Why we have some goodwill around the globe, rooting for us to overcome (again) our recurring demons... And the real danger when we're hit by that coming 9/11 Reichstag Fire.

As the Putinists continue wrecking all U.S. institutions and turning the world (including longtime allies) against us, it's important to recall how much goodwill Trump and his ilk must eliminate, before that promise to Moscow can be fulfilled. Of course all empires are disliked, but elsewhere I describe how George Marshall, FDR, Truman, Ike etc. set things up so that humanity would have its best 80 years, ever. Better than all of prior human history combined. Resulting in the *least hated* empire. That is... until now.

Okay, Pax Americana will never be the same after Trump. And maybe that's good. Other centers of Enlightenment are stepping up. But when the Union finally wins this latest phase 9 of Civil War betrayal by our idiot Hyde-Side neighbors, watch the joy burst forth around the globe... and across all Americans of goodwill and sapience. 

Want evidence for that assertion? Amid our self-reproach, Let's remember times when America did take brave steps toward light. There are others, on this planet, who remember, as well. And you need the gift that I am about to give you.

This song by Michel Sardou is called "Les Ricains" which means, more or less, "The Yankees." Here are the lyrics, to read along.

Les Ricains by Michel Sardou

If the Ricans weren't there

Si les Ricains n'étaient pas là

You would all be in Germania

Vous seriez tous en Germanie

To speak of I don't know what

A parler de je ne sais quoi

To greet I do not know who

A saluer je ne sais qui

Of course years have passed

Bien sûr les années ont passé

The rifles changed hands

Les fusils ont changé de mains

Is this a reason to forget

Est-ce une raison pour oublier

That one day we needed it?

Qu'un jour on en a eu besoin?

A guy from Georgia

Un gars venu de Georgie

Who cared a lot about you

Qui se foutait pas mal de toi

Came to die in Normandy

Est v'nu mourir en Normandie

One morning when you weren't there

Un matin où tu n'y étais pas

Of course years have passed

Bien sûr les années ont passé

We became friends

On est devenus des copains

To the friendly of the shot

A l'amicale du fusillé

They say they fell for nothing

On dit qu'ils sont tombés pour rien

If the Ricans weren't there

Si les Ricains n'étaient pas là

You would all be in Germania

Vous seriez tous en Germanie

To speak of I don't know what

A parler de je ne sais quoi

To greet I do not know who

A saluer je ne sais qui

Got you a little misty-eyed?

Even better is this version... a huge crowd of French people cheering and singing along. Capable of gratitude.  They know that this American Pax, for all of its faults, prevented vastly worse. That things could have been a hell, a curse. That every other era of dismal human history was worse. 

And if we do not blow it now, we have a chance to be recalled by our heirs - organic and cyber - the true humans - as the very best that cavemen could be. Crude, bestial primitives who tried nonetheless to lift our gaze and those around us. To something better.

Listen and read along. We need this now. Right now!

Try. I dare you not to tear up, in gratitude for this gratitude.

          == But we have a tough job keeping that promise == 

Alas, the Kremlin boyz and confederates and murder sheiks have the upper hand for now and they and stick together. 

Latest example: Trump has issued special exemptions letting Putin sell oil, evading world sanctions for his murderously criminal invasion of Ukraine. Fox News is a 5th column of the relabeled KGB's propaganda Comintern that has used blackmail to take over the entire Republican Party.

Amid the hooplah over the Strait of Hormuz -- ("YOU block it? No, *I* get to block it!") -- Trump has all along made offers to the Iranian Republican Guard and Religious Police etc. to make deals with him, in exchange for them kissing his ring. 

It's already happened! In Venezuela, Argentina, El Salvador etc. - and possibly soon in Cuba (DT shouts "They're next!") - the aim is never, ever to establish democracy or to liberate citizens from their oppressors.

The pattern is perfectly that of mafiosi and that of an ex casino mogul. Taking over another gang's territory by decapitating it's top capo, then getting allegiance (and resulting vigorish) from the sub-capos of the gang that's left in place. 

