Kim Jong-un says that North Korea will shut down its nuclear weapons program if America promises not to invade.

Did that missile just crash into the ocean again?

Courtesy of the NYT: 

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea when they met that he would abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States would agree to formally end the Korean War and promise that it would not invade his country, a South Korean government spokesman said Sunday. 

In a faith-building gesture ahead of a summit meeting with President Trump, Mr. Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States to watch the shutdown next month of his country’s only known underground nuclear test site. 

The comments by Mr. Kim were made on Friday when the leaders of the two Koreas met at Panmunjom, a village on their shared border, the spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, said on Sunday, providing additional details of the meeting. 

“I know the Americans are inherently disposed against us, but when they talk with us, they will see that I am not the kind of person who would shoot nuclear weapons to the south, over the Pacific or at the United States,” Mr. Kim told Mr. Moon, according to Mr. Yoon’s account of the meeting.

I'm sorry didn't he just fire missiles over Japan?

That's a little southish.

Besides the only reason that Jong-un is promising that he will not fire weapons at the United States is because his fucking missiles will not reach the United States.

And his promise to abandon his nuclear weapons program is most likely due to the fact that his testing site collapsed, and NOT because Trump scared him.

However the leader of North Korea has picked up on something that his former wives learned early on. If you shower Trump with praise ("Oh Donald it's the biggest I have ever seen.") he will give you whatever the fuck you want.

Essentially Kim Jong-un is playing Trump like a bloated orange tinted fiddle.

The Washington Post finds that since the Columbine shooting in 1999 there have been 208,000 children exposed to gun violence in 212 schools.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

The Washington Post has spent the past year determining how many children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999. 

Beyond the dead and wounded, children who witness the violence or cower behind locked doors to hide from it can be profoundly traumatized. 

The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Post pieced together its numbers from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports and calls to schools and police departments.

Since March, The Post has taken a closer look at states with fewer local news sources and searched more deeply for less visible public suicides and accidents that led to injury. 

The count now stands at more than 208,000 children at 212 schools. 

The Post has found that at least 131 children, educators and other people have been killed in assaults, and another 272 have been injured.

In 2018 alone, there have already been 13 shootings — the highest number at this point during any year since 1999.

The Post goes on to make the point that school shootings remain rare, and only a small percentage of school students are affected by them.

But I would counter with the fact that in most developed countries the number of school shootings are close to zero.

Which does not seem to make ours all that rare. At least not in America.

Instead I would argue that they are becoming less rare every year.

Russian hackers breach power grids, water processing plants, and air transportation facilities all over the United States.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Russian hackers are conducting a broad assault on the U.S. electric grid, water processing plants, air transportation facilities and other targets in rolling attacks on some of the country’s most sensitive infrastructure, U.S. government officials said Thursday. 

The announcement was the first official confirmation that Russian hackers have taken aim at facilities on which hundreds of millions of Americans depend for basic services. Bloomberg News reported in July that Russian hackers had breached more than a dozen power plants in seven states, an aggressive campaign that has since expanded to dozens of states, according to a person familiar with the investigation. 

"Since at least March 2016, Russian government cyber actors" have targeted "government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors," including those of energy, nuclear, water and aviation, according to an alert issued Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Critical manufacturing sectors and commercial facilities also have been targeted by the ongoing "multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors." 

Cyber-attacks are "literally happening hundreds of thousands of times a day," Energy Secretary Rick Perry told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday. "The warfare that goes on in the cyberspace is real, it’s serious, and we must lead the world."

In other reporting it was made clear that the Russians had gained control over some of these facilities, and could turn off power to millions of Americans or interfere in air travel at will.

This means that the Russians can render us helpless with a literal flip of the switch.

No phone, no internet, no lights, no nothing.

And while all this was going on the Trump Administration did NOTHING to protect us.

But hey they finally moved on those old sanctions to punish the Russians for interfering in the 2916 elections.

