Murder Holes and Sally Ports

I've been watching some of the independent media coverage of the "Portland Insurrection." The coverage is very good and very extensive and gives one a much better understanding of what's going on than anything you'll see in the major mass media. Most of it is not politically shaded. They just want people to see for themselves and come to their own conclusions.

The uprising is somewhat evocative of Occupy but not really. There's a park across the street from the Federal Courthouse which is used as a staging and rest area by the protesters. There's food, water, medical supplies, and many helpers to look after the needs of the protesters and anyone who is injured by the forces arrayed against them. People don't camp out in the park, however. It's not being used to house people, though I suppose it could be. Nevertheless, the various stations in the park look to be semi-permanent, even though they are partially destroyed by the "secret police" whoever they are every night.

The protests go on day and night, but it is at night when things become chaotic and often violent. The courthouse itself has been heavily fortified and heavily vandalized. Layers and layers of graffiti cover the walls and pillars and plywood protective coverings of the building. Many fires have been set in the front portico of the building, none of which have done any particular damage. They can't. The building is concrete and stone and glass and is in essence a fortified castle. Inside are some dozens of defenders, said to be from ICE, CBP, Marshal's Service and other federal law enforcement agencies, none of which can be sorted out by the public. Officers wear camo and try to look badass like military -- much to the objection of the military -- while some wear black uniforms that look identical to the Portland Police (and have been mistaken for them). Nobody knows though, because there is no identification of who is actually defending the building from the protesters at any given time or instance.

They're afraid you see. Oh yes. They're terrified of the "mob" -- of moms and dads and black folks.

The crowds of protesters have been growing every night since the deployment of feds to "proactively" arrest and drag away in unmarked vans people they choose on the streets. From a few hundred a week ago, the crowds have grown to maybe five thousand last night, the biggest so far, and signs are they will keep growing at least until the feds are neutered or removed. It's a diverse lot of people, that's for sure, and it's becoming more diverse every night.

What there aren't many of is older people. That's wise. The protests are intense, they're loud and long, and often, protesters are crowded very close together. Though most everyone wears face coverings -- often gas masks -- the close quarters and much shouting puts oldsters at risk of the virus. Not to mention all the tear gas, pepper balls and spray, and other munitions shot and thrown at the protesters.

One thing to note: the building defenders are heavily armed and armored. They carry and use "less lethal" as well as lethal weapons, and they are not particularly hesitant to use them -- though I'm not aware of anyone who's been killed. Hundreds in the crowds have been injured, some severely. Perhaps some of the feds have been injured too. It's hard to tell. What they say cannot be relied on because they lie. All the time.

They lie in wait inside the building while the crowds outside chant and sing and whatnot, the usual protest business. The crowds are not armed -- at least so far as we know -- and not armored, though some have made make-shift shields and many wear gas masks when things get rough. Their weapons, such as they are, consist mostly of plastic water bottles which get tossed at the building with some regularity. Also trash. Which gets tossed but then is often cleaned up. Water bottles are also thrown at the feds when they come out of their sally ports, but they rarely connect with individuals. Sometimes they do, it's true, and the whiny little bitches moan and groan about it as if they'd been shot with bullets.

The feds use lots of tear gas, flash bangs, pepper rounds, rubber bullets and other "less lethal" munitions on the crowds when they emerge from their hidey holes -- which they do periodically without announcement. They have sally ports on the front, the sides and the rear of the building and they have what are called "murder holes" from which they can watch the crowds and fire munitions at them without taking water bottle fire in return.

It all seems quite patterned, and those who have been protesting for any length of time know the drill.

But something changed last night, and it was quite astonishing to watch. The feds were attempting to expand their perimeter beyond the building, clear the park in front, and push the crowd farther and farther away from the blocks near the court house. Well, they got a surprise.

According to Sergio Olmos, one of the independent media observing and reporting on all this, activist used colored smoke grenades (red in this case) to obscure what the crowd (assembled about a block away from the feds) was doing. When the smoke was thick, someone shot fireworks into the midst of the feds. The fireworks exploded spectacularly -- but probably (?) harmlessly -- and the crowd started moving back toward the park. It wasn't immediately clear, but the fireworks caused the feds to retreat immediately -- they must have run back to their fortress because they were gone completely by the time the crowd reached the park. It was then a clear path back to the courthouse for the protesters.

