The Thunderbolt
News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
1) Ask your U.S. Representative to Co-Sponsor the People Over Pentagon Act
2) ACTION REQUEST to Stop Toxic Waste Estates aka Green Cove Park
3) Glen’s Parallax Perspectives for March, 2023
4) Bonus Tip of the Day
A detailed description of all events is located after the News and Commentary section
To go directly to an event description just type the index entry above into a search box
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
COINTELPRO 2.0
230302
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
Hot Air Over America!
Hey, People!
Welcome to the Thunderbolt for March 3rd, 2023. You know — I just love it when I can use a title that has a double or triple meaning — and we’re going to start off this week’s show with a piece about our latest national security crisis: Hot air over America!
Anyway — a bunch of hot air has been emanating out of DC lately over a bunch of hot air that recently passed over our national airspace encased within a Chinese hot air balloon. (Actually, it was a helium balloon — but that totally wrecks my metaphor!)
Has anyone besides me asked why everyone has their panties in a twist over 19th Century surveillance tech from China when the Chinese have satellites that can read your license plate from outer space?
Ah — but the Great Chinese Balloon Conspiracy derailed talks between Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his Chinese counterparts!
So this brings us back to another old Thunderbolt adage: Anytime anything happens look to who is profiting from that thing happening and 90% of the time you will have also found the person who is making that thing happen.
So who benefits from ‘blowing up’ the Chinese Balloon Conspiracy and canceling those talks?
_______
Selective Memories
One of the problems with oppressors is that they can never remember their history.
One of the problems with the oppressed is that they can never forget theirs.
_______
Thundersparks
A few brief news items…
Top accounting firm Earnest and Young, the very professionals responsible for catching cheating by clients, was recently fined because their own employees were cheating on ethics exams — largely because the employees figured out they would be fired if they were shown to be too ethical.
—
Eugene DeMaso, of La Salle, Illinois, recently sued Walmart because their Fudge Mint cookies did not actually contain any fudge or any mint.
The judge ruled that Walmart wasn’t deceiving customers because their cookies tasted like fudge and mint.
—
There is a city in Japan named Kokura that may be the luckiest city on earth. When Hiroshima was nuked at the end of World War II, Kokura had been the back-up plan should weather prove Hiroshima a problematic target.
Fortunately for Kokura, the weather over Hiroshima was fine that day.
However — for the second bombing, Kokura was the prime target, whilst Nagasaki was the back-up target.
Fortunately for Kokura, they were blanketed by a thick cloud cover that day, and so Nagasaki it was.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/kokura-atomic-bomb.html?firefox=1
—
There was also an individual resident of Japan who had highly mixed luck during that same time; he happened to be in Hiroshima on business when Hiroshima was nuked. In spite of being less than two miles from the blast Mr. Yamaguchi survived, though burned, dazed and temporarily blinded. Mr. Yamaguchi staggered about for several hours before he was finally rescued. He was treated for his injuries and then sent home by train to recuperate — home in his case being the city of Nagasaki.
He returned to work on August 9th, and just as he was describing his experience in Hiroshima to his astonished coworkers Yamaguchi once again found himself standing less than two miles from the center of a nuclear blast.
Déjà vu all over again — yet again he survived with only minor injuries.
He lived until 2010, in fact, when he finally died at the age of 93.
_______
Rage Against the Anti War Machine
For years I have been promoting the idea that everyone who is not part of the 0.1% needs to get together and throw off our oppressors. That means black people and white people, that means Republicans and Democrats, that means white collar and blue collar. All of us.
Well, there was a large anti war rally in Washington DC just recently that included speakers ranging from Dennis Kucinich and Jill Stein to Ron Paul. There were members of the Green Party, and there were Libertarians.
Wow. What I’ve been saying for years.
Some of the reactions to this rally have been very interesting. All of the Democratic Party shills who used to be anti war until the Democrats came to power (think Tom Hartman and Rachel Maddow) denounced the rally. Rachel Maddow even lowered herself to using that tired old trope about how anyone who opposes the war is automatically pro-Putin.
A somewhat surprising and frankly alarming reaction came from Code Pink and Veterans for Peace; they opposed the rally because of all the right wing participants. Boo.
This baffles me. I knew that Code Pink and Veterans for Peace often work together and that they have a lot of the same funders; I did not previously know that they were practitioners of identity politics. Amy Goodman on Democracy Now barely mentioned the rally, giving it only a few brief seconds of coverage with the only detail being the fact that Jill Stein had spoken there. A branch of the Green Party in the Bay Area held their own Rage Against the War Machine rally in sympathy with the one in DC, but the national Green Party refused to support their rally even though Jill Stein is a former Green Party presidential candidate.
