Yeah

I will likely never post here again.

https://bsky.app/profile/nofarhorizons.bsky.social

Two Years

Frightened enough yet ?

So, we're just one week into the Trump presidency, and any remaining doubt is gone (Forget punching Nazis, next arsehole to suggest we should give him a chance, gets it): America has elected an utterly insane, emotionally unstable narcissistic child & Fascist as President.  USA! USA! USA!

I tweeted out recently a prediction that the Congressional GOP would never impeach Trump, which might seem a tad premature for just days into his presidency, what with all the rumours swirling about GOP concerns for his mental health, and others predicting impeachment, whether within a six-month timeframe, immediately after the midterms, or whenever.

I can't predict the future, obviously.  No-one can.  But nonetheless, I feel compelled to give my best guess as to how things play out from here, based upon my read of Trump, Dem. & GOP politicians, and the American public.  And while I hope I'm wrong, I very much believe that we are drifting into a Turkish or Russian style pseudo-democratic Authoritarian state, a 'strong man'-led defacto dictatorship.

Right now, we still have a nominal semi-democratic republic in the United States.  We still have, in theory, rule of law, and a written constitution with guaranteed rights & protections for ordinary citizens & residents. In theory, even as Trump and some around him (Can you say 'emoluments' ?) may be in violation of certain provisions thereof already.

But I don't think this transitional period will last long, and given Trump's rhetoric & executive actions, given that dressing-down of the media by Spicer and thinly veiled threats by Bannon, I don't think it's long before the crackdown on the media & on dissent generally kicks into high gear.  It's going to be an aggressive push to dismantle the norms. and the protections of American democracy, and I don't think either the media or general public are remotely ready for what is coming.

Personally, I think it all plays out over the next two years...before the midterms.  If change is to come, in whatever form, be that impeachment by the Republicans, a mass popular uprising, military coup, some sort or foreign intervention, or hell, while we're clutching at straws, act of G-d, I feel it comes in the next two years or not at all.  My prediction (and by all means call me out if I'm wrong), is that, if Trump survives to the midterms, the only way he leaves the White House, is in a wooden box.

And no, I still don't think the Republicans will impeach him.  My read of the greedy cowards & bullies in Congress is that a) they are almost to a man, in awe of the greater bully in Trump, and constitutionally disinclined to take him on, and b) that they see allowing a crazy person to sit in the White House as the price they have to pay for maintaining power, and a price they are more than willing to pay.

The GOP stood on the precipice of being wiped out prior to the last election.  Ideologically, politically the country is becoming more & more progressive over time, as also demographically the population becomes less & less white, and their most loyal voters (the Fox News demographic of largely older white males) die off.  This election was characterised by many, and I'd say accurately, as the last stand of the conservative white male, and having not only held on to power, but expanded it, with control of all three branches of the federal government, and a majority of governorships & statehouses, why the hell would the GOP ever risk giving it up again...possibly forever ?

In two years time, perhaps the Democrats run on opposition to Trump, on impeachment even. Perhaps there is a groundswell of popular support for this.  Meanwhile, where will the tattered remnants of the Voting Rights Act be, under Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions & a hard-right dominated Supreme Court ?  What will have happened to (the, if any) investigation into Crosscheck, and the irregularities of the last election, into the widespread attempts at voter-suppression ?  What will have happened to the already heavily gerrymandered districts, to the easily manipulable electronic voting-machines dotting the country ?  Don't be surprised if that groundswell of public support for the Democrats somehow translates into the Republicans massively outperforming expectations.  And don't expect any other elections, or other than sham affairs after that.

I say you have two years, America/Americans.  Two years in which anything could happen.  What you do, what you could do in that time, I don't know.  Maybe you find a way to fight back against creeping fascism, maybe you just learn to adapt...maybe you leave.  But I think your window to avoid an Erdoğan- or Putin-style autocracy is much smaller than you think.  I give it two years.

Kremlin Apologist or Useful Idiot ? (or maybe I just don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust...)

Never did finish/post piece I intended on Russia & US Elections, but the Russian bear does still loom even larger than usual in Western political discourse, so I should probably say something, even as my suspicion that I may eventually end up regretting defending Russia grows...

I'll start thusly...As a Westerner I don't particularly fear Vladimir Putin...at all.  The man some want to paint as a Siberian candidate, soon to be POTUS Trump, a thin-skinned mentally deranged narcissist bully and confessed sexual predator OTOH...That sumbitch in control of not just the most powerful military of the planet, but also in possession of the codes to the US nuclear arsenal fucking terrifies me.  Why the difference ?  Because one, I judge on his past behaviour to be a rational actor, whilst the other...well, his words and actions rather speak for themselves.

I was vaguely hopeful up until the general election even that Trump, who prides himself on his unpredictability, might surprise us, that the incompetence & recklessness shown during the campaign might turn out to have been an act, but at this point, listening to commentators on the BBC mere days before inauguration still holding out promise that he can change, and insisting that we should give him a chance, give him the benefit of the doubt, I have do ask What are they smoking ?  Will the chattering classes still six months from now, eighteen months from now still be denying the obvious ?  That the man is exactly who he has shown himself to be, the last two years of the campaign...The last seven decades of his life ?  FFS !

Anyways...Putin...Russia...I've written here before on what I think about/how I feel about events in South Ossetia, in Ukraine & Crimea.  How I feel that Russia's geopolitical strategy is, certainly from their point of view, primarily defensive, and an attempt through fostering frozen conflicts, to establish buffer-zones between themselves, and what they see as Western encroachment/encirclement.  And it's a smart strategy.  Russia, despite what the USSR may or may not have been, and despite attempts at modernisation, is likely not as powerful militarily as they would have us believe, and even before falls in the price of oil & natural gas*, hardly an economic powerhouse.

What does it cost Russia to maintain frozen conflicts around Georgia & Ukraine ?  How many military assets does Russia need to sustain a minimal presence in South Ossetia or Abkhazia ?  How much does it cost to fund a simmering uprising in the East of Ukraine, to send over the occasional advisers or armaments ?  The cost of fortifying and rebuilding the infrastructure of Crimea I would imagine are substantial, but of the territories in question, this is the only one of true militarily strategic value to the Russians, so I'd be surprised if they didn't spend there, whether they have the money or not.  It's an investment in the future.

And so long as the unrest simmers in Eastern Ukraine, so long as Ukraine declines to relinquish its claim to Crimea, Ukraine is stuck/frozen.  No EU membership for Ukraine, no invitation to join the NATO umbrella.  Same for Georgia so long as it maintains its claims to Abkhazia & South Ossetia.  (Perhaps another non-European nation will be the first instead to take the EU out of the actual European subcontinent...if the European experiment even survives the next few years...) Cheap & effective.

Know what wouldn't be cheap ?  Rolling tanks into fucking Poland.  Or even Kiev.  This is the fear, right ?  Not that Russia might have slightly more influence in its own backyard, might maintain a buffer holding back western expansion, not even that Russia might have some influence in Europe, but that...the Russkies are coming any moment now to kill us all !

What would it cost the Russians to invade, conquer, and then occupy European countries...or any other hostile territories** ?  To destroy entire armies, to maintain infrastructure, to suppress likely ongoing violent resistance ?  And, in the event of attacking NATO nations (there's the rub in a bit...), risking outright nuclear war ?  For what ?  'Cos evil Vladimir Putin ('Vlad the Impaler' as Russophobic idiot Randi Rhodes has taken to calling him) wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire ?!!  I have no doubt that Putin does want to restore what he sees as Russian pride, as Russian honour, as respect for Russia.  As no doubt, do most ordinary Russians.  But where is the evidence for imperial ambitions ?

