Tag: russia

Categories
politics

100 Seconds to Midnight

Are you nervous about a nuclear war yet?

I’m co-teaching a survey course this quarter on 20th Century American History for my high schoolers. We’re trying to cover one decade per week. We can only scratch the surface this quarter, but the students will choose one event for us to investigate deeper next quarter.

After surveying the Progressive Era, World War I, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, we just finished summarizing World War II. We used this interactive timeline to guide our discussions.

Here’s what I want you to remember: 

  1. Spring 1936, Germany began its occupation of Austria and the Rhineland.
  2. Late 1938, Hitler (with British permission) annexed part of Czechoslovakia.
  3. September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, starting World War II in earnest.
  4. November 1939, US manufacturers began selling arms and supplies to Great Britain.
  5. December 1941, Japan attacked the US, after which Germany declared war on us, and we returned the favor.

These things don’t happen all at once. Five years passed between Germany’s first acts of international aggression and the United States’ declaration of war. 

In 2014, the Russian Federation annexed Crimea from Ukraine, setting off the still-ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. For the first eight years, the war was relatively underground. The Russian Federation claimed the Ukrainian people in the eastern regions were rising against the “neo-nazi” government in Kyiv, a puppet regime installed by Western elites.

But in February 2022, the Russian Federation openly invaded its neighbor after months of military buildup. Contrary to all expectations, the Ukrainian people put up an impressive defense and counteroffensive, and now the army of the Russian Federation seems in disarray.

As the right-centered Atlantic Council recently wrote:

More than six months since the onset of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion, it is now obvious that his army is in fact a deeply flawed institution that bears almost no resemblance to the immaculate fighting force of Red Square parades and Kremlin propaganda. Instead, the Russian military suffers from endemic corruption, low morale, and poor leadership, with individual initiative in short supply and commanders deeply reluctant to accept personal responsibility.

In response to these defeats, President Putin annexed four more regions in Ukraine. He  gave a speech earlier this week celebrating and defending the annexation, using the opportunity to denounce “the western elites” who have united against the Russian Federation’s efforts.

Meanwhile, Western elites heard in his words a defeated man willing to do anything to hold on to power. According to Foreign Policy, hardliners in Russia’s government have increased their pressure on President Putin to unleash hell on Ukraine. The pressure led to the federation’s attempted mobilization of 30,000 more troops.

With the Russian Federation now claiming sovereignty over the four eastern regions, we must view Ukraine’s attempt to recover them through President Putin’s latest speech, where he said, “In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country…we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us [emphasis added]. This is not a bluff.”

In response, the United States (in the form of President Biden) warned that the Russian Federation would face a “consequential” response if they introduced chemical or nuclear weapons to the battlefield. 

President Biden did not elaborate, so neither the American public nor the Russian Federation knows what he meant by “consequential.”

I fear the threat may become the equivalent of President Obama’s “red line” in Syria. 

But I fear even more that the criticism of President Obama’s failure to act in Syria will persuade President Biden to go the extra step and respond to the Russian Federation’s use of nuclear weapons with nuclear missiles of our own.

No one knows.

No one knows.

Are you scared yet?

Categories
life politics

On The Night They Bombed Ukraine

Is it basically one gang against another gang? 

And you and me, victims and witnesses.

Speaking as a generally-stay-within-100-miles-of-my-home American citizen whose relationship to “the world” is mediated by individuals and corporations publishing their interpretations of the world onto the Internet (most often and most insidiously in the form of a capitalistically-motivated algorithm), I have to believe that the felt reality of capitalist-driven, consumer- and public-debt financed colonialism feels an awful lot like an American citizen in a security-forces uniform staring down at you from behind the barrel of a gun.

What does it feel like to be in Ukraine tonight? Fear. Anger. Rage. Pride. Intolerable grief. 

Witnesses and victims. 

Except they’re staring up the barrel of a Russian-financed gun, into the eyes of a Russian-financed citizen standing in a Russian-financed security-forces uniform. A rose by any other name would still smell as crony capitalist. 