This is probably because Howie Hawkins, the current head of the Green Party, is a supporter of the Ukraine intervention.
Excuse me, but anyone who opposes the War Machine’s utter and complete domination of our national government and our national policies is on my side I don’t care what ideology they subscribe to I don’t care what political party they belong to I don’t care about their race creed religion or national origin I don’t care if they have purple skin with pink polka dots: If you want to fight the War Machine you are on my side.
_______
The Great Tyrant-Off: Adolf vs. Joe!
I have intensely studied both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin because I think it is very important to understand how people like that are able to what they do and how they are able to get so many others to go along with their outrages.
Hitler and Stalin were two very different men: I am convinced that Adolf Hitler was convinced that he was working for the ultimate good of humanity whereas as far as Joseph Stalin was concerned, humanity could kiss his ass.
I honestly don’t know which one of those attributes alarms me more.
Hitler was actually much easier to research due to the fact that he wrote a freaking book. In the spirit of “know thine enemy” I read Hitler’s book. Anytime you read a book it is sort of like the author is sitting there talking to you — and that was a very strange experience in the case of that particular book, let me tell you. About half of Hitler’s book consisted of genius level political observation whilst the other half consisted mostly of insane rants — especially about the Jews. He had four whole frigging chapters devoted just to them.
I am thinking that virtually none of the western leaders at that time must have read Hitler’s book, because he totally outlined everything he intended to do.
Stalin, on the other hand, not only never wrote any books, but he had a habit of murdering everyone who ever got close to him — Including numerous members of his own family — and thus there is even a dearth of personal accounts concerning old Uncle Joe. Still, old Uncle Joe did murder somewhere between 30 and 50 million civilians during his reign, almost all of them Russian citizens. (Hitler on the other hand murdered around 10 million civilians, most of them non-Germans.) Stalin depopulated entire regions largely over his own paranoid delusions.
—
Like I say — I don’t know which of those two characters alarms me more.
_______
COINTELPRO 2.0
There are a few ironies involved with this week’s feature Thunderbolt…
Just recently in the Thunderbolt newsletter, I more or less rhetorically asked how we could prevent the government from destroying all of our organizations from without and from within.
For years I have been reporting on how federal law enforcement agencies have pretty much abandoned investigating crimes, and instead spend most of their time these days either threatening snitches or bribing informants. They try to get their people into leadership positions. They routinely engage in a practice called ‘entrapment’ (which until recently was illegal) wherein the feds themselves will organize a criminal plot and then try to talk targeted activists or criminals into joining the plot so the feds can subsequently bust them for it. They often target people who are especially vulnerable, such as teenagers who are insecure and/or have low self esteem. The feds offer money, materials, praise, encouragement, and many other things in their efforts to involve activists in these fake crimes. Back in the good old days of the ‘War on Terror’, they were mostly targeting Muslim teenagers and using all kinds of psychological manipulation tactics to encourage these children to participate in a bombing or whatever and they have been using these tactics against social justice organizers for decades.
I have also reported on how many of the plots the FBI hatched up were consciously intended to garner major headlines.
And by the way, one of the takeaways I took from January 6th was that all those right-wingers obviously had absolutely no training in or evidently even any concept of the ‘security culture’ that all radical activists on the left have had drilled into their heads for years — which means that these right wingers had never dealt with government disruption and infiltration tactics before.
That is interesting.
I suspect they are now taking lessons from their January 6th experience. They should have taken note of the recent plot to assassinate the governor of Michigan, which was another operation that was cooked up by the FBI directed at right-wingers since it was the FBI who came up with the idea of assassinating Michigan officials and then inviting all those white boys to come join in the fun — a case that garnered major headlines.
And as for these ‘paid informants’, not only do some of them make a lot of money by informing on activist organizations, but they are also free to commit other unrelated crimes knowing they have a get out of jail free card even if they are caught. I have reported upon how these paid informants will often accuse the actual leaders of an organization of being federal informants, thus sowing major disruptions and distrust amongst the membership.
Another irony to this week’s feature article consists of the fact that I just recently trashed both Ryan Grimm and the Intercept, accusing them of having become just another government propaganda outlet since the time the Intercept was purchased by infamous billionaire Pierre Omidyar.
Well, Ryan Grimm and the Intercept have just broken a major story about how the FBI was sending paid informants to infiltrate the Black Lives Matter Movement with the aim of disrupting and delegitimizing that movement — and they largely succeeded.
