The Russians Ate This Blog

Hola Everybody,
I had written a whole blog justifying the widespread panic regarding the allegations that the Russians hijacked the presidential election. Unfortunately, a three-legged dog stole it, so you’re getting the following instead.

The Russians are Coming!

(Or: How I Stopped Thinking and Came to Love the CIA*)

No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.
 -- Edward R. Murrow 

Have you no sense of decency, sir?
 -- Joseph N. Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy

There’s been a lot of hysteria emerging from the recent and unproven allegations that the Russians hacked our democracy with the intention of skewing the election in favor of Donald “Le Grand Orange” Trump. Proof you ask? Well, maybe you didn’t ask as you rushed out the door looking for the nearest nuclear bomb shelter, but the proof, as a Washington Post article alleges, lies in some secret CIA document (“assessment”) presented to legislators in recent days. Mind you, the anonymous sources cited in the article aren’t the ones who did the assessment, but are unnamed sources guessing at what the people who did the assessment were thinking!

If you think that’s weird, consider that leading the war cry are recalcitrant Hillary Clinton supporters (“pragmatic liberals”) who didn’t have a word to say when credible evidence (i.e., not a “secret document”) was provided regarding the thieving during the Democratic primaries that saw the DNC going in the tank for Hillary. If you doubt the veracity of the evidence in that instance, consider that top-level democratic operatives were forced to resign once the evidence came to the surface.

But back the WashPo article. Glenn Greenwald does a great take down of that particular hit piece masquerading as journalism here. Essentially Greenwald decries the irresponsibility of accusing a nuclear-armed power of directly and deliberately interfering in the U.S. election in order to help decide the winning candidate without any credible evidence. This is how wars are started -- or have we forgotten the Iraq war yet? The CIA is an organization dedicated to propaganda and professional lying. They brought us COINTELPRO (the documented campaign to sabotage the Civil Rights Movement) and Contra-Crack Cocaine. It gave us Pinochet in Chile, and the overthrow of freely elected leaders the world over, and we’re to take their word based on a “secret document”? 

So to sum it up: politicians, gullible people (aka pragmatic progressives), and the corporate press are now in high dudgeon over an allegation based on no evidence. Not even a smoking gun. 

Still, the election has been hijacked. However, the culprits likely weren’t the Russians but U.S. conservatives on both sides of the aisle. As previously noted, the DNC and news outlets were in cahoots against Bernie Sanders during the primaries. In fact, during one 16-hour period, the Washington Post managed to publish 16 negative Bernie Sanders stories. This is the same paper, by the way, that recently published an article decrying “fake news.” The irony is that the Post had to “append” that article after discovering their anonymous sources were flaky, to say the least. Hence, the same paper that used cowardly anonymous sources to besmirch legitimate news sources, itself trades in fake news. I can’t make this fuckin’ shit up, people.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have refused to take leadership in forcing a recount in states that show suspiciously skewed statistics. The real election culprit has been a Jim Crow-like attempt to disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color. In the mean time, while the aforementioned pragmatic progressives waste their time whining about Russians, they have completely missed the essence of the problem. In the blackest city in the nation, Detroit, 87 vote machines broke on Election Day. That’s 59 percent of the voting machines there. Considering that Trump won Michigan by the tiniest of margins, you would think that the Democrats would be showing some leadership on this travesty. Actually, they are nowhere to be seen. The lone voice in the wild here is the Green Party’s Jill Stein. However, she’s probably run into a brick wall: Michigan officials passed a state law that says any time a vote counting machine breaks and causes it to display a different vote total than the one in the precinct log books, those votes legally can’t be recounted.

That’s a New New Jim Crow -- clearly a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. So “cousin Pookie” (a racist stereotype our current neoliberal president loves using to beat other black people over the head) did vote, but his vote didn’t count. Add to that the millions of Pookies who have lost their right to vote due to felony disenfranchisement, the millions of votes lost due to the racist and criminal practice of crosschecking, and right there alone you have the stealing of an election. There’s no need to go to Sarah Palin’s front porch to peer at Russia, the crimes are being committed here, on our soil. As Jill Stein points out, if you live in a rich white suburb, you have nothing to worry about. However, if you live in a multicultural urban enclave the chances of your vote being invalidated grows exponentially.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The same factors that skewed Detroit are played out throughout the country. We have an electoral system that’s antiquated, undemocratic, and racist. The least of our worries should be the Russians, or any outside entity. The enemy is within. All this let’s-kick-Russia-in-the-ass-rah-rah without a shred of evidence is pure insanity and eerily reminiscent of the lead-up to the Iraq war. Same con job.

