On the Coronation and the End of the Republic

I've watched parts of every inauguration since Eisenhower's second in 1957. That was my first opportunity to watch the pageant ""live after we got a teevee in 1954.

Yesterday's pageant seemed more like a coronation than any I've witnessed since Nixon's second in 1973. Of course that regime didn't end well, and it wasn't long after the display of Imperial Ruffles and Flourishes before dude was choppered out of DC in disgrace.

That episode was one of many shocks the Republic has had to endure during its lifetime. Replacing Nixon with the unelected Ford (ably assisted by the unelected Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President) will probably be seen by later historians -- if there are any -- as a critical error of judgment by the high and the mighty who ran the government in those days.

It set a standard of presidential impunity that's only been expanded since.

Bill Clinton's impeachment was another critical error of judgment, but with a very different outcome. It was a shock to the system, yes, and stupid as can be, but it demonstrated as clearly as anything could that whatever these people, Our Rulers, do for public entertainment, it's not even as orderly as Kabuki. They're stone (and probably stoned) idiots. What. The. Fuck?

These are only two of the events that have rocked the Republic and its operations in relatively recent times, but there have been many such shocks -- and much worse -- over the centuries that the Republic has more or less endured.

I'm not at all sure the Republic can endure this latest shock and survive in any meaningful way.

And perhaps it's time for this faulty experiment in Constitutional Self-Government to fold up and conclude.

The experiment has failed.

Presidents come and go, of course, and they don't define the meaning of the Republic which endures despite them. Or sometimes because of them. Any government, any form of government, is going to face shocks as a matter of course, and it is up to the governing class (or ruling clique as the case may be) to deal with them appropriately.

That includes the President, of course, but often in our history, Presidents have been little  more than figureheads fronting a government by, for, and controlled by the malefactors of great wealth. They don't use their quasi-imperial power == they may not even understand they have it. I'm not a presidential historian, so I won't delve too deeply into that speculation.

Not all presidents have been mere figureheads by any means. Certainly Nixon and Clinton were not; there's some question over whether GW Bush was a figurehead or actually the guiding hand of his disastrous regime. Accounts from the inside vary.

As for Obama, he seemed to have a sure hand on the tiller from time to time, but so often he was clearly a creature of the Interests Whom He Served. Not, in other words, the People.

I think what may turn out to be the surest measure of his ultimate impotence in the Driver's Seat is the series of disastrous interventions abroad that have turned various areas of the globe into bloody cauldrons and turned many global citizens against the Hegemon. Good heavens, what were they (those in charge of our foreign policy) thinking?

That's just the thing, isn't it? They weren't.

From appearances, it seemed they lost all moral or critical thinking skills whatever. Gone, disappeared, in a fog of neoLibCon ideology that they adopted as the only alternative to chaos (as if) and implemented mindlessly with horrifying results which they deemed "success."

Maybe we should take them at their word. The disasters that have been imposed on the People, at home and abroad, under the rule of the neoLibCon paradigm are exactly what they want and have aimed for.

Many of the hosannas over the elevation of Trump to the Throne have to do with touching faith that Mr. Trump will tear down that disastrous paradigm of neoLibCon rule and end the torture once and for all.

Oh dear.

No. That is not what he has ever said he would do, not even a hint. So far as I know, he's never even used the terms "neoliberal" and "neoconservative." His whole effort has been focused on making the governing paradigm work "better" -- on behalf of himself and his cronies, of course, and if there is anything left over once they have their reward, then providing something, a scrap or two, to the ravening Rabble. Gee. That's part and parcel of the neoLibCon theory of rule.

The Rulers see themselves as having no obligation to the Lower Orders, but in order to secure and maintain their rule, it is wise from time to time to show an interest in the well being of their servants -- if only to exploit them better.

The elevation of Trump via a highly questionable election is tailor made for just such an effort at "showing an interest" in Those People.

Isn't it obvious? Notice who the people being shown an interest in ARE.

The so-called White Male Working Class and Rural White Voters.

The common thread? White.

It's all very highly racialized and overtly White Supremacist. This is in the grand tradition of the US of A. There wouldn't be a US of A without it. Racism and White Supremacy are so deeply ingrained in US culture and society that there is no way to avoid it or extirpate it without bringing down the who structure.

According to the current narrative, the White Male Working Class and their Rural White Cousins have been "left behind" -- while others, brown, black, female -- unworthy -- have profited. There is some truth in it, of course. The working and middle classes in general have paid a heavy price to ensure the comfort and convenience of people like Trump. That cannot be denied and it shouldn't be denied, but focusing exclusively on the travails of the White Male Working Class and their Rural (White) Cousins, is just the kind of Divide the Rabble and Rule Them forever and ever amen tactic that has been employed by their neoLibCon betters throughout history. It's what they do.

So here we go, with a coronated and quite overt White Supremacist now on the Throne, vowing to serve the interests of those white men "left behind" who supposedly elected him. Anyone who gets in the way will face his wrath, for he is Emperor and his Will is Law.

Jeebus Farking Christmas. Do we have to?

Maybe so.

Maybe it takes this kind of Imperial hubris at the top to force those lower down to see what's being done to them, what has been done to them for generations and to finally take action.

I resist the urge to blame the bovine stupidity of the Rabble for what's happened. It simply isn't their fault. With many exceptions along the way, they've tried to do the right thing. They've tried to use the political and operational mechanisms of the Republic to better their own lives and the lives of others, strangers to them, but worthy just the same.

And they have been thwarted every step of the way by a fiercely entitled and resistant Ruling Class. Every/ Step. of the. Way.

Every advance has been fought either to a standstill or has only been accepted -- in modified form -- after decades or generations of struggle.

That's built in to the nature of the Republic, but over the years, the idea of the Republic has decayed to such an extent that it's largely a hollow shell, most of which is inoperative. As hard as it has been to advance under the Republican model, it's been essentially impossible -- with a few exceptions -- to do so for a generation or more.

And this is touted as 'what the people want,' and it isn't. It's false. But Our Rulers, in their ineffable wisdom, believe sincerely that governing contrary to the interests of the Rabble is exactly what they are supposed to do. Whatever the Rabble want or need, do the opposite.

This is insane, but this is how the ruling classes operate. It's a game to them. It's a game to see how many Quatloos they can accumulate before the whole thing implodes.

It's crazy. But there you are.

To say the Republic has been largely useless for the interests of the People for decades is to point to the obvious (I would think.)

So by elevating the Person of Mr. Trump to the quasi-Imperial Throne of the Presidency, it could well be the final nail in the coffin of a long-terminal Republic. Inevitable? Could be.

As for Mr. Trump himself, I'm not at all sure that he sees the Presidency as an "elevation." But given his nature, we can expect him to make it into one. That he's assuming the office in place of a Negro, and he seems to think that the Negro screwed things up majorly, is telling.

The message is that the Mud People and the Lower Orders are simply not fit to rule. Let the magnificence of the Gold Plated "Man of the People" show the right way to do things.

Of course his "Man of the People" shtick is a fraud, but after all the fraud at the top we've witnessed so far, that's nothing new. No, he will rule on his own behalf and that of his cronies, period. As that realization dawns on his faithful followers (he is like a cult leader to them), they somehow manage to rationalize it by hoping a few more scraps will fall from the tables of the Haute Monde than was the case previously. Maybe they will, I don't know, but the hope is all they've got at this point.

