Democracy actually dies in the full glare of the media and us all… (524)

“Democracy dies in darkness” is a quote pompously colonised by The Washington Post which now hangs like a rotting albatross corpse around its neck as owner Jeff Bezos – along with other notable tech billionaires - swiftly pivot away from previous thin moral stances, to pre-obey their chosen overlord and bend the knee to Donald Trump.

Here is the text of a letter of mine published last week in Scottish newspaper The National –

Dear Editor,

Project 2025 attracted focus and panic prior to the November US elections and its negative implications for ordinary Americans.

What is now evident from the foreign funding into Trump org during his last stint in the WH, the ongoing grift, the self-interested placements of billionaires in the transition team, is that Trump is putting the US up for sale in the same way Putin did with Russia.

IN Russia’s case the unwritten devils’ bargain that those oligarchs who made eye-watering wealth out of cashing in on the resources of their motherland and selling out its people, was that they were forever beholden to Putin.

And yes, it begins with getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas. Something we are trained to in the UK (Brexit!). Once that is achieved the rest is easy.

Trump is entirely comfortable with this feudal system and that, not Project 2025, is his blueprint.

It’s a strategy perfected by Putin.

Having got away with an attempted coup – Trump 0.2 has no breaks.

SO, buckle up.

(11^th December 2024)

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In summary, Trump is turning the US into an Oligarchy. It’s not just mad man Musk who has been bending the knee to rapist-elect Trump but Zuckerberg and Bezos etc. come to heel like trained bitches offered the canine equivalent of all their Christmases in one snarf.

As leaders (I use the term loosely) around the world work out just how they are going to placate the toddler-man this time or – to use the 1930s term - appease him, it’s like we are all suffering extreme collective amnesia.

So far Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sunda Pachai, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon have all kissed the ring without apparent shame or discomfort or sense of their own titanic cowardice.

Here is MSNBC laying it out.

Ari Melber

SO – Democracy doesn’t just die in darkness it can die out in the open. It can be suffocated in the full daylight; in the glare of traditional and social media and with all of us looking on.

 

Merry Christmas.

That will be the last post until sometime in January.

Assad; The Horror & Devastating Western Hypocrisy… (523)

 

“Events dear boy, events…” is what British Prime Minister (1957 - 63) Harold Macmillan was supposed to have said when asked what was the most difficult part of being a statesman.

No event can have rattled the current political stasis more than the sudden toppling of the murderous psychopathic dictator Assad. After a stalemate that has lasted over a decade the Che-esque figure of Al-Julani – leader of the rebels – has pushed through to Damascus and the monster has fled to Papa Putin in Russia.

Misery loves company but so does evil. And as the rebels uncover the abandoned Assad lifestyle - the dozens of cars, the golden interiors to palatial abodes - the similarities to Trump stare right back at us. A spoiled poisoned brat who inherited power and wealth from his father. More on that maybe in another post.

This is an old doodle of mine from 2017 – not the start of the new Assad horrors - but an indication of just how long and how hard Syria has suffered while the world did nothing.

However, there is one thing almost as upsetting as the way the West sat back while Assad destroyed his own country, used chemical weapons against his own people (his father previously slaughtered – for example – 40k citizens of Hama in one month).That one thing is the sound of gross hypocrisy coming from US and EU spokespeople in relation to Al-Julani – leader of the rebel movement that has ousted the immovable monster.

 

Many are speculating about removing the $10m bounty from the rebel leader’s head – and suggesting that sanctions that have so harmed Syrian civilians for years will be removed ‘if he behaves himself’. Oil taken by the US ‘may’ be returned if he plays nice.

Where were these attitudes when Assad was slaughtering and starving the people of Syria?

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THANKS by the way to Russell - journo at The Herald. I'd used similar text in a letter to that paper and he spotted that I'd credited Assad Jnr with the Hama slaughter actually perpetrated by his father. I suppose you get to the point where one genocidal maniac merges with another... But no excuse for sloppiness.

Pussy-grabbed Trudeau v Sheinbaum’s display of balls - a political lesson the world should heed. (522)

Let's be clear, the cosy bro pic of Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago with the convicted orange felon and rapist elect was cringe factor 10.

 

However, add to that his intention presumably was to schmooze up to the man who doesn't understand how tariffs work to save Canadian trade, I hope Justin is taking note of the success of the leader who actually has the balls.

 

Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum, immediately stood up to Trump. The Mexican Peso immediately rose against the dollar.

 

Other Western leaders could learn from her example. Go to Mar-a-lago to have your pussy grabbed like Trudeau or have some balls like Claudia.

 

If  these men never learn from history it bears repeating here - weakness and appeasement NEVER pay.

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For really great information and uncluttered take on what is actually happening across the pond, I strongly recommend Meidas Touch Network

 

‘It’s coming from inside the house…’ (521)

A famous line from many a trite teen horror movie.

IN this case this sentiment relates to the catastrophe with the Democrats approach to the US election and the reason that even seasoned and healthily sceptical commentators got it wrong.

All the fund-raising and door knocking and hugely positive, massive rallies not only was not enough but, with hindsight, was never going to be enough. Any door that may have opened in 2024 to a Dem canvasser was concealing the fact that MAGA was ‘already in the house’.

A con stick is very like a magic trick. It has actually been executed long before the mark realises its even going to happen. All the rest is smoke and mirrors, time-filling while the con sinks in.

