With permission from CapitolHillCitizen.com

A friend posed a question — why so much focus on Israel when there are so many pressing crises around the world, like the Sudan, largely forgotten?

A worthy question, as dire straits expand from deadly political conflicts and authoritarian, corrupt governments to include climate impacts and crop failures.

Attention should be paid.

While US policies and actions have played undeniable roles in some disasters, like Libya and Somalia, Israel’s long occupation and brutal subjugation of Palestinians stands apart.

Here’s why.

No other country enjoys but a fraction of US patronage that Israel does. Yet it repays America by undermining our government and political processes. Could any other country get away with its lobbyists announcing a hundred million dollars and more to defeat critics in Congress — even offering $20 million to primary one and seeking, with alarming success, to nullify Americans’ 1st Amendment freedoms?

The latter is done with compliant federal and state legislators seeking to twist language and devise laws as draconian as they can get away with.

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) got that rolling. In 2017 he tried to pass fines up to a million dollars and prison sentences up to twenty years for advocating Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). Attempting to crush Americans exercising their First Amendment, at the behest of a foreign power, is a stark betrayal. Censure? Expulsion? Senator Chuck Schumer made Cardin chair of Foreign Relations when Senator Bob Menendez, his Israeli lobby largess second only to Biden’s, flamed out.

On July 24th Cardin sat behind Bibi during his address to a joint session of Congress, joining bought and paid for know-nothings who rose and genuflected with each lie. Good God, what kind of moral cretins have we elected?

In lockstep are billionaire bullies, Grand Inquisitors incarnate, threatening to wreck educations and careers of students with strong moral beacons many of them American Jews because their views differ from the Israeli government’s narratives. Privileged people with the influence extreme wealth conveys seeking to hamstring young people starting out. Sociopaths or psychopaths, these bullies? A wavy line.

One marvels as Biden Administration spokespersons freely shred their reputations, speaking out of both sides of their mouths. Likely auditioning for the bullies, or those who service them, credibility need not apply.

It is heartening to march in protest, to see American Jews of all ages getting along famously with Palestinians and protestors of all backgrounds. Do political chumps calling them anti-semitic realize how comical they appear?

Much of the world sees America’s claimed ideals in bizarre refraction, twisted to undermine international law and to continue carte blanche support of a violent eight-decade-long land theft underpinned by supremacist, racist beliefs. Now the world sees us as complicit, not just in slow motion ethnic cleansing, but an undeniable genocide in high gear.

A quick but-for test. Could Israel do this but for the US? The whole world knows that answer.

The British medical journal The Lancet recently estimated the real Palestinian death toll, considering those mashed under rubble and indirect deaths from destruction of medical facilities and public infrastructure, might exceed 186,000, or 8 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

How does one count when two million have been displaced, their homes destroyed, with weaponry including US bombs each packing a ton of powerful explosives? Past conflicts, The Lancet‘s study noted, have had indirect deaths ranging from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths, so the real toll could skyrocket.

UN-backed experts recently estimated over a half-million Palestinians face imminent starvation. Ethnic cleansing is well-underway in the West Bank, from violent settlers backed by IDF and Israeli police, and children again among the targets.

The Fourth Estate is supposed to push back on such mayhem. But one example after another shows much of the mainstream compromised, finding ways to avoid reporting the full horror. Here again, the big money figures in, easily manipulating increasingly skittish journalists as journalism job prospects diminish.

The IDF confirmed there was a “death before capture” Hannibal Directive on October 7. Hear much of that, or of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, almost all without trial, kept in dire conditions, including torture, before the October 7th attack? Or that Netanyahu earlier addressed the UN while showing a map of greater Israel absent Palestinian Territories? Was Hamas, always cultivated and indirectly supported by Israel to avoid negotiating a two-state solution, baited as Israel sought an excuse to drive out Palestinians?

While the US supplies the vast majority of Israel’s weapons, Israel has itself become a major arms purveyor, its infernal creations demonstrated on unarmed civilians in Gaza.

Israel has also become a major force moving parts of the world into a surveillance state, selling technology to authoritarians around the world seeking to spy on dissidents, political opponents and journalists. One client was Saudi Arabia, using Israeli tech to spy on associates of Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, before dismembering him. It’s not for nothing Israel cozies up to far right governments. They have common aims.

