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We the People

 

ICE's feelings are hurt when we call them the Gestapo.

Stop Comparing ICE To The Gestapo, Homeland Security Says

 

Profiting off the sick

 

Rural vs Cities

 Found on the net:

Oliver Kornetzke

I come from a small, rural town in Wisconsin—the kind of place where the high school mascot is sacred, the churches outnumber the stoplights, and the local diner still offers political commentary with your scrambled eggs, all filtered through a Reagan-era lens of rugged individualism and bootstrap theology. It’s a town that raised me, yes—but also one I outgrew, not out of arrogance, but out of an insatiable curiosity that was simply not compatible with fences and familiar last names.

My childhood was an oddity in that place. While most of my peers stayed anchored in the gravitational pull of local norms and traditions, my parents handed me a passport and pointed outward. Road trips across the US turned into train rides through Eastern Europe. I was the kid who collected fossils and insects instead of baseball cards, who could name capitals but not quarterbacks. Later, I moved abroad. I pursued higher education. I immersed myself in history, science, philosophy, and the relentless pursuit of knowledge and understanding, trying to understand not just the world, but why people move through it the way they do.

And then, like some tragic protagonist in a novel about the perils of nostalgia, I came back.

If distance grants perspective, then returning to the town of my youth was less like coming home and more like stepping into a diorama. The streets hadn’t changed, but I had. What once seemed wholesome now felt performative. The patriotism wasn’t pride—it was ritual. The friendliness wasn’t openness—it was surveillance. And beneath it all ran a silent, suffocating current of fear: fear of change, fear of the other, fear of being left behind.

This divide isn’t just geographical. It’s evolutionary.

For 95% of our species’ existence, we lived in small, kin-based bands where survival was contingent on cohesion, predictability, and suspicion of outsiders. Tribalism wasn’t a flaw—it was a feature. It kept us alive. To be skeptical of the unfamiliar, to prioritize the known over the unknown, was adaptive. But we don’t live on the savannah anymore. The threats we face are no longer predators or rival clans, but climate collapse, income inequality, and information warfare. Still, the reptilian brain lingers. And it does not care about nuance. It cares about belonging.

Rural America, in many ways, remains a living museum of this tribal wiring. In places where diversity is minimal and ideas circulate slowly, identity calcifies. Community becomes echo chamber. It’s not that people don’t think critically—it’s that critical thinking is punished. Conformity is rewarded. Outsiders—literal or ideological—are threats to the fragile cohesion of a community whose worldview has not been tested by difference but merely reinforced by repetition.

This is the root of the urban-rural divide—not intelligence, not morality, but exposure. In cities, survival demands adaptation: to new cultures, new technologies, new ways of seeing. In rural communities, survival demands continuity. And so when the firehose of modernity blasts through cable news and social media, it’s not processed as information—it’s processed as attack.

And the right wing has weaponized this brilliantly.

They’ve learned that fear is easier to manufacture than hope, and far more profitable. That a brain wired for tribal survival will always choose the strong lie over the complicated truth. That it’s easier to sell paranoia than policy. In my town, like so many others, they claim to be patriots who love their country, but they’ll vote for the man who promises to burn it down. They don’t believe in climate change, but their crops are drowning and their wells are poisoned. They don’t want to be ruled, but they’re desperate to be led—by someone who speaks in absolutes, who confirms their suspicions, who reflects their anger back to them like a funhouse mirror.

And this is the part that stings the most: these are not all bad people. They are people trapped in a feedback loop that exploits the very instincts evolution gave them to survive. They have been trained to confuse subjugation with strength, cruelty with conviction. To them, surrendering their rights to a strongman is not cowardice—it is tribal loyalty. It is faith.

So when I walk those old streets of my youth now, it feels less like homecoming and more like fieldwork. I see not just neighbors but a case study in inherited fear. A once-hopeful people turned against themselves by a machine that knows them better than they know themselves. A culture that clings to its myths not out of ignorance, but out of necessity—because without them, the whole house of cards collapses.

And the tragedy is this: the world they’re fighting to preserve no longer exists. The 1950s never really happened—not the way they remember them. What they mourn is not the loss of a country, but the loss of an illusion. And in their desperation to reclaim it, they have become foot soldiers in a war against their own future.

But still, I hope. Because if evolution has taught us anything, it’s that adaptation is possible. That fear does not have to rule us. That our tribal instincts, while ancient, are not immutable. That exposure, education, and empathy—slow, hard, and human—can expand the circle of who we call us.

I don’t know if my hometown will ever change. But I know I have. I know that what we choose to do with our understanding—how we wield it, how we share it, how we live it—matters more now than ever.

Because history doesn’t just happen to us. We are it. In every conversation. Every vote. Every time we choose truth over comfort, connection over fear.

That’s the long arc. That’s the work. That’s the hope.

AaaAAAahhhh

 

Thank you, The Guardian!

 

Trump’s ‘climate’ purge deleted a new extreme weather risk tool. We recreated it

The Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed by Fema but then deleted

What makes an useful idiot?

