Why this "war" is different. Plus the dark "Z" vision. And our path out of all this.

== On the International Front ==

Vladimir Putin recently showed the world what he claimed was footage of a new, nuclear-fueled missile, purportedly capable of evading anti-aircraft defenses and traveling “indefinitely.” Let’s put aside the “nuclear-fueled missile” aspect for now. (That concept was abandoned by the U.S. in 1964, as stunningly dangerous and filthy.) What we need to remember is that it has historically been the role of underdogs to innovate, while the smug, central kingdom ("chung-kuo") wallows dangerously in assumptions centered on the past. 

That has not been the way for the U.S. military and protector caste, for 70 years. Starting with George Marshall, the U.S. Officer Corps has followed a dictum to "innovate every year, as if you lost the last war." A tradition that held sway - and kept the planet's best (if highly imperfect) era of general peace - till recently.

Which brings up the Syrian War - a quagmire with no plan, no stated goals or plausible exit strategy, except to set up a much bigger struggle, with Iran.  No, I won't go into any of that. Instead, let's zoom in upon the highly suspicious Trump-ordered missile attacks on Syrian government assets -- both last week's pounding of purported gas weapon facilities and bombardment of the Shayrat  airbase, half a year ago. 

The earlier of these two "forceful lessons" involved the U.S. firing 59 missiles at a replacement cost of about $100 million. Did the Shayrat lesson work? Did the Assad regime start behaving better, as Trump predicted they would? Did it deter Assad from gassing and bombarding his own people? 

What deterrence? Warned hours in advance, the regime and their sponsor-ally evacuated any important assets, while stationing sensor arrays along the missiles’ flight paths and testing electronic countermeasures in a controlled experiment. (Reports suggest many Tomahawks veered off course.) Thousands of Tomahawk puzzle pieces were subsequently gathered — e.g. sensitive circuits used for maneuver and radar evasion.

This month's teaching was even worse. Warned a week in advance, adversaries had time to set up every possible sensor and electronics countermeasure to test out on U.S. hardware. Only this time, the USAF was told to use its new, next-generation standoff missile, giving the Russians a perfect setup for monitoring every aspect of its performance, plus a zillion parts to sweep up and examine. A textbook intelligence coup. 

Who were the net winners and losers from this set-piece, potemkin “punishment”? While any one episode can be attributed to stupidity, over malicious treason, the cumulative effects add up to a daily litany of betrayals, whose sum is beyond dispute. Always remember Goldfinger’s Law: 

“Once, may be happenstance, Mr. Bond. Twice, may be coincidence. But three or more times is enemy action.”

* Add to Goldfinger's Law the Tucker-Shrugger Rule. What would have been your reaction, had Obama done this?

== Our core methods for revival ==

Watch this video on how easy it is to alter results on paperless electronic voting machines. This entertaining vid shows such a hack in action… with a surprise endorsement you’d never expect, at the end! What the creators never mention - alas - is that nearly all of the paperless and easily-hacked e-voting machine makers are former Republican Party operatives. And the paperless, easily-cheated systems are prevalently found in red states. Hm, I wonder why. If you went back ten or even five years ago, you'd probably find me and maybe 5 other people howling about voting machines without paper audit trails. I'm relieved it's now getting traction. We are fighting for our lives.

So, is there a path out of phase 8 of the American Civil War? Let me reiterate two proposals that would take one page, each, yet possibly save America and the world. If we had a majority in Congress that cared about such things.

1) Last week NPR published this excellent piece describing how the Inspectors General work to keep government honest, and how important they are.  My simple, almost cost-free, one-page reform - Free the Inspectors General -  would release them to be truly powerful for the national (and world) good.

And the other proposal, some of you have seen here before...

2) ... would create a national advisory council of sages, starting with the ex-presidents and former Supreme Court justices etc., which could help us to both set up nonpartisan ways to check facts. And, if the right language (one sentence!) were inserted, it would help us all to sleep at night, by using the Constitution's own prescribed method. It would also give our officers a place to appeal any insane orders. No amendment would be needed! Just a simple majority Congressional Resolution.

One pagers. One would restore confidence in our institutions. The other could let us sleep at night.

But over the long run, we can only end this civil war by winning the most important front -- the outright and open campaign of hatred toward every single American profession that deals in facts.

== The War on Science ==

Read how explicit the War on Science has become. The Greatest Generation (when America was 'great') invested in the thing that won wars, refuted injustices, quintupled our wealth and made us a dazzling-fun civilization -- science. Their favorite person - after FDR - was Jonas Salk.

