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Black PSYOP Part IV: Rudy Giuliani’s European OANN Adventure is the Black PSYOP’s Sixth Line of Operation

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Black PSYOP IV: Rudy Giuliani's European OANN Adventure 1*

Ken Vogel at The New York Times has reported that Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, is in Kyiv via Budapest. Vogel’s reporting clarifies Giuliani’s tweet from yesterday about a collaboration he is working on with One America News Network (OANN), which is a niche, far right news outlet.

From The New York Times:

Even as Democrats intensified their scrutiny this week of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s role in the pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been in Europe continuing his efforts to shift the focus to purported wrongdoing by President Trump’s political rivals.

Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, met in Budapest on Tuesday with a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who has become a key figure in the impeachment inquiry. He then traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday seeking to meet with other former Ukrainian prosecutors whose claims have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, according to people familiar with the effort.

The former prosecutors, who have faced allegations of corruption, all played some role in promoting claims about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a former United States ambassador to Ukraine and Ukrainians who disseminated damaging information about Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in 2016.

Mr. Giuliani is using the trip, which has not been previously reported, to help prepare more episodes of a documentary series for a conservative television outlet promoting his pro-Trump, anti-impeachment narrative. His latest moves to advance the theories propounded by the prosecutors amount to an audacious effort to give the president’s supporters new material to undercut the House impeachment proceedings and an eventual Senate trial.

The European trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series featuring Mr. Giuliani that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News, or OAN.

OANN has very little actual platform presence. It is not carried by most of the major cable providers and Nielsen doesn’t provide ratings for it. But that’s not the point of making and airing this documentary. The actual purpose of the documentary is to get it made so that it can be aired, in its entirety or in snippets, on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. This is the sixth line of operation in the domestic Black PSYOP to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop about what actually happened with Russia’s act of war against the US by interfering in the 2016 presidential election in order to blame Ukraine for conspiring with Secretary Clinton, her campaign, as well as the Director of the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Democratic National Committee, Vice President Biden, the mainstream media, and Alexandria Chalupa to steal the election from the President and to frame Russia for doing so. This is, of course, a lie. It is factually inaccurate. And it has been debunked repeatedly.

43% of Americans get their news from Facebook, 21% from YouTube, and 12% from Twitter. And 61% of those who get their news from Facebook are women and 62% of those who get their news from Facebook are white. That’s the primary target for the Black PSYOP’s sixth line of operation. The secondary targets are everyone they share it with and everyone who sees it once it is picked up and covered by mainstream news media outlets. Once OANN makes and broadcasts the video, the video in its entirety, as well as the soundbites edited for the most informational influence and effect, will be weaponized through Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to promote this misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop.

The real problem in trying to deal with this evolving Black PSYOP is that everyone keeps responding as if Walter Cronkite was still anchoring the nightly news. So the Black PSYOP is being conducted without actually discussing and understanding  how information, especially news as a type of information, is experienced by Americans in 2019 as opposed to 1974! The news media, the candidates, and their campaigns need to get their heads around this reality. And they need to come up with strategies for dealing with it, as well as with the Black PSYOP campaign and its various lines of operations that are exploiting it so that Americans aren’t so misinformed that they cannot determine what is and is not true, factual, and real.

Open thread!

* I have chosen this image because it is an inversion of the actual Psychological Operations Regimental Crest – the knight is facing the wrong way and the colors are black. I have done so to symbolize the inversion and misuse of psychological operations against Americans. Propagandizing American citizens by members of the government is illegal under The 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act.

The actual crest for the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment is a golden knight rampant to dexter (in profile and facing left) with two golden thunderbolt bladed swords crossed behind it surrounded by a laurel wreath. The motto is “Persuade, Change, Influence”. The crest is described as:

The laurel wreath symbolizes honor and achievement. The center device is adapted from the Psychological Operations collar insignia. The chess knight represents the ability to act obliquely and influence all types of warfare. The lightning bolt swords denote speed and the ability to strike anywhere. The silver gray, white and black represent the three types of Psychological Operations. White represents the overt processes, black is for the covert and gray for the hidden. The Insignia was authorized November 18, 1998.

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Meanwhile in Ukraine

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While everyone is focused on all the President’s, his political appointees’, his personal attorney’s, and the variety of post-Soviet state oligarchs’/post-Soviet state mobsters’, and various other riffraffs’ ongoing attempts to screw around with and screw over Ukraine until President Zelensky announces an investigation into the Bidens, which he’s not going to do, and Guiliani and the various post-Soviet state oligarchs/post-Soviet state mobsters he’s working with to shake down the Ukrainian natural gas industry, life actually goes on in Ukraine. And that life is one where part of Ukraine has been scarfed up by Vladimir Putin and another part has been invaded by Putin. And, as a result, Ukraine is at war with Russia in order to preserve its territorial integrity.

As a result of all of this, President Zelensky has learned some hard lessons in his short time in office. His views below are just one of those lessons.

I don’t trust anyone at all. I’ll tell you honestly. Politics is not an exact science. That’s why in school I loved mathematics. Everything in mathematics was clear to me. You can solve an equation with a variable, with one variable. But here it’s only variables, including the politicians in our country. I don’t know these people. I can’t understand what dough they’re made of. That’s why I think nobody can have any trust. Everybody just has their interests.

He also knows that at least for right now, he’s largely on his own despite the US’s international agreement obligation to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

“If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us,” he said. “I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo.”

Ukraine has just reached an unfortunate milestone, for lack of a better term.

Since the beginning of the fighting in the Donbass, human casualties from explosive objects amount to more than a thousand people. Mine killed 300 civilians, including 27 children. About it reports ArmyInform  with reference to management of ecological safety and mine action of the Ministry of Defense.

According to preliminary estimates, the area of ​​areas contaminated with mines and explosive objects is about 7 thousand square meters. km controlled areas and approximately 9 thousand square meters. km of occupied territories.

Infrastructures are in a critical condition because sometimes they cannot be accessed through shells and improvised explosives.

