All My Enemies Are American

The hype over the Russia-Trump story is illogical for three reasons.

America has some serious problems. Vladimir Putin ain’t one of them.

One, even if the story is completely true, with the Trump-Russia connection as bad as possible, this situation is hardly unprecedented or even a crisis compared with what has been going on in American politics for years.

Two, there is not now nor will there ever be any compelling evidence that Russia hacked the DNC, stole the emails, and gave them to Wikileaks, or otherwise changed the outcome of the 2016 election. Other than serious sounding guys in suits and fancy press releases dressed up as “indictments” the Russia “stole the election” story is all smoke and mirrors.

Three, what politicians do and say about each other in Washington, including CIA directors and FBI agents, is not important to the people of the United States. It’s all inside baseball and should not be particularly interesting to the people. We have 99 real problems and a Putin ain’t one.

One: collusion might be bad, but war is worse.

Worst case scenario for the sake of argument: Trump is a Russian tool, straight up Manchurian candidate. Putin has the goods on him. Putin says, “Jump!”, Trump says, “How high?” Traitor, tool, sock puppet, the whole nine.

So what? Trump doing Russia’s bidding is nothing to write home about in the context of American imperialism and fake democracy.

The Russia stuff is a diversion from the real story. The real story is that America is a fake democracy run by sometimes collaborating and sometimes competing sets of elites in finance, the military, tech and spy agencies with no accountability to anyone. They can do whatever they want and we, the people, have no real rights or power at all.

American imperialism is the greatest existing threat to people around the world — and inside of the United States. The puppet masters who have controlled previous presidents are as vicious, undemocratic, ruthless and bloodthirsty as Putin. Like Trump’s puppet master Putin (if it’s true), Obama, Clinton, and Bush’s puppet masters had no regard of the people of the United States, us peasants. Putin can’t be worse than the CIA, NSA, CitiGroup, Amazon, Facebook, Google, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Putin didn’t put lead in the water in Flint.

And stop with the treason stuff. You can’t have treason without war. Article 3, Section 3 defines the crime very narrowly: “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” This language is drawn from an English statute from 1351 that was also intended to limit the scope of treason. Even placing the interests of another nation ahead of those of the United States are not acts of treason under the Constitution.

Trump is a lying, racist, fascist, sexist, lunatic. Trump is the most disgusting human being I can imagine. He should not be president. He is probably not even sufficiently mentally competent to roll a joint.

But is the United States at war with Russia? No. So, cut it out. No treason. The predicate of treason is war. Trump has shamefully continued the appalling Obama drone war. He has authorized force in Yemen for some reason. There is already plenty of blood on Trump’s hands. Yet, unlike Bush and Obama, Trump hasn’t started a new war. Maybe he will but he hasn’t so far.

Imperialist, unnecessary wars like the ones fought in Libya and Iraq are close to the bottom of human morality and the last two presidents gleefully wallowed in this morass of blood. Trump has not yet done so.

Why get all excited about non-treason and ignore ongoing illegal war?

In 2011, the US military engaged in war without congressional approval. The Libya intervention ultimately destabilized 1/3 of Africa and killed thousands. Obama’s war was illegal under domestic law.

Trump hasn’t violated international law by waging aggressive war on false pretenses. That was Bush in Iraq.

Illegal, murderous war, destabilizing regions, killing, is worse than colluding with a foreign power when no one has died from that collusion. Obama and Bush have blood on their hands. Trump has some too. And he said stupid shit. I would like to have president who do not kill at will, as did the last three, including Trump.

I would like to live in a country with the rule of law for the most powerful as well as the weakest. I don’t. Trump is not why I don’t.

If you are on the receiving end of American imperialism, it’s not a technical issue or a close call about which is more evil, putting Russian interests ahead of American interests or starting an illegal war. The victims of terrorism in Mali, in Tunisia, in Egypt, of course, slaves in Libya, in Syria, in Iraq, in Afganistan and Yemen thanks to Bush and Obama — and Trump to a lesser degree.

Presidents betray the country for personal gain all the time

American presidents committing something like treason (arguably) is nothing new. Nixon sabotaged peace talks in Vietnam in 1968. Reagan must have made a deal with the Iranians to prevent the release of the American hostages in 1980. In both cases, a state of war or something like it existed, unlike the Trump-Russia scenario. Both Nixon and Reagan are more guilty of treason than Trump because they colluded with a belligerent at a time of war, or during a situation in which acts of war were occurring even if war had not been declared.

Carter offered Iran hundreds of millions in spare parts to release the hostages before the election. Iran rejected the deal and then, officially, released the hostages after Reagan took office in exchange for no payment of any kind. Then a few years later Iran Contra scandal proved that Reagan had in fact illegally sold arms to Iran. There is no plausible reason for Iran not to release the hostages before the 1980 election, to reject a good deal in favor of no deal. Then we see that Reagan had back channels to sell Iran weapons after all. Please explain this sequence of events without a dirty deal between Reagan and Iran in 1980, just like Nixon in 1968.

If Treason weren’t bad enough, Presidents also routinely take bribes.

Reagan wasn’t above some profiteering after leaving office, as in his Japan tour. Clinton’s profiteering is legendary. Obama has done his share. Bribe, kickback, whatever: Truman’s diary dated 24 April 1954 reads, “An honest public servant can’t become rich in politics.”