Courtesy of CNN:

The Trump administration announced Thursday it is enacting new sanctions on Russia, including individuals indicted last month by special counsel Robert Mueller, in a sweeping new effort to punish Moscow for its attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election. 

In enacting the sanctions, the administration is finally meeting a congressional mandate to impose measures punishing Moscow for its cyber intrusion. The delay had led to questions over President Donald Trump's willingness to punish Moscow. The new measures, however delayed, amount to the most stringent punishment yet by Trump for Russia's election interference.

This is the very definition of "A day late, and a dollar short." 

By doing nothing for over a year the administration empowered the Russians to keep right on hacking into our systems and now they have gained control over our communications, air travel, and security. 

I have felt we were fucked before, but this is a whole new level of fucked.

The Dutch have created a parody of gun violence in America. It's actually pretty good.

Courtesy of Vox: 

Sunday with Lubach, which is sort of like the Dutch version of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, looked at guns — specifically, the US’s love of firearms. And it’s very telling. 

For one, the satirical Dutch video describes America’s love of guns as so bad that it is an illness: Nonsensical Rifle Addiction, or NRA — a reference to the biggest gun lobby group in the country. 

“Dear fellow Europeans,” the video’s narrator begins, “a devastating humanitarian crisis is threatening a small country on the coast of North America: the United States of America.” 

The video goes on to list some of the statistics related to America’s gun homicides and accidents from Gun Violence Archive: 24,000 injuries and 11,000 deaths so far this year, culminating to roughly 40 deaths a day. The video pins this on “a terrible epidemic.” 

“NRA is a constitutional disorder caused by a dysfunction of the prefrontal Second Amendment in the nonsensical cortex, causing patients to shoot people,” the narrator explains. “It starts with an innocent Colt, but soon patients will show signs of shotguns, sniper rifles, and M16s even. Often, patients use silencers to hide their condition.”

This is certainly not the first time that Americans have been mocked for our ridiculous obsession with guns, but it is one of the more creative attempts.

The take away for us is the realization that the whole world sees our problem, as well as its solution, but we remain incapable of doing anything about it.

Jeff Sessions talks about the "Anglo American heritage of law enforcement." Wait, what?

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday talked about the "Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement" when speaking to law enforcement officials. 

Speaking to the National Sheriffs' Association, Sessions said he wanted to "thank every sheriff in America." 

"Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people's protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process," he said, according to CNN. 

"The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement," he said. 

Sessions added that "we must never erode this historic office."

According to CNN that Anglo American part was not included in the written version of the speech.

That was just Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions letting his racist flag fly.

No wonder Sessions is so adamantly against legalizing marijuana. After all how can he lock up all of the "darkies" if he can't simply bust them for carrying around a blunt or two?

Perhaps somebody should clue Beauregard in to the honorable tradition of African American law enforcement in this country.

Or are those facts his tiny racist mind simply cannot absorb? 

The world's respect for American leadership hits record low.

Courtesy of NPR:

The global approval rating for U.S. leadership now stands at 30 percent — lower in President Trump's first year in office than it was under former President George W. Bush, according to the Gallup World Poll. The image of America's leadership now trails both Germany and China, Gallup says. 

International regard for U.S. leadership fell sharply from the 48 percent approval rating for 2016, former President Barack Obama's last year in office. The previous low of 34 percent was reached at the end of the Bush administration. 

The new survey was conducted between March and November of 2017. Gallup found that approval of U.S. leadership had fallen by double digits in nearly half of the 134 countries and areas it surveyed. 

The Gallup report also cites another record: for disapproval. Worldwide, a median 43 percent disapprove of U.S. leadership — more than the median disapproval for Germany (25 percent), China (30 percent) or Russia (36 percent). According to Gallup, that's a record for any major world power, not just the U.S., in the past decade.