Amazing.

I've seen fireworks used in other demonstrations. In Spain, for example, protesters used fireworks rockets shot directly at police, which caused panic and apparently injuries among them. They were quite deliberate in their aim, too. In Kiev, on the other hand, protesters set police on fire with gasoline and molotov cocktails, and ran them over with bulldozers. Dozens of police were killed, hundreds injured. Fire bombs of various kinds were used against police in Athens, and there have been many other examples of protesters using lethal force against police throughout the protest seasons world wide, but that's not been the case in the United States. Last night, the protest came close, I'd say, to becoming lethal for police or at least it looked like it.

They say that the DHS employees are becoming alarmed and demoralized by all this. I would imagine so. It will go on until it is stopped. And the wonder is that nobody has yet attempted an intervention to stop it.

But I'm pretty sure there will have to be one. Or... well, let's stay positive.

A good overview of the protests is provided by Veteran for Peace on YouTube. His camera is held on high so you can see a much wider view of what's going on. He's been shot numerous times with rubber bullets and pepper balls, clearly targeted. But he keeps coming back.

There is lots of other independent media coverage, #pdxprotest will start you on your journey if you're interested, but warning, there is so much, it quickly becomes protest porn.

This is something different for the US. Whether it will last and be transformative, I don't know. But it is certainly worth paying attention to.

The Russia Thing

I don't think I've addressed The Russia Thing more than peripherally on this site. It always struck me as stupid to be blunt about it. Russians certainly had a hand in shaping some opinions about candidates in the 2016 election, particularly Hillary, but so what? So did a lot of other interests, national and corporate, and it shouldn't matter in the larger scheme of things that Russia and Russians were also involved. That's part of the political game in this country and it has been as long as I've been alive. And no doubt it has been true as long as the US has been a nation.

When you look at it from a historical perspective, the focus on Russia's involvement to the exclusion of just about every other national and corporate involvement is distinctly odd. Not only were they not the only ones attempting to gain advantage from the election (of Trump, but it's more complex than that), they weren't necessarily the main foreign interest in the outcome of the election. Oh no, far from it.

But in order to understand what happened, we need to understand what was going on. Trump wasn't expected to win. Not even he expected to win. The outcome was a surprise and a shock to the entire electoral system including the funders, media, and candidates. The voters were largely appalled. How did this happen?

It's not easy to sort out what was happening that led to such an unexpected outcome, but among the things I was aware of was a very concerted online effort to influence the influencers. This is tricky; it isn't self evident that influencing the influencers had much of an effect, but I think it did.

"Stop Hillary" was a really big thing online. Bernie was the great white hope, but he failed miserably. Whether or not he was robbed by the DNC and Hillary's partisans is a question I choose not to get into. I'll just say from personal knowledge that the Democratic Party apparatus is tailor made for selected outcomes, and there isn't a whole lot insurgents (or Bernie) can do about it. In a lot of ways, the Party has fossilized around a set of rules and requirements that almost always ensure that a selected candidate achieves the presidential nomination, no matter what. And who does the selection? A committee of old timers, in effect a Politburo. Hillary was the foregone nominee, despite the fact that she was opposed a large minority of party voters. Realistically, so was Bernie. If they'd had their druthers, I'm not sure who the Democratic primary voters would have chosen. The problem was that none of the 2016 primary candidates really represented the interests of a majority of the party's voters. The factional split between Hillary partisans and Bernie partisans was unbridgeable. The Party apparat went with Hillary and the rest is history.

The factional split left a wide opening for "influencers" to do their thing, and I saw it happening in real time online.  Of course it had happened before, but not to the extent I was witnessing during the 2016 election. What I saw was a relatively limited anti-Hillary drumbeat -- from somewhere, initially I thought domestic, but it turned out to be generated in Eastern Europe, with a source apparently in Russia -- hammering away at her many flaws and being picked up and amplified by all kinds of online sites and eventually by the mass media. I noticed it seemed to start with apparent Bernie partisans, particularly the canard that Hillary was going to start WWIII -- which to this day is repeated as an article of faith.