And for what? Money and turf; and the rare metals and gasses hidden just beneath that turf.

Say what you want about the former President (and I have), but he wasn’t always wrong. Elite citizens of the United States and their family members have interests in the land we call Ukraine. Some of them belong to Biden’s gang. Some of them belong to Putin’s gang. 

None of the gang members are treasonous; nor are they patriotic. The elite citizens of the United States have long-since abandoned the ideology of nationalism, laying their heads instead on the satin-sheets of crony capitalism. 

It’s not “Down with Russia” or “Let’s Go Joe or Brandon”. It’s witnesses and victims feeling powerless on the Internet while two gangs that neither of us belong to destroy yet another generation of Homo sapiens.

Thoughts and prayers.

Categories
asides

No One in Kyiv Knows Whether Russia Is Bluffing

From No One in Kyiv Knows Whether Russia Is Bluffing :

This moment is “strange—very, very strange,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, told me. For people in his country, the Russian threat is both dire and entirely unsurprising. Zagorodnyuk noted, as everybody in Kyiv does, that Russia already invaded Ukraine in early 2014. The Russians already occupy Crimea, which is Ukrainian territory. Fake “separatists,” supplied with Russian weapons, already control a small piece of eastern Ukraine, where they continue to fight the Ukrainian army, every day of every week. Some 14,000 people, including both soldiers and civilians, have already died in a conflict that continues only because the Russian government wants it to continue. Before I even broached the subject of whether Ukraine’s armed forces were ready for a new offensive, Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, reminded me: “We are in a state of constant military preparedness now for eight years.”

Categories
politics

Catching Up

Months and dates shown on a calendar whilst turning the pages

I haven’t posted for over a month. I’ve posted articles in other places, but nothing here on Fluid Imagination. Part of the reason had to do with my job. During the last month, I wrote, built, and launched a new website for my school, and before that, I spent most of my free time developing the second-quarter schedule for all of our staff and students. You see, along with teaching, I’m also an administrator and marketing person, so things can get a little busy.

But a lot of things have been happening over the last month: sexual predators facing the music, President Trump’s administration circling the drain, Congressional Republicans stealing trillions of dollars from the future, the potential loss of Internet freedom, and so much more. Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve missed.

First and foremost is the continued outing of powerful sexual predators, assaulters, and harassers. While we can all applaud the takedown of powerful sleaze bags, in my own life, I’ve seen the #metoo movement help individuals come out against their not-so-famous assaulters. Several months ago, a person I know had fallen victim to a sexual predator, but with all of the shame around the issue, they had not gone to the police about it. Following  the publicity around these other cases though, and the way the predators have actually seen some consequences from their actions, the person I know gained the confidence to press charges against her perpetrator. What we’ve seen on the news is just a drop in the bucket, but if the (apparently) changing perceptions of assault victims continues towards belief rather than doubt, the world might actually improve a little bit.

Next, of course, is the way Comrade Trump’s administration continues to flounder in light of the Russia investigation. Without a doubt, the best explainer of all this stuff has been the Twitter feed of a professor of law and journalism at the University of New Hampshire, Seth Abramson.

If you’re not following Abramson on Twitter, get on it. The guy deserves a Pulitzer for the work he’s been doing.

Then, of course, there’s the incredible distribution of wealth from the 99% to the 1%, also known as H.R. 1: Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, which according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office will increase the deficit by $1.437 trillion over the next 10 years. The Senate snuck this thing through in the most ridiculous and cynical manner possible, and every relatively moderate Republican ought to be ashamed of themselves (the other Republicans are long past the ability to actually feel shame).

Along with reporting on that increase in the deficit, the CBO reports that “it is not practicable for a macroeconomic analysis to incorporate the full effects of all of the provisions in the bill…within the very short time available between completion of the bill and the filing of the committee report.” In other words, this bill is not only messed up from a content perspective, but from a process perspective too. By now, you’ve heard that this 400+ page bill was passed before anyone had the time to read it, and that the bill itself still contained handwritten amendments since they wouldn’t take the time to print out the changes.

