BREXIT (UK) — A FAILED, TEAR-SHEDDING DREAM TO RESURRECT THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE AGE OF SAIL IS IN THE GRAVE

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  from 2009 with President Obama's election. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally commenting on the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted. 

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So, ‘Liz’ Truss resigned as Prime Minister (UK) on October 20, 2022 — after only 44 days in office, the shortest since 1827 when Tory George Canning died in office after 118 days. 

Her resignation speech is here — a signal example of a nationalist word salad of conservative slogans and hopeful but flawed illogic that some conservatives love to mouth but flounder on after a short time that shows how hollow those slogans actually are.

Ms. Truss makes the fifth UK prime minister in six years — the fastest turnover in nearly a century.

What can one say except it’s about time for the global fantasy-dreaming about past nationalist ‘glory’ to end … the ‘days of sail’ and exploitative spice trade are long over.

The ‘Now’ has changed from the crawling pace of sailing ships to the dynamic, high-tech, increasingly information-driven supersonic age that is above all sustained by interdependent associations not standalone empires… no one country is now truly self-sustaining. Not even America.

‘Brexit,’ the UK withdrawal from the European Union has proved to be an economic flop run by a false performer in a clown suit and Halloween wig (several candidates here, but …).

What Truss’s resignation means is that political posturing and claiming a mantle of past glory is what it sounded like to many— hot air and opportunism that rapidly turns into a disaster for the naive voter and certainly for their nation.

The lineup of guilty politicians who've covered their true motives or lack of true smarts is long but includes such stars as BOJO (Boris Johnson, Truss’s predecessor), Vladimir Putin, and, of course, the current era’s grand wizard behind the curtain, Donald Trump.

Putin is perhaps a special case as he seems to have the naked power to take Russia down with him, but he will not soften in his pursuit of personal glory and the glow of Tsarist Russia.

Let’s hope the UK will regain its senses…and find a way to re-enter the EU (big problems there with lots of 'cold crow' for the UK to swallow, but it has to be done to save England from economic collapse). And let’s hope the American path doesn’t curve back to Trumpism.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE 'VIG': THE FBI'S AUGUST 8, 2022, SEIZURE OF CLASSIFIED FILES FROM THE TRUMP ESTATE AT MAR-A-LAGO (FLORIDA)

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old,  beginning in 2009 with President Obama's first term. Our focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impact of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                                                                                                                                                                                  -------------------

On August 8, 2022, the FBI sprang, by warrant, an unannounced, early morning search of Donald Trump's estate home ('Mar-a-Lago') at West Palm Beach (Florida). The ostensible FBI objective was (is) to recover 27 boxes of White House documents that Trump had taken with him when he officially vacated the Presidency on January 20, 2021. Those documents may have included classified documents of importance to national security and which Trump would not have been permitted to remove from the White House...had he asked. (He didn't ask and just 'did it' as was, and is his style.) 

WHAT DONALD TRUMP WANTED WITH THOSE FILES MIGHT HAVE BEEN TO 'AUCTION' THEM OFF IN THE DARK GLOBAL MARKETS TO FOREIGN ACTORS AND INTERESTS...(ESPECIALLY TO THE PROXIES OF VLADIMIR PUTIN).

The nature of the FBI's  'Mar-a-Lago' warrant can be made available by Trump but he has chosen to keep it private...but some media 'opinionists' surmise that the recovered documents included highly classified materials closely linked to national security issues.

Trump's 'absconding' with White House documents is just the latest item in the Trump legacy of unpredictable behavior that on the surface is seemingly erratic, but by this blogger is totally in-character with Trump. Trump's behavior in nearly everything he does is with the objective of paying obeisance (and money) to his long-term (decades) debtors who are mostly third party foreign factors, principally Vladimir Putin...even during the Trump presidency.  

