for these politicians. I'm staying at home and when the war comes to Arkansas, I will dig my boots in the ground and I will die for everything I love, and I will not retreat. If this country is invaded and everybody's saying, "Well, ... we got to evacuate, we got to leave. We got.." I will not. I will dig my boots in the Arkansas soil and I will fight for the people that I love, for the land that I love, and the way of life that I love, but I'm not going overseas to fight. I don't know what's going on to be honest, brother. I really don't. There's so much stuff and I don't think nobody knows what's going on fully. There's been so much political corruption in that area. You got Biden and his son making a sh-- ton of money off of using our tax dollars to bribe their people. That's treasonous, in my opinion. So you got [Joe] Biden and his son using our tax dollars. Hey, if ..Ukrainian government, if you don't do this, we're taking your tax dollars. He shouldn't be giving our tax dollars to that country anyway. We got veterans out here sleeping on the street and you're going to give our frickin tax dollars to these Ukrainians and... brother, I don't know what's going on over there, but I'm not going over there and fighting. Tell us how he's a Putin stooge, Lindsey Graham and David Frum and Anne Applebaum, Liz Cheney. Tell us how he's immoral. When the war comes to Arkansas, he said, "I will dig my boots into the ground and I will die for everything I love." That's the American position. Fight to the death to defend what you love, your people, your family, your country, to defend it. That's why we call it the Defense Department. It is not called the Department of Nation Building or the Bureau of Trans Evangelism. Bryce Mitchell may not have good grammar, but he understands exactly what's going on here, even if the people who claim to represent him and our country have no idea.

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bopinion · 3 years

Text

2021 / 28

Aperçu of the Week:

"For some reason, the climate issue has suddenly become a global issue."

(Armin Laschet, current Minister President of, of all places, North Rhine-Westphalia, who apparently lacks both foresight and perspective. Yet he leads in the polls to become Germany's next chancellor).

Bad News of the Week:

Last week I wrote: "Who still doubts the man-made climate change: look out of the damn window!" And now it is really here, the climate change. Or rather its effects. On our doorstep. No more threatened islands in the South Pacific, no more melting polar ice caps far away, no more fires in North America, no more sinking groundwater in the Middle East - here, in our neighborhood, immediately, now.

It doesn't take a tsunami, a tornado, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption. It just needs rain. Much rain. Lots of rain. Former small streams burst their banks as torrents, mountain slopes slide down, floods rush through inhabited areas, sweeping everything away. Entire towns are under water, houses collapse, cars are thrown around like tennis balls, complete infrastructures are destroyed, people drown - almost 200 so far.

In parts of Bavaria and Saxony, but especially in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, the pictures look like a war zone. Not only because military recovery vehicles are often the only vehicles that can even pass the roads full of rubble and mud. The suffering of fellow citizens who have lost a loved one or simply their entire possessions from one moment to the next seems incomprehensible. Overcoming the consequences is a joint task. Politicians are putting together aid packages, while the solidarity of individuals and the commitment of many volunteers are setting standards.

One of the hardest hit places is called "Schuld", literally "Guilt". And this brings a bizarre realization: yes, we are guilty for what is happening. Not an unexpected phenomenon that comes out of nowhere. But the concrete result of what we have done and are doing. Or rather, what we have not done or are not doing.

It is always said that a crisis is the hour of the executive. Because it can decide, take concrete measures, send help, make money available. Normally, this is done - yes, we are currently campaigning for the federal elections in September - at the expense of the opposition, which, in the absence of government responsibility, can really only show concern. In this case, the Greens, the strongest challenger to the current governing coalition of conservatives and social democrats. But they are the ones who have always warned about the consequences of ignoring nature, who have declared sustainability to be the guiding principle and who are the only ones with concrete environmental and climate protection plans in their party program. Let's see how this realistic far-sightedness and this credible commitment will carry the day when the voters have to put their crosses. Hopefully in the right place...

Good News of the Week:

At the Eurovision Song Contest, many are always surprised by the hardly known countries in Europe (okay, we'll leave out the questionable participations of Israel or Australia). This includes for example the Republica Moldova. A small country between Romania and Ukraine, (almost) on the Black Sea, one of the many former Soviet republics. It shares the same classic fate of autocratic structures, corruption, an ailing economy, isolation from the West, and dependence on big brother Russia. In Transnistria, there were already pro-Russian independence efforts supported by Moscow before there were more high-profile ones in the Ukrainian Donbas region.

But just as in Ukraine, a democratic spring is dawning. Back in the 2014 parliamentary elections, pro-EU parties won a clear majority of 55 seats to the pro-Russian 46, but then failed due to cronyism, dubious entanglements and sabotage. But then came Maia Sandu. Coming from the World Bank as a lateral entrant, she first gained a reputation as a fearless fighter against corruption as education minister in the Liberal Democratic Party before failing as prime minister due to a lack of support for her radical judicial reform. In 2020, however, as the candidate of the "Partidul Acțiune și Solidaritate" ("Action and Solidarity Party" / PAS), which she co-founded, she finally won the presidential election with 58% in the runoff against incumbent Igor Dodon.

In last week's parliamentary elections, PAS was now the clear winner, winning a clear absolute majority in parliament with 63 of 101 seats. Memories of Emanuel Macron and "En marche" are awakening. PAS and Sandu now have the power to shape the government, freed from coalition concessions or multiparty dependencies. And their objectives were unambiguously defined as democratization and turning toward Europe. Sandu: "The people here have been lied to and disappointed so many times". The election results express "the desire of our people that order be established in this country and that corruption be fought. People want law and justice."

The great challenge will be to rid the country's institutions of the felt, to clean up and reorganize the administrative apparatus. For only on this basis can an economic perspective emerge for one of the poorest countries in Europe. It is precisely this lack of prospects that has caused an exodus of those willing and able to perform: one-third of Moldova's population now lives abroad. Sandu's first priority is therefore to modernize the education system and infrastructure and to develop a healthy sector of small and medium-sized enterprises. Only then would positive outlooks for the future have been created for the population - by their own efforts and they could then seek cooperative support from the EU. That this is not a foregone conclusion can be seen by looking across the border to neighboring Romania: a member of the EU for 14 years, the country is still struggling with economic misery and fundamental structural reforms. One can only wish the Republic of Moldova all the best and Maia Sandu a lucky hand.

Personal happy moment of the week:

I don't really know...

How pleased am I that Japan will not succumb to the commercial temptation to allow the same spectator madness at the Summer Olympics starting next week as England and Hungary did at the European soccer championships?

How satisfied am I to have found a solid solution to a complex challenge in weekend work that I can present to colleagues in the office tomorrow?

How relieved am I to live neither on a riverbank nor in a valley and therefore to be exposed to flood hazards only in underground garages and underpasses?

How happy am I that my wife will be standing in the kitchen tonight while I open the red wine, listen to the spherical sounds of Tangerine Dream and comfortably read the newspaper?

In some weeks you just have to be satisfied with the little pleasures in between. All good.

I couldn't care less...

...that insurance companies fear being confronted with claims arising from the flood disaster. After all, their business model should be to provide support in the event of an emergency. And not to look for backdoors and exclusion clauses in the fine print of their cryptic contracts.

As I write this...

...I'm tasting delicious olives my daughter brought back from her graduation trip in Tuscany.

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route22ny · 4 years

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ON 19 OCTOBER 2016, in the third and final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton opined that Vladimir Putin would “rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” meaning Donald John Trump, than a formidable adversary like her. As Trump short-circuited like a Star Wars droid on the fritz (“No puppet. No puppet. You're the puppet!”), she continued:

It’s pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.

So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.

As usual, HRC was right. But even the most cynical viewer could scarce have imagined, in the fall of 2016, just how on the nose she was.

Trump’s activities since taking office—the gutting of the State Department, the jackals in the Oval Office, Helsinki, Mueller obstruction, Ukraine skulduggery, and his willful non-response to the covid pandemic—make clear that the longtime mob money launderer has spent most of his presidency doing Putin��s bidding, just as Clinton predicted. Allow cyberattacks against the United States? Check. Encourage espionage against our people? Check. Spout the Putin line? Always. Sign up for his wish list? Like a porn addict on OnlyFans. Break up NATO? Western Europe is as divided now as it’s been since the forties. Continue to get help from him? Every fucking day.

Three years after that third debate, almost exactly to the day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stormed out of a meeting with President Trump concerning his strategically obtuse decision to withdraw US troops from Syria—a move that was ore in Russia’s interests than ours. “Why,” she exasperatedly asked the press, “do all roads lead to Putin?”

It’s actually quite simple: Trump has been mob property his entire life. The difference is that now, in 2020, the mobster who owns him is not “Fat Tony” Salerno, or “Big” Paul Castellano, or Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, or even Semion “The Brainy Don” Mogilevich. The mobster who owns him is Vladimir Putin—which makes Trump, by extension, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian government.

Previously, I wrote about Trump’s longtime association with the mob, both Italian and Russian, and his almost certain career as a top echelon Confidential Informant for the Justice Department. He is, as I said, “second generation mobbed-up.” Although he is not, and never can be, an actual mobster—a front can never be a member of the family, for obvious reasons—the unscrupulous Trump is an extremely useful asset to his underworld associates, and has been for decades. Front men, after all, are a vital cog in the global crime syndicate machine. That dirty money’s not going to wash itself.