He wants to rule as an autocrat/dictator, and he's trying to shape the battle space to ensure that he can and will. From appearances, he seems to be succeeding. As I've said, there is an inherent autocratic component in the Presidency, most often expressed during wartime. Since there is never an end to the current cycle of wars and overthrows this nation engages in, the inherent autocratic nature of the Presidency has no brakes -- except for those the autocrat chooses to engage. Even the Bush-Cheney regime sometimes put the brakes on the autocracy.

But it looks like Trump won't.

OK then. If that's the way he goes, then yes, the Republic is over and done.

What that will mean for the many is yet to be determined.

We'll see.

And if Roberts had been holding a crown of golden laurel leaves yesterday, I have no doubt Mr. Trump would have placed it on his own gold-plated brow and declared himself a god.

Jeebus, what have we done to deserve this.





Standing Rock Is A Microcosm

So far, no new updates from our friends at Standing Rock, but it was gratifying to learn that they are/were safe and that they survived the sheriff's and mercenary attack on Sunday/Monday. The updates I've seen from others indicate that between 200 and 300 were injured -- essentially everyone who was "doused" with water in below freezing temperatures  -- and that some 26 or more were hospitalized with their injuries, including one woman who practically had her arm blown off by an explosive munition and may still lose it to amputation.

The official lies about what happened are never ending, and they change from moment to moment. Nothing like what they say happened is confirmed by the numerous videos taken on scene during and before the police action against the Water Protectors on Backwater Bridge Sunday night and into Monday morning. In fact, nearly everything they say is starkly contradicted by the evidence.

That's the playbook of suppression though. Has been for as long as I've been alive and much longer. The lies are integral, the violence toward critics, dissenters and protesters is typical, the moral failure -- especially in the face of Native resistance -- is built in.

As most of my readers know, I've lived among Native peoples through my wife's family for most of my life. If it hadn't been for them, I'm not sure I'd  be alive to tell about it, so that's something of a foundational matter for me. I can't claim any particular knowledge or understanding of Native culture and society. Although I am a member of certain Native organizations and am considered a welcome guest with others, I'm still a white outsider. That doesn't change. Ms. Ché on the other hand, as a Native with a Blue Card and CIB (tribal citizenship -- Cherokee Nation -- and Certificate of Indian Blood) is fully accepted as a Native everywhere she goes. It's especially true in New Mexico where Indians have perhaps a greater and more important presence than anywhere except Oklahoma and Alaska. And the way Natives are seen here is quite different than they are in those states, in part because of history, in part because of Native assertion of rights that have never been completely overturned or taken away. Even by the Spanish in the worst of times.

What I've learned from my Indian family and the many Indians we know in New Mexico is how ignorant I am. Not just from an academic point of view, but from a cultural and social one too. If I'd been born an Indian, it might have been different -- or it might not. Ignorance in and of itself is not a bad thing; sometimes it's useful, even necessary. On the other hand, "not knowing" can be disabling, too. I try to learn every day, but I'm so far behind, I doubt I'll catch up to my Indian family, friends and colleagues. That's OK, though.

The struggle at Standing Rock is an inspiration for Indigenous Peoples all over the world, and those brave activists standing firm at Standing Rock against the might of the State are showing us all what must be done in the face of Rogue Power. The North Dakota authorities shame themselves every time they attack the Water Protectors. They bring dishonor to themselves and the corporate interests they serve. They are not protecting the people, they are not protecting the water, and they are not protecting lives. They are protecting the private pecuniary interest of a rogue corporation against the interests of the people. Period.

It is obvious as sin.

And they know it.

We're told that dozens of the Pipeline Protectors have turned in their badges, saying "No more of this shit." But there are many more to take their place, eager to engage in Indian Fighting so it would seem. They live in a fantasy of supremacy and power, as if somehow, if they're just strong enough and just bad enough, they can finally defeat the Savage Other that's been tormenting them the entire time the settler/colonists have laid claim to this land.

It's the same theory of Power (White Power, let's call it what it is) that underlies the many overseas wars of aggression the US has engaged in and still does. Conquest of the Brown, Savage Other is so deeply rooted in the Anglo-American subconscious that even some of those who are not Anglo, not white, believe in it implicitly.

The Power must be employed to overcome and defeat the Savage Brown, or.... something something.

The logic of it has never made any sense, and the more it has been employed -- especially lately -- the less sense it makes.

The struggle at Standing Rock becomes a microcosm for the whole enterprise of White Power and its immoral, anti-human, anti-life, and ultimately anti-future underpinnings. They so hate the earth and everything on and in it that they would destroy everything they can without a qualm. It's their nature. It's their identity exposed.

The Sunday/Monday assault on the Water Protectors exposed the fraud of the Pipeline Protectors top to bottom. They may win the immediate struggle, who knows, but they cannot and won't win in the end. I won't call it "the war," because that's not what it is. It's not the moral equivalent of war at all; it's a contest, let's say, between a cult of death and destruction, and a way and understanding of life that has endured for endless generations, and cannot be defeated by the dark forces arrayed against it.

Cannot. Be. Defeated.

Efforts to defeat it in the Americas have been underway since First Contact hundreds of years ago, and they fail, inevitably. The efforts to defeat it overseas failed just as inevitably and miserably, and still the powers of darkness and rage carry on.

I've long asked "What are they so afraid of? What are they really struggling against?"

Why do the Indians scare them so?

In North Dakota, it's very obvious that the settlers are scared witless of this Indian Uprising, though no Indian I'm aware of has threatened the settlers in any way, at least not in this struggle. They don't threaten the militarized might arrayed against them. They don't even threaten the pipeline except from a moral and spiritual plane. In other words, they say the pipeline is wrong and those protecting it are doing wrong, and all that can change. They don't have to do wrong. They can choose to do right.

I think that's what scares the settlers and the pipeline protectors more than anything: deep inside somewhere, they know they're doing wrong, and they know they don't have to. They can choose to do right, and the Water Protectors are offering them a way.

The way is open, the offer is sincere.

And it's terrifying to the settlers and their protectors.

That's what I see happening throughout the Euro-American Imperial Project. It's being confronted with its own immorality and its death-love. The earth is resisting, not just the Indigenous victims.

I doubt we'll have a resolution soon. There are indications that the assault by the Pipeline Protectors was a deliberate distraction from the start of the drilling operation under the Great Missouri, the final stage of the pipeline completion. Could be, I don't know. Otherwise there was no reason for it at all. It was nothing but naked aggression against a non-threat.

Absurd on its face.

But that's where we are.

The Anti-Putin Racket

I've been curious about this for quite a long time.

Russia and the United States have a long and complex history with one another, on the one hand putative enemies due to differing value systems, on the other friendly rivals, and on yet another level, close allies to overcome existential political, economic, social, or power threats.

When I was a child, of course, I was indoctrinated with all the anti-Communist/anti-Soviet propaganda everyone else was. We lived through endless iterations of the looming nuclear annihilation game, the repetitive duck and cover drills, the frequent measurements between our happy homes and likely targets for ICBMs and long range bombers. Of course, the enemy du jour was Joe Stalin and after he died, it was still Stalin until the Kremlin sorted out its power structure and Nikita Khrushchev got to the top of the heap.

That was a bit disorienting because we'd been taught to believe Stalin was the Devil, and Khrushchev just didn't seem to be all that threatening. More like a somewhat crazed uncle.

