#AFTER PUTIN HUMILIATED HIM IN PUBLIC

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Not gonna lie. Ze calmly but clearly destroying Olaf in tonight's video is my vibe, very hot, and I am here for it.

[hasufin]

They will not jail you for opposing Trump

It will just so happen that people who oppose him, or say unkind things about him, get investigated and arrested for “other crimes”.

A very large part of authoritarianism relies heavily on being able to redefine terms as one sees fit.

For example, in Putin’s Russia, it’s technically not illegal to be gay. However, it’s illegal to distribute “propaganda” of non-traditional sexual relationships. “Propaganda” means “any content at all”, and “distribute” can be something as simple as speaking about the ideas in a place where a child might overhear. And they’re not necessarily particular about where a child could potentially be.

What this means is that it’s not technically illegal to be gay, but you can’t talk about being gay, you can’t be visibly gay in public, you can’t have any business which appeals to gays, it’s functionally impossible to have a same-sex relationship, you can’t oppose the legislation… it’s not illegal to be gay, but anything involved with being gay is illegal. And if you violate it, you’re branded as a pedophile. And it’s perfectly acceptable to punish pedophiles in the most extreme way possible. Everyone hates pedophiles.

Understanding this informs us of how an authoritarian can restrict opposition. for example, opposition to Presidential policies can be defined as treason; traitors can be jailed. We still have freedom of speech! Treason has always been illegal, after all. Media which offers facts that disagree with Presidential claims become “foreign propaganda”, and that’s illegal.

Anything which opposes policy will be redefined as being something vaguely similar but which is emotionally charged and universally reviled: “corrupting children”, “spreading disinformation”, “foreign subversion”, &c. Then, under the color of law, opposition will be arrested and face the threat of extremely disproportionate punishment. They will then be coerced into giving a humiliating public confession of their crimes in order to save themselves from draconian punishment; these will be used for state propaganda, to claim all opposition is actually traitors/pedophiles/whatever. The goal being largely to assure that no one dares speak out in opposition, lest they find themselves treated the same.

For those whose opposition cannot directly be misrepresented as something vile, the state will dig up some other dirt, or find a way to target the victim’s family. This has already been part of republicans’ playbook for a while: one need only look at how Hunter Biden’s rather trivial crimes were turned into a media circus and treated as deserving of serious concern. Anyone who might speak against the regime can find their tax records combed over for any mistake, any unpaid parking ticket being transformed into reckless driving, any youthful indiscretion from decades past trotted out and paraded past the media.

Lastly, there’s also the matter of what is not prosecuted. We already live in a world in which a teenager can illegally acquire an AR-15 and explicitly go to a protest with the intent to murder protesters - but while a skateboard is a lethal weapon, an AR-15 is not, and his intent to kill protesters is apparently not admissible in court. Trumpists, then, will be emboldened to know that their predilection for driving around in liberal areas in pickup trucks and waving weapons will not be regarded as “terrorism” but merely as “citizen militias”, and that any excuse they offer, no matter how flimsy, will be regarded by the courts as just cause for them to employ lethal force - but their victims will receive no such leniency, and in fact existing laws which are intended to prevent such actions will not be enforced, or will face such hurdles to their enforcement that they may as well not exist.

this is how authoritarian regimes operate. They do not explicitly ever say “We are evil. We are a dictatorship.” Rather, they wrap themselves in claims of patriotism and tradition. They cast any opposition as a perversion which is outrageous to the populace at large. They weaponize the law to selectively harm their opponents and protect anyone who supports them. And they rely very heavily on violent thugs who are always looking for victims, who know that there are particular people they can hurt without reprisal.

But know, too - it is impossible for any regime to truly enforce complete control of a populace. Orwell’s 1984 is simply not possible. Authoritarian regimes rely foremost on fear: that while they cannot oppress everyone, they can and will selectively oppress the most visible of their opponents, with the clear message that whoever might object is next.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ukraine is fighting for a way of life as much as for its territory

Russia’s domestic political repression contrasts with flourishing competition and a strong civil society

MARTIN SANDBU

President Joe Biden’s speech in Warsaw was thickly coated in the kind of idealistic rhetoric many western Europeans discreetly roll their eyes at. Of Vladimir Putin, he said: “He thought autocrats like himself were tough and leaders of democracies were soft . . . And then, he met the iron will of America and the nations everywhere that refused to accept a world governed by fear and force.” 

Certainly, there are reasons to view this channelling of Ronald Reagan with scepticism. Hypocrisy is one — the US often props up leaders governing by fear and force. Biden himself went to Riyadh as a supplicant for oil only last year. But as Europeans with experience of Moscow will tell you, the Manichean language matters. 

It matters — as Reagan’s rhetoric did — because it speaks to the experience of those directly confronting autocracy, whether Poland during the cold war or Ukraine today.It matters practically, too, because it shapes our perception of the choices we face. The western debate on the war in Ukraine tends to treat it as essentially about borders: who governs which territories. 

It has paid far too little attention to how the territories in question are governed by each side. But the difference is stark. It is most shockingly exposed in how the Russian occupiers behave. Their cruelty goes beyond the murders, rapes, mutilation and plunder by Putin’s forces. After invading Crimea, Moscow restarted its old persecution of Tatars. There is a state campaign of child abduction. There is a pattern of torture, documented by such initiatives as the Reckoning Project. What this behaviour lays bare is the wantonness of the occupiers’ violence and oppression.

It is reminiscent of nothing so much as O’Brien’s lectures to Smith in Orwell’s 1984: “How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer . . . Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.” It behoves the west to realise that, as much as over who gets to rule, the Ukrainians’ fight is against this way of ruling. 

There are many other differences between the two systems. Over 30 years, the hallmarks of Ukrainian public life have become flourishing political competition and an indomitable civil society. If you recognise that in 1991, 2004 and 2014, the population’s political engagement changed Ukraine’s trajectory, you will be less surprised by its resilience against the darkness of the past year. Putin’s deft blend of propaganda and repression has politically pacified much of Russia’s population, and solidified his dictatorship.

While both the Russian and Ukrainian economies have long been rife with mismanagement and corruption, Ukraine’s pluralism has asserted itself in this sphere, too. Since 2014, Kyiv has shifted from a clientelistic dependence on Russia for natural gas to competitive European markets. Its transparency provisions for procurement are well ahead of those of some western governments. A decentralisation reform empowered local governments, with evident military benefits as on-the-ground commanders and local officials together proved in the battle for Kyiv. It could also help to ensure that future reconstruction money is well spent.

Above all, Ukraine’s policy of EU integration, from the 2014 association agreement to its candidacy for membership, involves a slow but steady march towards a rules-based, competitive market economy, the opposite of Russia’s capricious top-down model. Even corruption has manifested itself differently in the two systems. In less violent times, the joke was that Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs can both be bought, but Russian ones will do as they are told while the Ukrainians will take your money, then do as they like. Ukrainian society, and even some of its reformist governments, have strived to combat corruption. Few such efforts have emerged from Russian society, let alone its state.

Those who ignore these differences are easily lured into thinking the conflict is a matter of which population’s voices will be represented in Kyiv and which in Moscow — something surely less important than stopping the bloodshed now. In fact, the question is whether their voices will be heard at all. 

So western Europeans should not roll their eyes upon hearing Biden proclaim that “free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness”, but realise the fighting is about more than lines on a map. EU membership, in particular, must not be seen as just an eventual prize for Ukraine’s good behaviour. Instead, it goes to the core of the war’s meaning. Ukraine’s fight is a just war — not over territory but over ways of life, and the way of life they are fighting for is ours.

[mariacallous]

Huffing and puffing and occasionally fluffing his words during months of tense diplomatic negotiations, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has finally agreed to supply Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. The numbers involved are not impressive; as things stand, only 14 German tanks will get a fresh lick of paint with Ukrainian military markings. Still, his decision has removed a significant obstacle to Ukraine’s rearmament. Finland, Poland, Portugal and the Netherlands have already announced that they will transfer some of their Leopards and Norway and Spain are not far behind.

The Leopard tank contingent could, therefore, end up being quite substantial, providing Ukraine with the ability to flush out Russian troops from their dugouts, thereby injecting much-needed mobility into a war of attrition that currently allows Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to kill civilians and pulverise Ukraine’s economic infrastructure systematically and primarily with impunity.

Nato governments are relieved that Scholz has finally made the right choice, albeit only after trying everything else. The United States and Europe are “fully, thoroughly, totally united”, President Joe Biden joyfully claimed after the German tank decision became known.

And reports from Berlin indicate that, far from being apologetic about his dithering, Scholz believes that he has acquitted himself well. He kept his Social Democratic party united on a profoundly controversial question. He also persuaded the Americans to supply their tanks alongside Germany’s.

Sadly, much of this positive narrative is wishful thinking, for it ignores both the abrupt collapse of Germany’s influence in Europe and the continent’s profound strategic transformation because of the Ukraine war.

The decision to supply Ukraine with tanks amounts to a significant deepening of western military involvement in the conflict; Ukraine’s western backers have agreed to take a higher risk because they concluded – correctly – that allowing Putin’s war of attrition to continue is far riskier.

But this is just the first in many further escalatory steps that Nato governments are certain to face in the coming months, regardless of how the war develops. If the inevitable Russian spring offensive against Ukraine proves more successful than currently feared, demands will grow for the supply of fighter jets to Ukraine’s armed forces. So will suggestions of an even more direct Nato involvement in defending Ukraine’s skies. Today, that’s unthinkable. But then, supplying western tanks was also taboo until recently.

Conversely, if the anticipated Ukrainian offensive does better than Nato military planners anticipate, the question of the liberation of occupied Crimea – with the expected fleeing of hundreds of thousands of Russian settlers from the peninsula – will arise. And so would the risk that the Putin regime will resort to a nuclear escalation in order to stave off total humiliation and collapse.

Scholz’s propensity to take every strategic decision far too late and only under duress has already seriously damaged European security. But it could be catastrophic to the critical choices facing Nato in the months ahead. The chancellor has done little to explain to ordinary Germans what the impending delivery of tanks means for his country’s engagement or how he views the next steps in the war. Unsurprisingly, his public opinion remains divided, with “half of Germans sitting in the tank and the other half seeking to jump out”, as the Russian-born writer Wladimir Kaminer aptly put it.

The only proposition Germans now accept is that Scholz lacks leadership qualities; the latest opinion polls indicate that only a quarter of voters consider him a strong leader. So, far from being transformative, Germany’s tank decision offers no reassurance that the future strategic choices of Europe’s most significant and wealthiest nation will be reached with the speed or the determination that will be increasingly necessary.

Nor is there a serious appreciation in Berlin of how much Germany will need to adapt to the fundamental changes that have taken place in Europe because of the Ukraine carnage.

The continent’s strategic centre of gravity has shifted decisively from its western tip, where Germany and France used to decide matters, and towards central and eastern Europe. Throughout the Ukraine war, pressure from countries such as the Baltic states and Poland forced Berlin into making a choice. These nations have gained moral authority because they were far more lucid and realistic about the danger of an imperial Russia and are also exercising a more direct and practical influence over the continent’s decision-making.

This means that some of the old dreams about promoting a “European strategic autonomy” distinct from the US are redundant; Scholz indirectly acknowledged Europe’s dependence on the US last week by demanding that American tanks accompany German ones into Ukraine. It also means that Franco-German plans to uphold a clear distinction between countries in or out of institutions such as the European Union and Nato must be abandoned.