If the CIA has credible and verifiable evidence that the Russian government conspired to have Trump ascend the seat of the most powerful office in the known universe, then by all means, publish it! Obama needs to declassify that assessment and throw it out there for public consumption. But (fuck!) let’s also look at the ways conservatives -- both Democrat and Republican -- game the system to invalidate votes and skew the results in their favor.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

*Apologies to the film, Dr. Strangelove, for mangling the title.

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First as Tragedy...

Hola mi gente,
Marx said that history repeats itself -- first as tragedy, then as farce... and that is all I see today, farce. If we really want to honor those who perished on this day, we should start by calling out the shameless bastards using 9/ 11 to advance their selfish political and economic agenda.

Remembrance

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
 -- Mark Twain

I was there.

I lived in the vicinity of what would be called “ground zero” since 1969. When the towers collapsed, my building shook. 

I watched from the roof of my17-story building in horror as people jumped from the Towers.

I heard my neighbor’s horror-filled scream as she stood next to me and watched people who chose to plunge rather than burn. 

I saw, with my own eyes, that horror, something my mind refused to accept at first. I thought -- I wanted so much to believe -- those little dots were debris, but they were humans.

I walked in silence with the throng of humanity that marched through the streets of lower Manhattan, a mass shrouded in white ashes. The day was a beautifully clear day, the sun shining, as thousands walked in silence, ashen heads bowed.

I saw a woman wander aimlessly, in shock, bleeding from a wound on her head. I saw another limping, and as I heard her whimpering to herself, my heart, as it would that day again and again, broke. There are atrocities I saw that day that I will never be able to erase from my mind.

I lived in the shadows of the towers all those years. I used to party there every Friday when I was a young man working at the nearby Woolworth Building, almost across the street from the World Trade, as I used to call it. When I was 14-15, I took a summer job as a messenger at a printing company where my uncle worked, and I would deliver blueprints to the architects at the World Trade site. At the time I had developed an interest in architecture after reading about Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water, and I thought it was pretty cool to see the architectural monstrosity rise (let’s not allow nostalgic indulgence warp the truth: The Towers were pretty much bland-looking).

Once looking up on my walk to work (I worked in the Woolworth building on lower Broadway), I saw a man climbing up the outside one of the Towers -- “Spider Man!” blared the headline the next day. In the 70s I watched as tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, walked across the gap between the Towers on a cable. The incident inspired a film. There was a lot personal history there in those towers. At least for me, anyway. I also had many friends who worked there, at one time or another. On Fridays, some of the best Afro-Latinx bands played in tis plaza for free. I remember that no matter how blasted I got, all I had to do to make it home was look up to the night sky and point myself in the direction of the Towers.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had just started working at a reentry project (Developing Justice) I would eventually head, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I worked from 12-8. Annoyed that I had no milk for the last of my Yaucono, I went out in my pajamas to the corner store and when I looked up I saw the back end of a plane sticking out of one of the Towers. I thought it was fucked up, but this is New York, things happen all the time, weird shit always happened at the Towers.

When I got back home, I felt the second plane hit. I felt it -- the building shook. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I won’t retell that tale, we all know it... we saw it replayed on the TV countless times (was it really necessary?)

I walked one flight up to the roof of my 17^th floor apartment building and watched... I watched along with some of my neighbors had congregated there.

I saw thousands of people walking silently, heads bowed, covered in white ash. It was strange to see so many people in one place and feel that silence. I saw people helping one another, stores giving away free water, others helping the wounded. A priest and I helped some who were walking around in shock. That day, I witnessed the nobility of my fellow New Yorkers. I experienced the true potential of the human spirit that day, even in the midst of all that carnage and ugliness.

It was what I saw immediately after that scared me. And as it turns out, I had every right to be scared.

That day, I saw the religious fundamentalists in full force before the dust had settled (literally), handing out pamphlets proclaiming the end times. I saw people buy right into that. It was a scary time, and people were confused, easily swayed.

