Empire of Lies

I took a quick look at the EU list of Russian Disinformation I've now added to my sidebar and observed that much of the purported "disinformation" was actually true.

One example is the "biolabs in Ukraine."

The US government itself has admitted it operated 46 biological laboratories in Ukraine,  a fact that is usually called "disinformation" by supposed fact checkers (which are all likely run by western intelligence services).

The only question is what these laboratories were doing.  The US government claims they were studying "emerging diseases."  Russians claim they were used in the development of biological weapons.

We the people who are not granted access to "secret" government information do not know what the purpose of these laboratories actually was.  But it is very suspicious that the US was operating so many secret laboratories, funded by the Pentagon, in a disputed area (the "civil war" began in 2014), so close to Russia.  The US has a long documented past history of using biological weapons (Vietnam, Cuba, and Iraq) and supporting others who do (Israel).

Furthermore, much if not most research into infectious agents nowadays can be considered dual use (research that could be used for either defensive or offensive purposes).    In order to study what future pathogens might emerge, even more deadly pathogens are created.  This is exactly what we now know the US funded laboratory in Wuhan was doing.  They were doing Gain of Function research on Coronaviruses.  This research had been made illegal in the USA.

It is very reasonable to believe that this is the sort of thing that was being done in Ukraine.

Whenever you have dual use research, you cannot really deny that it is potentially offensive.

And it could be worse.  The secrecy (at first originally denying the existence of the labs, and not correcting the fact checkers) is very suspicious.

I think it would be reasonable for the US military not to operate secret laboratories in war zones, foreign countries, or for that matter, inside the USA.

As long as they do, we have good reasons to be suspicious, and to not consider claims that they had offensive use as debunked or disproven.

Poppies

Taliban's eradication of opium poppies is bad for poor Afghan farmers who have no other income.*  And it's bad for global opium addicts who switch to fentanyl which is far worse.  We need to legalize poppies and all other illegal drug producing plants and base drug policy on free treatment and society building rather than prohibition which only enables organized crime and profiteering intelligence services.  Many if not most drug issues are created by drug prohibition itself.

(*What's worse for the Afghans is the way the US sanctioned and seized Afghan assets after spending 20 years occupying the country.)

Free Will vs Determinism

First of all, it's a false dichotomy.

The assertion that "free will" is a subjective illusion (which I make) does not necessarily presume a "deterministic" universe.

There is a third possibility...and that is the universe is at least partly random.

It's too simplistic to say this lack-of-determinism comes from, say, the effects of distributed free wills.

We see lack-of-determinism as a fundamental feature of nature in quantum physics.

Things don't have a state, until they are measured.  That means no set of knowable variables about the universe is going to tell us the state of that thing.  All we can say about it, before measurement, is in terms of probabilities.

 Now suppose quantum effects ultimately affect decision making processes in the human brain.   That's hardly "freedom" if your decisions themselves are not being made by you but by random processes in your brain.

The ultimate thing is, there is no you.  You are a story you tell yourself, nothing more.  Your decisions are made by the sum of all things that have come together in you, your genes, and every single moment of your life.  That's what makes the decisions.  Then, you tell yourself a story about it after the fact, and later.  You say, "I did this because of that."  There may be some truth to it.  But it's just as story about You rather than the set of things which actually did it beforehand.

Cats

Some people ask, "Are cats social?"

Only a cat-hating person could ask such a question.  Cats have such a wide array of social skills, they domesticated us (or at best, it was mutual).

Cats did not have to be bred to be compatible with (some) people.  They just figured that out.

They clearly display signs of many if not most human emotions.   Very much like us, they can also hide their true emotions (though most often, they don't, they love to show their emotions much more than we do).

Cat society is a complex hybrid.  All cats are territorial, but females tend to stick together, males are engaged in endless territorial conquest or defense with other (especially male) cats.

Very much like humans, male cats spend much if not most of their waking time determining "who owns what."  With cats, these issues are ultimately solved by one on one fights.  Ultimately, one cat relents, at some level of being defeated.  Afterwards, first they will hide, then they will pretend no injury or pain (to the point of very serious injury which will cause extreme lethargy) to the best of their ability, since they never want to show weakness.  Their fur tends to hide the damage, and cats 'heal' fast, but sometimes too fast for the best result.