This is now so blatant that no other theory is remotely tenable. LOOK at this image of Maduro's VP Rodriguez, all spiffed and glammed-up and grin-hugging Trump's consigliere, eager to serve... and to send Trump personally a shipment of gold! And nothing for the Venezuelan people.

Oh, and Miami crime families will slip in atop the Castro power structure in Cuba. 

This is a Mafia gang and the capo di tutti capi is named Vlad. 

His other goal? Riling up enough enemies (who had been quiescent since Obama killed Osama) to deliver us into another 9/11, that he imagines might save him, this fall. Which explains why he fired over half of our counter-terrorism experts. Now why would anyone do that? 

Put it all together folks. 

== The real purpose of the coming Reichstag Fire / 911 strike ==

Everyone will be able to see that the calamity will be a blatant set-up in order to justify declaring an emergency and martial law and to cancel the November election's likely torching of the entire treasonous GOP. 

It won't work, for that reason. Because we all can see it.

Only there is an added, underlying danger that I see discussed nowhere.

Go back to 1933. The purpose of the Reichstag Fire was to excuse the Nazi arrest of dozens of opposition parliament members. And thus, the parliament could never hold a quorum vote for new elections or a new Chancellor.

The lesson?

YOU U.S. SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES: START UPPING YOUR SECURITY RIGHT NOW. 

The Roberts Court has already said Trump could off you, as an 'official act,' to prevent impeachment/conviction. So talk it over. Upgrade practices. Have contingency plans. Grow eyes in the back of your heads. Do it now.

The rest of you? 

When the calamity strikes, get out there and chant "Reichstag Fire!" 

And one more word to show our intent:

"Appomattox!"

== Finally, my qualifications as a history expert! ==

Well, AI has some legit uses. One fan/reader searched the paleontology databases and found this historical record, a bit fuzzy, from the Paleolithic. It shows my legit ancestral claims are valid!

 

War, loverly war. In Ukraine and in the USA.

Been distracted from posting. Trying to prep my long-gestating Big Book on Artificial Intelligence! (Isn't everyone writing one?) But let's zoom in on current events.

First off, they are deliberately distracting you from what's important. For example, while I am ticked-off at the blatant banishing of some late-night comedians and the rampage of masked, tattooed gang-bangers and ex-cons kidnapping innocents off the street or even from courthouses... all of that has driven from the news things that are even more important -- much more important.

For example, the Trumpist-KGB gang has severed the sinews of Law, in profoundly dangerous ways.

I cited the firing of nearly all of the Inspectors General in most agencies, eliminating the skilled professional auditors and their staffs, dedicated to keeping those agencies generally honest and law abiding. See where years ago I urged that Democratic Congresses strengthen and protect those primly meticulous officials, as dedicated to non-political competence and rule-of-law as the men and women of the US military officer corps... who are also right now under siege.

Only now...

...Now it's JAGs*! The ones who advise generals what's legal. Now why would the Kremlin... I mean Republicans... want to do that?

And then there is the cashiering of 400 Internal Revenue Service CPAs who had been assigned to audit zillionaire tax cheats.

Plus disease researchers at the CDC and universities across America. (And the very idea of universities -- the topmost pride of the WWII GI Bill Generation -- is now under relentless, moronic attack.)

Which brings us to the assault on skilled professionalism that is scariest of all -- the gutting of anti-terrorism and counter-espionage experts, laying us spread-eagled and wide open to enemy attack. (Bush did that months before 9/11 and it sure worked for him.) All of which suggests two terms that you need to look up: - the 'Reichstag Fire'

and

- The Gleiwitz Incident ... and be prepared to chant those words when we hit the streets, after whatever fell tragedy Vlad & his DC stooges have planned for us, to serve as a pretext for martial law.) Still, you might stock up canned foods too. And realize that it may be your turn to praise the 2nd Amendment.

ADDENDUM: Those of you quoting the poem: "First they came for the Jews..." Well, first they are coming for the professionals. Yes, what's happening to immigrants is terrible! But that is not their core goal! Which is to wage all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

Now who would want that?