While the Trump Organization does deals overseas, for most of his career Donald Trump was a stateside operator. The bulk of his revenue is homegrown. As a business professional of my acquaintance who worked for years in Russia colorfully put it: “The thing to remember about Trump is that he’s a venal crook, not some international criminal mastermind. His primary source of wealth, such as it is, comes from a string of golf courses, hotels, and mixed-use office buildings spread around the world, but the corn nuggets in his crown of shit are in the New York metro area and spread across the beaches of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward County, Florida.”

So how did a Queens-born front-man and mob money launderer, whose business was overwhelmingly domestic, wind up an asset of a hostile foreign government?

To understand this transformation, it is instructive to think of Trump not as a human being but as an asset, in the strict sense of the word—a piece of property, like a beach house, a private jet, or an HBO Go password. Just as two different families can share a beach house, and your buddy down the street can use your login to stream Succession, so Trump can be utilized by more than one entity at a time. He can also be sold outright—or rather transferred, like the deed to a house. None of this is up to him. At all. To paraphrase Elvis Presley: he’s caught in a trap, he can’t walk out, because the mobsters own him baby.

As for Vladimir Putin, while he may have started as an intelligence operative, and he may pretend to be a diplomat and statesman on the world stage, his true profession, at this stage of his career, is mob boss—probably the most powerful mob boss in the world, more powerful even than his longtime associate from back in his Dresden days, Semion Mogilevich. (There was, and is, a lot of blur between IC and OC in Russia.)

Putin and Mogilevich are two foci of the small circle of oligarchs—there are subtle distinctions, but for all intents and purposes, oligarch is basically just a euphemism for mobster—who own almost everything of value in Russia. In mafia states, the mob runs the show—charging protection for businesses, taking bribes, imposing restrictions on airports, seaports, etc. The Russian mafiya is closer to the East India Company administering the entire colony of British India than some Scorsese picture. It steals from the people, and manipulates the weak central government, to keep itself in power.

(Sidenote: per Robert I. Friedman’s Red Mafiya, Mogilevich has complete control of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. So if a self-styled NSA “whistleblower” contrives to spend 40 days there avoiding the media, coughEdSnowdencough, you can be damn sure the “Brainy Don” authorized it).

An ex-KGB chief, Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president in 1999. He’s been in charge ever since. Under his reign, Russia has regressed from a burgeoning democracy to a veritable dictatorship. Putin consolidated power, destroying the independent judiciary, clamping down on press freedoms, using false-flag operations to win popular support, and exploiting his power for personal gain. He is more like a tsar than a president—although the Romanovs did not possess nuclear weapons, and their wealth, obscene as it was, paled in comparison to Putin’s own.

Bill Browder, the American-born British national who was an early investor in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and who left the country after the government became too corrupt to continue doing business there, tells a hair-raising story about Putin: After the rise of the oligarchs in the early 2000s, Putin had the richest, most powerful oligarch—Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the energy concern Yukos—arrested. At a humiliating show trial during which the accused oligarch was kept in a cage, Khodorkovsky was found guilty of fraud. He was sent to prison, and his sizable assets seized.

After this sobering display, the other oligarchs approached Putin and asked what they needed to give him to avoid the same fate as Khodorkovsky, whose fate none of them wanted to share. Putin replied: “Half.” Since then, ill-gotten gains have poured into his coffers. The oligarchs boast fabulous wealth, but by virtue of claiming half of their money, Putin bests them all. Browder has suggested that Putin may well be the world’s richest individual.

And if this all sounds like the world’s greatest mob boss making the world’s biggest mob-boss flex, well, you say “tomato,” I say whatever the Russian word for “tomato” is. Whatever he might have been before that series of power moves, Putin emerged afterward as a no-doubt-about-it mob boss. Khodorkovsky, the fallen oligarch, himself said as much, in a recent interview.

Whether Putin is more powerful than Mogilevich is anyone’s guess. But only one of them is concurrently the head of state of a G8 country, one of a handful of nations that has nuclear capability—and, despite what revisionist historians at Fox News would have us believe, America’s chief adversary since 1945.

Donald John Trump’s association with the Russian mafiya—as opposed to the homegrown Italian one—began, best as we can tell, in 1984, when the Soviet soldier-turned-mobster David Bogatin purchased five of his condos for $6 million. Trump Tower was one of just two buildings in all of New York City that allowed units to be purchased by shell companies. Fishy deals like this did not deter Trump, who had traveled in underworld circles all his life.

By ’84, as covered previously, Trump was already a Confidential Informant for the FBI. He’d been on the radar of the KGB since 1977, when he married the former Ivana Zelníčková, a Czechoslovakian national who someone managed to emigrate from that Eastern Bloc country to Canada. As Luke Harding writes in his masterful and must-read book, Collusion (excerpted here by Politico):

Zelníčková was born in Zlin, an aircraft manufacturing town in Moravia. Her first marriage was to an Austrian real estate agent. In the early 1970s she moved to Canada, first to Toronto and then to Montreal, to be with a ski instructor boyfriend. Exiting Czechoslovakia during this period was, the files said, “incredibly difficult.” Zelníčkováa moved to New York. In April 1977 she married Trump.

According to files in Prague, declassified in 2016, Czech spies kept a close eye on the couple in Manhattan.…There was periodic surveillance of the Trump family in the United States. And when Ivana and Donald Trump, Jr., visited [her father] in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, further spying, or “cover.”

Like with other Eastern Bloc agencies, the Czechs would have shared their intelligence product with their counterparts in Moscow, the KGB. Trump may have been of interest for several reasons. One, his wife came from Eastern Europe. Two—at a time after 1984 when the Kremlin was experimenting with perestroika, or Communist Party reform—Trump had a prominent profile as a real estate developer and tycoon. According to the Czech files, Ivana mentioned her husband’s growing interest in politics. Might Trump at some stage consider a political career?

The KGB was really, really good. Are we to believe that the Soviets would not at least try to use Ivana—and her father Milos, stuck behind the Iron Curtain in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic—to get to Trump? Would not some cooperation be expected as the price of her being allowed to emigrate in the first place?

The Russians began to actively cultivate Trump in 1986, soon after his landmark real estate deal with Bogatin. As Harding tells it, Trump was invited to Moscow by Natalia Dubinina, the daughter of the Soviet ambassador to the United States, whom he met at a luncheon in New York in ‘86. The following year, he took her up on the offer. “On July 4, 1987, Trump flew to Moscow for the first time, together with Ivana and Lisa Calandra, Ivana’s Italian-American assistant,” Harding writes. “Moscow was, Trump wrote, ‘an extraordinary experience.’ The Trumps stayed in Lenin’s suite at the National Hotel, at the bottom of Tverskaya Street, near Red Square….The hotel was linked to the glass-and-concrete Intourist complex next door and was—in effect—under KGB control. The Lenin suite would have been bugged.”

Donald John Trump was a textbook KGB mark. The agents must have been drooling. Harding cites an internal memo circulated by the agency at the time, advising how to spot potential recruits: “Are pride, arrogance, egoism, ambition or vanity among subject’s natural characteristics?” Like a great baseball prospect, Trump was a five-tool player. Harding continues, writing about the internal memo:

The most revealing section concerned kompromat. The document asked for: “Compromising information about subject, including illegal acts in financial and commercial affairs, intrigues, speculation, bribes, graft … and exploitation of his position to enrich himself.” Plus “any other information” that would compromise the subject before “the country’s authorities and the general public.” Naturally the KGB could exploit this by threatening “disclosure.”

Finally, “his attitude towards women is also of interest.” The document wanted to know: “Is he in the habit of having affairs with women on the side?”

We don’t know what, if any, kompromat was gathered on that first trip to Moscow. But we do know that Trump is a serial philanderer, with a taste for Eastern European women. This wasn’t exactly a state secret; by ‘87, he was already a tabloid legend. Are we really to believe that the KGB—arguably the best intelligence agency in the world at human intelligence gathering—would not have tried to honeypot him?

It was upon his return from that fateful Moscow trip that Trump began to branch out in his interests. “For the first time he gave serious indications that he was considering a career in politics,” Harding points out. “Not as mayor or governor or senator.

“Trump was thinking about running for president.”

And indeed, in 1988, Trump flirted with the idea of entering the presidential race, going so far as to deliver a speech in New Hampshire. He toyed with running again in 2000, on the Reform Party ticket, even hiring his old friend Roger Stone to run the exploratory committee before ultimately dropping out. Is it really a coincidence that his dormant political ambitions manifested themselves immediately after his Moscow trip, and never went away?

So, yes, the Soviets were absolutely, positively recruiting Trump on his 1987 visit to Moscow—which began, not coincidentally, on the Fourth of July (Russians love that kind of symbolism). But the KGB was not the only spy network interested in the real estate developer. The trip also attracted the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency—the latter, by this time, becoming the bigger outfit, owing to the emphasis on signals intelligence collection that began in the late seventies.

As the pseudonymous mob expert known as Lincoln’s Bible put it, during our recent telephone conversation: “It’s 1987—the height of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan is president. The Russia desk is the largest, most important desk in the largest intelligence agency in the world (the NSA). And Trump was already a top echelon Confidential Informant for law enforcement. How could they not have known about that trip? It would have been gross negligence not to have known.”

And if our intelligence community knew, would they really not bother interviewing Trump upon his return from Moscow? He’d been wined and dined by the Party elite, after all, and they would have wanted to hear all about it. Beginning in 1987, then, Trump was not only a Confidential Informant for the FBI, but was also being utilized by the CIA.

