Sunday, November 10, 2019
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Friday, October 5, 2018
Saturday, March 25, 2017
How One Historian Views American Politics
Bill Maher was covered over at RawStory as he hosted Yale historian Timothy Snyder who talked about his new book Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century. If you don't want to link to RawStory or Bill Maher I have a YouTube link from a C-SPAN interview below as Blogger doesn't support VIDME embedding, the video format used by the RawStory post. But you should watch them both as it gives a much better picture of what prof. Snyder is most likely trying to convey. From RawStory:
1) Don't obey in advance,..“don’t follow what everyone else is doing… figure out what you stand for and be yourself.”
2) Defend institutions. Many anticipate that “the institution will save us” but Snyder said that this kind of thinking is wrong. “We have to save the institutions. They don’t do it on their own. This is the moment of ‘ask not what the institutions can do for you. Ask what you can do for the institutions.'”
3) Believe in the truth. “Without truth, we don’t have trust. Without trust, we don’t have the rule of law. Without the rule of law, we don’t have democracy.”
And the books table of contents from C-SPAN wherein they discuss #17 in some detail:
I guess you should just purchase the book.
But none of this is rocket science unless you are living in an alternate reality where whatever you want to believe in is a fact. Because you want it to be, a fact. It's very much like thinking that the organic disrupting power of electricity above a certain voltage & current will stop your heart. It's a cool edgy position until you are forced to test the theory. Then you are dead.
There is nothing shocking being discussed here unless you are living in one of the two bubbles that dominate the discussion. The right, or the left. There are subtle nuances to the two party reality which count not at all. ALL of the positioning is occurring within the two parties, not outside.
1) Don't obey in advance,..“don’t follow what everyone else is doing… figure out what you stand for and be yourself.”
2) Defend institutions. Many anticipate that “the institution will save us” but Snyder said that this kind of thinking is wrong. “We have to save the institutions. They don’t do it on their own. This is the moment of ‘ask not what the institutions can do for you. Ask what you can do for the institutions.'”
3) Believe in the truth. “Without truth, we don’t have trust. Without trust, we don’t have the rule of law. Without the rule of law, we don’t have democracy.”
And the books table of contents from C-SPAN wherein they discuss #17 in some detail:
1. Do not
obey in advance. 17
2. Defend
institutions. 22
3. Beware
the one-party state. 26
4. Take responsibility
for the face of the world. 32
5. Remember
professional ethics. 38
6. Be wary
of paramilitaries. 42
7. Be
reflective if you must be armed. 47
8. Stand
out. 51
9. Be kind
to our language. 59
10. Believe
in truth. 65
11.
Investigate. 72
12. Make
eye contact and small talk. 81
13.
Practice corporeal politics. 83
14.
Establish a private life. 87
15.
Contribute to good causes. 92
16. Learn
from peers in other countries. 95
17. Listen
for dangerous words. 99
18. Be calm
when the unthinkable arrives. 103
19. Be a
patriot. 111
20. Be as
courageous as you can. 119
I guess you should just purchase the book.
But none of this is rocket science unless you are living in an alternate reality where whatever you want to believe in is a fact. Because you want it to be, a fact. It's very much like thinking that the organic disrupting power of electricity above a certain voltage & current will stop your heart. It's a cool edgy position until you are forced to test the theory. Then you are dead.
There is nothing shocking being discussed here unless you are living in one of the two bubbles that dominate the discussion. The right, or the left. There are subtle nuances to the two party reality which count not at all. ALL of the positioning is occurring within the two parties, not outside.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Edgars Goes To Washington
As the Kerry fluff tour of Latvia ends we are now informed that the foreign ministers of the three Baltic states will meet with US Sec. of State Rex Tillerson in Washington March 28 to discuss, among other things one hopes, the strengthening of NATO which we can safely assume is a non-starter. I doubt even staying in a Trump hotel and spending bigly at the bar will get them anywhere.
