Wednesday, May 24, 2017

It's All to Be Expected

 What's all the hub-bub, bub?
I don't get the surprise from some who couldn't imagine that Russia would try to influence the outcome of an American election.

Just glancing at America's involvement over the past fifty years, America has had an almost constant presence in other country's business - even in democratically elected governments.

During the Cold War (roughly between 1947 to 1989) America had intervened in the affairs of foreign rulership at least 72 times.

Here is a quick look. An asterisk (*) denotes a successful regime change do to our intervention;
North Vietnam 45-73
Cambodia 55-70
Chile 64-73 *
Greece 67 *
Costa Rica 70-71 *
Bolivia 71 *
Australia 73-75 *
Angola 75
Zaire 75
Portugal 74-76 *
Jamaica 76-80 *
Seychelles 79-81
Libya 80's
Chad 81-82*
Grenada 83*
South Yemen 82-84
Suriname 82-84
Fiji 87*
Nicaragua 81-90*
Panama 89*
Bulgaria 90*
Afghanistan 90's*
Albania 91*
Iraq 91
Somalia 93
Yugoslavia 99-00*
Ecuador 00*
Afghanistan 01*
Venezuela 02*
Iraq 03*
Haiti 04*
Somalia 07-
Honduras 09
Libya 11*
Syria 12*
Ukraine 14*
(source: William Bloom, Wikipedia, Washington Post)

The problem isn't that Russia may have been trying to influence an election in a way that would benefit them - America does that all the time.
 But there is still a problem if someone within the American government is/was working with a foreign government to influence an election.

And now comes all of the Alex Jones listeners.
Jones claims that Noam Chomsky predicted that Trump would attempt to distract the media with some sort of False Flag perpetrated by a terrorist.

Then along comes the Manchester attack.
Manchester - while not a small town at a little over 500,000 people - is not a big city.
In fact, all I know about Manchester us their music scene.
From The Hollies and Herman's Hermits, to 10cc and the Bee Gees, to The Smiths and New Order, to 808 State and the Chemical Brothers, to Oasis - Manchester seems to have always had an influence on Pop music.
But besides for it's music scene the smallish Northern England town didn't seem like a high value target.

Not to go all Hypertiger with these lists and numbers but the whole '22' coincidence kind of got my attention.
Norway Attack 22-07-11
Lee Rigby 22-05-13
Brussels Attack 22-09-16
Munich Attack 22-07-16
Manchester 22-5-17

To be honest...
With all these facts, counter-facts and alternative facts there is no wonder the world seems to be in a constant state of mania.

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