Some of the more dramatic losses came from American allies like Germany and Mexico, while America only gained approval of ten points or more in four countries, Israeli, Liberia, Macedonia, and Belarus.

Yeah they really dig ole Trump in Macedonia.

A loss of respect also means losing the ability to lead, and that leaves a vacuum for other nations to take our place.

I guess I better start preparing my taste-buds for a lot more Chinese food. 

While Donald Trump pretends there is nothing to see here, Russia expands its troll factory.

Courtesy of Unian:  

As the city’s leading business daily Delovoy Peterburg reports in an investigative article published just before New Year, the 4,000 square meters of their previous address on 55, Savushkina Street have been replaced by 12,000 square meters in St Petersburg’s Lakhta business district, according to the Euromaidan Press. 

The impressive threefold increase of workspace is a testimony to the success of the “factory”. As Russian RBC Daily’s investigation in April 2017 showed, the trolling activities have now branched out into a conglomerate of at least 16 different online outlets, all of which voice strong support for Kremlin’s policies, while systematically linking to each other’s products. At the same time, they carry little or no advertisement. 

The owner of the “troll factory”, businessman and billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, has also become known as “Putin’s chef” because of his success in providing catering services for, among other clients, the Kremlin and other branches of the Russian government. Mr Prigozhin has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for providing financial support for Russia’s military occupation of Ukraine. Delovoy Peterburg’s investigation also reveals that the owners of the new premises are contributors to President Putin’s election campaign. 

The infamous Russian troll factory also known as Internet Research Agency (IRA) has been reportedly run by Putin’s ally Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Russian city of Saint-Petersburg. For years, the agency has been pushing pro-Russian narratives to promote the Kremlin’s interests in the world attempting to influence domestic policy and public opinion in the EU, U.S., Ukraine, and other countries, or just supporting opposite extreme opinions to sow chaos in target countries. 

And while this is happening the Trump Administration has not really lifted a finger to keep us safe.

At least the FBI is doing something.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

The FBI plans to alert U.S. companies and the public about efforts by Russia or other nations to use disinformation and social media manipulation to interfere in upcoming elections, while being careful not to upset free speech and constitutional rights, a top law enforcement official said. 

The direction that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “foreign influence" task force is heading could dramatically reshape the relationship between government and social media companies in order to address vulnerabilities that enabled Russia to meddle in the 2016 election. 

“We’ve been reluctant in some instances to share the amount of information of what we know about what’s happening," said Jeffrey Tricoli, a top FBI official heading the task force. “You can’t stay with the same strategy if you think there needs to be changes. So going forward there’s going to be opportunities for us to share information in better ways.” 

FBI Director Christopher Wray announced late last year that the task force had been created. But almost everything about it has been secretive to date. Tricoli provided the first extensive public comments about it during an FBI conference in New York Wednesday co-sponsored by Fordham University.

Does that seem a little too tentative to anybody else? 

You know if this were a conventional war I do not think the FBI would simply be telling people not to stand right there because there might be a bomb coming. They would be fighting back.

I think we all know that if Hillary Clinton had won that 2018 election that there would be a far more aggressive campaign to deal with Russian interference.

Despite Trump campaign promises, US jobs are shipping overseas even faster than before.

I can't believe they're buying this.

Courtesy of Quartz:  

“We’re just shipping company after company after company is leaving this country and leaving jobs behind,” president Donald Trump said on the campaign trail last year. “And I’m going to get it stopped.” 

So far, not so good. A group that advocates for federal workers says government records show (pdf) more than 10,000 jobs at federal contractors have been sent over overseas since Trump was elected. That’s more than double the average annual amount during Barack Obama’s presidency. The organization, Good Jobs Nation, funded by unions and faith groups, wants the White House to hold these contractors accountable. 