And the stories we were told about the appalling conditions in the Soviet Union either lacked context or were outright false. For some reason, I don't recall how it happened, I became aware of the falsehood of the anti-Soviet propaganda we young were indoctrinated with very early on. I'd like to think it was through anti-anti-Soviet propaganda organs like "Soviet Life" which was distributed fairly widely in the late Fifties, but I can't recall seeing it before my eyes were opened to the fact that we were being fed fabrications and lies.

I may have learned of the propaganda and lies through a teacher instead. Mr. Beeson was my fifth grade teacher, and I recall he was being "investigated" for God knows what, but I think it was for "Communist Sympathies" among other things. He was gone from the classroom for several days, perhaps weeks, and when he came back, he was very subdued. But I think he was the one who clued us to the fact that propaganda of any kind wasn't "fact," it was meant to sway our minds and build up loyalty and patriotism toward our own country and animosity and hatred toward -- THEM. It was perhaps my first lesson in critical thinking.

I see many echoes of that indoctrination in the New Hitler/Boogeyman, anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda we're being flooded with these days. Putin-The-Devil is everywhere, inescapable, and yet I see very little that even makes sense, let alone has any sort of evidence to back it up or factual basis whatever.

But even if there were concrete facts to back the propaganda -- there aren't -- the correct approach is skeptical disinterest, a "so what?" rather than the increasingly shrill and belligerent demands and ultimatums.

What's really going on here, in other words?

The Official CT (if you can call it that) is being driven by the same internal government faction that drove the drumbeats that led to the Iraq invasion and the subsequent catastrophe, and the demonization of Putin, the Otherization of Russia and its people, is right out of the neocon playbook which has been known for almost 20 years (Project for the New American Century, etc.) The point being to establish the USofA as the unrivaled global hegemon by destroying or absorbing any and all rivals.

Including the Russian Federation (aka "New Soviet Empire") and China. The destruction of the Middle East and Arab North Africa fit right in to the Plan as it was announced years and years ago.

It's an Anglo-American-Israeli plot to Rule the World for ever and ever, rAmen.

These people are relentless, they don't give up, and they will have their way by hook or by crook. Hillary is fully on board with their evil plans, according to the common CT understanding, whereas Trump, for all his many faults, is not.

OK.

I don't buy that Trump is not on board, but that's a side issue.

The issue for me is that this faction within the government (and those who own said government) is playing with fire, and it seems to have a Bourbon level inability to learn from mistakes or even to acknowledge them. Iraq was a great success according to them; the ruin of Syria is going according to plan; the rise of rebel jihadist groups and their terrorist accompaniment is useful to keep domestic populations in line and uncomplaining; the flattening of Yemen is necessary for the Saudi regional hegemony and to teach a lesson to anyone who would challenge the mighty-might of the Empire;
periodic Gaza flattening likewise.

India and Pakistan going at it is part and parcel of the Imperial Project; the chaos in much of Africa is meant to be. The economic turmoil in China is a precursor of Imperial Will to Power. It's all been gamed out, and the Hegemonic Axis of Anglo-American-Israeli power always comes out the winner.

Except when it doesn't. Which apparently the military has found is the case in any direct conflict with a fully engaged major or minor power. In other words, the Imperial Axis can't win against, say, Iran or Russia, or even a determined group of rebels unconnected with a nation-state. Thus the current efforts at subversion and undermining such states and rebel groups, much like the Color Revolutions of the 80s and 90s or the more recent Arab Spring/Maidan uprisings.

It's all part of the Imperial Project.

It's disturbing to say the least.

There is much hoo-hah over the likelihood of a nuclear exchange with Russia should The Hag assume the Mantle of the Presidency. I don't think it will happen. More likely in my view is a "non-aggression pact" between the two supposed Super Powers. In other words, some imitation of what has long been going on between US and Russian/Soviet rivals. Russia will bluster but back down in the end, and the US will step back from the brink. Nevertheless, it's a dangerous and a fool's game that shouldn't be played at all. Easy for me to say, right?

Of course, Russia is no longer a "super-power" and is unlikely to use its stockpile of nuclear weapons except in defensive extremity. Despite the propaganda barrage, things haven't deteriorated that far. Not yet, anyway.

And too, it's all a racket, meant to enhance the power and authority of a certain bloodthirsty faction among Our Rulers -- and theirs (the Russian ruling elite)  as well, it would seem. For profit. For gain. For ultimate glory.

It's sick.

But it's built in to the way our government and its owners believe and act. There is little or nothing one can do about it from outside. Not much the other factions can or will do from inside.

We're fucked no matter which way we turn, much as was the case during the previous anti-Soviet  churn.

Bah.

The Pope In The USofA

I've been following a bit of the live coverage of the visit of Pope Francis to the United States -- live coverage as provided by the US Council of Bishops rather than what's been on commercial TeeVee.

The US Bishops, of course, have some issues with His Holiness, in part because he has shamed them.

There's nothing particularly radical about Francis's theology or message; instead, the bishops have been carrying on a radical crusade of their own to "purify" the Church of its taint of inclusion and spirituality and transform it into a reactionary and hostile social/political entity standing in opposition to any movement toward a better future for all.

Pope Francis has not only told them they are on the wrong path, he's used his authority to retire and/or replace particularly recalcitrant and bull-headed bishops in the US and all over the world. He is no slacker when it comes to enforcing his sway over the Church.

He has even gone so far as to suggest the bishops are obsessed...

Indeed, during the past few decades, the Church's obsessions, particularly with abortion, contraception, and control of women's bodies and other people's sex lives, have been idees fixe and often seem to be the only things that matter to the Church hierarchy. Under the circumstances, the Church has had a tendency to drive away members and has self-limited its presence in secular society.

The Church became a rejectionist force in the world. And Francis says, "No." Don't reject, withdraw, antagonize, denounce, or delimit. Go forth with joy. Proclaim the Gospel, do good and be holy.

For Heaven's sake. Who'd a thunk it?

With the bishop's negativity as a backdrop, Francis's presence and message is seen by some observers as a threat to the hegemony of radical rightist power that characterizes the United States and much of the English speaking world.

A threat because the Pope ("of the Holy See" as he was introduced to Congress yesterday) doesn't buy into the crap and the bullshit and the nonsense that have come to dominate the political and social dynamic of the United States. No way.

He sees things so much more openly and inclusively. And he has no fear at all.

Good heavens, when I saw him wading into crowds in Washington and New York, it was astonishing. American politicians and celebrities do not mingle with the common people. At all. Ever. They live and breathe a separate existence, as cut off from you and me as it is possible to get -- as cut off as any imperial potentate of yore.

And of course they live in holy terror of the rabble.

That may be because they know they are doing bad and bringing untold harm to the masses.

But that would imply a conscience, and I'm never sure the high and the mighty possess such a quality.

On the other hand, His Holiness simply does what he believes to be right, including mingling and presenting a simple and humble appearance, as if he were, perhaps, the servant of the servants of God. Oh. What a concept.

His motorcade, for example, marks the contrast between the humble Pope of the Holy See and the Titans of Security who accompany him. Pope Francis is driven hither and thither in a tiny Fiat 500 -- with the windows down -- whereas his security detail provided by the US Government travels in huge armor-plated and bomb and bullet-proof SUVs, the kind we've come to expect the higher ranks of pols and celebs to travel in as well.

