Showing all posts tagged Russia

In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, January 2, 2017

Author SymphonyPosted on

Carrie Fisher died over the Holidays, may she rest in peace. She was best known for Leia in “Star Wars” and second-best known for her wit. Having finished filming for Episode VIII due in 2017, Episode IX for 2019 is still in on the drafting board, though she was intended to play a substantial role. There has been no official comment on what Leia’s role will be.

When anyone dies, our natural response is to discuss their work. It seems cold, but is its own form of respect. People want to know how her life’s work will end up, a question about justice to her and her work. People ask what will become of her unfinished work because they love her. They’ll make it good. They always do.

But, deeper meaning surfaces for all of us. Han Solo’s death, his speculated return, the runaway son, and the complexity of Leia and Han’s family opened one of the deep problems in America: broken families. Any runaway child should come home quickly because parents don’t live forever. Carrie’s mother passed away the next day.

Carrie Fisher left us with many messages, both in life and in death, both good and bad, both filial and professional, both pithy and elaborate, and always poetic.

A team that works in web security dug into claims about the so-called (and now seemingly mislabeled) “Russian hack” and they made some reports. In sum, it likely wasn’t Russia in particular. The hack seemed to use out-of-date Ukrainian hacker tools, had multiple origins and targets, and, as usual with hacks, the main vulnerability was: compromised user accounts—something easily prevented by using Ubuntu rather than Windows for a desktop operating system and knowing a few basics about hyperlinks, apps, and websites.

If Russia did have anything to do with the [non-]Russian hack, it would have been to get Democrats to merely cast the recent and unnecessary doubt on the perfectly-in-tact election system itself.

Obama continues to work diligently—between golf trips—to smack someone on the wrist in his remaining less-than-three-weeks. Israel may be stalling too much to receive a good slap; instead, he went after the adversary who outsmarted him time and again, including this time: Putin.

In life, many of us know what we have lost, but few of us ever learn to know when we have lost.

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In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, December 19, 2016

Author SymphonyPosted on
Encore of Revival: America, December 19, 2016

Socialists worldwide claimed Trump would be bad for America and predicted his loss in the election; Russia probably would think the same and try to help him. If Russia aimed to help Trump, that would be yet one more mistake on behalf of the global club of socialists—both official and unofficial. There is no news here, though many report it as such.

The faithless elector movement has already found it’s scrutiny, already fulfilling Symphony’s prediction from just last week. Their point man is reported as a would-be fraud. And, the dwindling movement itself does not include most of the people who voted against Trump. These are only the few who don’t know how to accept loss.

The anti-Trump alarmism has an interesting history since his announcement to run. Trump makes public comments that reflect a private self-talk of “no excuse, no whining, and know which battles you’ll lose”; his opponents lost, don’t seem to know it, make progressively-more dramatic excuses of how it’s “someone else’s fault” (this time the Russians), and won’t stop whining. They seem to follow the Kübler-Ross five-stages of grief. This current suspicion of the Russians has a few contradictions…

In the “election hack” narrative, no one claims that votes were directly altered. Though, precincts in Wisconsin had more Republican votes than registered voters and Democratic precincts in Detroit had something similar. Both parties can thank Hillary for exposing those precincts in her generous reverence for honesty—but, we don’t hear much thanks.

The purported “bias” in the leaked-hacked info. implies that an unbiased leak would have been preferable. And, it ignores the reversed bias from the American media, not to mention its failure to recognize the use of “fear marketing” from the Trump opposition.

Moreover, the clearer influence of Russian propaganda has always been in sectors of education, where the Constitution is attacked, turning points in American history are left out, and Communism is touted as an ideal theory. Those who opposed Trump seem to agree with one or more of those talking points, but only seem concerned as if Russia wanted to pick and choose candidates rather than sowing doubt of the entire process itself; and they certainly show no concern for the Russian influence in their own ideology. The Russian-conspiracy theorists should suspect themselves most of all—and they will, sooner or later.

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In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, December 12, 2016

Author SymphonyPosted on
Encore of Revival: America, December 12, 2016

Pentagon waste topped $125 billion and someone tried to cover it up. Trump complained about $4 billion with Boeing. That could mean that he is focused on details too-small or that he is minding the pennies so the dollars will take care of themselves.

The Hillary-backed recount included the Republican House Speaker’s district and was shut-down by a Democratic White House controlled federal judge after Hillary’s Republican opponent gained votes—and no one thought the whole incident to be suspicious.

Casting doubt on Trump’s legitimacy is one suspicion that sits among others. If the Russians were so uncharacteristically sloppy in their appearance of an election hack, then Liberals, along with the Democratic White House controlled CIA, suspecting the hack are doing what the Russians wanted. The accusation that the Russians hacked the election would actually indite the incumbent administration.

