COUP IN UKRAINE,OBAMA, CIA . BIDEN'S SON REAPED BENEFITS.

"Laughing all the way to the Bank"?

"The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking."


“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Joe Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) event, insisting that then-president Obama was in on the threat.

THE SOURCE OF THE TAPED INTERVIEW WITH JOE BIDEN, IN WHICH HE BRAGGED THAT HIS THREAT TO WITHHOLD $1 BILLION IN U.S. LOANS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF UKRAINE GOT THEIR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR FIRED, CAME FROM A TAPED MEETING OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS.

BIDEN HAS DENIED SAYING WHAT HE WAS TAPED SAYING.

IT WAS JOE BIDEN WHO DID EXACTLY WHAT DEMOCRATS ARE ACCUSING TRUMP OF DOING.

BIDEN COERCED THE UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT INTO FIRING A UKRAINIAN OFFICIAL WHO WAS ABOUT TO INVESTIGATE OLD JOE'S LAST LIVING SON, A SON WHO WAS BOOTED BY THE NAVY AFTER TESTING POSITIVE FOR COCAINE in 2014.

BIDEN BASICALLY USED AMERICAN TAXPAYER MONEY ($1 BILLION) TO BRIBE AND TO THREATEN  A FOREIGN COUNTRY IN ORDER TO KEEP HIS SON FROM FACING PROSECUTION. 

The timeline of events proves that the U.S. (OBAMA/BIDEN) linked the Zlochevsky case to loan guarantees, he said. $1 BILLION withheld until Ukraine complied with Biden/bama demands. BUT NO IMPEACHMENT THEN!

And a bit later?
Burisma paid Joe Biden $900,000 for lobbying – Ukrainian MP
APRIL 2, 2019

"While being videotaped, [https://www.cfr.org/event/foreign-affairs-issue-launch-former-vice-president-joe-biden] Joe Biden told a group of foreign policy specialists that he “threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.”


John Solomon reported for the Hill about the deep problems and new probe Biden’s actions could provoke because his son was able to cash in from the firing.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor.

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia. 

The timing of Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s appointment to Burisma’s board has been highlighted in the past, by The New York Times in December 2015 and in a 2016 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer.

Although Biden made no mention of his son in his 2018 speech, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities both told me Biden and his office clearly had to know about the general prosecutor’s probe of Burisma and his son’s role. They noted that:

Hunter Biden’s appointment to the board was widely reported in American media;

The U.S. embassy in Kiev that coordinated Biden’s work in the country repeatedly and publicly discussed the general prosecutor’s case against Burisma;

Great Britain took very public action against Burisma while Joe Biden was working with that government on Ukraine issues;

Biden’s office was quoted, on the record, acknowledging Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma in a New York Times article about the general prosecutor’s Burisma case that appeared four months before Biden forced the firing of Shokin.

The vice president’s office [AT THAT TIME] suggested in that article that Hunter Biden was a lawyer free to pursue his own private business deals.

President Obama named Biden to be the administration’s point man on Ukraine in February 2014, after a popular revolution ousted Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and as Moscow sent military forces into Ukraine’s Crimea territory.


AMERICA'S ROLE IN THE OVERTHROW OF VIKTOR YANUKOVYCH

The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking.

"Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to Kiev to show solidarity with the Euromaidan activists. McCain dined with opposition leaders, including members of the ultra right-wing Svoboda Party, and later appeared on stage in Maidan Square during a mass rally. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok.

But McCain’s actions were a model of diplomatic restraint compared to the conduct of Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs. As Ukraine’s political crisis deepened, Nuland and her subordinates became more brazen in favoring the anti-Yanukovych demonstrators.

Nuland noted in a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation on December 13, 2013, that she had traveled to Ukraine three times in the weeks following the start of the demonstrations. Visiting the Maidan on December 5, she handed out cookies to demonstrators and expressed support for their cause.

What Nuland did not reveal on December 13 was that her meetings with ‘key Ukrainian stakeholders’ included neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and prime minister wannabe Arsenly Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party.

 At about the same time Nuland was wooing fascist extremists, Sen. John McCain (R-Az) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D- Conn) shared the stage in Kiev with Tyahnybok offering their support and opposition to the sitting government.

 The Svoboda party which has roots with extreme vigilante and anti-semitic groups has since received at least three high level cabinet posts in the interim government including deputy prime minister.

 There is no doubt that the progenies of west Ukraine’s historic neo-fascist thugs that fought with Hitler are now aligned with the U.S. as represented by Victoria Nuland.


The extent of the Obama administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s politics was breathtaking. Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post-Yanukovych government. The U.S-favored candidates included Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man who became prime minister once Yanukovych was ousted from power.

During the telephone call, Nuland stated enthusiastically that “Yats is the guy” who would do the best job.

Nuland and Pyatt were engaged in such planning at a time when Yanukovych was still Ukraine’s lawful president.

It was startling to have diplomatic representatives of a foreign country—and a country that routinely touts the need to respect democratic processes and the sovereignty of other nations—to be scheming about removing an elected government and replacing it with officials meriting U.S. approval.

The two [American] diplomats also were prepared to escalate the already extensive U.S. involvement in Ukraine’s political turbulence. Pyatt stated bluntly that “we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing [the political transition].”

Nuland clearly had Vice President Joe Biden in mind for that role. Noting that the vice president’s national security adviser was in direct contact with her, Nuland related that she told him “probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the details to stick. So Biden’s willing.”

Both the Obama administration and most of the American news media portrayed the Euromaidan Revolution as a spontaneous, popular uprising against a corrupt and brutal government.
[That was not true.] 

A February 24, 2014, Washington Post editorial celebrated the Maidan demonstrators and their successful campaign to overthrow Yanukovych. The “moves were democratic,” the Washington Post concluded, and “Kiev is now controlled by pro-Western parties.”   

It was a grotesque distortion to portray the events in Ukraine as a purely indigenous, popular uprising.

The Nuland-Pyatt telephone conversation and other actions confirm that the United States was considerably more than a passive observer to the turbulence.
Instead, U.S. officials were blatantly meddling in Ukraine.

Such conduct was utterly improper.
The United States had no right to try to orchestrate political outcomes in another country—especially one on the border of another great power.

It is no wonder that Russia reacted badly to the unconstitutional ouster of an elected, pro-Russian government—an ouster that occurred not only with Washington’s blessing, but apparently with its assistance.

That episode, as well as earlier ones involving Italy, France and other democratic countries, should be kept in mind the next time U.S. political leaders or the media publicly fume about Russia’s apparent interference in America’s 2016 elections.

One can legitimately condemn some aspects of Moscow’s behavior, but the force of America’s moral outrage is vitiated by the stench of U.S. hypocrisy."


MAY 27, 2019
NOT REPORTED IN THE U.S.
Ukraine: Was the Overthrow of Yanukovych a ‘Coup’?
by Eric Zuesse

"On 20 December 2014, I reported that in a Russian business publication published in the Russian language the day before, the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor, George Friedman, was quoted as telling that publication in an interview, that the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych in February of that year had been “the most blatant coup in history.”

Subsequently (on 17 January 2015), that complete interview was translated into English, where the entire context of his statement on this important matter can be seen and evaluated.

No one can deny that the overthrow of Victor Yanukovych — the democratically elected President of Ukraine, who had won 75% of the votes of the people of Crimea — led directly to the movement of the Crimean people to separate themselves from being ruled by the newly installed, post-overthrow, Ukrainian government.

Without the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, there would have been no reason for Crimeans to have been in fear. But the question remains of whether the separation of Crimea from Ukraine was a legitimate act of self-determination of peoples, by the Crimeans, in response to a coup [INITIATED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND THE CIA]...?

So, this question of whether or not the overthrow of Yanukovych was a “coup” — an illegitimate takeover of the Ukrainian government — is absolutely central to world history, at the present stage.

If it was a coup, then all of The West’s sanctions and arms-buildups against Russia since that coup are on fraudulent grounds and thus entirely illegitimate.  

The West and its international organs are enforcing the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev’s arbitrary 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, and are utterly denying the residents of Crimea their sovereign right of self-determination, even denying their right to reverse that dictator’s arbitrary action, taken 60 years prior to Crimea’s 2014 Russian-reunification referendum.