To this blogger, it is fascinating to observe the mental contortions the media pundits have subjected their brains to to try to make 'normal' sense of Trump's actions...when Trump is actually a simple read: Trump is in deep debt especially to foreign parties, and in particular has been vitally dependent on the good graces of Russia's dictator, Vladimir Putin to whom Trump has publicly cowered before like a vassal and whose foreign policy interests Trump openly supported during the Trump presidency, even when Putin's foreign policy conflicted with America's. (Trump's vowed goal of disbanding NATO was a primary example of his pro-Putin clash with established American foreign policy.)  

The 'Why' of Trump's favoritism towards Russia as consistent theme is a subject of this blog post.

Trump's tolerant and indeed championing of Russia, and particularly Trump's personal allegiance to Putin is simply a matter of money - owed debts, promised gain and probably Russian blackmail (Kompromat). 

A primary example of foreign power 'kompromat' against Trump is the rumored machinations of the Russian KGB (GRU) to entrap him with seductions by prostitutes ...as written about in Craig Unger's 2021 book, "American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery". (This blogger would add 'Treason' to Unger's list of kompromat.)

This blogger figured back in 2016 that Trump’s claim that he was a ‘billionaire’ hid that in although he was partner to several billions of assets, those assets were (are) loaded down with nearly the same level of debt so that their net value is ‘only’ several hundred million$, and that Trump is sole owner of practically none. 

Trump's financial life has been a life of struggle to keep himself (and his family) financially afloat because he is not, nor ever was a good businessman. But he has shown a particular 'talent' for grifting off a carefully tended 'brand'.  

Trump's formula has been to profit off of 'being famous for claiming to be famous' or merely manipulating media exposure - the new 21st century American gimmick for striking it rich.  (Why work at 'it' when one can use the media against itself by manipulating the media to give oneself free advertising, hence generating money-equating media 'views'.) All of this is faux celebrity status created by by pinning on oneself a badge of notoriety or celebrity no matter how vacuous or fake ('Branding.')

 Where it all started: the Trump's learned the trick of building and protecting the 'Trump' brand name which in itself has no more real value than the faux-celebrity real value of the Kardashian 'brand' ...but at least the Kardashians are open about the nature of their 'business' so the public both knows this and relishes the entertainment the Kardashians' extravagant life styles ...thus satisfying the public's apparently 'needed' (addictive?) vicarious alternatives to the American humdrum reality. 

Trump's lifestyle of gold bathroom fixtures, private jets and multiple homes is mostly surface gloss ('bling' in the language of his lesser street-hustler kin).  

Trump has almost perfected living off the ‘Vig’ from creating new deals at 2–5% upfront broker’s fees. (But while that is probably OK in the fast track business world, those ‘skills’ are not appropriate for being President or running a nation…especially the most powerful on the planet, the United States.) Truetehrmp had supported himself and his 'world' of many-layered businesses by pursing the 'bigs' of new deals. But this required him to constantly be on the look-out for new deals, and new patsy's who would fall for the Trump hype.

This is why Trump came into the Presidency in 2016 practically ‘owned’ by Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin — Trump was expecting Putin to complete the authorization for a ‘Moscow-Trump Tower’ deal, inflated from a ‘normal’ 50 million to over 200–400 million $, which would have gifted Trump with a minimum 10 -15 million $ broker’s fee, and similarly given Putin his personal upfront cut of 25–50 million $. (And, all those fees, both to Trump, and to Putin and his Russian oligarch co-grifters, would be deosited into proxie accounts at Alpha Bank in Cyprus.) Whether the project would ever be carried through was unimportant to Trump at the time — it was the upfront signing fee he was counting on to help him pay current debt service and contirnue his living ‘like’a billionaire for several more months until (while he, like a constantly moving shark, created new deals using the leverage of his new power and influence as President throughout the world. 

Maintaining the flow of broker-fees was why Trump flouted (had to flout) traditional boundaries of personal business activities observed by American Presidents. Trump’s life depended on his breaking traditions while President. 

