Proxy War R Us

Russian Cruiser Moskva on Fire

I was expecting that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have been wrapped up by now. I mean here we have the great big Russian bear picking on poor little Ukraine, it should have been no contest, right?  There has been no end of 'news reports' from the western media about how brave little Ukraine is standing up to the big mean bear, but we aren't getting any real news, or least none that I would trust.

Meanwhile we're closing in on two months now and no end of the war in sight. That might be what some people want. Here's a post on RT (formerly Russia Today, undoubtedly Putin's mouthpiece) by Timur Fomenko, a political analyst:

The West doesn’t want peace in Ukraine

Rather than pursuing peace, the US and allies are doing all they can to turn the Ukraine conflict into a proxy war against Russia

. . .

Apart from its own invasions, bombings, coups, and regime change attempts imposed on countries around the world, one of America’s preferred methods of confronting its adversaries is to ‘wage war by proxy’ against them, that is, to support the war of a group or country against them without militarily engaging themselves. The history of the Cold War is littered with such examples, such as America’s backing of the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, its backing of Saddam Hussein against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, or, on a more contemporary note, its failed attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad via the local rebels. Proxy wars allow the US to minimize its own losses by having someone else die for them while also procuring geopolitical gain for themselves by undermining rival states, at the same time maximizing profits for the military-industrial complex by keeping the arms flowing.

To me, this whole thing looks like class warfare. The vile, sleazy, scheming wolf pack that runs the US government and the military industrial complex is not interested in what is better for the country as a whole, they are only interested in lining their own pockets. All this government spending on defense is helping to drive up inflation which is impoverishing everyone who doesn't have a fat bankroll to sleep on. Of course, with inflation running the way it is, your fat bankroll needs to be invested in something substantial, like real estate, or an oil refinery, or, best of all, a munitions factory.

This real estate thing might be why we have such a problem with people being homeless. They're homeless because there is nowhere for them to go. All the land has been carved up. All the useful land has been claimed by someone and all that's left is the useless land. We might want to start carving up a few farms into campgrounds, give people a base to start with. Some of them will fail, but some of them might be able to build a life, and I think it would be worth the gamble. Surely a better bet than sending another billion dollars worth of guns and ammo to the gangsters running Ukraine.

Soup Kitchen

Judge Kimberly A. Knill of the Orange County Superior Court
Nose stud and visible tattoos? Yah, sure, Bill.

A semi-amusing story about a billionaire and his troubles with his local community.

You Only Hang Twice by Bill Gross, billionaire and petty irritant

Just last week I was approached by a Hollywood producer to be the consultant on a new James Bond sequel to be titled "You Only Hang twice". Having received a restraining order nine months ago in the famous Gilligan's Island trial, I and my wife Amy had just been sentenced to five days in jail (with time off for community service) for playing 15 minutes of music at 9 pm in our backyard pool. The music was below city decibel limits but was somehow disturbing the peace of our noise-sensitive neighbor. NO police citation was issued but what the heck, a crime must have been committed if the neighbor simply called police and complained he couldn't sleep at such a late hour.

Enter the hanging judge of the Laguna Beach shore, a 57-year-old lady with pierced nose stud and visible tattoos, to retry and rehang the highly visible target of Bill Gross – ex-Bond King and obviously still "full of himself" senior citizen. She would try me twice, she would hang me twice – thus opening a potential career in Hollywood for me and her at a point in my life when climbing the stairs was taking up an increasing amount of my daily routine. The judge I have since learned only does "restraining order" cases in Orange County, but these two trials encompassing four weeks of court time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees (a mere $1,200 fine for me though) could presumably be a stepping stone for the judge for greater court assignments. Even the appellate court. But perhaps my fury runneth over a little too much here. Time will tell but in any case, she'll have a prominent place in the script and may even get to act in her own role. I'm too old for my part it seems. They're thinking of Jake Gyllenhaal! But I would have preferred Tom Hanks.

Anyway, the interesting part of all this to me was our immediate assignment to the Santa Ana soup kitchen for two days of community service. No orange suit duty on the highway thank goodness, just two days at nearby Santa Ana where coincidentally I had volunteered several times in the past to serve Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Like one of my friends remarked at a lunch last week, "Community service? Gross has performed and provided more community service in the past 20 years than anyone in Orange County history!" But no matter – truth, justice, the American way, and judicial ambition would prevail.