The West has now taken on the dictatorial role, which The West had claimed to have opposed in principle during the Cold War.

Extensive video documentation exists demonstrating that it was a coup, and even demonstrating that the Obama Administration had selected Ukraine’s post-coup leader 22 days prior to his being formally appointed by the Ukrainian parliament.

Furthermore, the only detailed scholarly study of the evidence that has been performed came to the same conclusion — that it was a U.S. coup.
Moreover, immediately after the overthrow, when the EU sent its own investigator into Kiev to report back on how the overthrow had taken place, he too reported that it had been a coup.
Subsequently revealed was that the Obama Administration had started preparing the coup inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev by no later than 1 March 2013 — almost a year prior to the coup.

Also, the even earlier preparation for the coup, extending through decades, on the part of CIA-affiliated ‘nonprofit’ or NGO organizations (funded by Western aristocrats and their corporations), laying the groundwork for this coup, has been brilliantly documented at some online sites.

None of this information has been widely published — it’s virtually not at all published in The West."


THE QUESTIONABLE CHARACTER OF HUNTER BIDEN

INITIALLY PUBLISHED BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. THE LINK LEADS TO NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
"Because of his age—43 when he was to be commissioned—he [Hunter Biden] needed a waiver to join the Navy. He received a second Navy waiver because of a drug-related incident when he was a young man. Biden was commissioned as an ensign on May 7, 2013, and assigned to Navy Public Affairs Support Element East in Norfolk, Va., a reserve unit, according to the Navy.

In June 2013, after reporting to his unit in Norfolk, he was given a drug test, which turned up positive for cocaine, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Biden was discharged in February, 2014, the Navy said.

Biden said in a statement that it was “the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge. I respect the Navy’s decision. With the love and support of my family, I’m moving forward.”

Navy personnel who are discharged from the military because of a failed drug test don’t receive honorable discharges. 
Most are given an “other than honorable” or “general” discharge.
The vice president’s office declined to comment.

Hunter Biden has embarked on several different professional ventures, including his recent appointment with a Ukrainian firm, that have drawn scrutiny.

In May, he joined the board of the Ukrainian gas producer, Burisma Holdings Ltd., which is controlled by a former security and energy official for Ukraine’s ousted former president.

The announcement that Mr. Biden would be responsible for Burisma’s legal unit raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, because his father, the vice president, was engaged in diplomatic efforts involving Ukraine.

At the time, the vice president’s office called Hunter Biden “a private citizen” and said Joe Biden didn’t endorse any particular company. Hunter Biden didn’t return calls seeking comment on the matter.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Biden worked as a lobbyist. He quit the business and resigned his partnership at a Washington firm after his father was named to join the presidential ticket in 2008.  


OTHER THINGS WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW: 

In the book To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Secret War Plans, one of the world’s leading physicists – Michio Kaku – reveals declassified plans for the U.S. to launch a first-strike nuclear war against Russia. The forward was written by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarke.

OBAMA NEEDED THE UKRAINE AS A THREAT AND A BUFFER AGAINST RUSSIA.
HE SENT IN McCAIN, BIDEN, AN AMBASSADOR AND THE CIA AND THEY DELIVERED.
WE NOW HAVE NUKES AIMED AT RUSSIA FROM JUST ACROSS A RIVER. 

In Towards a World War III Scenario, Michel Chossudovsky documents that the U.S. is so enamored with nuclear weapons that it has authorized low-level field commanders to use them in the heat of battle in their sole discretion … without any approval from civilian leaders.

THE CIA HAS PRIVILEGE TO DO THE SAME, ANYTHING IT TAKES,  TO "PROTECT NATIONAL SECURITY".

UNTIL QUITE RECENTLY, THE CIA CONTROLLED ALL DRONE STRIKES IN FOREIGN NATIONS. 

AMERICA'S  HYPOCRISY ON TROOP DISPERSAL

The U.S. has troops in many countries, which include the following nations where our soldiers are stationed (and this includes ones with missile bases located near Russia): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.

We also have some soldiers in other former parts of the U.S.S.R.: Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

We also have nearly 35,000 troops stationed in Japan, a nation near Russia and that claims ownership of four small Sakhalin Islands and two small Kuril Islands, from Russia.

Not to mention, of course, installations in places like Romania, Singapore, Turkey, Peru, Kenya, and Oman, totaling 185 countries throughout the world.

The United States is, of course, not surrounded by any Russian soldiers at all — not in Mexico, nor in Canada, nor anywhere near this country, except Russia itself near Alaska.

Steven Starr has written about the decades-long view within the U.S. military-strategy establishment, that the Cold War is not, and actually never really was, about ideology, not about capitalism versus communism, but is instead simply about which nation will control the world: basically about national political and economic dominance of our planet.

TRUMP IS A BOOR, BUT HE'S NO MORON LIKE BUSH, JR. APPEARED TO BE.
"[Trump] said he would not have done anything illegal on a call made from the White House with so many people listening in. 

“I got stenographers and all these other people on the line,” he said. “I am going to make a statement that is illegal or bad? Who would do a thing like that?”

“This is over a phone call that is a good call,” Trump, sitting behind the Resolute Desk, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. "At some point, I’m going to sit down, perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and I will read the transcript of the call, because people have to hear it. When you read it, it’s a straight call.”

WELL, WE CAN READ THAT DAMNED TRANSCRIPT NOW.
JUST GO <HERE> AND WAIT FOR IT TO LOAD NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE. 

IT'S ALSO ON SCRIBD <HERE> .


I LOVE MY COUNTRY, THIS AMERICA, BUT WITH JUST A STRONG A PASSION, I ABHOR THE POLITICS THAT KEEP ITS CITIZENS AT EACH OTHERS' THROATS AND KEEPS OUR NATION MEDDLING IN THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER FREE NATIONS.

I ABHOR ALL POLITICIANS, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.

IN ALL MY 70+ YEARS, I HAVE VOTED TWICE FOR A NAME ON A BALLOT AND WAS WRONG TO DO SO BOTH TIMES, AS I SADLY DISCOVERED THE HARD WAY.

I AM A CONSTITUTIONALIST TO THE BONE AND DAMN ANY MISINTERPRETATION OF THAT SIMPLE, CONCISE DOCUMENT, ANY BREAKING OF ANY OATH TO UPHOLD IT.

I READ AND STUDY AT LEAST 12 HOURS EVERY SINGLE DAY AND QUESTION EVERYTHING.

YOU ARE FREE, AS ARE WE ALL, TO BELIEVE WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO BELIEVE, BUT AS ONE WHO IS REPULSED BY TRUMP, THE MAN, (ALMOST AS MUCH AS I AM BY BILL AND HILLARY), TRUMP, LIKE OBAMA, IS THE DULY ELECTED PRESIDENT AND AS SUCH SHOULD BE SHOWN THE SAME RESPECT AS THE U.S. PRESIDENT AS WE SHOWED THE VULGAR SCUM, LBJ, THE BLATANTLY WOMANIZING 'IKE' (WHO ALSO BETRAYED 100,000 AMERICAN TROOPS AND OTHERS IN OPERATION KEELHAUL), OR BILL CLINTON, FDR, WILSON, JFK, ALL WHO HAD MISTRESSES IN THE WHITE HOUSE, OR THE POOR ALZHEIMER-PLAGUED, DELUSIONAL REAGAN WHO DID BEHAVE CRIMINALLY ON IRAN-CONTRA, OR THE UNREAD, VULGAR LIAR G.W. BUSH AND HIS ULTRA-MANIPULATIVE, EX-CIA DADDY, G.H.W. BUSH.

WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE SUPPOSED TO RUN THIS SHOW WE CALL A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.
WE CAN'T DO THAT SITTING ON OUR ASSES, BLINDLY ACCEPTING WHATEVER ONE'S CHOSEN, ABOMINATION OF A PARTY TELLS ITS SELF-BLINDED MEMBERS TO BELIEVE. 

TRUMP IS A SCREW-UP IN MANY WAYS BUT NOTHING HE HAS DONE, SO FAR, IS IMPEACHABLE.