This is a humanitarian nightmare and is going to take decades to fix even if a ceasefire was put in place immediately and was quickly followed by the withdrawal of Russian and Russian proxy forces and the reestablishment of Ukrainian sovereignty over the occupied territories in Donbass.

This is the actual effects on the Ukrainian citizenry not only of the occupation and the war, but the mine fields:

Here’s more from Christopher Miller at Buzzfeed (emphasis mine):

When he’s not engaged in gun battles with Russian-led forces on Ukraine’s eastern front line, Stas, a scruffy 26-year-old soldier, likes to cozy up in his bunker and brush up on his English skills by watching Stephen Colbert and Saturday Night Live. He cracks up at Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of President Donald Trump.

Watching political satire on American TV — when he’s able to get a strong enough signal on the battlefield to access YouTube — is also how Stas learned that Trump had frozen $391 million in US security aid meant for the Ukrainian armed forces over the summer. The news made him angry. The fighting was hot at the time, and he and his fellow soldiers were stuck with mostly crappy, old gear.

“Look at this. It’s old and falling apart,” he complained of his Ukrainian government–issued bulletproof vest in accented English. It was barely stitched together and slouching on one side. “It’s a piece of shit.”

There’s one thing Stas and the soldiers in Ukraine’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade positioned in the village of Novooleksandrivka do have, which they say has helped them spot enemy soldiers who creep within grenade-throwing range of their trenches at night: a pair of US-made night vision sights.

The only problem? They don’t fit on the Ukrainian rifles.

He explained that “they would definitely be more effective if we had them on our rifles,” which is impossible without a special adapter. He demonstrated how he has to hold the sight in one hand, pick a target, lower the device from his eye, and try to remember where he was looking as he aims and fires his weapon. Despite all this, an extra pair or two would be good, he said.

He wondered: Would his brigade have gotten at least another sight if the security aid hadn’t been held up? If only Americans knew how much the equipment would help…

“Nobody in your country knows what’s happening here,” Stas continued, waving his arms in frustration. “They don’t know how we are fighting for our lives with almost nothing.”

Fought for more than five years in trenches cut through some of Europe’s most fertile farmland, Russia’s war in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas has killed around 14,000 people and brought under its control a chunk of a territory larger than the state of New Jersey. Yet — despite it being fought with $1.6 billion of US help in the form of military aid and training since 2014 — the war had largely been forgotten before it was catapulted into the headlines amid the House impeachment inquiry against Trump.
“While they were playing with our aid, I wonder, did they know we were dying out here?” asked Oleksandr, a sergeant in the 14th Mechanized Brigade who goes by the call sign “kuvyrok,” or “somersault.” As we crept through trenches outside the village of Krymske, 40 miles northwest of Stas’s position, careful to keep our heads down and out of Russian snipers’ sights, Oleksandr said at least two soldiers were killed at the position over the summer.

According to statistics from the Ukrainian military, at least 46 soldiers have been killed since July 18, when word spread throughout the Trump administration that the president had secretly frozen aid for Ukraine. Around 19 of those deaths came during the window of time in which the aid was delayed. While there’s no way of tying those deaths directly to the lack of new US aid at the front line, more than two dozen Ukrainian soldiers — located at four fighting positions, a tank base, and a military hospital — told me they were disappointed by the news. Their morale suffered, and they felt vulnerable and abandoned by their biggest supporter.

The soldiers, whom I met over the course of a week this month while traveling along the snaking 250-mile front line in eastern Ukraine, painted a clear picture of just how important US military assistance is for Ukraine in its war against Russia. The soldiers spoke on the condition that their surnames not be used for security reasons. In what many described as a David-and-Goliath-like fight, they shared several stories about how the US aid has helped level the battlefield and stop the larger and more powerful Russia from grabbing more of their land.

They also said that any aid freeze — even a temporary one — jeopardizes not only themselves but perhaps the very future of Ukraine.

There is much more at the link.

14,000 Ukrainians – Soldier and civilian alike – have been killed in Ukraine’s attempt to resist Russia’s incursion into Donbass. And to establish enough of a position of strength so that Ukrainian officials can negotiate a ceasefire and peace agreement that maintains Ukraine’s territorial integrity and gets Crimea back as well. That isn’t going to happen without the US backing it up. Which means it isn’t going to happen until, at least, January 2021 and despite the US’s international obligations to preserve Ukraine’s territorial integrity. What the US would need to do today is much harder than it would have been in 2014 and in 2021 any response will be that much harder than it would be today. And throughout it all Ukrainians are dying – Soldiers and civilians – because Putin has decided that he gets to draw the borders of eastern Europe wherever he likes. And that cannot be allowed to stand. However, because Ukraine has now been turned into another partisan issue, just as trade, Israel, healthcare, education, climate change, and so many other issues, as long as there is a Republican president and/or at least one chamber of Congress in Republican hands, stepping up and doing the right thing for Ukraine, as well as for the rest of our European and NATO partners is going to be a very heavy lift. Because it is going to be a partisan lift.

When you see the domestic news reporting on Ukraine, where Ukraine is simply a sort of funny sounding part of the horserace coverage of domestic American politics, keep in mind that the real focus here should be Ukraine; should be on the fact that Ukraine has been invaded and been occupied for going on five years; should be on the fact that the US has an actual international obligation to safeguard Ukraine’s territorial integrity; and that it isn’t just another partisan football so the talking heads on the news shows have something to stroke their chins about.

Open thread!

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Black PSYOP Part III: The Fifth Domestic Line of Operation is Now Operational

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On 25 October and 12 November I defined what a Black PSYOP is, how it differs from normal Psychological Operations, debunked the conspiracies, misinformation, and agitprop at the root of the Black PSYOP that the President and his surrogates are trying to perpetrate on the American people, and delineated the four lines of operations up to mid November. The President’s surrogates, specifically elected Republican officials like Senator Kennedy (R-LA), have now rolled out the fifth line of operation in this Black PSYOP.