They are so frightened, after all, of you and me.

I noticed the same phenomenon during the Queen's visit to Germany earlier this year. She was quite fearlessly riding around in a non-bullet-and-bomb-proof Daimler whereas Fraukanzler Merkel was surrounded with security forces while being transported in an armored limousine which probably nothing short of a nuke could penetrate.

So it is with the Pope. He's not afraid.

Just the fact that he fears not has the effect of shaming the Powers That Be.

I'll be eager to see the Pope at the prison tomorrow.

He has dared to say that hope must be part of any effort at punishment.

And he has repeatedly declared the necessity for Dignity, Justice, Community and Peace throughout his American journey.

His references to Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton in Congress yesterday must have stunned the assembly. How. Dare. He.

Indeed.

Routines, Protocols, and Justifications

There is a magical incantation: "The officer followed proper department procedure."

There is another magical incantation: "The officer stated he was in fear for his life."

And yet another magical incantation: "The subject was seen to reach for his waistband."

And still another: "The subject refused commands to drop his weapon and was seen to point it at the officer."

One more: "The subject advanced toward the officer with hostile intent."

There are many more, of course, but these are among the magical incantations that will, in almost every case, enable the police department and district attorney, along with almost every use of force monitor and civilian review panel to rule yet another police homicide "justified." It typically doesn't matter whether these incantations are true or not, for the truth is rarely a matter for internal investigations. Veracity -- ie: the believability of the incantation -- is not necessarily truthfulness after all. What's needed -- often all that's needed -- is that the officer state certain things in certain ways, and once that's done, he (or rarely, she) is on his/her way.

The perp in almost every case deserved to die according to police procedure and protocol for the use of force.

Almost every time. So often, in fact, do police do so that getting away with murder has become a police department routine.

There is essentially no defense when an officer has decided (in that legendary "split-second" so frequently alluded to) to kill a subject. None. The subject may be surrendering, may not be armed, may be confused or unable to obey, may be mentally handicapped or or otherwise disabled, may be belligerent, may or may not be a real threat to the officer or others, it does not matter. Once the decision to kill has been made, there is no defense the officer is bound to respect. The bad aim and shooting skills of the officer may be the only thing that prevents the death of the suspect.

This became clear to me sometime this year when a particular New Mexico State Police sniper was assigned to a number of incidents involving civilians in crisis and he shot three of them, killing two, severely wounding another.

In the first case I'm aware of, he shot and killed a suspect at an apartment complex in Albuquerque. The suspect's family said, "He shot the wrong brother." There were two brothers wanted for firing at police and lightly wounding a police officer the night before. According to the family, the brother who had actually fired at officers the night before surrendered during a daylight standoff and claimed that the other brother was the one who fired. The other brother, according to the family, never fired a weapon at the police and was in the process of surrendering or negotiating his surrender, when the State Police sniper shot him dead.

A few months later, he was assigned to a "stand off" out in the country, not far from our own place, as part of a SWAT back up requested by the sheriff. The subject in this stand off was known to the sheriff as a troubled individual who was now "barricaded" in his parents' home, refusing to come out, and alleged to be firing at police and others from inside the home. It would later turn out he was not firing, but in these cases, what he was really doing is beside the point. He would not surrender in a timely fashion.

The sheriff and the man's parents were on the phone with him trying to get him to surrender when the State Police sniper opened fire, killing him. The sheriff was shocked. The man was not considered a serious threat -- though he was armed, and apparently had fired the gun inside the house. During the standoff and immediately after the killing, it was said he had fired at police, news helicopters and bystanders, but sometime later it was determined he had not actually fired "at" anyone, and statements to the contrary issued by police and media were false. Nevertheless, the man needed killing, yes?

The third incident happened a few months later when a man was having a crisis episode in Los Lunas. He was armed, threatening and fired his weapons several times, and apparently actually did fire at officers (though we should take any statement that he did so with a dash of skepticism.) Local police were backed up by Valencia County and State Police, once again including this particular sniper. Within a short time, the man was shot and wounded by this sniper and two of the local police. He was taken to the hospital and was said to be recovering from his injuries according to news reports which have, so far as I know, not been followed up on.

This State Police sniper has essentially been sent on assignment after assignment to kill people. We know of other individuals who have similar assignments.  And if there are such individuals in New Mexico, we can be sure there are other police assigned to kill in other places. In fact, they are probably all over the country. Killers. By protocol and procedure.

When it dawned on me that this was happening, not just around here but probably everywhere, and that killing by police was not by any means always a "split second" determination by an officer under threat -- or perceived threat -- but was an assignment carried out with extreme prejudice by designated killers, I got the picture that what we think is going on is not what's going on at all.

In many of these cases of police killing the fact is that there has been an active process of premeditation and predetermination leading to summary execution. In that context, the killings, which otherwise might seem spontaneous or random actually turn out to be planned and implemented according to protocols and justifications -- "rules of engagement" if you will -- that the public is largely unaware of.

They largely don't know that when they call 911 in cases of a loved one undergoing an emotional or psychological crisis or a drug or alcohol induced crisis, police will almost always be dispatched to "secure" the situation prior to EMTs having access. If the loved one cannot or does not obey commands from police, the loved one will be shot. Often the loved one will be killed. This is standard protocol for such situations, and so it's rarely advisable to call 911 for emergency services in such situations unless you are OK with your loved one being shot and killed. (Which apparently a lot of people are... )

For whatever reason, though, most people don't seem to understand this.

If police see someone with a gun or what they think is a gun when they are engaged in some kind of "crime suppression" operation, they will open fire sometimes without warning. "Rules of engagement." There doesn't have to be a gun for this to happen, just the perception of something somewhat gunlike is enough. Or if someone suspected of being involved in a criminal activity reaches for his waistband... bam.

Again, it doesn't matter whether the suspect is armed or not, nor does it matter whether there is an actual threat, all that matters is that the officer says he perceived  a threat. Or, as we've seen, the officer is assigned to kill the suspect, perceived threat or no.

It's routine, it's protocol, and it is sufficient to justify just about any police killing of anyone at any time.

Stuart Schrader at Jacobin gets into how these rules came about, how they were derived from military and policing practices used by American Imperial troopers in the Philippines and Vietnam, and how they became the standards for domestic policing as well. It's a fascinating story. Grim. But fascinating.

The thing of it is, the victims often have no idea what the rules are, or they believe they are quite different than they are. This misunderstanding actually leads to a lot of the killings by police, as the police operate by a set of rules and protocols completely different from those of the public, and often completely unknown to them.

This has been true of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as well, where thousands of innocents were killed -- because they didn't know what the rules of engagement were, or because snipers were assigned to kill them, or because they were in the way.

Thus the Haditha massacre, the endless checkpoint killings, the "clearances" of civilians from areas of operations, the roadside killings, the kill response to any perceived threat, any perceived action that might be a threat, the random shooting at civilians to terrorize them and so on. Ultimately it's about force protection. The killers to be protected at all costs, civilians not so much.

All these practices that were intended to cow and control an occupied population abroad, dating back at least to the Philippine Insurrection of 1898-1904 have been applied to domestic policing as a means of enforcing control through what amounts to terror. It's not new. It's integral.

Changing it means that the ruling class must abandon an imperial mindset. The question is, how?