THE LIARS IN CONGRESS, ALL THE SCHEMERS FIGHTING TO TAKE BACK THEIR POWER, POWER THEY NEVER WERE AFFORDED BY OUR CONSTITUTION, ARE WASTING OUR TAXPAYER MONEY ON YET ANOTHER WITCH HUNT, ANOTHER GAME OF POLITICAL ONE-UPMANSHIP WHEN THEY SHOULD BE ADDRESSING THE CONCERNS OF THEIR MASTERS...WE, THE PEOPLE. 

WE NEED TO CULL ALL THAT HERD, FIND HONEST PEOPLE TO BE OUR "CIVIL SERVANTS", TO RESTORE AND DEFEND TO THE DEATH OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR RIGHTS, AND STOP TAKING AWAY FROM US ALL.

CONGRESS IS CORRUPT, WHORES TO WALL STREET, THE MILITARY HAS PAIRED WITH THE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AS WELL, JUST AS IKE, WILSON AND JFK SAID, AND THE FBI, CIA, NSA HAVE ALL BANDED TOGETHER TO CONTROL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND SPY ON U.S. CITIZENS ILLEGALLY SO THEY CAN CONTROL US, TOO.

The American media has become useless as a news source.
It serves as a Ministry for Government Lies.

The corrupt propagandists are portraying the undemocratic removal of Yanukovich as a victory for freedom and democracy.

When it begins to leak out that everything has gone wrong, the presstitutes will blame it all on Russia and Putin.
The Western media is a plague upon humanity.


YOU MAY BE JUST FINE WITH SUCH A GARBAGE PIT OF VERMIN RUNNING THIS COUNTRY.

I AM NOT.

WHETHER TRUMP OR THE BIDENS, OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS OR THE BUSH FAMILY, THE GUILTY SHOULD BE CONVICTED AND SENTENCED AND THE NATION SHOULD APPLAUD WHENEVER JUSTICE AND THE CONSTITUTION ARE SERVED, AND STAND UP AND FIGHT WHEN IT ISN'T. 

TO HELL WITH POLITICS, SAVE THE REPUBLIC!







_____________________

POSTSCRIPT: 

FROM, OF ALL MSMs, THE NEW YORK TIMES ON HUNTER BIDEN's UKRAINIAN CASH COW. 

"New details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma:

Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.

The bank records show that, on most months when Burisma money flowed, two wire transfers of $83,333.33 each were sent to the Rosemont Seneca-connected account on the same day. The same Rosemont Seneca-linked account typically then would pay Hunter Biden one or more payments ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 each. Prosecutors reviewed internal company documents and wanted to interview Hunter Biden and Archer about why they had received such payments, according to interviews.
They show how Hunter Biden and his American business partners were part of a broad effort by Burisma to bring in well-connected Democrats during a period when the company was facing investigations backed not just by domestic Ukrainian forces but by officials in the Obama administration. Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma prompted concerns among State Department officials at the time that the connection could complicate Vice President Biden’s diplomacy in Ukraine, former officials said.

“I have had no role whatsoever in relation to any investigation of Burisma, or any of its officers,” Hunter Biden said Wednesday in a statement. “I explicitly limited my role to focus on corporate governance best practices to facilitate Burisma’s desire to expand globally.”

SIMPLY NOT TRUE AND WE WILL PERHAPS SOON SEE HOW UNTRUE IT IS. 


Hunter Biden, who left Burisma’s board last month, was one of many politically prominent Americans of both major parties who made money in Ukraine over the last decade. In several cases — most notably that of Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman — that business came under criminal investigation that exposed a seedy side of the lucrative Western consulting industry in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump, in turn, recently suggested he would like Attorney General William P. Barr to look into the material gathered by the Ukrainian prosecutors — echoing repeated calls from Mr. Giuliani for the Justice Department to investigate the Bidens’ Ukrainian work and other connections between Ukraine and the United States.


“I can assure you this all started with an allegation about possible Ukrainian involvement in the investigation of Russian meddling, and not Biden,” Mr. Giuliani said. “The Biden piece is collateral to the bigger story, but must still be investigated, but without the prejudgments that infected the collusion story.”

The decision to reopen the investigation into Burisma was made in March by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general, who had cleared Hunter Biden’s employer more than two years ago. The announcement came in the midst of Ukraine’s contentious presidential election, and was seen in some quarters as an effort by the prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally, the incumbent president, Petro O. Poroshenko.

MARCH, WAY BEFORE THE "IMPEACHABLE" PHONE CALL. 

When his father was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, Hunter Biden terminated his lobbying registrations, which at the time included a company that had lobbied the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which his father had served, about online gambling issues.

Months after his father became vice president, Mr. Biden joined with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, then a senator, and Devon Archer, a Kerry family friend, to create a network of investment and consulting firms with variations of the name Rosemont Seneca. Mr. Kerry would go on to become secretary of state.


Mr. Biden and Mr. Archer pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection.


Among the companies they did work for was Burisma, a natural gas company owned by Mr. Zlochevsky. Mr. Zlochevsky had served nearly four years in the government of the former Ukrainian president Viktor F. Yanukovych, who stepped down in early 2014 and fled amid mass street protests.


Soon after Mr. Archer joined Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden followed, despite being warned by associates who had experience in Ukraine to stay away from Mr. Zlochevsky, according to a person familiar with the conversations.


A news release from the company said Hunter Biden would “be in charge of the holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the company among international organizations.”

Mr. Biden said the news release mischaracterized his role with Burisma. “At no time was I in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” he said.

Among the Americans brought in by Hunter Biden’s American business partners to help fend off the investigations was Blue Star Strategies, a consulting firm run by Clinton administration veterans that had done substantial work in Ukraine.

A team from Blue Star, and an American lawyer Blue Star hired, John D. Buretta, who had served as a senior official in the Obama Justice Department, held two previously unreported meetings in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, with Mr. Lutsenko, who took office in May 2016 after Mr. Shokin’s dismissal, according to people with direct knowledge of the meetings. Mr. Lutsenko denied attending the meeting.

Mr. Lutsenko initially took a hard line against Burisma. But within 10 months after he took office, Burisma announced that Mr. Lutsenko and the courts had “fully closed” all “legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against Mr. Zlochevsky and his companies, and that the oligarch had been removed by a Ukrainian court from “the wanted list.” Mr. Zlochevsky returned to the country.

Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated. Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

Rosemont Seneca Bohai was controlled by Mr. Archer, who left Burisma’s board after he was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars. Bank records submitted in that case — which resulted in a conviction for Mr. Archer that was overturned in November — show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled as much as $50,000 in some months.
William Russo, a spokesman for Joe Biden, and Hunter Biden did not respond to email messages Monday seeking comment. The phone number at Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC in Washington was no longer in service on Monday."


"GUILTY AS CHARGED"...HOW I HOPE TO HEAR THAT OVER AND OVER AGAIN SOON. 

WIPE THE SLATE IN WASHINGTON, START FRESH, FIND DECENT, HONORABLE, CONSTITUTION-LOVING CITIZENS TO FILL THOSE FILTHY, TARNISHED SEATS ON CAPITOL HILL...ALL OF THEM! 




//WW

AUSTRALIAN MEDIA PRINTS RADIATION WARNINGS TO 2020 OLYMPIC ATHLETES

THESE ARE THE SOUNDS VISITORS TO THE OLYMPIC GAMES NEAR AND IN FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE COULD HEAR, IF ALLOWED TO, IN 2020. 

In Fukushima, contamination is now omnipresent, you cannot see it nor smell it, nor taste it but it is there. And in 2016, an unprecedented public project began..
Japan's contamination is made visible by its 1/1000 second clicking sounds.

You can't see it but you can now visualize the power of those radioactive disintegrations by hearing their sounds, so that the inoffensive looking becquerel per kg numbers of an invisible contamination now take on a new dimension, as the violence of their power is suddenly revealed through their disintegration sounds.

REMEMBER, PLEASE, THE ADMISSIONS 8 YEARS AGO:
"At least one billion becquerels a day of radiation continue to leak from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant."