All told, in the year since Trump was elected, more than 93,000 jobs have been certified by the Department of Labor as lost to outsourcing or trade competition, slightly higher than the average of about 87,000 in the preceding five years. But federal contractors made up 10% of that number, rather than the previous average of 4%. That suggests companies that work for the government like General Motors, Boeing and United Technologies aren’t worried about political repercussions from the man in the White House.

Consider United Technologies, which is the parent company of Carrier, a maker of air conditions and heating equipment. Carrier became famous shortly after the election when Trump loudly and personally intervened to “prevent” the company from outsourcing jobs to Mexico by offering it tax breaks. Since the spotlight has shifted along with Trump’s limited attention span, Carrier announced more layoffs, including 215 after the holidays. Local labor leaders say they feel betrayed.

I keep wondering what is the tipping point when the non-racist or batshit crazy Trump supporters will suddenly realize that they were duped.

I think stories like this might help make that a reality.

The idea that this idiot could deliver on ANY of the promises he made was always completely ridiculous. 

MAGA my ass.

Foreign policy expert predicts a devastating geopolitical crisis in 2018.

Courtesy of CNBC: 

The world is moving toward crisis and a state of "geopolitical depression" as the presidency of Donald Trump accelerates divisions among citizens and the unraveling of the global order, risk consultancy Eurasia Group warns. 

Liberal democracies are suffering from a deficit of legitimacy not seen since World War II, and today's leaders have largely abandoned civil society and common values, Eurasia Group says in its annual assessment of top geopolitical risks. The breakdown in norms opens the door to a major event that could rock the global economy and markets. 

"In the 20 years since we started Eurasia Group, the global environment has had its ups and downs. But if we had to pick one year for a big unexpected crisis — the geopolitical equivalent of the 2008 financial meltdown — it feels like 2018," said Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer and Chairman Cliff Kupchan. 

U.S. global power is "sputtering to a stall" as the Trump philosophy of retrenchment and unilateralism sows confusion among both allies and rivals, Eurasia Group says. The world now lacks leadership to steer it through the impending crisis. 

"'America First' and the policies that flow from it have eroded the U.S.-led order and its guardrails, while no other country or set of countries stands ready or interested in rebuilding it … significantly increasing global risk."

Here are some of Eurasia Group's predictions.

• China will fill vacuum left by United States: People argue that America should not be the world's police, but have they considered who takes that responsibility once we drop the ball?
• Miscalculations spark conflict: I think knowing Trump's lack of understanding concerning world affairs that this is a given.
• Technology Cold War: Oh yeah, most definitely.
• Tough year for Mexico
• Deteriorating U.S.-Iran relations: Already seeing this happen. Could lead to more direct conflicts, even militarily, or proxy wars within other countries.
• Falling trust in democratic institutions: America is the gold standard when it comes to democracy, once the rest of the world sees that it failed us why would they trust it in their countries?
• Rise of protectionism 2.0: Already seeing it.
• Brexit gets tougher to manage: Undoubtedly.
• Identity politics in  Southern Asia.
• Africa becomes less stable: Not an expert on this, but it is scary to imagine such a volatile nations becoming even more less stable than it is now. 

If even a portion of these prove accurate we are in for a devastating year.

If they all prove accurate we may be looking at a breakdown of world order that will see the rise of more dictators, increased poverty, and even the possibility of another world war.

Remember this?

"I'm the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse"–Clinton, weeks before the election https://t.co/6rbgEhANRJ pic.twitter.com/29lTA1N64X

— Adam Khan (@Khanoisseur) October 9, 2017

How does everybody feel about that protest vote now?

UN Secretary General puts world on "Red Alert."

As we begin 2018, I am issuing a red alert for our world. I call for unity – our future depends on it. pic.twitter.com/fWtTa1irM3

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) December 31, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo:

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a grim warning as 2017 drew to a close. 

In a somber video address posted to Twitter on New Year’s Eve, he cautioned that the globe was on “red alert” following a year marked by deepening conflicts and “new dangers.” 