I could be wrong, of course, but when has Putin acted irrationally, when has he shown himself to be anything other than the cool calculating pragmatist, acting in what he rationally sees as the best interest of the Russian people ?  Empires are expensive.  (And even the most successful, even the mightiest eventually collapse under their own weight.)  If Putin truly is the psychopath some would make him out to be, maybe he doesn't care, but there's no evidence of this.  Russia, economically, is still largely in a state of  contraction.  Putin can puff his flabby chest out all he want, but Russia is no Rome, no industrial Britain.  Russia, large as it is, doesn't have the resource-constraints of an island Britain or a Japan to drive it on to overseas conquests.  And it doesn't have the ideological motivation of a Nazi Germany or its own predecessor the USSR for empire-building, nor even the putative motivation of US empire in 'spreading democracy.'  Why, unless Putin is a complete maniac, would Russia be so stupid as to roll out the tanks into Europe ?

I meant it, that I don't fear Vladimir Putin.  I don't like the bastard, I don't think he's 'a good person', I despise his treatment of the LGBT community, his record on civil liberties, his targeting of political enemies, and I don't trust him as such, but I do on the basis of his past action see him as a rational actor.  As he moves the various (likely to him, disposable) pieces around on the chessboard, Putin is a ruthless player, but not so far as I can tell, ever a reckless one.

---

Now, for the caveat: Donald Fucking Trump.

I don't know to what degree the Russians may have worked with his campaign, or whether they might have some hold over him via bribery or blackmail.***  The fact that they not so much wanted him as President per se, but far more obviously Did Not Want Fucking Russophobic Warmonger Hillary, I don't blame them for, and the idea that of all the factors in the election, from Hillary's own inappropriateness as a candidate to the GOP suppression of the vote, we would focus on supposed Russian hacking as responsible for Hillary's loss, I find laughable.  And ooh, CIA goons, shock horror, RT is involved in producing state-propaganda, that tends to favour Russian interests over the West ?...No Shit !  But...if only via Paul Manafort, there do seem to be ties between the Donald and the Kremlin; there is reason for suspicion.

And, I have to say this...Trump potentially changes everything.  Trump is the wildest of wild cards, and could destabilise the global order seven ways from Sunday with any given tweet, never mind access to nukes.  And Trump is on the record, questioning the relevance or necessity of NATO.  Personally, I'm not sure myself whether NATO should have continued post Cold War****, but all my past calculations regarding the actions of Russia & other possible hostile powers have been posited at least in part on an assumption that the shared military & nuclear deterrent of NATO would hold.  Disbanding or neutering the NATO deterrent at this point in time would seems to me incredibly reckless (more so or less so than massing NATO forces on Russia's border as idiot Obama & the EU currently doing debatable), let alone in concert w/encouraging nuclear proliferation in the Far East & Middle East, but...idiot Americans decided to elect maniac Trump, and such ill-thought-out policies does he bring.

I still don't particularly fear Putin, but then again, I don't live in Eastern Europe...  I couldn't blame them back in the (well, still technically in for a few more days) relatively safe era of Obama for being wary of Putin & the Kremlin at least.  Back when I assumed the NATO alliance would endure well into the foreseeable future.  If that alliance goes away, or is significantly weakened...if the immediate threat of Mutually Assured Destruction is removed ?...

Well, I still don't think it likely that even then Putin would be stupid enough to invade & occupy the Baltic states, never mind Poland...Germany...  Empire, as I said, is Expensive.  But...some more localised disturbance, on the pretext say of protecting Russian citizens, Russian speakers, some version of the strategy of frozen conflicts ?  Some interference in the political process, an attempt to install political figures friendly to Russian interests...?  If I lived in the Baltics right now, in the soon-to-be Trump era, yeah, I'd be at least a little worried.  Live nowhere near, and I'm fucking terrified, but again, in my case,...of Donald, not Vlad.

The point of all of this ?  Nothing more than to set out where I stand on these issues currently, how I see events possibly playing out.  And, even in the era of the Cheeto King Trump, advising caution, that we treat Putin and the Russians generally as respected adversaries, and as proven rational actors, rather than as cartoon-supervillains.  Putin's hold on power won't last; Nor will Trump's.  One way or another, the earth will dawn on a day neither of said authoritarian arseholes hold sway over their respected peoples.  I'd rather the reason therefor were not the nuclear annihilation of all human civilisation.



* And if you believe that there wasn't a coordinated effort between the US & Saudi in this regard...

** Hint, hint...South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea...not only not hostile territory to Russia, but friendly.

*** If the CIA et al do have any further potentially damaging info. or rumours on Trump, I would suggest they release it post haste, to pre-empt any blackmail, and to let Trump deal with the embarrassment whilst he still lacks actual nukes at his disposal.

**** It could have been maintained as more of a Northern alliance, if we had pursued closer friendlier relations & possible alliance w/a certain large country of similar cultural origins, but neither here nor there now...

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary

Sooo...nothing major changed on the world-stage since I last posted here, right ?

What ?!! Russia invaded Poland and/or was forced to give back Crimea due to the concerted pressure/stern words of the West ?!!...No ?  Evil Tone officially retired from political life, then committed seppukku ?...  Oh, yeah...Trump.

I was somewhat prepared for the massive depression I anticipated when waking to an HRC presidency.  But not at all for the unthinkable outcome, that even running against the most beatable opponent imaginable...a bloated orange fascist reality-teevee clown, Hillary would fucking lose.  I never quite ruled out the possibility of a Trump victory, knowing what I do of Americans, but still...there's knowing...and then there's knowing.  'Knowing' for two years or so that Hillary was likely to be the next president is not at all the same thing as actually waking up to said reality, and the theoretical knowledge that idiot Americans could elect Trump, is, as I have had the ill fortune to experience, not remotely the same thing, as trying to come to terms with the possible (even more imminent than under Hillary) end of the world.

Ev'ryone's been providing their own autopsies of the election (an election, that we might note for the sake of a smidgen of hope, is not technically over as the actual state-electors have not yet cast their final say) and I suppose I'll finally do the same, though a) my observations are, I think, fairly obvious, and b) no-one gives a shit, and none will likely read the same...

---

So, why did Hillary lose ?  Well, there's the specifically nuanced thousand different pinprick reasons/excuses: Comey letter, FBI bias, Benghazi, (mostly) made-up scandals from the '90's, supposed misogyny from 'Bernie Bros' & others, Jill Stein, Russia, Wikileaks, e-mail server, suppression of minority vote in Republican states, possible manipulation of electronic voting-machines, lazy millennials, gutting of the Voting Rights Act ....

And then, there's the obvious elephants: Hillary lost a) because she was the establishment candidate in a change election, but b) even more than that, if not mostly...'cos she's Hillary.  As in, not husband  rock-star 'first black president' Bill; as in, not cool uncle smooth-speaking Barack, but just boring ole' widely-distrusted, not-so likeable, 'eat your vegetables' Hillary, the inevitable one.  She whose turn it was, just....Because.