*JAG = Judge Advocate General: the most primly meticulous law folks on the planet, who would make an ascetic monk seem lascivious. JAGs and IGs were the men and women protecting you, even more that the counter-terror folks and soldiers with Javelins. And they have been flushed away. By monsters.

** Vlad and his KGB (sorry, slightly relabeled FSB, with the same commie agents dedicated to the same goal: our downfall) hold kompromat on all high Republicans. Do I need to prove that, when Congressional GOPpers have ALL laid down to allow ALL of this, and so much more?

== End times... again already? ==

Veering in another -- frighteningly related -- direction. A recurring mania is apparently rising again... millennialist declarations that the fervently-desired apocalypse is coming! 

It's moronic stuff, of course, recurring every couple of years for the last 2000 or so... and in this essay I laid out for you why the 2030s will be an especially fraught time for those of us with Revelations-obsessed neighbors... or politicians.

Want something even more moronic? Twice per decade since I was ten, recurring episodes of UFO Mania have swamped media, along with declarations that this time all will be revealed, for sure! My fairly recent posting is about the sub-branch of "UAP sightings" by US Navy jests and such. Oh, fer....

Same thing. Upward prayers for a cheat code, rather than do the work to save and improve the first civilization worthy of the stars. One that we crafted, for ourselves.

== Ukraine and now... Poland? ==

Was the Soviet - um, Russian - swarm-probe of drones into Poland 'an accident'? Disproved by extra fuel tanks. Western analysts deem a 'test of NATO abilities &resolve.' A test that Poland and her allies - except the USA - passed brilliantly.

Only the reason for Putin's recent spate of near-attacks on NATO is one more of hundreds of things that were familiar to my parents' GI Bill/ WWII generation, but that time has erased from living memory.

In this case, the root is a tendency of national leaders in war time to assume that the enemy's home population lacks any virtues, including courage.

While this tendentious mistake was shown (somewhat understandably, but still immorally) by Churchill, "Bomber" Harris, Curtis LeMay and R. Nixon, it was a flat out religious tenet of Hitler and the Japanese imperialists... and Stalin. The leaders who ordered devastation of cities all shared a self-satisfying and delusional assumption...

...that the citizens of Antwerp and London, Hamburg and Berlin, Tokyo and Osaka and Hanoi, and now Kiev, would despair and knuckle-under. Instead, they almost always picked their way through the rubble and redoubled efforts in their roofless and windowless factories. (Destroying those factories certainly made sense and worked for the allies.)

Adolf so needed to believe this that he delusionally thought Londoners would buckle in 1944 when a few hundred V1 and V2 flying bombs murdered a few hundred civilians... a small fraction of those who died two years earlier, in the Blitz, inspiring their neighbors to strive harder, in revenge.

For more than three years we have seen Vlad Putin follow exactly this pattern, hurling destruction at Ukrainian cities and civilian populations, blatantly (and publicly avowed) in order to cow them into toppling Zelensky and submitting to Russian yokes. And all it accomplished was to solidify - diamond hard - Ukrainian national identity and passion to resist.

Note that most Ukrainian drone and missile counter-attacks into Russia have been aimed at infrastructure, war assets and strategic materials. Leading now to gas shortages across the whole country. Note also that last winter the AFU could have trashed urban heating systems plunging Moscow etc into dark and cold... ass did happen to Ukrainians. But they did not, because of sapient realization of what I am talking about here... that enemy-inflicted privation thends (not always) to make populations more determined. Though THIS winter will likely be different. Because Russians are by now ready to pin blame where it belongs.

Which brings us back around to Putin's drone probe of Poland. Which not only showed NATO strengths and served as a perfect training exercise. It also revealed Vlad's insistence on the feel-good narrative of enemy cowardice. And 'surely now - after 3 years of insistence 'hey will fold any day now!' It should be obvious to those surrounding Vlad that belligerent insanity is no longer an excuse. Rather, obstinate stoopidity.