Again: the two intelligence services were really fucking good. If the KGB was all over the guy, the CIA would have known, and thus taken some kind of action. “There is no universe in which he wasn’t being surveilled/tracked and used by our guys,” Lincoln’s Bible told me. “Not one that I can see.” If so, Trump’s counterintelligence file is over three decades old.

Moscow also marked a transition of sorts. Ownership of the mob asset known as Donald Trump began its gradual transfer from La Cosa Nostra to the Russian mafiya. Not long after the trip, Trump spent time aboard the Lady Ghislaine, the yacht owned by the British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell. That sounds perfectly above board, until you consider that Maxwell, born Jan Hoch in Czechoslovakia, was a seditious little fucker. His classified dossier at the British Foreign Office described him as “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.” He was affiliated with Israeli intelligence and the KGB. He was business partners with Semion Mogilevich, so he was mobbed up. And his daughter, Ghislaine Maxwell, would in 1991 begin a long and scandalous relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. For all we know, nothing untoward happened on that yacht. But given the nexus of key OC figures—Mogilevich, the two Maxwells, Epstein—it is hard to write it all off as mere coincidence.

Four-and-a-half years after Trump’s visit to Moscow, the USSR fell. Rapacious “oligarchs” raced to gobble up the country’s wealth and natural resources. Untold billions, maybe trillions, of dollars were removed from Russia, most to banks in quasi-Western places like Cyprus. This created unprecedentedly vast opportunities for willing money launderers in the West—and Donald John Trump was well positioned to benefit from the windfall.

Trump needed the help. By the early nineties, his casinos were going bust, US banks had stopped lending to him, and he desperately needed Russian capital to stay afloat. My business professional contact who lived in Russia explains what likely happened, incrementally, over the next two-and-a-half decades:

Take someone who cannot get credit from a bank headquartered in the English speaking world because he’s already burned every major US and UK bank in New York and London. Canadian banks don’t take American risk that American banks won’t take and Australian banks won’t touch him because their government blacklisted him from doing business in the country. But he has a massive cash need because if he does not have lines of credit to keep servicing his previous debts and his lifestyle and his next big thing, he can’t attract investors into his businesses to keep the ball rolling.

This is a critical point. Trump is not just greedy for his own sake. He has to keep earning, or he will have outlived his usefulness to his mafiya whoremasters. His very life depends on his ability to do deals.

The professional continues:

So Trump needs money that doesn’t ask a lot of questions. He’s happy to pay extra—and pay it he will—because in his mind interest comes without cost: he can write it off his taxes, or he can flush it in bankruptcy, or he can pass it on to his customers, or he can get his investors to give him enough to wash it all out, or he can refinance if and when the straight lending world comes back to him. He’s happy to take Russian money because in his mind, it’s an asset to him to have Russian lenders; it makes him more likely to play the real estate market in Russia.

But he knows that if his name and a Russian lender’s appear on the same finance document, that’s discoverable: by the IRS, by the agencies he probably reports to, by the gaming commissions, by the state regulators, by his ex-wives, by his last set of creditors, by the next bankruptcy trustee he has to deal with. So how does he get money from a Russian bank into his pocket, and how does he repay money to the Russian bank, without leaving that paper trail?

Simple. He does not borrow directly from the Russian bank. He borrows from a straw-man bank, like Deutsche, and has the Russian bank act as a silent guarantor.

The Mazars and Deutsche Bank documents almost certainly contain damning information that confirms all of this, and that will collapse his Trump Tower of Cards—which is why Trump has moved heaven and earth to keep them secret.

Whoever ultimately controlled the dirty rubles in the nineties, when Trump first opened his doors to the Russians, in the twenty-tens the kopek stops with Vladimir Putin. Would any Russian bank be able, in this day and age, to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to Deutsche Bank, or any other straw-man bank,” without Putin’s awareness, if not approval? If you borrow money from a loan shark, but the transaction is made through your local branch bank, guess what? You’re still borrowing money from a loan shark—and in that world, the penalties for nonpayment are brutal.

In the event, by the time Trump began his presidential run in 2015, the transition was complete. He was no longer a creature of the Italian mob. He was fully owned by the Russians—by Mogilevich and the mafiya, and ultimately by Vladimir Putin. The president really is Putin’s puppet, just as Hillary Clinton claimed.

What’s more, plenty of people in the intelligence community and the Justice Department know this is the case, because they have seen his counterintelligence file, or have worked with Trump in his capacity as CI. Robert Mueller must know. James Comey must know. Andrew McCabe must know. James Clapper and John O. Brennan must know. And while all of these individuals have dropped hints, none save Mueller have produced actual receipts—and a lot of his Report remains redacted. It’s no accident that Trump has done everything in his considerable power to impugn these people. He knows what they have on him, so he must attack their credibility.

To wit: When Lisa Page texted Peter Strzok that Trump is “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok replied, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” they were discussing national security, not Democrat/Republican politics; two of the FBI’s best Russian mob experts were highly, and rightly, concerned that an asset of a hostile foreign power would win the White House. No wonder Trump wants us to believe their text exchanges were romantic in nature, and constantly frames Page and Strzok as lovers—the truth could end his presidency.

Alas, Page’s worst fears were realized. The President of the United States answers to the Kremlin. That sounds like something from a bad movie, but in the time of the worst pandemic in over a century, it has immediate, and grave, real-world consequences.

“We have been taken over,” Lincoln’s Bible said, “and a quarter of a million innocent civilians are going to die because of it.”

***

As with “Tinker, Tailor, Mobster, Spy,” this piece was written with a lot of help from Lincoln’s Bible.

Photo: President Ronald Reagan Shaking Hands with Donald Trump and Ivana Trump During The State Visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at The State Dinner in The Blue Room, 2/11/1985. From the Reagan Presidential Archive.

#greg olear #putin's puppet #covid times #organized crime #america is broken #lincoln's bible #long reads

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

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"If you step back for a moment and look at the world map like you're playing Risk, things might come into focus a bit better about what is actually going on.

Yesterday it was revealed that the conservative Tory party is receiving a lot of Russian money into its campaign coffers. We know that the biggest threat to Russian aggression is NATO. So if you're a gangster with more personal wealth than Jeff Bezos, what would you do with that money if you wanted to cause some havoc against your enemies?

Would you hand some cash to some people in an attempt to break up the European market with an idea like Brexit? Because that's what Putin has done. He didn't face any consequences for that because the people who got their money are simply outraged that you are outraged that they took money to do something against their own interest. But to understand why these Brexiters want to shoot themselves in the foot so badly you have to first remember that historically, conservatives have always had the slime of sedition coursing through their veins.

With the aid of Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine, people in Britain went a little nuts after imbibing the lies that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage began spewing about the NHS spending $300 billion on immigrants. Beating up on immigrants has always been an effective tool for the rich to turn the poor against the poorer because most of the poor are convinced that they are just premature millionaires themselves so it must be all those foreigners coming to take their jobs.

The irony and hypocrisy that Murdoch is himself an immigrant should not be lost on anyone but it is his megalomania that should have more of us alarmed. He was quoted as saying that when he calls a politician in England and America, they always answer the phone. When he calls anyone in Brussels, nobody cares. Malignant narcissists do not like being slighted in such a way as we saw with the prime minister of Denmark when she refused to sell Greenland to Trump.

Both Murdoch and Putin are at their roots, insurgents who mean to undermine liberal democracy. But Putin is not merely satisfied with sowing chaos in England and the United States. He wants to destroy NATO and there was a real danger of the Ukraine becoming a member of NATO and Putin would do anything to prevent that. So he needed what people in the spy trade-craft call a 'useful idiot.'

Putin has said that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the most humiliating thing ever visited on the Russian people and that he means to restore mother Russia to its former glory. So Putin has been sowing chaos as best he can all across Europe by filling the campaign coffers of the most right wing conservative candidates that he can find. But why only conservatives you might ask? Because as there power has declined through contrition, their wacky ideas have become revolting to the kids coming of voting age and they know that in politics, money is everything. If they mean to hold seats of power, they must have an endless supply of cash. Putin has done this all across Europe with great success and he has one ally with control of huge media sources in Rupert Murdoch.

Putin started this campaign to make Russia great again by first establishing some pro-Russia groups in Crimea. These agents then took to the newspapers and television claiming the Ukrainians were oppressing them and gee willikers, Vlad was not about to let the pro-Russian separatist languish under the tyranny of a president who fled to Moscow once the people revolted. So he invaded Crimea and killed anyone in his way. Then he built a bridge tying Crimea to Russia. Of course this wasn’t entirely kosher with the rest of the world so NATO imposed the harshest sanctions they could on Russia. The effect has been reducing a country which spans eleven time zones to an economy smaller than Italy and New York state.

Now that he was paying for the crime he didn’t get religion, he just did more crime. Putin then invaded eastern Ukraine killing 13,000 people. Then the Russian navy began ramming Ukrainian boats and seizing their sailors while claiming they were the aggressors. This has gone on on Trump’s watch.

Putin knew one thing for certain and that was Hillary Clinton helped craft the heavy sanctions against Russia so if she were elected president, she wouldn’t be so inclined to lift those sanctions so what could Putin do to keep Hillary from becoming president? Anything he possibly could.