Post-election opposition to Donald Trump is ripening into form. There are two ends of the “business man” spectrum: good and bad, both morally and effectively. The bad business leaders don’t make a good product and only make gains—or more often than not minimize losses—by strong arming, cutting smoke-filled back room deals, and hostile takeover methods. The good business leaders make a great product that people want to buy and lead a company that people want to work for.

We have Bill Gates at one end—with a company some people want to work for and a product no one looks forward to purchasing (let alone updating)—and then Steve Jobs at the other—with a company many people want to work for and a product even the competition idolizes. In the most recent presidential elections, the wealthy candidates had the Clintons and Bushes at one end, Trump at the other, and Ross Perrot in the middle.

The concept doesn’t only apply to business, but also non-profits and governments. Dishonest leaders have to be dishonest because they don’t have the work ethic or “market smarts” to make money the so-called “honest way”. The honest leaders prefer the “honest way” because it’s easier for them—that’s what they have gotten good at: building an organization that really does something well.

As with having bad credit, being bad at what someone does is a kind of “security risk”. Leaders who don’t know how to lead will tend to find alternative ways of getting the appearance of good results. But, leaders who know what they are doing are less likely to be dishonest, unethical, or corrupt.

Trump says things in public that he says to himself to keep himself motivated and on course. “Go-getters” and fired-up entrepreneurs recognized what Trump said in what they tell themselves daily: Don’t accept excuses for failure, especially from yourself.

Most people don’t see a difference from one wealthy man to the next. The loud voices complaining about Donald Trump especially can’t tell this difference. They thought they were so right in their theory that they couldn’t see that their theory lacked the ability to understand what made the candidates different nor to foresee who would win the election. Now that their theory has been proven wrong, some are listening while others are balling-up in panic so they can continue to tell themselves they are right in the face of mounting evidence.

The faithless electors vowing to vote against Trump even before the electoral college meets in mid December are making a big mistake. We can only break the glass once and they will be made examples of to maintain the integrity of future elections. Their concerns about foreign influence and making dangerous statements applied to many previous presidents much more so than Trump. But, that is difficult to identify for people who don’t see how apply the polarized relationship between Gates and Jobs.

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In Encore

Encore of Revival: America, November 7, 2016

Author SymphonyPosted on
Encore of Revival: America, November 7, 2016

This was the week of chest-thumping before the election. Mass media make their last-minute poll corrections to make it look “close” so that no matter who wins the media can maintain polling credibility. The FBI has gone Agnostic on Hillary. Comey’s metaphoric beat-up, dead horse resurrected himself to shoot himself in the foot; Comey’s career that he had finished is now finished, finished.

A single mother of six could end up in prison for selling food. How dare she! She put the public at risk, and insulted all the companies that pay big, big money to sell food to three people. It would have been safer to sell State secrets without a license. Hillary’s use of her maid to print classified documents doesn’t speak to her disdain for rules of the “top secret” road as much as it speaks to her attitude of superiority. A maid is “too much beneath” her to matter—you don’t try to keep classified information from your dog. More over, protection of the public good isn’t important either—who cares if the Russians discover secrets of sheep and cattle while the dog was fetching documents for the farm.

As for State secrets and ironies, if the US government really was planning a classified cyberattack against Russia they wouldn’t tell NBC News. Notwithstanding that leaking a story is usually best done with a network that is viewed by the public more than foreign governments, leaking “classified stories of a deterrent in the making” is just another strategy of deterrence. Perhaps such “classified leak story” games confused Hillary. Never believe the TV when it says what one government might be planning against another—especially if they say “might“. That’s just governments using non-diplomatic channels of undiplomatic diplomacy. In the East, they call it “State media control”; in America, Congress publicly called it “Operation Blue Book”. For the record, the story didn’t only air on NBC, it was also picked up by Breitbart, which is banned at Pacific Daily Times for having websites that take too long to load. The Blaze is also banned for this reason.

Note that when NBC and Breitbart break the same story, something is amiss. The actual secret that got out with the “Russia, we’re having our media tell you you’d better not interfere with our election” story is that the US government is very set on making sure that the election happens. We already knew that. Not citing their reason for the extra caution indicates that the problem probably came from within; but, that is historically anecdotal. We don’t know the deep reason the government has been making grunts about ensuring that the election happens two months out. That is the actual secret, proving that classified measures are still functioning. The election will happen. So, most people won’t even notice the efforts to make it happen. They are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.

No one notices the real danger: Paul Ryan, who has managed to go from a failed-attempted second-in-line to a successful third-in-line, all while convincing the public that he opposes the very candidate who will grant his closet Liberal party a super-majority. No one notices, though. The voters are too busy being obsessed with which candidate they hate.