== US political in a pathological state ==

I keep seeing calls for restored calm negotiation between parties, even though one side has unambiguously declared phase 8 of the American Civil War. * Now the latest meme spread on on social media? "Debate" training is supposed to calm everyone down?

Seriously? I took two paths in high school. BOTH speech/debate and science. The former was useful, but mostly at appraising my opponents' argument for polemical flaws to attack. The latter taught me the sacred catechism of science: "I might be wrong." With its corollary: "Ain't it cool? Let's find out!"

It's no accident that former debaters like Alex Jones and his ilk are in full-blown attack upon scientists and universities in general. Because facts, well-presented, can crush polemics! As every single position of today's gone mad right can be demolished by actual evidence.

Which is why the MAGA cult - spurred by "ex" commissars in Moscow - wages all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.

Look, I am all in favor of returning to friendly, fact-centered and courteous argument aimed at negotiation! But it is one side that ended that in America. Look up DENNIS HASTERT! Whose Hastert Rules in 1995 ended all negotiation in DC and declared total war on science by banishing the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. A total campaign that has continued with the gelding of OSTP, the disbanding of most anti-terror and counter-intelligence units, demolishing the audit divisions of the IRS and firing most of the executive agencies' Inspectors general.

Reprising earlier parts of this missive. This is not the GOP of Ike or Lincoln or TR or Barry Goldwater or Reagan, who would spit in the eyes of Kremlin stooges helping "ex" commissars to rebuild the USSR. This cult is at war vs. the entire Western Enlightenment, including the universities that were the pride of the GI Bill generation and that truly made America great.

And no, I will not be calmed down into being nice about it anymore. Not till their Appomattox. Then it will be "malice toward none and charity toward all..."

Which their cult will not show to me, if they win. They have already told me so. And they are telling you, daily.

It's not left-vs-right, stupid. It is symbolism.

After a formal and erudite posting, let's relax and let our hairy opinions down to talk about lots of things... starting with symbolism.

Ah symbolism. It has always been of central importance to Republicans, who do very little else when in power. Take their obsession with the naming of Aircraft Carriers. (The other thing they do, of course, is hand over the nation's wealth to oligarchs. Hence their 21st Century affinity with Putin.) How ironic then, that U.S. conservatives style themselves as the hard-nosed, pragmatic bunch vs. wooly-headed, liberal idealism.

So what about all those Confederate statues that Donald Trump calls "beautiful"? New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu offers intelligent perspectives on the difference between remembering and revering historical figures.

What bugs me is the simplistic nature of all this. Hey, I am willing to parse a spectrum of confederate monuments, and Robert E Lee is way at the near end -- yes a rebel-traitor who owned slaves and tried to help dismember his country... but also representative of the one genuinely admirable virtue that the otherwise-horrifically-evil Confederacy could claim. Those virtues being (mostly) honorable battlefield courage and martial resilience. 

Those virtues were also displayed by Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Except for the "honorable" part. Unlike Lee, those two were pure sons-of-bitches, evil right down to their cores, and proved it repeatedly. 

Lee, in contrast, tried to control his army in ways that followed the letter and spirit of then-current codes of war. Moreover, he acted vigorously - in 1865 - to accept the offer of lenience made by Lincoln, and reciprocated by calling on all Southerners to "be good citizens" of the United States. That last bit -- staunching all calls for a guerrilla rising -- served the nation well enough to merit leaving a few effigies standing. A few street names in place.

(A side note: I've always thought Lee was over-rated as a general. He had one trick that he used - brilliantly and successfully - over and over... pounce on the flanks of a befuddled, lumbering, larger invading army. Aggressive, predatory defense. Yes, he was very good at that. But it did him zero good in his doomed-from-the-start Antietem and Gettysburg Campaigns. Moreover, when a general came along who shrugged that method off (Grant), Lee realized that he was doomed.)

If Forrest and Jackson had mostly yin, but a little positive martial yang, there's no justification for any hagiography of Jefferson Davis, whose image should be trampled far worse than Benedict Arnold (who actually saved the Revolution four times, before proving incompetent as a traitor.)

