Russian Hacking in 2016

     There has a battle line drawn along political frontiers within in the US. Republicans are pitted against Democrats who differ on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. Both parties have  are set against "old faithful" ,, their enemy from The Cold War, Russia. It is astounding how political parties will employ any means to bolster "their" version of the truth.
The following comes from a declassified report from The Office Of The Director Of National Intelligence released today but written in January 2017.

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections

January 2017

Key

Judgments

Russia in efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated asignificant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign
in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her 

electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian
Government developed a clear preference for President elect Trump.
We have high confidence in these judgments.

                

     My God this is meaningless when one considers the scale of US meddling. The US has cultivated a national blind spot towards intervention in the affairs of other countries that negates any real reflection. Instead jingoism reigns. The US role in the world is just naturally assumed by a great majority of the population. The US has historically subverted not only elections but entire governments at the cost of countless lives. It has attempted to influence the world theatre by forcing everyone to accept its own authors,, more so since WWII, but this desire to sow their style of democracy into the pastures of the world began much earlier. In a way The US has become a political and economic slave to preserving world wide order. 

     The following is a shortlist of US intervention. 

      

The Early Years
1846 U.S.–Mexico War  
1887 Samoa  
1893 Hawaii  

1895–1917  See also: Banana Wars  
1898 Cuba and Puerto Rico 
1899 Philippines  

1900 China  
1903 Panama  
1903 Honduras  
1912 Nicaragua  
1914 Mexican Revolution  
1915 Haiti  
1916 Dominican Republic  

WWI and interwar period  
1918 Russia  
1941 Panama
 

Cold War era South Korea 1945-1950
1950-1953 Korean War March 
1949 Syrian coup d'état  
1953 Iranian coup d'état  
1954 Guatemala  
1958 Lebanon crisis  
1961 Cuba Bay of Pigs Invasion  
1960s. Operation MONGOOSE  
1965 Dominican Republic  

1973 Chilean coup d'état  
1979-1989 Afghanistan
 

Destabilizing Nicaragua 1982-1989  
1983 Grenada
1989 Panama
 

After the dissolution of the USSR  
1991 Kuwait
1991 Haiti  
1991-2003 Iraq  
1994-2003 Iraq
2003 Iraq
2005 Iran   
2005-present Syria
2006-2007 Palestinian territories  2011 Libya

The Three M's on the 4th of July

     Several years ago I sold my U.S. van to a guy named Nava,,, nicknamed "The Whale" (Ballena). Nava soon plastered the windows with Harley-Davidson decals and painted flames coming out of the wheel wells. He uses the van as a hotel. Sometimes at night when one passes the street parked vehicle it is jostling back and forth and there are flailing legs visible through the windows. 
     When I was cleaning out the van just before the sale I came across a crumpled oil stained piece of paper that I had hanging the wall of my studio in Maine and then brought to Mexico. Upon this piece of paper were words that I had frantically written down during a phone conversation with Mother. I remember the phone call and the knowledge that she would reveal herself,,, once again.  That paper always reminded me of the erratic paths taken by my mother's mind. She was a poster child for middle america,,, avaricious, prejudiced, ignorant,, and fearful of losing her place,,,, yet she taught me so much employing bad examples.  
     The following was my mother's discursive rant that day recorded on that piece of paper. It went like this:

Follow the three M's baby, Money, Mind, and what's the other................Sex.

Nothing wrong with the Catholic Religion after all he came from a Catholic country, (a referral to Jesus the Jew who came from what is now Israel).

We ought to blast them off the Earth,,,I don't know what God had in mind when he created them,,,they're ugly,,,it's sad, it's sad, I don't know anything. (a referral to blacks from whom we all came if the archaeologists are correct).

To have a T.V. in the house is knowledge. (a reaction to the fact that for the first 15 years of my life after leaving home I did not own a T.V.)

I never saw anybody live like you did. (past tense, I was already dead in her mind)

Your father, he would make a good professional pallbearer. (my father was a very very tolerant man)