After some number of fights, boundaries may be well enough established that are no more big fights, just a few aggressive moves are all that's necessary.

Every cat will fight hardest for something, and a stronger cat will ultimately let some far flung and less desirable properties go without much fuss, so there ends up being something for everyone, up to a point.

There is never any 3rd party involvement.  Cats settle all disputes one on one.

It's less "civilized" in that it doesn't rely on anything like "civilization."  It's hard and could be construed as cruel by human standards, but cats rarely kill or harm other cats much, and there's usually something somewhere for every cat up to cat explosion population levels and then some.

It's a society that relies ultimately on a ubiquitous and strict form of one on one fighting to answer the ultimate question of who owns what, but few are killed or even hurt much.  Left to their own devices, without any animal control or predators, the number of cats will reach the total number cats "sustainable" and be around that depending on time of year (the hardest freeze may kill off a few, then there will be spring births, so new cats will always appear to replace old who generally disappear without a trace just before their jig is completely up).

Much human power ultimately relies on aggression as well, but in many different regimes--few of which are one on one fights, and it can and often does kill in the process and harm in numerous ways (for example, wars).  According to some (ie Steven Pinker) fewer fights and total deaths, but more singularly deadly fights, during the increase in complexity of human civilization (ie history).  Complex civilization has also produced mind boggling un-sustainability which is transforming the planet and already causing mass extinctions.

Assembling the Truth

The truth is in itself, and not in the thinking of any one person.

Sadly, this makes it devilishly hard to ferret out too.  The technique of relying on one good smart and honest person simply doesn't work.  That person is going to be wrong at least some of the time, if not most of the time.  And it's so limiting.

OTOH, I would think I'd pretty much summarily rule out following anyone who denies Anthropogenic Climate Change is one of the most serious threats faced by humanity as a whole.

And yet, it appears a number of sources I follow very respectfully on the War in Ukraine are either at or close to that.  This also upsets Roger Boyd, who is with me on ACC, and some geopolitics, but it looks like little else (so I score him 2/5 or something like that).

Likewise, I have little sympathy for those who defend Trump in almost any way.

(The only good argument about Trump is we might have avoided a confrontation with Russia during his term which might otherwise have happened under Hillary--as it materialized quickly under Biden and there does seem to be a difference between the Trump and Hillary (and Democrats mostly)  in their belligerence towards Russia.  But that's not only very limited data, it's speculation, and not fully founded either because he also did--after threatened with impeachment because he was not withholding weapons on principle but for political purposes--send weapons to Ukraine which Obama had not done--on principle, thereby taking the first next step after Obama...and we can assume all sorts of CIA/etc work in Ukraine was ongoing during his term as well, etc.  In the end, while I think this argument is ligitimate it is wrong, in every case, starting with Ukraine--it was simply not ready yet for the big push to re-take DPR and LPR and Crimea which was to begin in March 2022.  Most likely, the Empire simply rolled on under Trump as it would have rolled on under Hillary, and there is no reason to believe the future will be any different--under candidate with a chance of winning, or perhaps any at all.)

And any claim that his speech on January 6th was not incitement of an insurrection (actually even worse, a coup).

Any claim that this is unimportant because America is not a Democracy.  A republic is about as fine as humanity has gotten to at this point.  A republic is worth keeping under most circumstances, present ones included.

 Any claim that Trump's free speech rights were violated because of banning or censorship on social media.  (Given what Trump did on January 6th, in my view he abrogated any claim for protected speech.  But anyway, social media is inherently not bound to follow what may be within an individual's protected speech rights in society at large, because social media is a publisher and may rightfully sometimes need to be responsive to government censorship requests--though when this is unjustifiable or unfairly done it is worthy of being reported as a scandal as Taibi does.)

Any claim that COVID was not an actual pandemic, that masking or vaccinations were useless or even counterproductive.

Any claim that it is right and proper to restrict people's bodily freedom, the Rights to Privacy the Warren Court inferred as being demanded by the US Constitution.  So any prohibition of abortion is unacceptable in my view.