Next, there’s the announcement from the chairman of the FCC that they’d like to repeal the rules that protect net neutrality. This is an incredibly colossal mistake, putting the freedom of the Internet into the corrupt and greedy hands of Comcast, Verizon, and others.

One member of the FCC, who posted in Op-Ed in the LA Times under the headline, “I’m on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality,” writes, “There is something not right about a few unelected FCC officials making such vast determinations about the future of the internet…Before my fellow FCC members vote to dismantle net neutrality, they need to get out from behind their desks and computers and speak to the public directly…When they do this, they will likely find that, outside of a cadre of high-paid lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, there isn’t a constituency that likes this proposal.”

Nobody but the telecoms want this bill. No real human being has complained about having an open internet that allows low-income individuals to access the same websites as high-income individuals, and mom-and-pop and startup organizations to access the same audience as multinational corporations such as Microsoft and Google.

No one wants this policy change. But because the FCC is run by a former Verizon employee, the policy change is going forward. And that sucks.

So…that should bring us up today. Hopefully, my next post won’t be another month from now.

Categories
politics

Hunt the Right Rabbit

I’m trying to understand the conspiracy of all this.

Yesterday, a friend of mine on Facebook continued to spread (in a forceful and angry manner) the debunked theory (see Snopes’ debunking article and Politifact’s explainer article) that Secretary Clinton sold 20% of the United States’ uranium to Russia for $145 million and she laundered the money through her and her husband’s non-profit Clinton Foundation.

In reality, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear agency purchased a 51% stake in a Canadian-based mining company that had originally been owned by South African interests. The Obama Administration, of which Secretary Clinton was part, needed to evaluate the purchase because U.S.-based subsidiaries of the Canadian company managed a significant portion of the U.S.’s uranium stock. Though her department had a place on the nine-member evaluation board (as did several other agencies), Secretary Clinton did not partake in the meetings, and even if she had, she had no say as to whether the deal went through or not.

Now, one of the previous investors in the Canadian company — a person who at the time of the deal no longer owned any stock in the company — had made a $131 million donation to the Clinton Foundation, but he made it over a year prior to Secretary Clinton even becoming Secretary of State and three years prior to the deal between the Russians and the Canadian-based company even being made. Around $4 million of the donations to the Clinton Foundation, however, were donated by other members involved at the time of the deal, but those members deny accusations of a quid pro quo exchange with Secretary Clinton, claiming that their donations to the Foundation were offered in good faith.

If the exchange was a quid-pro-quo offer, it was made with incredible foresight while also being very poorly managed, seeing that it first required Hilary Clinton to be elected President (which did not happen), and then it required the main investor to own stock in the Canadian company when the deal went through (which also did not happen). If the quid pro quo was about Russia being able to steal our uranium, it was also very poorly managed, seeing as the U.S.-based subsidiary that manages the uranium is not licensed to export it. When the story was first debunked by Snopes & Politifact, they both rated the story “False” or “Mostly False.”

The story came up again recently when The Hill reported on an active case at the Department of Justice involving Russian nuclear officials, Russian donations to the Clinton Foundation, Russian corruption of the U.S. uranium market, and a coverup in the Obama Administration (including by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who is the man now most responsible for investigating President Trump’s Russian connections).

The Hill‘s new findings on this many-years-old story are indeed concerning. Essentially, The Hill‘s reporting implies (though does not assert) that the Obama Administration covered up a story that clearly demonstrates Russia’s attempts to manipulate various aspects of our economy and our national security. The story also implies (though does not assert) that Secretary Clinton supported Russia’s efforts in exchange for millions of dollars. It also implies (though does not assert) that the man now responsible for investigating President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia also played a part in the coverup.

I’m not going to agree or disagree with the facts as reported by both Snopes, Politifact, or The Hill. I believe all of the articles are reported in good faith and provide the facts as they are understood by the writers of those articles.