Britain remains a critical player in European security, notwithstanding Brexit. Despite the absence of any formal security connection with the EU, its reputation, footprint and influence in the conduct of the Ukraine war are far more extensive than that of either France or Germany. And, conversely, no future stability and security for Ukraine are feasible without that country becoming – in substance, if not in form – a member of both the EU and Nato.

Germany’s real task is to acknowledge this fundamental European transformation. Instead, Scholz still seems to believe that, as he recently put it, if Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine, “we can come back to a peace order that worked and make it safe again”.

This is utter nonsense. Germany will reassert its European importance when the guns eventually fall silent and the world looks to Berlin’s deep pockets to help with Ukraine’s reconstruction. But Germany will struggle to influence the reshaping of Europe’s security map.

[warningsine]

Exactly two months after his failed coup, Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is believed to have died on Wednesday after his private jet crashed in flames on an internal flight within Russia.

Speculation is rife that Russian President Vladimir Putin — who is notoriously unforgiving of traitors and accused Prigozhin of “treason” in June — ordered the downing of the aircraft. It comes only a day after Russian media announced the firing of Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, who has not been seen in public since the aborted Wagner coup.

A former loyalist who was dubbed “Putin’s chef” for his role as a catering executive supplying the Kremlin, Prigozhin became embittered toward the Russian government’s handling of the war. In late June, his uprising commanded 24-hour global coverage after he seized the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and ordered a column of troops toward Moscow.

Putin himself appeared cheery on Wednesday evening after Russian media suggested Prigozhin was dead, opening remarks at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk in World War II with a broad smile. “Devotion to the homeland and loyalty to the military oath is what unites all participants of the special military operation,” he said in his speech, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Since the coup, Putin and Prigozhin appeared to have reached an uneasy truce until the crash. On Wednesday, Russia’s investigative committee said it had opened a criminal probe into the loss of a business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg that crashed in the Tver region, with the loss of 10 people on board.

Russia’s aviation regulator, Rosaviatsii, also issued a statement confirming an investigation. “According to the list of passengers, the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin is among them,” the agency said.

Wagner Orchestra, a Telegram channel, posted a photo of what appeared to be the burning wreckage of a plane, saying the Embraer Legacy 600 had been shot down by Russian air defenses.

The well-connected Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU reported that Dmitry Utkin, a central Wagner figure and its alleged founder, was also among the plane’s passengers. “Wagner has been decapitated,” the channel commented.

Former tycoon turned political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky wrote he had no sympathy for Prigozhin, but denounced what he described as “yet another extrajudicial killing.”

Hit job

Pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov tried to flip the blame onto Ukraine.

“Prigozhin is dead. No one believes that this is an accident,” he said on his Telegram channel. In a separate post, hinting at how Kremlin spin doctors might frame the plane crash in the hours and days to come, Markov said the “murder of Prigozhin and Utkin … is probably a terrorist attack by Ukraine ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day.” 

“All enemies of Russia are already rejoicing. The murder of Prigozhin is Ukraine’s main achievement this year,” Markov wrote. 

Journalist Christo Grozev from the online investigative project Bellingcat dismissed speculation Ukraine could be behind the crash. 

“If Ukraine had had the capacity to do something like this, it would have done it at a time when Prigozhin was one of its main enemies, when he stood at the head of one of the most efficient branches of Russia’s military,” Grozev told the Popular Politics YouTube channel run by allies of Alexei Navalny. 

Instead, he said, he thought it more likely Prigozhin might have staged his own death. 

“It fits his style,” Grozev said, pointing out Prigozhin had several doubles. 

But he added the most credible scenario is that it concerns a “hit job personally ordered by Putin for humiliating him.” 

Russia’s ‘open-windows’ policy

U.S. officials have been expecting Prigozhin’s demise given Putin’s history of dispensing with opponents. It has even been the source of some gallows humor. In July, at the Aspen Security Forum, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an open-door policy; Russia has an open-windows policy.”

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said: “We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”

Senate Intel Chair Mark Warner said: “No one should mourn Prigozhin’s death, but this report, if confirmed, is another reminder of the brutality of the Putin regime, and why we must continue our support for Ukraine in its fight for freedom.”

“If the news are confirmed, I would say it was always difficult to grasp Prigozhin could have believed he could survive after the June coup,” said a senior diplomat from Central Europe, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now, we do not know details, but this looks like most likely an obvious message from the regime, that anybody who challenges it, has to be eliminated.”

“What will be the consequences to the Wagner Group is to be seen, but most likely, under this brand or another, it will remain an instrument of the Kremlin.”

A second senior diplomat from Central Europe said: “I guess Prighozin was somewhat ‘in the air’ since the botched coup attempt, his chances for survival were minuscule. After the literal plane crash Putin is stronger in Moscow, Prighozin ‘deader’ north of Moscow.”

A diplomat from Western Europe, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “I guess most of us shared the view that up to this point he was a dead man walking. Unlikely we’ll get the true cause of this crash. But we may add this to the list of unexplained deaths among those who somehow undermine Putin’s authority.” 

Anniversary of uprising

The plane crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin, 62, launched his uprising. He led his mercenaries in an overnight raid, capturing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don before breakfast time without a shot being fired.

Another detachment of Wagner men rolled northwards, coming to within 200km of Moscow by late afternoon — before Prigozhin abruptly ordered his men back to base.

The rebel warlord invoked the wrath of Putin, who on the morning of the uprising took to the national airwaves to denounce it as a stab in the back. And, although a compromise deal was brokered by Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus to allow Prigozhin’s men to relocate to that country, the Wagner chief already appeared a marked man.

He disappeared for a time before appearing in a grainy night-time video addressing his men at a new base in Belarus, popped up on the sidelines of an Africa summit hosted by Putin in Saint Petersburg, and, only this week, appeared in a video apparently shot in Africa saying his mercenaries were enjoying the 50-degree heat.

Prigozhin started out as a small-time crook in Saint Petersburg where he spent several years in prison for robbery, theft and fraud. On emerging from jail, he opened a hot dog stand with his mother and, as he built up a restaurant business, fell in with Putin, who at the time was deputy mayor of Russia’s northern capital.

Prigozhin’s Concord catering business went on to win a string of government contracts — including to supply rations to the military. Gaining standing in Putin’s clannish network of influence and patronage, Prigozhin established the Wagner mercenary group at the time of Russia’s partial occupation of Ukraine in 2014. He only publicly admitted to leading Wagner last September, however, months after Putin’s full-scale invasion.

Soon after, he established himself as one of the most high-profile leaders of Russia’s war on Ukraine — touring prisons to recruit convicts and throwing his men into a successful but bloody attack on Bakhmut that delivered the only major battlefield victory of Russia’s winter offensive in Eastern Ukraine.

“A caterer should know that revenge is a dish best served cold,” said a U.S. official familiar with Russia policy.

Infuriated by a lack of logistical backup, Prigozhin soon fell out with Russia’s high command and defense ministry. He took to posting profanity-laden video rants on Telegram, the social media network widely followed in Russia. 

In one, he stood before rows of dead Wagner men at night time, yelling “where’s the fucking ammunition?” at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff. Prigozhin’s rants left him looking dangerously isolated, as Putin stuck with his loyal, if incompetent, military leadership.

[humanrightsupdates]

Take Action Now: Shaman Challenges Indefinite Hospitalisation

On September 23, 2021 the Supreme Court of Sakha (Yakutia), will consider shaman Aleksandr Gabyshev’s appeal against the decision to confine him to psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile he is in pretrial detention and under investigation for alleged violence against a police officer. 

The shaman has been long targeted by the authorities after he vowed in 2019 to walk from Siberia to Moscow and use his shamanic powers “to purge” President Vladimir Putin. He has been repeatedly arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to humiliating searches and examinations, and confined in a psychiatric institution, all for criticizing the Russian authorities and his peaceful activism.

He was again arbitrarily arrested in May 2020, allegedly for refusing to be tested for Covid-19. He was examined by psychiatrists and found to be “suffering from over-valuing of his own personality” in connection with his declared intention “to harm the government.” He was released on July 22, 2020, following public outcry in Russia and internationally.

 On January 27, 2021, days after Aleksandr Gabyshev had announced preparations for another march to Moscow, his home was raided by some 50 law enforcement officers reportedly lead by the Deputy Interior Minister of Yakutia. The pretext for the raid was Aleksandr Gabyshev’s non-attendance of a psychiatrist in connection with his purported mental health condition.

 Police claim that during his apprehension, Aleksandr Gabyshev drew a ceremonial Yakut sword and caused an injury (small cut) to one of the officers. On February 2, 2021 Yakutsk City Court ruled to confine him to a psychiatric institution for medical examination, and three weeks later, the Investigative Committee announced that he was officially charged with making “calls for extremism” and “using violence against police officers”. 

Take action now - call for the immediate release of Aleksandr Gabyshev. You can write a letter or email the Russian authorities - please write before November 11 2021

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

At last: British politicians such as Dame Margaret Hodge have called on the government to apply sanctions against Putin’s henchmen in English football. 

I have long suspected that English football has been used as a vehicle for money-laundering and/or tax evasion by “businessmen” from abroad, particularly where their home country is corrupt. Russia is one such example, as are the Gulf States.  

(Having watched football for years, you can tell how these billionaire owners never know anything about English football: the club is just their pet project. This is also why I defend the salaries of footballers: they earn their money honestly. Go after the club owners like Abramovich, who do not earn their money honestly.) 

The inclusion of Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov in Navalny’s list means my country, Britain, must now step up and defend civil rights, justice, and laws against financial crime. 

If I do not obey the laws against financial crime, I will be prosecuted. 

Yet tycoons like Abramovich and Usmanov simply sail into my country with their suspicious billions, and our government and regulators are too scared to ask difficult questions about the source of their wealth. 

I have not watched any Navalny investigations about Abramovich, though I have heard several negative things about his finances. However, I have watched this response from Navalny to Usmanov, featuring serious allegations about Usmanov’s history made by the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. (English subtitles included.)

Stunningly, these allegations-- credible and substantiated-- were made public in the ambassador’s website, but nothing has been done since to investigate Usmanov before he began buying up shares in Arsenal FC. 

In Navalny’s response to Usmanov, he provides irrefutable proof of how the “businessman” built his metals empire: transfer pricing (a form of tax evasion), as well as conflicts of interest and bribery. 

In a damning indictment against Britain’s cowardice and greed, the investigation shows how a British company (Middlesex Holdings plc) was an accomplice in Usmanov’s corrupt business dealings during the 90′s. 

No wonder Russians who can remember the misery and humiliation of the 90s are angry with us! Our companies helped Russian oligarchs plunder state assets and hide their ill-gotten wealth abroad. No wonder such oligarchs feel comfortable investing in the city of London. 

In response, the UK government claims they are “considering” their options. Until the likes of Abramovich and Usmanov face tangible consequences, this statement means no action-- despite their condemnation of Navalny’s arrest. Hodge even quoted from Navalny, pointing out how the West has failed to protect Russian political opponents, because the sanctions do not target Putin’s henchmen. 

I would remind my country’s leaders that Navalny is due for a hearing next week, in which a judge could send him to a penal colony for a minimum of 3.5 years. By then, it will be too late to consider potential action against the Kremlin, as yet another critic of Putin winds up in prison. 

Will you defend civil rights now or not? 

