I recently was in touch with a nice lady about a possible endorsement from her group for my campaign. She ended up writing me that the group decided to not endorse anyone for Thurston PUD Commissioner. Disappointed, I wrote thanking her for their consideration & asking if she had any feedback for me. To my surprise and her credit, she wrote me back with exactly what I asked for.
“Your current website is very heavy on a wide variety of foreign policy issues, many of which are tangential, at best, with the duties of a Thurston PUD Commissioner. In trying to build a winning coalition for any office, highlighting controversial stances on issues not related to the office is unlikely to be helpful.”
I was thankful for the response.
Why talk about war here?
Since February of 2022, the US public has been sleepwalking, behind our political leaders from both parties and the military industrial complex they represent, towards World War 3. This will likely be the bloodiest, most destructive war the world has ever seen. If direct war ever comes between the US and Russia, China, or both, it will be a nuclear war and civilization plus much of the life on earth will be destroyed. The whole world ending barrage of missiles could be exchanged over the course of 72 minutes. The worst thing about it is that the whole thing could be caused by a mistake.
Less than a month ago, the US and EU were considering allowing Ukraine to fire US and EU made long range missiles to hit targets deep into Russia. These missiles can’t be fired without the direct guidance of US/ NATO military technicians. Putin said very directly, if Russia gets hit by these missiles, it will consider itself to be at war with whichever country or countries that was responsible, via their military technicians providing the targeting abilities, & that they would respond directly against them. Thankfully, at least someone in the group of unelected officials currently running the US, had some sense to heed the very clear warning, so far. Unfortunately the coverage by mainstream news of Putin’s most dire and serious warning was negligible, nigh it was negligent!
Direct war between the US and Russia was something that was an unthinkable horror during the Cold War. Every US & USSR administration worked steadfastly to prevent MAD “Mutually Assured Destruction.” The press covered the issue, the public built bomb shelters, practiced drills and organized demonstrations against nuclear weapons. Diplomacy eventually, after years and years, led to treaties that reduced the number, type and location of nuclear weapons in both countries.
Well today almost all of those treaties are gone, all ended or not renewed by the US despite Russian wishes. The US also pushed closer to Russia’s borders with nuclear capable missile systems in Poland for example. Then there was our direct involvement with overthrowing the elected President of Ukraine in 2014 in a violent coup followed by the installation of our select choices throughout every level of their government. George Soros was proud of his CIA driven color revolution’s success which only cost our government $10 Billion and 10 years to foment.
Their next step was to continue their goal, previously stated in 2008, of bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, something that Putin made clear was a total red line. They’d argue it’d be like Russia building a base and putting nuclear missiles in Mexico. They’d argue that Republican President George H.W. Bush promised after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, which was their equivalent to NATO, peacefully dissolved that they would not expand NATO east. Clinton broke that commitment and then so did every President afterwards.
Now, the US is pushing right up against Russia’s borders. We’re arming our proxy Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian. We’re actively provoking Russia and other countries with our aggressive moves. We’re weaponizing our international financial system to steal their foreign reserves and sanction them and every other country that doesn’t do what we want. We’re pushing them together to form new world institutions, like BRICS, without the US.
Two close calls to Nuclear War that hardly anyone knows.
On at least two occasions during the Cold War nuclear war was barely averted by the skin of our teeth. Once was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A Russian nuclear armed submarine off Cuba was in a dire situation and needed to surface, not knowing what was happening because they were unable to communicate. Suddenly a US sailor in a ship above them, apparently as a prank, dropped a grenade onto them under water which exploded. They thought they were under attack and their instructions were in that situation to fire their nukes. The two commanders agreed to fire but luckily for the world they had a civilian USSR official on board who out ranked them and told them to not fire. He saved the world.
In another situation, in 1984, the US/ NATO put on an enormous military exercise in the Baltic Sea. The USSR didn’t know what was happening, whether the US was about to attack. At one radar station what appeared on their screens was what looked like the US had fired nuclear weapons at the USSR. At that moment, the commander in charge there had only a few minutes to confirm that missiles were actually fired and put in the call to fire retaliatory nuclear strikes. The commander checked and rechecked. Up against the deadline, he made the judgment call that he was guessing that the radar equipment was wrong and he chose to not return fire. It turned out he was right.
The story of that incident reached President Ronald Reagan and he was shocked! He couldn’t believe the USSR actually might’ve mistaken the NATO military exercise as a sneak attack which nearly caused them to fire all their nukes thereby destroying the world! It shook Reagan to the core. After that near disaster, Reagan and Gorbachev started up talks that lead to an end of the cold war and was actually very close to an agreement of FULL nuclear disarmament.
As close to calamity as those two incidents came, the situation right now is even closer to nuclear war. In fact the League of Atomic Scientists who created the Doomsday Clock back in 1947 put the clock at 90 seconds to midnight which is the closest it has ever been. Since the beginning of 2022, the chance of nuclear war has gotten closer and closer. When the Israeli conflict started up it got even closer.