What I want to do is try to understand the conspiracy here.

Let’s say that high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration actively colluded with Russian agents to provide access to the United States’ uranium. The facts as they’ve been reported do not support the theory that Russians have smuggled, are smuggling, or will smuggle enriched uranium out of the borders of the United States.

They do support the theory, however, that Russians have influenced and may still influence the movement of that uranium within our borders. They also support the theory that a lot of individuals, both Russian and American, received a lot of dirty money in the process. And finally, they support the theory that some of those Americans may have been high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration.

But there are a few other facts we have to deal with too.

Like the fact that high-ranking officials in the Trump campaign and the Trump Administration also received a lot of dirty money in connection with Russian agents, starting with Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and extending to Trump’s former National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn (Ret.).

Like the fact that the Trump Campaign expressed an interest in colluding with Russian agents to take down Secretary Clinton during the election.

Like the fact that President Trump has significant financial relationships with known friends of President Putin.

Like the fact that President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce is (was?) the major stockholder of a Cyprus bank where Russian oligarchs are known to launder the money they steal from the Russian people.

Like the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a positive consensus as to whether Russian agents attempted to manipulate the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

Like the fact that President Trump’s continued belligerence towards North Korea, Iran, undocumented workers, and others redirects American anger away from Russia and towards virtually anyone else.

In short, there’s a lot of facts we have to consider, and those facts imply (though do not assert) wrongdoing by high-ranking officials in both the Obama and the Trump Administrations. I’m interested in the conspiracy that connects all these reported facts together.

What’s the common thread here? It’s not Left vs. Right. It’s not Democrat vs. Republican. It’s not Black vs. White or Socialist vs. Capitalist. And with Hilary involved, it’s not even Men vs. Women. It’s what then? What’s the common thread?

Oh yeah. They’re all fucking rich.

Know your enemy people. It’s not who all the rich people on TV tell you it is. It’s not Mexican farmers or Russian cab drivers or Iranian students. It’s not the peasants in North Korea or the poor people in Pakistan. It’s not the people starving through the civil war in Syria or the people surrendering to Iraqi forces in Hawija. It’s not hurricane victims in Puerto Rico or redneck loggers in Montana. It’s not the fishermen who stab the dolphins or the college students who save the whales.

It’s one thing and one thing only.

It’s the fucking rich people. And they’re all in it together.

If there’s an actual conspiracy behind all of these reported facts, any single element that ties them all together, it can only involve the rich.

Is there any doubt that President Putin, President Trump, and Secretary Clinton are all rich?

Is there any doubt that their high-ranking officials are also rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control corporate media are rich? That the individuals who control the military-industrial complex are rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control the pharmaceutical giants, the energy companies, or the banks are rich?

Is there any doubt that the individuals who control the text book publishers are rich or that the ministers who control the megachurches are rich?

Draw any conspiracy you want — make it look like an Oilman’s plot, a Yankee plot, an Islamist plot, a Capitalist plot, a Vatican plot, a Jewish plot, a Hollywood plot, a Monsanto plot, a Banker’s plot, a Patriarchal plot, a White Power plot — draw it any way you like, and what you’ll find is that it only and always involves the rich.

Know your enemy people. And focus your anger thusly.

Categories
education life politics

A Version of a Speech I Need to Give My Students Tomorrow

Okay guys, I’m floundering. I need your help.

About the only thing I know about this class is its frickin’ title: How to Combat Online Bullshit. When I came up with it, I had a whole idea about learning all about fake news — how it’s created, how it spreads, what kind of effects it can have — and then teaching you how to combat it.

The problem is, I don’t know if you care about fake news. I want you to feel a sense of righteous indignation toward it, but at least two of you don’t. I don’t really understand why, because my own righteous indignation is so close to the surface.

I make my living trying to get young people to understand and examine certain truths about the world, not truths that I necessarily have access to, but truths that I have received. One of those truths is that democracy is good; another is that democracy is hard; and another is that an enlightened electorate is the only weapon capable of of defending it. If that weapon gets any weaker, then the great experiment that is America will come to an ignoble end.

