New Worlds Coming?

By Kaigani Turner

Besides the return to industrialism (and later, agrarianism), another resemblance the U.S. has to Russia is our continuation of costly space programs. Spin-offs of these efforts do compensate at least partially for our investment, but space programs that support continuation of globalism (for example) may not pay off very well as trade dwindles due to diminishing resources. Another longshot, or rather, moonshot, is the proposal to NASA by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to set up infrastructure on and around the moon that will be the beginnings of an effort to support "millions of people living and working in space."

That sounds like it could become a bit expensive, even if undertaken by fanatically dedicated engineers. I can't help but wonder if the urge to populate space stems from a Plan B choice regarding the carrying capacity of Plan A (Earth). If that is the motivation, then it seems to me that we could get along fine without Plan B if nations would be willing to live in communion with nature rather than always seek to dominate it (though the population explosion does make that option quite difficult, as well).

Yet, the challenge of space exploitation might substitute nicely for the youthful urge to develop and operate weapons to combat enemies on the far side of the globe. The competitive aspect is still there - among companies, and with other countries (China, Russia). Another competitor is NASA, but our pro-capitalist government will almost certainly cede our Space efforts to private enterprise; leaving just two major competitors domestically - Blue Origin and SpaceX. To maintain token competition in our space industrial base, one company will probably get the lead on moonshots and the other on a new constellation of Internet satellites. That venture, too, is fraught with risk.

With Stephen Bannon's advocacy, these types of space missions will probably be pursued under Trump. In a past life, Bannon headed the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona which demonstrated how a small group could be sustained in a created ecological environment without external provisions. More development of this type of system would lead to deploying them in space. More recently, at Breitbart News, Bannon's momentarily famous underling, Milo Yiannopoulos, put out a call for an audacious space program.

Too bad all that additional budget proposed for defense wasn't put into the NASA line instead. Along with diverting money from warfighting, it could save the Earth Science Division. How about it Congress? Or are we just going with Plan B?

Truth Seeking

It seems disingenuous that so many liberals cling to RT and other sources distorted by Russian propaganda when there are many liberal homegrown options that don't have the ulterior motive of sowing chaos through disinformation. One might conclude that adopting such a post-truth stance, whereby you can pick a narrative arbitrarily and ignore any evidence to the contrary, betrays an unprincipled intent to destroy the existing economic and political structure in order to replace it with one that is more socialistic. Maybe this expedient to promoting revolution stems from affinity to socialist ideals which Russia tried and then corrupted, as opposed to capitalist ideals which are flawed at inception. The latter motivation is more noble, but there are surely news sources with more integrity that align with socialism.

Much fuss has been made over The List of over 200 websites that turned out to be Russian stooges, but, as much as I hate to banish sites like "Assassination Science" and "Bare Naked Islam" from my reading list, there are still more real news sources to be tapped than I would ever have time for. There are also numerous weekly news magazines that aren't beholden to big corporate interests. Here are some independent sources that publish breaking news and commentary:

• The Real News Network - Baltimore based, left wing news with sights on becoming a TV station
• The Christian Science Monitor - Global, balanced news of significance with humanitarian focus
• Reuters - The largest international multimedia news agency, a division of Thompson-Reuters
• Reuters TV - Video-rich Internet TV reports of Reuters news; app available for mobile devices
• The Nation - Opinionated and aspirational writings by mostly young progressives
• ProPublica - In-depth investigative reporting on topics of significance to U.S. citizens
• The Center for Public Integrity - Investigative reporting within the U.S., mainly on the public sector  
• Reveal (The Center for Investigative Reporting) - San Francisco Bay area investigative news covering stories around the U.S. and internationally. Also produces a podcast.
• AllSides - Reporting from left, right, and center from various sources with the hope of reconciling understanding of clashing views
• FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) - Alternative news organization seeking to reduce the power of mainstream media
• Who, What, Why - Unvarnished forensic journalism. Podcast and blog, too.
• WorldNews (WN) Network - A news junkie's paradise with over 750 sources for multiple perspectives
• Watchdog - Investigative reporting to hold government (states, in particular) more accountable

              Sources cited were obtained from Gemini Fox's Soapboxie post after removing Russian propagandists.

Photo by Joe Clay

As for myself, after running back into the arms of the Washington Post when I learned that I'd been snookered by the Russian fake news machine, I have become more aware of the slanted perspective of our own mainstream news, as well. The Green Party platform aided my awareness of this, noting that:

Our media laws and rules promote the formation of huge media conglomerates while discouraging competing voices. As a result, the mainstream media is increasingly cozy with the economic and political elites whom they should be investigating. Mergers in the news industry have accelerated, further limiting the spectrum of viewpoints in the mass media. With U.S. media overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and supported by corporate advertisers, investigative journalism is in an alarming decline.

With the above list of trustworthy independent news sources, I am looking forward to expanding my perspective of important topics, and having a firmer grasp of ground truth.