I say "apparent Bernie partisans" because I don't think they really were. I think they were using Bernie's campaign as a launch pad, but they had no interest in his winning the nomination or the election. They wanted to stop Hillary. Whatever it took to do so.

When I started seeing "Macedonian teenager" memes showing up on a number of supposedly "progressive" sites, and not long after that in the mass media, I really questioned what was going on. Obviously these kids in Macedonia (which was initially where these memes were thought to be coming from) had a more or less direct line to the internet backchannels which in turn led directly to mass media backchannels. And then right out to the public.

It wasn't just the "$100,000 in Facebook ads" that the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency purchased. Oh my no. Those ads probably had no effect at all. What was having an effect was the meme generators, wherever they were located, trouncing Hillary for "starting WWIII", for Libya, for Syria, for Iraq, for "super predators," for her devotion to neo-liberalism, for her supposed illnesses, for Bengazi, for those damned emails, etc.

Here's the thing. It wasn't coming from the Trump campaign (which was just riding a little bitty wave), and it wasn't coming from the Bernie campaign, either. There had to be some other source. It was relentless and repetitious to the point of complete predictability.

Hillary, the Arch-Bitch, had to be stopped at any cost.

By whom? Why? I think those questions are yet to be answered. "Russia" is not the Answer, though it may be part of it.

Trump of course benefited from an enormous amount of free publicity, but it was widely thought that was OK because he would come across so badly. That kind of thinking was critically in error, but it seems to have been the underlying thought process of those who were giving him so much free airtime.

On the other hand, Hillary was given no quarter, she was criticized relentlessly for everything, and she got much less airtime, even as she spent wildly to buy ads and positive coverage -- or any coverage. She was thought to be the uncatchable frontrunner. Trump was being boosted to make it a horserace, but Hillary was going to win, hands down. Everyone was certain of it. Absolutely certain.

And yet she didn't. What happened? Officially, what happened was that less than 80,000 votes in three states meant that Trump won the Electoral College while Hillary won millions more popular votes. Yet again, the Electoral College handed the presidency to the candidate with fewer popular votes.

Among the factors that led to that outcome were voter suppression in Wisconsin and Michigan, to the tune of several hundred thousand eligible voters who either not permitted to vote or whose votes weren't counted. Pennsylvania had some very hinky voting machines that could not be audited. A recount was tried in all three states, and it was shown to be impossible. Jurisdictions refused to cooperate, machines could not be audited, votes could not be verified; in some cases there were no paper trails or any trail at all. You had to take the results on faith because there was no way to verify the counts.

Then there was the issue of "interference." Prior to the election we were told that the Intelligence Community and DHS would be closely monitoring the election for any "interference." Uh oh. To me, that meant they intended to interfere. I wouldn't put it past them. They could certainly do it. As I pondered that possibility, it occurred to me that a faction of those entities would very much prefer a jocular, macho racist idiot in the White House to Hillary, no matter what we might think. Indeed, there was an obviously strong anti-Hillary streak among the macho agencies, plain as day. Particularly true of DHS, but I wouldn't say that the other three letter agencies were much in favor of her. If they were going to monitor, there would be little or nothing to prevent them from jiggering the results themselves if they wanted to.

And when the tiny number of votes in three states made the ultimate difference, I nodded sagely. When it proved impossible to fully recount or verify those votes, I figured it was obvious.

But my thinking about it is distinctly in the minority.

"Russia!" was announced as the culprit. OK. Russia and Russians did do things, yes, and Trump is in thick with Russians and (especially) Russian money, things that were almost never mentioned during the campaign. But did Russia cause Trump's success? Uh, no.

No, what was happening was much more complex. What Russians and Israelis and many other foreign interests were doing -- and are still doing as far as I can tell -- is using every tactic they can to influence the influencers, hoping to set public policy in the US favorable to themselves. The people -- we -- have almost nothing to do with it.

And I suspect the focus on Russia! is part of an influence campaign itself.