The more extreme those in the US Congress are, the more Israel seeks them out. AIPAC backed scores of Republican Congressmen and candidates who opposed certifying the 2020 Presidential Election. Yet that lobby isn’t required to register as a foreign agent. Why no foreign influence alarms from agencies tasked with government integrity?

As a guest of Israel in 1999, I broke bread with Moshe Katsav, Netanyahu’s outgoing Minister of Tourism. Katsav told me Palestinians are their “N-words,” sneering at the actual word. He later became President of Israel. One top Israeli official after another has expressed supremacist viewpoints, using terms like cancers and cockroaches, denigrating Palestinians, making them “the other,” as relentless as propaganda penned by Goebbels.

Any persons of color in Congress-looking at you Hakeem Jeffries, one of the largest recipients of Israeli lobby largess-taking money while ignoring galloping racism aren’t worth their salt.

If this entire essay were an abbreviated list, it would only scratch the surface. No matter how damped down the full picture is in the mainstream media, no matter how many Palestinian journalists Israel slaughters to stop those bearing witness to atrocities, no matter how many UN employees and their family members are murdered-over 366-the depravities escape Israel’s grasp.

Israel does its damnedest to pull America into the abyss as its protector, one with nothing to lose by staying the hellish course. But the US has everything to lose as it earns pariah status in the eyes of much of the world.

America’s “brand” is in tatters.

In a 1973 meeting Biden described as “one of the most consequential” of his life, Prime Minister Golda Meir told him the “Palestinian nation” did not exist any more than the “Palestinian people.” Moreover, she could not “forgive the Palestinians for forcing (Israelis) to kill their children.”

Did that give Biden pause, Meir’s telegraphing what was to come, what was already served up? A smorgasbord of horrid indignities. Violent land grabs by lunatics waving real estate deeds from God. Restricting calorie counts so children lived but did not flourish to their potential. Periodic lethal “mowing the lawn” to terrorize civilians. Snipers greeting non-violent protests in Gaza with competitions to blow apart knees, crippling even children and medical personnel rushing to attend them.

Does it give Biden pause now, when Israel’s long-held intentions are laid bare? Children no longer just on minimized calories but starved to death by design? Destruction of water supplies and cultivation of conditions of disease, even the polio specter rising?

Does he consider the karma payback for forcing upon his countrymen complicity with child murderers? With child torturers? What torture is greater than forced starvation and infliction of disease?

Perhaps denying antibiotics and anesthesia to orphaned children having shrapnel removed from shattered eyes, having limbs amputated? Shaken brains from repeated shock waves of massive bombs?

All the while arresting, torturing, and murdering the brave surgeons and medical personnel struggling to alleviate children’s suffering. We know not just from doctors but from IDF soldiers that small children are also targets. As noted, the damnable acts would exceed this space.

Golda gave Biden a glance at the systematic dehumanization of Palestinians early on.

One cannot help but wonder if cognitive dissonance between good Catholic Joe and his alter-ego, a self-proclaimed proud Zionist, hastened the disconnects in his mind. Even after Biden helped waltz the country into the disastrous invasion of Iraq, could he have imagined he’d finish his long public career acquiring the moniker Genocide Joe? That would crumble many of even the most carefully constructed self-images. Take note, Kamala Harris.

And what of damage to Americans’ self-images, as the horror seeps through the blood-brain barrier?

Nothing would delight Netanyahu more than Trump’s return, beholden again to Adelson cash.

No other country has enjoyed anywhere near the US patronage that Israel has. Yet it repays America by undermining our government and political processes. Could any other country get away with announcing a hundred million dollars and more to defeat critics in Congress and seeking, with alarming success, to nullify Americans’ 1st Amendment freedoms?”

In his intriguing book SpyFail, James Bamford, long our foremost investigative journalist on intelligence agencies, and a writer for The Nation, credibly revealed that a foreign power conducted espionage to benefit the 2016 Trump campaign. And that the foreign power was Israel. One would expect a thunderclap across Washington. Instead, crickets. Perhaps it roughed up too many pet media and political narratives. Even Hillary kept mum. That’s a fright.

