by William Skink
I finally got a new email I will actually check regularly: willskink at yahoo dot com, which I added to the brief profile on the right of the screen.
I find it fitting I’m starting a new stage of my life on the quadrennial day of February 29th, during the politically quadrennial year of 2016. During the next few months I’m going to be able to dedicate much more time to a creative project I hope to be able to start showing off soon.
Stay tuned.
By JC
“Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be counting the immediate costs of disappointments, . . . calculating the impacts on our international position, and keeping in mind the long range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international “golden rule,” and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? What of the effects on our present alliances? What will happen tomorrow?”
Well, tomorrow is here, and what we see in Syria and the Middle East — and the refugee crisis with its effects abroad (and here in Montana) — is a result of almost a century of U.S. covert foreign policy. The above quote is from the 1956 “Bruce-Lovett” report on the CIA, a report that is still classified and hidden away from the public, though some snippets have escaped as a result of other reports. The above quote was snipped from a piece on the meta surrounding the report.
The Bruce-Lovett report reminds us, once again, that our chickens (foreign and covert policies) will always come home to roost… even 50-75 years later. Today’s refugee problem is nothing more than a reminder that an unchallenged foreign/covert policy — either unchallenged by the press or by the people during elections — will have unforeseen consequences that will be passed off by short-sighted individuals as a result of events concocted (e.g. Assad’s “chemical weapons attack”) to conceal the real roots of chaos.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an interesting piece at Politico a few days ago, referencing some of these themes:
“The so called “Bruce-Lovett Report,” to which he [Joseph P. Kennedy] was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials. The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then [ca. 1956] mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.” The Bruce-Lovett Report pointed out that such interventions were antithetical to American values and had compromised America’s international leadership and moral authority without the knowledge of the American people. The report also said that the CIA never considered how we would treat such interventions if some foreign government were to engineer them in our country.”
60 years later, the words of the Bruce-Lovett report still ring true. What this tells me is that any presidential election campaign that doesn’t directly challenge American foreign/covert policy will be doomed to continue and/or repeat the mistakes of the past. JFK paid for this with his life, when he challenged Allen Dulles (and fired him) for his failed shadow foreign/covert policies, particularly the failed Bay of Pigs operation that was intended to draw JFK into war with Cuba, and potentially by alliance, with the USSR.
So, again, what led me off on this tangent today (besides Skinks’s piece here), started with a piece at the Saker’s:
“It is time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century.””
by William Skink
In Montana, the refugee crisis is a polarizing wedge issue eliciting xenophobia from the right and moral righteousness from the other side of the political spectrum. With all the media attention being thrown around, there continues to be an information vacuum when it comes to explaining WHY there is a refugee crisis.
In Europe, the refugee crisis is literally undermining the EU project:
Norwegian PM Erna Solberg doesn’t want to have to skirt her country’s responsibilities under the Geneva Convention and she doesn’t want to trample over human rights either, but she will if she has to.
“It is a force majeure proposals which we will have in the event that it all breaks down,” Solberg said, in an interview with Berlingske, describing new measures she believes Norway may have to take if Sweden buckles under the weight of the refugee influx which saw some 163,000 asylum seekers inundate the country last year.
Solberg is effectively prepared to turn everyone away and go into lockdown mode should everything fall apart completely, causing Europe to descend into some kind of lawless, Hobbesian, free-for-all.
If that sounds far-fetched or hyperbolic consider that on Thursday, EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos warned that the bloc has just 10 days to implement a plan that will bring about “tangible and clear results on the ground” or else “the whole system will completely break down.”
While Europe is dealing with the dire consequences of a refugee crisis the world hasn’t seen the scale of since WWII, thanks to American foreign policy in the region, America’s NATO ally, Turkey, is exploiting the refugee crisis for political benefit:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has threatened to send the millions of refugees in Turkey to EU member states, as Nato agreed to deploy ships to the Aegean Sea to ease the migrant crisis.
In a speech in Ankara on Thursday, Erdoğan stepped up his denunciations of western policy in the refugee crisis, confirming he had threatened EU leaders at a summit meeting in November that Turkey could say “goodbye” to the refugees.
Understanding why there is a refugee crisis doesn’t seem to be a big priority for the supporters of bringing refugees to Montana. Instead, it’s a chance to STAND AGAINST VIOLENCE, STAND AGAINST FEAR, STAND AGAINST HATE. That link provides information about rallies happening March 1st across the state because:
Over the last few weeks, a dangerous anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic narrative has taken hold in Montana. It’s time to come together around our values of dignity, respect, and security!