We've been in a very decadent phase of the Republic, and realistically, we're near the endgame. Trump won't be Emperor, any more than Julius Caesar was. But his successor likely will be. The Republic will become extinct. And you know what? Most people will say "Good riddance."

The Chaos Continues

The Las Vegas Massacre (50-60 dead, 500 some odd wounded so far) has consumed all the oxygen and attention of a confused and frightened media and nation. WTF is it now?

I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the mass shooting in Las Vegas from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay. Oh.

I haven't been to Vegas in many years, but Ms. Ché goes almost every year, sometimes twice or three times a year, and years ago when we would go together, Mandalay Bay was our favorite location. She was there last December, and she went once again in July of this year. When she goes, it's to meet friends from around the country, for the fun of it all and usually for country music concerts.

So.

Here we are witness to the aftermath of yet another mass slaughter by some white guy high up in the tower, shooting seemingly randomly into  folks just going about their business.

Allusions have been made to the UT Austin origin of the phenomenon, Charles Whitman, 1966, etc. How similar this seemed in some ways. Well, no. Not really. But it seems to comfort some observers to see commonalities and parallels with historical events. To place it in context, or so they say.

Because the shooter was a white guy, it's not -- and it can't be -- "terrorism," right? That's the narrative, always: when a white guy does the unspeakable, it's always about a Lone Wolf, almost always someone with diagnosed or undiagnosed mental issues, clearly deranged and exceptional because of it. We should not draw any conclusions about white guys because of it, right?

If a person of color does it, however, of course we can draw conclusions not only about the individual but about his family, society, race and religion. It's obvious as sin, right?

Yes there are commonalities between these shootings and shooters, ones that we probably should be paying more attention to but we don't.

• They almost never go after the High and the Mighty -- the Scalise shooting in DC and the Giffords incident in Arizona are startling exceptions to the rule. One could argue that neither Scalise nor Giffords are particularly high or mighty in any case.
• They almost always target the defenseless rabble going about their ordinary lives, shopping, going to church or the movies, or in this case at an open air concert. 
• It's almost as if these shootings are purposeful and deliberately terroristic, to terrorize and panic the Rabble, to make them fearful and easily managed/manipulated -- by whom, though? And to what object?

This massacre came at a particularly opportune time for the Regime of Chaos emplaced over us. Nothing will be done about gun violence per se, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with the sale and trade of firearms for the pleasure of the masses, but we can be almost certain that this incident of mass murder will be used for some political and practical end benefiting the Regime.

People are already being conditioned to accept a form of military rule, and I've pointed out elsewhere that the Government in DC is effectively that of a military junta. The Generals are in charge of everything that's important, not the Orange Menace. Yet he is the temporary face of the junta, and he is the one who ceded presidential power to them. It was no accident. I think this was gamed out behind the scenes well before the election, and it might have happened if Clinton had assumed the throne.

In other words, a civilian government may not have been salvageable given its own inherent instabilities and disabilities.

Obviously the Generals are playing it by ear. They're not skilled at this. But they do have skills and they are prepared to take over completely -- should the need arise.

They might bumble, but they'd do it.

During the recent hurricanes, the military was given almost free rein to conduct domestic operations in Texas and Florida, and according to reports, their operations were a "stunning success." Despite widespread destruction and devastation from the storm, few people died (and those who did "would have died anyway..."); relief efforts were mostly adequate or more than adequate, and survivors have little but praise for the operations of both civilian and military agencies on behalf of hurricane victims.

That all fell apart with regard to the Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands hurricane aftermath. Many-many calls for military intervention were either not heard, or they were deliberately countermanded in DC. By whom? By Daddy Yankee? It's hard to say. More likely, he gave no direction at all. He went golfing instead. Weekend getaway and all that.

This left the Generals on their own, and to say they were flat-footed is an understatement. According to this article at Politico, the military resources for relief and recovery that were operating in Texas and Florida were not re-deployed to the Caribbean. They simply disappeared. 

Thus the chaos and continuing lack of relief on the ground in Puerto Rico that has led to so much recrimination. Now that the military is deployed in the Islands, it's looking somewhat less dire in some areas, but...

