What is the Logic of New Sanctions on Russia?

The rationale for new sanctions on Russia isn't evident to me. One sanctions in order to correct something or to get something, rather than nothing. The new sanctions were punitive rather than a lever to exact a concession, as is usual in diplomacy. Russia cannot release some jailed homo or something the administration might desire in exchange for a repeal of the most recent sanction.

The reason for the sanction said the administration was the use of a nerve agent in Britain that killed an individual. No proof was given that Russia was to blame, yet even if they were, could they resurrect the dead to end the sanction?

There are more than six nations that have the particular nerve agent in question, so it is not necessarily Russia responsible for the death. In fact the premise of innocent until proven guilty seems lacking here. Democrats have that policy toward President Trump, but that is no excuse for passing the unsupportable blame on Russia. That does harm to the U.S.A. as well as the cause of international justice.

Maybe the President is just trying to appear patriotic for PR purposes. He should however be more concerned with upholding the principles of justice.

The Berlin and Other Government Walls

The Berlin Wall divided two different political frontiers. As Hadrian’s Wall and Offa’s Dyke were built to keep opposition forces at bay, the Berlin Wall kept capitalists and their agents out as well as forcing their own people not to venture outside the communist world where they could be contaminated by Elton John and Pink Floyd.

Defense walls are one of the most ancient products of government. Jericho had a wall since fallen to ruin thousands of years ago. North American aboriginals never used stone defense walls, except for one excavated a few years ago in North Dakota that protected a city long gone. They were an exception to the rule. Signs of fatalities existed at the wall.

Communism was totalitarianism or for some, a socialist version of anocracy. It was a form of government disliked not only by many of its subjects, capitalists hated it too. Soviet and communist frontiers were designed to defend against clandestine and conventional invasion. The Wall was simply one element in the great ideological war between Marxism and the Free World.

Not all East Berliners were non-communists. Communism had some popular support I would guess. When the 1993 White House in Moscow conflict occurred between Yeltsin’s tanks, the public and those supporting the Supreme Soviet in the White House, there was residual though not overwhelming support for communist government as theoretically it provided food to the starving as well as Dachas for the elite party members.

There have been other walls or dividing barriers placed between rival political and social cultures in modern times. One that springs to mind is the zone of rubble and junk dividing Turks and Greeks at Cyprus. The Israelis have built a wall to keep out Muslim suicide bombers, and famously, the demilitarized zone and barriers existing between North and South Korea have existed since the 1950s.

United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus - Wikipedia

If governments and citizens of nations have no issues with one another, and if there would be no difference if a wall existed or not, in the absence of a wall, walls generally are not built.

European housing, especially in Italy, is notable for the defensive-like architecture with interior courtyards for security, that existed in pre-contemporary eras. When law enforcement was not so good, people needed to defend themselves against a world of wandering criminals, gangs and so forth.

Pros and Cons of The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs was controversial. It had its supporters and opponents politically. It resulted largely from narcotics flooding the U.S.A. and the damage that caused to U.S. society. Stopping importation and sales of narcotics was a worthwhile though challenging task. The issues of arresting the flow of narcotics and what to do with those arrested are, and were, different issues.

Mass incarceration of drug offenders as well as other criminals doesn’t have a great record for effective correction. That is more of a social and governance design problem difficult to correct itself. An ineffective corrections system, or one regarded by some communities as unjust or racist, creates social issues and substantial problems for-themselves.

Crack cocaine and meth apparently are quite addictive. Users get involved with other crimes-sometimes violent, to support their addiction. A culture of corruption develops; individuals fail to act like responsible citizens, neglect the book-work, and are a kind of hippie-yippee-wiseguy subculture. They often die early even outside of prison.

There is no question that a war on drugs should exist. It is a matter of how the war should be waged; that is, how can the problem be addressed socially and governmentally. It is a social challenge to have so many millions of citizens pursuing decadent and socially destructive activities.

The illegal drug sales phenomenon fuels organized crime. Some Latin American nations may be near narco-states heavily influenced by drug traffickers. Some of those nations are challenged to have civil order free of the on-the-street adversity of the presence of organized crime. Drug gangs have replaced the social niches formerly occupied by guerrilla armies in the region, to a certain extent. In the United States television and movies employ drug users that have political influence and choose to pursue agenda that can be destructive to traditional national values. The wrong people end up with a lot of cash.

National values can always use upgrades. However it isn’t credible that dope users would generally be the source of solid, innovative, intelligent thought about how to improve society.

Nope; 2018 Isn't the Year for World War IV

The Cold War was World War III considering that millions died and it was quite globally diffuse. World War IV won’t occur soon. The major nuclear powers are too powerful for total war. The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote about that in his 1974 book ‘Mankind and Mother Earth’. A knockout blow to win a war between heavyweights has tech too large to use. Lesser powers would not be allowed free reign of the world to war either because of the harmful effects on the economy and ecosphere and would be terminated swiftly.

The best chance to get an equivalent or better amount of global destruction and death that a conventional World War IV would cause is anthropocentric ecospheric damage through economic methods, yet that takes time beyond 2040 to develop. Other than that if one hopes for a true W.W. IV they would need to be content with some rogue planetary biological sneak attack that is democidal.

Issues with F.I.D.E. and Government Restructuring

Why is it that F.I.D.E. can't be a web-based transparent agency with transparent processes for official business? A systems analyst and web designer with some accounting and networking consults should be able to construct a working, practical template fairly easily. One could still have a President, yet especially anything financial ought to be publicly transparent on-line.