Everything we see in the media looks to be orchestrated. Comey demonstrates the powerful non-decision making of Allen Greenspan. Maybe he wants to be the Chairman of the Fed. WikiLeaks didn’t throw an October Surprise, they threw an October Schedule. The government does interviews in media to help the election succeed? The media finally now reports on Clinton problems that have been known for decades? People need a break from all these scheduled surprises. At this point, it’s best to stop talking about the election, go vote, and then get back to work.

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In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, October 10, 2016

Author SymphonyPosted on
Cadence of Conflict: Asia, October 10, 2016

The tied rises and falls, but tensions only rise in the Pacific, week after week. This week, China and its old buddy, Russia, were seen in public together. And, it seems China has a new friend in the Philippines’ defense office. The tension is at such a point where the public has not only learned about it, but is getting “used to” it. The excessive education writers insert into their news articles, informing readers and re-informing readers about the history of China’s “nine-dash line” and the South Sea certainly helps move this from “news” to “mundane”.

But, who is the villain? Arguably, the US is the villain, but not for the conventional reasons. Had Trump had his way, the US never would have borrowed money from China to get involved in the Mid East in the first place. The US Navy could have then operated out of the red and more in the Pacific blue. Then, China’s “island-building” might never have happened and Beijing wouldn’t have been strong enough to vie for a fight that it seems to want so badly—at least by proxy of the changes in the maps Beijing insists on seeing printed globally. But, that’s all speculation.

As you watch headlines, note the trickle of economic articles on China. China didn’t get it’s money through innovation, policy invention, or good will; it got its money because the Western lower-middle class pinched pennies so much they would spend $1.50 in gasoline to drive across town where an item cost $0.75 less. That drove jobs to China—which capitalized on US penny-pinching and pinched their own dollars into pennies, another thing Trump has criticized the Chinese for. China won the lottery, a story which ends well for few.

So, like a 16 year old with the keys to the Porsche he bought with his rich uncle’s money, China tried to build islands in hopes of rewinding the pages of history to their nostalgic splendor. While the US abandoned the mess it made in the Mid East—creating an otherwise would-have-failed enemy in the process of going and leaving—China could capitalize on the vacuum left by the AWOL US. Had China known how to earn the money it ended up with, Beijing would have had the smarts to be where ISIS now stands. Had they the smarts to learn from loss, they would have beaten Putin to the punch and build their islands closer to the vacuum. But, like a jealous company set on “wants” instead of “needs”, China is building islands that the US can take over in 15 minutes.

In the end, China will have to sign some kind of truce, though probably not a full “surrender”; the man-made islands will go to the US or some puppet thereof; and the US presence will have done exactly what China didn’t want, thanks to China: expand. A stronger China in the Mid East with “status quo” in the South Sea might have been more profitable, for China most of all.

The irony of it all begs the question: Was the penny-pinching culture of the American lower-middle class some CIA plot from the beginning to boost China’s confidence beyond feasibility? Probably not. But, is might make a great thriller “espionage intel.” novel.

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In Cadence

Cadence of Conflict: Asia, August 29, 2016

Author SymphonyPosted on
Cadence of Conflict: Asia, August 29, 2016

The battlefronts are solidifying. China has expanded into cooperation with Russia, aircraft engine manufacturing, and diplomatic arenas.

G20 is a hoped-for tool that could make China an international giant. China wants in on Syria, just as the US and Russia may be reaching something to label as an “agreement”. While China has managed to insult and be insulted by many of the G20 countries, Beijing still believes that the important G20 diplomatic moves wait on the road ahead instead of in the past.

The timing of launching its own aircraft manufacturer should raise eyebrows. Taiwan, a US customer of the market-dominant F-16, which the US has not delivered on in the last several years, held secret talks with China, which the US wasn’t even invited to. This happened under the KMT-Nationalist administration, which just saw a crippling defeat, except for recent, small election on Taiwan’s east coast. The opponent, DPP, took control of both Taiwan’s presidency and legislature over the last six months. Now, with China’s secret-talk door closed to a US F-16 customer, China starts manufacturing its own engine parts. Why now? Did China get all the technology plans they were ever going to, one way or another? Is it just coincidence? Why is China also snubbing Russia?

The greater suspicion is the vaguely-defined cooperation between Russia and China. If the two countries are such great friends, why is China not buying more aircraft from Russia? Why go into competition with the US’s aircraft competition?

All of these questions point to a demonstrable worldview inside Beijing. The what and why and means can be largely debated and rarely proven. But, all paths lead to a path-based worldview. China sees cooperation with Russia just as it sees cooperation with nearly everyone else: Just another stepping stone. And, the stepping-stone builders are literally building rocks to walk on in the sea.

China’s motive is known only to the Chinese puppet masters and God Himself. But, no one should think for a moment that China plans—for good or ill—to stop with control of their nine-dash line in the South Sea.

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