I saw hatred. A lot of hatred.

The next day, there was a call for volunteers to escort Muslim women and children because they were being attacked. I saw a lot of anger and fear and I feared that there were forces that would use this tragedy to exploit, to manipulate. I witnessed a bellicose and washed up mayor resuscitate his political career while literally standing on the charred bodies of the dead. He is a racist who, though his leadership was a study in failure during the attack, has since made millions from the events of 9/ 11.

I saw an incompetent village idiot president take us to a meaningless war and the shredding of the Constitution -- all in the name of all those dear dead people, in the name of my fellow New Yorkers, all who stood bravely and came together when it was most needed. I saw our leaders take that nobility and turn it into something ugly, something for hatred and greed.

I smelled, every day, that strange smell emanating from the charred pile that was once the Towers. It was hard to describe -- a mixture of rotted meat and something else, something unidentifiable. I coughed what we began to call the downtown cough. My lungs have never been the same since that day... Through various degrees of separation, everyone one in New York was connected somehow to a death in those towers and I heard the many stories, I experienced the trauma and the sadness.

We must never forget those who died that day, those fifteen years ago. We must never forget the power of the human spirit that emerged -- that one sliver of good that day -- where we all came together. But we must also never forget that some used that tragedy to lead us into darkness.

Since then, we have allowed our freedoms to be taken from us, not by external forces, but by our own government and the corporations that own it. As a nation, we have failed to understand freedom and as a consequence, all those deaths have been rendered meaningless. First as tragedy, then as farce.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Definitions for a Neoliberal Planet Gone Mad

Hola mi Gente,

Several years ago, I came across the following several times on the ‘net. Considering the current election cycle, I thought I’d share as a public service. LOL

* * *

New World Order Terms Glossary

by James Hannum

The economy = The corporate global economy.

Industrialization = Corporate usurpation of production and destruction of the independent craftsman.

Economic development = Replacement of small businesses and self-sufficient local economies with the corporate system.

Economic freedom = Working for the corporations and buying from the corporations.

Growth = Increased corporate profits.

Job creation = 

1. (Global South) sweatshops, plantations, child labor.
2. (Global North) paper-shufflers.

 Mobility of capital and ideas = Rootlessness, unaccountability.

 

Competitive production costs = Elimination of environmental, worker safety, & child labor laws.

Free trade = Massive oil-burning transportation system that centralizes economic power in the corporations.

Privatization = Corporate appropriation of public lands and resources.

The poor =  People who live sustainably in true communities and diverse cultures, crafting their own homes, clothing, and utensils, and growing their own organic food, thus requiring little or no cash income. These millions are termed “poor” because industrial capitalism places no value on communities, culture, and the goods and services people provide for themselves.

Globalization = Destruction of all cultures.

Stabilization = Subjugation.

Shift to export economy = Corporate agribusiness theft of peasants' land forcing migration into big city slums, sweatshops, and massive corporate mono-crop plantations.

Business-friendly environment” Corporate puppet regime installed by U.S. military, CIA, Mossad, MI6, etc., and controlled by detailed and conditional World Bank loans.

European Union = Elimination of local democracy and homogenization of Europe's diverse cultures.

Costs outsourcing = Subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks given to corporations in exchange for campaign contributions and cash payments.

Media = Propaganda machine owned by corporations and funded by corporate advertising.

Industry consultant = Corporate lobbyist.

Market creation = Advertising and selling increasingly complex, costly, and unnecessary consumer products.

Automobile = An expensive, dangerous, stressful, and environmentally destructive personal isolation chamber which disrupts, disperses, and destroys compact pedestrian communities.

Infrastructure = Subsidized freeway sprawl forcing reliance on the automobile.

Television = An addictive corporate advertising and “news” propaganda device, which wastes time formerly used for family, friends, community, and the reading of books.

Peace-keeping forces = Occupying army.

Insurgent = Local citizen resisting occupation.

Military/ industrial complex = Trillions/ year in obscene upper class profits made from thousands/ year senseless lower class deaths.

American Dream = Corporate Dream.

“Fascism is the merger of state and corporation.”

--Benito Mussolini

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.”

 -- Albert Einstein

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...