My conclusion? R.E. Lee could remain in statuary at public places if balanced by great heroes of progress and tolerance. The SOBs Jackson and Forrest should be sent to battlefields or parks run by the dizzy daughters of the confederacy, places where the topic is generalcy and no one interested in other things will have to deal with them. As for Davis's representations and most other confed monuments, that were erected in the 1920s and 1960s in order to scream white power? They should be chiseled to dust. And I include Stone Mountain. 

But thanks guys. This is rousing the Union, at last. 

== Farewell White House Science Office ==

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy was one of our jewels. Normally, OSTP had about 60 staffers, to help assist WH personnel in creating fact-grounded policy. President Obama expanded it well past 100, bringing in loads of question-asking consultants and speakers… like yours truly (twice in 2016 alone). “The size of the office under the Obama administration reflected Mr. Obama's "strong belief in science, the growing intersection of science and technology—” reports CBS News.

Beyond advising the President on scientific discoveries and their implications for national policy, OSTP was involved in encouraging breakthroughs in STEM education and re-igniting a generation of skilled programmers. Heading OSTP was the Presidential Science Adviser, a position generally filled by some of humanity’s sharpest minds.

All of that is over. President Trump has attrited the Science Office of OSTP to zero… that’s zero staff to consult with West Wing policy makers over anything scientific or related to science. OSTP as a whole is down to a couple of dozen placeholders.

Elsewhere, I wrote about David Gelernter, who seemed a front runner for the Science Adviser post, under Trump. A bizarre and polemically-driven person, Gelernter apparently would have been far too scientific for this White House. Perhaps they sensed that he would be capable - in extremis - of saying the hated phrase: “um… sir... that’s not exactly true.”

That, after all, was the criminal offense of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) which was banished by Newt Gingrich in 1995 for giving honest answers. And the fate now apparently destined for the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), for similar treasons against dogma.

It is this fevered spite against all fact-users that makes our current civil war completely unrelated to the old-hoary-lobotomizing “left-right” political “axis.” When all outcomes and metrics of U.S. health and yes, economics and capitalism do vastly better under democrats, fact users become Enemy #1.  And that’s all fact-users, now including even the FBI, the Intelligence Community and the U.S. Military Officer Corps. (Look up the term “deep state” to see how the mad right is justifying attacking even them!)

Fans of the movie “Idiocracy” - and die hard confederates - may openly avow wishing for this rise of the know-nothings.  But your conservative aunt might be swayed to pull away from this madness, if you dare her to name one profession of folks who actually know stuff that is not under open attack by her crazy husband and his ilk.

She knows she will need skilled people, from time to time.  Even if he convinces himself that fact-people are all satanic.

== Why didn’t Obama speak out? ==

The ability of our confederate neighbors to concoct excuses for the plantation lords seems to have no limits. Now that it’s openly admitted and proved that the Trump family, the Trump campaign manager and the GOP leadership all actively salivated over and sought Russian help, the new Fox line is “why didn’t Obama speak up?”

Now we know why. Because Obama did try to negotiate with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan on a joint statement deploring any foreign meddling, in compromise language that would be non-partisan. It was the president’s job to be cautious and judicious and not leap to yell. (Remember those days?) What was their response?

McConnell threatened Obama that if he even mentioned the “Russia Thing” in public, the GOP leadership would accuse Obama of election meddling. No matter how much FBI and CIA evidence was presented to those two, the response was the same. In other words, outright, deliberate, partisan treason.

From Scout: "James Clapper, Former Director of U.S. National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, spoke with CNN's Wolf Blitzer at the Aspen Security Forum about Trump, Russian hacking, and national security. The entire hour-long conversation is a must-watch, remarkable for the candor and urgency expressed by two world-class intelligence minds.”

Said Clapper: “One of the things I’ve recommended to the Senate Intelligence Committee is that maybe there should be a requirement in the future that before all presidential and congressional elections, 120 days before, the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the FBI should say what’s the state of cyber intrusions that are designed to compromise the integrity of the electoral system,” Clapper suggested.

