Even Twitter Off Days

Using algorithms instead of human censors, and (mostly) shadowbanning--nothing new--but to a more pervasive level than ever before, the social media formerly known as Twitter has become an alt-right brainwashing system.

Despite that, due to it's long history as the first truly argumentative Social Media, that service continues to host a number of anti-establishment voices of some merit which are not available elsewhere.

(However, many are moving to the competitive service Bluesky, which is getting better and better as a result.)

So while Maga Blue immediately left Twitter the moment the new owner began reversing some of the earlier bans (the wrong reason but perhaps the right move), the service formerly known as Twitter still has some unique value.

THUS I propose a partial boycott.  I propose making the Even days of the month (2,4,6,8, ...) into Twitter Off Days.

On those even days, I will use email (still my biggest thing), Bluesky, favorite blogs and Substacks, Patreon, Youtube, etc.  Everything except the service that used to be known as Twitter.

I suggest people apply the same principle to all of the services operated by the nazi oligarch, or others.

USAID

 I am utterly opposed to DOGE hacking government institutions, and shutting down US agencies created by Congress.  Not only is this Unconstitutional, it doesn't deal with the lives of the current employees and other people affected for no good reason.

USAID was created by an act of Congress in 1961, and that act specifically says there should be an agency to perform this work (not a few handpicked friends of the Secretary of State).

If President Trump is allowed to get away with this, where it will all end?  We know one thing for sure, from the moment he does get away with it, we no longer have a Republic, we have a naked Dictatorship.

If one wants to change the direction of the US government, and I concede I do, one must change the mission first, in Congress, then everything else follows.  If we don't change the mission, the work will go on somewhere else and with even less transparency.  It should well be noted that the kinds of work USAID (and it's sister public NGO, the NED) does was previously done by CIA on the black budget, and it could resume being done by CIA on the black budget.

So if the goal is to make the US stop trying to control the world, which mine is, that has to be taken head on, and not skirted around the edges by even "abolishing" individual agencies like USAID.  Such actions are reckless, unfair, and ultimately pointless.

Even if your goal were just saving money, this would not be the way to do it.

And, it's laughable that Elon Musk and his friend Mike Benz have described USAID as a "Marxist" operation.  If only it were, I'd be deeply supportive of it.  Such incredible spin and dishonesty mainly reveals these people cannot be trusted at all.  They're kooks as well as crooks, just like their boss President Trump.  Boy do we have a wild ride ahead.

*****

But all the same it irks me when USAID is described as a Humanitarian Agency, as if the US had a charity because of its bleeding heart.  Nearly the entire US media (including online) has gone to bat almost immediately to defend USAID in those sorts of terms, about how much "aid" it delivers (while not mentioning anything else).  Once again this makes the "conspiracy theory" of CIA controlling US media look all too real.

Let's get something straight here.

USAID is US SOFT POWER.

Wikipedia says:

 The goal of this agency was to counter Soviet Union influence during the Cold War and to advance US soft power through socioeconomic development.[13][14]

[14]  

Matanock, Aila M. (July 25, 2017). Electing Peace: From Civil Conflict to Political Participation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-10140-0. The mission of USAID had initially been to counter communism through development.

Soft power is generally a more cost effective means of opening up new regions to US financial exploitation (called Freedom and Democracy, of course) than hard power.  If you want to win hearts and minds, nothing works as well as food and medical assistance.

Cuba does it probably far more relative to the size of its economy as the US (and generally where the US doesn't do it at all).

US SOFT POWER pales in comparison to US HARD POWER

US waves a lot more Hot Power in the world than soft power.  Merely look at the military weapons sent to Ukraine since President Trump first authorized it.  I'm seeing a number of $65 Billion but that does not sound complete to me (I think it's about double that).

And Israel, which had generally been the Camp David Accords authorized $3.5B per year, but more recently it's been $21 Billion.

And even that probably pales in comparison with what the US spends on military operations.  The US has spent Trillions of Dollars on foreign military operations since 9/11/2001.  And it's continuing.