This is why in future presidential elections, America must require complete financial transparency from all who want to run for President.

PUTIN’S MAY 9TH STARBURST — BE WARNED AND PRAY TO WAKE UP MAY 10 TO A PLANET STILL INTACT

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

Putin will do something to salvage his and Russia’s loos of face in Ukraine. He can’t yet claim victory…but there are still 18 hours before May 9. Ground war victory is not in the picture but Putin doesn't have to rely on just boots-on-the-ground - he can use one of the two or three operational super jets (SU-57s) to deliver TACNukes on the nearly 100% devastated Mariupol to to finish off the Azovstal steel plant. 

If Putin was smarter (not just KGB-trained sneaky-evil) he might spin being forced to back out of Ukraine to morph that embarrassment into an older brother gesture and offer to rebuild, and pull Ukraine closer to Mother Russia’s generous breast. 

But the intelligent-person option is a very outside option for Putin because he seems to act in a compensating, small-being-in-command manner and he must literally protect his back from sharky generals and pissed-off oligarchs.

 We must pray for Ukraine and hope the world wakes up safe on May 10. (Nevertheless, we also have reason to believe the American Defense-Intel team has long 'gamed' May 9 and have effective, and maybe clever, ‘stops’ to whatever Putin might have in mind.

IT IS INSANE THAT A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF A PSYCHOPATHIC DICTATOR (? BUT QED?()

 The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.                         -----------

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine are brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth and potentially damaging Russia's national economy. Biden's response has also been effective in its swift response and breadth, especially its application in stages ... as if designed by a psychologist's advice to parents of an acting-out child.)

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Putin’s disinformation campaign is bluntly threatening as if he just doesn't care about the 'rules' of superpower diplomacy. 

Putin misbehaves this way while he whines about not getting the proper respect Russia (him, personally) deserves as a superpower...while he threatens to push his nuclear button toys if he doesn't get his way...even though no one is threatening to invade Russia's borders... and as he violates those borders to terrorize democratically elected governments. 

Putin is getting away with these insane disconnects because he ‘knows’ his  threats of nuclear ‘acting out’ stymies the West from giving back to Russia its own punishments. 

Putin displays a deadpan public countenance while he destroys cities, tortures and mass-graves civilian populations, and ignores ‘rules’ of engagements, all showing he feels no need to excuse or cloak his satanically self-anointing, brutal, cruel, cynical behavior. 

In words, Putin behaves like a traditional autocrat in the style of Stalin, who he openly admits is his guiding mentor for foreign policy ... and personal conduct. 

Any country or belief system that blocks Putin’s targets or objectives is to be eliminated in the style of Stalin - with excessive, overpowering cruelty. The crueler, the better to prevent future rebellion. 

And Putin’s objectives are openly stated — to recover the land and hegemony Russia ‘lost’ in 1991 with the breakup of the USSR, even to recover east Germany, the Baltic states, Finland, and even Poland. These pronouncements should terrify the now proudly sovereign nations.

The West is faced with Putin’s hate and fear of democratic self-determination that resulted in the freeing of Balkan and Baltic states from Russian hegemony — Putin will not stop with his long game of reversing that history. 

And now, after 20-some years of total control over Russia, Putin has very good reason to fear the consequences of his autocratic rule - he is aware that rebellion will no doubt target him personally as its first target.

When you can’t ‘win’ a war with incompetent military strategy, inadequate self-cannibalized equipment, and even your own troops don’t support your purpose, just brutalize, torture, and kill civilians…and do the same with your own troops. (Russia’s Ukraine invasion is a mirror of its WW2 behavior, even to accompanying and threatening its own troops with ‘corrective’ political units (the KGB in WW2, now, the FSB).)

The West’s response should be as direct and harsh as Russia’s but without targeting civilians or even shedding blood if possible, but still as a goal, … like it is doing with recent economic sanctions on Russia…and especially on the oligarchs, who Putin has joined up with, with little disguising, to economically rape and pillage his own country. 