When the International Criminal Court indictments, which included Hamas leaders as well as Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, came down, the press releases from a number of members of Congress, both parties, decried the “equivalence” of it and condemned the ICC. Politicians from Adam Schiff to Tim Scott used almost identical phrasing and talking points. AIPAC’s puppet strings are everywhere, as visible as those on the satirical puppets of the 2004 film Team America: World Police.

Institutional memory in Washington, both of Congress and of media, apparently undergoes periodic lobotomies.

In 2002, Netanyahu gave testimony to a Congressional committee that if we didn’t invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein would supply nukes to terrorists around the world. Bibi also predicted an invasion would bring a flowering of democracy throughout the region, including in Iran.

Anyone thinking the invasion of Iraq was a grand idea should look up studies by the Watson Institute at Brown University. They can only shock and awe, and dismay. Four or five million dead from direct and indirect impacts, by any measure a rambling holocaust. Not over. We’re saddled with a federal price tag of, according to the Watson Institute, over $8 trillion for post 9/11 wars, which continues to limit our national priorities.

How many in Congress who clamored for Bibi’s wisdom and counsel are aware of a speech he gave in 2008 to Bar Ilan University? As reported by the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, Bibi said, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” According to the newspaper account, Netanyahu then said that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

His speech continued a theme when Bibi, then the former Prime Minister, was asked right after the 9/11 attack what it meant for US-Israeli relations. As reported in The New York Times, Bibi’s first reply was “It’s very good.” A pal, his concern for his American benefactors always paramount.

Washington has become a company town. Our military/industrial complex—Eisenhower had originally added congressional—is our company. Those profiting, greased by America’s uniquely styled legalized bribery via campaign finance, were certainly capable of engineering the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, without Bibi’s assistance.

But in another but-for, it’s arguable it might not have happened without Bibi and his American cronies in high positions in the George W. Bush Defense Department, particularly Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith.

I recently spoke with Dennis Fritz, a retired Air Force command chief master sergeant and author of a remarkable book fresh off the press, Deadly Betrayal, The Truth About Why the United States Invaded Iraq.

Short and to the point, with Pentagon redactions visible as intriguing puzzles, it’s one of those books one wishes would be assigned reading for Congress. Fritz wrote it for two reasons. First, that military men and women who paid a high price, often a terrible price, for participating in the invasion, and their families, could understand how the tragedy came about, devoid of the lies they were told at the time. And two, to sound an alarm that the same interests that pushed that invasion now want the US to go to war with Iran.

Fritz says that Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith were all both neo-cons and Zionists. A double whammy. They were already planning on going to war before 9/11. Fritz’s past work included reviewing and declassifying relevant documents in the Pentagon, ironically in part for a book by Feith, who is described as the architect of the rationale for going to war, including talking points and making the case to convince George Bush. Fritz believes the primary interest of this trio was always first and foremost Israel’s agenda. In Fritz’s view that was prioritized over the best interests of the US. Fritz says these three were part of a long-range plan to take down Iraq, Syria and Iran, ultimately forcing Palestinians to settle solely on Israel’s terms.

Though more Americans died in Vietnam, medical intervention improved considerably by the Forever Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Consequently, of the over 100,000 who were maimed, many who otherwise would have died survived with terrible and lasting wounds that require ongoing care and staggering expense.

Fritz believes all of that sadness, and the horrific collateral damage to those in other countries, might have been avoided but for the zealots driving the war. Those are among the reasons Israel deserves so much more attention now, with urgency. For most, Forever Wars don’t work out that well. In the shorter term, are Americans really on board with genocide? Can an apartheid foreign power really purchase our government so cheaply?

Here’s a recent interview by author: https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/riyad-mansour.

With permission from Capitol Hill Citizen, CapitolHillCitizen.com

The opinions expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of TravelingBoy.com or LA Progressive.

The post Why Israel? appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A Divided Country

WARNING: Very political topic.Move on to the jokes if you’re not into this.

If you keep up with the news, I betcha you’re just as frustrated as I am. You think you know the truth. The evidence is as clear as day and yet you see people in the “other side” spewing nonsense with authority. You look for people on “your side” to exchange the latest gossip and avoid speaking about politics with the “other side” because it takes too much drama. So each of us sits on our “safe side” and drift further and further apart.