Tillerson after all no doubt following express direction from the orange child monster POTUS has blown off the first meeting of NATO and will rather pointedly be visiting Russia instead. That is a thumb in the eye even though it is now being reported that an alternative date for a meeting with NATO may be found. The message is clear and completely in line with President Donald Trumps oft stated contempt for the organization.
A word of advice to all three ministers. Don't mention President Obama. The US commitment of troops and equipment in Europe you are seeing right now is an Obama initiative and not easily reversible. If Trump could roll it back he would.
But good luck anyway.
Tillerson after all no doubt following express direction from the orange child monster POTUS has blown off the first meeting of NATO and will rather pointedly be visiting Russia instead. That is a thumb in the eye even though it is now being reported that an alternative date for a meeting with NATO may be found. The message is clear and completely in line with President Donald Trumps oft stated contempt for the organization.
A word of advice to all three ministers. Don't mention President Obama. The US commitment of troops and equipment in Europe you are seeing right now is an Obama initiative and not easily reversible. If Trump could roll it back he would.
But good luck anyway.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Russian Bots Drive The News
The latest over at Rawstory is that Breitbart and Infowars are under investigation for ties to Russia.
Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as "bots," to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.
The bots' end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said.
Sputnik News was banned in Latvia one year ago by Latvia's domain registry which was promptly sidestepped when Sputnik adopted a .com url. Just recently Sputnik was dealt another blow:
On 1 March, Sputnik Estonia reported receiving a letter from the Baltic News Service (BNS) announcing the unilateral termination of a contract for news delivery. A similar letter was received by Sputnik Latvia from Latvian news agency LETA, informing its Russian counterpart that all services would be terminated from 1 March.
Sputnik News has been very vocal in it's coverage of the annual March 16 Legionnaires march painting it with lurid prose as a Waffen SS tribute march which is invariably picked up by lazy media. Sputnik News is also generally acknowledged along with RT as Kremlin propaganda tools. In collusion with these state organs is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks which was responsible for the Snowden NSA document dump and the Podesta email dump. A trifecta of dumps when you factor in the DNC hack.
Bots, fake news, hacks. All parts of the new war, cyberwar. And make no mistake! Russia is at war with us.
EDIT: I just read the Speigel Online interview with German Intelligence Chief Bruno Kahl. His response to the question of whether WikiLeaks is partially controlled by the Russians.
Kahl: It is, at the very least, rather conspicuous that the propaganda I have just described reaches the public through three channels: the television channel RT, the website Sputnik and the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks.
Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as "bots," to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.
The bots' end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said.
Sputnik News was banned in Latvia one year ago by Latvia's domain registry which was promptly sidestepped when Sputnik adopted a .com url. Just recently Sputnik was dealt another blow:
On 1 March, Sputnik Estonia reported receiving a letter from the Baltic News Service (BNS) announcing the unilateral termination of a contract for news delivery. A similar letter was received by Sputnik Latvia from Latvian news agency LETA, informing its Russian counterpart that all services would be terminated from 1 March.
Sputnik News has been very vocal in it's coverage of the annual March 16 Legionnaires march painting it with lurid prose as a Waffen SS tribute march which is invariably picked up by lazy media. Sputnik News is also generally acknowledged along with RT as Kremlin propaganda tools. In collusion with these state organs is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks which was responsible for the Snowden NSA document dump and the Podesta email dump. A trifecta of dumps when you factor in the DNC hack.
Bots, fake news, hacks. All parts of the new war, cyberwar. And make no mistake! Russia is at war with us.
EDIT: I just read the Speigel Online interview with German Intelligence Chief Bruno Kahl. His response to the question of whether WikiLeaks is partially controlled by the Russians.