“When I took office a year ago, I appealed for 2017 to be a year for peace,” Guterres said in the clip. “Unfortunately, in fundamental ways, the world has gone in reverse. ... Global anxieties over nuclear weapons are the highest since the Cold War, and climate change is moving faster than we are. Inequalities are growing, and we see horrific violations of human rights. Nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise.” 

Facing such challenges, Guterres said he was “not issuing an appeal” but a “red alert for our world.” Only international unity and cooperation, he stressed, could now help solve these many crises.

“I truly believe we can make our world more safe and secure. We can settle conflicts, overcome hatred and defend shared values but we can only do that together,” the U.N. chief said. “I urge leaders everywhere to make this New Year’s resolution: Narrow the gaps. Bridge the divides. Rebuild trust by bringing people together around common goals. Unity is the path. Our future depends on it.”

As you can read Guterres does not mention the Russian military buildup, and the back and forth between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un outright, but clearly that is the subtext. 

In decades past the United States was expected to be the voice of reason in working to make the world a safer place, but now that we have our own out of control oligarch in office, we are now seen as perhaps the number one threat to the people on this planet. 

When they coined the term "elections have consequences" I am not sure they ever envisioned consequences of this magnitude.

Russia warns the United States against meddling in their election. Yeah, you heard that right.

Maria Zakharova

Courtesy of USA Today: 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday rejected U.S. criticism over opposition leader Alexei Navalny's blocked presidential bid, saying it amounted to "meddling in the Russian elections." 

"This statement by the U.S. Department of State, which I'm sure will not be the only one, is a direct interference into the electoral process and the state's domestic affairs," Zakharova said in comments carried by state-owned TASS news agency. 

A State Department spokesman expressed concern over the "restrictions on independent voices" in response to the vote by Russia's top electoral body to formally bar Navalny from participating in the 2018 presidential election. 

"The funniest thing about it is that this statement was made by the same people who put the foreign agent label on RT and Sputnik, persecuted Russian media worldwide and invested vast sums in 'countering Russian propaganda,'" Zakharova said.

Can you believe the balls on these guys? 

They use Facebook and social media to spread misinformation, hack a number of government and personal computers, and then attempt to manipulate their asset in the White House to repeal sanctions against their country, and they have the audacity to bitch about the State Department pointing out that they are rigging an election to reelect Vladimir Putin?

I can't even.

So now we learn that the Russians have managed to inject code into the fingerprint analysis software used by the FBI.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

The fingerprint-analysis software used by the FBI and more than 18,000 other US law enforcement agencies contains code created by a Russian firm with close ties to the Kremlin, according to documents and two whistleblowers. The allegations raise concerns that Russian hackers could gain backdoor access to sensitive biometric information on millions of Americans, or even compromise wider national security and law enforcement computer systems. 

The Russian code was inserted into the fingerprint-analysis software by a French company, said the two whistleblowers, who are former employees of that company. The firm — then a subsidiary of the massive Paris-based conglomerate Safran — deliberately concealed from the FBI the fact that it had purchased the Russian code in a secret deal, they said. 

In recent years, Russian hackers have gained access to everything from the Democratic National Committee’s email servers to the systems of nuclear power companies to the unclassified computers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to US authorities.

This September, the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal agencies to stop using products made by the Moscow-based company Kaspersky Lab, including its popular antivirus software, and media outlets reported that Russian hackers had exploited it to steal sensitive information on US intelligence programs. The department later clarified that the order didn’t apply to “Kaspersky code embedded in the products of other companies.” The company’s founder, Eugene V. Kaspersky, has denied any involvement in or knowledge of the hack. 

The Russian company whose code ended up in the FBI’s fingerprint-analysis software has Kremlin connections that should raise similar national security concerns, said the whistleblowers, both French nationals who worked in Russia. The Russian company, Papillon AO, boasts in its own publications about its close cooperation with various Russian ministries as well as the Federal Security Service — the intelligence agency known as the FSB that is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB and has been implicated in other hacks of US targets.