[atrayo]

Channeled Angelic Prophecy of the Jewels of Truth Series on Chinese Militaristic Hegemony Triggers WW3

Hello All,

I'm somewhat nervous about making this entry blog post regarding it's a very very controversial topic. It would come off as China-bashing, which in fact it is more an alarmist entry regarding an East vs. West power struggle that gets out of hand with a conflagration of a World War in its wake. This almost seems like history repeating itself less than a century ago with the Japanese Imperial ambitions of the 1940s spreading across the South Pacific.

I get skittish when I receive such automatic writing missives from the angels as a cautionary form of tough love. As repent all ye who enter here type of phenomena. For my part, I usually bury these statements in my notebook collection of these channeled statements. However, I deemed this one more so detailed with 8 Points of No Return as qualifiers for WW3 with China versus the World triggers itself. I intuit that this is 75% locked in already as ill-fated destiny up to 85% potentiality.

This is my caveat I hope to God I'm awful wrong as having drunk the Kool-Aid as Coco for Coco-Puffs loony toons basket case in this regard. With that stated, I feel more a prophet of doom than an Inspirational spiritual poet as my usual devotion. The statement 3,048 dovetails also upon the commencement of WW4 in 2075 by the European Federation as an Empire, not today's European Union.

Interweaving through all this the angel nameless as they often are without egos speaks about my "Jewels of Truth" series surviving eons (?) from now as a recorded spiritual philosophical angelic discourse with humanity. Talk about a shameless plug in all places and on this apocalyptic topic.

Prophecy of WW3 & WW4:

3048) What is to become of what you call the "Jewels of Truth" legacy of our spiritual angelic discourse with you in the centuries and eons following the end of your life on this earth dearest "Ivan the Atrayo". A future global religion as a cross-pollination of spiritual traditions not unlike that of the Persian Bai-Ha religion but one that actually succeeds in becoming truly globalized. A meta-Worship of the Abrahamic Creator God gets pinched transcending its original roots in around 150 years plus. As can be said from wingtip to wingtip of the Imperial Hawk as the standard for a New World Order.

We the angelic heavenly host didn't wish to alarm you dear Navi (Hebrew for Prophet, ie my first name spelled backward "Ivan") with such an infamous statement as you deem alarmist. However, you amongst many others are canaries in the coal mine seeing the writing on the wall as false placating by China is practically a foregone conclusion in world history to come.

With all this said take this as a pinch of salt to add flavor to the human condition as a cautionary tale of woe if ignored en-masse. As you stated in your introduction above, this is our Tough Love for humanity to glean what it may from our stance to date. Humanity can steer around this for the writing on the wall can still be whitewashed over with bravery if mutual reconciliation is so desired between the superpower of China and the rest of the World.

Allow us to start backward as it may with the future disaster of World War 4 in the region of the world that you presently call Ukraine. Mother Russia is no more a threat for China in WW3 made them their conscripts but that comes later in this statement. The peoples of Ukraine are ancestrally pure stalk of Euro-Slavic genetics and the future European Federation as a dystopian version succeeds the European Union after the rampant famines and plagues scorch the earth post WW3. The European Super Continent unites more so akin to the Ancient Roman Empire of yore with democratic tendencies only for its elite castes. Thus the seeds of distrust and acrimony are sowed once more by barbarians at their gates of the empire.

The year is 2075 the European Continent was less so ameliorated by the nuclear holocaust of WW3 than that of the North American continental shelf. In some ways the traces of Chinese culture is stronger upon Europe for the Silk Road 2.0 of the Sino Belt and Road Initiative succeeds culturally and economically by far before the Chinese government uses it as a Trojan Horse. Chinese population centers of its mainland are akin to a lunar landscape post WW3. Thus its peoples migrant en masse onto Asia Minor what is the Middle East today and into the Eastern flanks of Europe. Such Chinese populations will be considered the barbarian mongrels for the dystopian European Federation thus WW4 ignites around the Black Sea of Crimea.

In twelve years what you consider as an alpha or new beginning Ivan. Will be the start of World War 3 with China upon the year 2033 Anno domino. Give or take 6 months after China crosses 8 Points of No Return that the angel of the Lord God sounds the trumpet of perdition on Earth. China for its part ascended to the righteous status of a superpower too quickly and anything that is achieved too soon is lost just as immediately. The greek tragedy of Icarus with the Sun melting the wax bindings of his artificial wings sends the young lad plummeting to his death.

It is a matter of fact that China has every right on God's Earth to succeed and be a proud nation of her ancestral peoples on a united front. However, as they have been victimized by the Japanese during the early 1940s and were the footstool of the British empire of the 19th century. They feel that payback is in order to the world with a chip on their shoulder, thus their Sino exceptionalism soon becomes a recipe for disaster for the rest of the world and her Asian neighbors.

Notwithstanding its currency manipulations as a temporary measure during the early 2000's to cheat its way to the top. This practice was soon discontinued due to not overheating with a meltdown their economies of scale were soon achieved globally. Next to their notorious one-two punch of lured infamy of intellectual property theft as sanctioned statecraft of technological theft transfers. It would allow the Chinese State to supercharge its beautiful minds to leapfrog the West and the grand USA at its own game.

The first ill-fated seal of WW3 was when China annexed and conquered Tibet during its Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse Tung. That set the tone of supremacy in an egotistical guise of reclaiming its lost Imperial Dynasties of centuries before of grandeur. The 2nd seal of WW3 was broken more so recently from what they learned in subjugating the Tibetan peoples. They carried over to their Muslim minority of the Uyghurs accomplishing their cultural genocide upon them as enslaved conscripts. The Western economic sanctions on its textiles from such a provincial region are little more than a slap on the wrist.

What the Chinese learned from the Tibetans and now the Uyghurs they are implementing on Hong Kong like the flap of the wings of a graceful dragon. Soon the 3rd seal of WW3 to be broken is the naval and aerial invasion of the democratic island nation of Taiwan off its mainland. These so-called rebels will soon experience the Chinese boot snapping their collective necks with the revenge of humiliating their might makes right doctrine.

The 4th seal of WW3 is already partially cracked open with China claiming its ancestral Imperial Dynastic seaways and now air passage routes in an outright fashion. Building naval airbase atolls out of the ocean a feat of engineering will soon pot mark the South China Seas like satellite landmines to the rest of the world. Naval commerce and air traffic are now harrassed including foreign military air traffic be dammed. Expect so-called enemy fighter pilots of Australia and other South East nations to be shot down outright. With naval cargo and oil freighters to be harassed by premature boarding inspections as so-called checks for illicit goods.

The 5th seal of WW3 to be broken is when Mother Russia is soon out witted by Chinese Hegemony. When the mafia state of the Russian government gets greedy in an oil dispute transfer with the Chinese it soon escalates to sour grapes all around. Leading up to China invading by land its armies seize Russian Southern Oil fields permanently. Thus Putin the Russian Czar's rule comes to an end as his Oligarchs soon replace him with a shill of a weak national leader to appease China. Opening the way in future years that the Russian army is at the beck and call of the Great Dragon of China as its conscripts by any other name.

The 6th seal of WW3 is when China tires of the North Korean Premiers games of Kim Jong-Un they annex North Korea without firing a shot. Installing a viceroy and begin massive industrial mining for the mineral riches of the North Korean Peninsula. Which ironically jump-starts the North Korean economy putting its citizens to work for an eventual rise out of poverty.

The 7th seal of WW3 is the greatly lauded Belt and Road Initiative as the Silk Road 2.0 becomes what it is advertised to do. A boon of Chinese engineering producing Infrastructure projects from China through the Middle East into parts of Europe as Sino goodwill public relations globally. It is a roaring success since similar projects brought Africa out of its schizophrenic famines and poverty up to 20 years ago. That all the foreign aid historically upon Africa could never do.

However, what looks good and feels good with much mutual economic prosperity triggers a fervor for Chinese hegemony abroad. Where southeast Asian nations of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia soon get the negative attention of Chinese interference as Big Brother. Frankly stated the Belt and Road Initiative becomes a proverbial Trojan Horse for the conscripted armies of Russia, North Korea, and China's armies. To seemingly roll upon in the guise of an inaugural guest-hosted military parade throughout the circuitous route becomes a bait and switch tactic.

The 8th seal of WW3 is that the unwelcome security occupation by the Chinese armies outside its mainland albeit as security guarantors is soon worn out. The remaining free nations declare war on China and within months a nuclear holocaust is triggered by the United States as a desperate first-strike policy.

Thus ensuring that Beijing its Capitol and Shangai as a modern port megalopolis of Chinese Supermacy is nuked several times by the Western nations of the US and Europe leaving it akin to a lunar landscape. The United States will receive the majority of Chinese Nukes rather than that of Europe as cited in the above introduction to this posting. The US island territory of Puerto Rico is hit directly upon Old San Juan its Capitol for it lacks a missile battery defense shield capability. All the island residents that remain leave over the ensuring years throughout the rest of the Caribbean (ie Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc...) and other parts of Florida.

All major primary and secondary American cities are hit once or twice by Chinese and Russian nuclear strikes such as Miami, Houston, Washington D.C., Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Detroit, and so forth. Also, the missile defense shield battery purchased by Australia from the United States works as advertised. Sydney is spared a near-fatal strike however the radius concussion of such a nuclear missile detonation overhead causes an electromagnetic pulse knocking out its electrical grid. Its offshore island of Tasmania doesn't fare as fortunate it is hit directly annihilating its entire population. Lastly, the New Zealand Capitol of Christ Church is also hit directly by a Chinese nuclear strike.

World War 3 lasts for a mere 6 years time ending roughly by the end of the year 2039. Leaving what remains of China, Russia, North Korea, and its counterparts of the United States and Europe is a near catastrophe for the next 60 years plus to attempt recovery. The United States loses its superpower status soon to become the Federated States of America an empire by any other name dystopian. Chronic outbreaks of famine and various once curable diseases spread dysentery of water-born illnesses run rampant and plagues of Covid-19 and other forms of Influenza throughout the Americas.

However, in the decade to follow the Federated States of America invades its neighbor to the North as Canada. In order to seize its prized infrastructure and pastoral farmlands to maintain its hold of power. Slavery in America is institutionalized once more in order to cultivate its non-irradiated farmlands and strip mining. Hungry mouths cause riots and thus enslaving such unruly ungrateful once citizens is another act of desperation.

Africa and the rest of the Americas such as the Central and Southern regions fare way better from the Chinese and Russian nuclear attacks lest that of Columbia and Costa Rica. Ironically democracies take root here to one degree or another as they see the dystopian societies of Europe and that of North America and want no part of that turmoil. The Federated States of America partially fascist devolves into feudal Esque family houses of nobility as the once upper classes survive to a degree via tact and shrewdness.

Your "Jewels of Truth" series as our angelic discourse with humanity dearest "Ivan the Atrayo" survives mostly intact not unlike that of the affectionate Rumi and Hafiz as Spiritual Persian poets have done so. Since your channeled writings of us for now, over 26 years to date as Inspirational automatic writings as a clairaudient psychic technique has foretold. It Will be cherished by the generation of readers to come lasting centuries if not an eon or two more. Taken into the stars by futuristic human colonists leaving the earth out of necessity due to dwindling resources.

The 1st truly global earth religion subsumes your writings into one of its tomes of sacred literatures. Thus you'll be piggybacking onto another greatness by sheer good prosperous luck for the added measure as there are no accidents metaphorically speaking. To this, we remark a thank you for taking the courage to share this cautionary statement although your reservations have been noted in protest by us.

Go with God(dess) those of the eyes to see and the ears to hear between the rhetoric spoken by the greater national powers that be. There's is the agony soon to herald all into collective planetary ruin because of a game of brinkmanship that gets out of control soon enough. Pay attention and take actions that are peaceable via protests or be steamed rolled into oblivion. Amen. ---Ivan Pozo-Illas / Atrayo.