Today we are in dire straits and the media isn’t even covering it despite it being two years since Biden spoke at a fundraiser about how the situation could be “Armageddon.” The lack of serious media coverage or grassroots protests should raise red flags for people about the state of our media and democracy. What happens instead is that people, like myself, who bring up the issue, are ignored or ridiculed, especially from the political class. What is harder to ignore and ridicule though is the fact that, last week, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, of Japan’s leading atomic bomb survivors organization, that works on ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
How does this relate to my race for PUD Commissioner?
I wonder what local political candidates were talking about during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Should I assume they were ignoring it like people expect me to be doing today? My understanding was that the entire nation was discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis intensely rather than ignoring it. My dad remembers the climb under their desk drills during school and that many people were building nuclear bunkers. Today, despite the danger being even greater, this important conversation seems to be subdued. Maybe it’s more accurate to say, although it’s tough to prove, that this conversation is being actively silenced.
Keep in mind, JBLM is the fourth largest military base in the world and it is right next to Thurston County. If war breaks out, that means that 55,000 military and civilian employees of the base, plus their families, are likely affected in some way. JBLM is also a priority military target in case of a nuclear war. An even bigger target if nuclear war breaks out is the Bangor Trident Base in the Hood Canal, which has approximately 500 nuclear weapons. Most people don’t realize that, had our Dementia-in-Chief allowed Ukraine to hit Moscow with US missiles, the world might’ve already been ended a few weeks ago. Maybe if the public had known the severity of the situation, they might’ve stood up to say: HELL NO!
Most people in the US, on some level, understand that they are being lied to. It wasn’t that long ago that the US went to war in Iraq based on lies about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Yet, despite the American public having been lied to about a war that cost lives and put the US trillions in debt, no one in power was held accountable. Therefore, many of those exact same people, or their underlings, are now continuing to create new illegal attacks, proxy wars and pursuing egomaniacal plans for wars against other super power rivals.
In 2003 I was marching with 25 million others worldwide against the coming Iraq war and today we’re on the verge of war with Iran and the biggest protest I can find is 200 people in a park in upstate NY. That makes it clear to me that the only thing that the US learned from the disasters of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was how to dismantle all grassroots or political voices against our foreign wars of aggression. This always begins with the media teaching Americans to hate whatever country the US intends to go to war against, especially their leaders. The story is always the same, the leader is a dictator, their people are brainwashed or yearning to be free like us, and we’re the good guys spreading democracy and freedom with our aircraft carriers and bombs. I’m seeing this same trope play out today.
As Thurston PUD Commissioner, I would have no say on any of this. I’m not running based on anything to do with my positions on geopolitics and my stance against the US involving itself in foreign wars. I made this blog several years ago and decided it would serve as a good enough candidate website. I’m not trying to hide who I am from the public. Why should I? I was proudly against the last wars, I’m against the current wars and I’m already against the BIG ONES I see coming. It’s the smart position to take, least of all because this coming war, America will lose. That’s not something I want to see.
I thought about voting for you, but the Dementia-in-Chief comment made me wonder how often you find your mouth wrapped around Trump’s jewels? Not taking the chance at allowing MAGA even a modicum of power. Linda will be getting 6 more years.
If you had addressed the very real threat that Dementia Trump poses to every single potential flashpoint, I’d have looked even more into you.
I’ve never been an enthusiastic supporter of any President. I’ve also considered every election to be less democratic for the most part than the one before. With the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision, a decision which allowed unlimited money into politics, our US democracy, which already was on life support, was buried. What we have now instead is nothing more than a Pageant put on by the Plutocrats for their benefit. An article from the NYT back in 2012 described that all US federal primaries are basically funded by 400 families who have pre-approved the top two who advance to the general. In 2016 it was so, in 2024 so it was again true and so it is in every election. The people never have a real choice. If you’ve bought in to the charade of the reality tv pro wrestling match that’s funded better that the entire 8 seasons of “Game of Thrones” every Presidential election cycle, well that’s exactly what that kind of money can buy. Donald Trump played the heel very well, he is a seasoned reality tv star after all. It helped him that they ran a B grade set of candidates who weren’t much for star power. It’s almost as if the Power Elite Plutocracy preferred him, or rather they needed a villain for their next four years.
I’ll be honest I did vote for him. It was my first time voting for a Republican for President. My first Presidential vote went for Al Gore in 2000, an election where he won the popular vote and only lost the Electoral College because Bush’s brother Jeb was Governor of Florida and rigged it for his brother George. A group of newspapers eventually did end up getting the real count and, if I remember correctly, Gore actually won Florida by 60,000 votes, yet this was long after Gore had thrown in the towel in December. Then in 2004 I voted Nader, in 2008 Obama, in 2012 Jill Stein GP, in 2016 Jill Stein GP, in 2020 Howie Hawkins GP and in 2024 Trump. I considered voting for a third party but I wanted to cast my vote fully and unambiguously against the Democrats who had gotten us into a war against Russia (on the verge today of going nuclear) and caused a Genocide against Palestinians. Trump meanwhile specifically said that we would not get us into WW3, something Harris would not say she wouldn’t do.
