Poking the Bear – #Russia Love

The ever rising platitudes finally peeked, American style, with this pronouncement from a prominent talking head: “the 9/11 of cyber war.” Excuse me while I wipe the spittle from the corners of my acidic mouth. The 9/11 of huh? Will someone of authority please stand up and ask the loonies to dial it back just a tad? Am I missing something here? 

So far the most sophisticated arm of this Cyber-Charge of the Light Brigade seems to have cracked a Gmail account using a piece of code as old as Gmail itself. You say legit, I say illegitimate, whatever? Why would you ask some other dumbass to check your spam? These are the folks supposedly so much smarter than the Trump Clan? Hardly. The prey circled while the cuddly bear opened up a mean Care Bear Stare and whoopsie…..10s of thousands of Clinton campaign chairman emails woken from hibernation early. Bold move comrade. 

Now, the DNC hack. Seems a lot more sophisticated and targeted, yes. This story about the FBI agent phoning a DNC tech to report the activity pretty much sums up the rest of the damage. But 9/11? Come the fuck on! Out of millions of emails the absolute worst were of the “egg on da face” variety. No criminal shit. Just petty bickering and nonsense. Yes, Bernie was clearly never going to ascend over Hillary. No surprise there. The DNC could use this as a lesson instead of a crutch? Nevertheless, PUTIN, PUTIN, RUSSIA…WIKILEAKS! Reminds me of BENGHAZI, BENGHAZI.

If no one that matters can rise above this trash, the Dem Party has no relevant future on national politics. If the Russian Gov was directly involved in these shenanigans I have to believe many in the MSM have the reading all wrong. I’d say Russia thought Clinton was a lock to win and sent all this trash out in order to undermine our processes. Either way, big win for them. If American’s believe our NSA and CIA aren’t playing similar games, I have an Igloo in Siberia for sale…OH wait.

This is an arena that will become evermore dangerous as rhetoric soars and retaliations compound. We must remember that these spook agencies only leave bread crumbs behind when they WANT you to find the prize…or the flaming dog shit, as it were. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nation of Fools: The Cults of #Trump & #Clinton.

It’s been a challenge sharing my struggles with grief, anger, fear and all the other shit that hitches up to many a good soul post military combat, or, many other traumatic life events, for that matter. Questions rise and cycle through my brain like: am I a terrible person; is my life planted forever with a lie like a mountaineer would a mountain peak; does anyone even give a fuck about my feelings or what I’ve done; will I ever feel free again; will the nightmares cease and let me sleep in peace; does anything ever matter or make a difference? I feel alone beyond the shore of a churning sea.

My anger stems from the unaccountable and those seemingly comfortable living within their hypocrisy and blatant contradictions.I’m furious with myself. Anger is a byproduct of my fear, or an extension of it, balancing, like the opposing sides of a simple mathematical equation. To watch them, so at ease with their atrocities, leaves me paralyzed with fright. The possibility that I am the hypocrite, that comes and goes. It’s all one big bag of shit that I’m scared to leave behind, stubbornly holding on, no matter the stench, or the ugly weight of it.

There was a time that I felt patriotic for my country, warts and all. “The proud American,” my German girlfriend would say. Not arrogant, not pretentious, just patriotic. We were far from perfect, I knew, but we weren’t animals or criminals. Mistakes were made, yes, but we tried to do better. Was it a false belief, a product of ignorance, immaturity or simply naive to believe my country would ultimately live up to these ideals in the shadow of September 11th? We could survive a corrupt Congress or a President sick with power, from time to time. I tended to believe our system of government would sort things out eventually.

The current state of things seem grim. Is this assessment pollution of my own inevitable corruption? I see and hear a wider public completely devoid of curiosity and fact. If so, and the government is of the people, will the Republic change course? Can we survive a nation of fools who appear willing to follow and elect proven liars as leaders? How does that get fixed? Or is it really broken at all?

