Weaponized our corruption against us

We had rain all day yesterday. Today the Detroit paper said we got 1.9 inches at the airport, setting the record for the greatest single day rainfall in January. Adding in rain on Friday and much of the area got 2-4 inches. The park/floodplain behind my house is flooded (no danger to the house). When I got up yesterday the temp was 51F, quite warm for Detroit in January. At noon the temp had dropped to 37F. Overnight a lot of that standing water froze, so my senior friends didn’t venture out this morning.

If the temperature had started out 20 degrees colder yesterday we would have gotten an epic blizzard.



I read the transcript of another Gaslit Nation podcast, this one titled Human Sacrifice. Yeah, that sounds ominous. The hosts of the podcast are Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. It was released on January 8, which was between the assassination of the Iranian general and Iran’s retaliation of tossing missiles at military bases holding US soldiers.

Chalupa starts off by criticizing President Obama and the Iran Deal. The problem was that Obama and his team failed to prioritize the bigger threat, which was Vladimir Putin.

So, the nasty guy, with Putin’s help, stole the White House. And then ripped up the Iran Deal. That’s the result of not prioritizing threats.

Yes, Iran is a threat. And Soleimani was the architect of that threat. He worked to make Iran a regional power, from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea. He did so through directing proxies to get rid of those in his way. At this he was legendary, the most influential operative in the region in modern times. Chalupa lists several examples of his terrorism. Even so, Iran’s influence doesn’t work well outside the Middle East.

In contrast, Putin’s influence is highly successful outside of the region around Russia. Chalupa said:

When compared to Iran, Russia tends to be better at asymmetrical warfare with greater impact on Western States within their own borders, while the Kremlin weaponized our own corruption against us, propping up far-right groups and leaders, infiltrating useful idiots and complicit actors like the NRA. The Obama Administration, with the noble goal of trying to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, spread itself too thin with the Iran Deal, and in the process gave Syria up to Russia and Iran and gave Iraq up to Iran. The world needs to eradicate nuclear weapons but the reality is when you're juggling several crises, prioritize the one that faces an immediate danger to your country. In this case, asymmetrical warfare by the Kremlin was the immediate danger because it was so effective, as we've seen in the rise of Brexit and Trump.

Russia by the way is a nuclear power and did it need its nukes to successfully undermine us?

Obama had successfully contained ISIS, an extraordinarily difficult task. But Obama had missed that Russia was the bigger threat, one that killed more civilians in Syria than ISIS. And now that ISIS containment is being undone by Putin’s puppet.

Chalupa again:

Kremlin aggression had to be confronted at the core, which of course was very difficult, but it was right there out in the open. The aggressive disinformation campaigns, propping up far-right leaders in Europe, in the US, spreading its influence to Western capitals through oligarch proxies close to Putin, buying off politicians and other political influence. Through Western corruption, the UK and US let Putin in through the front door....

We have the rise of authoritarian populism and the Climate Crisis hitting us at once, because master strategists in asymmetrical warfare, Putin and Soleimani, have outsmarted the most powerful military on Earth.

I’m not convinced that “outsmarted” is the right word. Maybe it is, though I think “out corrupted” fits better.

The nasty guy has been impeached. He wasn’t impeached for what he did to the 2016 election, but for what he was planning to do in the 2020 election.

Cambridge Analytica was a company that in 2016 did voter manipulation on “an industrial scale.” The company collapsed and closed when *The Observer* showed they had misused 87 million Facebook profiles. But the people who ran the company were not punished, so the prospect of manipulation by them or their admirers in our next election is even worse. And CA was only a small part in a much bigger operation.

Chalupa played a clip from CBS of two unidentified people interviewing Barbara Slavin, director of the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative. In this clip Slavin discusses the winners and losers as the assassination of the Iranian general plays out.

Winners from this are ISIS, Al Qaeda, Sunni fundamentalists that hate Iran as well as the United States. Russia, China, which will become more powerful in the Middle East.

All this winning will make it untenable for American forces and diplomats to stay in Iraq and maybe even Syria.

Biggest losers are people of the Middle East, people of Iran, people of Iraq, people of Lebanon. They were beginning to push back against some of these policies and now the subject will be changed to the United States and what the United States has done.

Yes, a president in personal political trouble will use a war as a distraction. But no war is only a distraction. A war has terrible consequences.

When this podcast was recorded Iran had not yet tossed missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US military. Kendzior thought one way Iran might (and still might) retaliate is some sort of cyber attack. And if it does … In 2018 the nasty guy changed the Nuclear Posture Review so that nukes are an acceptable strike to a significant cyber attack. The nasty guy has been obsessed with nuclear weapons for 30 years. The only way to keep him from using them is remove him from office.

Chalupa said the nasty guy is the Reality Show President. He loves carnage. He’ll want a big season finale for his reality show. And Chalupa thinks that’s inevitably a nuclear weapon. And the adults in the room who might keep him from doing it? They’re either accomplices or they’re gone, either pushed out or jumped ship. There is a huge vacuum of power in this administration with so many position vacancies.

Kendzior adds:

The key to understanding Trump, is that, in his mind, this is a show. In his mind, people are disposable. In his mind, a geopolitical conflict is just an act of presentation, of performance. He does not understand the value of human life. He does not understand, I think, what other human beings are.

The discussion turns to John Bolton. I think he used to be National Security Advisor, but was fired, though he didn’t actually go away. The question is why is Bolton ready to testify now, when he refused to testify in front of the House? One reason is that testifying now means doing so before the GOP controlled Senate rather than the Dem controlled House. Another, says Chalupa, is Bolton testifying to clear the nasty guy’s name is in exchange for getting the war he always wanted.

Kendzior says with Bolton’s offer Pelosi should say, if you’re willing to testify come do it in front of the House under open inquiry. Alas, in spite of actual Articles of Impeachment it has been way too late to start holding the Trump Crime Family accountable. Bring the truth to light.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has brought religion to his job. He believes in the Rapture and using that as a guide to shape policy. The Rapture is a fundamentalist belief that when certain conditions align, including Israel being a thriving country, Jesus will return. Those judged to be suitable (fundamentalist) Christians will be taken up to Heaven as the rest of the world descends into a final war of good and evil. This prophecy doesn’t appear as such in the Bible. Maybe a century and a half ago the idea was cobbled together and supported through passages scattered through the Bible.

So in Pompeo’s thinking his job, as one of those suitable Christians, is to help events along to make the Rapture happen. To do that he wants to protect Israel from Iran. And a way to do that is force regime change in Iran.

Which means, Kendzior says, the nasty guy has surrounded himself with…

this sort of nexus of Evangelicals, and Zionists, and general Rapture fiends, and fatalists like Trump, people who just are cool with the apocalypse like no particular religious affiliation needed.

And Chalupa replies:

I mean, in this case we're talking about religion being used as it always has historically been, and on this level as a means to hold onto or gain more power. Its power at the center of this. This isn't about spirituality by any means, it's about power. And Soleimani and all those who are going to be the destroyed in the fallout of Soleimani's assassination, they are human sacrifices for Trump, and Trump has basically abused his power in part by creating human sacrifices. Look at all the lives he's destroyed, including the lives of innocent children and separating families on the border. Those are human sacrifices by Trump for his own power to please his base.

It is time to join the grassroots efforts to elect bold progressives, close down the Kremlin’s loopholes that weaponize our corruption against us, hold polluting social media giants like Facebook accountable, and getting truth out there. Join your community. Grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left.