This fifth line of operation is to launder the completely debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, through its elected and appointed officials, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election in the attempt to get Secretary Clinton elected by conspiring with Secretary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Obama administration, the DOJ’s National Security Division, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the FBI, the Director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, MI6 and other elements of British Intelligence, other allied intelligence services, and Alexandra Chalupa to subvert the election and prevent the President from being elected. And that Russia had nothing to do with trying to subvert the 2016 presidential election. Or, if Russia did, it was ineffective and no one in the President’s campaign, his businesses, or among his surrogates and supporters was involved in whatever it was Russia might or might not have been doing in 2016.

We know that this conspiracy theory and misinformation is NOT TRUE! IT IS A LIE! A fabrication of Russia’s leadership and intelligence services put out in an attempt to muddy the waters around what happened in the 2016 presidential election, further obscure Russia’s actions in and against Ukraine, make Ukraine the villain to justify the actions in and against Ukraine that Russia is trying to obscure, all so that Russia can get out from under the US sanctions against it. We know it’s a lie because last month US intelligence officials briefed members of the Senate and told them it was a lie and delineated its origins. We know it’s a lie because we have a transcript, posted by the Kremlin on the Kremlin’s outward facing English language website, of Putin making these claims in February 2017:

Second, as we all know, during the presidential campaign in the United States, the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral position in favour of one candidate. More than that, certain oligarchs, certainly with the approval of the political leadership, funded this candidate, or female candidate, to be more precise. Now they need to improve relations with the current administration, and using a conflict to do so is always a better, easier way to draw the incumbent administration into addressing Ukrainian problems and thus establish a dialogue.

We know it is a lie because of materials brought to light by Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation and the prosecutions that resulted from it, which clearly indicate that Paul Manafort was fed this information by his Russian handler, Konstantin Kilimnik, and was pushing it within the President’s campaign in 2016.

The fifth domestic line of operation of the Black PSYOP to remove the blame of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election from Russia and place it on Ukraine is to have presidential surrogates like Senator Kennedy (R-LA) go onto legitimate, mainstream news shows, such as the Sunday talk shows, and launder this misinformation and agitprop. The laundering of the information occurs once it’s been said on CNN, the three broadcast networks, and/or MSNBC. Then follow up reporting has been done on those networks about the claim, as well as in the major mainstream print and digital media. And even though this follow on reporting is all debunking, the misinformation and agitprop has been laundered through legitimate sources. Once that happens it is ready for weaponization on Facebook, Twitter, and the conservative digital and social media sites that Senator Kennedy and the other surrogates pushing the same conspiracy theory, misinformation, and agitprop were originally referencing as their sources. All that matters in this line of effort are the video clips of Senator Kennedy or other GOP elected and appointed officials above the CNN or MSNBC or broadcast network symbols looking into the camera and stating the agitprop. Once those exist they can and will be weaponized across social and digital media like Facebook and Twitter, as well as conservative social and digital media sites. And, of course, they’ll be picked up by Russia’s state media outlets like RT and Sputnik and spread to a whole different audience.

On average 2.3 million Americans watch the Sunday news talk shows on the three networks and Fox News Sunday. That’s not a lot. However, 43% of Americans get their news via Facebook. And among that 43%, 61% are women, and 62% are white. So if you can edit the footage of Senator Kennedy and other surrogates down to them just stating this conspiracy theory, misinformation, and agitprop on one of the Sunday news shows on NBC, ABC, CBS, and/or Fox News Sunday and put it out on Facebook, you’ve gone a long way to effectively weaponizing this misinformation and agitprop. From there it will get picked up and rebroadcast through a variety of different platforms and means. And, ultimately, the purpose isn’t to change anyone’s minds. It is to both reinforce the already held positions of the President’s supporters and to so confuse the actual, factual record of what happened in the 2016 presidential election that anyone who isn’t a political junkie or a committed political partisan just throws up their hands in disgust because it has been made impossible to tell the truth – that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to elect the President and ensure that Secretary Clinton would not and could not be elected – from the lie – that it was really Ukraine who interfered in the 2016 election by conspiring with Secretary Clinton and others to try to prevent the President from being elected. The point of this line of operation is to make it so that since nothing can be clearly demonstrated to be true, then anything and everything is possible.

It really doesn’t matter if Senator Kennedy (R-LA) believes the lies he’s peddling or if he knows that it is conspiracy theories, misinformation, and agitprop. I think he knows it is bullshit and the tell is his asserting that he never got the briefing that senior US intelligence officials provided to US senators last month. If he didn’t get the briefing then he really has no official information to rebut the less than reputable sources he’s citing. By being purposefully uninformed, by not taking the briefing, he’s able to say he doesn’t know which is true.

We have reached the point where elected US governmental officials are attempting to propagandize American citizens for partisan political purposes. It is illegal for government officials to propagandize Americans, though I highly doubt anything will be done and anyone will be held to account. But that is where we’re at. The real question has to be why Senator Kennedy has decided he needs to do this. Is it just fear of mean presidential tweet? Is it fear of being primaried or being voted out of office? Or is it fear of something else? Until or unless we get answers to those questions the only thing we can be certain of is that Senator Kennedy (R-LA) is promoting Russian misinformation and agitprop, which has been debunked by the US Intelligence Community.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread.

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DisOrder & UnDiscipline: An Out of Control E7, an Out of Control Fox & Friends Weekend Loud Mouth, and an Out of Order Chain of Command

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The Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, has accepted being terminated (no one told me you could ignore that sort of thing, but what do I know…). His resignation letter is below.

At this point it is unclear what actually has transpired with Secretary Spencer’s termination. The initial reporting was that he’d made an end run around Secretary of Defense Esper, which led Secretary Esper to ask the President to fire him. In this recounting of events, Secretary Spencer is accused of going to the President and ensuring him that if the President let the Naval Special Warfare review board convened by Rear Admiral (RADM) Green, commanding admiral of Naval Special Warfare, play out, then Secretary Spencer would ensure that Eddie Gallagher would retire shortly at the rank of E7, as a member of the SEAL community/with his trident, and with his full benefits.