Could Comey delaying or differently announcing the investigation into Huma's e-mails have made a difference ?  Wikileaks not exposing apparent malfeasance on behalf of the Democratic establishment, DNC, and Clinton Foundation ?  Bernie Sanders attempting to reign in his supporters' (IMHO well-justified) contempt of Clinton earlier ?  Jill Stein, having the audacity to run as a third-party candidate, and non-right-wing corporatist voters generally choosing to vote for a non-right-wing corporatist candidate ?  Republicans not blatantly attempting to suppress minority & urban votes for years & years & years ?  Sure, any one of these factors might have made a difference, but in any given election there will be multiple factors, and we'll never know for sure exactly what swayed the end-result one way or another.  The only safe bet, especially when the vote for the presidency could also have consequences for down-ballot elections also, is to put forward the most electable candidate possible.

If you're a political party, in say an essentially two-party republic, in say, the most powerful country in the world, trying to choose a candidate, you have essentially two criteria: a) Someone who can do the job of president, which, given we had GWB, comes down to the low low bar of a non-entire moron who can surround him/herself with competent support in the staff & cabinet (ie, You're pretty much safe with anyone so long as they are vaguely mentally stable and not a deranged thin-skinned reality-teevee-show buffoon); and b) Someone who can WIN.

We survived a b-list movie-actor president with Alzheimer's, and even whatever the fuck Dubya was/had.  We may or may not survive Trump.  But, the point is, competence, temperament, experience, none of it matters in the slightest if you don't fucking WIN.

Democratic pundits & party-insiders are still to this day defending the idea that Hillary was not just a good potential president, but a good candidate, despite the fact, that, having lost* to the half-black first-term senator with a foreign Muslim-sounding name, then nearly losing to the crazy-haired 74-year-old Jewish self-described 'Democratic Socialist' from Vermont, she then went on to lose to...fucking Trump.

What level of delusion is this ?  This is no longer a theoretical matter for debate.  She LOST. TO. TRUMP !!!  In what should have been a mega double-digits landslide.  The guy alienated/insulted practically every ethnic group, attacked veterans, mocked the disabled, flip-flopped from moment to moment, said Americans were paid too much, that climate-change was a Chinese hoax, ran a 'University' that stripped vulnerable seniors of their savings, promised the deportation of millions, threatened a ban on/registry of Muslims, apparently questioned why we couldn't use nuclear weapons, and floated the idea of a nuclear-armed Japan & Saudi Arabia, and was not just accused of sexual assault by multiple women, but confessed to/boasted of the same on tape.  Just. for. starters.  And she fucking LOST...to that guy !

---

In case it were not already clear, I do not give the slightest flying fuck about the feelings of Hillary Clinton or anyone in her campaign, or in the Democratic establishment, or in the political, media-, and corporate establishment of the United States in general.  Insofar as they are in mourning over the likely destruction of the republic & possibly humanity itself under Trump, well aren't we fucking all, but as for they themselves; as for Hillary, Bill, Chelsea, DWS, Donna Brazile, Podesta et al ?  I never want to hear from them or their ilk ever again, and give not a whit for the disruption of their personal hopes, ambitions, and careers.

Above all, I don't want to hear from  anyone in the Democratic establishment or Hillary camp about the word 'Fair':

As is so often noted, life isn't fair.  One might think that those who championed welfare-reform & globalisation would acknowledge the same... So, it's not fair that another candidate ran in the Democratic primaries, and pointed out some home-truths about Hillary, huh ?  Not fair that third parties exist, and that voters can vote their conscience ?  Not fair that sexism still exists ?  Not fair that the Republicans beat up on the Clintons in the 'nineties ?  Not fair that the Obama-appointed head of the FBI sent that letter when he did ?  Not fair that someone, possibly connected or not to Russia, hacked and leaked Podesta's e-mails ?  Not fair that, say.....the establishment-media, who were entirely in your back-pocket, would give Donald Trump billions of dollars worth of free advertising, at the Democratic establishment's behest ?.....

I, for one, have always thought it 'unfair' that hiring-practices in most Western countries are so subjective, that the decision usually comes down to a) Social connections/'Who you know' & b) Interviewers' & Hiring Managers' subjective judgement of a person's personality & character, with the actual objective qualifications/fitness for the job being more peripheral in the decision-making, due in large part for many/most jobs that it is hard to accurately measure the same.

Nonetheless, subjective most hiring-decisions are, and, outside perhaps affirmative action when it comes to race**, no preferential advantage is given to the ugly, to the old, to the mobility-challenged, to the socially awkward, to the stammerers, to the shy, to those who freeze under pressure, or those under any other 'unfair' disadvantages...  And those who conduct interviews, those who act as hiring-managers are not usually required to meet any particular standard in their decision-making, not required to take some sort of mandatory educatory standard that would hopefully ensure they would always or even mostly select the best candidate.  Nope, we just leave it to their gut-instinct, to their first impressions...

And yet, so many of the Dem. establishment types, so many Hillbots would actually blame Voters for her loss.  Voters who likely grew up with under-funded educational establishments, with a dysfunctional corporatist profit-obsessed consolidated news-media***, with no time to educate themselves about politics, about policy, about candidates, what when they have to work multiple jobs all available hours of the day in this globalised economy, just to make ends meet...  Those voters, even more so than before, but much in the mould of the past, vote primarily not on policy, not on platforms, not on experience, but on the same first impressions, the same instinctive gut-reaction as the interviewer, as the hiring-manager. And they only do so once every two years at the most.

Put simply, voters will tend to choose the candidate they like and/or trust more (or dislike/distrust less).  The decision need not be rational, need not be based upon provable facts, need not have any correlation with actual reality...  Their gut simply says, 'I kinda like this gal', 'I'm not so sure of this fellow', 'This scum is a lying sac o' shit, 'this guy's shifty as fuck'.... And they make their vote for, in this case, the most powerful person on the planet, on the basis, perhaps of whether they felt their endorphins rise, or felt a little stomach-acid regurgitate when they looked at the one candidate's name or other...  Not fair ?... Not relevant.

The Clinton campaign, the DNC, the Democratic establishment & associates in the media, Wall Street, corporate America more generally, all knew about Hillary's unfavourables & baggage years in advance of the election.  And yet, they decided years ahead (eight years even, say...) that the candidate would be Hillary.  That it was her turn, time to return political favours, time to honour whatever deal she did with Obama in '08, that it was Hillary no matter what, and America would just embrace her regardless because what fucking choice would they have versus whatever cretin of a candidate the Republicans coughed up ?

Martin Webb Chafee Biden III (I), maybe

What followed in the primaries, with the only significant opposition coming from a reluctant 74-year-old 'Democratic Socialist' from Vermont, and to what degree the Democratic establishment, the media, the DNC put their thumb on the scale for Hillary is debatable.*  And yes, if Bernie were serious, he should have run earlier, should have hit Hillary harder.  But the end-result was that the party ended up with the candidate it started with, the candidate it had decided upon well in advance, the candidate preferred by the media, preferred by Wall Street, preferred by Corporate America, preferred if not endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Democratic politicians nationwide.  Hillary was what they wanted, Hillary is what they/we got.  And.then.she.fucking.lost.

Because people don't like Hillary, because people don't trust Hillary, right or wrong, fair or not.  Was it theoretically possible for an unpopular establishment candidate to win, even if her opponent were not Trump, sure.  Was it an ideal choice, even in a year when the populace weren't screaming for change, No.

How far which way ?  You tell me.