Ivan "Atrayo" Pozo-Illas, has devoted 26 years of his life to the pursuit of clairaudient Inspired automatic writing channeling the Angelic host. Ivan is the author of the spiritual wisdom series of "Jewels of Truth" consisting of 3 volumes published to date. He also channels conceptual designs that are multi-faceted for the next society to come that are solutions based as a form of dharmic service. Numerous examples of his work are available at "Atrayo's Oracle" blog site of 16 years plus online. You're welcome to visit his website "Jewelsoftruth.us" for further information or to contact Atrayo directly.

[quakerjoe]

This is a long read, but it’s the best damned thing I’ve read in a long time... ~Joe

I stopped watching Chernobyl after the first episode because a lifetime ago, I was a serious physics nerd and everything they were saying was absurd about the levels of radiation. Last night we watched the other 4 episodes and I thought maybe I might try and push the rock up the hill again and maybe open some eyes about where we are right now in this truly dystopic Orwellian nightmare. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a particular hero to me as a teen because he was so brilliant and accomplished the impossible in just 18 months. If you have not read American Prometheus, I highly recommend it because it details a time when we had a government of imbeciles running around with their hair on fire about communists who threw people in jail who wouldn't admit to that old drunk McCarthy that they were communists. Like all demagogues, McCarthy thought he was the lone arbiter of who was and who wasn't a patriot and he rose to such prominence because he was willing to lie about anything to make his baseless allegations. But Joe McCarthy was no patriot nor was his principle henchman Roy Cohn. They used the collective paranoias of stupid people to manufacture a crisis that did not exist. They destroyed lives and relished doing it to what would be referred now as the 'elitist liberals' like Dalton Trumbo and Oppy. Oppy was an extremely educated liberal who spoke to other people like him. Some of whom were communists. This made him a threat in the minds of the men who put Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death. Ethel was entirely innocent but that didn't matter to a public brought to full froth by the hysteria of the day. Those men beating the drums of patriotism could not conceive of a man like Oppy talking to a communist and not be a communist himself, the same was said of Trumbo. Guilt by association was just enough for the likes of Cohn and McCarthy. "For each lie, a debt to the truth is incurred." Chernobyl Historians have written heroic books about the great generals of WWII, MacArthur and Patton being the most famous and they do deserve their notoriety but they ignored to a large extent who actually won the war for the allies and that comes down to two men: Alan Turing and J. Robert Oppenheimer. By any measure, Alan was the greatest man of the 20th century. Oppy is a bit harder to fit into that calculus and he said so himself because he knew atomic weapons would change the world and not in a good way. It's true the Japanese were whipped and that Doolittle could have continued to firebomb Japanese cities until the Japanese came to heel but that is still speculation. After Nagasaki, the war was over right or wrong, Oppy did that and saved hundreds of thousands of American troops. After the war, McCarthy went after Oppy. He wasn't treated like the hero he was and didn't want to be. He was treated like a Soviet agent and stripped of all of his security clearances because he would not name names. He was threatened with prison, his jobs were taken from him and he was exiled from the community of scientists that *he* built because of the lies of scum like McCarthy and Cohn. Alan Turing didn't fair much better from his government either. The McCarthys of that time didn't really believe in America at all, he wasn't a patriot no matter how loudly his supporters screamed it. McCarthy didn't think the idea of America could survive 'communist infiltration'. He had no grasp of why communism spread in Russia like wildfire because to his primitive and ignorant mind, he didn't know what it was like to live under a Tsar. 'If it spread there then it can spread here' was the thinking because McCarthy didn't understand or believe in the ideals that founded America. To him, they were so weak and feeble that communism would be preferable than what we had in America. That lie destroyed lives, destroyed families and stands as a black stain on our nation's history. The thing about liars is that they have to tell bigger and bigger lies to cover for all the small ones and then that debt to the truth comes due. It came to McCarthy when Joseph Welch lanced the festering boil that was McCarthyism with the truth. Before Welch delivered his fatal blow, he reacted to McCarthy's slander with this: "And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me." Then a moment later, he drew the blade that ended the national nightmare when he murdered McCarthy with the indelible truth: Mr. Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? McCarthy and Cohn of course had no decency. Cohn delighted in going after homosexuals and destroying their lives while being a homosexual himself. They were the most vile hypocrites the world had ever known. McCarthy incapable of feeling shame, drank himself to death after he was humiliated as the coward he was. I sat there thinking about this as the full horror of what happened at Chernobyl unfolded. The entirety of the Russian government played out exactly like Trump having all of his cabinet praising his greatness, it was vulgar, it was disgusting. Then I remembered all the other dictators I've read about in history who surrounded themselves with sycophants. Martin Bormann being the reference example who served Hitler so faithfully. Bormann was a slack-jowled imbecile who was barely qualified to lick stamps but nobody in the Reich dare cross the thug because he was Hitler's favorite yes man. I remember that day Trump's cabinet took turns telling Trump how honored they were to serve under his super terrifically awesomeness and that they were but boot-licking sycophants. Pence really had to lather up Trump's ass before he could muster a vulgar enough kiss to satisfy that insidious git. I sat thinking that this was the lowest moment in the history of the Republic. What separated them from the Soviet Central Committee under Gorbechev? Not a damn thing. They *all* lie for a living and kiss the dear leader's ass. It was the most unAmerican thing ever done in the White House. It was sheer cowardice by each and every single one of them. Any man who had a lick of honor would have walked out in disgust to save what's left of their honor. The *only* one who got out of this administration with any was General Mattis. And you can see this cult in all of its terrible glory if you just glance at any of the stories coming in from visitors to the concentration camps now open on United States' soil. There are zero testimonials from any objective visitor who says conditions are fine. Last Thursday a government Lawyer argued to 3 appellate judges that giving toothbrushes and toothpaste were luxury items not to be afforded for the $700-$800 a day American tax payers are paying private prison companies to house these thousands of misdemeanor offenders. Republicans have strenuously objected to calling these 'detention centers' 'concentration camps' because nothing offends cult members like the truth about what they are really do. Ask any Scientologist if you're not positive of this undeniable fact. Children are living outside, locked up and fully exposed to the elements without food and running water because the man who concocted this policy is a 32-year-old psychopath named Stephen Miller who has devised schemes to strip parents of their children as a 'deterrent' from coming to the US. I remember wondering as I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich how so many people were duped into voting Hitler into office and here I am now witnessing it. I see right wing lunatics actually calling people 'Antifa' as if it is some slur. "Antifa'' meaning 'anti-fascist.' They seem wholly unaware that Americans won a war against fascism because we were all against what the Axis was doing. What the nazis knew was that they needed to control the press. What modern fascists like Rupert Murdoch have learned is that it is easier to control the masses with propaganda and to do that is to obey Goebbels' edict to 'accuse the other side for what you are guilty of.' This is where Republicans are now. There is no Republican party anymore. It is a cult of personality except it isn't Hitler being exalted by the hoards of half-literate morons, it's Trump. Trump lies to them and they breath in his lies and they repeat them with a religious fervor because none of them are aware that for each lie they tell, they incur a debt to the truth. In Germany and in Chernobyl, those lies always caused death on a mass scale either through incompetence or outright evildoing. Here we are at a crossroads in American history with an ignorant electorate chanting 'lock her up' as if that's something that's going to happen. The Secretary of the Treasury is openly breaking federal law in full few of all these miscreants and the cult doesn't care. The Attorney General of the United States, the highest law enforcement official in the land openly committed perjury before the US Congress. The President has committed election fraud, violated the emoluments clause and committed more acts of obstruction of justice than can be counted in full view of the American people and the sad fact of the matter is nothing is being done about it. The Republican cult doesn't even want to pretend like they don't want the Russians involved in the next election. They've done exactly nothing to safeguard our elections from Russian interference because they are so easily bought by Putin that they aren't going to do a damn thing to stop someone who is trying to help them win elections. I don't know what it takes before the people take to the streets but if opening up concentration camps isn't appalling enough to put the spurs in then nothing will. This is how it was done, the chipping away of normalcy with outrage after outrage until insanity became the new normal because as Voltaire so presciently said, 'anyone who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocities.' Little children are locked up outside in the elements without so much as a blanket to protect them. They have no rights to anything because the courts are so overwhelmed with cases now that it will take many years before any of these refugees get a hearing. They're standing children up in front of a judge without a lawyer to defend themselves against imaginary crimes of crossing a line on a rock turning 35,000 mph in a small solar system. Republicans stole a supreme court seat and they will continue to lie, cheat and steal to remain in power. That's why Mitch has delivered over 100 carefully selected members of the Heritage Society to fill vacant judicial posts because he does not care about our democracy, he cares about power. As many Republicans have said, they only need someone to sign stuff, they don't care who. Trump is perfect for their agenda and democracy has never been on their agenda, usurping it is. 20 years of Murdoch's brainwashing has gotten us to this point and if anyone really believed in justice in this country, the heads of everyone at Fox would be rolling down main street as a lesson to future ambitious propagandists who mean to undermine our nation as that rogue Australian has done more than any other. To rid ourselves of this seditious scourge is going to take all of us who agree to speak with one voice at the ballot box. It's going to take protests on a scale not seen in the US. Blood is already being spilled in these concentration camps. Edmund Burke's warning that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing is coming to pass *yet again* and here we are at tyranny's doorstep. How much is enough? What atrocity must be committed on American soil before we get off our sorry asses and start doing something about it? If you don't think we aren't at war with a very determined enemy bent on destroying our country then you need to wake up to reality before we wake up that one morning like Martin Niemöller did when he said, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Every single Republican in office right now is an enemy of the United States who are conspiring with our foreign enemies to keep themselves in power. So are the people who vote for them because they are no different than the people who voted Hitler into office. I sincerely hope if you agree with what I have said here that you spread this message with any like-minded people because as of yet, I haven't seen any presidential candidates calling these concentration camps what they are. If we don't start preparing for next November today, we could wake up to another 4 years of Trump. Our nation cannot survive such a reckless criminal administration the likes of this one for another four years. The nation will be bankrupt and in its death rattle. We can start speaking in unison this Independence Day by squelching this Trump celebration in DC by turning the real patriots out on a scale he can't imagine. It's time to start fighting and dirty at that while there's still something worth fighting for. #Resist Your very life depends on it as does our future.

- Thomas Clay

[omfgtrump]

Bow Wow

Aide: Mr. President, we have some important information to discuss with you.

The Don: Is it really important, as I still have 5 holes to go. That was some shot I just hit off the tee, wasn’t it?

Aide: Yes, Mr. President, but I am confused how the ball wound up 30 feet from the green?

The Don: Are you accusing me of cheating?

Aide: Of course not Mr. President. You, cheat?

The Don: I am the most honest person in the world.

Aide: Absolutely, Mr. President.

The Don: And I have the evidence of my prodigious shot. Hey Lindsey, did you see my last shot off the tee. My caddie has some doubts about it.

Lindsey Graham: Mr. President, I watched in disbelief as that ball soared above the trees and landed near the hole. I was dumbfounded. My shot is still 200 yards from the hole.

The Don: Lindsey, you’re a wuss…So what is this important information?

Aide: I was told to tell you that you need to be briefed about options for Iran and it is time to “Wag the Dog.”