Summer Slaughter Season

Map of Europe, c. 1940. The Summer Slaughter Season was under way and wouldn't end for years to come...

[Note: I found the map above in my collection of maps and atlases a couple of weeks ago. The map is in a Rand-McNally Atlas that was published in 1936, but the interesting thing to me was that the owner of the Atlas had taken a pink colored pencil to it and shaded in the then-current conquests of Nazi Germany. They include Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Norway. Albania had been invaded and occupied by Italy in 1939, and it is included in the conquests. Also indicated as partially absorbed into the Fatherland are Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland... We know that the Axis wasn't by any means satisfied... Don't forget Spain and Portugal...]

The sharks are in the water. Have you noticed?

The Summer Slaughter Season is upon us, and the various conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere are in full swing. Bloodlust is catching.

Of course the slaughter in Gaza rivets the attention of many among us -- partly because it is so telegenic, what with the constant exploding shells, the running, screaming Arabs, holding the broken bodies that once were their children, and of course the breathless "terror" of the Israelis dashing to their shelters if by chance one of the Gazan "missiles" gets through the protective Iron Dome. (Actually, according to statistics I've seen, most get through. It's just that they land and explode -- or not -- where they have no effect.)

It's telegenic, too, because of the massive propaganda campaign Israelis undertake when they go to slaughter Arabs, a campaign that has only been matched recently by the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev (h/t Saker) as they go to slaughter in the Donbass and along the Black Sea coast, committing atrocity after atrocity, but none as telegenic recently as the slaughter of Arabs in Gaza.

What became of this Ukrainian slaughter? It's still going on, with sieges under way, villages destroyed, hundreds then thousands of dead, millions made refugees. But the news is practically nil. The businesses that bring us the "news" are almost entirely focused on the slaughter in Gaza, for that's where the real action is.

Word has it that the ethnic cleansing an extermination campaign in Ukraine is perhaps going better than planned -- assuming it was planned, and I'm not sure it was -- partly because "Putin blinked" and refused in the end to send more than token assistance (if that) to his Russian/Russian speaking comrades in the Donbass and southeast. The rebels are on their own.

And so, recognizing that they cannot hold out indefinitely, and there's probably no profit in trying to do so, many residents, targets of the coup-regime run by the Freaks in Kiev, are leaving. By the tens of thousands.

Slaviansk fell to the Kiev coup-regime last week, and reports from there have practically ceased. We don't know how many executions there have been, in other words, but given previous indications, we can rest assured that the wet work is proceeding with all due diligence and speed. The armed rebel faction may have abandoned the city, but their collaborators are everywhere within it, no? And how does a bogus government like the Kiev coup-regime establish its authority over resistant areas and peoples? By killing rebels and their collaborators on a massive scale.

See the coup-regime in Cairo for a not-too-long past example.

The killing goes on in Syria unabated, and now the Syrian slaughter -- they say -- has spread to Iraq with the conquests of the ISIS Caliphate which has abolished the border between Syria and Iraq, and is -- they say -- intent on reestablishing the historic rule of the Caliph from Baghdad where once he held forth.

It's an interesting idea. No, really.

There was a time of relative peace and prosperity throughout Araby. It was much more recent than the Caliphate. It was during Ottoman times. Barely a century ago, within the historical memories of most of those in Arab lands today. Anglo-Euro-Americans have no memories of it, because in their histories, they created the Arab nations out of nothing at all; the Ottoman period barely registers.

The arrangements the Ottomans made among the various Arab peoples (and with the Jews too) seemed to work out fairly well all in all, limiting tribal conflict, resolving disputes, providing a reliable sense of security and safety throughout the region for peoples to do pretty much as they wished.

If that or something like it is what the ISIS Caliphate party is trying to re-establish, who am I to say "no?" Except, from reports, it's not. The Ottomans were progressives compared to the Caliphate. Or so we're told. The Caliphate would be going backwards a thousand years, and it would be terrible for the well-being of the people and the region. No, really.

 So we, or rather they, can't have that. Must be crushed. And so the anti-ISIS campaign is supposedly under way to re-take the various cities in Iraq that have fallen...

Deja-vu all over again.

We've done this before, haven't we? Wait, wait. We've been on this road so many times.

Fascism/Nazi-ism back in the day was a means of coordinating/uniting fractious Europe's elites and common herd to oppose the Dreaded Communists of the Soviet Union. A rightist form of populism, if you will, intended to do physical battle with the Soviet Bear, which it did with not a lot to show for it.

The Soviet Union dissolved on its own decades after the disaster of the Fascist/Nazi expansion period (with a nudge or two, to be sure).

But now we're in a political/ideological situation where it seems Our Betters believe that the Fascists and Nazis were too advanced, too progressive. Too organized.

Disruption and chaos are now the operative principles of global elites. Disruption in the Middle East and South Asia has been going on for many years, the idea apparently being to prevent any sort of comprehensive -- or even localized -- organization among the Arabs and to disrupt/dismantle any organization among the non-Arabs (such as Persians, Afghanis, and so forth).

Chaos and disruption serve the interests of the High and Mighty, but they cannot do so permanently. At least not historically. At some point, a new status quo has to settle in, but for some reason that is not allowed to happen in the Middle East and adjacent lands.

The current slaughter in Gaza is part of Israel's ongoing attempts to maintain chaos and disruption in its almost-conquered dependencies of Gaza and the West Bank. To what object is the question. How are Israeli interests served by such tactics?

But we can ask the same questions about Iraq or Syria or Libya or Ukraine or pretty much anywhere chaos and disruption -- and slaughter -- are the current ruling principles. How is anyone's interest served more than temporarily, indeed more than momentarily?

There have been more than a few suggestions that the ISIS advance in Iraq is a false flag engineered by the United States in order to disrupt/overthrow the corrupt regime of al-Maliki who was previously installed by the US. That would be par for the course given the way the Great Game has been played from the bunkers of the West for some time now, but there's no telling whether it's true -- or even relevant if it were true -- at this point.

The indications are that the Ukraine Thing was engineered by the US and EU over a long period, indeed over decades, and came to fruition by "accident" when Yanukovych said "no" to EU/IMF demands that would have caused domestic chaos and disruption in order meet them. Chaos and disruption ensued anyway.

Much the same can be said for Syria, Libya, and anywhere else the neo-imperial project is being implemented.

There is no escape apparently; there is no way to avoid the impositions and social/political/economic destruction that ensues.

Much the same was the case in Europe and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in prelude to the American entry into WWII.

While Americans were content to sit back and watch things spiral out of control in 1940 and '41-- at least until the attack on Pearl Harbor -- today, it appears the US Government, or a faction of it, is leading a global campaign of disruption and chaos.

We have become the enemy we once fought against...

Riding the Ukrainian Tiger

There's been little or no mainstream news coverage of Ukrainian matters for many weeks, as the so-called military operations of the Kiev coup-regime continue in the East and South, supplemented by all kinds of militia and "privat-armi" action, including the phenomena of death squads, so beloved of our own government's adventurism abroad.

So far as I can tell, the mayhem and chaos is confined to the "separatist" regions, but it is bloody and nasty and is meant to terrorize the locals into complying with the demands of the Freaks in Kiev -- whatever they may turn out to be. There is, after all, supposed to be a "national election" tomorrow that is intended to endorse and confirm the Kiev Freak-Regime in power, and to assert one or another of the "Western" oligarchs as President, probably the so-called Chocolate King, Poroshenko.