For the next four years (at least) the US will be in the grip of a feudal kleptocracy so cultlike and so openly corrupt that those dreading it are taking refuge in the notion that the sheer level of very obvious incompetence and chaos will save what is left of America by constipating government.

But this is not a short-term problem. The world is now in the hands of the tech billionaires and Trump may turn out just to be a useful rich idiot. Certainly, Russia’s cyber reach (see post 519) must now be taken seriously.

Those not taking the placement of Tulsi Gabard (Putin and Assad pal) as a big red flag should remember that the Cold War was sparked because the then equivalent of the KGB had a ‘man in the room’ when the US was developing its atomic bomb which is how they came to have a world destroying weapon themselves for a tiny percentage of the cost.

It’s what they do and most certainly what ex-KGB operative Putin does.

THE US no longer belongs to Americans. Americans did what the UK did when they voted for Brexit. They have voted for massive self-harm and the norms that have been relied on for decades are not disappearing – they disappeared while no one was paying attention.

Norms have been eaten away in the bedrooms and basements of America (and Britain) on the internet.

This is borne out by testament from ex-MAGAs and family members of those who have been consumed.

Like this MAGA Mother 

Worryingly the big draw especially to young men seems to be full on – no excuse misogyny.

Turns out misogyny is as popular as racism…

The monster is not just in the house – its running through the cables in the walls.

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as always - for lighter reading and maybe some Christmas purchases - do check out my Other Stuff

The dead had something to say if the living did not… (520)

 On March 5th this year I posted that The Ghosts of Gaza will be waiting... in the coming elections. At the time Biden had still not accepted his frailty and stepped down.

Turns out, the British public really weren't that bothered about what the ICC view as potential genocide and the party of the illegal invasion of Iraq got in on a landslide. Starmer is still happily selling weapons to kill Palestinian children (2% of the entire population to date). 

Though we’re not without our gurning fascist in the UK with Farage and his cohorts staining Parliament with their presence.

However, there seems to have been a more cataclysmic effect in America.

As the sickness lingers for decent folk, many are now contemplating, among other things, the influence of those just too disgusted at Biden's horrible mishandling of Gaza, 'Bibi' and his "most moral army in the world".

Gaza, the suffering civilians and hostages, got barely a mention during Harris’s otherwise apparently well-run campaign. 

And, as documentary film maker Michael Moore pointed out - many US Muslim voters live in swing states.

So, here we go, with four years of chaos and cruelty for the US which, if you look at the proposed line up of the Trump team of nut jobs, sex offenders and racists, seems set to make the last Trump stint in the WH seem almost benign.

You have to wonder if there is some very harsh poetic justice buried under the political rubble…

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Do check out my Other Stuff

When Putin pays Western leaders play… dead. (519)

WE may have had our suspicions prior to the Musk/MAGA win in the US but if the mists have not lifted, the penny well and truly dropped - now is the time.

WE know Trump, apart from being a Farting, lying, racist, racist, orange, cretinous, faithless, weak, unstable, conman, is a Putin stooge who invited Putin’s henchmen into the Oval office when he was president the first time around and he has been recipient of Russian money via over-payments for properties dating back years. That’s before you consider the efficacy or not of the pee tapes.

Here in the UK Putin’s first poisoning of a Russian dissident – Alexander Litvinenko went unchallenged and largely unremarked because the UK Tory Party was so awash with Oligarch money. It was only after the second botched event against Sergei Skripal and his daughter near Salisbury that the UK took notice.

It was Boris Johnson who – despite being warned that Russian tanks would soon cross the Ukraine border laughed at his military advisors – though he subsequently took every chance he could get for a photo op with President Zelenskyy – but that would be the same Johnson who appointed a Russian Oligarch to The house of Lords against firm political and security advice.

Kim Jong Un had his brother killed in THE RUSSSIAN STYLE and is now of course contributing thousands of troops to the invasion and destruction of Ukraine.

Even here in Scotland I’d note that Alex Salmond got his RTE licence in 2017. During the Pandemic I was relieved that Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson wore makeup because apart from the physical similarities between her and Salmond – they both spent the entire pandemic attacking the Frist minister of Scotland. How either of them thought that helpful to a country in crisis is anyone’s business but they each had their pay masters. For Davidson it was – oh yes – again – Boris Johnson who also rewarded her with a seat in the lords. Salmond was finally prised away from RTE after the invasion of Ukraine.

Even the side men are out. Is anyone surprised that Peter Mandelson – he of Russian oligarch Deripasca Yacht scandal – is out soft pedalling for Trump and Putin?

Remember, Putin is KGB through and through. As well as the Le Carre type, there is soft espionage that involves using – for example – those weakened by unstable egos. It’s not that they are Russian operatives but they sure know who buttered their bread.

My point is that anyone surprised at the US result should not be. Both Trump and Musk are the exact types of egos Putin colonises and makes use of to destabilise and undermine his enemies. HE rots them from within.

The current backbiting in the US is pointless. Putin has a 24 year head start on them and they need to get real.

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And – you know I used to doodle. Here’s an old one from 2016 about choices…

Democracy, Decency, Dedication V Degradation, Depravity, Disaster… (518)

…the ONLY question hereafter re the 2024 US election - Harris v Trump - is how did the very obvious choice between a potentially decent future and one of disaster and degradation end up on a knife edge?