Category Archives: Viva!

Treaties That Ended The Cold War

In the late 1980’s the US and the USSR made several treaties to limit weapons of mass destruction……and 30+ years later those treaties are falling apart….

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) was probably the Alliance’s most important and secretive institution during the Cold War. Notably, it worked out NATO members’ joint strategy and tactics for using non-strategic nuclear weapons in a possible all-European war with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Such a confrontation seemed all too possible—and sometimes almost inevitable—during acute crisis situations that brought the Cold War opponents to the brink in 1949, 1956, 1962, 1973 and 1983. In the last of the aforementioned crises, tensions spiked as the United States deployed nuclear-tipped land-based cruise missiles as well as medium-range Pershing II ballistic missiles on the territory of several European NATO allies to counter the threat of the deployment of hundreds of Soviet SS-20 nuclear intermediary missiles known in Russia as Pioneer. The Soviets produced over 800 Pioneer missiles, and each carried a heavier payload than the Pershing IIs; but their U.S. counterparts were stealthier and much more accurate.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/10/10/agreements_that_ended_the_cold_war_are_disintegrating_113882.html

The INF Treaty, what is it?

https://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm

One of the main treaties from those days was the INF Treaty…..Trump with the urging of Bolton is thinking about withdrawing from this treaty….

Years of US allegations that Russia is violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) may be coming to a head, with John Bolton reportedly pushing hard for President Trump to withdraw outright from the pact.

Instead of negotiating over the questions, Bolton wants the US to just withdraw outright, despite that being a major escalation on tensions with Russia. State Department and Pentagon officials are both opposed to this.

The administration was to have talks on Monday to discuss Bolton’s idea, but this has been postponed, at least for now. Still, Congress is also pushing for action on Russia, as part of general hostility toward Russia.

(antiwar.com)

Trump has made it official and pulled out of the treaty……

President Donald Trump said Saturday he will pull the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because Russia has violated the agreement. The 1987 pact, which helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. “Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years,” Trump said after a rally in Elko, Nevada, per the AP. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.” The agreement has constrained the US from developing new weapons, but America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons, Trump said.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” he said. National Security Adviser John Bolton was headed Saturday to Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials at a time when Moscow-Washington relations remain frosty over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and upcoming US midterm elections. US officials have previously alleged that Russia violated the treaty by deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile in order to pose a threat to NATO.

Yet another international treaty the Trump thinks he can throw away….And of course Russia will have something to say…..

A day after President Trump announced his intention to scrap a landmark arms control deal with Russia, the Kremlin called the pullout “a very dangerous step.” Trump is sending national security adviser John Bolton to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, and was to relay Trump’s decision. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass on Sunday that a US withdrawal “will cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability.” The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty bars the US and Russia from possessing, producing, or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles, reports the AP.

Britain said it stood “absolutely resolute” with the US, while Germany called Trump’s move “regrettable.” Heiko Maas said Sunday that the three-decades-old treaty is “an important pillar of our European security architecture.” Maas says Germany has repeatedly urged Moscow to “clear up the serious allegations of breaching the INF treaty, which Russia has so far not done.” He says Germany is urging Washington to “consider the possible consequences” of its decision, including for a US-Russian nuclear disarmament treaty beyond 2021. But Britain’s defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, blamed Russia for making a “mockery” of the pact and called on the Kremlin to “get its house in order.” Independent Russian political analyst, Dmitry Oreshkin said, “We are slowly slipping back to the situation of cold war as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, but now it could be worse because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt.”

Once again Our Dear Supreme Leader has taken it upon himself to make the world a little less safe…..nukes unregulated not a very promising situation.

EPA re-registers drift-prone dicamba. Really?

Crap!

Farmer in field



On Halloween, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a truly scary announcement — the agency decided to continue its registration of Monsanto’s (now merged with Bayer) highly controversial dicamba-based herbicide, Xtendimax. The chemical has damaged millions of acres of farmland over the past two seasons of use, and with this decision, the devastation will continue.

Farmers were outraged at the news, feeling that EPA has seriously failed to protect their businesses from harm.

Well-documented danger

In 2017, over three million acres of soybeans were damaged by dicamba drift. Farmers and farmer support organizations, PAN included, were vocal in opposition to Xtendimax, asking EPA to pull registration of the herbicide before even more damage could occur in the next growing season.