All of this occurred after several days of reporting that Secretary Spencer and RADM Green had made it clear that if the review process regarding Gallagher remaining a SEAL, as well as three officers in his chain of command at the time of the crimes he’s alleged to have committed, was not allowed to play out, then they’d both resign. This was quickly followed by Secretary Spencer stating he’d never made this ultimatum. So if you’re confused, that isn’t surprising. Until the all too predictable leaks occur over the next several days to fill out the narrative, we won’t really know how this all went down.

We do, however, know that a major problem here is that the President is, as usual, not listening to the people he actually hires and/or promotes into the positions to advise him on issues and manage those issues for him. This leaves the President susceptible to influence by those with their own agendas. In this case Gallagher himself, as well as weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth. Hegseth hosted Gallagher this morning on the Sunday weekend edition of A Blonde with Two Boobs on a Sofa, D/B/A Fox & Friends Weekend. Hegseth honorably served in the US Army National Guard for 11 years, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, earned the rank of major (O4), and has basically been influencing the President’s views on the US military and the VA from both his weekend perch at Fox, in private meetings, and on calls with the President on the President’s unsecured cell phone (Estonia, if you’re listening, and we know you are…) since the President began his campaign. During his appearance with Hegseth this morning, Gallagher publicly went after his chain of command, especially RADM Green, accusing him of being derelict in his duty by trying to suborn the clear orders and guidance of the President, as Commander in Chief of the US military, regarding Gallagher’s case.

I cannot express not only how irregular what I’ve just recounted is, but how BATSHIT FUCKING INSANE it is as well! Serving US military personnel, and to a lesser extent DOD and the Service civilians (civil servants) do not speak to and/or engage with the news media unless it has been approved by the Public Affairs Officer at their command. And they certainly don’t go on a cable news talk show program and publicly accuse their commanding officers of being derelict in their duty and insubordinate. If you were wondering if Gallagher was a disciplinary problem waiting to happen and a real impediment to good order and discipline, wonder no more. What he did this morning should dispel any doubt. And if you were Gallagher and trying to show the review board and the commanding admiral that you weren’t either or both of these things, going on Fox & Friends Weekend and making these statements is a really stupid way to demonstrate that you’re not a problem child and a shitbird.

Even before Gallagher made himself the poster boy for an out of control culture within the SEAL and Naval Special Warfare community, Rear Admiral Green had already begun a commander’s strategic initiative to try to understand the problems that have developed within the Naval Special Warfare community’s culture and develop specific ways and means to address and correct them. His initiative is inline with those of GEN Clarke, the Commanding General of US Special Operations Command, who has instituted a similar strategic review. GEN Clarke, as well as RADM Green and GEN Clarke’s other subordinates at the Army, Air Force, and Marine special operations commands are rightly concerned that the corrosive nature of war, especially a war in it’s 18th year, that is poorly defined at the strategic level, and that is overly reliant on Special Operations at the tactical and operational levels, has done major harm to America’s Special Operations Forces. And the effects of the corrosion that this ongoing war has caused on US Special Operations culture and those within that culture needs to be assessed, analyzed, and understood so that corrective measures can be developed and put in place.

What we’ve seen with the way Gallagher behaves, obviously empowered because he feels that his advocates like Hegseth have the President’s ear and, therefore, the President has his back, is a very public example of the cultural corrosion that GEN Clarke, RADM Green, and their peers in the Special Operations community are concerned with. Just for his actions today, Gallagher should be facing an Article 15 hearing, popularly known as a captain’s or admiral’s mast, first thing tomorrow to answer for his public insubordination. What he did today on Fox & Friends should make whether he keeps his trident the least of his worries.

At this point, however,  I have no idea what is going to happen. RADM Green, GEN Clarke, ADM Gilday the Chief of Naval Operations, GEN Milley the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary Esper, and RADM (ret) Braithwaite, the announced nominee to be the next Secretary of the Navy all know by now they have both a good order and discipline problem and that the public face of that problem’s name is Gallagher, who thinks he’s untouchable. The President’s undue command interference in Gallagher’s trial and the post conviction handling of him as a personnel matter, as well as several other military prosecutions and disciplinary matters all involving accusations of or convictions for war crimes, has created a good order and discipline problem within the ranks. Leadership knows that if they don’t make an example of Gallagher, then any Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine who gets in trouble and can get to Hegseth or anyone else who has the President’s ear, has the ability to short circuit the military justice system. And unless that notion is quickly disabused, then good order and discipline is going to become nothing more than a hollow slogan. And this problem is as dangerous as the message the President’s interference in military justice for Gallagher and others sends both our allies and adversaries about the behavior that will be tolerated by the US military because it will be tolerated by the President of the United States. That makes our allies uncomfortable and provides aid and comfort to our adversaries by giving them seeming approval to conduct war however they like, regardless of the Law of Armed Conflict, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Rules of Engagement for any specific operation.

Open thread!

Full disclosure: I served as a Senior Special Operations Fellow at SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University from May through August 2015.

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Breaking: Secretary Pompeo’s Weekend Plans Have Just Been Interrupted

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The Secretary of Swagger’s weekend is off to a terrible, horrible, no good very bad start!

Here’s the 100 page pdf with all State Department records that were released under the FOIA order earlier today.

State-Department-Records-of-Giuliani-and-Ukraine

I’m not sure that even the Koch funding network is going to be able to salvage Secretary Pompeo’s political future.

It’s going to be a busy news weekend, so remember to stay hydrated!

Open thread!

 

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Some Thoughts On the Campaign Before Tonight’s Debate

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Earlier today Norm Ornstein published a really thoughtful piece in The Atlantic about what the candidates should actually be asked at tonight’s debate. I highly recommend you all take a few minutes and read it. Full disclosure: I know Norm, he’s a friend and senior mentor, and he occasionally tweets out my posts here to his very large social media following.