It’s important to remember now that when Trump was claiming anyone could have hacked into the DNC server that he knew Russia did it. Yesterday at Roger Stone’s trial it was revealed that Roger Stone was telling Paul Manafort that he was in contact with Julian Assange and that he had access to Russian intelligence about Hillary. This is documented. Roger Stone told Manafort he knew a way to win the election but, ��it ain’t pretty’ meaning collaborating with the Russians via Julian Assange. This is not speculation, these are facts laid out in federal court by a US Attorney. Trump’s purpose of saying it could be China or a 300 pound guy in his basement was to deflect from the verifiable fact that it was Russia. He didn’t want the truth known that they helped him win the election.

Since Trump’s election, Putin has been on a killing spree in European countries where his critics have fled his retribution. He has brazenly murdered former spies in England and Germany. He has not faced any further sanctions for these crimes because he has one very devoted fan, Trump.

If you look at the Risk map again, you can see in the Middle East, the threat of a regime change in Syria is now gone. The only base that Russia has on foreign soil is in Syria. Putin has again effectively gotten a right-wing nationalist to win a functional dictatorship in a NATO member state, Turkey.

Putin has been selling arms to Erdogan to shore up his dictatorship and Erdogan has embraced Putin’s tactics in dealing with any political opposition. He has done this by paying two members of Trump’s inner circle, Mike Flynn and Rudy Giuliani. Erdogan has offered big money to both to get Trump to deport a cleric that Erdogan wants to kill, badly. The last time Erdogan was in the United States to visit Trump, his security detail brutally assaulted protesters here and Trump did absolutely nothing about it. Not even a, ‘hey don’t do that here.’

We now know that Trump withdrew our troops in northern Syria after a call with Erdogan. Erdogan told Trump that he was going to invade northern Syria and kill him some Kurds. Trump did not put up any resistance at all to this planned genocide. Why? Well Trump has hotels there and other business interests in Turkey and Erdogan can snap his fingers and take away any money from Trump. After the blowback of abandoning our allies, Erdogan did Trump a solid and gave him Al-Baghdadi.

So if you look at the Risk map before Trump became president and now, you can see England in chaos. Poland in chaos. Ukraine is invaded and losing control of their eastern territory and their coastal waters. Putin has a very good relationship now with Turkey, he has strengthened the Assad regime and completely restored its territorial control of Syria. He has gotten Iran to come in to sow even more chaos and this was all done in the name of ‘bringing home the troops.’ Not one soldier is coming home. In fact Trump sent 1800 extra soldiers to guard oil wells in Saudi Arabia because they are paying us like mercenaries.

When both houses of congress voted to stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia so they couldn’t kill Yemeni civilians, Trump overruled them and sold them anyway. The fact that Trump has sent our troops to Saudi Arabia as mercenaries has not perturbed any Republican in congress.

That’s because Republicans no longer have any interest in National Security. Putin funneled $30 million through the NRA to help elect Trump and his henchman have filled Republican coffers with cash they need to keep themselves in office. It’s so very curious how easily Republicans so quickly went from being harsh critics of Russia and then changing their presidential platform specifically on Russian aggression in Ukraine to be a little more accommodating to what can only be called a pro-Putin stance.

We know Trump lied about his Trump-Moscow deal. We know that Trump cares only for money. After losing more money than any single person the IRS ever kept track of, Trump is more than eager to get that billion dollars he lost of his father’s money. He has proven over and again that he will lie, cheat and steal from anyone in his quest to pad his bank account and Putin *knows* this.

Trump has never once missed an opportunity to lie for Putin nor has he missed an opportunity to praise him. After Russia rammed a Ukrainian vessel and took its crew hostage, the State Department thought it might look a bit bad if Trump had a meeting with Putin in South America. So they put out a statement saying that the meeting was cancelled because what Russia did was an outrageous violation of international law. Not even an hour later, Russia announced that the meeting was still on. Hmmm. So how do those Russian bastards have the unmitigated gall to tell the world what the president of the United States is going to do after he just said the meeting was off? Was Trump finally going to stand up to Russia? Nope. The meeting happened just as it was previously scheduled with no record whatever of what was said.

Russia effectively said that Trump was their bitch and after announcing there would be no meeting with Putin, they told their bitch that he wasn’t calling off any meeting and that he was going to meet when they said they would meet and Trump did. How do you think that went over in the State Department?

Any one of the things I have mentioned merits being impeached. If Barack Obama had paid off two women to keep them quiet, he would have already been removed from office and justly so. This is how far they have fallen. They have abandoned any semblance of ethics because their leader has no ethics. They are entirely amoral in ways not seen since Caligula was walking around. They have completely abandoned any belief in the rule of law or the constitution. There is not one Republican in congress who can open their mouths and not lie. What’s most troubling is the way that they have become so servile to Vladimir Putin at the costs of American lives.

This trade-war has caused China to go looking for other suppliers for their agricultural needs and who have they turned to? Putin. We were making a profit from China to the tune of $26 billion for the American farmers. Now we are borrowing money from China to give money to American farmers to *not* sell their crops to China. Republicans think this is a good deal because they cannot admit that this is lunacy at its putrid worst.

As more and more damning testimony is revealed about Trump’s incompetence, Republicans are contorting themselves into debased loons trying to defend a president we now know beyond any reasonable doubt, lies as easily as he breathes and who has committed multitudes of felonies that they care nothing about. After last night’s revelation from the senior Trump official writing A Warning by Anonymous, I am left wondering why Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence have not begun 25th amendment proceedings but doing so would mean that they would have to have some allegiance to the constitution that we know without question they do not have.

Donald Trump and the Republican party have become an existential threat greater than any enemy before to the United States. No amount of hand-wringing is going to cure us of this scourge. It’s going to take some drastic measures because the common Republicans are not up in arms about the complete servility of Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin because they are too busy getting poisoned a little every day from the propaganda that tells them comforting lies instead of inconvenient truths. The truth is that Trump has not missed an opportunity to hurt America and help Russia.

If we do not take action now, the epitaph of the United States will read, ‘when fascism came to the United States, it was welcomed with open arms because the unbridled power of propaganda poisoned the minds of Republicans everywhere who sold out every principle this country was founded upon to own the libs.’"

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theliberaltony · 5 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Stories around the allegations that President Trump used the power of the presidency to seek dirt on his political rival in a phone call to the Ukrainian president in July are moving fast. The House has opened an official impeachment inquiry into the president, and some Democrats have even suggested they’ll draft articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving.

But there’s also an election going on (in case you forgot) … so how does the question of whether Congress should move to impeach Trump affect the Democratic primary?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Well, since Sept. 20 — which is both the day the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and, not coincidentally, the last time I really thought about the 2020 Democratic primary — Sen. Elizabeth Warren has gained significantly in the Real Clear Politics average, and Biden has slipped.

And I think there are lots of reasons to believe this story would help Warren and hurt Biden.

Warren was one of the first 2020 candidates to come out in favor of impeachment, back in April, and she has been one of the clearest candidates about where she stands on the issue.

So given that support for impeachment has increased among Democrats, as our tracker of impeachment polls shows, I think a sense of urgency among Democrats to impeach Trump could help Warren.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I disagree with this take pretty strongly.

nrakich: Oh good! I was afraid we were all going to agree.

perry: I don’t think the “scandal” (Biden himself did nothing wrong; his son, Hunter Biden, seems to have done something that is perhaps not ideal but not illegal) will hurt Biden among Democratic voters who were already seriously considering voting for him.

Basically everyone in the party is defending him, and I suspect that the people who are likely to say this is a problem for him (by showing he and his family made money through politics/cronyism) were already Warren or Bernie Sanders supporters.

Impeachment is the position of the Democratic Party, and Biden is in line with that. He and Warren are not that different on this issue now.

nrakich: But doesn’t it show leadership on Warren’s part that she was one of the first to call for impeachment?

As for Biden himself, I don’t think a lot of Democrats buy what Trump is selling — that Biden’s activities in Ukraine were corrupt. But I think it could pierce his aura of electability if Democrats worry that it’s something that could be used against him in a general election.

sarahf: Yeah, I tend to agree with Perry, but do think there is a “tug-of-war” around media narratives right now involving the Ukraine scandal, and while Fox News has been the main outlet focusing more on Biden’s involvement in Ukraine, rather than Trump’s conduct, the déjà vu to 2016 makes me think this has the potential to overtake/overshadow the primary.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I think impeachment is pretty clearly good news for Warren. But that’s not mutually exclusive with it being good news for Biden. My initial instinct was that it could help Biden in some ways because (1) Democrats would have to come to his defense, and (2) it makes Trump looks like he fears Biden, which bolsters his electability case. My second instinct, though, is that it isn’t so helpful for Biden.

Why? It’s not so much because his vague aura of electability might suffer, although maybe there’s some of that. But more because it requires a campaign that can be nimble and react to unpredictable news developments in real time, and I’m not really sure that campaign is Biden’s — they’ve run a very risk-averse strategy so far.

perry: But I think Biden is smart to lean into this and basically argue, “I’m so electable that Trump is already trying to cheat to beat me.” That seems like a good argument to me, particularly in the Democratic primary. That argument also seems true!

natesilver: It’s a pretty decent argument!

Another dimension to all this is that if impeachment is in the news all the time, it’s bad news for any candidate who isn’t one of the front-runners now. Since the story occupies a lot of media bandwidth that could be spent on, I dunno, a Cory Booker surge, or whatever.

perry: But in general, I do think a fast-moving event favors Warren, just because her strategy (run to the left) is easy to execute and Biden’s (figure out where the middle of the electorate is) is a bit harder. And if this moves to the Senate, you can imagine Warren being like, “Let’s convict” and Biden being less eager to say that.

nrakich: Maybe this is a bad analogy, but I think maybe the impeachment issue is to Warren as the Iraq War was to Barack Obama in 2008. He had a clear anti-war stance and no past baggage on the issue (unlike Hillary Clinton, who had voted for the war), and that really gave him credibility on an important issue to Democratic primary voters.