Someone the West can do business with at any rate.

It must be said that Russia has stayed pretty much out of this mess of growing proportions on its western border. Despite all the propaganda and hysteria about "Putin-Hitler" and "Putin-Stalin" and the nonsense about "reviving the Soviet Union" and all the constant baiting of the Kremlin by Anglo-American and EU interests, Putin and the Kremlin have remained remarkably calm and restrained. They have not intervened on behalf of their Russian-speaking Ukrainian brothers and sisters, in fact they seem to have shunted them away as the death and destruction from Kiev continues unabated.

So far as matters can be puzzled out from afar -- and the lack of "news" from the region is as telling as if there were actual news being reported in the mainstream -- the Kiev coup-regime is as freaky as The Saker makes them out to be. Though curried by Anglo-American and EU imperialists, they are massively incompetent to actually govern -- not that anyone else is on tap who might be better.

Since independence in 1991, Ukraine has been ruled by a succession of incompetents and kleptocrats, leaving little or nothing in their wake. I've been struck by the videos I've seen of various parts of Ukraine, from Kiev eastwards. Practically every building is a legacy of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. It appears that almost nothing has been built -- at least from Kiev eastwards -- since independence, and programs on the Vremya Odessa channel continuously highlight the deterioration of housing and other buildings from the Imperial and the Soviet eras -- which are almost the only buildings there are in any case.

The place is falling apart, at least those parts that are not being deliberately destroyed by the Freaks in Kiev and their henchmen.

Of course this civic deterioration and lack of infrastructure construction and maintenance activity is widespread throughout the West as well. In Ukraine, it's no surprise that a handful of kleptocrats, styled "oligarchs" hoovered up all of the valuable properties and industries as soon as they were offered by Kiev and that is a major reason why little or nothing is or has been done on behalf of the public interest, and nothing resembling a government of the people has ever taken root in Kiev. It can't so long as everything of value is in the hands of kleptocrats and oligarchs and everyone's deteriorating well-being is dependent upon them rather than on the will of the People themselves.

While the situation in Ukraine is far starker than what we see in the West, they mirror one another. Oligarchic control isn't as complete in the West, but it is getting there, the goal being more like the Ukraine (minus the civil unrest) than not.

It's dreadful.

But that's the world these global oligarchs and kleptocrats want for the rest of us; what they want for themselves is another matter.

The Ukraine is turning into another Yugoslavia or even (God forbid) another Libya, and this has got to put some fear into the minds and hearts (such as they are) of the oligarchs and kleptocrats and their servants. Profits can still be made, of course, if the situation deteriorates completely, as it did in the Former Yugoslavia and Libya, but the amounts extractable -- and on whose behalf -- are seriously diminished under such conditions than they would otherwise be.

Stability may not be a short term objective, however. More wealth can be looted faster under conditions of chaos and warlordism than under any stable regime, so if the short-term objective is to steal as much as possible from the Ukrainian people -- and to destroy what can't be stolen outright -- then maintaining the current conditions are much preferable to having an actual national government in Kiev. Note, for example, how the sham of national governance is maintained in Baghdad  while the wealth of the nation (such as remains after wars and occupations) is pillaged and what can't be taken is destroyed day in and day out...

Having an unstable Ukraine on the borders of Europe and Russia would not seem to be in the interests of either Russia or the EU over the long term, however. What's there now is a tiger that isn't being ridden very well by anyone, not the Freaks in Kiev, not the oligarchs and kleptocrats, not the Kremlin, and not by the sponsors of the coup.

The mess gets worse daily.

The Ukrainian people are being used and abused badly. Their attempts to take matters into their own hands are understandable, but as we've seen so often elsewhere, the people who are actually capable of taking control of the chaos are the rightists, the Fascists and the Nazis, not the socialists/communists and democrats. This is what happened in Europe during the interregnum between the World Wars, and in a sense, it's what's happened throughout the West and East during the Post - Soviet Era.

In other words, power has devolved since the expiration of the failed Soviet experiment into a re-animation and revision of the supposedly destroyed Fascist/Nazi experiments of the post-WWI era. Since the Soviet version of Communism and the Fascist/Nazi version of Capitalism were essentially mirror images of one another, both totalitarian and in competition with one another -- eventually at war with one another for supremacy (or survival as the case may be) -- the absence of the Soviet model together with the resurgence of the Fascist/Nazi model means gross imbalance at the very least. Specious claims that Putin-Russia are the mirror image of the Soviet Union, and thus the mirror image rivals of the West are ludicrous. Putin-Russia are integral aspects of the Western rightist resurgence. Compared to the EU, Russia today is more like Poland in comparison to Germany in 1937 or 39. Poland was just as Fascist as Germany at that time though not quite as dominance-minded. Their governance and economic regimes were practically the same.

So it is with Russia and the EU; they're hardly distinguishable.

Ukraine is a tiger being ridden by the EU and US, but without grace or skill, and Russia seems content to see it falter and even die.

Putin-Russia have the Crimea and that's sufficient unto the needs of the Kremlin.

There can be no sufficiency, though, in the eyes of the West under its current neo-Fascist/Nazi regime. It's either all or nothing.

"All" means the end of rivals like Russia and China. Not their incorporation into the Western Realm, their extinction.

India has just elected a Fascist government, interestingly enough. Perhaps that assures that India doesn't fall into the "rival" camp. I don't know, but could be. Meanwhile, China is declared a rival and indeed cyber-enemy. While name-calling the West and particularly the USofA "mincing rascals" is cute, I'm sure the Chinese know very well what is up and are taking appropriate steps to protect themselves.

Ukraine is not a rival, it's a resource to be exploited, nothing more or less, and what can't be exploited is to be destroyed. Depopulation is already under way -- has been a feature, not a bug, of Ukraine's independence from Soviet/Russian control.

Russia doesn't seem to be interested in participating in either the destruction or the exploitation of Ukraine and seems content to let the locals fight over the debris, and let the EU/US/NATO axis try to make something other than a giant mess of what's left.

And every time I see the claim that the West is "supporting" Nazis and Fascists in Ukraine, I shake my head and think, "No, the West IS Fascist and Nazi." The Anglo-American/EU Imperial Project isn't something "other than" Fascist/Nazi, it IS the Fascist/Nazi project made manifest once again.

The New Model Imperial

[Apropos of nothing in particular, I'm reminded that my sister and her husband drove older Imperials in the Fifties and early Sixites; they had two of them as I recall, a 1951 and a 1954. To me, they were very stodgy cars, too proper by half. But my first car was a Packard convertible, followed by a Buick Roadmaster and which was followed by a Cadillac Sedan de Ville. So I should talk...]

We're living in an era in which the Imperial Idea is reasserting itself with a vengeance. I've often commented that the course of warfighting in the Great and Glorious (Neverending) War on (Some) Terror(ism) initiated following the attacks of 9/11/2001 has closely followed the British Empire's march, and the targets were, until recently, mostly the failed projects of the British -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, the Yemen, even Egypt. They may still be failed Imperial projects, but they have been ripped to pieces and strictly punished for their temerity. Let that be a lesson to them.