Look, every politician can't be a rockstar like Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. And it's not 'your fault' if you have a personality, a demeanour, whatever it might be that people don't take to.****  But on the spectrum of candidates from Richard Nixon-types to Justin Trudeau, you want to be as close to the Trudeau end of the spectrum as you reasonably can, without giving in to the temptation to just choose popular celebrities without consideration for their qualification & ability.  The Richard Nixons of the world can win, if the political circumstances are right, if their opponents are weak enough, but you don't fuckin' want to gamble on that if you can help it, and certainly not if the alternative is yer modern-day lunatic right Republican as president, be it yer Paul Ryans, Scott Walkers, or Huckabees, never mind yer actual Donald Trump...  Nixon winning twice was the exception to the same rule of which Nixon losing to Kennedy was a prime example: The shifty-seeming guy on teevee with the five o'clock shadow, who is visibly sweating, or the younger handsome healthier-looking telegenic well-spoken up-and-coming charmer that was Kennedy...Who you gonna go for ?

Now, normally of course, a politician of sufficient stature to run for president***** would have been vetted by multiple elections, would have a career of election-wins and possible losses that tested their popularity with the public, their ability to sell themselves.  Weaker candidates would be winnowed out, and stronger candidates would presumably rise to the top.  Hillary, much as her mettle may have been tested in the media, much as her supporters hailed her absurdly as 'the most qualified candidate ever', won just two elections...in New York...coming straight out of the White House with massive name-recognition...and with the entire Democratic establishment behind her.  Other than her election & subsequent re-election to the Senate for NY, Hillary's resume in elected politics consists of her two bids for the presidency, in the first of which she lost to the black guy with a foreign Muslim-sounding name, in the latter of which, after nearly losing* to our Doc Brown lookalike, the 74-year-old 'Socialist' Jew from Vermont, she then went on to lose to...fucking Trump.

Winning an election in New York is not nothing.  US Senator & Secretary of State is not nothing.  I don't deny that Hillary has talents, has intelligence, has a strong character, has some political ability.  Do I think that she in any year, under any circumstances, would be a strong-enough candidate to risk a Republican presidency ?  No.  Do I think that, if Hillary had pursued her own independent political career, back in the 'seventies or so, that she would have risen to the level of a presidential candidate ?******  No.

Hillary could have done anything with her life after she left the White House.  I'm sure she would have succeeded, would have flourished if she returned to law, if she returned to the business-world, if she devoted herself to charity-work, whatever.  But she wanted to be President so badly, whether the public wanted her as President or not, that she dedicated herself to the project the minute she left the White House, the Senate seat, the deal with Barack to be SoS, all of it a diving-board to propel her, with her name-recognition & establishment-support back into the White House.  She would return triumphant, the first female president, naysayers be damned, popularity-ratings be damned, past 'scandals' be damned, the Republicans be damned.  And if it took intentionally elevating the likes of Donald Trump to get there, to poison the Republican brand, and possibly even set up an eminently beatable opponent in the general election to get there ?  If it meant risking a Trump presidency, even as you sat in the shadow of a possible indictment, even as your popularity dropped & dropped & dropped, even as the polls consistently showed your opponent in the primary massively outperforming you in a general election-matchup, beating the likes of Trump by double-digit margins ?

---

The Democratic party ran an unpopular, untrusted candidate, who was seen as the very face of the Establishment in a year in which people were screaming for change.  After eight years of broken or unmet promises*******, of 'Hope & Change' denied.  They looked around in 2015 and could somehow think of, could somehow find no better candidate for the presidency than Hillary Clinton, with all her baggage, all her negatives.  And they ended up coincidentally in the general, with the same candidate they had decided upon well in advance of the primaries.  A candidate, who, if nothing else, surely couldn't lose to Donald J Trump.

A Wall Street-backed, MSM-backed candidate running against a purported populist, who had rejected the very pursuit of universal healthcare as 'rainbows and unicorns', who insisted that America was fine already, was already great.  Who offered a third term of Barack Obama, albeit minus Barack Obama.

Who offered
a third term of Barack Obama
minus Barack Obama.

And minus Joe Biden.

All the same polices as Obama, some more popular, some less so...The same overall direction...Carry on as we are.  Some liberal advances maybe on social issues, centre-right corporatists in the White House & the Supreme Court, continuing wars, meagre largely symbolic efforts on climate-change, mere tweaking of an increasingly unpopular******** and unsustainable healthcare-law, civil liberties continuing to be curtailed, more unilateral assassination of undesirables all over the globe by the President, more propping up of unsavoury allies in the Middle East and elsewhere...

Bye bye Barack Obama, bye bye Uncle Joe, palatable faces of unpopular policy...

A third term of Barack Obama, but with likely even more war, with more hawkish foreign policy, more fracking, and...instead of the guy everybody loves...Hillary fucking Clinton.

Meanwhile, there's this guy speaking to the great unwashed of America, the guy who loves the poorly educated, who speaks at a third-grade level, promising the Moon.  Who will 'make America great again.'  Which will appeal, I wonder...?

---

And briefly, as for the question as to, unpopular as she may be, how Hillary could have lost to someone with even higher unfavourables, how an election plays out when both candidates are hated ?  Well, yes, Comey letter, yes voter-suppression in Republican states, yes she won the popular vote...

Also, whether it's due to genuine frustration with their lot, economic or otherwise; racism; decades of right-wing propaganda fanning the flames of hatred towards the Democrats, supposed Hollywood elites, (((international banking-cabals)))*********, atheists, agnostics, homosexuals, the transgender community, supposed 'welfare queens', immigrants, Muslims, 'the Other' in all its various forms..., government in general...Republicans are more motivated.**********

Whatever it is, Republican voters (and older voters who trend more Republican) tend to show up to vote.  Even in the midterms.  Democratic voters (and younger voters who trend more Democratic don't.  The Democrats, even more so than the Republican party, need a presidential candidate who will inspire voters, who will get people off their asses and into the voting-booths.  An unpopular candidate offering little or no change in an election that gives people only the choice of lesser evilism, that leaves people feeling hopeless, fearful, and dejected ?  When you represent a party that needs to appeal to a largely progressive base ?  Hillary just doesn't cut it.

Sorry for that.  Now off to the nuclear bunker.....





* What exactly happened in the primaries are a matter for debate, but I think you can figure out what my feelings are on the subject.

** Veterans also, though not perhaps consistently.

*** Wonder whose fault that was ?...

**** Just as it's not the fault of those born dwarfs that they happen to lose in marathons to seven-foot-tall Kenyans with a special genetic mutation that allows them to more efficiently funnel oxygen into their arteries.

 Yes, this would not be the case for a non-politician, and an argument against moving too far in the direction of celebrity-candidates.

****** Here's where you call me a sexist, if you aren't already...

******* Yes, I know...Republican obstructionism...Republican obstructionism...

******** If you're one of millions who otherwise couldn't have afforded insurance without the ACA, or would have been denied due to pre-existing conditions, it's likely popular with you.  Yes, it did some good.  It still has its flaws, it was still an opportunity lost, premiums are still going up...

********* Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.  You know who we mean...

********** I could go on here about Republican cussedness, and how random maybe racist voters in the Bible-belt react to concerts with Jay-Z & Beyonce, with Lady Gaga, to that gawd-awful sickening SNL open with McKinnon & Baldwin, but it's just too much.