A few states such as Arkansas took action to protect their farmers, by disallowing dicamba applications between April and October 2018. In those places that put protective measures in place, damage was reduced. But EPA didn’t take meaningful action nationally against Xtendimax after the devastating damage of the 2017 season.

In 2018, over one million acres of soybeans were damaged as of mid-July, along with numerous reports of dicamba damage to fruits, vegetables, alfalfa, commercial and residential gardens and thousands of trees. Weed scientists from Iowa to Tennessee agree that the severity of the dicamba drift crisis continues to hit specialty crop and organic farmers, conventional soybean and cotton growers, orchardists, gardeners and rural residents the hardest.

Way too little, too late

In its statement announcing the decision to re-register Xtendimax, EPA indicated it would add several label restrictions, such as prohibiting early morning or evening applications, and spraying 45 days after soybean planting and 60 days after cotton planting. But farmers are very clear that this won’t go far enough to protect vulnerable crops from harm.

Iowa farmer and PAN Board Chair Denise O’Brien shared,

Monsanto has always been determined to keep farmers running on the pesticide treadmill. The reality is we can’t afford another year of Xtend crops. We need more than a few extra hours of protection per day. We need a bold and comprehensive policy solution to this drift pandemic.

The dicamba drift crisis is a direct outcome of the chemical-intensive model of farming that has become the norm for commodity crops. The widespread use of Monsanto’s (Bayer) Roundup created weed resistance, which led to introduction of seeds genetically engineered to resist dicamba, an antiquated, drift-prone herbicide.

PAN senior scientist Marcia Ishii-Eiteman has been tracking the crisis closely:

As farmers and scientists have been saying for years, dicamba simply cannot be kept on fields: it volatilizes, drifts and will continue to cause harm until EPA has the sense and integrity to pull this product from the market.

PAN will continue to work with partners in Iowa and throughout the Midwest to find a solution to the dicamba crisis, and is a co-plaintiff, along with National Family Farm Coalition and others, in a lawsuit challenging EPA’s 2016 decision to register Xtendimax in the first place.

 
Share this post: 



The number of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents has fallen since 2007

FT_18.11.01_UnauthImmigrantBirths_births

About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007.

The post The number of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents has fallen since 2007 appeared first on Pew Research Center.

How the MAGAbomber and the Synagogue Shooter Were Likely Radicalized

During the week of October 21-27, 2018, the United States suffered three separate far-right terrorist attacks. Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, and Cesar Sayoc, the so-called “MAGAbomber,” both left substantial social media footprints on Facebook, Gab and Twitter. Bellingcat has combed through as much as we’ve been able to find in order to trace both men’s path to radicalization.

Much of the evidence for this article comes from the Gab account of Robert Bowers. Gab is a social network built as an alternative to sites like Twitter, which founder Andrew Torba described as part of the “left-wing Big Social monopoly.” Gab became a haven for white supremacists and fascists, and was the platform Robert Bowers last posted on before committing mass murder.

Radicalization Followed Familiar Patterns

Earlier this month, Bellingcat published an investigation into the ways 75 fascist activists reported being “red-pilled.” Red-pilling has a variety of definitions, but the most common among fascists involves accepting the existence of a vast Jewish conspiracy. Mass shooter Robert Bowers did not explicitly state how he became red-pilled, but his Gab posts give us some hints into the road he took.

In the repost below, Bowers identified with a meme about going through the “libertarian-to-far-right pipeline,” presumably via his time on 4chan’s /pol/ board.

At least three of the fascists we previously studied noted holding libertarian beliefs immediately before descending into outright fascism. There are numerous other cases among those archived Discord logs of fascists discussing their so-called “libertarian phase.” Fascists seem to consider the influence of /pol/ on converting new fascists to be a matter of common knowledge.

Outside evidence supports this observation. One University College London study of eight million /pol/ posts found that 12% contained “hateful” language, compared to 2.2% in a random sample of Tweets. The most commonly used hateful word on /pol/ was “nigger.” The word “goy” was also prevalent. The study notes:

…that “goy” is used in an inverted fashion on /pol/, i.e., posters call other posters “goys” to imply that they are submitting to Jewish “manipulation” and “trickery.”

Another study from University College London suggests that /pol/ is one of the largest influencers of the meme ecosystem, and that it has a particular penchant for pushing out anti-Semitic memes. Ten of the 75 fascists we previously studied cited /pol/ or 4chan as integral to their red-pilling. Many more at least referenced it as an influence. If Bowers entered /pol/ a libertarian and exited a radicalized neo-Nazi, he would not have been the first.