Which is more important — party loyalty or loyalty to country? It’s not the same thing. The winds of political ideology shift with the current party leadership and it takes an objective eye to see the truth. Fight for our country NOT for the party! If we all do that the chasm between us will narrow.

This is how I see America today. The democrats are in panic mode. Despite what people have been saying for years about Biden’s dementia, they are shocked that it’s true. Doesn’t that tell you how far removed they’ve been from reality? Doesn’t that tell you that the news media has been feeding them lies? Even among the stalwarts of media, many of the talking heads are fumbling whether they should continue the narrative. They’re like chickens without a head. Many prominent Democrats are asking Joe to step down but Jill and Hunter Biden are blocking the stampede. And even if Joe steps down, who will carry the Liberal flag? Will there be enough time to create a new narrative for their new hero to appeal to the swing voters? The decision needs to be done soon because the DNC (Democratic National Convention) comes (I think) at the end of the month. What a mess!

On the Republican side they’ve got huge rallies with die-hard Trumpers. Yet their enthusiasm is dampened by their fear of election fraud. All that anticipation is centered around a single individual with major character flaws. The status quo is at stake. Is he capable of uniting the country?

Whichever side wins, half of America will believe this will be the start of the end. America is a country divided even now. An earthquake has shaken the very foundation this nation was built on. What are we to do?

In times of uncertainty, I always look at the Bible. We may not know the details between points A and B but we know where it leads to. Interpretations may vary but the prophecies are never wrong. I’m not an expert in the end times so I listened to Pastor Chuck Swindoll’s exposition of Revelations (the final book of the Bible).

Revelation-Unveiling the End, Act 3: The Final Curtain

There will be a rapture. There will indeed be the battle of Armagedon where nations from all around the world will gather with their forces. The preparation and events leading to this confrontation will be carefully crafted but the actual slaughter will not last long.

Chuck came up with 4 conclusions:

• The absence of America is surprising – ie. America is not a prominent factor in the final battle.
• The presence of demonic activity is frightening
• The resurgence of interest in the Bible – there will be a hunger for the truth
• The influence of Christ is compelling

That’s a lot to unravel and it still left me with a question: So what are we to do in the meantime? I like Chuck’s suggestion:

“The best thing to do to prepare for the coming of Christ is to tell people about Christ. It becomes for them an escape … a rescue from the horrors that remain yet future.” — Chuck Swindoll

But this is just me. TGIF people!

“Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. They key is not to get stuck in it.” — Gabrielle Bernstein

“But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. “ — Isaiah 40:31

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” — Hebrews 10:23

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Maria of Norwalk, CA

Parting Shots

Thanks to Benny of Chicago

Thanks to Vincent of New Jersey

Thanks to Sharon of Connecticut

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

Thanks to Maling of New Manila, Philippines

Thanks to Drew of Anaheim, CA

I found these:

My good friend (and jokester) Terry and I came up with this.

SUBSCRIBE

The post Annoyances appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Observations of the Debate

WARNING: Political Topic. Move on to the jokes if you’re not interested.

The great debate between Biden and Trump is history. You’ll know whose predictions were accurate. And the media will have their analysts massaging the truth to their liking.

I dare not contribute to the confusion so I will just share a few observations about the event.

For me, this is a perfect example of why America is such a great country. To witness polar opposites verbally slug it out yet still being relatively civil to each other is impressive. Few countries have the forum nor the political stamina to stage this.

In the main stage was a battle of ideas, name-calling and lying. But the setting of the battleground itself was beautiful to behold. I think we should be conscious of the forces that try to divide us. That is the real enemy. America, despite all the craziness in today’s politics, is still an amazing country to live in.

But this is just me. TGIF people!

Raoul

” Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” — Romans 12:14

” The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” — Sun Tzu

“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles,” – Proverbs 24:17

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” — James Madison

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Parting Shots

Thanks to Benny of Chicago

Thanks to Maling of New Manila, Philippines

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

Thanks to Drew of Anaheim, CA

I found these:

My good friend (and jokester) Terry and I came up with this.