A STANDING OVATION FOR 'THE AUSTRALIAN' FOR HAVING THE GUTS TO PRINT A DOCTOR'S WARNING! 

WHY THE HELL DON'T ALL NEWS MEDIA  DO SO?
IT COULD SAVE LIVES AND THE HEALTH OF MANY YOUNG ATHLETES. 

DO YOU KNOW WHICH MAJOR NEWS AGENCIES EVEN MENTIONED THIS WARNING?

NONE!
NOT ONE!
AS OF 10:30PM, CDST, ON OCT. 29, 2019, NOT A SINGLE ONE  

'ANTINUCLEAR.NET' ALONE REPRINTED THE AUSTRALIAN ARTICLE. 
IN A WEB SEARCH USING THE TERM "Fukushima fallout warning for Olympians",
I GOT THIS FROM THE SEARCH ENGINE:

"No news articles found for Fukushima fallout warning for Olympians."

SEARCHING ON THE ENTIRE WEB?
i GOT ONLY THIS: 
"Not many results contain Fukushima warning olympians." 

Yeah, most were 4 to 6 years old or older, and even when I modified the search to include the Dr,'s  name and used 'Olympics', nothing but these two I list here came up.

Shame, damned sorry shame. 

Everybody deserves full disclosure on this very real threat, especially, like Ruff says, pregnant women, young children (and I'd add the elderly and anyone with a compromised immune system).

ALL who are considering attending have a RIGHT to know the honest, factual data and make a CHOICE!

I really expected Greenpeace to make a lot more noise on this.

What happened to the ex-Prime Ministers and ambassador who have come out against Abe's lies to the Olympic Committee, to the people of the world?

Former Japan PM Koizumi accuses Abe of lying over Fukushima pledge.
“When [Abe] said the situation was under control, he was lying,” Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo. “It is not under control.”

Former Prime Minister Naoto Kan said that the nuclear accident is “still going on” today.
“One reactor meltdown could destroy the whole plant and, however unlikely, that is too great a risk.”
He criticized his successor, prime minister Shinzo Abe, for restarting some of the country’s nuclear power stations, all of which were shut down after the crisis, saying that Japan had “not learned the lessons enough.”

Former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland, Mitsuhei Murata, recently proposed an eminently reasonable solution. "It is time," he says, "for Japan to stage an honorable retreat” from hosting the 2020 Olympics while there is still time to select and prepare an alternative site.
As Murata noted in the conclusion of his article, “Heaven and Earth will not long countenance immoral conduct.”

Where are scientists like Michio Kaku, Arnie Gunderson, Tim Mousseau, all who initially and for years told the press the truths about Fukushima?

Where are the Physicians for Social Responsibility like Catherine Thomasson and Alex Rosen when we need their voices again to warn those thinking of being in Japan for the 'games'?

NO, THERE IS ONLY THIS SMALL GLIMMER OF TRUTH OUT THERE IN A SMALL AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPER. 

Fukushima fallout warning for Olympians

The AOC (Australian Olympic Committee) has been urged to inform its athletes and team members about the ongoing health effects of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster for those attending the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo ...

Dr.Tilman Ruff, a public health expert who co-founded the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in Melbourne, said he had written to the AOC to warn that levels of radioactivity in certain areas could be above the recommended maximum permissible exposure level.

He said the Japanese Olympic Committee planned to host baseball and softball competitions and part of the torch relay in Fukushima City, 50 kilometers away from the ruins of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.

In 2011, multiple nuclear meltdowns at the damaged facility caused radioactivity to leak out across Japan and the Pacific.

“The Japanese government is making a concerted ­effort to present the Fukushima nuclear disaster as over and effectively dealt with in the lead-up to the Olympics. Some of these ­efforts are misleading and should not be accepted at face value,” Dr Ruff said.

He said thyroid cancers had notably increased among young people in Fukushima, with a total of about 200 cases.

He has made several visits to Fukushima since 2011, the latest in May when he provided radiation health advice to the Fukushima prefectural government.

Dr Ruff said he then wrote to the AOC urging it to “properly ­inform and safeguard the best interests of the Australian staff and team, and their accompanying families, especially women who may be pregnant and young children”.

He said short-term visits to areas contaminated by radioactive fallout “now involve low to minimal risk”.

“However, if any (AOC) members or athletes plan to be based in Fukushima or neighbouring contaminated prefectures for weeks or months, they should be informed about the health risks of radiation exposure,” Dr Ruff said.

International physician groups have criticised the Japanese government’s decision shortly after the 2011 disaster to increase the maximum permissible radiation dose for Japanese citizens from one (1) to 20 millisieverts. 

[Dr. Paul Dorfman of the Energy Institute at University College, London, in 2017, on the Japanese government raising allowable radiation levels to 20 times the acceptable high level in the rest of the world: .

"This is inexplicable, since 20 mSv is the allowable dose for an adult radiation worker," Dorman said. "Given that infants and children are still in their developmental stage, they should not have been subjected to this dose. 

"Unfortunately, what this means is that we may be seeing increased ill health in the future. Not simply gross cancers and possibly heart problems, but also things that are difficult to detect through epidemiology, such as immune problems."]

“Eight years later, it has not reversed that decision,” Dr Ruff said. 


“No other government in the world has ever accepted such a high level of radiation beyond the immediate emergency phase of a nuclear disaster for its citizens.”


An AOC spokesman said Tokyo 2020 provided regular updates to the IOC regarding the situation. “We have been given assurances that radiation levels in Fukushima City are safe, noting that the IOC Co-ordination Team has made several visits to the region and that ongoing monitoring is conducted independently of the Japanese government,” the spokesman said.


THEY'RE LYING, AOC!
THEY'VE BEEN LYING FOR GOING ON 9 YEARS!

YOU'D BE FOOLISH TO TRUST A GOVERNMENT OR A UTILITY COMPANY THAT HAS BEEN BUSTED AS MANY TIMES AS JAPAN'S CO-CONSPIRATORS HAVE BEEN.

DITTO FOR ANY/ALL "NUCLEAR PROTECTION AGENCIES".
THEY ONLY PROTECT THE BIG BOYS OF THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY.

BACK-TO-BACK TROPICAL STORMS IN JAPAN HAVE WREAKED HAVOC IN THE FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE.

We have no clue to the possible damage done to the failed power plant there.

SINCE NO FOREIGN SCIENTISTS, NUCLEAR EXPERTS OR JOURNALISTS ARE ALLOWED UNACCOMPANIED ACCESS TO THAT DESTROYED PLANT, WE CANNOT POSSIBLY KNOW WHAT THE CURRENT READINGS ON RADIATION ARE.

BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY!

WARN THE WORLD ABOUT THE ONGOING LEAKS AND HIGH-LEVEL RADIATION IN AND WITHIN 100 MILES OF FUKUSHIMA, AND EVEN IN TOKYO. 

LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE IF THEY STILL WANT TO ATTEND. 

LET THEM TAKE GEIGER COUNTERS TO THE GAMES, MEASURE EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE.

GIVE THEM ALL DOSIMETRY BADGES IF IT'S SO SAFE.

SHOW THE WORLD THE READINGS!

Dec. 11, 2016: Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian writer who won a Nobel Prize for her book on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, visited evacuees in Fukushima Prefecture to hear about their experiences. "I try to listen to people no one sees or hears," Alexievich says. "There’s much more power in their emotions than in economic or medical data.... So I think it’s important to remember their lives.

Alexievich was also told the story of a dairy farmer, who committed suicide. A close friend of the farmer took her to the place where he died.
"He left a note saying, ‘I wish there'd been no nuclear power plants here,'" the farmer's friend Kenichi Hasegawa told her.

Alexievich has spent years focusing on the suffering of ordinary people and making their voices heard.
Visiting the 2 disaster-stricken regions has renewed her sense of determination.

"No one completely understands the horror of nuclear power. Literature should communicate it, and so should philosophers. It’s not a job for politicians alone," Alexievich said. "In other words, we need to look at what happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima and put them together, to form new knowledge.... I saw the future, not the past, and we need to work on that future."