Left out of this disturbing article? Starting with Truman, every president listened closely to his science adviser... till Trump left the post empty and eviscerated OSTP. The GOP in Congress had already killed their own Offict of Technology Assessment, for daring to sometimes say: "Um, sirs, that's not exactly true."

Next in their sights, the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office, IRS auditors, and anyone else who might hold a skyrocketing oligarchy accountable. 

Seriously, you know some decent Republicans who can blink and shake their heads in denial over all this. We must each take responsibility for just one or two such. Take their hands off their ears and eyes. Persuade them to take their hands off their mouths.

There are anti-science loons on the far-left, too! Concede the point! But that is a fringe, while hatred of smartypants nerds who know stuff is now the core catechism of the entire mad-right.

Fighting back for our kids, we need to nominate scientists and fact-people and retired officers in every red state assembly district, every city council.

Or doctors: Okay, this is the best thing I've seen. It is better even than that Marine F-18 pilot major and mother of two. Yes, even better than her. Make this doctor your archetype. Calm, reasonable and moderate and utterly militant about calm-adult, fact-using moderation in a nation of grownups. (Okay, alas. Alas, he lost his primary. Still, keep at it!)

== A Time Traveling Putin? ==

The topic never came up, during our recent trip to Russia. (And yes, it was amazing; we made good friends and look forward to future visits.) Still, their leader is the central planner of our current crisis of resurgent feudalism. So -- let's heed what he says.

If Vladimir Putin was given a chance to go back in time and change one thing in Russia’s history, it would have been the collapse of the Soviet Union, the president told a media forum, in Kaliningrad. Putin, who famously called the dissolution of the USSR the greatest geopolitical tragedy of 20th century, said he would have prevented its collapse if given the power to alter one thing in the past.

Okay, look, I’ve said it before, I actually respect Vladimir Putin a lot.  He’s not the master international chess-player the the adoring American right portrays in their endless, unctuous praise of the former KGB colonel. Loss of the Ukraine was a blow vastly worse than any of his counter-nibbles in Crimea, the Donbass and Syria. (Though if Trump wages war on Iran, it will be checkmate on the West.) Anyway, he plays to his strengths well, including the Russian tradition of exquisite spycraft.

Moreover, I blame him far less, for the collapse of the brief, 1990s liberal democratic experiment in Russia, than I blame George H.W. Bush — yes, senior — who sent over “advisers” to help President Boris Yeltsin distribute state assets to the populace.  Those advisers made sure it was done in a way best-guaranteed to ensure that all assets would soon be held by a few score oligarch-billionaires and their secret western backers. In other words, the Bush family has been a calamity for the West of untold proportions, yet to be exceeded even by the Trumps.

I do not blame Putin, personally, for choosing a hierarchical system - akin to the one he was raised under. Sure, the current nomenklatura wear Russian Orthodox crosses instead of hammer-and-sickle pins, but many are the very same guys. And it’s not their fault that we have millions of idiots who fall for that ploy of symbolism. (I am reminded of Christopher Walken’s character, in 'Blast From The Past,' who chuckles in admiration that the Soviet Politburo has actually succeeded in persuading the west “that it’s over.”)  They figured out how to help re-ignite our civil war and make alliance with the Confederacy against America. You’ve got to respect such feral ruthlessness.

Which brings us back to Putin’s statement in Kaliningrad, that he would bring back the Soviet Union, if he could. Really? Then why not start with the Communist Party, which was the religion of your youth and the core raison d’etre for the USSR, in the first place? 

Well, in answer, it occurs to me that the current Russian oligarchs have effectively re-assembled all of the old, Soviet state enterprises in their personal, monopolistic cartels. All you’d need to do is replace (or rename) maybe a hundred “billionaires” with Leninist committees and voila - instant Soviet restoration! Well, without the post-WWII empire.

But give-em time! The comintern may be wearing a potemkin mask - as Walken's character assured - but it sure looks more effective than ever. Meanwhile, the Supply Siders and neo-fascists in the West are doing something I would never have thought possible... reviving Karl Marx! Who is now selling more copies than at any point in 30 years.

That's one path.... There's another, described in Vladimir Sorokin's incredible novel that I read during our trip: "The Day of the Oprichnik." It portrays not a re-coalescence of communism, but a restoration of Russian traditionalism under a supremely powerful (and tech-enhanced) revived Orthodoxy and Romanov Czar. 

No, this isn't over. We still live in interesting times.

And so now we'll conclude with the scariest vision of all.

== Dark Scenarios ==

Everyone - especially Robert Mueller - needs to watch the chilling 1969 film "Z" by Costa-Gravas. Especially the startling and terrifyingly pertinent last 4 minutes. I mean it. Just spreading the meme of reviving this one forgotten classic may do more than anything else, to help prevent it from coming true in the next year or so.