Puerto Ricans are well aware that the military can just as easily be an occupation force on behalf of corporate interest no matter what immediate and temporary relief they are able to provide.

Puerto Rico is a humanitarian disaster, but conveniently, there was a mass shooting by some white guy of a lot of other white guys in Las Vegas that takes some of the focus off the disaster in the Islands. The white guy that did the shooting in Las Vegas apparently had access to military grade weapons and used them to effect. The killed and wounded by one civilian have reached unprecedented numbers. Even the military would have trouble matching them without resort to 1000lb bombs.

Dude did a bad-bad thing, but...

He was a white dude shooting at mostly other white dudes (and their women and children) in what would otherwise be seen as a "military" operation -- it's what Our Valiant Troops have been doing in foreign lands for so long we've forgotten when it all began. 

It shouldn't be acceptable abroad, but it is definitely not acceptable at home. It is an invitation to chaos.

Yet another one.

The only force capable of controlling it is the military itself. 

Ergo, don't be surprised if over the next few months the military ("His Generals" according to Trump) take on more and more domestic responsibility and authority. They will be hailed as heroes.

Oh yes, they will...

The Late Summer Battle Over White Supremacy

Labor Day is nearly upon us, and once we're past that milestone, I expect this battle will fade away, much like summer stories of sharks and missing white women.

The Hurricane Season will be upon us. A new Imperial war will break out somewhere. The economy will tailspin once more. The poor will rise up and be put down with ferocity and brutality.

Himself will keep the pot stirred and bubbling. Media will be transfixed by it all.

And the questions of Confederate Statues and White Supremacy and Nazis with torches will vanish as if they were never asked.

The white supremacist right has already gone into nearly total retreat. Their efforts to "engage" as it were turned into a nightmare in Charlottesville, and a farce in Boston. The idea that they would show strength by marching and rallying in San Francisco (hahhahhah) went bust when Antaifa said they'd cover Crissy Field, the rally site, with dog doo doo.  Dear me. So impolite.

Dozens and dozens of white rightist rallies have been canceled, it seems, while the white supremacists have been banished from the internet and must find what comfort they can with the pedophiles and freaks of the so-called "darknet."

While the Overclass can't seem to do anything worthwhile about Trump and his gang of thieves and mountebanks, they seemingly can -- and have -- put the kabosh on any more of this Nazi unpleasantness (too bad that girl had to die, they say, but her sacrifice was not in vain.)

Unlike a lot of white kids, I was not exposed to the active white supremacist community until I was old enough to make a judgment of its value. I lived my first ten years in mixed company so to speak, integrated communities and schools where the concepts of white supremacy and separation of the races didn't exist.

Well, except that white supremacy was taken for granted. The default as it were.

We may have lived in an integrated environment, but all civic and higher authority was held by whites, and nobody questioned it. At least not until the mid-fifties and later when Civil Rights became a Thing.

White people were not only in charge, they set all the cultural, educational, governmental, and scientific standards.

For all intents and purposes, it's still that way. And it's not likely to change anytime soon.

There are plenty of chinks in the armor to be sure, and white supremacists including  the tiny Nazi contingent whine and complain incessantly about the suppression of Wypipo by those ever-present hordes of Others -- Brown and Black and Not Quite White Enough -- who always want to rape their women and steal their stuff. Yes, yes, we know.

But the Overclass is not having it. Not this time. No way.

Interesting.

So, they'll go away after Labor Day; Antifa will too. It will all be like a dream as Shit Gets Real once again, and who knows what fresh hell we'll be presented with? Who knows?

Power Play

The Comey Thing is without doubt an effort by the Trump regime to consolidate power and neuter any effort by the so-called "deep state" to interfere with the regime's exercise of power.

Analysts are wetting themselves trying to pin this or that meaning or significance to the firing of James Comey by Trump, but they have so far missed the bigger picture.

There have been several opportunities for a coup or coup-lite since the election, and each of them has been whiffed. Those opportunities are disappearing. The regime is learning how to consolidate and exercise power, and soon, it will be almost impossible to get out from under that power. We saw it happen in almost the same way with Bush/Cheney.