But also any absolute prohibition of sex change, or claim that this is somehow immoral or unnatural.  Some regulation and/or cultural sensitivity may be suitable for democratic settlement (eg bathrooms).

Any claim that there is something immoral about homosexuality, Drag Queens, or that bringing children to watch such presentations is grooming.

*****

It is very troubling to me that so many sources I regard as being close-to-factual about Vladimir Putin, Russia, the War in Ukraine, China, and the progressing World War to Save US Hegemony are so wrong, and often very wrong, about Trump, free speech rights, sexual issues, COVID, and often ACC as well.

It's almost as if the nut jobs on MSNBC were right about Putin pushing all these things in order to de-stablize the USA.  (With the qualification that some of the controlled opposition mix these things up a little).

(My take is it's not a grand Putin manipulation, but the natural alignment of people of views in ways that have as much to do with the path that led to present circumstances as much as anything.  The Russian Bolshevik government was the first to make open homosexuality legal.  Sadly Lenin didn't live long, and his successor had other ideas.  So today, Vladimir Putin holds obsolete ideas about the nature of sex and gender.  So people who also hold those views would tend, on average, to have a higher idea of him.  I regard Putin as one of the greatest world leaders of all time, not perfect, mainly for his work at pulling Russia back together from the brink.  His views of sex and gender are 'representative' of the Russian population as a whole.  That's sad, but I see it as a local issue.  Meanwhile, in Russia, there is National Healthcare and no restriction on abortion.  Much better than much of USA now.  Homosexuality is legal--just not promoting it to minors, but there is no restriction of discrimination either.  Sex changes are legal for adults.)

I'd prefer to look at the closer side of US manipulation.  The government of the USA (and especially through it's covert operations) literally weaponizes the (sometimes and in some places) greater sexual freedoms enjoyed by Americans.  Liberals and gays in enemy countries are obvious potential assets useful in things like Color Revolutions.  True, that's not the fault of the times and places that have greater sexual freedom.  But it's also an invitation for pushback at all levels.  In general, a person should not want to mix these things up.  I'd prefer not to have my organization supported by a foreign power, and especially, not by western intelligence services.  In doing such a thing, one is being used.

There are only a few things that stand above saving your Republic.  Those things are 1) avoiding nuclear holocaust, 2) surviving and/or solving global heating, and 3) Communism (Workers of the World Unite).

Goodness

I tweeted this today:

https://twitter.com/charlesp210/status/1688245407371939841?s=20

There is no "sin."  There is no "divine" to "sin" against.  Good people are those who do good for others and avoid doing harm to any.  There is no monopoly on people like that.  But generally, having direct unmediated feeling and thinking helps, so religion can be an obstacle.

Nordstream done in by "Anglo-Saxons" said Putin and ...

American in Russia John Helmer disputes Seymour Hersh's story on Nordstream, his methods, and his motivations.  He's sticking with the Nordstream story previously enunciated by Putin and others involving US, UK, and Poland, which Helmer believes Hersh is trying to cover for.  I'm not sure if this Helmer story is still active since I got the archive ink from somewhere else.   But I'm thinking I may prefer Helmer's version, and I also felt convinced by the version described by Moon Of Alabama.  US and NATO spent months in the area testing underwater equipment and operations.  The last US ship only left the area a few days in advance.  There were plenty of opportunities for US and Allies to do something like this....the only question is which ones.  Meanwhile with all the NATO presence it's unlikely Russia could ever do anything in that area without multiple levels of being caught.

I subscribe to Helmer's position that all of Hersh's anti-Russia and American Exceptionalist rhetoric is in stark contrast to the critical-of-US-goals he showed previously, and especially in Vietnam, and this is cause for concern.  Hersh simply goes all in for what his US source--which Helmer proves to be second tier--says and does not check out what Russia has produced on the subject, as if they don't count, like most of the western media.  However, I dispute Helmer where he claims Hersh wants this war on Russia.  My reading of Hersh is that he wants immediate negotiations.  However his source may share certain goals with his superiors that need to be met first.

Here's the actual story the Helmer recommends, which describes earlier provocative measures by Poland (which is about as close to the sites of Nordstream bombings as any other country).

Were the Pentagon Papers primarily CIA Whitewashing?