The Don: You want me to get off the golf course to wag a fucking dog? You know I hate dogs. Why would I want to wag one? The sight of one makes me sick. Slimy, smelly, attention seeking. Pet me, pet me!  Which general told you that as I am going to fire him?

Aide: It was actually Pompeo.

The Don: Can’t fire him. He knows too much. You know, the Ukraine thing, the illegal impeachment thing. Well go back and tell Pompeo that there is no way I am stopping my golf game to wag a dog. The only dog I ever want to be around is Conan, the one that helped killed that scum Baghdadi Even so, what the hell does it even mean to wag a dog?

Graham: The expression comes from the saying that ‘a dog is smarter than its tail’, but if the tail were smarter, then the tail would ‘wag the dog’.

The Don: What the hell does that mean?

Graham: It comes down to creating a diversion so what seems like the most obvious thing to look at becomes replaced by something else. If the tail of a dog was shaking the dog’s body you would say: ‘holy shit, look at that; the tail of the dog is wagging the dog’s body.’

Funny thing is that there was a movie called “Wag the Dog” that starred one of your favorites, Robert De Niro, who plays someone who is helping the president with his message to the American people.

The Don: I don’t find that funny Lindsey. That no-talent bastard. Don’t ever mention his name in front of me again. It’s almost as bad as the curse word Obama.

Graham: Never again, Mr. President.  Fuck De Niro. But back to wagging the dog. You know how you hate the impeachment thing. And don’t worry Mr. President, we will make sure you are vindicated. But you don’t want the country focusing too much on that, so if you do something to distract people’s attention, then it helps you.

The Don: That’s good. And I am the master of distraction, so I love it. So who are we wagging?

Graham: Iran? After all, they just stormed our embassy and humiliated us.  You were pretty steamed at your New Year’s soiree about it, which by the way was a blast and once again, I want to thank you for inviting me. Also, it was such an honor to be at the same table as, Eddie Gallagher, the Navy Seal you pardoned. What an American hero.

The Don: Shush up Lindsey. Your groveling is distracting me from making this eagle putt. And why are you talking about seals now, I thought we were talking about dogs?

Graham: We were Mr. Pr…

The Don: Shush. If you make me miss this put Lindsey, I will expose you for you know what.

(The Don putts and misses.)

The Don: Lindsey, you saw it with your own eyes. Two shots on a 400 yard hole. Take that Jack Nicklaus!

Lindsey: Mr. President that was one of the greatest holes ever played.

The Don: So now, remind me. Were we talking dogs or seals?

Pompeo: Hi Mr. President. Lindsey told me all about your golf game today. Must admit, at first I was a bit skeptical that you two holed a 400 hundred yarder, but Lindsey has the evidence.

The Don: I hear you want me to wag a dog. (Wink, wink)

Pompeo: We have intel (wink, wink) that this bad ass Sulaimani is planning to take some actions that will put American lives at risk.

The Don: From the intelligence community?

Pompeo: Yes, Mr. President.

The Don: But I don’t believe anything  our intelligence people tell me. They are still blaming Putin for intervening in my election and it is clear that it was Ukraine.

Pompeo: I understand what you are saying but we need some intel to allow us to move forward. Rest assured Mr. President, this evidence is kind of like Lindsey’s evidence regarding your golf today. Also, Pence has ‘Lindsey’ kind of evidence that ties Sulaimani to the 9/11 attacks.

The Don: So we really have the goods.

Pompeo; Absolutely. In fact, I have already contacted Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to let him know what we are doing. And I  heard you spoke to Putin a few days ago.

The Don: Yeah, and Putin says hi. And I really like Lavie. We had a real blast in the oval office a few years ago and the best part is no one even knew he was there until Russia’s media leaked it.

The Don: Anyone in Congress been informed besides my caddie, oops, I mean my buddy, Lindsey?

Pompeo: Of course not.

The Don: Does any other country know our plans?

Pompeo: Of course not.

The Don: Even Bibi?

Pompeo: Nope. Mr. President, not only will you be moving impeachment off the front page, but you will be seen as strong and an American hero.

The Don: Let’s take the motherfucker out then. But one question. Aren’t some going to want to see evidence of an imminent attack to justify this?

Pompeo: Well, let’s put it this way. You have been a master at denying access to evidence regarding the Ukraine thing so we will just keep with the program.

The Don: I have an idea. If it gets too hot, I will call up Bibi and tell him we will withhold military aide until he goes public that the intel was shared with him.

Pompeo: Mr. President, you are brilliant!

The Don: A great genius. That’s what they say about me. Now that we’ve decided to “Wag the Dog,” I would like to put my tail down on the couch and watch some football. Just buzz when the deed is done and I’ll switch to Fox News and watch them hail me as the greatest American president.

Pompeo: Mr. President, it is an honor to serve with such a visionary and American Hero.

The Don: (Turns on TV and sounds of football- helmets crashing.) Wow, did you see that hit? I just love those animals.

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[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Well ... who would have thought that thinks are going to develope so fast...

Here's a little recap (chronological):

- Kherson is liberated

- Zelenskyy visits Kherson; the Kremlins barely comment it, but they're outraged that Zelenskyy visits "Russian territory" and says Kherson will always be annexed and Russian

- during his speech in Kherson, Zelenskyy says that the liberation of Kherson is the start of the end of the war - many experts agree with him: the majority says that giving up Kherson and running away is the biggest humiliation for Russia so far and a sign that they're losing the war / can no longer win

- Putin doesn't attend G20, Lavrov travels for him, but all the other leaders refuse to have the traditional "family group photo" with Lavrov; fake news about Lavrov being hospitalised appear; unconfirmed news about Ukraine also liberating settlements across the Dnipro and continuing with their counter-offensive are published; meanwhile the public's anger about Russia's G20 participation grows - the hastag #G19 gets started

- Zelenskyy gives a speech at the G20 meeting, introducing the Ukraine Peace Plan: 10 points for peace and to start negotiations and to end this war and saying again that Ukraine is ready for diplomacy and negotiations, but not with Putin as President and under the conditions that all fighting stops immediately and all Russian soldiers and military personnel gets removed from all Ukranian territory - Ukraine gets the territory from 1991 back

- the Kremlin doesn't comment the G20 speech, Lavrov speaks and blames everyone else and defends the war with all kind of bullshit

- Lavrov suddenly leaves Indonesia - it's unclear if G20 threw him out or if he leaves in his own; he immediately returns to Russia

‼️ - almost at the same time air raid alert in all of Ukraine (despite Crimea): in one of the worst missile attacks since the start of the war in February, Russian missiles rain down on Kyiv and other cities; people die, critical energy infrastructure is destroyed, civilian targets

‼️ - two Russian missiles hit Poland, close to the Ukrainian border; it's unclear so far if by accident or on purpose (remember: Poland is NATO member and one of the biggest and strongest supporters of Ukraine); two people die

‼️ - after first investigations it is confirmed that the missiles are Russian

‼️ - voice get loud that this is an attack on a NATO country and Article 5 must be activated; still nothing from the Kremlins about the attack

‼️ - the Polish PM convened the emergency meeting of the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security & Defense Affairs (9PM local time); Duda hasn't said anything so far; no official statement from the Polish government at this point

‼️ - Estonia is the first country to release a statement, saying they are ready to defend every inch of NATO territory

‼️ - according to unconfirmed rumours, Polish Air Force launched fighter jets from the airfield in Tomaszów Lubelski

- more and more politicans and leader release statement about Poland, say they support Poland and give their condolences

‼️ - Pentagon releases a statement: no clear statement regarding Article 5 of NATO, but a reminder that "we have made it crystal clear that we will protect every inch of NATO territory"

[political-fluffle]

With the US gone, the implications of their departure is beginning to sink in across the Middle East

The moment that changed the Middle East arrived with a sudden silence. Just before 7pm on Sunday, the internet was cut across north-eastern Syria where, for half an hour, the Kurds of the region had been digesting a news flash. The Syrian government was returning to two towns, Manbij and Kobane. The implication quickly sunk in.

The regional capital, Qamishli, soon emptied; streets that had bustled with minibuses and shoppers became eerie and still. With the internet down phones were no help and nor were officials who had vanished along with the traffic. Air seemed to be suddenly vacuumed from the city, and the few people still around knew exactly what it meant: this was the moment power changed hands. It was a time to be scared.

“You must leave now,” one man said, avoiding eye contact. “There are regime checkpoints to the east and it isn’t safe to stay.” He, and other Kurds had lived all their lives, except for the past seven years, under the control of the government in Damascus, and the prospect of their return left him pale and worried. (...)

A day later, the ramifications of the momentous week that preceded the Kurds allowing the Assad regime to retake the province is still sinking in, across Syria and far beyond in Riyadh, Baghdad, Cairo and the Gulf.

Something far bigger was at play here; the end of US influence in Syria and the plunge in its status elsewhere. The public handover on show was that between the Assad regime and the Kurds, but the real power shift was between Washington – whose fighting troops have all but left the region, 16 years after invading Iraq – and Moscow, whose reach and influence across the Middle East has now been cemented.

As if to celebrate the moment, Vladimir Putin arrived in Riyadh for a state visit on Monday, his first in 12 years, hosted by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who three weeks earlier had similarly felt the humiliation of abandonment by US allies. (...)

In northern Syria, the US decision to abandon the Kurds, who had helped lead the global fight against Isis, had bewildered locals and left them with very few options. “It’s better to go for compromise than genocide,” said Muzlum Abdi, commander in chief of the US-raised force, formerly known as the SDF. (...)

As time ticked away on the last vestige of Kurdish rule, the Syrian military arrived – packed into cattle trucks – in the town of Tal Tamir, where Kurdish fighters had been bringing their wounded only hours earlier.

Their arrival would have likely heartened one of the country’s most recent refugees, Ahmad Mahmoud Hussein, who a day before had raged against Turkey’s proxies – Arabs from elsewhere in Syria, who had just forced him from his home in the town of Ras al-Ayn. “They are mercenaries, hired guns,” he claimed. “They are all ex-convicts and drug addicts and they have no honour or mercy. Those who fall for what Turkey are offering them will do anything for money. I don’t care if I’m sleeping on this school floor for one year, two years, or 10. I’m not going back while they’re still there.” (...)

“Iran and Russia are the dominant foreign powers now,” said Arshan. “They will dictate terms in this region. Things have really changed.”

The USA was defeated, thanks to Trump

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The President is having a rough time. That much we can easily infer by reading both the medical and the political tea leaves that have dropped all around him in recent days. As of October 7, 2020–27 days from the Presidential Election — here’s where we stand.

It is a story in three parts:

1. Trump has, or at least had, severe Covid. We can infer that from the drugs he’s been prescribed.

For the past five days he has been on a course of Remdesivir, an antiviral medication that can interrupt viral reproduction. According to the Financial Times, the FDA “authorised the emergency use of Remdesivir for Covid-19 in May for patients with severe coronavirus who need extra oxygen or mechanical ventilation to help them breathe. In August, the FDA extended the emergency use authorisation to anyone in hospital with Covid-19, however severe their disease.”

He has also been given Regeneron’s multiple-monoclonal antibody therapy, a drug that directly kills the virus. He was given an 8-gram dose, which is very high, indicating that his viral load was significant when they got him to the hospital on Friday. This drug has not yet even been authorized for emergency use, but his doctors leaned on the regulatory agencies and the company to be able to prescribe it for compassionate use. This is the drug that, in my opinion, likely saved his life. At least for now. Note, this drug does NOT stop the virus from resurging, but it can be administered again without harm, so long as his body does not develop a resistance to the antibodies, themselves.