Fake President

Image by Alan Davey

Allowing The Donald to adjust to his new upcoming role as POTUS by giving him the benefit of a honeymoon period is tempting; something we would do for most people in the early stages of a new relationship. In this case, since we've been through the courtship stage already and ended up in an unhappy forced marriage, we aren't going to reward the lout with a happy honeymoon. We are going to make him crave an annulment.

Multiple grounds exist for annulling his illegitimate claim to the Presidency.

• He was elevated to that office with the help of a foreign adversary with whom he has business and political ties.
• His tax returns over several years may show that he has evaded his responsibility to the U.S., but he refuses to disclose them to the public.
• His foundation was caught abusing the system and failing to report truthfully to the IRS.
• He personally dishonors American military heroes by disparaging their sacrifices.
• The elections were rigged, by his own admission.
• His conflicts of interest would make him ineligible, under longstanding ethics rules, to participate in any material decisions regarding numerous entities potentially affected by the oval office.

A similar set of disqualifications was compiled by activist Nancy Altman and Ira Lupu, an Emeritus professor of law at George Washington University. They break these down into transgressions of political legitimacy and moral authority and list four presumptions we should all hold regarding communications, activities, subordinates, and decisions of the head huckster. They conclude by calling for his opponents in Congress to set the tone for the resistance movement and for a provisional withdrawal of the customary respect due the office of the President:

At noon on January 20, 2017, we will have a new president. The office of the presidency deserves respect, but the new occupant has relied on illegitimate means to seize power, and he deserves moral contempt.

In his speech, The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplain urged soldiers to resist brutal leaders who treat them as machines. Trump's objectivist worldview lends itself to such high-handedness. As a career U.S. military officer, it is discomfiting to my imbued sense of rank and honor to treat the President that way, but Trump may well not have been elected President without the nefarious designs of Putin and his den of liars and thieves. The fact that Trump will hardly even acknowledge that Russia was involved in hacking or propaganda marks him as a self-serving crook undeserving of respect at home or abroad.

The Greatest

The richest man in the world may be Vladimir Putin, according to financial executive Bill Browder. While the wealth of their country is siphoned off to secret Swiss bank accounts, everyone but the oligarchs struggle to scratch out a living, just as the Russians have throughout history.

Donald Trump would naturally admire the richest man in the world and, since he is taking over leadership of the richest country in the world, would naturally consider it quite appropriate that he would be the rightful recipient of that honor, given enough time to exact all of the tribute possible from his loyal subjects. Until he was elected President, all he had to work with were a smattering of resorts, hotels, a school, sundry consumer product lines, and the Trump Foundation. It turns out that he used the foundation to support anything Trump, just as the name implies.

If he is anything like his pal, Putin, the Trump Foundation was just a warm-up. At 71, he really needs to kick it into high gear in order to exceed $200 billion, but he seems unencumbered by scruples and has brought so many tycoons into his inner circle that his chances look pretty good. This is what making America great again means to Trump - great for him and his coterie of oligarchs.

We didn't think we'd end up like Russia after two centuries of democracy. Perhaps we won't if Trump can be forestalled by legalities like the proposed Presidential Accountability Act. Laws, however, don't seem to count for much in Trump's calculations, so we might all end up as subjects of the throne eventually.

In Laudato Si, Pope Francis pointed out the error in this pattern of governance:

This vision of “might is right” has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all. Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of harmony, justice, fraternity and peace as proposed by Jesus. As he said of the powers of his own age: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mt 20:25-26).

A glimmer of the Christmas story shines through this passage: despite all the Caesars, Putins, and Trumps of the world, Jesus tells us, "It shall not be so among you." While they go high, we go low, and so become great in his kingdom.

Photo by Sampo Sikiö

It's Gonna Take a Lotta Love

Russia's treachery in the campaign of The Don (our Big Twit, not their big river) is forgivable when viewed in context of the way the U.S., mainly under Ronald Reagan, brashly drove the U.S.S.R. into economic ruin. Russians and citizens of its former republics were thrown into dire circumstances as their economies collapsed. For the most part, they recovered. Now it's our turn. While economic collapse is pending for us and the rest of the world, we are faced with the more present danger of navigating through a sea of lies spawned from previous lies and from a profusion of liars made to appear acceptable by our prospective Dissembler-in-Chief.

Little Brother

A culture of lying has brought us growing numbers of whack jobs like Dylan Roof and Comet Ping Pong Rambo, Edgar Welch - guys who latched on to fake news or warped values and became strategic corporals, taking abstruse memes off the Internet as statements of commander's intent. The establishment's reaction may favor more controls on information dissemination, so in spite of the threat from Little Brother, Big Brother must also be resisted in order to hold fast our liberty. 