I am not sure about Ellsberg.  Was he one of the 20th century's greatest whistleblowers?  Or was he covering for the CIA?  Nowadays, I tend to believe the latter but am not sure.  Given that uncertainty, I'd have to start with a presumption of innocence for Ellsberg himself.  OTOH, I can freely shoot the message.

My first sense that something was amiss was attending a meeting featuring Ellsberg on video.  This was around the same time as the Snowden revelations and possibly had to do with them.  What struck me was that all the people whose ideologies I would describe as American Exceptionalist were the very biggest fans of Ellsworth.

I've never actually read the Pentagon Papers and perhaps I should at least skim it to be sure.  It disturbed me that AFAIK it said nothing about the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication.  That was only revealed later.

And then the way the Papers were published in the ultimate warmongering newspaper, The New York Times, has long given me pause.

Then subsequent to that I've discovered a large number of critics of Ellsberg with more solid evidence.  For example, Ronald Thomas West.  It still feels a bit fringy though.

According to these critics, what the Papers basically do is whitewash the CIA involvement in Vietnam, which was massive and central between 1954 and 1964 (and not that it stopped then).  The Papers shift the blame for the war to the White House and the Pentagon and whine that they were not listening to the CIA National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), which are the prominent feature of the Papers.  Meanwhile, the Papers don't say enough what the CIA itself was covertly doing, most often also in contradiction to the NIE

Curiously, the Pentagon Papers were released by Ellsberg right after the CIA was first getting intense scrutiny for it's ubiquitous global drug dealing.  So they also seem to be an effort to change the topic.  And Ellsberg has never confessed his own role in these drug dealing and other operations, which had been extensive.

Ellsberg was no lifelong peacenik.  In fact, he started as one of the very most hawkish, thinking that nukes would probably be the answer.  I suppose he could have changed in those regards however.

The Watergate Op

For a couple decades now, I've been convinced that the Watergate affair, which ultimately resulted in President Richard Nixon resigning, was not what the common legend says it is.

Sure enough, Nixon was paranoid and ordered these things, and tried to cover them up, I'm not arguing about that.  Nixon was no saint (despite being "the last New Deal President").

But I question how the whole thing unraveled and was discovered.  This sort of thing had gone on for a long time, but this time the President got caught.

I suppose, it could have just happened, for example with Butterfields'  (mistaken?*) admission that there was a White House taping system.

But what I've been seeing for some time makes it look like more than just a few mistakes or random events.   There are many many pieces here which look very much like this was really a second Presidential assassination by other means.

And there were many people, including the Plutocracy itself, that might have wanted to see Nixon removed.  For one thing, he had just created a plan for Medicare for All.  Nixon's political populism was not consistent with the new winds that were blowing towards Neoliberalism, which would be picked up starting with Jimmy Carter.

But now I know there were other things.  As with JFK firing Allen Dulles, Nixon had planned a completely new way of doing intelligence.  He planed a new central functionary that would bypass the CIA--and in fact he had already been handling the CIA differently.  He never met a CIA director without Kissinger by his side.  For his China initiatives, he deliberately bypassed both CIA and Pentagon.  A lot of people in the deep state were furious with him, as became obvious later.  That was why Kissinger's briefcase was pilfered.

Nixon knew a thing or two.  In fact, as Vice President under Eisenhower, he had been deeply involved in the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation.  People I follow also place him in interesting roles during the JFK assassination.

Knowing a thing or two might be useful in becoming President.  However, they might also insure that certain others might not want you to make it all the way through.

If ideas like these sound ungrounded, you should read the 10 post series on Watergate by RAXFX (RIP).

There was definitely more going on than in the usual Woodward and Bernstein epic.

(*Following RAZFX's story, it does not appear like an accidental admission at all, but was part of the plan to destroy Nixon, along with McCord's letter.  If not for those two things, Watergate would have been virtually a dead story after the first trial.  Butterfield's subsequent appointment to FAA happened just in time for them to ignore certain things about the crash of the airplane which killed E Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy Hunt, who was carrying $2M in hush money payments, and was found with a higher level of cyanide in her blood than ever before among plane crash victims.  It was judged to be 'Pilot Error' but there are a large number of strange facts about it.)