Alexievich spent more than 10 years interviewing over 300 people, sometimes on camera. "In the last few days, whenever I lifted my husband’s body, his skin would peel off and stick to my hand," the wife of one firefighter told her.
She then wrote about their deep shock and continual sadness.

It has been 30 years since the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, and 5 years [almost 9 now] since the one in Fukushima. The future depends on never letting the voices of “the ordinary people” go unheard -- that’s the message from Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich.


ANYONE, EVERYONE WHO MAKES A DILIGENT, OPEN-MINDED, FACT-SEEKING SEARCH OF THIS UNENDING NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE CANNOT FAIL TO SEE, AS DID
OPPENHEIMER, GOFF, AND MOST ALL "MANHATTAN PROJECT" SCIENTISTS, THAT NUCLEAR ANYTHING IS A LONG-TERM KILLER. IT'S AN OPENED 'PANDORA'S BOX' THAT WE JUST CAN'T CLOSE.

THEY ALL REGRETTED UNLEASHING THAT MONSTER ONTO HUMANITY.
I REGRET THAT THEY DECIDED TOO LATE THAT IT IS A MONSTER. 

IT'S NOT A FAIRY TALE, NOR A 'CONSPIRACY THEORY', IT'S A CONSPIRACY FACT THAT WE WILL ALL BE BOMBARDED BY FUKUSHIMA RADIATION FOR HUNDREDS TO THOUSANDS OF YEARS, DEPENDING ON WHICH RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES WE CHOOSE TO MONITOR THAT ARE STILL BEING EMITTED FROM THAT CURSED CRIPPLED NUKE PLANT.

IT'S SIMPLY A FACT OF LIFE FOR ALL OF US.
NO PANIC IS NECESSARY.
THE TRUTH IS WHAT IT IS, IT'S DONE, AND NOW WE SIMPLY SIT BACK AND 'PAY THE PIPER' FOR OUR FAILURE TO STOP IT. 






_________________________________


-- TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE BASICS OF RADIATION READINGS AND WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO REALIZE ABOUT THIS NUCLEAR DISASTER, PLEASE READ
"A FUKUSHIMA AND RADIATION PRIMER. WE LEARN OR WE PERISH"


--POSTSCRIPT, FROM MY BLOG OF JANUARY 3, 2017:

THREE AND A HALF YEARS AGO, SOME TRUTH WAS TOLD, BUT MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOWNPLAYED IT, REFUSED TO CARRY IT, OR CALLED IN BIG NUKE'S WELL-PAID 'EXPERTS' TO DISCREDIT IT AND THE WORLD, WANTING TO FEEL SAFE, ACCEPTED THAT ALL WAS WELL AND FORGOT ABOUT FUKUSHIMA.

Key findings from a report, which was released at a press briefing March 9, 2016, include a 10-fold increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer in children.

"As of February 2016, 116 children in [ONLY] Fukushima Prefecture had been diagnosed with aggressive and fast-growing, or already metastasizing, thyroid cancer, against an expected number of 1 to 5 cases per year, the report notes.

An additional 50 children have been diagnosed with suspected thyroid carcinoma.
More than 10,000 (and perhaps as many as 66,000) excess cases of cancer are expected among residents of the Fukushima area and the rest of Japan as a result of radiation exposure from the March 11, 2011, Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, according to a report from Physicians for Social Responsibility and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

THE GOVERNMENT HAS REFUSED TO TEST ALL CHILDREN IN JAPAN.
WHY?
AREN'T THEY 'WORTH' THE COST?
OR WOULD RESULTS BE TOO HORRIFYING AND STRIP JAPAN OF THE OLYMPICS, CREATE OUTRAGE IN THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY AS THEY FIGURED OUT THAT ABE IS WAGING AN ONGOING, 'STATIONARY NUCLEAR WAR' ON ALL OF US?

FUKUSHIMA IS NOT OVER. IT WILL CONTINUE FOR GENERATIONS.

THE FAILURE OF THE GOVERNMENT IS AN OUTRAGE.
"Unfortunately, the full health impact of Fukushima may never be known, due to Japan's failure to immediately track radiation releases as well as a disturbing lack of testing of the general population for radiation-related diseases and other impacts, such as miscarriages and fetal malformations, leukemia, lymphomas, solid tumors or cardiovascular disease," Dr Thomasson said.

The report also notes that independent research data on the effects of the disaster are needed. Most of the data for the report come from pro-nuclear organizations in Japan. Dr Thomasson noted that the "massive initial radioactive emissions were not recorded at the time of the triple-reactor meltdown, and some radioactive isotopes, including strontium-90, have not been measured at all by the government.

"What is badly needed now is a series of epidemiological studies to investigate the health consequences of the excess radiation exposure, especially diseases that can be detected and treated early," the report concludes.

BUT SHINZO ABE WILL NOT ALLOW THAT!

Briefing speaker Alex Rosen, MD, pediatrician and vice-chair, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany), said, "The important thing about this report is not so much counting cases of cancer or predicting how many cases of cancer there will be but pointing out that there are people in Japan right now whose right to life in a healthy environment is being taken away from them."

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar specializing in nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies, Institute for Policy Studies, and former senior policy advisor, US Department of Energy, said: "Radioactive fallout from the reactors has created de facto 'sacrifice zones' where human habitation will no longer be possible well into the future.
In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that long-lived radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles (30,000 sq km) of the land surface of Japan. Some 4500 square miles — an area almost the size of Connecticut — was found to have radiation levels that exceeded Japan's allowable exposure rate of 1 mSV (millisievert) per year. Fourteen of the nation's 54 reactors are permanently shut down, as they are on fault lines, and only four have been restarted."

"It is unfortunate," added Tim Mousseau, PhD, professor of biological sciences, University of South Carolina, "that, in some regards, we have better and more complete data about the impacts of Fukushima radiation on trees, plants, and animals than we do on humans."

"It is such an obvious measure that could be completed in about six months, but the government has done absolutely nothing for three years," said Koichiro Ono, a local kindergarten teacher. "The government is worried that if the results suggest that there is a link, it will ruin its plans to restart nuclear reactors."

[AND HOST THE OLYMPICS!] 

"How can anyone talk about life returning to normal in Fukushima until everything has been done to ensure that people have their health?
Politicians keep talking about recovery, but that doesn't mean anything to people living around here."Toshiyuki Kamei whose 12-year-old daughter was found to have nodules on her thyroid.

IF YOU CAN'T STOP THE LEAKS, RAISE THE ALLOWABLE LEVEL OF RADIATION...
The Abe regime's decision to raise allowable radiation exposure standards in Japan to 20 millisieverts of radiation a year, up from the prior level of 2 mSv a year, far surpasses the globally-accepted limit for radiation absorption of 1 mSv a year.

This means that children were and are being exposed to the same levels of radiation that are permitted for adult nuclear power plant workers in Europe.

Some officials even argued that zones where rates were as high as 100 mSv a year should be considered ‘safe’.
FOR CHILDREN?
THAT'S CRIMINAL!

New Orleans-based attorney Stuart Smith observed wryly:

“Instead of taking corrective measures to protect its people, Japan has simply increased internationally recognized exposure limits. It seems that the priority – as we’ve seen in so many other industrial disasters in so many other countries – is to protect industry and limit its liability rather than to ensure the long-term health and well being of the masses.”

-- SEE ALSO "TOKYO'S RADIATION OLYMPICS" BY ENVIROREPORTER







//WW

VIOLENCE, HATE AND THE 'MORAL ORDER' WE ACCEPT

SOME OF THE FIRST WRITTEN WORDS IN HUMAN HISTORY WERE ABOUT WAR, VIOLENCE AND CIVIL SOCIETAL CONFLICTS. 

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
― Bertrand Russell


Until about five thousand years ago, human beings lived in a state of anarchy without central government or enforceable laws.

Genocides were committed and written about by the early people of the Middle East, Asia, Athenians, Romans, the 'Crusaders', invaders/'colonizers' of the 'New World' ("Americas"), of Africa and of Australia.

Genocides were part and parcel of civil wars, 'world' wars, all wars.

Such is still the case.

But now we see POLITICAL wars erupting all over the world, internalized, vicious, hate-filled and mostly of a 'civil war' nature.

