Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

No Tea for the Tillerson

Posted on by
Reply

no_tea_tillerson

Former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, was on Capitol Hill yesterday for confirmation hearings before Congress. Given the general hysteria over Tillerson’s business ties with Russia, I thought at first he’d be a good pick. Nothing is more important than repairing America’s damaged relations with Russia. It’s a powerful country, rich in resources, with an educated population and a shared opposition to Islamic terrorism. Most importantly, it has nuclear weapons, so to attack it would be suicidal.

Unfortunately, the US government is lousy with “exceptionalists” who deny that Russia has the right to defend its own interests. They’re apoplectic that Moscow has opposed the illegal installation of hostile regimes in two of its former allies, Ukraine and Syria. The neo-conservative anti-Russian crusade is not about “human rights.” If we cared about that, we wouldn’t support countries like Saudi Arabia that murder gays and enslave women.

As for Tillerson, he’s more of a war-hawk than his detractors thought. He supports our pointless sanctions on Russia as if either Crimea or Aleppo was any of our business. Furthermore, the accusations of Putin “hacking” the Presidential election are just that, accusations, unsupported by credible evidence. Even if the Kremlin DID hack the Democratic Party’s server, the released information was true and relevant to the voters’ decision, so the leak was a public service.

Perhaps Rex is repeating this neo-conservative rubbish so the clowns in Congress will confirm him. I hope that’s the case, but I have my doubts after hearing his belligerent remarks about China. What gives us the right to tell a sovereign nation what it can and cannot do in its own coastal waters? Open navigation in the South China Sea is critical for Beijing’s survival. Despite that fact, Rex insists that China must stop building artificial island bases and threatens to send our Navy to kick them off.

Is this man insane? It’s acceptable to make war for our own national defense, but not to attack the vital interests of another country. China has every right to defend itself and having come late to the party, there are no leftover islands for it to occupy as bases. To Beijing’s credit, these built-up shoals were not inhabited. They’re not conquering and coercing native peoples as we did with Guam, Samoa, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Even Diego Garcia, which the US rents from the UK, was stolen from its native population.

Why do so many powerful Americans continue to frame other nations’ defensive moves as aggression? It must be psychological projection because the US is second to none at portraying imperialism as defense. We needn’t accept this nonsense. Congress should reject Tillerson’s nomination, not because he’s (allegedly) soft on Russia, but because he’s unhinged, unfair, and unbalanced on China. We don’t need another conflict, especially one that could escalate into a nuclear war.

If you like political intrigue, you’ll enjoy my novel Centrifugal Force.

Centrifugal Force: How Many of My Predictions Came True?

Posted on by
Reply

cf_front200x300

Three years ago last month I published my first book, the agorist science fiction novel Centrifugal Force. Though I hate to toot my own horn (there’s some false modesty for you) many of the things I wrote about in this book either have come to pass or are in the process of doing so. The major difference is that Centrifugal Force dealt solely with North America, and these phenomena have been global in scope.

As I predicted in my book, on-line business models are replacing and bypassing traditional regulated industries. Examples of this are Uber, Airbnb, and the online music and publishing industries. Unlike my fictional scenario, these are currently above-ground, legal efforts. However, competing institutions (such as taxi drivers’ unions) are striving to outlaw Uber, and rapacious cities are imposing their exorbitant hotel taxes on Airbnb participants. There’s no reason these businesses couldn’t exist underground, on a peer-to-peer basis. This will become more likely if the current economic situation worsens.

Continued, escalating acts of “terrorism” are giving governments an excuse to crack down on what little freedom we have left, such as free speech, freedom of movement, and financial privacy. The difference from my novel was again that terrorism has been a world-wide phenomenon, particularly in Europe and Africa. France takes the place of the despotic fictional US, where Joel Walter is forced to go into hiding. Since the Paris 11/13 attacks, the country has closed its borders and declared a state of emergency. Thankfully this hasn’t come to America yet, but I’m sure that our government is only one major terrorist attack away from doing the same.

Centrifugal Force featured the Undernet, an unregulated pirate alternative to the Internet. In real life we have the Dark Web and the notorious Silk Road drug marketplace. My book had E-barter, we have Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Politicians are simply apoplectic about these developments, and are even making noise about outlawing encryption. I was not surprised by the draconian punishment meted out to the Dread Pirate Roberts, though in my opinion, he’s a hero! Yet I believe the government’s efforts will fail in real life as they did in the novel.