How I Would Vote

This blog...it still exists ?  Any road...

So, yeah, I don't have a vote in US elections. The whys & wherefores, the (in)justice in denying the vast majority of the global population a say in the governance of a country that acts as defacto ruler of the entire planet, never mind those within the US itself denied a vote, aside...

Who would I vote for in the US general election for President ?

I previously (aeons ago now) discussed having to choose between that theocratic loon Ted Cruz & fascist clown Donald Trump. And, despite some (I think, deserved) criticism of Bernie Sanders, anyone who's read what I've written here, or on Twitter, probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I was leaning towards Bernie Sanders. But...he didn't win.*

Gun to my head, Donald versus Hillary, was always going to be Hillary, Hillary the inevitable one, Hillary 'Her Time Has Come' Clinton, Hillary 'Guess it's time we elected a woman President, so why not her?' Clinton...Vomit !

---

I'd like to see more third-party options & support in the US generally (bring on AV voting & abolition of the electoral college), but given a) The US's ridiculously archaic first-past-the-post system, and b) what an utter incompetent maniac Trump is/would be, I'd go along with most Bernie-leaning pundits (Sam Seders of the world, say), and agree that any responsible liberal-leaning voter in a so-called 'swing state' has to vote for Hillary, painful & unpleasant as it may/would be. 'Has to' as in, it's what I would do, what I would advise, what I would expect from anyone with any concern for the continuation of the republic whatsoever; You want to just burn the whole system down to the ground, and gamble on starting over, well I get that too, but...I kinda think yer nuts...

I've only recently decided what I would do, if I were voting in a non-swing state, which is a far more common scenario in a country so politically polarised, and with such corrupt partisan dominance of statehouses (which control electoral boundaries) as the United States.  And...

I'd write in Bernie Sanders.

Why ?

Firstly, obviously, he came far closer to addressing the economic, and to a lesser degree, environmental concerns, that are way at the top of my list for what should be the priorities of this election.

No, I don't dismiss ISIS or Islamic Extremism generally, Yes, I have concerns about the rise & regional hegemony of the PRC, Yes, I even have some concerns about Russia under Putin, though I will maintain that that threat is far overstated, and has far more to do with the Russophobic attitude of Western politicians who grew up as children of the Cold War than anything else. But, after decades of Reaganomics, of Thatcherite hyper-capitalistic insanity, I consider wealth- & income-inequality far greater concerns**, never mind the fact that in our pursuit of infinite economic expansion, on a planet of very finite resources, we are destroying the ability of the planet to sustain human life !

Secondly, Yes it would be a protest-vote. Unfollow me or block me on Twitter if you must Hill-bots, but the way the DNC planned for an inevitable coronation of HRC far in advance of the primaries, and their obvious bias & manipulations against Bernie Sanders disgust me.

I obviously would consider (in any election) a third-party vote, but in this specific case, I feel that writing in Bernie's name would be the only option (for me), because it is the only unambiguous way to protest, the only way that cannot possibly be misinterpreted.

A vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, could just mean that you like the Libertarians, agree with the Greens, take seriously either of those (IMO) completely unserious candidates. A vote for Donald Trump could mean that you are protesting against a corrupt establishment, or equally, that you are one of the fringier alt-right contingent who identity with white nationalism, favouring swastika-themed avatars and Neo-Nazi numerical code (88, asf.) in social media, alongside jokes about gassing Jews... And, staying home, could just mean that you couldn't get time off work, or, and I'm sure this will be mentioned over and over again, that you're a lazy millennial, who just couldn't be arsed...

Writing in Bernie's name on the other hand says:

• This is a vote you otherwise could have had
• I reject utterly the DNC's handling of the primaries
• I reject the establishment candidate you foisted upon the party (in a year of anti-establishment frustration/desperation) and upon the country (despite her huge national unpopularity)
• I reject Bernie's endorsement of same (Yes, a middle finger, a direct FU to Bernie himself)
• I want to send a message that, if you somehow lose to Donald Trump...(to Don-ald f'ing TRUMP...) it is 100% on you. You being the DNC. You being Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. You being that lifelong Goldwater girl, Hillary Rodham Clinton herself.

I won't get to make even that meagre protest, even that pathetic act of resistance against the elites that are strangling our middle classes, killing our poor, destroying our entire planet in the name of putting infinite growth and the profit of billionaires ahead of all other concerns, all other actual humans...All I can do is, for the record, speak my mind here, on Twitter, elsewhere on social media. It's almost certainly all for nowt, but I somehow feel an obligation to exercise my voice in place of that vote where it's otherwise denied.



* Voter-rolls purged, polling-places closed, debates scheduled on holidays, against major sporting-events, efforts to limit independents registering as Democrats, proclaiming Hillary's victory whilst the single largest state had yet to vote.....I'm not going to go here into all the ways one could argue against whether Hillary actually...or fairly won...

** Plutocracy and concentration of wealth, also being inherent corrupting factors in a democracy, inherent threats to the sustainability or integrity of Democracy itself.

Jimmy Kimmel: Are You Smarter Than Gary Johnson?

Nice that Jill Stein gets a brief name-check too. US deserves reasonable third-party choices, as does the UK. Shame this doofus is currently in third place.

You Maniacs !

Repeated some of same thoughts/arguments recently on Twitter, but said all I really had to on the subject here, and haven't changed my mind since.  I won't much mourn the EU, if it inevitably collapses, but I will mourn British English & Welsh voters, for what they've done to themselves.

Oh well, it is what it is, and a democratic result, decades of right-wing propaganda notwithstanding.  Congrats. Farage, congrats. UKIP, congrats. Hannan & co.  Enjoy yer victory.

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Why Trump's Fake Publicist Charade Matters: A Closer Look

Someone's apparently not afraid of repercussions if/when the short-fingered one (seemingly, somewhat inevitably now) takes the White House...

Exit Stage Right ?

I'm a procrastinator.  Through and through.  And on political questions, as much as anything else, especially when I have the luxury of holding off on making a decision, or not making one at all.  Take the question say, of which Republican candidate I see as a greater threat in the upcoming US presidential elections, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz...  As for my preferences overall, clearly I'm leaning towards Bernie, and frankly I want nothing to do with the Republican party, the supposed 'moderate' candidates of which, would have been the far-right of just a few decades ago.  I still feel I should have an opinion though, and I've just left the notion of choosing between these two maniacs percolate in my mind the last year or so.  Then, somewhere between tweeting this, & a few days later this, I just made up my mind.