I cast my vote for Trump without any glee or dismay. My only hope was that it registered as a vote against war and I think a large number of people did the same, which is probably the biggest reason he won the popular vote in my opinion. I don’t think he’s much less likely to avoid WW3 than Harris but if there is a slight chance nuclear war is averted, I’ll take it. The fact is that it doesn’t much matter who is the President, if the Plutocrat Billionaires want WW3 there is little to stop their manufacturing of it. It’s a war I don’t think the US, or the Western Supremacist Plutocrats, will win and it likely will end much of human civilization, which I think they are perfectly ok with doing.
In some regards, I guess I can relate to your “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. After all, it is how I feel towards the Billionaire Western Supremacist Globalist Power Elite. The puppeteers behind both parties and pretty much all politicians. Those who manipulate the population to cheer for vacuous nondescript political terms like their favorite sports teams. I mean, what do Democrat and Republicans really stand for? What is a left? What is a right? What is a liberal? What is a conservative? I’m not kidding. Ask 10 people and I promise you’d get 10 different answers. What’s more, had you asked those same ten people 10 years ago, they’d probably come up with ten more answers. The terms are not only garbage, they’re worse, they’re terms manipulated from above to divide and conquer those of us below. I consider these words and the “left right political spectrum” to be a mind virus planted into all our brains by the same billionaires who, oddly enough, also tend to own all the professional sports teams. What a coincidence. Incidentally, I’ve never fully understood what people are cheering for when it comes to those either. The teams swap players, swap coaches and even swap cities, yet people still cheer for “their” team. I mean what are they cheering for exactly?
I had a prediction for the US under the next President, whomever it was going to be. The US is going to get worse. The puppet at the top won’t change that. We’re talking about 40 years of terrible decisions by both parties, the rich and the overwhelming majority of the brainwashed masses who complacently accepted the slowly heating up pot of problems they sat in. It was a complacency sold in the propagandized Western Supremacism that pervades into the minds of even the poorest among us. It was a complacency made possible because the US Empire held the rest of the world hostage by the point of a gun shown in 800 foreign bases, a dozen Aircraft Carrier Strike Groups, 5,000 nuclear weapons, CIA covert assassinations and coups, military actions everywhere and a myriad network of spooks and bribed foreign officials across the globe. It was a complacency that was so delusional the whole population understood themselves as “consumers” whereas the rest of the world were producers for US. It was a complacency that freed us from responsibility to community, from the burdens of cooperation, from the need of having to share things, from the duty towards one’s family and that made us each encouraged to believe that our task in life was centering ourselves above all. Today our decades of complacency has brought us a crumbling infrastructure, an unreal amount of debt, a currency who’s imaginary value is soon to be brought back to reality, a public that has fallen behind in education, a declining level of health, a skyrocketing in wealth inequality and a situation where the rest of the world isn’t just catching up, but are passing us by. It’s all going to get much much worse for quite a long time before it gets better.
The only people who will eventually change that direction are all the little people, like you and me, on the bottom. We’ll change it when we’ve stopped playing for, or rooting for, these imaginary teams that are controlled by the Billionaires’ manipulations from above. When we’ve decided that it’s time that we write the rules instead of following their rules. When we start really connecting to place, to deep culture, to our families and neighbors once again instead of live in their dystopian psyop of alienation and fear. I don’t live in fear of MAGA, it’s not real, it doesn’t have any power over me and it shouldn’t over you either. When you hate something and you fear it, you give it power. In my opinion, the psyop of fear around these things are all about hurting those who are made to be afraid and empowering those that they are made to fear. I want nothing to do with any of that. I’ve been standing up against the most powerful Billionaires, corporations, spy agencies, security agencies, banks and more my whole adult life. I don’t spread fear, I face it. What I spread is courage and the belief that together we can overcome someday.
Thanks for commenting. Your feedback was welcomed and appreciated. I probably could have done without the name calling of Biden. I am extremely angry towards him. I think he should have stepped down or been removed over a year ago. His cognitive decline became so apparent that the White House stopped holding full cabinet meetings in October 2023. I’m someone who already thinks the role of President, as it has become, is one that is not where the power truly lies, but I hate the dishonesty of that. To see our Presidency go to a reality tv star billionaire and then to a person suffering severe cognitive decline and then back to the reality tv star billionaire, bothers me deeply. The lack of honesty and accountability in this Plutocratic system is untenable. It truly is.