I’m not sure how the Intelligent Discontent campaign of mockery and ridicule fits in with the values of dignity, respect and security, but that cognitive dissonance will probably not bother the morally righteous in their efforts to further traumatize refugees by relocating them to a western state hostile to foreigners.
I also wonder how many Montanans marching on March 1st are planning to vote for Hillary Clinton when she snatches the nomination from Bernie. This article offers a great summation of Hillary’s six foreign policy catastrophes and should be read in full, if understanding why there is a refugee crisis is important to liberal do-gooders.
If Democrats truly understood the destruction wrought by Hillary they would realize that wanting to help refugees and voting for Hillary is tantamount to wanting to help victims of child abuse while voting for a pedophile.
So have fun feeling superior to bedwetting, hateful Montanans, liberal do-gooders. If you stay focused on them, the rot of your own ideology can go unscrutinized and you can vote for a sociopathic monster with a clear conscience.
by William Skink
Bernie Sanders, Your Time’s Up:
Time’s up for Bernie Sanders as his chances of winning the Democratic nomination slip further and further away. It’s true. He’s done for.
Baloney! you say, Hillary could still be indicted for her salacious email scandal (possible, yet unlikely) and there are a bunch of primary states left that could rally behind the Sanders camp.
Sure, there are certainly delegates out there that are up for grabs, but it’s becoming quite clear they are Hillary’s to lose. Super Tuesday could well be the deciding factor with polls showing that she is killing Bernie in virtually every single state.
Of course, that’s not even mentioning the (undemocratic) Super Delegate allocation which, despite close contests thus far, puts Hillary up by over 430 delegates. Bernie has fought a good fight, but he’s toast. The Clintons are just too ruthless and the primary process too rigged in favor of the establishment. The worst thing about the whole ordeal is that Bernie’s vowed to back Hillary when she ends up becoming the nominee.
Hillary Clinton is Backed by Major Republican Donors:
An analysis of Federal Election Commission records, by TIME, which was published on 23 October 2015, showed that the 2012 donors to Romney’s campaign were already donating more to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign than they had been donating to any one of the 2016 campaigns of (listed here in declining order below Clinton) Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, or Jim Gilmore. Those major Romney donors also gave a little to two Democrats (other than to Hillary — who, as mentioned, received a lot of donations from these Republican donors): Martin O’Malley, Jim Web, and Lawrence Lessig. (Romney’s donors gave nothing to Bernie Sanders, and nothing to Elizabeth Warren. They don’t want either of those people to become President.)
Clinton is the only Democratic candidate who is even moderately attractive to big Republican donors.
Get ready to hold your nose, Democrats.
by William Skink
In a school setting, mockery is a form of bullying that no teacher would ever promote. From the link:
“Mocking” is usually perceived to be a form of verbal abuse that takes place in a face-to-face encounter. However, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, what makes peer mockery so dangerous to your child’s growth is its multi-faceted nature.
It is crucial for you to familiarize yourself with the role that mocking plays in schoolyard aggression, and how this mockery impacts your child’s life. You should also learn about the different types of bullying, the signs of bullying that your child may manifest, and the ways in which you can prevent bullying from occurring.
While politics isn’t a schoolyard where we are trying to mold kids into becoming responsible, well-rounded adults, it might be important to ask the following question: do certain groups of people deserve to be made fun of?
Today in Helena a morally righteous partisan is making the argument that, yes, some people do deserve to made fun of, and today is the day to do it with the Freedom From Idiocy Rally:
There are times for righteous, passionate protest and there are times when people simply deserve our disdain. Try to find a way Monday to sneak over and offer some well-deserved mockery of people who believe still that hate and xenophobia are messages that resonate outside of their compounds.
Is there a good reasons to encourage this mockery? Other than making oneself feel morally superior, mockery isn’t very effective in changing someone’s mind that their opinion is wrong:
The problem with mockery is that it is not rhetorically effective. It doesn’t actually persuade anybody of anything. Nobody has ever been mocked out of a belief or humiliated into accepting another. When we mock others, we communicate the view that we do not respect them or take them seriously. This invariably deepens their commitment to the positions that they hold and decreases—usually to zero—our ability to exercise any influence with them. Mockery makes us feel good and look smart to to our friends. This is its function; it has virtually no value as a form of persuasion.
I guess some partisans have abandoned the notion that they have persuasive arguments to make in regards to accepting Syrian refugees in Montana.