Cesar Sayoc, the MAGAbomber, does not seem to have been a channer. But his route to radicalization was also one that was familiar in light of our previous research on far-right radicalization. Several of the fascists we studied on Discord cited the 2016 election or Donald Trump’s campaign as the start of their red-pilling process. The Trump campaign also seems to have started Sayoc down the road to extremism.

Readers are by now likely familiar with the numerous Trump stickers pasted onto the would-be bomber’s now iconic white van. It did not always look that way. Kelly Weil, of The Daily Beast, found a YouTube video Sayoc posted in 2015. It showed his vehicle, free of any political bumper stickers or other paraphernalia.

Sayoc appears to have always had issues with anger management. He was arrested in 2002 for threatening to blow up the offices of Florida Water & Power if they cut off his electricity. He was also arrested for battery in 2013. The Trump campaign appears to have given direction to his deep-seated anger. 2016 is the first year he registered to vote.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Sayoc family lawyer Ron Lowy claimed that Cesar had no interest in politics prior to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Lowy stated his belief that Cesar Sayoc, “…was attracted to the Trump formula of reaching out, Trump reaching out to these types of outsiders, people who don’t fit in, people who are angry at America, telling them they have a place at the table, telling them that it’s OK to get angry. I believe that was a motivating factor…”

But there were other motivating factors for Cesar, including an obsession with a very particular subset of right-wing media.

Violent Far-Right Extremists Have Similar — And Specific — Tastes in Media

It’s not shocking that these far-right terrorists subsisted on a diet of right-wing media. What’s interesting are the specific sources, media personalities and memes violent extremists cluster around. The MAGAbomber, for example, seems to have been a fan of Ben Shapiro:

Shapiro is particularly beloved by far-right extremists. He’s the editor-in-chief and a founder of The Daily Wire, a far right news website funded by the billionaire Wilks brothers. Alexandre Bissonnette, who murdered six Muslims at a Quebec City mosque in 2017, read Shapiro more than any other writer and the Daily Wire more than any other website. Several fascist activists whose Discord logs we studied expressed a sometimes intense appreciation for Shapiro’s content, in spite of the fact that Shapiro is Jewish.



Cesar Sayoc also seems to have been a fan of Infowars, another preference he shares with Bissonnette. Eight of the fascist activists we studied credited Infowars or Alex Jones with their red-pilling. A look at the accounts Sayoc followed on Twitter suggests that Fox News also made up a sizable chunk of his media diet.

Fox News also appears to have had an influence on Robert Bowers’ decision to open fire on a crowded synagogue. Eight days before committing mass murder, he reposted their coverage of the refugee caravan:

Here we see Fox News’s coverage of the refugee caravan in Mexico, modified and built upon by fascist users on Gab. That arrow points to a Star of David painted on the side of the truck. In his last post on Gab before the shooting, Bowers explicitly cited his belief that Jewish organizations bring “invaders” into the country. The particular target of his hate was HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. HIAS was founded in 1881 to help Jewish refugees from Imperial Russia. Today, they help refugees of all backgrounds.

Bowers also professed a desire to do violence to a variety of left-wing boogeymen, including Antifa, as we see in this reposted Fox News article:

We did not find any posts by Bowers that referenced Patriot Prayer, a far-right organization that has battled anti-fascists in the streets, most prominently in Portland. Patriot Prayer is not officially a fascist/ anti-Semitic organization, but many of its members openly profess an admiration for dictator Pinochet. These shirts are quite common at Patriot Prayer gatherings (and can easily be purchased on Amazon.com):

Robert Bowers seems to share this admiration.

Pinochet fandom is also rampant in fascist activist Discord conversations. Jokes about Pinochet are actually part of a tight constellation of memes shared almost exclusively by violent fascist groups. This constellation includes the imagery of communists being thrown from helicopters, a la the Pinochet regime’s infamous Death flights. Know Your Meme has traced the origin of the helicopter ride meme back to a June 31, 2015 post on /pol/. Here is an example from a February 5th, 2017 conversation on Anticom’s Discord:

A similar image is actually common on another shirt regularly seen at Patriot Prayer events. Here we see one on Tusalita “Tiny” Toese, one of the most prominent and violent members of Patriot Prayer:

Pictures of Toese at other angles show the letters “RWDS” printed on his sleeves. RWDS stands for “Right Wing Death Squads”. This term is regularly associated with the idea of Death Flights and references to Pinochet. Our Discord fascists were also obsessed with the idea of right wing death squads.