Furthermore, Warren’s steady rise in the polls actually started around the time she came out in favor of impeachment in April — although there were also a lot of other factors at play, so we can’t say for sure it was the reason she caught fire.

sarahf: I mean, to some extent, though, this has to be objectively better for anyone who isn’t Biden, because being dragged through the mud on this scandal (regardless of whether any wrongdoing actually happened) isn’t great PR.

And while the Biden campaign has tried to put the kibosh on stories that Biden did anything wrong, I do find it astounding that a Monmouth poll this week found that 42 percent of voters think Biden “probably did” pressure Ukrainian officials to not investigate his son’s business interests.

perry: I still think the number of Biden Democratic primary supporters leaving him over this is close to zero, and the number of Democrats who were thinking about voting for Biden who will be bothered by this is also close to zero.

What percentage of that 42 percent will vote for Trump? Probably most of them.

nrakich: Yeah, and that’s borne out by the crosstabs of that poll — Democrats said 65 percent to 19 percent that Biden “probably did not” inappropriately pressure Ukraine. But as I said above, it’s not about Democrats leaving Biden because they believe the allegations. It’s about them getting scared that he now has a scandal, however unsubstantiated, that could hurt him in the general election.

perry: So they choose Warren instead?

Does that seem likely to you?

natesilver: Yeah I’m with Perry on this!

I think voters aren’t taking “electability” quite as literally as you or I might.

Otherwise they’d consider Amy Klobuchar really electable or whatever, because she’s from a swing-ish state and has won by big margins before.

nrakich: Nate, I agree that the ordinary voter may not spend a lot of time diving into a candidate’s average overperformance above partisan lean or whatever — but I think simpler concepts like “scandals hurt your chances of winning” can resonate. This may be one of the lessons many people took from 2016 (along with, maybe, “America isn’t ready to elect a woman president”) — that even an overhyped scandal like the one over Clinton’s emails can cost someone an election.

And Perry, Warren doesn’t need all those ex-Biden voters to flock to her. She is doing fine on her own. If Biden drops to 15 percent, Warren will probably be in first place by default.

sarahf: I’m not sure we’ll see mass defection from Biden over this. But I do think Warren stands to benefit, however marginally, just by not being at the center of it all. I still think that while the Ukraine situation might not be bad for Biden, it’s not great either.

perry: Part of why I don’t think this will hurt Biden with voters who care a lot about electability is because the rest of the really viable candidates don’t scream electable (the white woman, the black woman, the socialist, the 37-year-old) in the way that voters typically think about electability.

natesilver: We also haven’t really seen how perceptions of Warren change now that she’s perceived by the media as a front-runner — maybe even the front-runner — instead of an underdog. I do wonder if there’s a bit of recency bias in how we’re covering that too.

nrakich: Right. I fully expect a scrutiny cycle for Warren coming up.

But I think that’s outside the purview of this chat!

natesilver: I mean, in some ways, you’d think that Biden could gain ground by saying, “While all these other Democrats are out there talking about impeachment, I’m talking about how we can BEAT Donald Trump based on issues that matter to the middle class,” etc.

Except that… the scandal at the heart of Democrats’ best impeachment case directly involves him!

sarahf: I do wonder, though, how much people are generally factoring impeachment into how they think about either a) the candidates or b) the election, period. Granted, this CNN poll is from March, but what stood out to me in that poll is that no one named the Russia investigation as their top issue for 2020. Do you think we’re headed toward a similar outcome here? Or is the dynamic different?

natesilver: At the very least, Democratic voters’ focus on impeachment is likely to increase now that all the party leaders and candidates back it.

perry: Where there might be a shift is in how the primary is fought. Basically every debate up to now has had this super-boring Medicare for All vs. Medicare “for everyone who wants it” discussion. But does that go away now? Are the terms of the campaign now different?

sarahf: Do you think there will now be more questions about whether the candidates support impeachment?

perry: Not impeachment. But the debates have all been very policy-focused. And now I wonder if they will be more about democratic norms and values. “Should Trump be removed from office?” is certainly a question that will be asked.

nrakich: Yeah, the irony of this whole thing is that impeachment is actually an irrelevant topic for a presidential campaign. If any of these people wins the White House, Trump will be out of office anyway!

perry: But impeachment is in the news, and I think it’s more interesting than restating everyone’s Medicare position. It could lead to more interesting questions, too. For example, Kamala Harris’s idea to ban Trump from Twitter has come out of this whole discussion. My guess is Warren may be to the right of Harris on that.

nrakich: Oh, I agree that it will come up. I just find it funny.

natesilver: But calling on Twitter to kick Trump off, though, is (apart from the journalistic case against kicking Trump off Twitter) sort of daft strategically since Trump probably hurts himself politically (and maybe even legally) with his various outbursts on Twitter. You’ve also had Harris calling for Brett Kavanaugh’s impeachment if I’m not mistaken, which seemed very off-message for Democrats.

nrakich: Warren did as well.

perry: The primary has largely been a wonk-fest, which is good for wonky candidates (Warren) and candidates who clearly reject wonkiness (Biden). But maybe this is a new phase of the campaign and a different type of candidate emerges. Maybe someone like Pete Buttigieg who has campaigned a lot on norms and democratic values. He also speaks about foreign policy fairly fluently. I wonder if he can turn this moment into something.

sarahf: Given that support for impeachment is so high among Democrats, do you think any of the candidates have anything to lose by saying they support impeaching Trump?

natesilver: I dunno. If Harris is any indication, I don’t think it’s going to be very easy for any of the other low-polling Democrats to latch onto a good argument about impeachment.

perry: Right, now that impeachment is a position of the party, I think it’s hard to differentiate yourself on it.

natesilver: I guess you could argue it’s good for Tom Steyer, who really was out in front on impeachment.

nrakich: Yeah, by all rights, Steyer should get a boost from this, as he’s run so many TV ads on the topic. But I think your point above about the media oxygen being taken away from non-front-runners is a good one.

natesilver: Maybe in a weird way it’s good, too, for someone like Andrew Yang, because he’s the most unconventional candidate and can counterprogram the most. It’s not like he’s been relying on much traditional media attention anyway.

Like, if you’re airing something alongside the Super Bowl, you don’t want to be showing a college football game. You want something really different.

nrakich: Like the Puppy Bowl???

sarahf: Tulsi Gabbard certainly held out on supporting impeachment — but to Nate’s earlier point, I’m not sure talking impeachment will help differentiate any of the candidates already struggling in the polls.

But OK, if the conversation does become more about norms and values and how we think about the office of the presidency, does that actually change the primary that much?

natesilver: I guess one way it could be bad for Warren is if it makes the debates less policy-driven. Then again, I’m not sure if Warren is benefiting from her policy positions so much as being branded as The Policy Candidate

nrakich: One point worth reiterating is that we’re still probably very early in the Trump/Ukraine/impeachment story timeline. The story will continue to evolve, and we don’t know where that will take the political conversation.

perry: After the El Paso shooting, Beto O’Rourke was in the news a lot. But his numbers didn’t move, and that tells me that he is still very unlikely to break through. And so while this feels like the kind of story where Buttigieg can come in and say, “This is another example of how Washington is broken and we need fresh faces,” I would not be surprised if he didn’t gain in the polls either.

A lot of what we are seeing in the polls right now is Warren gaining from Harris, Sanders and, to some extent, Biden. So I think the biggest shift for Warren, as Nate was hinting at, is not her stance on impeachment, but that she is now doing so well that her rivals will attack her more and the media will increase its scrutiny of her. Perhaps this is an atmosphere in which the primary is shaken up a bit. Warren has already kind of won the college-educated, Hillary Clinton-voter mini primary over Harris and in some ways has won the populist mini primary over Sanders, too. But what happens next is unclear.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Sarah Frostenson #Nate Silver #Nathaniel Rakich an

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years

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to help yourself understand the Mueller investigation, read this novel

“This novel” being, of course, a stack of court documents filed in the course of the investigation.

Hear me out.

This isn’t to trivialize or sensationalize an ongoing existential threat to western democracy. Precisely because it is not a fucking game, I think it’s really important for people to get new ways into this story. Because it still seems alarmingly common for even generally well-informed people to throw up their hands and say “well, the right says ‘no collusion!’ and liberals say ‘he’s a Russian agent!’ but the partisans all seem really worked up, I guess the truth is somewhere in between/it must not be as big a deal as they think.”

Maybe sometimes that’s motivated reasoning or sheer ignorance. But it’s also possible that “this Rusher thing with Trump and Russia” is unusually resistant to understanding as a conventional news story. We want our news to be solid, with “hard facts.” Maybe this is more like gas. Like gas, it always takes up as much space as it’s allowed. On slow news days it can expand to envelop everything else; unrelated dramatic events can compress it down to almost nothing. And you can’t get a grip on gas.

This whole bizarre situation is genuinely unprecedented in American history, which is perhaps why special prosecutor Robert Mueller has been doing something unusual in issuing a series of speaking indictments. Remember, a bill of indictment is basically a list of the crimes that a prosecutor has convinced a grand jury that someone has probably committed. Prosecutors are smart to keep these minimal, because every fact they allege in their indictment, they damn well have to be ready to prove. A speaking indictment means that the prosecutor is saying more than they have to say. In a case like this – which deals with a lot of sensitive information, and implicates people who haven’t yet been charged or even interviewed – that’s even trickier, because there’s a lot it has to avoid.