Notably, neither of these drugs will help to reverse damage already done to the organs.

The third big-hitter drug he received was a steroid called Dexamethasone. It is used to help prevent the body’s immune system from doing more damage than the virus. When the immune system goes into overdrive, there is significant swelling that can, itself, severely damage the organs. With Covid, that swelling can be so bad that it kills the organs, then the patient. The World Health Organization advises doctors to only use the drug in severe or critical cases, because it can have powerful side-effects — both physiological and psychological.

Physiologically, it SHREDS the immune system. That is, literally, what it is intended to do, which — in this case — is good for him, because he’s getting the Remdesivir and the Regeneron cocktail to fight the Covid, but BAD for him because for the next week or so, he’s got no meaningful immune system and that bathtub mold left behind by William Howard Taft in the White House jakes might take him out quicker than he can kill anyone else with his coronavirus.

Psychologically, it can lead to mania or more severe depressive states — which has got to at least rate a bit of a worry among Trump’s advisors, right?

Well, maybe not — and that brings us to the next point.

Donnie is all alone.

2. The second thing we know, or can infer from the past few days’ events, is that President Trump is finally — and fully — leading his own parade. There really is no sane doctor in the land who, short of wanting to fluff the Commander-in-Chief, would have authorized either his Sunday night joyride, or even his discharge from the hospital as if he’d just come down with a touch of 24-Hour Covid.

But, well, Trump. Even casual observers quickly learn that he does not tolerate independence in his advisors. They either show a willingness to bend to his will, or they are drummed out of service. As such, when he needs someone to finally stand up to him, even for his own good, they are long, long gone. Some folks are lamenting Dr. Sean Conley for tarnishing his reputation this past week, but in truth, you could have inferred that from the simple fact that he’s Trump’s personal physician. It’s the same for everyone. Persistent exposure to his toxicity either leads to outright rejection, or total corruption and collapse. At this point in his life and his Presidency, there simply are no grown-ups left in the room.

That goes for his political team, too. But with them, it’s even worse: Not only have the ones with actual backbone long since been ejected from the West Wing, the toadies that are left are now all down for the count because of this virus. Here’s a list of his people who are currently either ill or in quarantine:

Hope Hicks, chief adviser to the president.

Bill Stepien, campaign manager.

Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

Chris Christie, top political advisor.

Melania Trump, his wife.

Nicholas Luna, assistant and “body man” to the president.

Kellyanne Conway, former White House senior adviser.

Stephen Miller, his pet Nazi.

Lord knows what sort of protocols are in place in the East Wing of the White House, right now, but given the pacing and the lunacy of the Tweets, there’s just no one there to stop him. He is amped up on steroids, likely a bit delirious, and clearly surprised — and offended — that his “triumphant return” was mocked by everyone outside of his Proud Boy Fan Club as a weird, pathetic Evita routine wherein he was clearly gasping for air. He’s pissed off, alone, and facing the greatest humiliation of his life in 28 days. CNN today has Biden up by 16 points — 57% to 41%. That is getting into Ronald Reagan / Walter Mondale ’84 territory, when the Gipper beat the Man from Minnesota by an Electoral College margin of 525 to 13.

Clearly, Donald is losing his mind — likely due to the drugs, but also because he is all alone, scared out of his wits, and can’t seem to do a damn thing about it. There is no one left to bully.

So, what does he do?

He lashes out like a haunted madman at the nation he purportedly leads.

3. In his almost four years at the helm, he has typed nearly every single type of public obscenity into his iPhone that a Manson Family member could imagine — but he save the most purely foolish of them for today. A few hours after the Fed Chair — you know, the guy in charge of global capitalism — came right out and said, in essence, “Hey, Washington, we need massive government spending NOW to save the economy!” Trump tweeted, literally and explicitly, “I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill.”

Holy shit!

The Fed Chair screamed: “STEP ON THE GAS!” and Trump, instead, slammed on the brakes. The market reacted by cratering nearly 600 points. They will pause for a moment, before again jumping off the cliff tomorrow, when no course correction is offered. This is very, very bad.

Backed into a corner, and with the economy teetering over the abyss, he has decided to take the entire country hostage — with an implicit promise that we either elect HIM, or he will let the entire country burn.

You know, I like to think that if McDaniel, or Stepien, or McEnany, or Hicks, or even Conway were there, they might have at least tried to talk him down from such an utterly insane position — one from which he has ZERO room to retreat without looking like a fool — but maybe not. Maybe after the Covid and the Roids and the Evita jokes, he would have gone ahead and set the world on fire regardless of what any advisor suggested.

Now we’ll never know. That die has been cast. And with it, I believe, his Presidency is all but over — short of straight-up election theft, or an auto coup d’etat.

Both, sadly, are still possibilities.

But shy of that, this President has demonstrated to everyone in the past few days that he has come undone. He is unbalanced, unhinged, disconnected from reality, physically ill, and getting his ass kicked by a dude he calls Sleepy Joe.

To put it lightly: It’s not a good look.

On top of that, his idiot son Eric — a used piece of moral toilet paper, who got busted two years ago for stealing money from a children’s cancer charity — just got deposed in a court case that will almost certainly spit out a basket of Trump Family indictments before Christmas this year, and Vladimir Putin — his patron (and banker) in Moscow is either prepping the piss tape for TMZ once his gimp is no longer useful, or burning the evidence trail so none of this can ever be tied, definitively, back to him.

All in all, Trump should count himself lucky if that Taft fungus rises up from the drain pipe and puts him out of his misery. Nothing good happens for him from here. He can still drag us all down with him, but he won’t get back up off this mat.

Or so, at least, it seems.

Love to you all.

[mariacallous]

Colonel General Alexander Lapin, commander of the Russian army group Center in Ukraine, used a pistol to personally threaten the commander of a mobilized unit, which retreated from the front lines without orders. One conscript from Moscow spoke about it as part of an official complaint, reports outlet Sota. The publication didn’t name the man but writes that they know his name, and that they have copies of his complaint and his call-up papers, which he sent the outlet.

The Moscow resident was mobilized on September 22, and was already in Ukraine on October 7. According to Sota, he received a rusty gun and no training “apart from one day of shooting practice.” He and his fellow conscripts were sent to an area near the city of Svatove in the annexed Luhansk region. They were under fire for at least a day and a half, as a result of which no fewer than 10 men were killed. The Moscow man and his fellow conscripts decided to retreat to Svatove to get new orders.

“Since there were no officers or command, we set ourselves the task of finding headquarters and asking about further actions. We were standing at a refueling station when Colonel General Lapin came up to us with his personal security detail. When he found out about the situation with the retreat, he held his pistol to Lieutenant V’s head, the commander of the fifth company, and ordered us to go back [to the front]. He also addressed a number of insults at us (traitors, deserters, and a lot of more offensive words),” says the complaint.

Lapin later left and the mobilized men spoke with a Colonel Rumyantsev. The conscripts asked him for food and water, to which he apparently replied “roadkill like you shouldn’t eat, or drink, or sleep.” He sent the conscripts to sleep in the forest, returned the next morning (drunk, according to the formal complaint), and again started “using offensive language and humiliating [us] verbally.” That day he sent the conscripts food and water, and later the same day they were collected and taken “to the Russian border near Belgorod.” 

According to Sota, the man is now on a unit in Belgorod, where he and other service members are under pressure to return to the front. His wife has complained to the military prosecutor and the Commissioner for Human Rights. The woman is raising two young children alone and counting on her husband’s return.

Alexander Lapin is the commander of the Central Military District and the army group Center, which captured the Luhansk region.

In the Spring of 2022, he attracted journalists’ attention for honoring his own son for the “liberation” of the Chernihiv region on the same day that Russia announced its retreat from the border there.

In the summer, Vladimir Putin awarded Lapin the title Hero of Russia. According to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the award was based on the capture of Lysychansk, although in Kadyrov’s words “he was in fact not anywhere around there.”

In early October, after the Russian retreat from Lyman, in the northern Donetsk region, not far from the borders of the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, Kadyrov criticized the general, calling him “talentless.”

[bountyofbeads]

Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

https://nyti.ms/2YiERaF

"There is one incontrovertible truth about the Mueller Report. It establishes, together with the FBI and CIA investigations, that your President was elected, in part, by Russia. That, together with the fact that three million more Americans preferred his opponent, will forever taint this President. His legitimacy is, and should always be, a massive question mark."

JOHN DAVID JAMES, CANADA 🍁

"Has anyone reported on why Senator MCConnell refuses to allow any legislation that would safeguard the 2020 election to even come up for a vote?" JOANNA SMITH, SANTA FE, NM

"Robert Mueller is an old-style, patrician Republican who devoted much of his life to serving the interests of the United States. People such as him have been driven out of today's Republican Party. But what he did was impart damaging information about this President and his actions. There was obstruction and there was no exoneration. Perhaps more significant, he elicited responses from Republican Members of Congress that highlighted how the Republican Party has devolved into a Trump Cult that cares little about truth, integrity or foreign attacks on our Democracy." PAT CHOATE, TUSCON AZ

"Mueller did not say Russia would attack our election again, he said they were attacking us "as we speak." Meanwhile, Democrats have already passed the Election Security Act and have sent it to the Senate, which would help states defend their election systems from attack and require a paper ballot back-up. But McConnell refuses take it up in the Senate. The outcome of the 2020 election hinges on battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and Florida, which Russia targeted last time (with help from the Trump campaign). It appears that McConnell does not care to prevent Russian hacking in these states, perhaps because he knows they will help Trump win." SHERRY, WASHINGTON

"My takeaway from today’s hearings is that impeachment can wait. Trump is not going to be convicted by the Senate. Democrats should focus on defeating him at the ballot box. Mueller and everyone else in this country knows that the Russians will be back to to help Trump win again. That is why Mitch McConnell, the traitor of the Senate, one of many Republicans who put party over patriotism, is refusing to allow a bipartisan bill to shore up and protect our election machinery. No paper trails will tell us if the count in closely contested states or any other state is accurate. Should the results be close , particularly if the Democrat loses, who but Republicans will believe it. Democrats should start demanding this bill be passed. Mitch has gotten away with enough obstruction. Put the pressure on him every day. That includes during his month vacation in August." MARY BETH, MA

"Several GOP panelists derided the Mueller investigation as prolonged and costly. Cost of Mueller investigation? ... through seizures of ill-begotten assets (eg Manafort forfeitures), it has more than paid for itself! Contrast the GOP Benghazi investigation on Clinton that went on for 4 years! ... with no indictments and no counts ... none (and no asset seizures)! Mueller’s investigation wasn't even 2 years, and already with 37 indictments and 199 counts and several in trump’s inner circle charged and in prison with more imminent." JOHN TOWNSEND, MEXICO

"In much the same way Trump demeaned, denigrated a former First Lady and Secretary of State; today the Republican Party did the same to another public servant. No 74 year old, War Veteran, public servant deserved to be spoken to the way Mueller was by the Republicans who questioned him. But then again, we saw with McCain how much this administration respects veterans. Never wandering far from the low moral bar their POTUS has set, Republicans today once more demonstrated how much they respect what were once established values."

