A little reminder from days gone by: 

Back in 2018 I wrote this on my facebook wall: 

   " I am relatively certain that it will come out that a fistful of Russian intelligence operators came to the USA in order to facilitate the election of the current occupant of the White House. They acted in collusion with Candidate 1's campaign, and obtained and used data generated by contractors employed by Candidate 1 to push the election in Candidate 1's direction. It will be revealed that Candidate 1 received material aid from these foreign agents, and that Candidate 1 was aware of these machinations and approved of them. Finally, it will be hinted at, if not actually brought out, that Candidate 1 was recruited to be an agent of influence by the Russian government. (Note: this is not based on sources. it is strictly and only my opinion based on my personal perception and synthesis of known events and projected possible outcomes. I am not a psychic, and I do not believe such things exist. I am however, well up in the news, and in the practices of Intelligence agencies, including ours and theirs. "

 

Given  all that has transpired in the ensuing four years, how would you rate my prognostications ? I think I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. But considering the nature of the material missing from two of what are now being called the Mar-a-Lago documents, I would really rather have been wrong. 

 

Next we turn to Jared's money woes: One of the things a skilled intelligence operator will do is look for people with access (not necessarily power, but access.) who are having money troubles. The deeper and more private a financial hole the subject is in the better. This is ever so much better than trolling for gays or sexual deviants because people with money woes are much more common. They may be gamblers, speculators in the stock market (another form of gambling.) or maybe they just live too far above their means. Jared was in a deep financial hole. Now Jared has 2 billion to speculate with courtesy of the Saudis. I think it's a pretty easy set of dots to connect, don't you ?  

O- -- - - - - - - - - o

 A closing remark : On the volume of scandals.  Not long ago Fox News pundit Sean Hannity read off, in an angry voice, all the scandals that plagued the Former Guy's regime. He went on for about two minutes, listing all of them. Apparently it never occurred to Hannity that what he was doing is reading the bill of indictments against his hero. You could dismiss some of the investigations as being all sizzle and no steak, but you still have to admit that where there is smoke there is fire, and the former regime did issue forth a whole lot of smoke. These missing Classified documents may indeed be the flames we have been seeing signs of all along. I can only hope the damage control party can get to it in time. TFG blew a hole in the bottom of the ship of state, and men like Hannity helped him light the fuse. 

The Irony of the Young Okoberists from Pskov.

 In 1987 Tom Clancy published 

his techno-thriller masterwork "Red Storm Rising." (which he co-authored with Larry Bond). 

        Clancy wrote what was then, in 1987, a chilling scenario in which the Russians, as prime mover in the Warsaw Pact, suffer a drastic casualty in it's oil production facilities due to poor planning and a group of Muslim fanatics. This causes the fictional Russian leader to decide that the only way to get out of the jam is to seize the Persian Gulf oil states. (with the possible exception of Iran.) If the Soviet controls the Arabian Peninsula not only is their immediate oil need satisfied, but their control would place a stranglehold on US and other economies. And so, the decision is taken. Warsaw Pact will launch a "defensive" battle against NATO, and split West Germany and Austria off, thus fracturing the alliance. 

        No doubt most of you are wondering by now why I'm spoiling a good read and what Clancy's fictional scenario has to do with the current very real war in Ukraine. I'm getting to that, but bear with me as I  construct a scenario: Putin wants to wreck that portion of Ukraine not under his control so as to put an end to their threats of taking back the portions of the Donbas that his operatives have encouraged to separate from the main Ukraine country. It goes without saying that he also wants to keep them out of the Crimea he so badly wanted to re-integrate into Russia. Ukraine with it's leadership in prison (in Russia) and leaders installed by Putin would not be able or willing to drive Russians out of those territories. So now we come to the attempt at provocation. Putin has for years been manipulating events in Crimea and Donbas so that when the time came all three areas would break off from Ukraine and either request Russian "protection" or outright cede themselves to Russia to run by fiat. (both ends would be sufficient for Putin.) So, he cooks up this fiction about De-Nazifying Ukraine and protecting Ethnic Russians in the Donbas and Crimea. It is of course complete fabrication. The Ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine would have been content to remain there had not the mysterious "little green men" been there to "help" them separate from the rest of the country, in exactly the same way that "little green men" and "volunteers" helped Crimea secede from the nation. Well now let's turn to the Tom Clancy fiction again. 

        Why it is surprisingly similar. . . Why it should be familiar :

Oh Twitter Bots. Oh Twitter Bots. How stupid.

 Late last night, I tabbed back into Firefox and looked at my twitter page. When I did so, I found that my twitter account, @tzed928 had been locked, because of a post I made which the Twitter bots decided was a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. My twitter handle is a name I made up as something short and relatively anonymous back when I was playing World of Warcraft to allow me to tweet images and text out of the game. From there, my participation grew until I was tweeting regularly out of that account. Well, that is now coming to a close. Earlier that night, someone with the handle @jtrebach posted a tweet of a then-unknown root and then asked if anyone would eat it if they were hungry. the captioned tweet below is the reply I made. A relatively sensible suggestion slice off a small piece of the root and rub it on the web between your finger and thumb. If you fee a burning or tingling sensation, discard the root and do not eat. read the survival guide. According to the almighty Twitter Bots, this is a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. In Fact, it is entirely the opposite. The picture was, as I later found out, that of a mandrake root. Mandrake  root is dangerous and can be harmful or fatal if swallowed. It contains datura. The procedure that I suggested would have saved unknown numbers of people from a fairly horrible death by poison. The irony is not lost on me.

Notes:

 Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter inc and used under the fair use exception, to wit: "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody"

World of Warcraft is trademark Activision Blizzard and used without permission under the fair use exception, for : "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody 

Note: As if it needed saying : I do not condone, endorse or recommend self harm of any kind.  

Note: I will not relent on this. I was not and am not wrong. My tweet violated no terms of service. It's intent is crystal clear to anyone who is not a moron or a robot. 

Note: The irony is not lost on me that you can demand the head of the President of the United States on a platter, cheer on the nazi party, use whatever racist slurs you want, but mention "take your knife and slice . . . " and you get banned. I'm lookin at you, Jack Dorsey.