Taken from this Reddit post:  https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/1jenwbp/governor_jb_pritzker_to_trump_what_does_putin/

These are just the tip of the iceberg.

1. Several members on Trump's team during his first term had close ties to russian oligarchs. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868/

2. FBI probed Trump’s Russia connections and found decades-old relationship with Russian and former Soviet investors and financiers. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/30/enduring-mystery-trump-relationship-russia/

3. Putin dangled a Moscow building deal in front of the Trump Organization worth hundreds of millions of dollars in 2017, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/

4. Trump sides with Russia against FBI at Helsinki summit.
   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812

5. Trump has defended Russia’s seizure of Crimea https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-russia-crimea#.efb6wz0z1

6. How Russian Money Helped Save Trump’s Business
   https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/

7. There are very few examples over the years of Trump criticizing Putin. One was after reports of a russian chemical attack in Syria in 2018. More often than not, Trump has spoken very positive about Putin and praised him. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-uncharacteristically-criticizes-putin-after-reports-attack-syria-n863716
   https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelenskyy-united-states-russia-policy/

    And following:

   1.The KGB saw Trump as an easy mark because he’s stupid & narcissistic. Putin has leverage over Trump. Trump will badmouth anyone (including Republicans, his own VP Pence, & US veterans), but never badmouths Putin. In Jan 2021 ex-KGB spy Yuri Shvets said Russia cultivated Trump as an asset for 40 years (asset is not the same as agent). In 1977 Trump married a Soviet woman & her father was under surveillance by the Soviets in Czechoslovakia so her phones were also wiretapped, as a Soviet living abroad.

   In 1980 Trump became indebted to Russian mobsters after borrowing hundreds of TV’s on credit to furnish The Commodore, from Joy Lud on 5th Avenue, run by Tamir Sapir & Sam Kislin who was an associate of Russian Mafia boss & vory v zakone member Vyacheslav Ivankov who came to the US in 1992 on a film visa & lived in Trump Tower in the 90s & laundered dirty Russian mob money at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City.

   Trump has laundered dirty money for the Russian Mafia ever since 1984 when Russian mobster David Bogatin bought 5 condos for $6M in Trump Tower. Bogatin made the money in a gas tax scam (since at least 1980), involving Russian mob boss Marat Balagula, Michael Markowitz, Lev Persits, Colombo underboss Sonny Franzese, his son Colombo capo Michael Franzese, mobster Lawrence Iorizzo (linked to 300 gas stations around Long Island & NJ), where they would collect federal gas taxes on the sale of gasoline but skim it for themselves & use shell companies in Panama to hide their tracks, making $100M a month, & it later spread to PA, GA, FL, OH, TX, & CA. Balagula had taken control of 14 gas stations & 2 fuel dealerships by 1978 & bought gasoline from the Nayfeld brothers & had an office in the El Caribe club in Brooklyn owned by Michael Cohen's Uncle Morty, & Michael Cohen knew Marat's daughter Malavena & visited Balagula's house in Hewlett Harbor. After the Long Island faction of the Colombo family tried to shake down Balagula, he requested a meeting at the 19th Hole club with the Lucchese family's consigliere "Christie Tick" Furnari & Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, where they agreed to provide protection, & the Five Families (except the Bonanno family) put a 2-cents-per-gallon "family tax" on the scam, worth $100M per year.

   In Mar 1986 Natalia Dubinina & her father Yuri Dubinin met Trump inside Trump Tower. Ex-KGB spy Yuri Shvets said Dubinina worked in the UN Library as her cover, but she was secretly working in the KGB’s First Directorate.

   In fall 1986 at a luncheon hosted by heir Leonard Lauder, Trump again met Yuri Dubinin (Soviet ambassador to the US 1986-1990), who later wrote Trump letters in Jan 1987 inviting Trump to the USSR, & Vitaly Churkin (friend of Jeffrey Epstein & Peter Thiel) also helped organize the trip.

   After Intourist (aka Goskomtourist, a Soviet/Russian tour operator based in Moscow) invited Trump to the USSR in 1987 (which he mentions in The Art of the Deal, ghostwritten by Tony Schwarz), Trump went to the USSR in July 1987 with Ivana & Lisa Calandra & Norma Foerderer & Trump visited St. Petersburg & Moscow, but Trump didn’t know that Intourist was a front for the KGB (according to former GRU military spy Viktor Suvorov), & that the Hotel National was a KGB honeypot bugged for surveillance, designed to capture compromising material on visiting foreign businessmen using prostitutes (maybe even child prostitutes). Putin was in the KGB from 1975 to 1991, when the KGB recorded the kompromat in the first place. The Russian Mafia reportedly possess multiple tapes of a sexual nature of Trump, in St. Petersburg (Trump was there in 1987), & Moscow (Trump was there in 1987, 1995, 2013). That’s why in Helsinki (where Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies), Putin was smiling, & Trump looked like someone had eaten his lunch. 