However, I want to take a different direction in discussing the campaign, which includes the debates, before tonight’s debate in Atlanta. The Democratic candidates, every single one of them, whether they know it or not, recognize it or not, or want to recognize it at all, are not involved in a normal or traditional campaign cycle, nor in a normal or traditional presidential election year. The 2020 US election – from the presidential election to the senatorial and congressional elections to the state gubernatorial and legislative elections to local elections  – are all being contested within an information and political war that has expanded from an unconventional Russian hybrid active measures operation to a largely non-violent and non-kinetic world war. This is the reality for the United States and Americans as the Democratic presidential primary grinds on towards the first election and caucus, as candidates register to run before state filing deadlines, and as people sign up to volunteer for campaigns or to work as election officials.

The Democratic presidential primary candidates, as well as every candidate regardless of party up and down the ballot, are now enmeshed in a war. And because it is a political war – politics including other means to use the Clausewitzian formulation- that largely relies on diplomatic, information, economic, intelligence, and legal warfare while downplaying the use of military power. It is a war that is going largely unremarked and largely uncommented on. The war has multiple fronts and not all are in the US. Brexit is one front and the now sequestered counterintelligence report on Russian financing, support, and interference in Brexit, by order of the Prime Minister and/or his senior staff, is a Damoclean sword hanging over the upcoming British elections. Russia’s ongoing low intensity kinetic, information, and political warfare operations in Ukraine is another front. As are Russia’s similar operations in Syria and Libya. The PRC’s Belt and Road initiative is a diplomatic, information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation, as is their information, intelligence, and economic warfare operation against the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is part of this new world war. The President’s ongoing unearned fulfillment of items on Bibi Netanyahu’s wishlist is another front.

The US front, however, has one very specific center of gravity: the President and the Republican Party. Or, perhaps, more accurately stated, voting the President out of office in the 2020 election, holding the majority in the House, flipping the Senate majority, maintaining the state houses and legislatures currently in Democratic hands, and flipping as many as possible is the strategic objective of the 2020 elections. That’s it. Everything else, from revising how health care is funded and delivered to how college is paid for to fixing the tax code to repairing our relations with our allies and partners to seriously addressing climate change to shoring up the aging post World War II and post Cold War global system, are all, at the Federal level, dependent on limiting the President to one term, maintaining the majority in the House, and flipping the majority in the Senate.

All of the sturm and drang about how to fix health care and health insurance in the US, rebalancing the powers between the branches of government, rebalancing the Federal courts, repairing the tax code after decades of abusive revisions in pursuit of validating economically bankrupt theories, repairing our relationships with our allies and partners, seriously addressing climate change, and shoring up the global system WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF THE PRESIDENT IS LIMITED TO ONE TERM, IF THE DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY IS MAINTAINED IN THE HOUSE, and IF THE DEMOCRATS FLIP THE MAJORITY IN THE SENATE! 

It is absolutely wonderful to have a talented, diverse field of candidates who demonstrate the depth and breadth of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition that makes up the Democratic Party and spans from the center to the left of center. And in another time and another America, debating the minutiae of various plans, proposals, potential policies, and the strategies to achieve them would be a political junky’s dream. Unfortunately we DO NOT live in that time, nor do we live in that America. We are in an America at war. A war that is not formally declared, that our President, his administration, his allies in Congress and at the state levels of government, his surrogates, and his media supporters at Fox News, Sinclair, talk radio, and conservative digital news and social media have no interest in recognizing, let alone combatting. Our self governing democratic-republic is on the knife’s edge. We are in murabashi – facing our opponent across the log bridge over a deep ravine. We cannot retreat without being cut down, we cannot go to the right or left or we fall to our death, the only way out is through one’s opponent and across the bridge to safety.

The focus of the Democratic candidates and their campaigns needs to be on the reality of this existential threat. If the news media, and the debate moderators drawn from within its ranks, can’t get their heads around it and want to focus on the minutiae between various candidates plans and proposals because they are following the professional wrestling concept of controversy creates cash, ie people tune in to see a fight, then the candidates have a political obligation to bring every answer back to this reality: nothing, not a damn thing will be done on any of these issues until and unless the President is limited to one term, the House majority is maintained, and the Senate majority is flipped. Everything else is a distraction.

Elections with incumbent presidents standing for reelection are always referendums on the incumbent. The Democratic candidates and their campaigns need to adjust and focus on this reality. It is perfectly fine to state one has a plan or a proposal or a strategy for fixing anything and everything that ails the US and Americans, but it needs to be focused through the lens of it only happens if we elect a Democratic president, reelect a Democratic House majority, and elect a Democratic Senate majority in 2020. That is the real strategic objective of the 2020 election. Not health care reform, not tax revisions, not how to fund college educations, pay for child care, repair our alliances and partnerships, shore up the global system, take serious measures regarding climate change, and/or dozens of other too long neglected issues. Those are all lines of effort to be undertaken once the strategic objective has been achieved. But unless the strategic objective has been achieved those are just nice ideas that will never ever be attempted, let alone accomplished. The various proposals, plans, policies, and strategies are just good ideas presented by a dozen or so good idea fairies with no hope of ever even being seriously considered if the President is elected to a second term and if Senator McConnell maintains his majority in the Senate.

Some Thoughts On the Campaign Before Tonight's Debate

Open thread!

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In Non-Impeachment News, the President Has, Apparently, Shifted the Republic of Korea Into an Alliance With the People’s Republic of China

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Faced with the President’s demand that the Republic of Korea (ROK) increase their cost sharing of the basing and sustainment of US military and civilian personnel in the Republic of Korea to $5 billion, the ROK’s leadership was not amused and very concerned. Especially, as this would mean not just a four to five time increase, but that the ROK would be covering the entire cost, rather than sharing it. Earlier today, things took a turn for the worst.