The Big Twit applies his creative powers to generate a version of reality that other power-hungry souls readily latch onto. His word becomes the Brothers' parameter for acceptable narratives. Trump hiring a 50-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps to come in and take over a demoralized Department of Homeland Security offers little assurance that First Amendment rights will receive adequate protection. Big Brother will want to protect the rest of the family from Little Brother However, the more the Big Twit tweets his fantasies, the more Little Brother goes rogue. At some point, the combination of Little Brother police actions and Big Brother censorship presents a new politically correct space that the majority choose to abide within.

Big Brother can be resisted through political organizations such as the Green Party, white hat hacking, and investigative journalism. Little Brother (all of us, to some degree) must be resisted by taking the time to correct him in his infantile acts and rushes to judgment. Since the election, political discussions in my extended family have been more taboo than normal. In the interest of helping Little Brother understand, it's time we started pushing the political correctness envelope and showing those close to us that issues aren't as simple as demagogues and propagandists make them out to be. It's gonna take a lotta love to change the way things are. 

The Big Twit

Donald Trump is already beginning to measure up to one of his presidential models. Like Ronald Reagan before him, he adroitly falls back on the plea of ignorance, as in his Time "Person of the Year" interview in which he claimed that he did not believe that Russia interfered in the election. Where you stand depends on where you sit, and sitting in the cat-bird seat means that Trump doesn't have to take a stand on much of anything that doesn't comport with his own designs.

His designs appear to lean toward undermining democracy in America, just like the Russian cyber-warriors he tacitly defends. He and his party have nearly squelched the recount efforts aimed at reforming our election process to be more equitable and less prone to gaming. His high tempo tweeting habit gives him a special connection to a significant segment of the American public - setting him up to be some sort of Dear Leader, but undermining the traditional connection of lawmakers to their constituents. Twitter also gives him precision targeting capability against any person or other entity that inflames his ire. That comes with built-in laser designator capability for his followers to mount secondary carpet bombing attacks and kill verification.

Photo by Gian Luigi Perrella

Now that he will be in command of our nation's military, it's too bad Trump never served in it. There he might have learned the first principle of psychological operations, i.e. you don't conduct PsyOps against your own citizens. Instead, our future fearless leader borrows from his reality TV show experience where psyching out your opponents and teammates is all part of the game.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

The disclosure of how Russian hackers have systematically undermined democracy in the U.S. by flooding the Internet with false or misleading stories has unmoored me. Not that I think the U.S. doesn't sometimes intentionally deceive Russians, but it would be hard to curate a portfolio of our blatant lies on the Internet as mendacious as that of the Russians. Besides, information fed to the Russian people weighs far less than that fed to the American public, since Russians are less empowered than U.S. citizens to influence or participate in their government. It's OK, though. I get it. Even if your country is defeated economically, information is one other means to conduct a cold war.

The cold war was plainly on again after Russia helped take down Malaysian flight MH17 over Ukraine. It was then that I noticed many of the websites that I was using to help make sense of current events accepted the Russian version of things with no hesitation. Regardless, I persisted for years in reading many of their views, dismissing their Russophilia as misdirected, but not malign. Now that the Russians' schemes are patent from investigative reports, I realize that these websites are, for whatever reason, beholden to the Russian disinformation apparatus and many are not worth visiting.

I dropped Club Orlov years ago, as I noticed Dmitry was not only too ardently defending Russian misdeeds, but also those of other U.S. enemies and denigrating our military. I first heard Orlov on James Howard Kunstler's podcast, whose Clusterfuck Nation blog this week pooh-poohs Russian hacking as an excuse mainstream news organizations are using for not noticing Trump's ascendancy among the electorate. To his credit, he doesn't deny the impact fake news may have had on the election, so I will keep him on my reading list. Another of my favorite writers, +Albert Bates, is too chummy with Dmitry and RT for me to trust his opinion as untainted, so I will have to stop reading his blog, too.

Photo by Sophie

A website that Kunstler put me onto, The Automatic Earth, has always helped me to wake up with a pessimistic view of the financial quagmire we are in. With its constant defense of Russian virtue and links to Zero Hedge and various other false news websites, I am glad to be rid of it. I will subscribe to the Washington Post again and get my morning news from the American media establishment rather than the apparatchiki. Another writer I located through Kunstler, John Michael Greer, has been mentioned in a few of my blogs as a fellow Marylander. He is on probation now, having soured me by a recent post in which he wondered why his blog wasn't on the list of 200+ websites showing evidence of heavy Russian fake news propagation. Come on, John! I know you think the best thing for us now is to have a million points of light shining in as many directions, but by toying with ideas from the heads of Russian hackers, you are just entering a hall of mirrors.

Jill Stein is doing something especially patriotic in fighting for vote recounts based, in part, on suspicions of Russian tampering. It is keeping the issue elevated long enough for us to realize that we need to all work harder at filtering information and that we need to protect our society from the effects of falsehoods at all levels of decision-making. I suspect that a lot of the push-back she received from fellow Greens was because many on the left became too invested in the narratives that originated in Moscow to the point that they subconsciously shifted their allegiance in favor of Russian tales to the detriment of their reliance on manifest truths.