Generally, when a person makes their own job harder, they’re doing it for a reason. And I think at least part of the reason here is that the special prosecutor’s office is trying to tell the American public a story. Our minds can comprehend dramatic plot lines more easily than the seedy, fact-heavy, choppily-paced web of a real criminal conspiracy. There’s a narrative logic to the pre-election events described in the most notable speaking indictments in the order we’ve seen them, moving relentlessly closer in time, space, and relationship to Donald Trump on Election Day, 2016.

So if you’re frustrated or baffled by what you catch of this story in the news or on your Facebook feed, it’s not because you, personally, can’t understand it. You might just need a new angle of approach. If you are a movie person, I can recommend the documentary Active Measures (Hulu, iTunes). If you’re more of a reader, these documents, in this order, can be read like an epistolary novel – specifically, a pulpy, beach read-y spy thriller.

Part I: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III

Part II: United States of America v. Internet Research Agency, et al

Part III: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik

Part IV: United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al

Part V: United States of America v. Michael Cohen (a)(b)

Part VI: United States of America v. Roger Jason Stone, Jr.

TO BE CONTINUED [probably]…

I’m serious. Download the pdfs onto your e-reader – remember to make a note of the order! – brew yourself some tea, and turn off pop-up notifications for a while. (Don’t get too hung up on figuring out who “Organization 1″ or “Person 2″ are - sometimes it’ll be obvious, but don’t worry if it’s not. You can just treat the big tables like illustrations: look and see what they’re about, but you don’t need to read every line to get the gist. You can also skip the last page or so if you start hitting headers like “statutory allegations” or “substitute assets.” There’s no post-credits stingers.)

These aren’t all the documents that have been filed in court by the special counsel, let alone in related cases, and I doubt even the courts have heard the whole story yet. Most of the documents related to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn are still redacted. Maria Butina was charged by a different prosecutor’s office just as she was about to make a run for it, but her infiltration of the National Rifle Association could quite possibly be Chekhov’s gun. And it doesn’t even mention the UK spinoff! But I think they’re the ones that are, intentionally, useful to someone who wants to understand.

Still skeptical? Recap/analysis below.

Part I: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Richard W. Gates III

The first indictment of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort took its focus far away from, and several years before, the main story, deep into a 2010 election in Ukraine which ominously foreshadowed the 2016 election. Manafort, an old friend of Stone, a Trump Tower resident, and the employer of his co-defendant Rick Gates and of future Sanders consultant Tad Devine, ran the campaign of a buffoonish businessman who was in hock to the Russian government. Their strategy relied heavily on exacerbating ethnic tensions within Ukraine and seeding skepticism about international alliances, as well as a vicious smear campaign of his opponent, an accomplished public servant who would have been the nation’s first woman president. Manafort’s candidate took office, was exactly as bad as his opponents believed he would be, and had his opponent imprisoned and tortured – but was eventually forced to release her and flee the country for Russia.

Part II: United States of America v. Internet Research Agency, et al

The Internet Research Agency indicted Russian nationals who worked on the propaganda campaign, spending over a million dollars a month to manipulate American public opinion from a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg. The action starts in 2014 and picks up in 2016, but still takes place a continent away. It deliberately stays away from the hacking and dumping of Democratic party emails, and pointedly does not accuse any Americans of committing crimes.

Part III: United States of America v. Paul J. Manafort, Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik

An installment with a foot in both worlds indicted Manafort and a Ukraine-based co-conspirator, while also showing Manafort’s corruption of a respected American law firm. This part shows us how Trump’s campaign manager – both his dirty politics and his illicit money – moved from Ukraine to the United States, set in the same time frame as Part II.

Part IV: United States of America v. Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, et al

Then another indictment did name the Russian military intelligence officers who stole Democrats’ emails in the spring of 2016, and traced their cooperation with “Organization 1,” which released those emails. This moves the story closer in time to the election, and shows the stolen data moving west from Moscow to Julian Assange’s hideout in London before being dumped on the American public.

Part V: United States of America v. Michael Cohen (a)(b)

The next installment targeted Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, a New Yorker like Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to hiding what appears to have been early 2016 real estate negotiations for a property in Moscow, and of committing apparently unrelated crimes to affect the election illicitly by covering up the candidate’s affairs in the weeks before the election. The Southern District of New York – filing at the same time and in clear cooperation with the special prosecutor, but not working directly for him – overtly said it could prove Trump’s complicity in crimes. Trump is tagged “Individual 1.”

Part VI: United States of America v. Roger Jason Stone, Jr.

Currently in the barrel is Roger Stone, a longtime supporter of Trump’s political career and an old business partner of Manafort. Stone has a colorful backstory of extensive wrongdoing, but his indictment is laser-focused on conversations he had with a known Russian intelligence cutout in the summer and fall of 2016, and the crimes and lies he tried to use to hide those conversations. This indictment mentions the Trump campaign by name, and it includes a lot of specific conduct by individuals who are not named but are nonetheless readily identifiable. The document is succinct, clinical, clear as a bell. But it leaves one omission which leaped out screaming at just about everyone who read the whole document.

[A] senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.

If you’ve taken high school English, you already know the million ruble question. “Was directed”? Who gave that direction? The indictment doesn’t say.

If you’re trying to avoid drawing conclusions the way a newscaster might, you would probably think it was not another senior campaign officer – otherwise, why not refer to them as “Senior Campaign Officer 2”? – but still someone important enough to boss around a senior campaign officer. Maybe if the candidate had adult family members who were not given official positions on the campaign, they would be suspects – though only because they could reasonably be assumed to be speaking for the most likely culprit. The simplest explanation for They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Pseudonymed is the most dramatic one. The candidate is not a senior campaign officer. The candidate is the candidate.

We don’t have all the facts yet. The only thing we can be sure of is that the special prosecutor has, quite deliberately, not yet shown this particular card.

But if you’ve taken high school English, you have a pretty good idea about the answer.

Okay, the genre snob reviewers might say it’s a little heavy-handed. Personally, I’ve always felt that subtlety is overrated.

#donald trump #trump russia #paul manafort #rick gates #konstantin kilimnik #internet research agency #michael cohen #roger stone #mueller investigation

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didanawisgi · 5 years

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by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

“Setting aside Hunter Biden, there was no impropriety in President Trump’s asking Zelensky to assist the Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.

Back home in the Bronx is where I first heard the old saw about the Irishman who, coming upon a donnybrook at the local pub, asks a bystander: “Is this a private fight or can anybody join?”

I was a much younger fellow then. The prospect becomes less alluring with age, so I have some trepidation stepping in between two old friends, Andrew Napolitano and Joe DiGenova. Through intermediary hosts, the pair — Napolitano a former New Jersey Superior Court jurist and law professor, DiGenova a former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and prominent defense lawyer — brawled this week on Fox News (where I, like they, contribute regularly).

I’m going to steer clear of the pugnacious to-ing and fro-ing. Let’s consider the intriguing legal issue that ignited it.

Judge Napolitano argues that the July 25 conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contains the makings of a campaign-finance crime. He highlights Trump’s request for Ukraine’s help in investigating then–vice president Joe Biden. In 2016, Biden pressured Kyiv to drop a corruption investigation of Burisma, a natural gas company that paid Biden’s son, Hunter, big bucks to sit on its board.

Biden, of course, is one of the favorites for the Democratic presidential nomination. Napolitano reasons that the information Trump sought from Ukraine would be a form of “opposition research” that could be seen as an in-kind donation to Trump’s reelection campaign, which should be deemed illegal because the law prohibits foreign contributions and attempts to acquire them. (Napolitano also raised the “arguable” possibility of a bribery offense, on the theory that Trump was withholding defense aid as a corrupt quid pro quo to get the Biden information. But he emphasized the foreign contribution issue. That is his stronger argument, and I am focusing on it, given that the Trump-Zelensky transcript does not support a quid pro quo demand; plus bribery, in any event, raises the same “thing of value” proof problems addressed below.)

DiGenova strongly disagrees. Though there wasn’t much time to elaborate, he is clearly relying on the lack of past campaign-law prosecutions on similar facts. DiGenova is also voicing the prudent conservative hostility to campaign-finance laws: Any expansion of criminal liability would necessarily restrict political speech, the core of First Amendment liberty.

I’m with DiGenova on this, but it’s a closer question than he suggests. Napolitano’s construction of the campaign laws, while not wholly implausible, is purely academic. It ignores real-world concerns about free speech and the prosecutor’s burden to prove intent.

Most of the commentary on this has been very politicized (surprise!). For dyed-in-the-wool anti-Trumpers, no technicality is too trifling to be a felony. For the Trump base, it’s all a witch hunt. In light of this, the most helpful source we can turn to is the Mueller Report. (File in: Sentences I’d Have Bet My Life I’d Never Write.)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team overflowed with partisan Democrats, and their report could have been entitled “Roadmap to Impeachment.” While they faced complications (that I’ve addressed) in making a case against the president, the prosecutors were not inhibited when it came to other subjects of the investigation. They’d have loved to nail Donald Trump Jr. But the only thing they had was the notorious Trump Tower Meeting of June 2016, when Don Jr. orchestrated a meeting with a Kremlin-tied lawyer (Natalya Veselnitskaya) in an effort to obtain Russian dirt to be used against Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya supplied information, but it was a dud.