SUBSCRIBE

The post A Forgotten Beatitude appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The country holding captive  the birthplace of the religion I grew up with, Christianity, of the ethics that shaped me, has withered beyond redemption. It seems hell-bent on withering spirituality throughout the world.

In 1999, I was a guest of Israel, there to write on adventure travel. While traveling at night on camels across the Negev desert to a Bedouin-staffed luxury camp for tourists, news comes of Ehud Barak’s defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party. The guides, members of Bedouin tribes long displaced and discriminated against, were ecstatic. They chattered away on cell phones, hopeful for reforms that might improve their lives. That was not to be.

Shortly after that excitement, I’m in a luncheon in Jerusalem. I’m sitting next to Netanyahu’s outgoing Minister of Tourism, Moshe Katsav. No backwater, this cabinet post. For a time, Barak served simultaneously as both Prime Minister and Minister of Tourism. The post is not just central to bring in income but for propaganda, which is ladled thick on visiting journalists.

I asked Katsav why, instead of arguing with Jordan about which side of the river Christ was baptized on, the countries didn’t join together in joint tourism projects, enlarging the tourism pie.

Even better, I added, why not include the Palestinians? Give them skin in the game and a stake in stability?

Katsav stared at me like I’d just emerged from a twenty year coma.

“The Palestinians, (pause), they are our N-words!”

Katsav didn’t say “N-words”. He said the word. Drawn out, emphasized. No KKK Imperial Wizard could outdo his sneer.

Katsav assumed I’d grasp terms a white American would understand. No concern of insulting African-Americans any more than Palestinians. Or of offending me, someone there on their dime. Scales dropped from my eyes. The supremest racism underpinning Israeli society and policy winked at me.

An outlier? Katsav was later elected President.

At least he didn’t give the common scripted response, “It’s complicated”. It isn’t. It’s never been more complicated than people, even the non-god fearing, waving real estate deeds from God to steal what they coveted of what little Palestinians had left.

Another Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Ze’evi, appointed in 2001 by Ariel Sharon, remained a pal of Netanyahu. He described Palestinians working in Israel as a cancer that should be gotten rid of as if they were lice. He wanted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank by making life miserable for them. He envisioned Jordan as part of a Greater Israel.

A proponent of Israel’s strategy of assassinating “potential” terrorists, even calling for the death of Arafat, he later met that fate.

Current Likud Minister of Tourism Haim Katz has long pushed for Israeli colonization in the Gaza Strip and developing tourism in the occupied West Bank, via illegal settlers, measures preventing a Palestinian state. During a prior government post Katz obtained parliamentary immunity on charges of corruption.

Nice crowd, beckoning travelers to the Holy Land.

Spirituality that hasn’t withered runs deep in groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, with whom I had the pleasure of marching on Capitol Hill. Damned impressive, they hold up under despicable insults to their character and identity. As are Code Pink and anyone else who’ve let me string along demonstrating for a ceasefire. Revealing how deeply the fix is in, Nancy Pelosi called for FBI investigations to see if those calling for a ceasefire are doing Putin’s bidding. Honest, Nancy, Putin hasn’t called.

Israel has manipulated America, founded on the separation of church and state and on free expression, into creating a doom loop for our democracy. We do carte blanche funding of an apartheid foreign power which then purchases and threatens both our legislative and executive branches, Federal and state. Would it go over if any other foreign country’s minions publicly announced they’d spend a hundred million dollars to defeat a handful of US Representatives who opposed ethnic cleansing? If they offered bribes of 20 million dollars to people to primary those they want removed?

What about if their US legislative minions pushed to throw our First Amendment rights under the bus by threatening fines of a million dollars and prison sentences of twenty years if one advocates BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – for Israel’s violations of international law? That’s what “liberal” Maryland US Senator Ben Cardin tried to pull off in 2017. Chuck Schumer made Cardin head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after Senator Bob Menendez – Senator Mendacity – another Israeli favorite, crossed too many gold lines. Lately we have the spectacle of legislatures across the country twisting our language so that criticizing Israel and Zionist genocide is equated with anti-semitism. The irony of course is that there is no greater cause of anti-semitism throughout the world than Israel’s actions. No justification for anti-semitism, but impacts are there. As it is now for Americans before the shocked eyes of the world.