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/10/deconstructed-fbi-informant-protests/
During the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in Denver a paid FBI informant named Michael Adam Windecker II infiltrated in just such a manner. Mr. Windecker was described as being “like a biker”. He was also described as being “cartoonish”. He drove a hearse, and inside that hearse were a lot of guns, including AR-15s. While Mr. Windecker made a lot of questionable claims about membership in the French Foreign Legion, it does appear that he did actually fight for the Peshmerga Kurds against ISIS in Syria. The important thing though, is he was able to convince a lot of the activists that he was a battle hardened character who had trained other Antifa activists. Mr. Windecker claimed that he could teach the activists hand-to-hand combat and how to use explosives. Many of the activists did not trust Mr. Windecker, but he was able to find enough naive activists to do some serious damage — and many of those who started questioning Mr. Windecker soon found themselves being accused of being informants. Many people then backed away from these falsely accused informants thus creating a leadership vacuum that Mr. Windecker was able to step into. Mr. Windecker then began encouraging violence in general and targeting specific activists in particular to perpetrate that violence. He tried to get two of the Black Lives Matter activists involved in a plot to assassinate the attorney general of Colorado, Phil Wiser, for instance — a plot that would have garnered major headlines had it actually gone through. Fortunately, though, none of the activists bit.
Meanwhile, an FBI undercover agent named April Rogers was busy down in Colorado Springs trying to get Antifa activists to purchase illegal guns for her, yet another example of the FBI targeting political activists for a potentially violent crime for which there was no information to indicate that they would have participated without FBI involvement.
—
Black Lives Matter was the largest protest movement in human history. However, between many of the demonstrations turning violent and undercover sting operations causing infighting amongst the organizers, mistrust was sown into the community — largely as a result of the FBI’s work — and between distortions, gas lighting, and outright lies saturating media coverage of Black Lives Matter, within months the Black Lives Matter saw their public approval ratings tank to the point that they were lower than when BLM had started.
The demonstrations ended rather abruptly soon thereafter, especially in Denver.
—
There are endless details involved in all this, many of them truly ugly. Therefore, in a final little irony, just a couple of weeks after trashing Ryan Grimm and the Intercept here in the Thunderbolt, I’m going to highly recommend that you read Mr. Grimm’s story about all of this in the Intercept.
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/10/deconstructed-fbi-informant-protests/
—
So while I’m digesting the crow I just ate — it’s time to get to work…
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
The Cascadia Action Alert
March 2nd, 2023
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
1) Ask your U.S. Representative to Co-Sponsor the People Over Pentagon Act
I got this message from AZ:
On February 22, Representatives Barbara Lee (CA) and Mark Pocan (WI) re-introduced the People Over Pentagon Act in the House of Representatives. PSR is a proud supporter of this legislation, and firmly believes that a $100 billion reduction in military spending is the minimum we must cut if we are to transform our society from a permanent war economy to a sustainable economy of community care.
The National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress last December is the largest Pentagon budget ever, at $858 billion, an $80 billion increase over what was authorized in 2021. The USA spends more on its military than the next 9 countries combined. No nation can afford this!
Upon introducing the bill, Rep. Lee said “Cutting just $100 billion could do so much good: it could power every household in the U.S. with solar energy; hire 1 million elementary school teachers amid a worsening teacher shortage; provide free tuition for 2 out of 3 public college students; or cover medical care for 7 million veterans.”
Over half of the military budget goes directly to for-profit corporations and their executives. According to Rep. Pocan, “We can no longer afford to put these corporate interests over the needs of the American people. It’s time to invest in our communities and make meaningful change that reflects our nation’s priorities.”
Instead of wasting our taxpayer dollars on endless wars and obscenely expensive weapons—including nuclear weapons—ask your representative to make those public funds available to help people.
Please urge your U.S. Representative to cosponsor the People Over Pentagon Act. Join PSR in demanding access to the resources we, the people, need and deserve to live healthy, sustainable, thriving lives.
_________________________________________________
2) ACTION REQUEST to Stop Toxic Waste Estates aka Green Cove Park
I got this message from Helen:
Hello Friends,
The City is giving the developer of Toxic Waste Estates a public hearing in March. We can stop it. There are 2 things to do.
1. Request Ecology to take over lead agency status for Toxic Waste Estates
(Click action link)
2. Request the Rules Coordinator at Ecology to repeal WAC 197-11-350, MDNS
(letter attached below that you can edit and send)
The City issued a Mitigated Determination of Nonsignficance (MDNS) which allows Toxic Waste Estates to move forward without having first made a threshold determination about its environmental impact.