But here's the interesting part. Having volunteered at this same soup kitchen before, I was expecting a similar cast of "down and out" people in need of a hot lunch. Indeed, as Amy and I cut chicken for the soup and fruit for the fruit cups, we were then assigned to pass out what was actually a gorgeous enchilada lunch replete with cheesecake and chips when the doors opened at noon. Due to COVID, however, there was no indoor dining – in fact the new routine featured a drive-through lane where a large percentage of cars were nice SUVs and pickup trucks. "Say what?" I whispered to Amy. Each "customer" was handed a meal with more calories than the ones at a McDonald's drive-through and in addition, many special requests were fulfilled. No downtrodden homeless people at this soup kitchen! There were vegan meals, gluten-free meals, five kinds of bread, and orders from the cars to skip the meal but to give them mini-sacks of avocados and artichokes for special diets later in the day. There was one request for a feminine hygiene package and several for prophylactics. But not to be outdone, requests for "doggie bites" and cat food kept Amy and I scrambling from noon to 3 pm. "Hundreds were served" to use the McDonald's phrase, and well served I might add. We worked beside a volunteer who told us he came two days a week to feel good about helping other people. He was a little bedraggled looking and had to take the bus from Long Beach to get there. I told him that was a wonderful gesture but silently thought to myself, "Buddy, you've been screwed. They're living better than you".

And so perhaps we have all been screwed if the Santa Ana soup kitchen is any example. A trophy for every kid has moved up the maturity ladder to an artichoke for every adult. Many of those requesting vegan were well dressed and apparently not lacking in the finer accoutrements of daily life. "We can't discriminate against those who have already been discriminated against," remarked one of the permanent staff. "We can't deny them twice". Ah yes I said to myself – I know what you mean.

 The story then rambles off into a bunch of financial mumbo-jumbo which I found pert near useless.

Via ZeroHedge

Portland Street Life

Had lunch with my son today. He tells me two cars have had their windows broken out on his block in the last week. 

Safeway Signature SELECT Drinking Water - 24-16.9 Fl. Oz. - $2.49

The other day he was walking home from Safeway and he noticed a small stream of water running down the street. A little farther on he came across the source of this water. A guy had five cases of the small bottles of drinking water and was cutting them with a knife. We surmise that he purchased the water using food stamps and was emptying them out to prepare to cash them in to collect the bottle deposit so he could get some cash money to buy drugs. At ten cents a bottle, five cases of bottles would net him $12. 

Who is that masked man?

Gas Mask

I think the corona virus scare is overblown. I might be wrong. We might get a million deaths next year from some new strain, but I doubt it. I don't think we are even going to see a blip on the population graph. On the other hand, the side effects are going to fuck us over but good.

The lockdowns are having an adverse effect on the economy. That and the psychological effects of people being isolated, or even worse, locked up with their 'loved ones', is killing more people than the virus could ever hope to kill. But that doesn't matter, but because we are not operating in the real world, we are operating in a dream world where everyone is wonderful and we all have the same set of pristine values and nobody hates anybody. The parameters of this dream world are all that you can get a majority to agree on, and this agreement is going to have us marching straight off the cliff that is getting closer every day.

People are resilient, so we should be able to adjust to this 'new normal' of never going anywhere and never seeing anybody.  We should be able to find some way to hobble along, but I am afraid of what it's going to look like. 

Homeless camps have started showing up in Hillsboro. We're 30 minutes by car from downtown Portland.

Will the Biden Presidency implode? Given our history, he or his cohorts will blunder along till the next election. Will anything change with the next election? I doubt it, the President is, after all, simply the figurehead on our ship of state, a ship that has considerable momentum. Changing the President isn't going to change our course. No, I suspect things will deteriorate until we have 50% unemployment. Of course, those will be the official numbers. Most of those people will have joined up with criminal gangs who are going to be engaged in all the traditional forms of crime and probably some new ones that haven't been invented yet. At some point some demagogue will capture people's attention and we'll get an entirely new form governmental bullshit. Let's just hope it doesn't include death camps.

Now might be a good time to reread The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

Crush the Bums

 

No camping in the alcove

Sometime in the last month, security gates were installed across the alcove in front of the entrance doors of this apartment building in downtown Portland.

Sometime in the last year or so, a couple of doors down from this place, a chain link fence was installed across an empty storefront's covered inset.

I don't understand why apparently no progress has been made with the homeless. Maybe it's just class warfare, or rather class neglect. The people who are in power just don't care about the problem. Any discussion of the homeless is simply an opportunity to score political points, never mind if it does anything useful. But right now everyone is thoroughly entrenched in their positions and are waiting for the election. 

Some of our elected government officials are intelligent, dedicated folks who can be trusted to base their decisions on the facts. 

Some of them are big huggy bears who are blown whichever way the winds blow. They wouldn't know a fact if some one hit them upside the face with it. For them , logical thought is a foreign country.

Some of them intelligent, cunning, psychopaths who don't give a rats ass for anyone or anything except power, money and glory.

There is some overlap between these three categories, but I think that about covers it. Let us say our elected government officials are evenly divided into each of the three types. That would certainly explain why it is so hard to get any decent legislation passed.

I just searched my archive for 'homeless'. There are a number of posts. The oldest is dated 2009.