It isn't the first time violence was born of politics, but we should have taken lessons from history, by NOT repeating the errors of the past, by NOT insanely doing the SAME things over and over again, expecting ...what? Different results?
There won't be any different results.

If you think that 'psychopaths' are more prone to violence than the kind people next door, you're wrong.

Of all violent crimes committed, less than 10% are committed by those who can be diagnosed as 'psychopaths'/the mentally ill, which leaves 90% of violent acts that are committed by 'normal' people. 

Non-psychopathic people are harming/killing others in much greater numbers than the psychopaths.

WHY? 

Most of us are convinced that WE will never engage in an act of extreme brutality.

WE would never shoot, stab, choke, drag or bludgeon someone to death. WE would never rape another human being or set them on fire. We would NEVER strap a bomb to our chests and blow ourselves into a million pieces in some crowded place, or aim our vehicle at a crowd of people and step on the gas pedal.
NO, NOT US, NEVER!

When faced with these violent, senseless acts, most of us would find ourselves at a loss to explain the actions of anyone who would commit them. What possible purpose could they serve?
WHY do people hurt and kill one another?

It sounds like an unanswerable question, but there IS an answer.
The answer is simple, powerful and very disturbing.
We purposely or 'subconsciously' fail to recognize and/or admit the answer almost everywhere a valid, honest answer is needed.

However, IF, if we REALLY want to solve the problems of human violence and wars and senseless deaths, there is nothing else to do but admit the answer IS valid and true.
We have to risk an answer that may threaten our own values, our own way of life.

We have to gaze into a very dark abyss.

There we will find "moral justification".

A psychiatrist, sociologist, or behavior therapist may say that violence is enabled by loss of self-control. Something 'triggers' a person and makes them 'snap', then they just say to hell with it all (become 'disinhibited) and attack.

But that "disinhibition theory" avoids the question of why humans are motivated to be violent in the first place.
The drive to become violent has to come from somewhere, and this theory is silently lacking about where that 'somewhere' might be.

What about what some call the "rational choice theory", wherein one might just decide it's a grand idea to kill off others so he/she can be 'king of the hill', or decides to kill their friend or family member to obtain a fortune?
These rational-choice models predict that the likelihood of violence increases when the benefits of violence go up or its costs (risks of being caught in the act, punishments) go down.


A study a few years back out of the UK found that foreign nations are much more likely to intervene in a civil war when the country at war within itself also has valuable oil reserves. Fossil fuels are triggering violent conflicts all over the world, says Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the US.

Klare zooms in on four areas – Iraq/Syria, South Sudan, the Crimea/Ukraine, and the South China Sea – to argue that the desire to control valuable oil and gas assets is fueling long-standing historic tensions. “In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power,” he warns.

The trouble with "rational choice theory" is that it also doesn't answer the question of WHY people frequently resort to violence when, by any measure of practical sense/logic, non-violent measures would be easier and far more effective, would carry NONE of the risks or punishments associated with committing a violent or deadly act.

A quick look at history shows even those thinking of doing violence that "Wars harm both sides, most crimes yield little financial gain, terrorism and assassination almost never bring about the desired political changes, most rapes fail to bring sexual pleasure, torture rarely elicits accurate or useful information..." (That is a PDF)

Another study posited to those involved in civil war over territory (land), in which those at war valued the land as 'sacred', that a large cash settlement would be handed to them if they simply gave up the land, but showed that such an offer elevated levels of anger and disgust, as well as increased enthusiasm for violence from both sides. Those who did NOT see the land as sacred were enthusiastic to take the monetary incentive and call it a wrap.

That blows the "rational choice theory" right out of the water. Such a theory cannot handle/explain this kind of data. Adding material incentives should never make the deal worse, but sometimes it does.

Neither the disinhibition theory nor the rational choice theory provides a complete picture for why people harm one another, why they go to war.
And to the extent that we try to rely on these theories to reduce violence, we will fail again and again.
What are we missing?

Looking at violence across time and cultures, looking long and hard and honestly, a pattern emerges in all the violence. There IS a unifying theme, with all the predictive and explanatory power one could wish for.

Humans determine within their own minds and within their own cultural and/or chosen groups that violence is obligatory, necessary, proper.

Violence is motivated by moral sentiments, a deep, inner surety that some actions of others DEMANDS retribution, DEMANDS that the person who committed even an imagined 'sin'/wrong MUST be punished.
Some tell themselves that their victims "brought it on themselves", that they "begged for it" when they did thus or so.

Drill sergeants, gang leaders and guerrilla fighters brutally ‘beat in’ new recruits believing it creates lifelong bonds and unflinching obedience to superiors, both of which are fundamental to success in battle.

A father in New Guinea pours hot fat down the inner arm of his son and hopes he will endure it 'like a man' because this is imperative if he is to become a respected adult in that culture.

Suicide bombers in the Middle East kill themselves and others in the name of the authority they respect and out of loyalty to 'the noble cause'.

A brother in India or in an Islamic nation kills his sister because her sexual infidelity has contaminated and shamed their family and her death is the only way to restore the family’s honor and prove the family is devout and noble.

Fighter pilots bomb a 'terrorist' target, killing several terrorists along with many nearby civilians because their commander said it was an 'acceptable loss' in order to achieve a 'greater good', i.e.,the death of their enemies.

One can find examples of such 'moral justification' without end.

If indeed violence is motivated by moral sentiments, what is it motivated toward?
What are these perpetrators of violence trying to achieve?

The answer seems to be that violence is intended to regulate social relationships.

Across all cases that have been studied, that we ourselves can study, perpetrators are using violence to create, conduct, sustain, enhance, transform, honor, protect, redress, repair, end, and mourn relationships they see as "immorally detrimental" and/or "unjustified".

The jilted spouse or lover is convinced that the one who jilted them was unjust, evil, morally corrupt, and that allowing the one who jilted them to go unpunished would leave them free to do the same to the "next guy".

Maybe the jilted decides that harsh physical punishment is enough to change the offenders actions, or they may decide such an unjust person needs to be erased from the earth.

Maybe they feel a cultural 'moral need' to regain their 'honor', their sense of community worth by not allowing the deed to go unpunished. Others are watching, after all. Being 'unjustly shamed' demands retribution so that the scales balance once again in their society.

In every case, the violent act is perceived by the perpetrators, and by at least some who observe their violence (and in some cases even by the victims themselves) as just.

As examples...public executions have often been popular community events, with families picnicking at hangings throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, gathering to watch 'justice served'.
Remember the 'witch hunts', the approved massacres of Indigenous Tribes in colonial times, the celebrations of won, often undeclared wars that we see an abundance of today.
Syria is in ruin, people in Yemen are starving to death, all because our pals in Saudi Arabia are scared of Iranian influence there, but House of Saud rules OPEC, so, Yaaay, team!

WHY would we applaud that?
Because the ones we're told are 'wicked' got their "just desserts" and order will be restored.
Let's not forget that oil prices will drop once the fighting and killing are over.

Individuals and cultures vary widely in the ways they accomplish their set of 'regulations', these 'necessary, violent acts'.
The contexts in which each culture or individual believes violence is an acceptable means of making things right also vary, but the goal is the same.

The purpose of violence, in the minds of the violent, is to sustain or restore an accepted "moral order".

Violence is still celebrated by everyday 'good' people TODAY.

Every time "terrorists" are killed, many celebrate and determine to kill more (which makes US the terrorists to those whom we attack), while others who are attacked are incensed and vow to annihilate every man, woman and child in whatever culture/nation that killed their 'heroes', their loved ones, their countrymen.

PAUSE, REWIND, REPLAY....OVER AND OVER AGAIN, THROUGHOUT HISTORY.

BUT WAIT!
Surely it’s not difficult to claim 'moral justifications' when one is actually motivated by selfishness or is just plain criminally evil, right?
Wouldn't some use moral justification as an EXCUSE to do whatever they pleased?
The excuses/justifications that perpetrators offer reveal the moral standards of those being appealed to who will take sides with the 'righteous vindicators', finding 'moral cause' handed out freely by those among us who AGREE with their violence, perhaps even encourage it. All this SHOULD be a terribly uncomfortable thought.