The United States broke off talks with South Korea on Tuesday over how to share the cost of the two nations’ military alliance, injecting fresh tension into the relationship over Washington’s demands that Seoul pay sharply more.

President Trump has demanded South Korea raise fivefold its contribution to cover the cost of stationing 28,500 U.S. troops in the country, asking for nearly $5 billion, officials on both sides said. But that demand has triggered anger from Korean lawmakers and sparked concerns that Trump may decide to reduce the U.S. troop presence in the Korean Peninsula if talks break down.

The top U.S. negotiator, James DeHart, said the U.S. side decided to cut short the negotiations on Tuesday morning, the second of two days of planned talks. In a rare public show of disunity between the allies, he blamed South Korea for making proposals that “were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing.”

“As a result we cut short our participation in the talks today in order to give the Korea side time to reconsider,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to resuming our negotiations when the Korean side is ready to work on the basis of partnership, on the basis of mutual trust.”

This year, South Korea agreed to pay about $890 million toward the cost of stationing U.S. troops in the country, a little more than 40 percent of the day-to-day expenses. It also provides land for bases rent-free, paid more than 90 percent of the $10.7 billion cost of moving the main U.S. base out of Seoul, and buys significant amounts of U.S. military equipment.

But Trump insists that South Korea, as a “very wealthy nation,” needs to pay more. His demand for up to $5 billion would imply South Korea was effectively not only being asked to cover local costs but also the entire wage bill for the U.S. troops.

This genius move of walking out on a negotiation, which is not taught as part of how to conduct a negotiation to any career US government officials, such as Mr. DeHart who is a career foreign service officer, is a hallmark of the President’s understanding of how to conduct negotiations. Specifically, make an outrageous demand, posture and preen, throw a fit at the negotiations and walk out, then wait for the other party to come back and grovel for a deal. The Republic of Korea is not going to play the President’s game.
Here’s the text from Yahoo News:

The defense ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in northeast Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s longstanding alliances in the region are fraying.

Mission accomplished!

Open thread!

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Breaking: Shooting at Duncan, Oklahoma Wal-Mart

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There has been a shooting at the Wal-Mart in Duncan, Oklahoma.

There aren’t a lot of details available. Duncan is about 90 minutes south of Oklahoma City. The local police department doesn’t appear to have a Twitter account and the county sheriff’s office’s Twitter account is secured and not open to the public. The Duncan Banner, the local newspaper, has most of the available details:

Duncan Police Department have confirmed the suspect in this morning’s Walmart shooting is dead. It is confirmed three are dead, including the suspect.

District Attorney Jason Hicks is on the scene. He has confirmed the scene is contained and this is not an active shooter situation anymore.

The Duncan Banner is meeting with DPD in 15 to 20 minutes for a media update.

—

At approximately 9:54 a.m. calls on the police scanner indicated a shooting at Walmart with three down and suspect still at large. The suspect, according to DPD, is now dead.

Red River Tech is on lock down. Duncan Public Schools is on lock down as well. According to Tom Deighan with Duncan Public Schools, schools are on lockdown and school will continue as normal inside. The district says parents should not try to pick up their child at this time. Children will not be released because of the lockdown protocol.

It is unclear at this time how severe the injuries of the victims are. The Banner will update more as information becomes available. Please use caution when traveling in this area and be aware of law enforcement as they work to secure the scene.

The shooting has made the national cable news, which is how I heard about it, but there doesn’t appear to be video or even large scale local TV news coverage because of where Duncan is. As is almost always the case with these types of events, information is going to come out in fits and starts and will likely be adjusted and revised as new, better, and more accurate information becomes available.

Open thread!

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The Opening Statement of David Holmes, the Career Foreign Service Officer Assigned as the Political Officer at US Embassy Kyiv

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CNN’s Manu Raju obtained the opening statement of David Holmes in his deposition before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence this afternoon. He is the career foreign service officer assigned as the Political Officer at US Embassy Kyiv. He also read the statement on air. Holmes works for Ambassador Taylor, the Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, who testified yesterday that Holmes and one of his other foreign service officers had overhead an unsecured phone call on 26 July between US Ambassador to the EU Sondland and the President at a restaurant in Ukraine. This call took place the day after the President’s call with President Zelensky of Ukraine where the President tried to extort him Zelensky into interfering in the 2020 election.

The call that Holmes overhead WAS NOT on speaker phone. Rather, the President was so loud that he could hear him through Ambassador Sondland’s ear piece. It is important to note here, that US government issued unclassified smartphones for official use have the bluetooth deactivated as it is considered insecure. If you’re issued a US government smartphone, you get a wired earpiece as part of the equipment package. We already know that the President was speaking on his own unsecured cell phone at the White House, but Raju’s reporting of Holmes’ opening statement seems to indicate that Sondland was also using his own personal cell phone to conduct official business. Or what he and the President considered official business, but is really a crime, as well as a High Crime and Misdemeanor. We now have an eyewitness (earwitness?) to these events, which won’t actually tamp down the President’s, his surrogates’, and his supporters’ complaints even though it should, because those complaints aren’t being made in good faith.

I’m uploading a copy of Holmes’ opening statement here.

Holmes_Opening Statement

Mr. Holmes deposition is not particularly good for either the President or Ambassador Sondland who, it appears, will likely need to revise his testimony again.

Mr. Holmes is now scheduled to testify in open session next week. Tomorrow, Mark Sandy a senior career official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be deposed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ahead of what will surely be scheduled public testimony next week. Mr. Sandy was directly involved in the criminal orders that Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney gave that forced OMB to hold up the congressionally appropriated and mandated aid to Ukraine.

There is a second foreign service officer assigned to Embassy Kyiv, Suriya Jayanti, who overhead the unsecured phone call between Ambassador Sondland and the President on 26 July 2019. I haven’t seen any reporting yet as to whether she will be deposed by HPSCI.