You two, the ones who are throwing me for a loop in this class, you two are still two or three years away from joining the electorate. But me and him, we’re already there.

And both of us are telling you that the information you find on the Internet is often completely fake, regardless of how real it may sound. I suspect (I hope) you already believe that, but I’m not entirely sure you understand the ramifications of it.

There’s something else I’m not sure about: I don’t know how much you read, or if you do, what kinds of things you might read.

When I conceived of this class, I made (and continue to make) an awful lot of assumptions about you, and I realize now that one of them is that you care (at least somewhat) about some of the events that are taking place beyond your own lives. That may have been a mistake.

Some basic knowledge of current events is necessary if I’m to rile up that righteous indignation I assumed you would already have. But if you don’t have this basic knowledge — if you don’t at least somewhat depend on the news to guide your understanding of reality — then you have no context from which to draw your anger from; you simply have no idea that we are currently being attack by an onslaught of verifiably intentionally-fake news.

Which means we need to go back to step one.

The purpose of a high-school education is, primarily, to prepare the future citizens of this country to continue the great experiment that we call democracy. Anything you learn above and beyond that in high school is just gravy.

But the key ingredient to democracy is, again, an enlightened electorate. And in order to cultivate that, I need you to become critical of everything you read, hear, and watch — I need you to become critical of media.

Because that’s where the battle is being fought now. It’s where democracy is currently being attacked. This is not hyperbole. This shit is actually going on.

Russia, that great enemy of my childhood, is literally attacking our country, and almost everyone has a reasonable suspicion that Russia may have even compromised the Chief Executive of our government, a possibility that is being diligently investigated by an incredibly powerful — and by all accounts, highly ethical — civil attorney, as well as by some of the more patriotic members of Congress. Reality is now literally a bad 80s movie that has been reboot for the 21st century, where the writers have replaced nuclear bombs with information bombs.

I shit you not.

My question to you is, “What character do you want to play in that movie?” Do you want to be someone shoveling your own shit in the background, or do you want to be someone driving the enemy all the way back to its capitol?

In the 21st century, heroes may not jump out of helicopters; they may work quietly and furiously on a laptop; but the dangers are just as real. The same menacing villain, a former high-ranking officer in the menacing KGB, is directing the same group of menacing bastards to train their sights on America. Behind it all stands a shadowy group of menacing rich bastards, luxuriating in the arrogance of their wealth, while in front of it all, the same innocent victims fall prey.

It’s up to somebody to stop them. Why shouldn’t that someone be you?

If it’s not, that means you’ve opted to become just another victim, and that  means America’s great experiment in democracy has failed.

I’ll say it again. Our democracy is really and truly under attack — not by some shadow terrorist, but by another sovereign nation whose military may not be as evolved as ours, but whose ability to engage in information warfare seems to be operating on a completely different level.

You’re both going to be 18 soon, which means, first, you’ll be eligible to participate in our democracy, and second, that you’ll be eligible to fight for it.

I want to teach you what the fight is actually about, and then teach you to defend yourself and throw a punch. I have the skills to do that.

But first, you have to show me what you know.

Categories
politics

President Trump Did What Now?

U.S. President Donald Trump waves as walks on the South Lawn of the White House upon his return to Washington, U.S., from the G20 Summit in Hamburg, July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

I haven’t written about politics in a bunch of weeks. The reason is simple: it’s only a matter of time before Donald Trump gets impeached. There seems to be enough smoke now for any fair-minded person to agree that there must be some kind of fire. I don’t claim to know exactly what it is or who was involved, but I don’t doubt that the act of collusion includes the man at the highest level.

The *NY Times* is now reporting that Presidents Trump and Putin had an undisclosed, private conversation that lasted as long as an hour during the G20 Summit. It’s true that the conversation occurred in front of many of the world’s leaders, but except for Presidents Trump and Putin, only a Kremlin-employed interpreter knows exactly what was said.