Is there any part of our government, law enforcement, or intelligence agencies that have NOT been infiltrated by the Russians?

Not that it makes that much difference anymore, since all the Russians have to do to learn what American spies have uncovered is to show up at the White House and get a briefing from their number one asset.

Nikki Haley announces that the US will cut 285 million dollars from the UN budget right after 120 nations criticize Donald Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Courtesy of the New York Post:  

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced Sunday that the United States negotiated a $285 million cut in the United Nations’ “bloated” budget for next year. 

“The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known,” Haley said in a statement from the US Mission. “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked.”

Haley added that the “historic reduction” in spending is a step in the right direction and that the US would make many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable UN. 

“In addition to these significant cost savings, we reduced the UN’s bloated management and support functions, bolstered support for key US priorities throughout the world and instilled more discipline and accountability throughout the UN system,” the statement said.

Haley said that she also hopes to make further cuts to the UN in the future.

Now Trump has been talking about how unfair it is that America pays so much to the United Nations essentially since launching his campaign in 2015.

However this announcement comes only days after this happened.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

The U.S. will cut its 2018 contribution to the United Nations by $285 million—nearly 25 percent—an announcement that comes days after more than 120 nations criticized the United States for its decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. 

Ambassador Nikki Haley made the announcement Sunday, but specifically blamed the world body for its budgetary excesses without making a specific reference to last week's vote on President Donald Trump's controversial Jerusalem decision.

You know if a Mafioso did not like it that a restaurant owner was not playing ball, he might say something like "This is a nice place, would be a shame if something happened to it." 

In a way this is essentially how Trump does things on a more national level.

UN members failed to kiss the emperor's ring and now he punishes them by cutting into their finances.

This is not how American presidents deal with the United Nations.

This is how dictators lose empires.

Barack Obama finally brings up Hitler while talking about his fears for the future of America.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Former President Obama issued a stark warning against growing nativism in the U.S. and throughout the world at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, invoking growing complacency and the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. 

Obama told the forum's audience during a question and answer session that the danger at hand was "grow(ing) complacent," according to newspaper Crain's Chicago Business. 

"We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly," Obama said. 

"That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s which, despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate," he continued. 

"Sixty million people died. ... So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

Even if he did not mention him by name, we all know who Obama was talking about.

And it is time that he started to openly recognize what most of us have been talking about all along.

Donald Trump is a fascist and if not removed from office he will destroy this country.

We need people like Barack Obama and other leaders to start saying that openly and often.

Here is video of his speech.

Former Canadian skinhead says that Donald Trump has "normalized" white supremacy.

Courtesy of The Star: 

“I don’t know if you’re a Trump fan,” Galloway says, as I nearly fall out of my chair. “But the guy down south there is enabling this stuff, I believe, by allowing it to be normalized.” 

Galloway believes many prejudiced eyes see Trump as both a modern day prophet and a warrior who is fighting for the white side. Trump has more dog whistles than you’d find inside the Westminster Kennel Club. 

In rhetoric and by tweet, Galloway thinks Trump is making hate great again. “The movement is growing because of the normalized message coming from the United States,” he says. “It’s so often that people are latching on to this.” 

This is from a new documentary called "Skinhead" which will be broadcast tomorrow on Canadian television.

And Canada is not the only place where the number of white supremacists have started to rise.

Courtesy of CNN:

Millions of Americans are shocked by the recent displays of white supremacy on US soil. But it's not just America that is seeing these types of demonstrations. 

This Saturday, an estimated 60,000 people marched through Warsaw on Poland's independence day, with some of the marchers burning flares and carrying banners that read "White Europe" and "Clean Blood." Far-right symbols from the darkest corners of European white supremacy were proudly worn. One marcher said in a television interview that his goal was to "remove Jewry from power." To be clear, Polish leaders afterward said they condemned the hateful messages and stressed many thousands were there to celebrate the country's holiday. 