Recently, the Imperial Idea has expanded, though, to encompass theaters of operations outside the former British sphere, starting with Libya (which was an Italian colony at one time) and moving on to Syria (French)  both of which experienced a descent into civil war and chaos , the Syrian matter still unresolved, and now, interestingly, expanding into (the) Ukraine (Russian). There are other sites where the New Imperial Idea is being fostered (Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, among them) but for now (the) Ukraine is the hot spot. (Note: "The" Ukraine is a Soviet slur according to some; the proper name of the country is simply "Ukraine" with no preceding article...)

There was some hoo-hah the other day over Mark Ames' article at Pando Daily that exposed Pierre Omidyar's funding of the opposition in (the) Ukraine, and his daring to question the integrity of the First Look Media staff, especially regarding their ability to do "adversarial" journalism when their boss and the owner of First Look is an active "co-investor" with the US government and other NGOs in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and the installation of a more compliant one.

Oh, the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments that ensued! Oh, the focus on personalities and not the issue! The Twitter Wars! The tits-for-tats!

Yes, well, that's how it goes with today's media. It's really is all about personality, hardly about issues at all.

In the midst of the all the angst and ennui over the Pando article, there appeared a blogpost that's having a bit of play because it dares to focus on the issues of New Model Imperialism, and how the various regime changes and overthrows under way, particularly the one in (the) Ukraine, fit into the New Model Imperial Idea, and how -- perhaps -- Ames wasn't even conscious of what he was doing when he wrote the article in question. (Note: I'll write another post dealing specifically with that one.)

According to the author, Patrick Higgins, Ames inadvertently showed just how the New Model Imperial Idea is organized and implemented through the collaborative activities of NGOs (they are legion and extremely well funded by the US government and private agencies), private funders like Pierre Omidyar through their foundations, pre-existing and newly created in-country opposition groups, together with American government agencies -- openly and prominently by the USAID, covertly the CIA and others unnamed and probably unknown. It's a formula for regime change that typically doesn't require military intervention. It may lead to civil war, but that's an internal matter (viz: Syria), not something that requires sending in Marines and occupation forces to enforce order and the rule of predation as in the dreadful cases of Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation in Ukraine is a bit dicier because it treads on Russia's historic interest in holding or at least controlling territories on its western and southern borders, and the overt attempt to detach Ukraine from the Russian sphere isn't going over well in the Kremlin. Not a bit.

Higgins gets into the fact that oligarchs like Pierre quite naturally play a prominent role in the New Model Imperial Idea, not (by any means) a marginal one. They are integral to the process of regime change that is such a feature of New Model Imperialism. It's actually hard to imagine the process of regime change without oligarchic participation. Especially so in the case of Ukraine.

RT ran a story the other day that touched on the role Oligarchs as a class play in the Ukrainian developments, focusing on the role Ukrainian Oligarchs are playing, not even mentioning Pierre. Understanding that RT is strongly funded and influenced by the Kremlin, if the story is true -- there's no reason to doubt it at this point -- then parts of the Imperial pageant we're seeing play out in (the) Ukraine is being undertaken by Ukraine's own Oligarchs who apparently are being installed or installing themselves as Eastern District rulers and warlords -- fascinating. They are playing roles that seem to be in line with Kiev's new rulers, who in turn pledge fealty to Frau Merkel and her bankers, but how is one to know? These men are billionaires. They will do what billionaires do. They will look out for themselves, not "their people" -- of which there are none. If it means the Ukrainians and Russians are pink misted, so be it.

The newly-appointed Dnepropetrovsk governor is Igor Kolomoysky, Ukraine’s third-wealthiest man, with an estimated fortune of $2.4 billion. He co-owns the informal commercial group Privat, which includes Ukraine’s largest bank Privatbank, which Kolomoysky heads, as well as assets in the oil, ferroalloys and food industries, agriculture and transport

A former ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, Kolomoysky reportedly had a falling out with her and refused to finance her election campaign in 2010, which the ex-prime minister subsequently lost to Yanukovich. Kolomoysky was reported to be a principal sponsor of the UDAR party, which is one of the three fueling the street campaign to oust Yanukovich. Kolomoysky has a dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship and controls his business empire from Switzerland.

The new governor of Donetsk Region is Sergey Taruta, who is estimated to worth around $2 billion, putting him among the top-10 wealthiest people in Ukraine. He heads ISD, one of the biggest mining and smelting companies in the world, and also own Donetsk-based Metallurg Football Club.

I've noticed that people refuse to accept news, even if it is perfectly factual, if it comes from the "wrong" source, and these days, RT (like Iran's Press TV) is considered by many on the "left" (so-called) as a "wrong" source. Unless the news reported above appears in the New York Times, say, many will simply dismiss it as propaganda.

Well, yesterday, the Times did report it. They couched the appointment of Oligarchs to rule the potentially restive East Ukraine as perfectly natural, of course, who wouldn't do this, but it's clearly recognized as something... odd if "natural" and provocative nonetheless.

Russia has its Oligarchs too, and so does the USA. Pierre Omidyar is one of them.

I still don't know much about him, largely because he has such a low public profile, and stories about him and his enterprises are fairly rare. His apologists at First Look and the Honolulu Civil Beat are fiercely defensive. And why shouldn't they be? He pays their freight. It's only natural to protect and defend one's patron.

The stories I have seen about Pierre, though, suggest that he is both busy and quite slippery, engaging in more than a few large projects, both philanthropic and for profit, in which his participation barely breaks the surface of consciousness. He says he likes to slip in under the radar and slip away again. Even those who profess to know him probably don't. One of the things that comes out in the article linked, however, is that even if the public knows little about Pierre Omidyar, he is quite well known in Power circles, indeed is a major player therein. How many people know that Pierre was living in Honolulu at the same time as Snowden? How many people know of the Omidyar Network's connections with Booz Allen, Snowden's last NSA-contractor employer? Then there is the whole PayPal 14 Thing which has so angered many in the online civil disobedience community, and which prompted Alexa O'Brien to declare of Greenwald, "He fucking lied."

As principal shareholder and chairman of eBay, Omidyar controls eBay’s child company, PayPal. PayPal has recently made headlines for prosecuting the so-called “PayPal 14,” the hacktivists who staged a virtual ‘sit in’ in protest of PayPal’s decision to cut off Wikileaks’ funding by organizing a Denial of Service attack on PayPal’s website. PayPal was co-founded by Max Levchin, a dedicated NSA supporter.

More worrying still, Sal Gambianco, one of the principal investment partners with the Omidyar Network, actually sits on the board of advisors of Globant, a software company in which both the Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden’s former employer, are major shareholders. Philip Odeen, one of the Booz Allen Hamilton board members, also sits on the Board of Directors of Globant. The Omidyar Network and Booz Allen Hamilton are also both major investors in Innocentive.

Omidyar Network, BTW, is the funder of the Ukrainian opposition organization -- which is actually an umbrella organization for more than 50 Ukrainian opposition groups -- which Ames discovered in his research prompted, he said, by Marcy Wheeler's tweets which cogitated over whether the regime change in Kiev constituted a "coup."  (The obfuscatory denials from Wheeler, Greenwald and Culligan that they were discussing something else notwithstanding.)

Paging through the list of member organizations of "New Citizen" (aka "Centre UA") is really kind of creepy, as many of the opposition organizations that cluster under the umbrella of "New Citizen" are National Endowment for Democracy (NED) clients as well, and a surprising number of them are essentially media propaganda outfits.