The campaign-finance offense that Napolitano urges be charged against President Trump appears to be the same one Mueller considered charging against Don Jr. The Mueller team’s analysis (Vol. 1, pp. 186-187) is thus on point. And it is frustratingly ambiguous — as befits the constitutionally dubious campaign-finance laws.

Two offense elements proved to be stumbling blocks for the prosecutors. The first is the question whether opposition research is a “thing of value” under federal law. Mueller’s team assumed that, in theory, it might be (the Napolitano view), but that to interpret it as such would break new ground and raise troubling First Amendment issues (the DiGenova position).

The second problem was the intent element. As I’ve observed before, regulatory crimes are not innately wrong (in contrast to, say, murder or robbery). They are illegal only because we choose to make them illegal (for you Latinists out there, they are malum prohibitum). Because the conduct is not wrong in itself (malum in se), the law requires a higher degree of malevolent intent before it can be criminalized. Prosecutors must prove willfulness, which very nearly reverses the adage that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The defendant must be shown to have known that his intentional conduct was illegal — not merely unsavory but actually prohibited by law. The Mueller team concluded that they could not have hoped to prove willfulness beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, while there might be some conceivable scenario in which acquiring information from a foreign source for use in a campaign could be a federal crime, it is highly unlikely — so unlikely that some Type A prosecutors wisely decided that the huzzahs they’d have gotten for indicting the president’s son were outweighed by the humiliation they’d endure when the case inevitably got thrown out of court.

The Mueller report is also worth considering because the campaign-finance charge the prosecutors rejected is stronger than would be any similar charge against President Trump arising out of the Zelensky call. That, no doubt, is why the Justice Department summarily declined prosecution.

To hear the media-Democrat complex tell it, DOJ declined because it is beholden to the president and Attorney General Barr is acting as Trump’s lawyer, not the government’s chief prosecutor. No one who actually took five minutes to read the relevant section of the Mueller Report would see it that way. Moreover, the fact that the president is president complicates matters not only politically but legally.

Trump detractors hyper-focus on the president’s request that President Zelensky provide Attorney General Barr with any information Ukraine might have about Biden twisting arms to quash an investigation involving his son’s cashing in on dad’s influence. I say “hyper-focus” because there was a lot more to it than that. Long before the conversation came around to the Biden topic, the “favor” that Trump asked for was Zelensky’s assistance in Barr’s ongoing investigation of the genesis of the Trump-Russia investigation.

No matter how much Democrats seek to discredit that probe and the AG overseeing it, it is a legitimate investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice, which has prosecutors assigned and grand jury subpoena power. It is examining questionable Justice Department and FBI conduct. It is considering whether irregularities rise to the level of crimes. It will be essential to Congress’s consideration of whether laws need to be enacted or modified to insulate our election campaigns from politicized use of the government’s counterintelligence and law-enforcement powers.

I mention all this because it is a commonplace for the government to seek assistance from foreign counterparts for ongoing federal investigations.

Indeed, as Marc Thiessen pointed out this week in an important Washington Post column, Democratic senators pressured Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller probe — notwithstanding the obvious potential electoral ramifications and the specter of “foreign interference in our democracy.” These requests for assistance often occur at the head-of-state level. When I was a federal prosecutor in the mid-nineties, for example, the FBI and Justice Department asked President Clinton to intervene with Saudi authorities to assist the investigation of Iranian complicity in the Khobar Towers bombing.

There is nothing wrong with our government’s requesting the assistance of foreign governments that have access to witnesses and evidence relevant to an ongoing Justice Department investigation. The president is the democratically elected, constitutionally empowered chief executive: There is nothing his subordinates may properly do that he may not do himself (it is his power that they exercise). And the president is never conflicted out of executive branch business due to his political interests. There is no legal or ethical requirement that the Justice Department be denied potentially probative evidence because obtaining it might affect the president’s political fortunes.

There was no impropriety in President Trump’s asking Ukraine’s president to assist the Justice Department’s investigation of Russiagate’s origins. Okay, you say, but what does that have to do with Biden?

Well, Biden was the Obama administration’s point man in dealing with Kyiv after Viktor Yanukovych fled in 2014. That course of dealing came to include Obama administration agencies leaning on Ukraine to assist the FBI in the investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman. So, Biden’s interaction with Ukraine is germane: The fact that he had sufficient influence to coerce the firing of a prosecutor; the fact that, while Biden was strongly influencing international economic aid for Kyiv, a significant Ukrainian energy company thought it expedient to bring Biden’s son onto its board and compensate him lavishly — although Hunter Biden had no experience in the industry.

That aside, I do not understand why there has not been more public discussion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in light of the instances of Hunter Biden conveniently cashing in with foreign firms while his dad was shaping American policy toward those firm’s governments. As we saw with the collusion caper, it does not take much evidence of any crime for the FBI and the Justice Department to open an investigation and scorch the earth in conducting it. And if it would have been legit for the Justice Department to open an FCPA investigation of one or both of the Bidens, then it was appropriate for President Trump to ask President Zelensky to help the Justice Department determine if an FCPA crime took place – even if doing so could have affected the 2020 fortunes of Biden and Trump.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not rooting for Joe Biden or his son to be subjected to investigation and prosecution. I agree with Attorney General Barr that there has been too much politicization of law enforcement and intelligence. In the absence of a concrete, patent, and serious violation of the criminal law, I want the Justice Department and the FBI out of politics – which would be better for them and for politics. If you think there is an indecorous heavy-handedness to the way Donald Trump and Joe Biden conduct foreign policy, that’s fine – go vote against them on Election Day. We don’t need creative prosecutors deciding elections by testing the boundaries of abstruse statutes.

Neither, however, do I believe in unilateral disarmament. There is at least as much basis for opening an FCPA investigation against the Bidens as for opening campaign-finance investigations against the Trumps. If I had my druthers, all of this nonsense would end. But as I detailed earlier this week, we have one candidate for the presidency — a once-serious legal scholar and practitioner — who publicly and straight-faced says Trump’s call with Zelensky could rate the death penalty. As we saw in the late 1990s, when Bill Clinton got to experience the independent-counsel statute up close and personal, maybe it takes Democrats being hoisted on their own petard before we finally say: This has to stop.”

#politics #controversy #debate #philosophy #first amendment #law #trump administration #donald trump

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marvsreflections · 5 years

Text

On Guatemala's place in global history

There are few things you might take as intrinsically unchangeable on this world, one of those is human stupidity and the other one can be “change” or a least the concept related to such word.

I’m from a little country named Guatemala a piece of land south to Mexico, about 2 hours flight from Texas, this little country has been for most of its history nothing but a pseudo-democracy resembling more a modern feudal state than a republic, however the last century big changes (there’s the word again!) have transformed Guatemala into what some people called “a young democracy”.

Well as with manny ideas it is imperative to understand the social and historical context that gave birth to such labels, so in order to understand Guatemala and more importantly, why we matter more than ever before, we have dive into Guatemala’s history and it's now very close and bound relationship with the United States of America.

A bit of global history...

It all begins back in 1944, second war world has just finished, Hitler has been defeated and Europe is looking ahead to a feature of prosperity and unity, up until now the USA has been in the same side with Russia, however the end of the war leaves the world with two massive super powers.

The USA on the west with capitalism as the economic model, judeo-christian beliefs as moral templates and their own version of Greek political machinery called republic as its structure of power. The USSR on the east with communism, a one-party nation and socialism wrapping it all up, ideas that people somehow believe were totally opposite to western values.

This landscape of power lead to a “cold war” named like that because it wasn’t a war of direct military conflicts between the USSR and the USA but instead it was a war based on ideology, with both side creating propaganda to make their people believe those who did not live like them were the enemy and needed to be eradicated before they eradicate you!

This idea was aggravated by the fact that now both nations have the destruction power of the nuclear bomb, a new weapon of mass destruction capable of erasing human life from this earth, as you might expect the stakes were high, they were threats made, missile placed in close location to the enemy like Cuba or Ukraine, none of the parties was willing to lose and used every allie they could get to gain power and push the enemy further away from their motherland.

On this side of the globe, the USA declared war against communism and started programs of all kind to make sure there were no communist influence inside the motherland or anywhere close to it, so, guess where Guatemala landed on that plan? Yep, we weren’t really there, I mean, Guatemala was a bit more than a farm for the USA you might even say we were not consider humans back then, it is inevitable to say that we were just another “banana nation” for the white upper class of the big super countries.

About Guatemala on the 1940’s

Guatemala on the the 20th century was a nation owned by a big company that took the place of the Spanish crown, our communications system, train roads and the majority of the land, belong to the United Fruit Company (UFCO), they bought land at a really low price so they didn’t have to pay much taxes, they did not pay workers for the labor instead the “rent” a pieces of land as part of a “deal” where they could use the land to survive by also “paying” a part to the company, however the land was still under UFCO’s possession.

The precarious work situations under companies like the UFCO are depicted on the famous novel 1000 years of solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, in a very dramatic and extreme representation, in the book after a strike by the workers demanding better conditions, the government reacts by inviting over 3000 of them to a meeting with the leadership to resolve their difference, however it was a tramp! The workers found themselves surrounded by machine guns and get methodically killed, the bodies were then thrown on a train and dropped off in the sea, after the event the government keeps exterminating any surviving union leader and denying the reports of the massacre.