The President’s very bad week is about to become an even worse weekend. Information from tomorrow’s depositions, for instance Mr. Sandy’s opening statement, will be released and picked over just in time for the Sunday news shows. The worst thing that could happen to the President has happened: he has lost control of the news cycle. He is unable, at least for now, to program it. And it is going to freak him out, enrage him, and drive him to commit even more self-destructive acts.

We should all hope that these self-destructive acts are limited to the political and the personal. It is going to be a long, bumpy weekend. So strap in, stay frosty, and keep your heads on a swivel!

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread.

 

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House Impeachment Hearings Day 2, Part 2: Ambassador Yovanovitch Testimony Continues

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Here’s a nice, clean new post for when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence comes back in to session after the scheduled morning votes in the House to resume hearing the testimony of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Here’s the live feed:

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House Impeachment Hearings Day 2: Ambassador Yovanovitch

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The second day of the House impeachment hearings is scheduled to get started at 9:00 AM EST. Expect more of what we observed on Wednesday. The Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence focused on fact finding through Ambassador Yovanovitch’s testimony while the Republicans attempt to use the hearing as an information laundry to promote the conspiracy theories and agitprop that they want people to believe exonerates the President.

Update at 9:10 AM EST

News broke late last night that one of the senior career civil servants at the Office of Management and Budget assigned to the White House with firsthand information of the illegal orders to hold up the congressionally mandated and appropriated aid for Ukraine will give a closed door deposition if subpoenaed. We now know the officials name, that he has been subpoenaed, and that he’ll likely sit for that deposition tomorrow.

The President is going to have a very, very, very, very bad weekend. As is Mick Mulvaney. And several others.

Here’s the live feed:

Open thread!

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T-12: The House Impeachment Hearings Begin Tomorrow AM, Here’s What to Expect

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We are just under 24 hours out from the first of the publicly facing House impeachment hearings. The first hearing begins tomorrow at 10:00 AM EST and if we have a functional blog, I’ll have a live feed up for you all.

Tomorrow’s hearings are Ambassador William Taylor, the Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, at 10:00 AM and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the afternoon. The next day of public hearings will be Friday when Ambassador Yovanavitch, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine will be testifying.

Next week’s schedule was released earlier today.

The procedure for these hearings will be that the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Congressman Schiff, and the ranking member, Congressman Nunes, will each make an opening statement. Each session’s witness will then be given a chance to make an opening statement if they so desire. Questioning will begin with a forty-five minute round of questioning for the committee chair and ranking member, rather than the 5 minute rounds we’ve become accustomed to over the past several years. It has already announced that Congressman Schiff’s time will be taken by the majority (Committee) counsel, Dan Goldman, a former Federal prosecutor and former NBC/MSNBC legal analyst who was specifically hired by Congressman Schiff back in February to oversee this investigation. It is not clear yet whether Congressman Nunes will do the questioning himself, have his counsel conduct the questioning, or some combination thereof. It is important to remember that Congressman Schiff is, himself, a former Federal prosecutor and one of the few who has successfully prosecuted a case involving a US official engaged in spying for a hostile foreign power. Goldman was involved in very high profile prosecutions of Genovese crime organization members. Congressman Nunes has a degree in agriculture, states his occupation as farmer, but his family farm is now in Iowa, not in his congressional district in California. So expect more of the conspiracy theory laundering that Congressman Nunes has been doing throughout the closed door depositions when he could be bothered to actually show up to them.

After that, the questioning will devolve back to the alternating five minute blocks of questioning for each of the remaining Democratic and Republican members of the committee. I fully expect that the Republican members, like they do for every hearing, will have a coordinated a list of questions intended to derail and sidetrack the hearings into conspiracy theory territory so they can launder their misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop through the hearings. And since Congressman Jordan (R-Men’s Showers) has been temporarily placed on the committee so he can do his jacket off, sleeves rolled up, rapid fire, staccato badgering of witnesses, I fully expect a lot of the Republican questioning time will be yielded back to him so he can badger at will as we’ve seen in House Oversight Committee hearings earlier this year. The Democratic members of the committee, unlike their Republican counterparts, are largely former Federal and state prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and staff judge advocates in the US military so their questions will at least be on topic and germane even if they’re not coordinated. And they really should be coordinated, but I’m not counting on that type of message discipline in strategic communication.

Congressman Schiff has established the rules so that all of the various points of order and personal privilege and parliamentary procedure will be dealt with at the end of each hearing day to avoid the Republican members of the committee from grinding the hearing to a halt for up to an hour as soon as it begins as they’ve done with other high profile televised hearings over the past 10 months.

I have no idea what time the ritual bodily ejection of Congressman Gaetz (R-DUI) from the committee chambers is scheduled for. You’ll just have to watch the whole thing. Personally, I’m hoping Congressman Schiff has a Gaetz sized trebuchet installed so they can really go for distance! (that was sarcasm, lest anyone think I’m advocating for violence against Congressman Gaetz).

Expect a lot of what we already know from the now released deposition transcripts to be publicly confirmed. Expect the committee Republicans, their staff, and Congressman Gaetz to be disruptive and try to turn the hearings into a circus. And, provided the blog is actually up, running, and functioning with the change over to the new site, expect that I’ll have a live stream of the proceedings up as soon as I can get access.

Open thread.

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Black PSYOP Part II: The Republicans Are Trying To Turn the US Congress Into an Information Laundry for Misinformation, Disinformation, and Information for Provocation,

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On October 25th I went over what a Black PSYOP is and how the President’s attempt to extort Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf by having newly elected President Zelensky go on CNN and announce his government was opening investigations into the Bidens and Ukraine’s conspiracy with the Democrats to fix the 2016 election for Secretary Clinton and frame Russia for doing it (NEITHER OF THESE THINGS IS TRUE!) is a Black PSYOP. But they form the basis of the conspiracy theories, rooted in Russian disinformation planted in late Spring 2014 about the Bidens and during the 2016 election via Paul Manafort, that are at the center of the President’s animosity to Ukraine and Attorney General Barr’s, and the House and Senate Republican caucus’s, attempts to validate these conspiracy theories to protect and please the President.