I think I mentioned how slickly produced the video feeds from the Maidan were. This was no amateur on the fly footage, it was highly professional and designed to inspire/inflame. Well, among the 58 "New Citizen" member organizations are 7 or 8 public relations/media organizations, actually there are more, but they are masked under a number of different labels, but among the ones easily identified are a couple of media professional trade unions.

The umbrella can actually provide any sort of "technical assistance" the members need or want. That's its function. ON mentions that "New Citizen" is an umbrella for "over 50" orgs, but that seems to have escaped most other notice. Each of these member orgs has funding of its own, of course, and one of them ("Center UA") is also the master org for "New Citizen." "New Citizen" you see is a "project" of "Center UA") Oh what a tangled web...

The fact that the Omidyar Network funded the umbrella organization for so many other organizations has been dismissed as unimportant, "minor funding" given the $5 billion or so that Victoria Nuland-Kagan boasted of spending over the last two decades in Ukraine.

In other words, the "investment" of $335,000 in "New Citizen" over two years by the Omidyar Network is barely a drop in the bucket [UPDATE: Omidyar Network issued a communiqué today which "clarified" its "investments" in "Center UA" -- not mentioning "New Citizen". According to the brief communiqué, ON has "invested" a total of $1.105 millon in "Center UA", $335,000 in 2011 and $770,000 in 2013, made to "amplify the voices of Ukrainian citizens" and "promote open and accountable government." The communiqué is somewhat at odds with other documents however.] compared to the $5 billion, Nuland claims the US has "invested in the development of democratic institutions and other goals" since Ukrainian independence over two decades ago. That works out to about $20million a year, not by any means a small sum, but what-- exactly -- it's been spent on, and how much has been spent during any given budget cycle remains to be investigated.

We don't know. These are not things our rulers think we should know, either.

Omidyar is by no means the most generous funder of the Ukrainian opposition, the United States government is, directly and through its myriad NGOs, but Omidyar's funding should be more than a little interesting to in light of events. Greenwald and Wheeler claim it is not, however, as the political activities of Mr. Omidyar -- who pays them -- are of no interest to them, nor is his involvement in overthrowing dictators abroad in concert with the interests of the US Government of any particular moment. Just business, I guess.

Such willful blindness is itself interesting for what it says about dedication to "adversarial journalism and transparency."


Of course, we are supposed to "wait" before we pass any judgement on these things. 6 months, say. OK?

No, the course has been set, and the destination is clear. We are being led into another round of an old Imperial contest that always -- ALWAYS -- harms ordinary people, and at some point, we the Rabble have to say, NO MORE.

We are being propagandized and manipulated to believe that (suddenly) Russia has been transformed into the Soviet Union and Putin has become the reincarnation of Stalin (or Hitler, depending.) Lies and fabrications are everywhere, and the risks to the Ukrainian people from all sides is horrendous.

I doubt what Pierre Omidyar has to do with it is any greater than what the native Ukrainian oligarchs have to do with it -- though I don't doubt his assistance is welcome. The people of Ukraine, however, are the losers. How badly they will lose remains to be seen, but they can gain nothing.

The Nations and Their Future -- The New Imperialism

There seems to be no escaping the New Imperialism that is being created as we write and debate about these things endlessly. The New Imperialism is global rather than regional, it seems to involve all the major nations (as in the G20) as almost equals, but as subsidiaries to the transnational corporations that are demanding and getting freedom from law and justice as they were once conceived and are asserting an independent "right to rule" without hindrance by government. Further, they demand that governments -- to the extent they are permitted to exist at all -- become the enforcers of corporate will against the interest of the People.

The nation-state as we have known it for the past several hundred years may disappear as a functioning governing body -- certainly national sovereignty will disappear as it is already doing -- in the interests of corporate hegemony, but what, exactly, will take its place (perhaps something like sports teams, many of which already have global followings) is anybody's guess.

I argue that the nation-states as we know them today are the legacies of imperial constructs of yore; they are not for the most part coherent geographical or common human interest groupings. They are at root arbitrary creations intended to instill loyalty to a distant ruling elite through nationalism.

They can disappear almost as quickly as lines on a map can be erased.

Europeans found that out for themselves as the first the Soviet Union and then the imperial constructs of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia fell to pieces, the latter not without considerable bloodshed and destruction.

If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere it becomes useful to certain interests -- not always popular ones -- to dissolve the larger nations and carry on with the "liberated" pieces. That's how the dissolution of nations has been sold, as "liberation" for... someone.

But anytime "liberation," "liberty" or "freedom" is placed up for bid, I always ask, "Liberty for whom to do what?"

I've never been a great nationalist. I'm more a tribalist. As I've argued in the past, de-tribalization is a prerequisite for the institutionalization of nationalism, and not everyone, even in the most nationalistic environment has actually been de-tribalized. The irony of forced de-tribalization -- which is often what takes place in the effort to forge a national identity -- leads inevitably to re-tribalization, perhaps differently aligned (for example, new-tribal groupings based on professions or neighborhoods or something similar)  but they are still socially the same thing.

I think of my Irish and German ancestors as strongly tribalized before they emigrated from the Old Countries in the mid-19th Century, and I believe they maintained their tribal identities when they got to this country. Their tribalism dissipated a bit as the generations wore on, and some individuals became highly nationalistic as an alternative to maintaining close tribal ties. But the essence of the tribalism they brought with them is still operating -- whether on the surface or below it. We see the same phenomenon among all sorts of peoples here and abroad. Organizing into tribes is human nature; it is how human society is designed to operate. Denouncing tribalism as some sort of mindlessness or inferior social structure is absurd; not only is it human nature, tribalism will assert itself no matter what "rational" argument is made against it.

As we've witnessed empires and larger nations dissolve during the past several decades and generations, we've seen a concomitant reassertion of tribalism. At the same time that nations and empires have dissolved, we've seen the rise of predatory corporations, some of them apparently organized specifically to loot and pillage the carcasses of the former republics and Imperial provinces.

Does this mean that we will ultimately see corporate brands and logos replacing national identities?

That's certainly been the view of many futurist and science fiction writers for decades, and we seem to be coming ever closer to that reality.

The future-present is not to be found in 1984, in other words, it's Blade Runner.

Or something else again.

I mentioned over at Ian's place the other day that he's apparently advocating for a New Imperialism based -- I think -- on the premise that there can be a "good" global authority that will act in the best interests of humanity as a whole and the planet. On a mission from god? I don't know, all I know is that the British and other European empires were constantly defended on the basis of "mission" -- a mission that was by definition "good" and was often argued to be God-given. The colonized peoples were simply too immature and irresponsible to be allowed to continue governing themselves; they had to be taken in hand by their Betters and put on the right path, much as British children were schooled in the fundamentals of knowledge and deportment. Well, some of them were, others were cast aside. Much as surplus colonized peoples were routinely disposed of.

But we won't go into that aspect of Imperialism right now.

The point right now is that I see us entering a New Imperial age, dominated once again by the private exploitative and extractive interests of corporations, for which governments are instituted and enabled as a means to enforce and enable the smoothest extractions possible. As in the past, unless thwarted somehow, this will not end well, as inevitably corporate wars for dominance will overwhelm every other interest at all.

A question for further consideration in this series is whether there truly can be a "good" Imperial overlord.

At the moment, I think not, but there are counter examples... aren't there?