IS USAID GOOD OR BAD ?

I think it's fine a good that the US government spends money providing food and medicine to people in other countries, regardless of the political motivations of the US in doing so.  Whatever it spends in these ways pales in comparison to Hot Power, when it should probably be the other way around.  So I look at is as a drop in the bucket given back to the world, at least the food and medicine part.  I'm sure it primarily goes to people we want to curry favor with, for geopolitical power reasons, and others we less want to curry favor are damned, but at least we're doing something positive somewhere, and that's better than nothing.

(Um, but is is "medicine" or "research" the US is conduction.  Research may be fine, certain kinds perhaps not, but let's not consider it aid at all.)

I don't feel so sanguine about the media and other influence USAID provides.  It's clear that USAID has run many influence operations, funded media organizations around the world and especially in US conflict zones.  But I have yet to see the total numbers, no searches I've done have located the total numbers, and most often just debunking Musk on particular points.

The individual numbers can be pretty impressive though.  According to the Council on Foreign Relations, who would in no way enlarge the numbers (more likely find any way to minimize it--which is what they are doing here I believe, claiming these to be exceptional cases when in fact they are typical examples if not on the smaller side):

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other-times-usaid-pretended-to-be-an-intelligence-agency/

According to a US government website, USAID has given $3 Billion to Ukraine since 1992 to "support efforts to strengthen democracy and good governance, improve health care systems, and mitigate the effects of the conflict in the east.

When I read a line like "strengthen democracy and good government" I know what that means.

It's the same old Freedom and Democracy propaganda that enables US investors to buy up the world, which is called Neo-colonialism.

$3B to Ukraine of influence ops is still a drop in the bucket of USAID over that period.  (Victoria Nuland is shown on a video from a conference from around 2014 saying the US had given more than $5 Billion to Ukraine.)

It turned out, that was only a tiny down payment.

But let us remember that USAID isn't the only US soft power organization.  There is also NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, whose entire mission is the promotion of US style bankster imperialist "Freedom and Democracy."

Here's a relevant QUORA discussion on USAID and NED.  The original post (from someone who does a lot of work for USAID) gives a link (broken) to the "Foreign Aid Explorer" which would tell us where the USAID money goes.  Then. it has a link which supposedly tells us were NED funding goes, but it's just a FAQ for applying to NED which gives no such information.  This discussion appears to be from five years to a few months ago, and I wonder if defenders of Freedom and Democracy are following the standard disinfo playbook of providing links (or references etc) which they don't expect anyone to check out, or have things just changed (and when and why?)

Poster Lance Chambers (an elder with PhD, MA, 6500 Quora followers) thinks like me when he writes:

I remember when I lived in Tanzania that a host of US NGO’s would set up charities and schools to educate the young children. One of the big things they did in the schools was to teach English - understandable as it would help them to read which is an important attribute but why English - it was because they also offered a host of books written in English.

The problem wasn’t that they were helping them read but that the books in English were all in English. No books in Swahili so they could write in their native language which would have been very useful but also that many of the books were about how wonderful the US was, how rich they were, how much they should be honoured and respected for all the largess they were offering, how America was so wonderful, so supportive, so kind, so generous - I’m sure you have an idea of what these bodies were doing?

To me they were humiliating the Tanzanians so as to convince them that America would be their saviours and to convince them that America could do no wrong and that the people and government of Tanzania should follow the US in all things.

I admit that this was close to 60 years ago but I still see the US acting in the same way far too often to make me feel comfortable of Americas suggestions of proffered largess when it all ends up being little that is of use if anything at all.

As if to respond to my questions, a video from Grayzone appeared about 8 hours after I first posted it.

 

CIA favors lab leak theory

I've often heard the lab leak theory of COVID origins to be "crackpot" or "right wing."

But it has always seemed all too plausible to me, and possibly the best theory as well according to many articles I've read.  I've read the papers on the other side too and not found them convincing and I worry about conflicts of interest among relevant scientists (notably virologists) who may be driven to defend their kind of work with or without even realizing it.  I've written some posts and emails on this.