We've been warned. Now you have been. This film resonates powerfully with the Mueller Investigation. As a Greek jurist probes a political murder, he strips away masks worn by the mighty... with terrible consequences. Watch it! Spread word about worrisome memes like this one. 

Or the terms "Reichstag Fire." Or "Gleiwitz Incident." Or "Tonkin Gulf Incident." Or "Wag the Dog."

Yes, in our case the normal 'worrisome parties' - the state security agencies - appear actually to be on our side! But those sincere professionals (maligned by the confederate machine as "deep state" enemies") are often (I know from experience) surprisingly naive.

Twenty years ago (I can prove it) I warned folks at certain "agencies" that international rivals who see their power diminish in open, international affairs often turn to traditional, surreptitious means that go back thousands of years. They turn to: 

(1) using targeted propaganda and agitprop to incite divisions within their opponent, 

(2) suborn high members of the leading nation's leadership caste. 

I have slides from 1998, predicting these two methods would be used against us. Agency officials snorted that I was talking "science fiction," when instead I was citing 6000 years of history.

Today? I am invited all over to show those slides (and many others.) Now that our great and mostly (mostly) beneficent Pax is tottering and teetering from those and other unexpected failure modes. 

Hey. They weren't "unexpected" in the deep, planning basements of the jealous, angry feudalists of the world. They know what brought down past empires - and especially what brought down history's few enlightenment renaissances. They study history - even if we don't.

Putin on the rips in Syria, Chinese troops in Africa, and #%$@! Spartans!

Here’s an epic example of the art of propaganda. An essay by Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post, in which he falls all over himself to gush admiration for the way Vladimir Putin has outmaneuvered the West in both Ukraine and in Syria “catching the Obama Administration flat-footed.”  

Diehl is joined by the entire panoply of right wing fools who gave us “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, then proclaimed that we were actually there to spread democracy… and then shouted “squirrel!” to point elsewhere when that frenzied exercise in Nation Building didn’t work out so good. Now take this screech by Charles Krauthammer: Putin's Gambit, Obama's Puzzlement: in which he writes, “Kerry and Obama are serially surprised because they cannot fathom the hard men in the Kremlin.” 

And yes, I spoke of this a little while back, citing the declaration by Forbes Magazine that Vladimir Putin is the "most powerful person in the world." Actually read the Forbes drivel! But the flood of such ravings, from Diehl and others, proves that it is now a central right-wing catechism, meant to confirm that "Barack Obama is a wimp."  And therefore, by contagion, so are all democrats.

And hence, for all their sins -- having not one single example of good governance outcomes to point to, across the last two Republican administrations -- they get to sneer "at least we admire guys who are strong!"

But let’s see what their facts might be.  The West advised the Ukrainian government to grant some autonomy to the Donbass region, where ethnic Russians mostly live and would prefer separation. But that separation is now prevented.  (For now.) 

And even if the Donbass does eventually go to Moscow, like the Crimea, as the locals clearly want?

Such nibble-backs are signs of failure, not strength. Moscow is desperate to put a positive spin on the biggest loss from the Russian sphere of influence since Peter the Great – absolute loss of the Ukraine, which will never, ever, ever again allow a Muscovite puppet to hold power in Kiev.  

That is the big story, the huge story. The only part of the story with major geopolitical repercussions and long term effects.

And yet, the ability of Vladimir-idolators to ignore huge defeats, while touting their hero’s tactical-retreat “victories,” is simply stunning. 

To be clear - and repeating the point so that it can rise above the Fox/Forbes fantasy - the Russians themselves are not as stupid as Fox commentators. They do not ignore the devastating setback in Ukraine. 

They deem it to have been a hugely aggressive and successful assault on Russian interests by Barack Obama. They view Obama as anything but the wimp he is portrayed in right wing American press.  They see him as the most aggressive and successful opponent they have faced, since Reagan.

Or, as described on Slate by Fred Kaplan:  “The portrayal of Vladimir Putin as a grand chess master, shrewdly rebuilding the Russian empire through strength and wiles, is laughable. Syria is just one of two countries outside the former Soviet Union where Russia has a military base (the other being Vietnam, and its naval facility there, at Cam Ranh Bay, has shrunk considerably). His annexation of Crimea has proved a financial drain. His incursion into eastern Ukraine (where many ethnic Russians would welcome re-absorption into the Motherland) has stalled after a thin slice was taken at the cost of 3,000 soldiers. His plan for a Eurasian Economic Union, to counter the influence of the west’s European Union, has failed to materialize. His energy deal with China, designed to counter the west’s sanctions against Russian companies, has collapsed.”