Strange as it seems to say it, I fear Ted Cruz as the GOP candidate more than Donald Trump.  a), Because all the head-to-head polls show Cruz as the greater threat in the general versus either Clinton or Sanders on the Democratic side.  And b), because, while I know Ted Cruz to be an extremist, an ideological bomb-thrower & theocrat, I don't honestly know what the fuck Trump is.  He increasingly looks and sounds like a fascist, but some of his economic talking-points* sound more like those of Sanders, his absurd rhetoric regarding ISIS aside, he seems less a warmonger on foreign policy generally than Clinton, and despite his newfound paper-thin pretense at being a devout Christian, he still sounds more liberal on social issues than his fellow Republican lunatics.  Never mind the fact, that everything he's doing or saying right now could all be an act.  Trump's a gamble, to be honest.  I don't really know what the hell he truly stands for (neither do his own supporters, apparently)**, but given a choice between a possible lunatic fascist and another proven lunatic fascist, who's a dyed-in-the-wool theocrat to boot, I can't honestly say that Cruz isn't at least equally scary.  He's more subtle and more soft-spoken sure, but he's still an evil fucking snake.  And if a Trump candidacy destroys the Republican party...well woo-hoo, party-time !  All our birthdays and Christmases come at once.***

Which is all a very roundabout way to get to the question of...Europe.  More specifically, a so-called 'Brexit' -- Should the United Kingdom exit the European Union ?  I've been on the fence about this forever, and even now, I'm conflicted.  I'd call my attitude towards the EU historically Euro-sceptic, were it not for the fact that that term was adopted long-ago by those who, far from being merely sceptical about the EU, were dead-set against everything it stood for.  I like the idea of the European Union in general terms, the notion of (Western) European nations transcending centuries of bloodshed & hatred to unite around shared values & traditions, in a new liberal democratic union.  And after the end of the Cold War, I had hopes that the EU could help balance American power in global affairs.

Instead...the EU consistently does the US' bidding on foreign affairs; the actual government has become a bloated bureaucratic mess sprawling across multiple cities; membership of former Soviet-bloc countries was rushed through to provide Western businesses with cheap labour, and new markets, with membership frequently floated for the likes of Turkey, Georgia, and even North African nations****; the shared currency has impoverished Southern European nations to Germany's benefit, one of which has been routinely blackmailed, looted, and humiliated in the name of paying debts it should never have been allowed to take on in the first place; as with the case of said country, and with trade-deals like TTIP, the EU has consistently been an anti-democratic force, placing the interests of banks & multi-national corporations ahead of both democracy & national sovereignty; and the EU has not only proven unable to control its borders, but the most prominent national leader therein, one Angela Merkel, actually worsened the worst refugee/migrant-crisis since WWII by inviting millions of refugees and economic migrants to disregard both actual refuge, and their own safety, by making the dangerous and unnecessary journey to Northern Europe.  Why ?  Because big business wants even more cheap labour, even more downward forces on the economic status of existing citizens and workers.  And I haven't even mentioned yet the lunatic ideologically driven class-warfare of so-called fucking 'Austerity'.  I could go on and on and on...

Now, after years of the 'Eurosceptic' voices being largely marginalised, and despite the sizable support of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) being suppressed through archaic first-past-the-post voting-practices, we find ourselves following the economic crisis of 2007-2009, following decades of class-warfare & globalisation, following the utter humiliation of Greece, and in the midst of oppressive economically dubious policies of Austerity, and a migrant-crisis worsened considerably by Merkel's idiocy...here.  David Cameron, having made an election-pledge to allow an in/out-referendum on EU-membership that he never expected to have to follow through on, with the expected outcome of the election, and having failed utterly to get a new settlement for Britain from the EU, that isn't found laughable by the entire political spectrum, has put Britain on the verge of seriously leaving the shared community for the first time since 1975.*****

Less than four months from now, British citizens will be asked 'Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?'  And that vote might eventually lead, to the slow dissolution of a union six decades in the making...  Seems, almost every time I go on Twitter now, I'm confronted with a poll on this subject, and, depending on the wording, I either answer 'Don't Know', or pass it over altogether.

My opinion of the European Union is the lowest it has ever been in my lifetime, and the last few years have been an embarrassing time to be a European.  Than again, they've been an even more embarrassing time to be a Brit.

The coalition-government formed in 2010 lost its lustre fairly early on, and was becoming an embarrassment towards its end.  Then, despite the disgraceful behaviour & rhetoric of the Tory party in the wake of the (narrowly won) referendum on Scottish independence, despite the warnings and exhortations of what a returning Tory party would do to Britain, and not so much despite of as because of a viciously malignant fearmongering campaign by the Tories and the establishment-media to convince the British public that voting for Labour would bring about a) A sinister deal w/the SNP resulting in the end of the Union, and b) Economic armageddon (partly based upon the continuing lie that Labour was somehow responsible for the global economic meltdown of 2007-9), the British public (or, a sufficient plurality thereof under first-past-the-post voting) gave the Tories not just the chance to form the next government, but an outright majority of seats in Parliament.

Hence, amongst other things, the referendum on leaving Europe, Cameron never actually intended to preside over.  Hence the loss of what little moderating influence the Liberal Democrats had been able to provide under coalition-government.  Hence the enabling of the more right-wing and more 'Eurosceptic' Tory backbenchers.  Hence David Cameron's government turning the dial on Austerity-politics up to eleven, as they slashed regional & local budgets wherever they could, even as they entered into more expensive and unnecessary military adventures & promised to renew the ever-more expensive Trident nuclear-deterrent.  Hence, the DWP's escalating war under that monster Iain Duncan Smith on the very most vulnerable members of society...  How many have died in recent years, many at their own hands out of total despair, as a result of ideologically driven cuts & sanctions under his regime ?

If you've read the first paragraphs above, you already have an idea of my opinion of the GOP, the Republican Party in the USA.  Even lacking some of the more explicitly theocratic tendencies of the GOP, I find the modern-day Conservative party worse.  I despise those evil fuckers and everything they stand for !  One of my (admittedly selfish) reasons for opposing Scottish independence, is the fear of a right-wing Tory dominance of England & Wales for decades to come.  And I have similar fears about the loss of the relative moderating influence on civil liberties of the European Union under a so-called Brexit.

The United States at least has a modicum of constraint on abuses of its' citizens' rights via a written constitution (abused and distorted as that has become over the last two-hundred plus years).  Britain has the last disintegrating shreds of Magna Carta, and the supposed balanced powers inherent in division of government between a now completely neutered monarchy, the now completely corrupt vessel of political patronage****** that is the House of Lords, and the ever less democratic institution that is the House of Commons.  Absent the likes of the European Convention of Human Rights, where would the government draw the line in restricting civil liberties in the name of 'Security', in the name of the so-called 'War on Terror' ?  What limits on indefinite detention without trial ?  What protections for freedom of speech & assembly ?  What to stop the government stripping anyone it doesn't like of citizenship at will ?  Having them murdered by drone in secret ?  What would now stand in the way of these fascist fuckers turning the UK into an out-and-out police-state ?

But, but, restoring our sovereignty...But, but immigration...But, but TTIP...

What kind of utter naïve blind fool would you have to be at this point, to think that any of the major mainstream parties, let alone the whores to Big Business that the Tories have become, give a damn about sovereignty, give a damn about ordinary people's jobs, incomes, futures ?  They're bought and sold by the biggest bidder.  They're selling all Britain's remaining state-owned assets, including to the likes of the People's Republic of China, in whom they apparently intend to entrust the building, and control of Britain's future nuclear reactors.  They're pulling away at every loose thread in the National Health Service, salivating at the prospect of finally privatising the crown-jewel of Social Democracy and the post-war consensus.  And whether, under the name of TTIP, or some new trade-deal, the Tories (probably the biggest proponents of TTIP on the entire European subcontinent) will absolutely give away Britain's sovereignty, making British governance subservient to not just the quasi-democratic influence of Brussels, but to the absolutely undemocratic power of completely unaccountable multi-national corporations.*******  And absolutely, one way or another, they will find a way to justify ever more immigration from the poorest nations on Earth, in the name, yet again, of driving down labour-costs, of reducing the working man to the lowest common denominator conditions possible.