In my book, several characters went underground to escape harassment or prosecution, staying in the US because of the difficulty of crossing the border. In the real world, many such activists have gone overseas, for example Edward Snowden in Russia or Glenn Greenwald in Brazil. Probably the most analogous real-life equivalent to Nephi Snow’s hacker network is Anonymous – assuming this group isn’t, as many claim, a CIA front.

Secession is a major theme of my book, because I believe this is the most plausible way to deal with the arrogant, rapacious, unaccountable American Empire is to break it up. Considering the roadblocks thrown at any serious reformer (such as Ron Paul), working “within the system” is not an option. Again, this has come to pass in Europe, with Catalonia seceding from Spain and Scotland almost leaving the UK. Here in America, a more current controversy is state nullification of Federal law, which causes many a progressive to shriek in outrage. The recent round of secession petitions at whitehouse.gov – and yes, I signed one for Arizona – gave me cause for hope. This might become more realistic if our Kenyan President keeps trying to rule this country by decree.

Other predictions include surveillance drones becoming commonplace (obviously true) and organized criminals posing as police to rob their victims. The latter seems largely confined to Mexico, but given the lawless behavior or police in many parts of the US, I expect it’s only a matter of time. Has political correctness gone crazy? Check; to the mainstream media, government opponents are evil racists. Also, we have seen curfews, like the one in Boston after the Marathon bombing. This one’s a no-brainer: anti-smoking fascism has definitely increased. Thankfully, though, we haven’t yet seen the activation of FEMA camps. I expect the Federal government will need to take a different approach to detainment of its enemies, due to the justifiable paranoia of the libertarian and patriot communities.

On the other hand, I was wrong about the following:

  • The Draft has not been reinstated, thank God! Not that I believe a slave army is ever necessary in any nation or circumstance, but in this time of drone wars and bombing campaigns, conscription would be especially redundant. Yet it still may happen, because it would be an effective way to control and indoctrinate America’s youth, particularly if females were included.
  • The District of Columbia did not become a state. This movement appears to be dead for the time being, but I expect it to be resurrected if Hillary becomes President, as it would provide two more guaranteed Democrats in the Senate. (And yes, no need to speculate; she’s the inspiration for the evil female President in my book.)
  • 3D printing – I missed this completely. This is a wonderful vector for revolution, enabling home-based manufacture of guns and other contraband items.
  • Ethnic self-defense/vigilante militias did not, to my knowledge, come to pass. In my book, Muslim-Americans banded together to protect themselves from harassment and violence, and to punish those who had wronged them. I haven’t seen evidence of this, even in Europe (if you don’t include terrorist groups, which was not my intent — those are all state-sponsored, anyway.) Even the Donbas rebels in eastern Ukraine, who are wildly popular in their area, are essentially a government-in-waiting.
  • The resurgence of Russia – another thing I missed entirely. There were Russian mafia characters in my book, but I didn’t address the possibility that Russia itself could be the “black swan” that could bring down he US Corporatocracy. This subject is, of course, a matter of great debate in alternative media circles. Is Vladimir Putin a hero, a villain, or a New World Order collaborator? That’s a question I’ll address in a future post.

 Centrifugal Force cover design by Kyle Dunbar.

 

Congress Has Lost Its Mind

Posted on by
Reply

The US House of Representatives, excluding 10 brave members, recently gave us proof of its collective insanity. House Resolution 758, passed on December 5, 2014, condemns Russia as an aggressor nation that must be sanctioned. The bill’s supporting arguments are a tapestry of lies and propaganda, and hypocrisy. Among the howlers:

  • Russia has “invaded” Ukraine. Every month or so the corporate media spouts some nonsense about Russian tanks invading its neighbor’s separatist-ruled eastern provinces, but we’re never offered any proof. Even if they’re talking about Crimea, Russia’s actions there are not an invasion but an occupation. Crimea is a historic part of Russia populated mostly by ethnic Russians which was granted arbitrarily to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev in 1954. Somehow the US doesn’t have any trouble with Israel occupying Palestinian land, and the Palestinians didn’t welcome their occupiers as did the Crimeans.
  • Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17, because the commercial airliner was shot down by pro-Russian separatists using Russian weapons. Again, we’re not offered a shred of proof, and it’s equally plausible that Ukrainian forces shot down the plain either accidentally or intentionally (as a false flag promoting war with Russia.)
  • Russia has initiated economic sanctions against Ukraine. More precisely, Russia has eliminated subsidies, the same way the US Federal government threatens to cut off funding for states that refuse to enact its policies. In reality, the US is the aggressor, first supporting the ultra-nationalist coup in Ukraine, and then strong-arming our allies in the EU into supporting sanctions that hurt them (our friends) far more than they hurt the “evil” Putin.
  • Russia has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This one’s true, which is to Putin’s credit: Assad is the good guy in this situation, opposing the barbaric, genocidal so-called “Islamic State.” It’s the United States that illegally initiated aggression against Syria by arming the so-called “moderate rebels.” In reality, it was arming ISIS. Whether this was an act of sheer stupidity or Machiavellian evil, I can’t say.

Unfortunately, a lot of people I know believe the US corporate media’s bullshit about Russia. Please don’t take my word for it, look to the alternative media for a more balanced perspective. There are even British mainstream sources such as the Mail Online which tell the truth about Russia. I’m not saying it’s a perfect country; it has many policies I abhor, such as military conscription and oppression of gays and Chechens. Yet at the rate we’re going, with our rising rates of incarceration and “anti-terrorist” legislation, America will soon be less free than Russia.

Should we really risk igniting a new world war by antagonizing a fellow nuclear power for dubious reasons? Absolutely not!

 

Vladimir the Terrible?

Posted on by
Reply

As a libertarian, I don’t like political leaders or their phony, arrogant claims to “legitimate” use of power. I despise every last one of them, especially Obama, the Clintons, and the Bushes, both father and son. They are among the worst people the world has ever produced. Being at the helm of the world’s most powerful country has allowed them to exceed the evils of those whom they’ve demonized, two-bit dictators such as Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Khadaffi. Power corrupts, whether you lead an autocracy or an alleged republic. That is why I’m surprised by the restraint that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, has shown so far in the Ukrainian crisis.

It’s not that Putin is a nice guy. He was formerly in the KGB, the kind of organization which would not exist in a just world. Many people believe that Putin’s government, not Chechen separatists, were behind the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. These false-flag events gave “Vlad the Terrible” an excuse to crush that rebellious province, rather than granting them a plebiscite on independence as is their right. Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was mysteriously poisoned by the radioactive element polonium while in exile in London. Who but the government of a nuclear power could pull this off? Putin has also presided over a ridiculous anti-gay law that serves mainly to focus the peoples’ minds on an imaginary threat.

Yet Putin’s Russia has proved to be a worthy adversary for the arrogant and self-righteous United States. The American corporate media likes to blame Russia and Putin for the chaos in Ukraine, but in reality, America’s spy services and its captive “non-government” organizations initiated the conflict. Obama’s State Department interfered by supporting the protests, even after they became violent. When Ukraine’s President Yanukovych compromised to schedule new elections, the US-supported far right elements drove him from the country. The new junta in Kiev immediately passed discriminatory laws designed to outrage the Russian minority in the country’s east and south. Did the holier-than-though US government tell our allies to stop this, lest the country slide into civil war? Of course not; provoking ethnic Russians and their cousins across the border was probably their real aim.

Again and again we hear that Russia “invaded” Crimea. Balderdash. Crimea was historically part of Russia, not the Ukraine. Its people are mostly ethnic Russians, a majority of whom supported the annexation in an internationally monitored election which the Ukraine opposed. Ironically, the US did the exact same thing in supporting Kosovo’s split from Serbia in opposition to the wishes of the Serbian people. Consistency has never been the US government’s strong suit.

Because of this alleged “invasion,” the US proceeded to impose ridiculous economic sanctions on Russia and strong-arm its lackeys in the European Union to go along with them. Then came the crash of flight MH-17 over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine. Without providing any evidence whatsoever, the US government blamed the pro-Russian rebels (and by extension Russia) for this atrocity. The media refused to entertain the possibility that the Ukrainian military did this themselves in order to whip up anti-Russian sentiment.