Further, CitiBank vetted Obama’s cabinet. On October 6, 2008, bank executive Michael Froman sent a spreadsheet to John Podesta. Podesta would later head your transition team. At the time, CitiGroup was effectively broke and yet by controlling the presidents (both Bush and Obama) they were re-capitalized at taxpayer expense. Why was the spreadsheet secret in October 2008? If there was nothing wrong with the staff of CitiGroup picking Obama’s cabinet, then why didn’t we find out about it until Wikileaks released the email? At the same time as Obama recapitalized CitiGroup and saved the bank from imminent collapse, the disparities between white and black income and wealth and the net worth of Black families collapsed by 40% according to a study by the Pew Trust. Shouldn’t Obama have worried more about the net worth of families struggling with underwater mortgages than with the net worth of Michael Froman and yourself? If Obama had not funded the big banks through TARP in 2009, would his net worth now be 60 million dollars?

All my enemies are American.

Trump may be Putin’s puppet but Obama and Bush were certainly the puppets of the big banks and did nothing to temper the desire for war and power of the American defense and intelligence establishments.

The American people do have enemies. However, none of the serious threats to the health, safety, and freedom of the American people are foreign, unless these foreign entities are subsidiaries of American power.

The CIA can listen to you at any time with fake off more and they do not need a warrant. Fake-off mode is scary. “Suppress LEDs to improve look of Fake-Off mode… Turn on or leave WiFi turned on in Fake-Off mode… Parse unencrypted audio collection… During initial development, a rough approximation of bit rates for different audio quality settings were made.”

Hello, Big Brother. Can you hear me?

The NSA has all your email. When the NSA director lied about this to Congress, nothing happened to him. Does anyone really think the Congress has oversight over the NSA and the CIA? Obviously, the reverse is true. A politician who says he wants to “splinter the CIA to the winds…” well, we all remember that one, right?

Where is the outrage at the erosion of constitutional liberty about fake-off and the NSA email scandal? The CIA owns the Washington Post indirectly through Jeff Bezos. That fact should make your blood run cold. The CIA has 80 billion a year to play with. That kind of money will buy you a lot of media.

You are being lied to. Your false education in school prepared your mind to accept the false current event narratives being thrown at you now.

Two: There is not now nor will there ever be any evidence that Russia was responsible for hacking the DNC servers in 2016.

When this “Russia hacked the election” story started in late 2016, it was hard to take the idea seriously. It still is pretty hard to not laugh at these absurd claims.

Originally, the charge was that Russia hacked the DNC server. Then there were some charges related to lying to the FBI, Michael Flynn, and being sleazy, Paul Manaford. Then we had the troll factory indictment. Now we have an indictment of Russian intelligence officials.

The troll factory indictments were based on a story already published in a Russian newspaper. For all the millions in their budget, the Mueller team basically read a single newspaper article and re-wrote it as an indictment. Plus, the cherry picking of the original examples of the work of the troll factory — the buff Bernie comic book and the Hillary as Satan meme — intentionally distorted the actual work of the troll factories, which had almost nothing to do with the 2016 election.

The more recent indictments are as unconvincing as the troll factory nonsense. If any of the Russian nationals were to appear in an American court on the charges in the indictments, the charges would be immediately dismissed. The FBI would not want to disclose their methods.

If the trail were to proceed, discovery would address the fact that the concept of “digital fingerprints” is flawed. The CIA intentionally uses Russian malware and disguises their tracks to look like Russians. Here is the link to the article on how to hide your tracks and look like the Russians. In these instructions for hiding your origins, we read “DO NOT leave dates/times such as compile timestamps, linker timestamps, build times, access times, etc. that correlate to general US core working hours (i.e. 8am-6pm Eastern time).” More of those in that same link.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in their joint statement on Russian hacking, said, “. . . are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

So, who are you going to believe, the DHS or your own eyes? There is no such thing as evidence “consistent with the methods” of the Russians because those same methods are consistent with the CIA.

In the FireEye report commissioned to prove Russian hacking, we read, “The second was that malware compile times from 2007 to 2014 corresponded to normal business hours in the UTC (+) 4 time zone, which includes major Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.” Right, just as the CIA instructed their hackers to do.

The FBI in their report “GRIZZLY STEPPE — Russian Malicious Cyber Activity” said, “The U.S. Government confirms that two different RIS actors participated in the intrusion into a U.S. political party. The first actor group, known as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 29, entered into the party’s systems in summer 2015, while the second, known as APT28, entered in spring 2016.” The systems were old Russia malware, as reported here.

Old, well-known Russian malware is just what the CIA would use. “The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.”

The recent indictment by the FBI and Mueller’s team changed nothing. There is no evidence that Russia had any substantial role in the 2016 election.

John Podesta’s Gmail password was “podesta1234.” He didn’t have two step verification on his account. He left his phone in a cab. His emails ended up online. No foreign spy agency necessary.

Three: Neither Russia nor Trump are fundmental problems in America.

The United States has at least 800 bases overseas in at least 70 countries. Sounds like an empire to me. We spend over 800 billion a year on the military and spy agencies.

Yet, life expectancy is declining for large sections of the country. US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world. Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy, and the “health gap” between the US and its peer countries continues to grow.

The United Nations finds 40 million people in extreme poverty in the United States. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD. The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The US comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries, and 18th amongst the top 21. In the OECD the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality. America is one of the worst countries in the developed world in terms of social mobility. Rather than being the land of opprotunity, unlike Vietnam, much of Europe and Korea, few kids from poor families do well in school. Income inequality is through the roof. In terms of racism, the statistical gaps between Whites and Blacks in all important areas are generally worse now than when Martin Luther King was shot.

Given all of this war, inequality, racism and declining health, who really gives a shit about Vladimir Putin?