Is this what I sacrificed for? Is it what other brave, patriotic men and women sacrificed for, often with their lives? 9/11 was the most significant event to occur in my lifetime. A fulcrum point emerged out of the rubble, smoke and skeletons that offered paths in two separate, opposing directions. One path stretched ahead towards our ideals, our “better angels,” as it were. Another would slowly transform us into the evil we sought to destroy. Sadly, we burst blindly ahead on that path of misfortune, towards an eventual ignominious fate. Not only has that fact left me sorrowful and lost, it also makes me culpable.

This upheaval and chaos rocking the Middle East isn’t to be chalked up to most American’s go to theory regarding the region: “They’ve been at war for centuries over there. We just tried to bring them freedom.” That’s the simplistic sort of bullshit that corrodes our dialogue and erodes our standing throughout the world. I admit, in my early 20’s, this analysis wasn’t too much simpler than my own. I certainly didn’t believe our military could, or should, be deployed anywhere as peacekeeper’s or proponents of Democracy. I signed up in October 2001 to defeat the forces behind the 9/11 attacks, no more, no less.

What I’m trying to say is this: The mission in Afghanistan as I participated in was just and appropriate, knowing what I know now and then. The invasion of Iraq was inappropriate by any measure knowing what I know now and then. Our ongoing missions to rebuild governments in Afghanistan and Iraq was, and is, an error in judgement and impossible to complete, as the past 15 years have revealed, not to mention past failures in Vietnam, Somalia etc.

The only entity capable of extricating ourselves from this chaos is Congress. Congress is an extension of the American people. Do the American people seem concerned about these policies? Are the American people working with all the facts? If the American people just shrug at the mention of these wars, or support them on the basis of incorrect information, or willful ignorance, like say they did the Vietnam War in the early 1970’s, what would motivate Congress to modify the course? Wars are easy to start, difficult to end, especially without the visual of an enemy capitulating, e.g., the Empire of Japan face to face with Douglas MacArthur aboard an US Navy battleship in late 1945.

We cannot kill our way to victory in a war versus an ideology, as much as it is geography. Likewise, we cannot go on fighting indefinitely without sustaining wounds to our Republic that are permanent. I’ve been there, seen it up close and bloody. Fighting a war against an ideology is analogous to fighting a war verses dandruff. What is victory? Is it a world where no person has violent political disagreement with the United States government? I’m sure that bombing their uncle’s house or droning a family wedding party will shift perceptions. It’s just that the shift continues in the wrong direction.

I keep wondering off the message. Betrayed. That’s the sense I feel the most viscerally. It’s a feeling that leaks into my personal affairs, like a trigger, or a premonition.

On November 8th the people are going to elect a serial liar to the Presidency. One side will claim the other will finally ruin America, or conversely, make it great again. I truly cannot say who’s correct? What I do think is the candidates we have are a perfect reflection of our collective ignorance and willful resistance to the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#Weiner compromised by #Russia?

Why do I feel as though we’re all living out a season of “The Americans,” the great show from FX that follows an undercover Russian family of spies, living near Washington DC, at the height of the Cold War? It would be just like these clever infiltrators to trap the spouse of a high level government operator in order to leverage the sharing classified material. We have former Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York who resigned his seat following revelations of his sexting issues. By chance, he is the husband of a longtime Hillary Clinton associate Huma Abideen. Then, coincidentally, this pervert finds himself caught up again, this time with an alleged 15-year-old kid. Further, a computer Weiner shared with his wife, used both to correspond with the likely next President of the United States, as well as a child in some pedophilia nature? Sounds like Hollywood to me, no?

I’m surprised this theory hasn’t been considered by the media? Or if it has been, the coverage missed me. Another way to look at this is, senior aides to Secretary Clinton thought it acceptable that they leave storage devices that almost certainly held highly classified information just lying around unsecured?

Clinton’s deliberate use of a private communication system, networked to many devices yet to be found, is a much bigger deal than the media, the FBI, the President or the Clinton campaign has been willing to admit. If this scheme had been carried out by a group of people not associated with Hillary Clinton, the FBI and the Justice Department would have come down on them like a sack of rocks. There would not be a basic blanket of immunity offered to the key players of the investigation. There would be no FBI press conference explaining in detail the results of the investigation. Oops I made a mistake isn’t a legal defense.

I cannot stand the thought of a Trump Presidency. I’m about there with a Clinton Presidency.