Kahl: It is, at the very least, rather conspicuous that the propaganda I have just described reaches the public through three channels: the television channel RT, the website Sputnik and the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Poor Putin, Poor Russia
How galling it must be to be anointed a God in human form and if not then certainly a Grand Chess Master without parallel. A Machiavellian leader sitting astride the resurgent Russian State wearing the gleaming armor of righteousness provided by his old chum Patriarch Kirill. Adored by ovulating women. Admired, bigly, by all real men. Rich beyond rich, corrupt beyond corrupt staining everyone around him, and all the while producing one misfire after another. A wobbly path that leads to his currently being mired up to his neck in the upcoming Trumpian turdnato that he has, almost certainly, without much doubt helped create.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's accomplishments are legion! He barely missed his calling as a taxi driver and through a series of lucky breaks and murder became President of the Russian Federation and rode a surging resource based economy into the hearts of his countrymen and women while doing absolutely nothing at all to modernize or diversify it and instead setting up a Kleptocracy with himself as the Godfather overseeing a massive brain drain and capital flight that continues. Blew up a couple of apartment blocks of innocent families along the way. Brazenly killed off his enemies at an appalling rate both at home and abroad, the ones he couldn't be bothered to feed to his servile judiciary which stocks his mini-gulag. Corralled the Oligarchs for future disposal. Burned Chechnya, slapped down Georgia, annexed Crimea and set up Ukraine for failed state status by starting a war and promoting anything and anyone who could bring down the EU. We're still not sure how Syria is going to end but I would bet dollars to donuts that it will sink Russia further all the while being hailed as a master stroke of asymmetrical warfare by a canny opponent with limited resources.
That's why Putin is considered a "strong" leader even though he has actually failed at everything he has tried to do. He is seen as having given the Russian people their pride back. He has lifted them off their knees and handed them the tools to "Make Russia Great Again!" And he has shown them that the only way to do that is to drag down everyone else. To disrupt, corrupt, and burn the world if that's what it takes.
But he appears to have very seriously overreached himself when he meddled in the American election which resulted in the man child Trump. This will be his undoing. One can only imagine the feeling of contempt that Putin would have for someone like Donald Trump but to have invested so much into this mentally ill puff bag just to end up watching the slow motion collapse of what was to be his greatest triumph must sting. Because eventually all of Donald's dirty laundry will be hung out on the line for public viewing and Putin's visage will be there just like the Shroud of Turin and Americans will finally have had enough of Russia's meddling. They may be divided right now but as Putin knows nothing will pull together a society like a shared enemy. And Russia is about to become that enemy.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's accomplishments are legion! He barely missed his calling as a taxi driver and through a series of lucky breaks and murder became President of the Russian Federation and rode a surging resource based economy into the hearts of his countrymen and women while doing absolutely nothing at all to modernize or diversify it and instead setting up a Kleptocracy with himself as the Godfather overseeing a massive brain drain and capital flight that continues. Blew up a couple of apartment blocks of innocent families along the way. Brazenly killed off his enemies at an appalling rate both at home and abroad, the ones he couldn't be bothered to feed to his servile judiciary which stocks his mini-gulag. Corralled the Oligarchs for future disposal. Burned Chechnya, slapped down Georgia, annexed Crimea and set up Ukraine for failed state status by starting a war and promoting anything and anyone who could bring down the EU. We're still not sure how Syria is going to end but I would bet dollars to donuts that it will sink Russia further all the while being hailed as a master stroke of asymmetrical warfare by a canny opponent with limited resources.
That's why Putin is considered a "strong" leader even though he has actually failed at everything he has tried to do. He is seen as having given the Russian people their pride back. He has lifted them off their knees and handed them the tools to "Make Russia Great Again!" And he has shown them that the only way to do that is to drag down everyone else. To disrupt, corrupt, and burn the world if that's what it takes.
But he appears to have very seriously overreached himself when he meddled in the American election which resulted in the man child Trump. This will be his undoing. One can only imagine the feeling of contempt that Putin would have for someone like Donald Trump but to have invested so much into this mentally ill puff bag just to end up watching the slow motion collapse of what was to be his greatest triumph must sting. Because eventually all of Donald's dirty laundry will be hung out on the line for public viewing and Putin's visage will be there just like the Shroud of Turin and Americans will finally have had enough of Russia's meddling. They may be divided right now but as Putin knows nothing will pull together a society like a shared enemy. And Russia is about to become that enemy.
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