There'll be less bureaucracy under a 'Brexit', I suppose.  Fewer stories in the Daily Mail about bans on bendy bananas, or 'political correctness gone mad'.  Also, less restriction on the ability of huge companies to poison the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe; to 'frack' Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats; to contribute even further to Anthropogenic Climate Change...  We can't even claim any economic advantage to dropping the shared currency, the Euro, since Britain never abandoned the Pound in the first place.  Just about the only benefit I can think of in Britain leaving the EU, is that Britain, the great tax-haven for foreign billionaires & tyrants, that a London-dominated finance-centric Britain has become, would no longer have to contribute financially to the upkeep of the bloated EU bureaucracy, or to supporting its poorer neighbours...Any guesses where such a windfall (even assuming it weren't cancelled out by a decline in trade with the continent) would go ?...  Not into your pockets.  Not into crumbling infrastructure.  Not into rebuilding what remains of the welfare-state, certainly.  I don't even need to say it.  You already know what would happen to the damn money...

The ironic thing is, the European Union is ripe for reform.  Desperately in need of it, to create an edifice that reflects the democratic interests & aspirations of the subcontinent's citizens, rather than a mechanism to funnel more and more wealth & power into the hands of the planet's elites.  If Britain goes, it almost certainly won't be the last, and I can't blame the citizens of every nation in Europe for being fuming mad at what their governments have done to them, for wanting far better.  And if he and/or his party were remotely serious about reforming Europe, David Cameron could have gone to the EU with a far-more credible plan at reforming not just Britain's place in the EU, but the EU as a whole.  Instead of which, he comes back with pledges to restrict benefits for migrants.

Which is where I really started with my thinking on this.  I listen to the language surrounding this debate, and it's all about denying benefits to migrants, who time after time we see are striving to come to Britain very specifically for jobs and not welfare.  It's all about Othering, about spreading fears that the migrants, be they from Kraków or Kabul, will not only steal your jobs, but rape your wives, and enslave your daughters.  That any moment now, your town will fall under sharia-law, and the ISIS flag rise over the town-hall.  And fuck, I'm just about as right-wing on such matters as most, but the blatant racism, the hatred, the incitements to violence, it's too much to bear.  And then I see the public faces of 'Brexit', such inhumane fascistic monsters as Iain Duncan Smith, and I think 'whatever my doubts, whatever my fears, do I really want anything to do with a movement championed by such an evil piece of excrement as this ?!!'

I can't really apologise for the European Union, such as it is -- it's a g-d-awful mess, in need of probably quite radical reform, if it is to survive at all in the longer term, never mind as the shining hope of the world some may have hoped it to become.  And I can't blame Brits, any more than other Europeans, for wanting out.  But I'm not remotely convinced that the leaders of the Exit campaign have Britons' best interests at heart, I don't see any sign that the real problems blamed on the EU would be solved by an exit, and if anything, especially under the current far-right political regime, I fear things could get even worse.

As meaningful reform isn't on the table, as any kind of real return of sovereignty isn't in the offing, as the current government would likely be only further enabled by exit, and the continuing crushing war on the working-classes and the most vulnerable in society only escalate, and as Britain would lose what remaining influence it had in the EU, to even attempt at a better direction for Europe, I'd have to say...Stay.

Not happy, not comfortable, not even entirely sure.  But sometimes I just know where I must stand.




* What word am I supposed to use here ?  Would be dishonest to call them ideas, never mind actual policy-proposals.

** Shit, I could've said the same of George W Bush for that matter.  Even Obama maybe.

*** Well also assuming, the Democrats kick his ass in the general...obviously...

**** Most of which are either geographically or culturally not European; in some cases, neither.

***** Common Market/EEC at the time.  I'm not going to go into the whole history, including the various treaties between then and now, partly because it's beyond the scope of what I'm talking about here, partly because I'm not remotely qualified to do so.

****** Thanks again, Tony Blair !

******* And oh yeah, if America says 'Jump !'...

Last Week Tonight Takes on America's War on Voting

To celebrate the return of Last Week Tonight, and primary season in America, here's John doing what he does best.  Especially like that trick Oliver has of pulling it all back together at the end, then bam !

In Which The Telegraph Smears Tor

Been a long time since I talked about the Telegraph here.  But yesterday, I came across this particular piece of bullshit reporting from that 'journalistic' organisation, and felt compelled to say something.

That headline above, is frankly...a lie.  First off, Tor is a network, or a technology, not a browser, even if the browser download is the way in which most users will experience Tor these days.  The browser download, being a simplified bundle of the core Tor & proxying software with a modified version of Firefox.  Secondly, the study in question doesn't in any way speak to to the 'overwhelming use' of the Tor browser, but specifically to the use of the so-called Dark Web.  Back to the Telegraph...

There is an "overwhelming" amount of illicit and illegal content on the dark web, a new study shows.

That statement might seem self-evident. But the Tor browser - also known as the dark web or deep web - was created to protect the anonymity of vulnerable people online. It is a web browser just like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, but it masks the identity of who is browsing and what they're looking at.

The Tor browser is perhaps known as 'the dark web or deep web' -- by fucking idiots !  The so-called 'dark web' is a fear-mongering slur utilised by the government for any services over the internet that in any way bypass conventional IP/HTTP routing, and thus implicitly threaten governmental control and surveillance thereof.  Tor is one of many services that can be used for such means, in this case, via the use of .onion addresses, that are only routeable via the Tor network.  It is not the only technology providing such hidden services, the hidden services are not the primary purpose of the Tor network, and in fact, the hidden services component was a much later addition to Tor.

Don't believe me, that the hidden services, the 'dark web' are not the primary purpose of the Tor network ?  Well, let's look at the study in question, shall we ?

The Tor architecture provides two services – anonymous browsing (property 3), and hosting of anonymous information exchanges (property 5) – through one piece of software, the so-called ‘Tor Browser’. Although distinct, both services employ roughly the same protocols and rely on the same distributed infrastructure. But that is where their mutual dependency ends. There is no technical requirement for anonymous browsing and anonymous hosting to be bundled. Indeed, browsing is overwhelmingly more popular than hosting. Most Tor users have never visited any hidden website at a *.onion address; hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.²⁷ Most users instead use the software merely to browse the internet's conventional address space more securely or anonymously. An analogy illustrates the significance of anonymous browsing. Alice, who lives in a small town, wants to buy a pregnancy test, but doesn't want to be seen doing so by the shop owner, Bob, a friend of Alice's father. Rather than simply going to the store, Alice wears a mask, walks a detour, and pays in cash. Bob will not be able to identify her or trace her. Alice's privacy and anonymity are assured. Anonymous browsing is not part of the ‘dark web’; it is a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides.

This is from the very study upon which the Telegraph's scary misleading headline is based.  It says right there that most users have never visited any .onion 'dark web' sites at all, and that hidden services account for around 3–6% of overall Tor traffic.  Three to fucking six percent !  Hell, I've been familiar with Tor since long before there was such a thing as a 'Tor Browser', and I don't think I've ever visited or had reason to visit any hidden 'dark web' sites via Tor myself.  Because...why the fuck would I ?  Tor's primary purpose is, and always has been, simply to provide a modicum of anonymity in browsing the Internet, and the vast majority of users are most likely using Tor in entirely legitimate ways, in entirely legitimate pursuits.