To briefly recap:

Psychological Operations, popularly known as PSYOP, are the weaponization of information for effect. The effect being to influence the targeted population, whether a group, an organization, a society, an element within a society, or a government, to either undertake an action or to prevent an action from being taken. Black PSYOP refers to the attempts to launder the influence operation through a legitimate third party that is not connected to those conducting the influence operation.

Before we go further, let’s just get the documentation of why the two different conspiracy theories that the President and his surrogates have internalized and are pushing, are completely made up out of whole cloth. The accusation against the Bidens was first planted in Russian state backed media in April of 2014: to muddy the waters around Putin scarfing up Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, as well as dirty up VP Biden and Secretary Kerry who were considered two potential candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2016.

The conspiracy theory that Ukraine conspired with the Democratic Party to fix the 2016 election for Secretary Clinton and to frame Russia for it was created by Russian military intelligence (GRU) and pushed to Paul Manafort via his GRU handler Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort started pushing this conspiracy theory on the President in 2016. The purpose of this conspiracy was, of course, to create a plausible reason for the President to lift the sanctions that President Obama had placed on Russia because Russia, according to this conspiracy theory, are innocent victims of those scheming, malevolent Democrats and Ukrainians. This is, of course, a lie.

In my 25th October post I delineated the three domestic lines of effort of the Black PSYOP the President, AG Barr, and his surrogates were undertaking. Over the past two weeks we’ve seen the opening up of a fourth domestic line of effort, by Republican members of the House of Representatives. This fourth domestic line of effort in the Black PSYOP is to use the impeachment hearings and eventual trial in the Senate – from the behind closed doors depositions to the public hearings set to start tomorrow to whatever Senator Graham and AG Barr are cooking up in their meetings about AG Barr’s line of effort in the Black PSYOP – to launder both the conspiracy theories through the US Congress. This is why the Republican members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and their staffers, including the minority counsel, keep asking questions of witnesses like Fiona Hill and LTC Vindman about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine, Ukraine’s conspiring with the Democrats to steal the 2016 elections and frame the Russians and the Trump campaign for doing so, and trying to get the name of the person they believe to be the whistleblower into the transcripts that will be released publicly. All of this is being done to launder these conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation into the Congressional Record and through the House impeachment hearings into the mainstream media. From there, like every other good Black PSYOP, once the information has been laundered through legitimate sources, in this case the US Congress, the broadcast networks, the mainstream cable news networks (CNN and MSNBC), and the mainstream print and digital news media, the laundered conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation can then be effectively weaponized in support of the President’s reelection efforts in 2020, as well as other Republican and conservative movement efforts.

Forewarned is, hopefully, forearmed.

Open thread!

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Veterans Day 2019: Veterans in Exile

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Senator Duckworth is a national treasure.

And the President, the Vice President, Stephen Miller, DHS Secretary Kelly, DHS Secretary Nielsen, Acting DHS Secretary McAleneen, Acting USCIS Secretary Cucinelli, Acting Director of ICE Homan, Steve Bannon, and every single American that supports these officials and their actions is a national disgrace. And the next president, provided she or he is a Democrat, damn well better bring these veterans home and hold all of the above to account. I don’t care if some of these veterans have criminal records, I don’t care if some of them have serious PTSD or other issues from their service that led to those criminal records or otherwise somehow violating their immigration status. I don’t care if some of them are undocumented. They raised their hands, they took the oath, and they served the US, many if not most in harm’s way, which is something no one in the Trump family has ever done across five generations in the United States. These people disgust me!

Open thread!

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Kristallnacht 81 Years Later

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Tonight is the 81st anniversary of the NAZI pogrom of November 1938 known as Kristallnacht.

I’m not sure 81 years on what there is left to say. Especially that I didn’t say in a post memorializing this day last year and the year before and the year before that and the year before that… Or in the posts I’ve done on the Red Summer or any other number of atrocities.

Perhaps we just need to pay attention because the revanchist, neo-fascist, and neo-nationalist descendants of the NAZIs and the other fascists that set the conditions for and carried out the atrocities on Kristallnacht and the even worse atrocities during the Holocaust proper still need to be combatted. They need to be exposed whenever possible. Dragged out into the sunlight for all to see and, should it come to it, once again physically combatted until they are defeated on the battlefield as they were during WW II.

Just this past week a neo-NAZI was arrested for trying to blow up a synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. A young African American man had to stand his ground in Georgia in the face of a racist attack from a now deceased white man.* And we learned that the President and his racist, white supremacist administration have actually separated an additional 1,500 migrant children from their parents and that number may still be an undercount. I’m sure there are more examples of the revanchist, racist, and fascist throughline that runs from Kristallnacht in 1938 to the President, his administration, his surrogates, his supporters, and the tyrants and dictators that he so idealizes with just a few minutes more searching, but I don’t think I need to belabor the point.

Also, the Auschwitz Memorial is trying to get 750,000 followers by the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January 2020. So if you’re on Twitter, give them a follow!

Open thread.

* I’m actually surprised it has taken this long for a person of color to have to use force/lethal force to defend him or herself from a white racist’s attack. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the courts, given that Georgia is a stand your ground state, but the person who stood his ground this time is African American. As I’ve written here many times in comments, I expected this to happen. And I expect that once white people realize that the old maxim that “G-d made man, Samuel Colt made all men equal” doesn’t just apply to white people, they’ll freak out. I’m honestly not sure what the nature of that freak out will be. It might be a response similar to that of then Governor Reagan’s to Black Panther’s openly carrying unarmed long guns in the California state capitol building by signing gun control legislation. Or it may be more similar to the Tulsa Race Riot, the Red Summer, and the response to Forest Joe’s slave revolt in the 1820s among others. But if people of color exercise their statutory rights to self defense, and they are both justified in doing so and do so in response to attacks on their persons and property by racist whites, there will be a backlash. And we all need to be prepared for it.

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