From a purely pragmatic point of view, Trump is doing what he needs to do.

From practically every other point of view, it's a disaster.

It may be a disaster we have no way to avoid.

Rough Times

The point of "Dr. Strangelove" is that we are ruled by a class of madmen who actually want to blow the world to smithereens. It is their mission in life. "We'll Meet Again" indeed.

This movie was released in 1964, not long after the assassination of President Kennedy (a 20th century pivot point) and just as President Johnson was ramping up the Vietnam War due to the false reports of an NV attack on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. False reports. It didn't happen, but because killing gooks or whomever is a necessity for new presidents, it was used to justify the escalation of US force in Vietnam regardless.

In Dr. Strangelove's world, such a non-event would be perfect to justify launching the nukes. It didn't matter whether it was real; nuclear annihilation certainly would be. Yippee! We're all gonna die!

Here we are more than 50 years later, and we see a kind of twisted replay is taking place. What actually happened in Syria or N. Korea or any of the other hot spots the US is making hotter doesn't matter a whit. What matters is whether the propaganda sufficiently justifies more bloody business up to and including nuclear annihilation.

For all the unsupported belief that Trump would keep the US out of war while Mrs Clinton was sure to get us into a nuclear war with  Russia post-haste, some of us Boomers actually had an understanding of the mindset of both candidates, where they were coming from when it came to Use of Force. Neither was pristine by any means, and both came of age during the "Dr. Strangelove" era.

I'm sure both saw the movie during the summer or fall of 1964 as well, and they've probably both seen it several times since.

The impression it made on them, however, was probably quite different.

The issue is simple enough. Hillary went to public school in Chicago. Public school students of the era were socialized (and propagandized) to fear Communism and to fear the Bomb more. Ms. Ché and I were in Los Alamos yesterday (home of the nuclear annihilation labs, dontchaknow). She was reading some of her poetry at the White Rock Library. One of her poems deals with the topic of duck and cover, instant incineration, and all of that and what we were trained to do and believe if the final button was pushed. That kind of conditioning stays with you. It doesn't go away. You can't  really free yourself from.

The upshot of it is that you do not push that button no matter what.

In "Dr. Strangelove" of  course, while leaders tried to prevent the catastrophe, the madmen (militaryjakes) had their way anyway, and Oops! Apocalypse ensued.

Trump had a different kind of conditioning and socialization during the era; he was a student at the New York Military Academy, they say because he'd been such a trouble-maker at his previous private school. Yes, well.

NYMA was at the time associated with West Point which was just down the road. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, West Pointers on President Kennedy's staff were advocating launching a nuclear first strike against Cuba and the Soviet Union; "it would be survivable."

Yes, right.

It's always been known that some people would survive an all out nuclear war, and that the ruins would only glow for a relatively short time. Reconstruction might be difficult but it would be possible, and the horror of what happened would eventually fade from the survivors' memories. Life of a sort would go on.

None of this was shared with public school students who were being conditioned in one way regarding the Bomb and its effects, but it was an article of faith in the military and was a kind of doctrine in military schools throughout the country.

That's what Trump was taught. And it looks like he still believes it wholeheartedly.

"You can survive, and it's worth the wreckage." To win.

Trump may or may not try for an alliance with Russia -- I'd say he wants to do it, but the current situation won't allow it. But what would this alliance gain? In alliance, the two most heavily armed nuclear powers would be able to threaten annihilation of any competing power (eg: China) and they would be able to follow through. I think that's the point.

It's not to make peace, it's to threaten and control the rest of the world -- and to destroy it if there is a lack of compliance.

Gangster rule, in other words.

Sounds like a plan, no?

Meanwhile, our military has apparently been given free rein to do as they will wherever they are engaged in combat, and the other day, they dropped the Mother of All Bombs on what they said was a "ISIS cave and tunnel complex" in Afghanistan. Whether or not it was targeted on such a facility and whether or not there were casualties is still a matter of some dispute, much as the missile action against the Syrian airfield was maybe not as effective as it was touted to be -- intentionally.