I might add that no one seems to be talking about the elephant in the room… and I guarantee you heard about it here, first.  But watch. Just watch as Vladimir Putin gradually and glacially proceeds with his already-done deal to sell China something thy want and that declining Russia cannot keep.

Siberia.

== What’s the deal in Syria? ==

But let’s pull back from that scenario that seems like sci-fi (for now)... and return to today’s headlines. Although Kaplan is more lucid than Krauthammer or Diehl, he still misses the very tight limitations on Putin’s goals in Syria. Seriously? You’ve putting  - or Putin’g – us on, right? 

Russian moves in Syria are clearly aimed at bolstering the Assad regime’s hold on the coastal region where the dictator’s Alawite sect is centered and where Moscow has its only Mediterranean naval base. Moreover this has been a long time coming. Mr. Assad has spent years prepping the Lataika-Tartus coast and its mountain approaches to serve as a redoubt, a refuge for when his hold on Damascus becomes untenable. That coastal mini-state might be held, with Russian help, especially now that the Allawites have engaged in half a decade of ethnic cleansing, though only by surrendering most of the rest of Syria, leaving the West to deal with the Islamic State mess.

A mess that might be resolved by exactly such a partition of Syria! If the Europeans (who want to slow the flow of refugees) and Turkey, which wants an end to the mess, next door, make a deal with the Kurds to consolidate to the east, moving some Kurd populations away from the Turkish border… and Turkey establishes a Sunni safe zone in Aleppo and Iran fires the worst Hezbollites so that a Shiite zone near Lebanon and around Damascus…. Oh but we’re back to sci fi scenarios, again.  Sorry. It just makes more sense.

Though in fact, even my wildest arm-wavings are more realistic than the dismal, diametrically-opposite-to-true stuff you get from Fox.

                                                                                                                            

== International ==

Speaking to the UN, President Xi said that China plans to set up a United Nations permanent peacekeeping force of 8,000 troops and would provide $100 million to the African Union to create an immediate response unit capable of responding to emergencies. In addition to the peacekeeping pledge, Mr. Xi promised a $1 billion donation to the United Nations for a “peace and development fund.”  

This article explains many details and some background. Of course, they are also learning a lot about the logistics of moving lots of troops far and fast…. 

== Visions of Democracy ==

Turning to pop-historical culture... I am pleased to see this comic called Democracy, telling the difficult, tragic and triumphant tale of Athens and its experiment with moving away from pyramids of inherited privilege, toward (partially) respecting the rights and ingenuity of a new kind of being called “citizen.”  

These rebuttals matter to me, after my own eviscerations of the “300” series came online. I ripped Frank Miller’s grotesquely evil paean to Spartan “virtues” in an article that showed how vastly more effective the Athenians were in every field of life, including war.  But above all, how deceitful Miller and his colleagues were in their trumped up propaganda against democratic values.

There I called for a movie about the Athenian admiral Themistocles, who succeeded in every way that Leonidas failed... so imagine my mixed feelings when Director Zack Snyder delivered that very story! Only warped by Miller’s uniquely anti-truth and anti-democratic sentimentality. This, too, I dissected.

But have a look at the new comic. I think you’ll enjoy the refreshing chance to actually see the real story, and how vastly more dramatic and compelling history is… than lies..

== Political manias ==

In the Guardian, an article by one Sam Thielman proves that insipid political mania is ecumenical.  While today’s entire American right wing appears to have gone loco, there certainly are substantial islands of left-wing mania, as well.  

The article on white supremacists is actually very interesting, portraying a neo-Nazi polemicist -- right-wing sci fi author Harold Covington, whose attempts at promulgating incitement novels – fomenting white power revolution – were cited by the Charlseton church shooter, Dylann Roof. As happened in the last century, when Timothy McVeigh cited “The Turner Diaries,” it is only by association with lunatic murderers that such execrably-written trash ever gets attention beyond a small circle of the mentally ill.  A process that Norman Spinrad brilliantly satirized in his novel, The Iron Dream.

So why am I aiming some of my own ire toward Mr. Thielman, if I agree with almost everything he says about such tripe-spinners?  Well, the following should give you a hint:

“Covington, the latest in a long line of rightwing sci-fi writers…”  and “American science fiction has long had a rightward tilt, from the contemporary strain of small-press sci-fi Tea Party fantasias swarming the Hugo Awards nominations all the way back to libertarian deity Ayn Rand.” 

Alas, this author knows very little of the field. No genre of literature ever did more to question ancient prejudices and pave the mental path for progress than Science Fiction. Let tho be a lesson, then.  You can agree with one thing a person says… while also avowing that he/she is -- in other ways -- an ignoramus.