Clapper, of course, was referencing the tension the Obama administration faced between sharing what it knew about Russian interference with U.S. citizens and being perceived as trying to throw the election for Hillary. But while the U.S. may have been the most prominent example of international hacking designed to skew the outcome of its election, it certainly will not be the last.

Oh, but more and more grows clear. I have wondered for some time where’s been the reporting on Donald Trump’s mob connections. What? You are shocked? Shocked that a casino owner and slumlord, involved in international money laundering might have been in business with shady characters? Let’s be clear about this.  The sanctions against Russia that Putin and his Kremlin are angriest about are the ones specifically targeting money launderers. See Trump's Russian Laundromat, from The New Republic.

== Count the vote honestly ==

California officials have gone to the big Defcon hacker convention challenging the best to test security of votingsystems and ensure fair elections. You’ll find no representatives from red states. The top qualification to be the Republican Secretary of State is how eagerly and effectively you support gerrymandering, voter denial, rigged voting machines, plus “losing” thousands of registrations just before every single election.  Your Republican neighbors won’t even deny this, anymore.  They are proud of it, the confederates.

Which leaves the democrats as honest… but stupid.  The response to Trump’s “Voter Fraud Commission” should not be “there’s no voter fraud!”

It should be: “There have been almost no examples of fraudulent voting, but plenty of cheating by red state officials.  So here’s the deal. We’ll go along with your ‘investigation…’ plus gradually ramping up voter ID… in exchange for —

— compliance assistance to help poor Americans GET ID!

— a full appraisal of the nation’s voting machines.

— an end to the blatantly criminal and treasonous cheat called gerrymandering. See my proposed 3-sentence solution.

Make it an offer of a fair deal. "We'll address your concerns - like undocumented voters or dead people shambling to the polls - if you'll help stop the treasonous cheats of your side.

For the Dems to fail to express their objections in this positive and assertive way is just dumb.

So, sure, one side is more honest, caring and fact-based. But it’s still hell-bent on Idiocracy.

== Newsletters vs blogs == 

The world of “newsletters” is kind of elitist, in that they cost subscription fees - often paid by your employer - if you are high enough in the company to extort it. I have been urged to shift from blog mode to a newsletter, that could then help pay college bills!  But the tradeoffs are harsh:

1. Subscriptions to their newsletters can keep very smart people in business, doing their research, preparing solid reports. (Full disclosure: I get many of my newsletter subscriptions for free.)

2. But subscriptions limit the number of readers — and hence your immediate influence in changing things. Though you may be zeroing in on an elite.

Among the best and most important newsletters would be Mark Anderson’s Strategic News Service. Mark is a brilliant forecaster with one of the best, big picture views of how technological change sweeps through our certainties in business, science and the real world. SNS also runs the annual Future in Review (FiRe) conference.  If I time this posting right, it will come out while I am at this year's FiRe!

Among many other things, Mark has been the most powerful voice denouncing and revealing the devastating effects of tech-spying and IP theft, which are destroying the ability of Americans to keep paying for the trade deficits that have uplifted the entire developing world. This shortsightedly rapacious predation of western (especially Californian) creativity proves that the mercantilist powers are not as smart as they think they are.

Here’s a link to the opening of an SNS newsletter — a 2-parter written by one of Mark’s top Asian analysts — and I hope some of you will talk your company into purchasing you access.  Because this could be among the most important series that you read, when it comes to international affairs and trade.

Indeed, it reveals how extremely aggressive things have become, as we (via cheap WalMart imports) finance cultural and commercial and conceptual war against our very societal underpinnings.

(Often there are side routes to peeking in at these newsletters. Take this important example on Chinese business practices.  And this YouTube of a Mark Anderson talk on the problem, one of the biggest that our civilization faces.)

My newsletter subscriptions range from the Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technologies to the Lifeboat Foundation to John Mauldin’s investment letter to George Friedman’s strategic overview.  In all such cases, ranging from left to right, I have a reputation as a challenging gadfly… hey, it’s my role in life!