Trump is attacking the Times for the story — “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is ‘sick.’ All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!” — but it’s not about whether the press knew about it (nor is it about the President’s use of quotation marks around “sick” — does he think he’s quoting somebody or is he misunderstanding  the use of scare quotes?). It’s about whether the press reported the conversation, and until now, they had not.

Journalists know a lot of things. They don’t report on everything they know. The best of them only report on the things they know for sure, which means they have evidence to support it.

And what did the *NY Times* journalist, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, report?

She reported that “hours into” a G20 dinner, President Trump rose from his seat and joined President Putin for “a one-on-one discussion…that lasted as long as an hour and relied solely on a Kremlin interpreter.”

She wrote some more words to allow the White House to register its reaction,  and she wrote some others words to provide context for more casual readers, but at bottom, those are the only facts that she reported.

And President Trump calls it “Fake News!,” not because he denied it happened, but because he’s upset someone thinks such a conversation should be news.

This is the reason those of us on the left think he is an idiot. He can’t stop getting in his own way. How hard is it to *not* have a private conversation with the person you’re being accused of colluding with? And if you must have a conversation, how hard is it, really, to arrange a truly private one?

You know how hard it is for this president? Incredibly hard. Everyone in the bureaucracy is out to get him. He can’t make a phone call to anyone on the planet without someone else knowing about it, and with the leak culture being encouraged by the press and, let’s face it, the American people, that someone else is more than likely to let the information slip. How much worse would it look if President Trump tried to arrange an actual secret meeting with President Putin?

He had no choice. He can’t just not talk about the situation with President Putin, collusion or no collusion, so his only choice is to do it in the most public place possible.  If he actually wants to talk about the collusion issue, he can’t trust the State-department interpreter to not share the details of their conversation, even if only under oath to a prosecutor.

So what the President did, collusion or no collusion, makes complete sense. But to think, even if only for a minute, that such a conversation doesn’t deserve to be news is to think something bat-shit stupid. If the President of the United States had a private, one-on-one conversation with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, the existence of that conversation would make the news — and I don’t even know if they have Prime Ministers there. To imagine it wouldn’t be news when you do it with your alleged colluder in treason…that’s just dumb.

That’s why I haven’t been writing about politics lately. I’m so done with trying to understand this President. I don’t have to anymore. I get it, and I honestly don’t think he’s a match for the one-two punches that keep coming at him from the bureaucracy and the press. If Mueller is as ethical as the press suggests, then it’s only a matter of time before they take him down.

At this point, writing about Trump feels more like trying to catalog and predict the ending of a one-sided fight — will he go down because of some kind of final, powerful blow or will he just succumb to a continuous onslaught of jabs? Making those kinds of prediction can be fun some of the time, like trying to predict which character on your favorite HBO show is going to die next, but more often it feels like trying to get excited about the arc on a crappy reality show.

There’s a danger in feeling that way, of course. If we allow ourselves to get bored by the lack of progress or overwhelmed by the case’s ever-growing details (how many fucking people were in that room with Don Jr. and how the fuck are they all connected again?), then we risk losing the urgency of the resistance. I get it.

But seriously, let’s look at this shit. Yes, the Republicans are trying to fuck up all kinds of shit in Congress, and yes, the President is doing a ton of real damage via Executive Order, but it seems the most they can do right now is all short-term stuff. They’re not organized enough to ram something through Congress — Trump is too unhinged and vague, and the Republican Congress has to reconcile the desires of too many “moderates” (as if…) with too many Tea Party crazies. If the Democrats can stay united in their resistance, the Republicans can’t deliver on the biggest promises they’ve made to the electorate, and they’ll continue to look and act completely dysfunctional.

Yes, there are things to do. Yes, there are real dangers to fight. But in all honesty, it seems like those who are doing the fighting for my side of things are doing a damn fine job, and I’m trusting them to continue to do so.

Me? I’ll keep going to work each day to teach the next generation of leaders how to think for themselves. It’s the least I can do.