Legal pushback didn’t happen when people boycotted apartheid South Africa. The editorial page cry for our First Amendment rights would have been deafening if it were tried. Not loud now. That should terrify us.

The NY Times recently told reporters to mostly shutter the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “occupied territory,” “Palestine” and “refugee camps.”

Orwell looks wiser every day.

Better to support tourism to nations not cowed, that call out Israel’s war crimes and my own country’s tragic hypocrisy. The forced complicity of the parade of depravities we’ve seen is unforgettable and unforgivable. Yes, nothing justifies attacks on innocent civilians, even by the occupied against occupier, even in return for attacks continuously done on Palestinians, including in the West Bank. Should never have happened, even if past non-violent demonstrations were greeted by snipers. Just a line one can’t cross and maintain one’s moral high ground. But most Palestinians, including men, had nothing to do with it. The horrors of collective punishment, including on children, women and other innocents, did not begin after Oct. 7th, despite the illusions of PR machinery. It began with the systematic, long-haul dehumanization and annihilation of a culture and people. I can easily do without the country behind that, as well as its apologists and enablers. I guess that’s something of a personal boycott.

The post Israel’s Doom Loop for Our Democracy appeared first on Traveling Archive.

With events on the ground overtaking efforts to make sense of Ukraine, here’s a few sources I reach for to try and make sense of it. — Skip Kaltenheuser

Ukraine is a now a tilt-a-whirl that’s come loose. To understand it, I’m trying for inputs beyond the mainstream that’s had a dubious track record in the past, from WMD’s in Iraq to Russiagate. One shouldn’t ignore the mainstream, but one needs a wider angle lens.

Here are a few suggestions for circumventing journalism’s herd instinct. Start the day with the 7 am EST Links section at Naked Capitalism, which assembles a broad array varying viewpoints, often introducing new sources worth making a note of. Democracy Now! presents interviews worth a look, particularly good ones on Ukraine are in the Feb. 24th show: “Truly Appalling”: Russia Attacks Ukraine as Putin Ignores Diplomatic Pleas and Launches Invasion, 

Panic, Fear, Disbelief: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Prompt Humanitarian, Refugee Crisis and Yanis Varoufakis: Europe Must Stand with Ukraine, Condemn Putin & Roll Back NATO to Restore Peace.

We can doff our hats to Bill Clinton for yet another long-term impact he gifted us with, this one by his decision to expand NATO, eventually providing the pretense to Vladimir V. Putin for his attack, as described here. The Clinton-era blunder that set the stage for today’s Ukrainian crisis. Statecraft is a source worth monitoring for its analyses of how we land in such predicaments. Another is Consortium News, which pulls in solid expertise and avoids getting stuck on prior narratives. The Intercept often has interesting insights, such as How Putin’s Designs on Ukraine Reflect the “Dangerous Nostalgia” of a Lost Empire.

Any perspective by Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell, is worth grabbing, wherever you can find it. Same with Daniel Ellsberg, who probably knows more about government disinformation and near-fatal nuclear brinkmanship than anyone I know. Katrina Vanden Heuvel knows the territory, here’s her latest, Putin’s Invasion. One might also benefit from the offerings and analyses of the Committee of the Republic. Some of that group’s past offerings, zoomed during the pandemic, scrutinize the military/industrial/congressional complex, (Ike’s original draft included “congressional”). They are accessible on YouTube.

Of course every effort to divine what’s happening becomes more difficult given the speed of events. Today’s certainties are apt to collapse tomorrow. Best luck.

Part of the game we all play now is deciphering what goes on in Putin’s head, particularly as pressures build. He’s not a nice man – a poisoner, a killer of journalists, a kleptocrat without peer, a fantasist yearning for Russia’s old empire. I have always assumed our intelligence “services” must be fully aware of how much Putin and his cronies have looted from Russia, and where and how the fortunes are stashed. Finding ways to disseminate this information to the Russian people always seemed to me a proper way to undermine Putin’s leadership, once the need for that became as obvious, as it appears to be now.