Now the CIA joins the DOE and the FBI in endorsing the Lab Leak theory as the most likely.  Insiders say this has been in the works for some time, it was not driven by having a new President.

But the backstory keeps getting elided.  US officially banned Gain of Function research into contagious viruses.  US officials, including Fauci, got a waiver on that ban to continue GOF research at Wuhan into coronaviruses.  Later the Trump administration relaxed oversight on Wuhan.  The perfect storm.  For a long time now we have known that BSL 2 labs were being used to conduct research at Wuhan that was banned for BSL 4 labs in USA.

This was not a "Chinese Military Project" to create bioweapons as some Senators allege.  It was several kinds of negligence, mostly driven by the US, coming together in the same time and place, just like a novel by Michael Crichton. 

At minimum, this catastrophe should be very cautionary.  Even if it were not a Lab Leak, all the ingredients were there--it very well could have been.

To put it simply: Certain kinds of research should not be done.

Yascha on California

 Journalist Yascha Levine has written some great essays (and he has a movie too, Pistachio Wars) about oligarchs in California.

This one starts with legendary California land baron Henry Miller.

This one exposes how unnatural Southern California is.

This one shows how the Resnick's built their pistachio business on the sanctioning of Iran (the previous major producer of pistachios) and therefore has a shared interest with Israel.

Why we feel poorer

In my first 4 years of life, my mother moved 4 times.  She had traveled to Southern California, and with a high school diploma and no particular experience (other than an attempt at Opera singing) she got secretarial jobs that paid the rent in some pretty cool apartments in places like Manhattan Beach.

No one could do that now.

My father retired from Sears Roebuck in Minneapolis, where he had been a buyer (a mid level management job), at 62 and bought a new home in Woodland Hills and sent his two kids to college on his Sears pension.

No one could do that now.

Now even back in those glorious (hah) days, I might point out that (1) we were the last on the block to have any kind of TV, and then, (2) we were the last on the block to have a color TV, and then (3) we were the last on the block to have a TV with remote control, etc.

What's happened in the last 60 years is that the "essentials" of life like rent and education and health care have gone up in price dramatically, and finding new jobs has become orders of magnitude more difficult.  The precariat has been created.

On the other hand, "discretionary" items like TV and computers have become dramatically cheaper for the amount of capabilities they have.

This all gets boiled down into official "inflation" numbers which disguise how much poorer many people are, if you look at how many hours they have, after paying for essentials, to pay for discretionary items.

Because these "inflation" numbers themselves are averages, even (given their way of downplaying essentials) they also paint a very incomplete picture.  Back in the 1960's-1980's there were huge price differentials in things like rents.  If you couldn't afford the rent in a pricey area, and were willing to drive a way (using cheap gas), there were much cheaper rents elsewhere.  Now, the rent is high everywhere.  There are no "cheap" options.  Just like there are no jobs that are easy for an inexperienced person lacking higher education to get, etc.

One other way that official inflation numbers (which are based on hedonic calculus...which of these two options would you prefer, etc) hide the way things have changed is that the definition of what is "acceptable" has changed.

Cars, homes, and many other things are generally much nicer right now than they were in the mid 20th century.  Cars are more powerful, comfortable, safer, etc., and last longer.  Houses are much bigger, have better insulation, and more efficient appliances.  (OTOH, the quality of wood seems to be going down.)

This means you "get" more so of course you have to "pay" more.  But generally speaking, you don't have a choice.  All homes are bigger, so the part of the market with small cheap homes doesn't give you very many choices.  The only small cheap homes are in poor neighborhoods with poor schools.  Etc.

There's simply no way to go back to nice middle class neighborhoods of 1,100 sq ft homes, $1000 new cars, etc.  They don't make 'em like that anymore.

It seems that everything has been rigged to keep ordinary people nailed to their grindstones in fear.  No one can just take off on a lark, like my mother, and establish a new home elsewhere on a dime.

Here's an essay on this topic by someone else.