This kind of “false flag” operation has happened throughout history, such as Nazi Germany’s Gleiwitz Incident (which it used to justify invading Poland) the CIA’s Operation Gladio which terrorized post-war Europe and Israel’s Lavon Affair which attempted to frame Islamists for a series of bombings in Cairo.

I believe the reason America hates Putin is that he’s one of the few world leaders who appears to be sticking up for the interests of his own country and against those of the globalist corporate community. Throughout the world we see leaders kow-towing to the “neoliberal” world order, plunging their countries into IMF-engineered debt servitude.

Libertarians detest this exploitative system, and also oppose the sanctions against Russia. Putin has done a lot of evil things, and is certainly no hero in our philosophy, though some (myself included) admire his determination and apparent cleverness. Best of all, he’s no stooge of the financial industry. The oligarchs who looted Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era were not “too big to jail.”

No matter what Putin’s motivations are, it hardly seems sane for our leaders to risk war with another nuclear power over a small patch of territory, and over what was probably just a tragic accident. Another, more probable outcome of this new cold war is that Russia and its allies such as China will create their own independent systems for trade and banking.This would end the economic supremacy of the US, already under threat, along with most of the value of the dollar. That would be a disaster for all of us “commoners,” whether the event was intentionally planned or just the unintended consequences of the incredible arrogance of American politicians.

Though what happened to MH-17 is still a mystery, one thing is for certain: the story the corporate media tells us is based upon lies.There may not be much we can do about the insane belligerence of so-called leaders such as Barack Obama (and his bloodthirsty Republican opponents), but we must not let ourselves be their fools, either.

Presenting “Out Loud”

Posted on by
Reply

After a three month hiatus, it’s high time I return to my blog, though this entry will be a relatively short one. In early November I became quite busy with my writing projects, which turned out to be much more demanding then I expected. All my marketing activities ground to a halt, though I now have something important to promote, which I’ll get to shortly.

 

First of all, I was attempting to meet my personal goal of finishing my second novel, Fidelio’s Automata, by the end of 2013. Although I made a valiant effort at editing and cleaning up the draft manuscript, I was forced to set it aside. I’m recently resumed that project and hope to be done by the end of this month. I’ll keep you posted.

 

My second, more urgent project is a theatrical production, which is called OUT LOUD! Stories from the Gayborhood. The show boasts five contributors of different short works, including three scenes by myself and my girlfriend/collaborator, Arlys Holloway. The latter are excerpts from our work in progress, a musical comedy about on-line dating called One Good Man. When I took up writing a few years ago, I never expected it to go in that direction. Frankly, if I’d have realized how challenging writing a musical would be, I probably would not have attempted it. (By the way, many thanks to JR McAlexander with his invaluable assistance with the music.) Despite several weeks of chronic sleep deprivation, it’s been an enjoyable and educational experience.

 

Now, after two years of preparation, OUT LOUD! is finally coming to the stage, with seven talented local actors playing over twenty roles. Besides our own musical numbers, the show features works of fantasy, young romance, and drama, by playwrights Ben Gill, B.D. Heywood and Lori Hicks. Like us, they’re newcomers to writing for the theater, and we owe a debt of gratitude to our facilitator, mentor and director, Richard Schultz. (Shameless plug: Gill, Heywood, Hicks and I all have novels published on Amazon.)

 

The title makes obvious the show’s lesbian/gay theme, and in fact, it is a benefit for the One Voice LGBT Community Center in Phoenix. All the works have gay/lesbian characters and/or writers. Though Arlys and I have a more conventional orientation, we are proud to support the cause of equality for the LGBT community. Though gays and lesbians have achieved much in recent years, there has recently been a resurgence in bigotry around the world, especially in the Middle East and in Putin’s Russia. Vladimir would no doubt consider our show “homosexual propaganda,” which is his standard smear on anyone who opposes his agenda of making gays into scapegoats for his country’s problems. (Though I do appreciate his opposition to the neocons’ Syria war plans – but that’s another topic.)

 

For those who would rather support Truth, Justice and the American Way, showings of OUT LOUD! will be February 6, 7, and 8th at the Phoenix Center for the Arts, 1202 North 3rd Street at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $10 and $25; to buy in advance, call 602-254-3100, and for more information, www.1vcc.org. Warning: these works have mature subject matter, so it’s not for children or for the easily offended. We invite those of a more eclectic bent to join us for an enjoyable evening of original theater by local Arizona writers.