   And more: 

    2. In 1994 Trump sold Apt 63A-B in Trump Tower to Russian oligarch Oleg Boyko. Trump was in Russia in Moscow in 1995 for a deal on an underground mall at Okhotny Ryad under Manezhnaya Square, & 1992-2010 Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov said Trump “planned to take part in the mall’s construction”, & video of the meeting aired on Russian state TV. Trump reportedly rigged the 2002 Miss Universe Pageant to help Oxana Fedorova win, who was reportedly a mistress of Putin & her “public” boyfriend was organized crime figure Vladimir Golubev. Shortly after, Bayrock took up residence in Trump Tower, run by Felix Sater (a childhood friend of Michael Cohen), who worked with Trump on the Dominick & who is the son of Russian Mafia underboss Mikhail Sheferovsky under Russia Mafia boss Semion Mogilevich. In 2004 Trump paid $41M at a bankruptcy auction for a mansion in Palm Beach, then sold it for $95M in 2008 to Russian oligarch Dmitry Ryboblev or his daughter’s trust, but Ryboblev never lived there & he demolished it in 2016 — which is how to bribe someone without it looking like a bribe.

   In 2008 Don Jr. said "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets...We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

   In January 2017, Trump lied & said “I have nothing to do with Russia.” The pee tape would be circa November 2013, around the Miss Universe Pageant on Moscow. In his book Disloyal, Michael Cohen wrote he watched a “golden showers” show with Trump at a Vegas club, months before the alleged pee tape in Moscow. The 2013 tape in Moscow was on a night when Trump’s bodyguard left his post at his room, a night where there was a fight in the hotel lobby because women didn’t want to sign in & that was witnessed by a Trump Org employee, after the bodyguard had been told of a offer to send women to Trump’s room, not long after Trump met with oligarchs, including Russian billionaire Artem Klyushin, who is close friends with Konstantin Rykov who runs Dosug, Moscow’s largest brothel. Trump had seen golden showers months before.

   In 2014 Eric Trump told James Dodson in Charlotte, NC "we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia."

   In 2015 Trump hoped to build a Trump Tower Moscow & give Putin a $50M penthouse in it.

   Former Trump campaign manager & convicted felon Paul Manafort gave internal polling data to Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnick on August 2, 2016 inside the Grand Havana Room (where Rudy Giuliani is on the board) inside 666 5th Avenue which was owned by Jared Kushner (who got $2 billion from the Saudis) who wanted a secret back channel to Russia. Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass on the information to Ukrainians Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov, & to Oleg Deripaska who is close to Putin. Afterwards, Gates, Manafort, & Kilimnik each left separately out different exits. In 2006 while working for the Party of Regions, Manafort paid $3.6M for an apartment on the 43rd floor of Trump Tower, through an LLC called "John Hannah, LLC”, but the money allegedly came from the richest man in Ukraine, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov for helping Yanukovych win in March 2006. Akhmetov is the one who introduced Manafort to Yanukovych, & also to Konstantin Kilimnik in 2005 who worked for the GRU. The GRU could then use that polling data to promote Jill Stein or Pizzagate (a product of the hacking & leak of John Podesta’s emails after Trump said “Russia, if you’re listening…” in Doral on July 27, 2016) in the Rust Belt states of MI, WI, & PA in 2016.

   Trump fired Comey (by tweet) to stop the Russia investigation — after Comey didn’t pledge loyalty to Trump — which Trump bragged to Lavrov & Kislyak in the Oval Office the next day where no media was present but TASS of Russia, where Trump revealed classified intel to the Russians. In August 2020, it was reported that former Deputy AG Rosenstein told Mueller not to investigate counterintelligence matters involving Trump & Russia, & prevented a complete investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia (including the Russian Mafia). 

   And more:
   

   3. Reuters, 2-6-25: Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs

   The task force indicted aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, & seized yachts of oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

   In term 1, Trump tried to extort the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Zelensky, who ran on anti-corruption & replaced Putin Puppet Yanukovych (whose campaign chairman was Paul Manafort, who owed $10M to Russian oligarch Deripaska, before he became Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman). Before Trump won in 2016, the RNC changed their platform on Ukraine.

   Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg & his US cousin Andrew Intrater met Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen at Trump Tower in January 2017, Intrater is the CEO of Columbus Nova (the only US subsidiary of Renova Group) which was under US sanctions & owned by his cousin Vekselberg -- who went to Trump's inauguration. Columbus Nova paid $500K+ to Essential Consultants LLC, a shell company created by Michael Cohen, which he used to pay $130K in hushmoney to pornstar Stormy Daniels. Vekselberg profited when Mnuchin lowered sanctions on Russian aluminum companies. Mnuchin ignored a congressional subpoena in May 2019 to provide Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways & Means Cmte.

   Read:

   Red Mafiya (2000) by Robert Friedman

   Gaspipe (2008) by Philip Carlo

   Collusion (2017) by Luke Harding

   House of Trump, House of Putin (2018) & American Kompromat (2021) by Craig Unger

   Proof of Collusion (2018) & Proof of Conspiracy (2019) by Seth Abramson

   Disloyal (2020) by Michael Cohen

   all credit goes to masterwad.

    

One can hope

 

Propaganda yesterday and today

 It’s from Mein Kampf:

“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be ... The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”