If we accept that dangerous people might be motivated by genuine moral beliefs, we face a deeply troubling subjective dimension to morality as such.

At the very least, we must face the possibility that someone can be sincerely wrong about violence being 'morally justified'.

Once we allow ourselves to go that far, it’s a short hop to thinking maybe WE, who agree with moral justification are the ones who may be wrong, or even that there’s nothing to be right about in the first place as far as JUSTIFYING violence.

Those who justify violence due to moral obligation may fail to see the group or communal or cultural HATRED for certain things that fuels violence and wars of all kinds.
According to a recent study, there are at least 917 organized 'hate groups' in the United States, all of which share a common 'moral code'.

Some are composed of Whites, some are created by Blacks, some by Latinos/Hispanics, some by "religious fanatics", others were formed based on political beliefs, etc.    
What motivates most humans to hate, collectively or individually?FEAR...mainly FEAR. 

1- Fear of “The Other”
If something or someone is not LIKE them, many people fear that and then begin to hate through their fear.
They see DANGER to their societal and 'sacred' beliefs and to their personal standing in the larger national society because of these "others". SURELY, they tell themselves, such 'others' will destroy society and replace it with something that enslaves or eradicates them.

Researchers like Patrick Wanis cite the in-group out-group theory, which posits that when we feel threatened by perceived outsiders, we instinctively turn toward our in-group—those with whom we identify—as a survival mechanism. Wanis explains, “Hatred is driven by two key emotions of love and aggression: One, love for the in-group—the group that is favored; and two, aggression for the out-group—the group that has been deemed as being different, dangerous, and a threat to the in-group.”

All we have to do to 'test' this theory is to read the news, listen to the 'platforms' these 'hate groups' are based on.

The Tea Room sees this fear quite clearly in the formation of political parties.

Political affiliation has kept America divided since our second Presidential election.

Politics gave us the "Great Civil War".

Democrats see Republicans as evil incarnate and Republicans view Democrats as Satan's spawn.

The very language of politics speaks to fear and hate.
We're told to FIGHT for America by BEATING the other party.
We're told by each party that the other party is AT WAR against America and seeks to DESTROY the nation.

And most Americans buy into that and choose sides, making sure we remain DIVIDED, making sure we ALL come to ruin rather than to UNITY.

2- Fear of Ourselves

According to Washington, D.C., clinical psychologist Dana Harron, the things people hate about others are the things that they fear within themselves. She suggests thinking about the targeted group or person as a movie screen onto which we project unwanted parts of the self.
The idea is, “I'm not terrible; you are.”

This phenomenon is known as projection, a term coined by Freud to describe our tendency to reject what we don’t like about ourselves and assign it to others. Psychologist Brad Reedy further describes projection as our need to be good, which causes us to project "badness" outward onto others and attack it.

We can almost immediately see in others what we see within ourselves and wish wasn't there or try to deny that it does lurk within US.
That's how we can point fingers at others so quickly and easilyWhat would happen if we stopped thinking of moral values as objective facts that are always true everywhere at all times, and saw them instead as subjective opinions that differ across cultures and history?

Again, at the very least, shouldn't we perhaps face the possibility that one (even we ourselves) can be "sincerely wrong" about "blanket" moral values?

I'm thinking of things like, oh, "manifest destiny", let's say, or during the Crusades, when only ONE religion was acceptable, or, in the case of Islam, that THAT religion alone is the only right religion for the entire world, or that ONLY a socialist society can "fix" the problems of the world.

3- Lack of Self-compassion

The antidote to hate is compassion — for others as well as ourselves. Self-compassion means that we accept the whole self. “If we find part of ourselves unacceptable, we tend to attack others in order to defend against the threat,” says psychologist Brad Reedy. “If we are okay with ourselves, we see others’ behaviors as ‘about them’ and can respond with compassion. If I kept hate in my heart for [another], I would have to hate myself as well. It is only when we learn to hold ourselves with compassion that we may be able to demonstrate it toward others.”

4- Hate fills a void

Psychologist Bernard Golden, author of Overcoming Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work, believes that when hate involves participation in a group, it may help foster a sense of connection and camaraderie that fills a void in one’s identity. He describes hatred of individuals or groups as a way of distracting oneself from the more challenging and anxiety-provoking task of creating one’s own identity:

"Acts of hate are attempts to distract oneself from feelings such as helplessness, powerlessness, injustice, inadequacy and shame. Hate is grounded in some sense of perceived threat. It is an attitude that can give rise to hostility and aggression toward individuals or groups. Like much of anger, it is a reaction to and distraction from some form of inner pain. The individual consumed by hate may believe that the only way to regain some sense of power over his or her pain is to preemptively strike out at others. In this context, each moment of hate is a temporary reprieve from inner suffering."

5- Societal and Cultural Factors

The answer to why we hate, according to Silvia Dutchevici, LCSW, president and founder of the Critical Therapy Center, lies not only in our psychological makeup or family history, but also in our cultural and political history. “We live in a war culture that promotes violence, in which competition is a way of life,” she says. “We fear connecting because it requires us to reveal something about ourselves.
We are taught to hate the enemy — meaning anyone different than us — which leaves little room for vulnerability and an exploration of hate through empathic discourse and understanding.
In our current society, one is more ready to fight than to resolve conflict. Peace is seldom the option.”


Can't we ever agree to LIVE AND LET LIVE? 
Can't we EVER just look at history, see the gross errors of our ways and determine to STOP BEHAVING AS THOUGH WE ARE INSANE by repeating those errors yet again? 

WHAT ABOUT TERRORISTS?
SHOULDN'T WE KILL ALL 'TERRORISTS'? 

Terrorism is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.”

NEWSFLASH!
MOST WHO BELONG TO POLITICAL PARTIES COULD BE LABELED AS "TERRORISTS" BY THAT DEFINITION!
READ THE DAILY HEADLINES AND SEE IT FOR YOURSELVES. 

The inclusion of damage to private and public property in the definition of terrorism is a point of contention, but it is generally accepted in legal and statistical contexts.

WE SEE THAT DAILY, TOO, DON'T WE? 

An action must also be carried out for political, economic, religious, or social purposes to count as terrorism.


THERE'S THAT "MORAL JUSTIFICATION"! "A political party is a group of people seeking to promote the enactment of their ideals into law which, unlike an interest group, consists of multiple interests and primarily uses the ballot box.

A terrorist organization is a group of people seeking to promote the enactment of their ideals into law and primarily use politically motivated violence.
The line between the two types of organizations is not solid and there are multiple linkages between them.
Terrorist groups can become political parties; political parties can become terrorist groups; political parties can use terrorism and the ballot box; both political parties and terrorist groups can form wings of the opposite variety; and factions within political parties can splinter off into terrorist groups.

In addition, interest groups or political movements can utilize terrorism or spawn political groups or terrorist groups."   (Weinberg and Pedahzur, Political Parties and Terrorist Groups. London ; New York: 2003)


WE'VE BEEN GOING ABOUT REDUCING CRIME ALL WRONG. 

For years, we have been trying to reduce crime by incarceration, by placing restrictions on the mentally ill, by teaching potential perpetrators how to exercise more self-control.
On the face of it, these all sound like plausible strategies.

But ALL of those missed their target. 

Decade after decade, our jails are full, we still have the mentally ill diagnosed in ever greater numbers, and nobody is going to 'exercise self control' until they honestly see a NEED to and can admit to that need. 

WHO likes to admit they're wrong or that they need help? 

Did you know that about 45% of federal inmates are rearrested within five years of release?
This is considerably lower than the more alarming calculation of the Bureau of Justice Statistics that 77% are rearrested within five years.

But the BJS number includes both federal prisoners and the far more numerous veterans of state prisons.

Prisoners released before turning 21 had a rearrest rate of about 68%.

OBVIOUSLY, incarceration doesn't change minds or intent. 

One of the most robust findings in criminology is that increasing the severity of punishment has little deterrent effect.

People simply aren’t as sensitive to the potential costs of crime as the rational-choice model predicts they should be, and so efforts to reduce it by cracking down have failed to justify the immense fiscal and social costs of mass incarceration.