DENISE, NM

"Today, it was reiterated that the sitting US President, Donald Trump, is guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of colluding with the Russians to attain the US Presidency in 2016, and of committing and continuing to commit the obstruction of justice in covering up his collusion. What we also learned today is that the rump GOP that remains, after all this Trump carnage, of what used to be the proud party of Lincoln, is willing to lie, to shill and to defend this narcissistic Russian owned clown to their bitter end. Sad. Humiliating. Depressing." JOE MIKSIS, SAN FRANCISCO

"That Special Counsel Robert Mueller III made a very grave statement about Russian tampering in the 2016 election for President and Vice President of the United States should be a very loud, resounding alarm to every citizen of this country demanding the assurance from every Board of Election in each state that their vote casting system is tamper-proof. And if there is not a very vocal public outcry to demand free and safe elections in this country, we are sunk as a democracy. There is no democracy of one person - one (tamper-proof) vote in the United States if we have Russian or any other outside interference. And yes, I continue to believe Donald Trump's tax returns will see a direct link between Russian interference - in many forms - vote tampering, money schemes, loans, and potentially blackmail that will bring this house of cards down. I think Trump knows this and continues his daily and relentless twittering directed toward whomever is disturbing his house of cards at the moment . All of his twittering behavior is simply to distract from the truth - which will be found in his taxes. And finally, Special Counsel Mueller, in his 11 minute televised address two weeks ago stated:, "if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." Another shocking statement that should be sounding very loud alarms. That statement is yet another reason to issue court orders to subpoena Trump’s taxes." KKM, NYC

"Some of the media coverage of Mueller’s testimony today bothers me as a person who appreciates the American Constitution. The idea that the testimony was ineffective is ludicrous. The house majority did an excellent job of refuting Trump’s claim that there was “no collusion”. They also did an excellent job of meticulously outlining the actions that constituted that collusion. When Republican representatives pushed Mueller on making a political statement with his report, he pushed back vehemently. The American people who watched this testimony now have the truth as opposed to the spin that came from the White House. Hopefully citizens who love this country will uphold our democracy in the next election and today’s testimony gives us all some truths to take to the ballot box as we make our individual decisions." RMWARD, CONNECTICUT

"This is the best account I've read about what I witnessed on the live stream today. The one thing that no news articles have mentioned — I am not seeing hard core critique of the questions that were asked and statements made. The Republicans have so intimidated news media by attacking everything as "partisan" and "political" that the media posit a false equivalency between what one party does versus another, so as to refer to the parties equally. Thus there is not one word spoken about the odiously misleading and false statements and questions by the Republicans, oftentimes loaded with conspiracy theories. It is a disgrace that legislators feed these accusations to the public, and the press says nothing. Nunes telling Mueller to his face that the investigation was a hoax??? These guys are out front with Trump feeding delusions to the public. Many media are making the big news that Mueller seemed indecisive or shaky in his answers, all the while this public disgrace of Republican accusations that are completely disconnected from reality parades before the cameras and goes unmentioned — or else portrayed as equal to the serious and studential questions and comments of the Democrats. There are dangers headed towards U.S. democracy like a freight train. Please do more to wake everyone up to the dangers of claims that flagrantly violate known facts."

ANNE SHERROD

"The fact is, there is no law to say you can't indict a sitting president, neither is there anything in the constitution to that effect. It is simply a DOJ opinion that has been passed down over the years. It is not a high bar to expect that your president has not committed a crime. The simple answer: render the president accountable to criminal justice just as every American is."

YesIKnowTheMuffinMan, NEW HOPE PA

"If Russia can do it to Clinton, China will do it to Trump (and I expect they will). The GOP are unbelievably naive. China is much more experienced and skilled."

CHARACTER COUNTS, USA

"Putin is grinning ear to ear." CINDY, SAN DIEGO CA

"The best we can do is gather a great Democratic Party strategy, pick a candidate that can stand up to trump and beat him solidly in the 2020 election. Muellers report should provide plenty of reasons why trump and his cronies must go. The Democratic Party must insure that the Russians or any foreign country does not hack our election again." DR B, BERKLEY, CA

"Most questions were long winded, hard to follow and self served, aimed to impress the electorate base and embarrass Mueller. Republicans in particular excelled in irrelevancy, ranging form brash accusations to white noise generators. To his credit, Mueller chose not to play along and stayed within the scope of even the least cohesive question. Posterity will remember, hopefully, Mueller for his uncompromising and professional stance, focus on the job and carelessness for his public image. Picture him side by side with the president, and try to take in the difference." MIROCAL, SEATTLE WA

"They’re doing it as we sit here,” Facebook knows more about you than your parents. And they package that knowledge as a target for the highest bidder. As a Target. You and I are Targets. Cambridge Analytica leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. The Russian Government leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. Dear regulators, as a part of the Facebook settlement, how about banning Targeted political ads? Sure, the Supreme Court has ruled, in Burson v Freeman, that blackout periods for political ads are unconstitutional. But, it says nothing about Targeted ads. When I'm shown an ad for or against a candidate, I want to see what everybody else sees. I want to see everybody's response to that ad. Is it fake? Is it fair? One of the worse policies for political speech was the removal of the fairness doctrine -- where broadcasters were required to give free time to opposing views. Well, at the very least, it should be a requirement that ads for public office are truly public. Not some kind of guided missive keyed to my private data. Regulators, are you listening?"

IKO, HERE

"I believed Mueller. I wouldn't believe Trump if my life depended on it. Indeed, I would depend on this fact: Trump will always lie. He THINKS his lies are a "force of nature." I suppose we will found out just how strong they are. Because they are now exposed. Anyone who believes them now has no more excuses. Whoever believes Trump belongs to Trump. They are bought and paid for." PAUL GLASSON, GA

"I am frankly beyond being disgusted with these shameful Republican congresspeople. While they may believe the best defense is a good offense, and are aggressively trying to steamroll and invalidate a legitimate investigative process, I am not buying what they are selling. No amount of money or power could make me behave in such a despicable fashion, and the fact that they seem to be immune from self loathing for their behavior indicates what type of people they are to their cores. They dishonor this country."

GMR, ATLANTA

Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

By Mark Mazzetti | Published July 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 24, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III on Wednesday publicly rejected President Trump’s criticism that the special counsel’s investigation was a “witch hunt” and defended his conclusions about the sweeping Russian interference campaign in 2016, warning that Moscow will again try to sabotage American democracy.

The partisan war over his inquiry reached a heated climax during hours of long-awaited testimony by Mr. Mueller before two congressional committees. Lawmakers hunted for viral sound bites and tried to score political points, but Mr. Mueller refused to engage on those fronts, returning over and over in sometimes halting delivery to his damning and voluminous report.

Mr. Mueller remained a spectral presence in Washington over the past two years as the president and his allies subjected the special counsel and his team of lawyers to withering attacks. Speaking in detail for the first time about his conclusions produced occasionally dramatic moments where he ventured beyond his report to offer insights about Mr. Trump’s behavior.

When asked whether Mr. Trump “wasn’t always being truthful” in his written answers to the special counsel’s questions, Mr. Mueller responded, “I would say generally.” He called Mr. Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign “problematic” and said it “gave a boost to what is and should be illegal activity.” He said that he and his team chose not to subpoena Mr. Trump out of concern that a battle over a presidential interview might needlessly prolong the investigation.

Democratic lawmakers had hoped that Mr. Mueller’s nationally televised testimony would provide a dramatic culmination to a yearslong saga: the special counsel translating the dense jargon of his report into a bleak portrait of the Russian interference operation and the president’s behavior since winning the election. The testimony would, in their minds, make the report both more authoritative and more vivid for Americans who had skipped reading it.

Some television pundits built up the drama by comparing Mr. Mueller’s appearance to some of the most galvanizing moments of the Watergate era.

For the most part, Mr. Mueller did not play along. He gave clipped answers to lengthy questions, and forced lawmakers to give their own dramatic readings of parts of his report rather than reciting the conclusions himself. He sometimes gave a forceful defense of his investigation and his team in the face of the Republican fusillade, but his answers were at times faltering. Throughout, he was careful to avoid straying from his report’s conclusions.

Mr. Trump has spent months characterizing the special counsel’s report as a “total exoneration,” though Mr. Mueller was careful on Wednesday to state that he and his team had drawn no such conclusion. The special counsel’s 448-page report, released in April, laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power, and on Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was most impassioned when describing the contours of the Russian interference playbook.

“They’re doing it as we sit here,” he said of Russia’s tampering in American elections.

Looming over the hearing was the question of whether Mr. Mueller’s testimony might shift the ground in Congress and propel more lawmakers to push for Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Only one new call emerged for impeachment hearings by late afternoon Wednesday, from Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, and lawmakers will soon depart Washington for a summer recess. It was too soon to say whether the spectacle would change Americans’ opinions about Mr. Mueller and his work that have only hardened over time, and whether Democrats would return to their districts and encounter more vigorous calls for Mr. Trump’s removal.

The questioning on Wednesday reflected a bitter philosophical divide, both on the committees and in the country as a whole: whether it was Mr. Trump, or those investigating him, who committed crimes. Throughout the day, the Democrats hit the high points from Mr. Mueller’s report: the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the efforts by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, the discussions between Michael T. Flynn and a Russian ambassador about Obama-era sanctions, the strategy by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to sow chaos before the election.

The Mueller report cataloged numerous meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians seeking to influence the campaign and the presidential transition team — encounters set up in pursuit of business deals, policy initiatives and political dirt about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent.

Mr. Mueller concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to determine that the president or his aides had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians, even though the Trump campaign welcomed the Kremlin sabotage effort and “expected it would benefit electorally” from the hackings and leaks of Democratic emails.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was asked about the Trump Tower meeting, WikiLeaks and the decision by Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, to share campaign information with a Russian oligarch, and whether these episodes were a new normal for political campaigns.

“I hope this is not the new normal,” Mr. Mueller said, “but I fear it is.”

Republicans tried to flip the lens, peppering Mr. Mueller with questions about what they have long argued, with little evidence: that the F.B.I. opened a politically motivated investigation in 2016 with the aim of preventing Mr. Trump from becoming president. They focused on the research firm that commissioned the dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. They focused on Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic identified by the special counsel as linked to Russian intelligence, and advanced unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Mifsud was actually under the sway of Western spy services.

Mr. Mueller mostly deflected those questions, saying the origins of the F.B.I. investigation predated his time as special counsel and was outside his purview.

Mr. Mueller was a reluctant witness and had tried to avoid the spectacle of a congressional hearing. In a brief public statement in May, he urged the public — and, by extension, members of Congress — to read his report, which he said “speaks for itself.” “The report is my testimony,” he said.

House Democrats were unmoved and chose to take the aggressive step of compelling Mr. Mueller’s testimony under subpoena.

[xtruss]

The World Ignored Russia’s Delusions. It Shouldn’t Make the Same Mistake With “Hindus’ Extremist and Terrorist India.”

“Extremist & Terrorist Hindu Nationalist Ideologues” in New Delhi are flirting with a dangerous revisionist history of South Asia.

— May 8, 2022 | By Sushant Singh, a senior fellow with the Centre for Policy Research in India | Foreign Policy

A bulldozer demolishes a structure during a joint anti-encroachment drive conducted by North Delhi Municipal Corporation in Jahangirpuri, India, on April 20. Naveen Sharma/Lightrocket Via Getty Images

Leaders have long relied on manufactured history to justify invasions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied the existence of an independent Ukrainian state in his bid to take over the country and restore Russia’s perceived greatness. Chinese President Xi Jinping argues that the state must recover what his party sees as historical territory to overcome its so-called century of humiliation. Neither leader seems to care that Russia and China were never previously politically contiguous states.