It could therefore be argued that Bowers and Sayoc were both attempting to act as their own one-man death squads.

In The Far-Right Media Ecosystem, All Roads Lead to Anti-Semitism

Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, regularly engaged with neo-Nazi accounts. He seems to identify as a fascist, and expressed an intense dislike of President Donald Trump. In his eyes, the president’s refusal to directly attack Jewish people was proof that he was secretly a part of the vast Jewish conspiracy that, in reality, exists only in the minds of anti-Semites.

Meanwhile MAGAbomber Cesar Sayoc, was vociferous in his distaste for Nazis. He made a number of Facebook posts that accused people he saw as his political enemies, including Angela Merkel and Arnold Schwarzenegger, of being Nazi sympathizers.

On the surface these two extremists look very different. But their interests converged in one area: belief in a Jewish-led conspiracy to control/influence American culture. Bowers was stereotypically open about this. Sayoc’s anti-Semitism was less obvious, and probably less conscious, although his former manager at the pizza restaurant he delivered for has claimed he was outwardly “anti-Jewish.” It may seem odd that someone like Sayoc would believe in a grand Jewish conspiracy and profess to hate the Nazis, but some fascists and anti-Semites do not automatically identify with Nazis.

By CNN’s count, Sayoc tweeted out more than 240 threats to 50 different elected officials, individuals and media organizations. He seems to have considered himself an American patriot, rather than a Nazi revolutionary, but he still wound up sharing anti-Semitic memes. The key here seems to be that these memes focused around Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, rather than “the Jews” as a group. Soros is commonly demonized by right-wing media throughout the world. Hungary’s far-right government, headed by Viktor Orban, even named a bill that criminalized helping illegal immigrants the “Stop Soros” bill.

The MAGAbomber also followed Glenn Beck. During his Fox News days, Beck accused the Tides Foundation (pictured in the above meme) of being at the center of a web of left-wing causes. In 2010 Byron Williams, inspired by Beck’s rhetoric, got into a gun battle with the Oakland Police when they stopped him on the highway before he could carry out his plan to assassinate members of the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.

Glenn Beck also appears to have been one of the first prominent figures in U.S. right-wing media to demonize George Soros. He’s been referring to him as a “puppet master” as far back as 2010.

In October of 2018, the conservative PAC Florida Strong portrayed Soros as a puppet master. The Forward article linked the prior sentence notes accurately that Jews were often depicted as “puppeteers” in Nazi-era propaganda.

 

In fact, one of the first bombs Cesar mailed went to Soros. Far-right media has portrayed Soros as somehow “funding” the migrant caravan. Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, is one of the more prominent purveyors of this myth:

Infowars also ran with the Soros migrant caravan conspiracy theory at the same time as Gaetz posted about it.

Blaming George Soros for everything that goes wrong in their world seems to almost be a bridge between far-right and actual fascist groups. In Discord conversations the same fascists who planned the first Unite the Right rally mentioned Soros over five hundred times.

It is possible that Robert Bowers’ anti-Semitic beliefs began coalescing in a similar way. That is the impression one gets when looking at this /pol/ meme he reposted:

A scan through Cesar Sayoc’s full Tweet archive reveals a steady drumbeat of Soros-themed conspiracy theories.

Sayoc’s bandying of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on social media seems to have been limited to ones about George Soros. It appears that Sayoc was simply at an earlier point in his red-pilling than Mr. Bowers. Even so, he was far enough down the pipeline to have been moved to terrorism.

Both Sayoc and Bowers were unstable individuals long before they found themselves sucked into the far-right media ecosystem. Far-right media does not create unstable individuals, but it has proven remarkably successful at radicalizing them and providing them with targets. In the wake of the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue, Gab has found itself thoroughly deplatformed. But its thousands of members are still out there, and still dangerous. One of them posted this the day after the attack (the “JQ pill” is a reference to the “Jewish Question”):

There is, of course, no guarantee that Mr. Little will continue to “manage the rage.”

The post How the MAGAbomber and the Synagogue Shooter Were Likely Radicalized appeared first on bellingcat.