Meanwhile, because most violent crimes are committed by psychologically healthy individuals, legislation that focuses on the mentally ill – for example, by stopping them from buying guns – would lead to only a small reduction.
If we really wanted to cut our rates of violence, we would have to focus on moral motives.

Simply stated, violence must be made immoral.

This must hold true for both perpetrators of violence and the people they care about and/or the people who justify acts of violence based on an accepted moral code.
Only when violence in ANY relationship is seen as a violation of EVERY relationship will it diminish.

NO! NO, you may NOT do violence and expect to be excused for it, EVER.

It must be instilled in all our minds that ANY violence against ANYONE is considered violence against us ALL, that NONE of us will ever again condone violence or justify it as a "moral obligation".

I've written before about the now-banned "Blood Law" of a few Indigenous Tribes, wherein THEFT, in ANY form within the Tribe, whether theft of a life (murder), theft of a blanket, or theft of the truth (a lie), was immediately punishable by death, and the perpetrator's family members were responsible for carrying out the sentence.
If the family refused, they, too, would be seen as thieves...of justice.
If that happened, then others would be assigned to step in and carry out the sentence...on everyone who had broken that law. 
In those Tribes, THIS was the one and ONLY law.
It was sufficient. 

Such criminal acts were not condoned and were not tolerated by ANY of the Tribal members, and that was made crystal clear to each child growing up in the Tribe.
From infancy they were warned, taught and there was NO excuse offered if ANYONE broke that one law. 

In his work to reduce gang violence in Boston, the criminologist David Kennedy helps to organize 'interventions'.

Killers, violent criminals, no matter their race or social standing, are confronted by local leaders and the families of victims, who all express the wrongness of killing and insist that violence against anyone undermines relationships with everyone.

Sure, legal sanctions are also present, but they prove insufficient on their own. Critically, the message HAS to come from respected people within the criminal’s own community.

As Kennedy puts it: ‘their own ideas about right and wrong matter most; the ideas of those they care about and respect matter more’.

These programs have been quite successful WHEN PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED.
Baltimore tried to conduct a similar program "on the cheap" which seems to have failed, but other cities HAVE seen real reductions in violence using Kennedy's strict methodology. 

It won’t be easy to change our culture of violence.
We have to give people the structural, economic, technological and political means to regulate their relationships peacefully, options aside from violence that will make the scales of justice balance once again.

ALL social groups, ALL races, ALL levels of society have to determine to SHAME AND SHUN, AS WELL AS DELIVER THE VIOLENT UP FOR JUSTICE, ANYONE WHO VIOLENTLY HARMS OR KILLS ANOTHER.

THIS CAN BE DONE.
It HAS been done in the past by cultures we might call 'third world' or 'tribal' or even 'savage or strange', but it IS happening as we sit here, in prosperous, modern nations as well.

Cultures CAN AND DO change once they see the benefits of change.

People everywhere, WHO WANT TO, are finding ways to satisfy their moral motives and social-relational aims non-violently.

This in no way means this work is finished.

People also still hurt and kill one another because they believe that it's the right moral thing to do.
But if their primary social groups make them understand that violence will result in their being completely ostracized by family and community AND sent to face swift justice, most WILL learn NOT to be violent.

Once everyone, everywhere, truly believes that violence is unacceptable, is inexcusable by ALL whom they value/care for, that violence carries a "double curse", not just a legal punishment, then violence will begin to end.
The desire to be a valued member of a group, 'part of the herd' has often over-ridden the desire to be a self-serving lawbreaker.

Would we still allow for self-defense?
I would think we should, but then I think of the victims of abortions, of child abuse, of elder abuse, the animals who suffer and die from animal abuse and how none of those can ever be said to have had a real "fighting chance" to save themselves.

I think of a city cop in Houston, TX, who bragged that he could always prove self-defense by placing one of his stash of confiscated weapons in the hand of anyone he shot.
SAME can be said of a civilian who commits a violent act believing it to be justified.

It's precisely FOR those who can't truly protect themselves, who have NO means of self-defense that we MUST change this tendency to violence among all members of society. 

We simply can't keep putting the entire burden on "law enforcement" and courts and expect those few to SEE HAPPENING what WE see happen daily in our own neighborhoods, streets, homes, to produce evidence of the violence that WE bear witness to but keep quiet about, make excuses for, acts of violence that we try to NOT see, WANT to excuse, violent acts that happen to the helpless, the innocents, the weak.

NO MORE "I've got your back, brother", NO MORE "I'll be your alibi", NO MORE I'll go to bat for you every way I can, pal/son/daughter/husband/wife/mom/dad".

NO!
It's NOT 'a jungle out there', it's a CIVILIZED WORLD.

NO!
NOBODY IS PREY!
NOBODY should be allowed to be a PREDATOR! 

VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE.
IT ISN'T NECESSARY IN THE DAILY LIVES OF AMERICAN PEOPLE.
IT ISN'T TO BE CONDONED. 

HATE ERASES SANITY AND CREATES UTTER CHAOS. 

REALIZING THAT WE ARE ALL EQUAL, NO ONE BETTER THAN THE NEXT, INVITES PEACE AND PEACEFUL SOLUTIONS.

ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU THAT YOU ARE NOT EQUAL WITH ALL OTHERS IS LYING TO YOU IN ORDER TO MANIPULATE YOU TO CARRY OUT THEIR 'MORAL JUSTIFICATION' TO DO VIOLENCE AND TO DESTROY YOUR FELLOW MAN. 








______________________________________

OTHER SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: 

-- CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
A PDF that shows the RISE in global conflicts since 2011, the astronomical number of civilians displaced by those conflicts and FAILS to include Europe, the USA, or Canada.


-- The Essential Guide to Defense Mechanisms
The 9 most common defense mechanisms used to prevent inner turmoil, angst and fear.


-- How the Long History of Human Violence Explains Why the Internet Causes So Much Chaos

We are currently living through the third communications revolution: the Internet. Invented late last century, its use has grown exponentially: by the end of 2018, more than half of the world’s population was online. It is currently disrupting our senses of nationhood, hierarchy, equality, resource sharing and employment, among other things. It is upending national consensuses on all of the five group problems at once.

The Internet is also laying the foundations for what could be a truly global society.

Scholars—from psychologists to political scientists specializing in conflict—are starting to understand that the desire to belong among humans plays an outsized role in generating group violence of all kinds. This evolutionary desire to belong does not mean belonging to just any group of humans, but to a cohesive social group that protects you from violence, and gives you access to resources and sexual partners.
And for a social group to remain cohesive it needs to have norms and rules that solve five basic coordination problems inherent to groups. These five problems are: hierarchy (who makes the decisions), identity (who is in the group and who is out), trade (how do we trade or share resources), disease (how do we manage disease with so many individuals living in close proximity) and punishment (who are we allowed to punish as a group, and for what). If a group fails to solve these five problems, violence ensues and the group splinters and cleaves into smaller groups.


--Tage Rai, a research associate and lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Massachusetts, is the co-author, with Alan Fiske, of Virtuous Violence (2014) which I used as a source. He also wrote an essay I much appreciated titled "How Could They?"


--Mental illness and violence
A Harvard Health article.
Most individuals with psychiatric disorders are not violent.
Although a subset of people with psychiatric disorders commit assaults and violent crimes, findings have been inconsistent about how much mental illness contributes to this behavior and how much substance abuse and other factors do.
An ongoing problem in the scientific literature is that studies have used different methods to assess rates of violence — both in people with mental illness and in control groups used for comparison. Some studies rely on "self-reporting," or participants' own recollection of whether they have acted violently toward others. Such studies may underestimate rates of violence for several reasons. Participants may forget what they did in the past, or may be embarrassed about or unwilling to admit to violent behavior. Other studies have compared data from the criminal justice system, such as arrest rates among people with mental illness and those without. But these studies, by definition involving a subset of people, may also misstate rates of violence in the community. Finally, some studies have not controlled for the multiple variables beyond substance abuse that contribute to violent behavior (whether an individual is mentally ill or not), such as poverty, family history, personal adversity or stress, and so on.





//WW