(Biden POTUS's economic sanctions in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is brilliant, from the framework of threatening Putin's personal wealth as well as damaging Russia's national economy. And it is brilliant in its swift response,  its breadth, and especially its application in stages ... all as if desigend by a child psychologist's advising of parents of an acting out child.)

As for the West’s response, note Russia’s appeal to its successful maneuvering a proxy leadership into America’s government ….Donald Trump’s first steps as POTUS was to attempt to lift economic sanctions placed on Putin’s Russia resulting from its earlier land-grabbing cruelties in Georgia and Crimea. Trump continues to support Putin and Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

The overview —there is little chance Putin will (rationally) compromise over his Ukraine invasion. 

But, if Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t stopped, he will proceed to destabilize other border democracies by the same formula — claim vested partial land ownership by population kinship, orchestrate political and civil destabilization from that platform, support insurrection then invasion and finally re-annexation in the face of a paralyzed West. 

Putin has to be stopped cold. THERE IS NO REASON A COUNTRY (RUSSIA), WITH A GDP LESS THAN ITALY’S IS BLACKMAILING THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY TO BEND TO THE WILLFUL CRYING OF AN AUTOCRATIC (AND PERHAPS PSYCHOPATHIC) DICTATOR.

HAS RUSSIA'S UKRAINE INVASION BECOME A HOLY WAR? RUSSIA WEAVES A FLAG FOR A MEDIEVAL HOLY WAR: The Battleship "Moskva" & The Holy Cross

The Perched Eye blog is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic ...  the ways and directions of American politics and culture, and occasionally summarizing the potential impacts of new technologies. Pericles21's observations sometimes attract a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains unblunted.

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 Whaaaat! Things in the Black Sea are getting weirder. Are we now in a holy war? Reportedly, the battleship Moskva went down carrying a piece of the "True Cross"? Will this now justify Russia using chemical or nuclear weapons to carry forth its invasion of Ukraine? How convincing is this? If even real, who might be the intended ears?

Putin - the Red Herring, False Trail Proxie of the Comintern (Comunist International)

 This blog site is 12+ years old, from 2009 with President Obama's first term. The focus has been eclectic though focusing on national affairs and culture, and occasionally discussing new technologies. Sometimes Perilces21's observations receive a critical eye, but the 'pen' remains honed and unblunted as a sharp eye is always kept on the ways and directions of American politics and culture.

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This post is written in reference to Russia's Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the West's response with huge economic sanctions .   [“Putin is not afraid of his population getting poor” (Gessen, ref. below), so correct! But it is incorrect to continue to speak of Putin as a lone actor,,,Putin is a sleeping proxy of the Comintern, the Communist International, whose historically consistent and openly stated objective is to topple Capitalism (and capitalism’s own proxies, the democratic nations of the ‘West’). Don’t forget, in 1975 Putin first came into view when he was put in place in the Russian security apparatus and subsequently rose to be head of the KGB and then to prime minister and now is nakedly the dictator of Russia..who wants to restore the USSR, the Soviet Socialist Republic. Putin is a proxy and Russia as the 'insane bad guy' is a facade, straw man and convenient target proxy to divert the West’s attention from the real threat, the Comintern plan to dominate the globe through destabilizing, by any means, western democracies, one by one, with Comintern puppet leaders. Donald Trump and Venezuela are prime examples supporting this notion. And meanwhile western democracies, especially in America's sphere of influence, South America and the Caribbean, are frozen in place and handcuffed, unable to fight back, by their capitalist-corporate interests..and the erosion of the Monroe Doctrine by a negligent America. The West’s corporate and oligarchic greed will be the downfall of democracy. 

[Refs.:  Masha Gessen: The West Is “Insane” for Thinking Sanctions Will Deter Putin | Amanpour and Company, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxJxfSCMvnE;  The Putin Files: Masha Gessen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk9igTqTx9s]