Images from Warsaw immediately bring to mind this summer's deadly rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, and for good reason: A thread of anguish and hatred connects white supremacists across the Atlantic with the ones in America. Indeed, one of the most underreported stories of Charlottesville is that Richard Spencer, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach -- three prominent rally organizers -- have all been involved with European white nationalist individuals or organizations.

I don't think any of us are even remotely surprised that Donald Trump is helping the spread of white supremacy here in America, but to find that the same is happening not just in Canada, but around the world as well, is more than a little unsettling.

I still remember when America was considered a beacon for hope around the world.

And now suddenly the man that occupies our highest office is considered an inspiration for hatred, racism, and religious intolerance.

Justin Trudeau fights back tears as he apologizes to the indigenous people of Canada for their horrendous treatment they suffered at the hands of the government.

Justin Trudeau fought back tears as he apologized for Canada's role in mistreatment of Indigenous children in residential schools. pic.twitter.com/zEjGH2AOQP

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) November 24, 2017

I was really touched by this video as it brings up our shame as Alaskans for how we treated our own indigenous people.

The white man's government, often using religion as a bludgeon, tore families apart and demanded that native children only call each other by the Biblical names given to them by Christian missionaries/educators and were punished for speaking their own language, or for being slow to adapt to western culture.

The destruction of the native people's sense of identity and connection to their culture was horrific, and is often cited as one of the main causes for suicide and alcoholism even among today's population. 

This shame that Prime Minister Trudeau speaks of is shame that should be shared among the people of Alaska, as well as the people living in the Lower 48.

Our ancestors all participated in the destruction of the history and culture of the people that were here when we arrived, and we have yet to really make amends for what we did.

Vladimir Putin tells Russian businesses to prepare for war. Uh oh.

Courtesy of The Independent:  

Russian business should be prepared to switch to production to military needs at any time, said Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. The Russian president was speaking at a conference of military leaders in Sochi. 

“The ability of our economy to increase military production and services at a given time is one of the most important aspects of military security,” Mr Putin said. “To this end, all strategic, and simply large-scale enterprise should be ready, regardless of ownership.” 

A day earlier, the president had spoken of a need to catch up and overtake the West in military technology. “Our army and navy need to have the very best equipment — better than foreign equivalents,” he said. “If we want to win, we have to be better.”

When the clear outcome of a war between the US and Russia is mutual destruction, it is hard to understand what winning or being "better" might entail. 

Since it is obvious to everybody that Russia has nothing to fear from America as long as Putin's puppet Donald Trump is in office, it seems to me that this directive is the result of Putin thinking that he may not stay in office that much longer.

However the idea that we would remove Trump and then immediately start a war with Russia seems more than a little ridiculous, even though by interfering in our election Russia essentially launched a first strike.

So is Putin simply saber rattling here for the benefit of his constituents, or is he literally considering a military engagement with the US?

Russia threatens American media outlets because the Justice Department is forcing RT to register as a foreign agent.

Courtesy of Mother Jones: 

Russian lawmakers vowed Friday to adopt legislation targeting American media outlets in response to the US Justice Department forcing RT, the English-language Russia television channel, to register as a foreign agent. 

Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said Russian legislators will amend a law related to foreign agents to include foreign media. Volodin, a former Putin aide, said the Duma could adopt the new legislation as soon as next week, according to news reports. “Since such decisions are being made in the United States in relation to our television companies, it is right for us to respond to these actions,” Volodin said, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

The measure would initially target CNN, Voice of America, and Radio Liberty,” said Senator Alexei Pushkov, who chairs the upper house of parliament’s media policy committee. Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, indicated the law could also target Moscow-based correspondents from newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post. 

RT, formerly Russia Today, said Thursday in a statement posted on its website that the DOJ threatened to freeze its bank accounts and arrest its top US executive if it fails to register by Monday under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that requires representatives of foreign governments to disclose information, such as employees’ contacts with government officials and political donations, in publicly available filings to the department.