Both actions, it seems to me, were designed to "message" rivals and enemies: Watch that shit or you're next.

It is unlikely that Mrs Clinton would do this sort of thing so overtly, but you never know.

If the skeptics are right, neither action really did all that much, and the demonstrations of US might may have been counter-productive much as the Special Forces raid in Yemen was.

Massacres for the sake of messaging do not inspire confidence or loyalty.

Bombing just to bomb likewise. Vietnam was a good example of how these things unravel. But lessons learned are soon forgotten.

The nuclear annihilation clock edges closer to midnight.

And there's essentially nothing we, the Rabble, can do about it but hunker down and pray.

Rough times indeed.

Going Into Town

I've been driving quite a bit more than I ordinarily do these last couple of weeks. Last week was midterms at IAIA, and Ms. Ché was under the weather thanks to a bug she picked up somewhere, either at school or at the New Mexico Writers' Dinner she attended the week before midterms. She didn't want to take the bus, and I don't blame her. She has fairly long layovers in Santa Fe as there is no direct bus out to IAIA, and mornings especially were cold in town (not so much at our place, but they were cold up there.) She figured she'd get a chill and feel worse. So I drove her up the hill to the campus in the mornings and she took the bus back home (or on Fridays, a fellow student who lives in the next town over drove her back.)

The trips up to Santa Fe are difficult for me, although I'm not complaining. It's hard to breathe, even with oxygen, and that's the main thing. Consequences include exhaustion; after a drive up there and back, I'm pretty well spent for the rest of the day, though I try to accomplish some things at home. I have a whole list of things to get done, and I'm getting through it slowly, slowly, but I'm stunned at how far behind I'm am.

This week is Ms Ché's Spring Break, but this is the only time she has to deal with some of her own medical and dental appointments that she's been putting off because she has no time for them when classes are in session. She's carrying 18 units and her class schedule is tough -- even without a bus commute. Two more semesters, she says, and she should be done. We'll see!

So this week, I've been driving her into Albuquerque for her appointments, and while it's not quite so tough on me -- due to a lower altitude, I guess -- it's still draining, and that bothers me. I'm afraid I'll get so tired that my attention will suffer and I'll run off the road -- as so many truckers tend to do -- and that will be that.

So far though, it's been OK, so again no complaints.

We still don't have another vehicle, and even if we did, I'm not sure Ms Ché would want to drive more than occasionally. She was really traumatized by the wreck, and I wouldn't blame her if she didn't want to drive at all any more. She's been in a couple of other wrecks, but this one was the worst. Thank goodness for the airbags, even though they were the cause of most of her injuries. Had they not deployed, there's no telling how bad it might have been.

There are a couple of things delaying the purchase of another car.

One being my dislike of car shopping. I tend to put it off as long as possible. Lately I've been scouring internet listings, but every time I find something online that I'm interested in, it's gone by the time I'm ready to make contact with the seller. Yes, well. That's how it goes.

So I found this on Hemmings, and thought: Well, here's a car that won't disappear tomorrow!

1948 Studebaker

Not exactly a commuter car, but what fun, eh?

And that's the way I have to look at this situation. Well, not just this situation, but the whole panoply of WTF that we're all immersed in. Life itself is throwing us some interesting challenges, eh? Some we'll meet head on, but others require a more nuanced approach -- or none at all. Just let it go.

I have my own appointments in town next week, so the trips will continue at least for now. The old beat up Astro van which got us here from California is doing heroic work getting us from here to wherever, and we're lucky to have it on hand.

Soon it will be time to start tomatoes. I have Cherokee Purple seeds and starting trays and as soon as the weather turns reliably warm -- probably next week, though we'll no doubt get at least a couple more cold snaps -- I'll start the seeds. Hope to get quite a crop and share the plants with the Cherokee group in town.

The Stimulator Explains It All For You

I haven't linked to The Stimulator for a good long time, though I check in with him every six months or so. After the election he posted this little number (NSFW language and shit) that really helped explain what happened and what to do about it.



Then most recently, he's reposted a little effort from Global Uprising on the J20 actions in DC that were intended to disrupt the inaugural festivities...