The City’s use of an MDNS as a threshold determination was ruled unlawful in a 2005 Court of Appeals case, City of Olympia vs. Thurston County (131 Wn. App 85). According to the Court’s ruling in that case, “A mitigated determination of nonsignificance issued under WAC 197-11-350 does not therefore constitute a “threshold determination” but is, rather, issued after a threshold determination is made that an environmental impact statement is unnecessary.”
Clearly, the City is not following the decision of the Court of Appeals. Using an MDNS allows the City to bypass a full environmental review of a project.
Since the 2005 Court case, the City has issued almost 50 MDNS’s, many for major housing developments like those around Capital Mall, Boulevard Road, and Briggs Village. In the same 18 year period, the City has not issued a single Determination of Significance, completely perverting the requirements of the State Environmental Policy Act (see attached).
If this toxic waste site under Formal Order for cleanup on the aquifer for City and private wells draining into streams, the strategic groundwater reserve and federal and tribal waters of Puget Sound with endangered species doesn’t have likely adverse environmental impacts, what does?
We want Ecology to take over as lead agency of the project. Since the City hasn’t done a real threshold determination or Environmental Impact Statement for at least the last 18 years, they obviously don’t have the expertise or willlingness to do one, as the record shows it is not part of their business practice.
We also want Ecology to repeal WAC 197-11-350, the MDNS rule, because it is unnecessary, unclear and conflicts with other laws. Mitigations are referred to in other sections of the rules. The MDNS is being abused in Pierce County also, and probably other places as well.
The letter to the Rules Coordinator at Ecology asking for repeal of WAC 197-11-350, MDNS is attached below (edit or add to as you wish) along with our petition, for your information.
Here’s the link again that will go to Ecology staff asking them to take over lead agency status.
Request Ecology to take over lead agency status for Toxic Waste Estates
Please do one or both actions. If you are part of a larger organization, please consider signing on as such. Repeal of the MDNS will help communities all over the State protect our natural resources and wildlife.
Intense public pressure is how we got the site listed under the Model Toxics Control Act. Let’s do this again!
Together, we DO make a difference!
All the best,
Esther and Jerry
_________________________________________________
3) Glen’s Parallax Perspectives for March, 2023
I got this message from Glen:
The March 2023 program on “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” TV series provides fresh insights and smart strategies to help us achieve peace in the world and abolish nuclear weapons worldwide.
In this TV program, I address these main points:
Point #1: The U.S. has been provoking nuclear weapons since the 1940s.
Point #2: Nuclear weapons exist in the overall context of U.S. foreign policy.
- To achieve peace, we must debunk the MISTAKEN ASSUMPTIONS that have trapped us in endless wars and the suicide of nuclear weapons.
- To get out of those traps, we must think clearly and creatively – and de-militarize our foreign policy.
Point #3: The American people – deep down – are afraid of this existential crisis, but they feel stuck and don’t know what to do.
Point #4: To overcome the existential fear and move our nation toward peace, we must help the public ground itself in our best values and deepest needs.
Point #5: The problems came from the top down, so solutions must come from the bottom up. Only a nonviolent GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT can change our foreign policy and abolish nuclear weapons.
Point #6: We can achieve these goals if we devise fresh strategies and change public policies.
Point #7: Let’s understand and obey the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Let’s support the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Finally: I close this TV program with encouragements and sources of smart information.
People in Thurston County WA who have cable TV can watch it on channel 22 three times a week throughout March 2023: every Monday at 1:30 pm; every Wednesday at 5:00 pm; and every Thursday at 9:00 pm
People ANYWHERE can watch it for free at ANY TIME and/or read the thorough summary Glen typed up of what we said during the interview – with links to many additional resources. Glen posted the VIDEO and the THOROUGH SUMMARY here.
CLICK THIS LINK TO WATCH THE INTERVIEW VIDEO.
Glen typed up a very thorough summary of what we said during the interview — and included much additional information, including a list of some good organizations and websites working for peace. Besides watching the interview video, I hope you will also read the thorough summary. CLICK THE NEXT LINK TO READ THE THOROUGH SUMMARY:
2023.03 Smart Strategies — Peace — No Nuclear — SUMMARY and MORE INFORMATION
Please tell your friends about this powerfully informative and savvy TV program: the video and thorough summary I’ve linked above.
Questions? Contact Glen Anderson (producer and host) at (360) 491-9093 or glenanderson@integra.net
_________________________________________________
4) Bonus Tip of the Day:
Watch out for the FBI
Peace.
Dana
_________________________________________________
LINKS:
To Donate:
https://www.patreon.com/TheThunderbolt
The Thunderbolt Facebook page:
The Thunderbolt 