Gee what is Russia going to do, start having their highly placed double agent start publicly referring to reporting by American news outlets as "fake news?" 

Oh, wait.

Facebook groups created by Russian trolls not only attempted to sway election, they also attempted to incite violence.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Posts from three now-removed Facebook groups created by the Russian Internet Research Agency suggest Russia sought not only to meddle in U.S. politics but to encourage ideologically opposed groups to act out violently against one another. The posts are part of a database compiled by Jonathan Albright, the research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who tracks and analyzes Russian propaganda. 

For example, "Being Patriotic," a group that regularly posted content praising Donald Trump's candidacy, stated in an April 2016 post that Black Lives Matter activists who disrespected the American flag should be "be immediately shot." The account accrued about 200,000 followers before it was shut down. 

Another Russia-linked group, "Blacktivist," described police brutality in a November 2016 post weeks after the election, and stated, "Black people have to do something. An eye for an eye. The law enforcement officers keep harassing and killing us without consequences." 

The group "Secured Borders" had the most violent rhetoric, some of it well after the presidential election. A post in March 2017 described the threat of "dangerous illegal aliens" and said, "The only way to deal with them is to kill them all." Another post about immigrants called for a draconian new law, saying, "if you get deported that's your only warning. You come back you get shot and rolled into a ditch... BANG, problem solved." And a post about refugees said, "the state department needs to be burned to the ground and the rubble reduced to ashes."

Well that's troubling.

And it also indicates that the Russian trolls were likely more interested in sowing unrest and even violence than in getting Donald  Trump elected.

In fact they probably believed that getting him elected would create even more disharmony and distrust.

Which would help to explain this next story.

Courtesy of Politico:

Top lawyers from Facebook and Twitter said Tuesday that Russian-linked posts and advertisements placed on the social networks after Election Day sought to sow doubt about President Donald Trump's victory. 

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a Senate Judiciary panel that content generated by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency after Nov. 8 centered on “fomenting discord about the validity of [Trump’s] election.” That's a change from Russia's pre-election activity, which was largely centered on trying to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a January report. 

“During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton. After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. Is that what you saw on Facebook?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked at the hearing. 

Stretch and his Twitter counterpart, Sean Edgett, called that an "accurate" statement.

Donald Trump is the chaos candidate, which is likely why Putin wanted him in the White House.

I imagine that Putin also hoped that he could do something about the sanctions against Russia, but when Trump proved impotent in that regard, well then  it was time to use him to ignite more unrest among the American people.

I have said it before, but it bears repeating.

If you are getting your information from Facebook it is almost certain that your opinions have been manipulated in one way or another.

The Alt-Right are using NATO and British Intelligence psychological warfare techniques to spread white nationalism. Well isn't that special.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Far right groups under the banner of the so-called 'alt right' are using psychological warfare techniques learnt from leaked NATO and British intelligence documents to spread white supremacism across the world, according to a new report. 

In a study by the the Institute of Strategic Dialogue—titled 'The Fringe Insurgency'—Julia Ebner and Jacob Davey argue that activists are "weaponising internet culture" to spread their ideology online and subvert democracies. 

After spending several weeks undercover on online alt-right forums, the authors identified the tactics that users adopted to radicalize people online and mobilize support for the far-right groups, targeting anxieties over immigration, terrorism, and race.

They used “crowd-funding platforms, custom-made social media platforms and even the use of leaked military and intelligence resources from [U.K. intelligence agency] GCHQ and NATO to run campaigns against their own governments,” the report said. 

The study identified these tactics as originating in America and then being transported to European counties to disrupt their democratic elections and incite hatred and even violence.

The article did not mention it but I would be interested in how this relates to the Russian government's attempts to undermine western democracy or if in fact they are working hand in glove.