Others around the world harbor similar irredentist dreams that are sometimes mocked by observers. We ignore these ambitions at our own peril. For decades, India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—the Hindu nationalist organization with close links to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—has put forward the idea of Akhand Bharat or an “unbroken India.” The proposed entity stretches from Afghanistan on India’s western flank all the way to Myanmar to the east of India as well as encompassing all of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has mentioned the idea: In a 2012 interview, when he was still the chief minister of Gujarat, he argued that Akhand Bharat referred to cultural unity.

Last month, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told a public gathering that India will become Akhand Bharat in 10 to 15 years, providing the first timeline for a Hindu nationalist pipe dream. Besides heading the RSS, Bhagwat is a very powerful figure in today’s India because of his personal relationship with Modi. The BJP is one of a few dozen institutions that comes under the direct control of the RSS, which now holds the most power since it was founded in 1925. Modi was a full-time RSS campaigner before it assigned him to the BJP, and he considers Bhagwat’s late father to be a mentor. Indian corporate leaders and foreign diplomats recognize Bhagwat’s clout, visiting him at RSS headquarters in Nagpur, India. His words must be engaged with seriously, not dismissed offhand as the fantasies of an old man.

The idea of Akhand Bharat is a core tenet of Hindutva ideology, a century-old doctrine of Hindu nationalism. Now, with its own map and nomenclature, it is being taught to students in RSS-run schools across the country. Modi’s government seems to assert that this political geography transcends present-day borders. Its proponents imply that achieving Akhand Bharat will come after India is refashioned as a de facto Hindu Rashtra or “Hindu nation”—even if it remains a constitutional republic. This does not bode well for India’s democratic values. Modi has often presented himself as a Hindu ruler, a shift accompanied by increased violence against Muslims in India.

Beyond India, this ideology could also be dangerous for the region: It is likely to breed further insecurity in nuclear-armed Pakistan and will weaken India’s position against China, its more powerful regional rival. Furthermore, although the notion of a Hindu Rashtra may seem far-fetched today, the same was said of Putin’s expansionist ambitions until recently. That’s why the very public desire of Hindu nationalists to change the map and create a new, “unbroken” India could have global ripple effects—and must be taken seriously.

A 1902 map from The Century Atlas of the World shows the expansive Indian subcontinent during the period of the British Raj before partition in 1947. The PrintCollector/Getty Images

Although often assumed to undo the British partition of India in 1947, the idea of Akhand Bharat actually invokes an Indian kingdom from more than 2,000 years ago. An RSS textbook teaches that India once included “Brahmadesh [Myanmar] and Bangladesh to the east, Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan to the north, and Sri Lanka to the south.” The text uses its own Sanskritized names for oceans and seas, ridding them of any perceived Islamic influence: The Bay of Bengal becomes the Ganga Sagar (sea of the Ganges), and the Indian Ocean becomes Hindu Mahasagar (an ocean of the Hindus). An RSS publishing house produces a map that refers to the “holy land” of India, in which Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Tibet are also given new names. This nomenclature dates at least to the 1960s, when the second RSS chief, M. S. Golwalkar, included it in his book. (When he visited RSS headquarters in 2015, journalist Mehdi Hasan noted that he was surprised by the Akhand Bharat map inside.)

Policies enacted by Modi’s government have increasingly reflected this desired political geography, which asserts that Hindutva goes beyond current borders. In 2019, India passed a Citizenship (Amendment) Act that selectively creates a path to citizenship for religious minorities—mainly Hindus—from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan and excludes Muslims. Indian Home Minister Amit Shah then linked this criteria to a National Register of Citizens, raising fears among Muslims that they could be denied citizenship. The same year, Modi’s government stripped Jammu and Kashmir—India’s only majority-Muslim state—of its autonomy, bringing it under direct federal rule.

The idea of Akhand Bharat also shapes the current Indian government’s relationship with its neighbors. Within India, Modi refers to the country as a Vishwa Guru, or a teacher to the world; right-wing propaganda suggests that only he can restore the greatness of Hindu India. He has paid high-profile visits to temples in Bangladesh, Nepal, and elsewhere to suggest that those countries fall under Hindutva’s umbrella. The Indian government imposed a supply blockade on Nepal in 2015, when it wanted the Himalayan country to amend its new, secular constitution in favor of declaring Hindu Rashtra. Under Modi, India has also selectively raised diplomatic objections about the ill treatment of Hindus in neighboring countries; it pledged to fast-track visas for Hindus and Sikhs from Afghanistan after the Taliban took over last year.

“Modi Is Trying to Engineer a Hindu Majority in Kashmir Under the Smokescreen of Electoral Redistricting, New Delhi is Using Gerrymandering to Politically Neuter the Region’s Muslim Majority.”

Despite this narrative, most historians figure that present-day India never included Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Tibet, or Sri Lanka, even in ancient times. The areas that did belong to India—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan—never fell under the same direct leader, except while under British colonial rule. Even then, the government operated through numerous princely states with their own limited sovereignties. To treat India as a much older political entity is a powerful act of revisionism: The borders running off the edge of the Akhand Bharat map imply the sovereignty of a single Hindu republic where there was none. Instead, South Asia’s history is one of a multiplicity of kingdoms with rulers of various ethnicities who spoke different languages. Their states occupied parts of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—often concurrently.

Furthermore, India’s past is not one of perpetual conflict along sharp religious lines. In the past, Hindu leaders employed Muslim generals to fight Muslim rulers and vice versa. But by describing India as having suffered under 1,200 years of Muslim rule, as Modi did after his 2014 election, RSS ideologues argue that India is a Hindu nation that must be restored to its supposed former glory. This idea of a linear path to glorious Hindu rule ended by Muslim invaders was, in fact, a British colonial construct intended to divide and rule the region; the RSS has lapped it up.

Hindu nationalists have deployed their distortion of history to support divisive policies and even violence against India’s more than 200 million Muslims. Abetted by the Indian state, this religious persecution has recently reached alarming levels. Hindu nationalist campaigns have targeted Muslim Friday prayers, BJP leaders have conflated Muslims with criminals in campaign speeches, and Muslim students have been barred from attending classes for wearing headscarves. Following communal violence targeting Muslim neighborhoods, authorities have bulldozed houses, shops, and religious structures—including in New Delhi and despite a Supreme Court order temporarily banning such demolitions. Modi has remained silent on the matter, instead using a recent speech to demonize a 17th-century Mughal emperor.

Bhagwat has expressed satisfaction with these recent events, without naming them explicitly. Having already declared India a Hindu Rashtra, he recently described the country’s trajectory: “Those who want to stop it will be either removed or finished, but India will not stop. Now, a vehicle is on the move, which has an accelerator but no brakes. No one should come in between. If you want to, come and sit with us or stay at the station.” In another speech, Bhagwat said if Hindus want to remain Hindus, then India must be “unbroken.”

Left: Hindu fundamentalists chant slogans demanding demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, India, on Dec. 6, 1992, shortly before the structure was destroyed by Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh supporters. SONDEEP SHANKAR/GETTY IMAGES Right: Volunteers of the right-wing Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh gather for a large-scale congregation in Meerut, India, on Feb. 25, 2018. Sajjad Hussain/AFP Via Getty Images

Akhand Bharat has long been a part of Hindu nationalist ideology, connected to the core RSS principles of sangathan (organized unity) and shuddhi (purification of race). Local RSS units observe Aug. 14—the day before India and Pakistan became independent countries in 1947—as Akhand Bharat Sankalp Diwas (or Pledge Day for an Unbroken India). In 1948, activist Mahatma Gandhi’s RSS-linked assassin, Nathuram Godse, told the jury during his trial that he killed Gandhi because he held him responsible for “the cursed vivisection of India.” Before he was hanged, Godse shouted, “Akhand Bharat amar rahe” or “Long live Unbroken India.”

Likewise, Bhagwat’s recent rhetoric around achieving the goal of Akhand Bharat is troubling. “We will talk about nonviolence, but we will walk with a stick. And that stick will be a heavy one,” he said in his April speech. Small countries in South Asia are already concerned about India’s hegemony; Bhagwat’s proclamations are bound to increase insecurity in the region, breeding anger and hatred against India. Recent events in Bangladesh could be a harbinger of what’s to come: Last year, Modi visited Dhaka during the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence and was met with violence and protests against his anti-Muslim policies, leaving at least 12 people dead.

The RSS has especially focused on Pakistan, with its leaders negating its status as a sovereign state and calling for undoing the reality of partition. Such rhetoric has contributed to the persistent animosity between the two neighbors, and it appears in Modi’s own embellished history. In 1999, then-Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited the Minar-e-Pakistan monument in Lahore, Pakistan—where Pakistan declared independence. It was seen as a signal that the Hindutva ideologues had accepted Pakistan’s existence. But Modi has now diminished Vajpayee’s narrative: When he claims that nothing was achieved in the 70 years before his own premiership, Modi does not exclude the late BJP leader.

In any case, the idea that a nuclear-armed Pakistan would somehow become part of a unified India—because Bhagwat’s followers wield a heavy stick—is ridiculous. To include Tibet in the equation is even more so, given that Chinese soldiers have denied Indian patrols access to the disputed territory in nearby Ladakh for nearly two years. The relative difference in power between India and China has only widened under Modi’s watch; a demand that Tibet become part of Akhand Bharat would certainly provoke Beijing. Akhand Bharat propaganda could further weaken India’s position in the neighborhood, where China has successfully challenged India’s influence in countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

Scholars of the RSS say that as a secretive organization, it hasn’t publicized any official document related to Akhand Bharat. This allows it to define the idea fluidly and means that its contours must be gleaned from speeches, books, or interviews from the organization’s top leaders. Public communications from the RSS and the BJP also diverge on the issue: Akhand Bharat has, at times, been described as a cultural entity, a political group with a single military and a common president, a federation, or a political monolith. By speaking in different voices, RSS propaganda leaves enough wriggle room for these leaders to escape uncomfortable questions while camouflaging their actual idea.

But the devil lies in the details of RSS rhetoric. Last February, Bhagwat said tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan had arisen because “they separated [India] from the energy of life,” adding that, “[w]e are open to treat them as our own as they were before.” Other RSS ideologues have explained that refers to the period before Islam came to South Asia—a crafty way of saying that India’s neighbors should accept their Hindu origins. It’s no coincidence that Modi’s government is now funding the archaeological study of the Maldives’ pre-Islamic past. At its core, the idea of Akhand Bharat is not a confederation of sovereign states where all citizens are equal; it rejects the Westphalian state system for a revanchist vision of an expansionist Hindu nation. That should be clear from the track record of the RSS, which treats India’s religious minorities poorly and appears hellbent on destroying India’s secular, democratic constitution.

No political leader would dare attempt to carry out the RSS idea of a Hindu Rashtra today, but those blinded by manufactured nostalgia and religious zeal will go to any extent to pursue what they see as a righteous cause. Sharing the stage with Bhagwat last week, a Hindu saint said, “Undivided India is the dream of all in the country, and this dream will certainly be realized during the tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” If the RSS did not control the levers of power in India, these ideas could be dismissed as fantasies. But Bhagwat’s yearning to change the map by creating a new India, unified as a Hindu nation, comes with a cost. Under Modi’s influence, India will suffer more bigotry and violence as its heritage and democratic values are squandered in the pursuit of Akhand Bharat. Instead of ignoring it, the world must recognize what the nature of this dangerous idea portends for India and beyond.

— Sushant Singh is a senior fellow with the Centre for Policy Research in India. He was previously a lecturer in political science at Yale University and the deputy editor of the Indian Express, reporting on strategic affairs, national security, and international affairs. He won a Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his reporting in 2017 and 2018.