It occurs to me that there might be some in the Kremlin who’d like to see Putin go away and would welcome his graft being fully outed. I also wonder if Putin’s hold on power was wobbling a bit behind the scenes. He wouldn’t be the first to try and shore up support at home with a war. Perhaps Putin is now cornered by his runaway train rhetoric. Who knows? I don’t. In any case, his reckless gambit in Ukraine might fizzle as Russia becomes a pariah state. Russian memories of the disasters wrought by Afghanistan may surface.

This item from a favorite site, Wall Street on Parade with Putin Thought of Everything – Except a Crash of 45 Percent on the Moscow Stock Exchange and Big Russian Companies Losing Half their Market Value) shows how fast things are already going south for Russia, A continuing pile-on of sanctions will likely keep Russia’s economy in free-fall. 

Suffering all around, Ukrainians, Russians and all those impacted, including by the looming refugee crisis. To think the world has to cope with this and sideline everything else that ought to be on the front burner, from the pandemic to nuclear disarmament to climate change, is a lousy state of affairs. According to The Daily Poster, the American Petroleum Institute is already offering its solution, drilling everywhere, and not sanctioning Russian oil and gas production. This amid predictions of a severe global fire season. Keep an eye open for all the grifters lining up to capitalize on our latest precarity, especially those who don’t think we squander enough of our treasure on our military. We slipped out of the Forever Wars, but continue to set spending records.

From a slightly simpler time, here’s a reprise of observations done after a couple weeks spent in Kyiv on a writing assignment. I was there back when Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, ran Ukraine. It includes an imbedded slideshow for a sense of Kyiv. I didn’t mind when Ukraine finally gave the wildly corrupt Viktor the bum’s rush in 2014, I just wish there’d been the patience to wait to do it via an election, which would have left no doubt as to the popular will to dump him. And given the corruption that continued after his departure, I wish I’d ended with The Who lyric, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.“

For more on the topic:

Kyiv Kaleidoscope: Viktor Yanukovych, We Hardly Knew Ye! But We Knew Enough, Good Riddance

The post Making Sense of the Ukraine Situation appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The Fork on the Road to the Midterms

WARNING: Move to the jokes if sensitive about political ideas.

I can’t believe I paid over $6 for a gallon of gas. I can’t believe the stock market continues to tank. I can’t believe this is still America.

The midterm election is just around the corner. Whether living conditions have improved or not since the last election is the normal gauge of whether one votes one way or another. In other words, if things got better since the last election, you re-elect the current establishment. If things got worse, you vote for the other guy. Simple, right? No. Not really.

Where we are today

It’s quite obvious that things have gotten worse — the sinking economy, the rising crime wave, the unabated influx of illegals, the surging homeless population, the one-sided judicial system … heck, we’re at the brink of a nuclear war with Russia. No matter how you lean in your political ideology, you’d need to be really wacko or in denial if you can’t admit this, right? There’s nothing irrefutable about my observations.

Pennsylvania is a microcosm of the rest of the 50 states. A well-funded buffoon who can’t speak and think logically is up against a celebrity doctor with limited means. It’s anyone’s guess who will win. How is that even possible? It’s because this is no ordinary election. Performance is not the gauge. Personality is. Ideology is.

HIM

“Anyone but HIM” is a mantra of many. Do you realize how illogically dangerous that notion is? One has to assume HE is the worse human being in the planet. After 2 years of irrational decisions by the OTHER GUY, how’s that turning out?

Are we talking about loyalty without question … even to the point of going down with the ship? If Putin says attack Ukraine, do we attack? Is it possible that the ideology of the party has changed? JFK would not recognize his own party today. Are our priorities in order? Do we build the foundations first or do we build the penthouse? If nuclear missiles are launched will there still be an environment to save? Will abortion still be an issue when we are scrambling to survive?

Einstein never really said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” but the logic is still true.

Indeed, this midterm election is a mirror that tells you what you’re really made of.

TGIF people!

Raoul

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Joanne of Connecticut.

Videos of the Week

Thanks to Jackie of Whittier, CA for this Halloween video of Topi the Corgi.

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA for this video of a prank by the Payless discount shoe store. Hear the professional opinions of the influencers. Sadly, Payless closed its 2,500 US stores shortly after and filed for bankruptcy in February 2019.