Well, conditions were not that much better in Guatemala and I’m sorry to say that as in many good books, usually fiction is nothing by a reflection of reality, after years of being used for free labor, Guatemalans decided they needed a change they cannot longer live in a land that is not theirs, so in 1944 after numerous public demonstration and the killing of the teacher María Chinchilla in a protest, over 100,000 people gather to protest and stop the country for a week until the then president Jorge Ubico resigned en July 1, 1944, this initiated what some people called the first real “democratic period” in Guatemala, this new set of changes and reforms landed to a fresh-type president in 1951, it was a democratically elected president from the highlands of the country Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán .

About the CIA and UFCO

The thing with power is that is a human invention, so is fair to say that power is limited to what humans believe to be more important, as a mention before back in 40’s and 50’s we were not seen as humans by the USA or any of the companies coming from that side of the border, therefore we were not intitle of having an opinion nor to have a decent life or to be part of a country, we were only workers, just a step above from a horse or any other beast.

When a president of Guatemala decides that we can’t be a country if we don’t have land or infrastructure of our own, it is only inevitable he will have to make some changes that will not vibe with UFCO or some of its allies, and that is exactly what happened. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán started using government power to buy the land from the UFCO and give it to the poor people that were actually leaving on it and using it, buying land from the UFCO at the same low prices the claimed the bought it, he decided that train roads should be of public use and created a plan that aim to put Guatemala on the track to development.

The UFCO did not like what was happening in the country, their lands were being taken, they now have to come out with payment for their workers and a series of restriction help create the environment for workers unions and better working conditions that were impacting profits, this went on for about 3 years and the UFCO was doing everything they could to create propaganda and manipulate Guatemalans and Americas in order to take Arbenz from power.

One thing we need to understand is the people that were in Guatemala at that time and how their connection made a coup possible, one of the lawyers working for the UFCO was John Foster Dulles a republican from Washington D.C. that would eventually become the United States Secretary of State, Dulles’s brother Allen was the director of the CIA, in order to stop the “attacks” against the company, the Dulls brother worked together to convicend the President of the United States that Guatemala was a possible location for a soviet embassy in the western hemisphere. To achieve their goal they created a PR campaign to create fear among politician and the American people.

A CIA operation was created under the code name PBSUCCESS , the goal was to take way Guatemala’s president from power and to make sure general Carlos Castillo Armas was in the presidency so the UFCO would be able to continue business as usual, the operation was a success, however as with many thing in history “success” not necessarily means “the beginning of a peaceful and great period”, so now we need to dive a bit deeper on “What happen when you interfere with a democratic elected government and place a puppet president instead?” type of question..

About the civil-war

Castillo Armas and most of the head of states that came after him were nothing but puppets to the UFCO and the United States, they did not put Guatemalans interest and needs on the agendas, instead they were working for the top sphere of the country therefore leading to a very unhappy population that were being oppressed by their own army and their own government, this is something we need to discuss, because again it shows how bound the United States’s and Guatemala’s faith are.

Because of the fact the the USA put the general in charge people did not like him, so we did not really pay for the army nor we wanted our taxes to go to a dictator, so the USA feeling bad or wanting to keep control of the country founded Guatemala’s army and let the generals do whatever they please, this lead to an army that was not found by taxes, nor it had to respond to the people of Guatemala, the army was the tool dictators have to keep people down, either disappearing anyone who did not agree with the government or rightout killing them.

As you might expect once you start killing and disappearing people, they will start fighting back, so the paramilitary forces were born and a 36 year war started, a conflict that took some 70,000 lives and countless more were disappeared, the army sustained with US money were going to villages and killing every men, raping women, some stories from my own family even mention babies being smashed against rocks, there was some pretty bad human right violations going on and you can’t deny how Guatemala and US government officials were involved in all of this.

About the USA and its gang problems in all of this...

Well, once you take a country to its knees is just a matter of time before people that are unable or don’t want to fight get themselves out, just as we are seeing happening today with Syrians refugees, there were a lot of Guatemala and Central America refugees that ended up in the US, they created communities in places like LA and New York, however racism and violence towards latino communities made them organize to protect themselves, back in the 1980’s as their countries of origin were consumed by civil war (some of the initiated by the USA itself) they created some of the first latino gangs in the US, MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha.

So, you might ask, what did the US did after creating a problem in Guatemala that ended up as gangs members in their backyard? Well they did what the US had been doing since its first contact with Guatemala, they ship out whatever bad shit they could to us, however we have to give them some credit, they did not think of that right away, it actually started back in the 1990’s so it is fair to say that the US had to deal with gangs for about a decade before deciding that it would be easier to ship them back to where they came from.

Even though I would not have any problem with a country kicking illegal immigrants that committed a felony to their original country, it is imperative to say that the US did not stop to think how can this change (the word again!) Guatemala and how it will affect the USA? Because if they would’ve stopped to think on that for a moment, there is a chance the would’ve realized they were making the same mistake all over again, they were creating a problem in Guatemala hopping it won't reach back to them, however we all know that is not how life works.

By 1996 “peace” was signed in Guatemala, there was even a speech by then president of the USA - Bill Clinton, promessing the Guatemalan people that human right will not be violated again and that the horrible civil-war we went through should never be repeated and the USA will not commit to the same wrong practices they did in the past, It was all good a least on a diplomatic level, however the US was on its high of deportation of gang members to our country.

There is this question I feel is worth asking at this moment… What would happen if you send a bouch of highly educated criminals (highly educated in contrast to the rest of Guatemala). that used to leave in big cities, they were resourceful, smart and on top of that we had never had to deal with a gang member or “marero” before?, in other words, the USA send criminals to a country with not infrastructure of any kind to contain them, nor it had a police force capable of facing this gang members.

Guatemala came out of the 36 years of civil war just to end up with a war with gangs that still last until today, something about 30 years dealing with a problem created by Guatemala and Central American refugees in the streets of LA, refugees that were there because a national army founded with US money were killing their families back home, this “war on gangs” lead Guatemala to a level of violence that reminded us of the war all over again, it stop the few progress we wanted to have, instead our youth was being recruited or killed by MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, yet again people were forced to leave the country and find land were they would not be killed or robbed or extorted.

So, yep….We are talking about another exodus to the USA!

About “Mojados” or illegal immigrants to the USA after the 1990’s

There something we have to admit about the 1990’s - today problem with gangs, it is not all fault of the USA as is never “just on person’s” fault, when you put a country in a situation like we are, people don’t usually get access to education, information, food and health care, you know, the things that once cover might lead somebody to care about what their politicians are doing or where to money goes, but as Marx used to say, seas the means of production and you will have control of the system!.. Or something like that, because, that is what the top businessman and wealthy families of the country did, they took control over the country and made money out of the always unstable status of our nation.

So by the 1990’s after 30 years of military regimes, guatemala democracy was finally flourishing, like a baby that gets into age, it started to be aware of itself and every more and more people started to understand how this democracy thing is supposed to work ( a least more people in the capital city) and what can we do to make sure it is use in benefit of the people, however our leaders still coming from the upper class, mostly spanish descendant with old money and with little interest or connection with the population of their own country., they were used to do whatever they want with our country, they took advantage of our national institutions to control the country and steer it on the direction they saw better for them and their business, our all times lover impunity was still with us and as time passes she would reveal itself more and more clearly.

So after the war we found ourselves in a country with MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, with no police, with a government handle by the rich class that only cares about their business and how they can get out of Guatemala, a government dedicated to use the country to make themself richer, even if that means stealing money from heath, education and security programs that were supposed to be in place to take our country to a better future after the war ended.

We did not have (and would argue we still not have) a national identity, Mayan people made up to 65% of the population however they were being discriminated, no jobs, no services and a country that up until today is very divided. On the other had the USA in a effort to stop gangs and immigration say something like “We’re sorry for taking your president out of power and starting a civil war” but now we will reinforced our borders, American visas would be expensive and rare for you and we start ICE to send all illegal Guatemalans in the USA back as we have been doing with gang members.

So as you might know by now this also had and effect that wasn’t what they expected. Instead of Guatemalans saying, “well I guess we can’t get to the USA anymore and here comes Juan from San Diego after he was deported”, people from all over the country started to hire human traffickers, people that knew how to move between borders and that could charge up to 5000 USD for trip, this “coyotes” as they called them are part of a organized net of crime that also includes drug traffickers, illegal gun sales, force prostitution and others, however when you come from a country where the government does care about you and the gangs want to kill you, dealing with a coyote might be the best of your options.

#guatemala #history #cia #usa

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marvintexts · 5 years

Text

On Guatemala's place in global history

There are few things you might take as intrinsically unchangeable on this world, one of those is human stupidity and the other one can be “change” or a least the concept related to such word.

A bit of global history...

About Guatemala on the 1940’s

About the CIA and UFCO

About the civil-war

About the USA and its gang problems in all of this...

So, yep….We are talking about another exodus to the USA!

About “Mojados” or illegal immigrants to the USA after the 1990’s

So as you might know by now this also had and effect that wasn’t what they expected. Instead of Guatemalans saying, “well I guess we can’t get to the USA anymore”, people from all over the country started to hire human traffickers, people that knew how to move between borders and that could charge up to 5000 USD for trip, this “coyotes” as they called them are part of a organized net of crime that also includes drug traffickers, illegal gun sales, force prostitution and others, however when you come from a country where the government does not care about you and the gangs want to kill you, dealing with a coyote might be the best of your options.

#guatemala #history #cia #usa #homepagepost

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