In fact, the US government has repeatedly promoted the use of Tor for such purposes as enabling dissidents and human rights-activists living in authoritarian regimes, to communicate freely, bypassing restrictive governmental policies and controls, to promote liberal Western-style values.  The US government continues to this very day to provide a vast amount of the funding for the Tor project, and to utilise the network itself, and the Tor software was originally in fact invented by the United States Naval Research Laboratory & DARPA.

That's right, this evil evil 'dark web' software, the users of which the Telegraph apparently wishes to smear, was created by, and continues to be funded by the government of the United States of America.

So, in case you're not familiar with how Tor works, and is used by, as noted above, the vast vast majority of its users, here are some illustrations from the EFF.

Tor doesn't provide uncrackable security, certainly not for the likes of the NSA or other US govt. security agencies, and that much more certainly not when they have been involved in its creation and funding of its development from day one.  It simply obfuscates the path of traffic through a random series of nodes, making it difficult for a would-be adversary to monitor the traffic, without control of, and therefore the ability to monitor traffic through, all the nodes in question.  It isn't that inherently secure, even if you trust that the US government hasn't inserted its own backdoors into the system, and any one relying solely on Tor to run, say an international drug-smuggling operation, without detection, would be very stupid indeed.  Of course, the vast majority of users aren't doing anything of the sort.

Back to the Telegraph...

In the first study of its kind, researchers at King's College London found that 57 per cent of sites on Tor facilitate criminal activity, including drugs, illicit finance, and extreme pornography.

The findings are not unexpected - if anything that figure is lower than expected. Tor has been associated with child pornography, gun trading and murder long before now. 

"We expected something along these lines," said Thomas Rid, professor of Security Studies at King's College London and co-author of the study. "Previous studies have established that it's a pretty nasty place."  

Scary, scary fucking stuff indeed !  Child pornography, murder, drugs, extreme pornography !  Sounds pretty nasty huh ?

Did we mention that the 'dark web' sites in question were a product of a secondary (and not inherently illegitimate*) function of Tor, not even utilised by the vast majority of Tor users ?

Tor offers anonymous browsing to people across the world. Users in countries with strict censorship laws, like China or Iran, can use it to access mainstream sites - like Facebook - securely. Rid and Moore found that the vast majority of material on Tor was not just illegal in places like China or Iran, but in more liberal jurisdictions too.

Here, in the same fucking paragraph, the Telegraph conflates the anonymous browsing (such as use of fucking Facebook), which is the sole usage of the vast majority of users with the hosting of illegal materials on so-called 'dark web' sites.

The sites included marketplaces for drugs, fire arms and weapons, and explicit, illegal pornography. The study found a "near-absence" of Islamic extremist sites on Tor.

"Militants and extremists don't seem to find the Tor hidden services infrastructure very useful. So there are few jihadis and militants in the darknet," said Rid. "It's used for criminal services, fraud, extreme, illegal pornography, cyber attacks and computer crime."

Know why that is ?  Because, they're not fucking stupid !  Because they know full well, that if the US government wants to find them on an US-govt-designed and funded network of mild anonymity, it can, and will.  The US government could crush the Tor network any time it wanted to, but insofar as a) Tor isn't any meaningful threat to security-services, b) Dissidents in foreign competitor states utilise Tor, and c) Agents of the US govt. itself utilise Tor, it has no compelling reason to do so.

What the US government, and its proxy poodle in Westminster, would like to do, is utilise fearmongering rhetoric about 'terror' attacks, to convince the public, and technology-companies, that it is in the public interest that the privacy of Western citizens be intentionally compromised, via the dilution of encryption technology, and the building of government-accessible backdoors into common security software.  The sort of breathless hyperbole in which right-wing publications such as the Telegraph specialise is perfect for such a purpose.

Rid and Moore commend Tor for offering vulnerable people access to anonymous browsing. But they said Tor needs to work harder to encourage its community to build a safe and legitimate browsing experience.

Did they say that ?  I must have missed it...

"The developers made Tor for a different purpose - they wanted security, not crime. It's up to them to change the direction," said Rid. "It's up to them to have a sensible discussion about ways to reduce crime, to get more legitimate users in." 

Now here, I can only assume the quotation is the result of an interview (what, the Telegraph doing actual reporting...like actual journalists ?), as I don't see such language in the report.  Regardless, this is shit.  We've already established that the vast majority of usage is merely anonymous browsing (which is, in the authors' words, 'a legitimate and laudable service that Tor provides'), and how the hell can Tor's developers be held responsible for the content provided by the 'hidden services' on their network, without fundamentally compromising the relative anonymity that is the whole raison d'etre of the Tor network to begin with ?

Is the argument that as the functionality of hidden services could theoretically be used for ill purposes, that it should be removed ?  The same is true of the anonymous browsing functionality, innocent as the vast majority of usage may be/probably is.  The same is true of all technology.  Hell, in the US, special constitutional protections are given to the ownership of tools (i.e. guns, firearms), whose primary if not sole purpose is to murder living beings.  But the fact that a subset of the functionality of a mildly anonymising technology might be used for illicit purposes, that...that is a reason for ripping apart what little guarantee of privacy is currently available to us on the internet ?

Tor's example will no doubt be used in the encryption debate that is circulating around the snoopers' charter, according to Rid and Moore. 

"Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates," Rid and Moore conclude. "The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin."

This is just...WTF ?  Wait, why am I still quoting the fucking Telegraph ?

The other quandary is how to deal with darknets. Hidden services have already damaged Tor, and trust in the internet as a whole. To save Tor – and certainly to save Tor's reputation – it may be necessary to kill hidden services, at least in their present form. Were the Tor Project to discontinue hidden services voluntarily, perhaps to improve the reputation of Tor browsing, other darknets would become more popular. But these Tor alternatives would lack something precious: a large user base. In today's anonymisation networks, the security of a single user is a direct function of the number of overall users. Small darknets are easier to attack, and easier to de-anonymise. The Tor founders, though exceedingly idealistic in other ways, clearly appreciate this reality: a better reputation leads to better security.⁸⁵ They therefore understand that the popularity of Tor browsing is making the bundled-in, and predominantly illicit, hidden services more secure than they could be on their own. Darknets are not illegal in free countries and they probably should not be. Yet these widely abused platforms – in sharp contrast to the wider public-key infrastructure – are and should be fair game for the most aggressive intelligence and law-enforcement techniques, as well as for invasive academic research. Indeed, having such clearly cordoned-off, free-fire zones is perhaps even useful for the state, because, conversely, a bad reputation leads to bad security. Either way, Tor's ugly example should loom large in technology debates. Refusing to confront tough, inevitable political choices is simply irresponsible. The line between utopia and dystopia can be disturbingly thin.

Less oblique, less misleading, less blatantly crass government-propaganda.  Still crap.

But, now I'm getting into the realm of disputing the report's findings & conclusions, which wasn't where I started, with the Telegraph's blatantly misleading headline.  So, let's step back a bit...

See those results above, from Google News ?  The bottom three accurately characterise the report's findings, and the subject thereof.  Only the one at the top from the Telegraph manages, unintentionally or not, to completely conflate the lesser functionality of 'hidden services' with the wholly legitimate purpose of 'anonymous browsing', and to smear the vast majority of Tor users as a result.  Fuck, I hate the Telegraph...


* Imagine say Iranian or Chinese dissidents, wanting to not merely communicate freely over Tor, without detection of government authorities, but also wanting to provide a stable hosting source of shared documentation within their groups.