Parting Shots

Thanks to Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Thanks to Garie of Paranaque, Metro Manila

These I found

Cool Halloween DIY idea.

The post Bathroom Etiquette appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Are you mourning this year’s lack of Carnival’s spiritual cleanse, its satirical sorting of society’s woes to give us perspective? I am. And so I retreat now to past frolics. It’s hard to overstate how rotten the past year has been, in so many ways, or the dim prospects it left us, as we await whatever next escapes Pandora’s Box. The shakeups underpinned by carnivals around the world, with their myriad styles and cultural melting pot histories, would be damn welcome now. But as they’d be world class superspreaders, we must make do with echos, such as New Orleans refugees in my DC neighborhood paying homage by decorating their houses, and more robust statements throughout homes in New Orleans, where there’s no shortage of Mardi Gras artifacts and artisans.

Below is a past take that imparts a bit on the roots of Carnival, and reprises a musing on the potential of Washington, DC as a target-rich Carnival city. It ricochets off the 2012 election, which then seemed the heights of improbable political folly. Little did I know it was merely bedrock for the jaw-droppers to come. I thought of taking a stab at what an imaginary Washington Carnival would look like this year. My circuits quickly overloaded. But you can put your imagination to work. The 800-pound orange gorilla in the room, and his gang of grifters, presents a smorgasbord of choices. How to satirize a President so beyond the pale he ought to present a plausible Covid brain-fog defense? Picture him in a medieval plague mask. Or an executioner’s hood. Serial killers are where you find them. The real costs of breaking down government oversight in every way possible at the command of looney Koch-minded operatives. And the tragedy-tinged grand finale of the stop-the-steal con. Challenging, but I guarantee that when they are given the opportunity, Carnival satirists around the world will be skinning America alive, so perhaps we dodged a hail of Carnival bullets. The Biden Administration, already hamstringing itself by whittling down promised $2,000 relief/stimulus checks, looks ready to line up new themes. Ah, Joe. Designated OMB hitter Neera Tanden, a gift of the Clintons that keeps on giving, so deep in so many big-money pockets, emblematic of an influx of people into Washington willing to do anything, advocate anything, for money. And there is so much money. So much of it dark and well-laundered. The bundlers lining up at the revolving door. Legions of them as eager as Eric Holder to profitably insulate Wall Street from consequences as it sets the country up for another fall. Check out the art of Nancy Ohanian, for a wealth of float concepts.

Everything old is new again. Washington’s potential never runs dry. Tens of millions in dark money promoting Supreme Court Justices like Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, as if in a John Grisham plot. The collapsing pillars of media narratives that Putin dictates the results of multi-billion dollar elections. Relax, Putin remains a prime target as an underwear poisoner. Media scampering on to the QAnon freak show. And in Congress! Fascist Proud Boys as the Lost Boys. Guns, guns and guns. Missing foreign influence? Netanyahu and the Saudis, anyone? The world’s richest union buster unleashing his corporate opinion stylists on progressives like Bernie, undermining Medicare-for-All, even as the pandemic loomed. How will they pay for it? should be their epitaphs. The calculated media stovepipes thrashing about without their profitable Donald, the orange-hued goose who laid their golden eggs. The Kafkaesque plight of Julian Assange reaping the whirlwind after daring to expose the horrors of forever wars. And the tandem future of investigative journalism. National intelligence alumni morphing into cable media talking heads with undisclosed clients. Monopolies as far as the eye can see. Political correctness on crack. In newsrooms! The DNC and the Lincoln Project, bipartisan grifters together again. Mitch and Chuck. Nancy as a vendor — ice cream cake for the masses! Renegade cops as unaccountable Amokiteers. Compounding climate catastrophes. Oh, and our ham-handed handling of wild and free-roaming microbes. Bellwethers warning of other microbes to come knocking. So much to cleanse from our souls. Let your imaginations wonder, what Carnival might gift us when our Carnival world is finally released from pandemic hibernation. Let’s hope America can take a joke, because Carnival will be coming for us.

Read Skip Kaltenheuser’s Carnival Beckons: A Carnival Musing for 2013

The post Ode to Carnival Past and Future, Sadly Not Present. appeared first on Traveling Archive.