These are some of the deeper currents of revolt in this country. They have not been able to gain more than momentary recognition from the public, and what recognition they get is typically bad. On the other hand, the "intersectional" nature of the growing revolt against Trumpism/Fascist USA has meant that even the most marginalized upriser may have a role to play in whatever is to come.

We shall see...

The Continuing Russian Thing

Hot horny Jeebus. This is stupid.

Why in heaven Our Rulers -- or a faction of them -- continue to press this Russian Thing defies reason. They're out of their minds. It should have long ago been over.

Yes, perhaps some of it is true, but it doesn't really matter whether the Ruskies were trying to influence the election. One would -- or should -- expect various foreign interests to attempt to have their say in who gets to sit on the Imperial Throne after all, and it should make little difference to the American electorate.

There are other problems with our elections that are far more significant and important including unverifiable voting machines and growing levels of voter suppression. The fact that Americans have to choose between what Hugh at Ian's Place calls "shit-sandwiches" for president -- sandwiches chosen by their Betters for their malleability and their likely service to the High and the Mighty while keeping the masses entertained and tame -- is much worse in the end than any propaganda and poison that is injected into the mix by inside and outside influencers.

Our elections have been farces for many years. For people of my generation, November 22, 1963, was the only "election" that really mattered; every one since then has been a farce. The situation has gone from bad to worse, and there is really nothing the People in their multitudes can do about it through regular order.

As long as we accept the regular order of elections and transfers of power and observing the constitution (although not), things cannot change for the better. We started down a rathole in 1964, and we cannot emerge, because there isn't a light at the end of that tunnel. That way leads directly to Hell.

We can break out of the confines of that tunnel, though, and as soon as we do, voila! A new day dawns. Or rather, its always dawning, we just can't see it for all the garbage and horseshit we're surrounded with.

That's why, among so many other things, the Russian Thing strikes me as so stupid. It doesn't matter. But a faction of Our Rulers is intent on making things as fraught as possible with the Ruskies, because they miss the Cold War. Or something.

Of course the Other Faction, apparently aligned with Trump, is just as desperate to get it on with Iran and China and who knows who else, as well as that shadowy metastasizing 'threat' called ISIS or whatever the Brown Menace du Jour might be.

They are creations, essentially fictions, brought forth and flogged to provide an enemy to fight. For without enemies, Our Rulers have no meaning.

Deny them their enemies and you deny them their power.

Think about that...

And Now For Regime Change In New Zealand...??

Interesting.

It appears that the Snowden, LLC, outfit has decided to attempt regime change in New Zealand, one of the governments involved in the Five Eyes Anglo-American intelligence sharing operation.

The active agents are Snowden himself from his exile in Moscow, Glenn Greenwald from his jungle lair in Rio, and Kim Dotcom from... well, wherever (is he still in New Zealand?) Behind the scenes lurks Pierre Omidyar from his redoubt in Hawaii, whose previous efforts at changing regimes seems to have paid off -- at least temporarily.

The issue seems to be the bulk surveillance of the Kiwi people by the government -- in line with the general Anglo-American surveillance we're seeing of practically everyone everywhere almost all the time. And the fact that the PM has apparently lied about it -- and therefore he must be made to resign forthwith. Or fail to be re-elected. Or something. Whatever the goal is, and I don't think we can tell from the propaganda campaign launched the other day through the Intercept and other outlets, the rage among the people of New Zealand is being whipped to a fever pitch.

And the slug-fest between PM John Key on the one side, Greenwald, Dotcom, and Snowden (with Omidyar in the shadows) got interesting yesterday when Key released documents refuting the claims of the insurgents (why are they insurging in New Zealand again?) and asserting authoritatively that the so-called "smoking gun" email was fake.

If this be true, then there is something up of which we, the Rabble, know -- and can know -- nothing. What we see has nothing to do with what is really going on. It's a pageant for our amusement while the real work behind the scenes continues.

Whatever the case, the government of New Zealand will be roiled until and unless something not spoken is satisfied.

And if it works in New Zealand, the least of the Five Eyes, expect the process to be applied to the rest of them.