Sometimes it can be useful to go about restructuring organizations so they function well. The Russian Federation has challenges like that. They have a Super-President with extraordinary powers as well as a constitutional government and partly elected officials. They too could upgrade and will need to do so in order to provide a good example of a transparent on-line democratic system of governance.

If Alpha-Zero or Stockfish were as poorly organized as F.I.D.E. they would have a rating about 1150 with annual blunders eternally recurring and hyper-dimensional one way communications to aliens.

I discovered a free college course about Russian Governance and Public Policy from St. Petersburg State University via coursera.org that has hundreds of free college courses from around the globe, and learned of something of the nature of challenges that Russia has today.  

https://www.coursera.org/learn/political-governance-russia/home/welcome

Political Governance and Public Policy in Russia Course On-line

For those interested in Russian governance and public policy as they are today, from a Russian professorial point of view as taught at St. Petersburg University for Coursera (where there are hundreds or thousands of free college-level courses from Universities around the world), this course of six weeks length is starting soon.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/political-governance-russia/home/welcome

It is incredible that the 'professionals' at state and elsewhere in government can't ever work things out so they work smoothly- even after all the work Reagan put into it. Maybe they should learn more about Russia today; as should the public, since the media isn't trustworthy at all- nor several of the major internet platforms.

The United States rates an 8 of 10 score on the polity series of democracy vs dictatorship in nations with more than a half million people. Russia got a 5 rating, like Ukraine. Canada got a 10 as did the U.K., though it has a technical royal aristocracy lurking in the background, while Canada has legal dope and homosexual marriage indicating that the polity authors may approve of sin as tests for democracy. Maybe corporatism and Internet tricks to provide content before being banned, purged or expropriated is part of the reason the U.S. is not rated a top-notch democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series

Polity IV

Blitz Chess (3M) E26-Nimzo-Indian-Defense-Saemisch-Variation-5...c5-6.e3

I played black in this Nimzo-Indian.

Start of Universes paradigm 1 (video)

A philosophical paradigm of the start of Universes read from my science fiction novel Pieces of Eight.   http://www.veoh.com/watch/v141893416Nzf6Ezkb

Everything Wrong With Casino Royale in Twelve Minutes or Less

The Instant Historical Revisionism Power of Apple, Facebook and YouTube

When major video content platforms take down content posted by the public that has been viewed and linked in many other webpages because they have banned it as using hate speech, they in effect create instant historical revisionism. Deleting from the present the historical content of producers with divergent political points of view from the most rich corporations such as Apple is something even people with a minor in history don't like.

I don't like big gaps in the history of what went before as if it never existed. All of Alex Jones' old content should remain and a ban if it must be used should apply to new stuff. Then reality would be keep with a semblance of integrity. To simply cut it out and erase very influential elements of social reality is evil. 

The Congress should expropriate funds going to NPR and reallocate them to start a new public back-up of posts content that would keep a permanent record of items posted on social media that the posters want backed up. Then history could at least be conserved, and people of the future could get some idea of the true social media content of the past rather than sanitized versions allowed by Apple, YouTube and Facebook.

https://www.garycgibson.us/2018/08/vast-l-wing-conspiracy-takes-down-r.html

Alex Jones' Internet platform was under real and solid attack. He has had his political shows taken down from Youtube, Facebook and Apple podcast. Fundamentally those corporations are under the sway of homosexuals that hate anti-homosexual  political positions. Jones is a prime supporter of Donald Trump so the Democrat corporations have good reason to pull the plug on political opposition. It is Mussolini's political philosophy of corporatism in action. When President Obama's Supreme Court allowed hate speech and hate crimes legislation  to become law the corporations were armed with an example to emulate useful in killing free political speech and opposition points of view. Corporate wants shit eating mutts for sycophancy in the media.

Alex Jones reports on an important side of current events and social structure the establishment usually ignores. The 1% concentrating wealth is not an illusion. The Democrat Party is deaf, dumb, blind and stupid these days in working as hard as they can to destroy the heritage of national independence and self-reliance so far as possible. They are shop stewards working for the rich as leaders of a company-owned union. The broadcast media is owned by that 1% establishment- it isn't imaginary.

A good Canadian philosopher named John Sauls published a book on corporatism in contemporary society in 1999 named The Unconscious Civilization. I don't believe he has written another book on that topic since. I recall him writing someplace that he had a family to take care of. Corporatism can shut anything down just like Muslim theocracy, imperialism and communism can.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/08/06/alex-jones-show-removed-other-infowars-content-services/912742002/

https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/06/facebook-removes-alex-jones-pages/

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/06/apple-pulls-alex-jones-infowars-podcasts-for-hate-speech.html  Apple the Trillion dollar corporation removed most of Alex Jones' podcasts; that's corporatism at work and a reason why the government should have some kind of citizen back-up venue to let publishing remain permanently even when public corporate platforms disappear.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-hayek/notes.html quote from note #7 "Adaptation to the niche of political entrepreneurship consists of becoming a better predator in a game where the predators make the rules. Politicians learn to cooperate, to be sure, but mainly with fellow predators. An evolving political order is increasingly dominated by corporatism (more pejoratively known as crony capitalism, where politically favored CEOs acquire the power to regulate their competitors), which is entrepreneurship of a destructive kind. Boettke 1995 articulates the theory of public choice implicit in Hayek."

SPLC appears to have left a semblance of neutrality and objectivity these days being so far removed from the 1960s and later when there were actually numerous groups perping violence that required tracking. SPLC could include CNN and the Washington Post these days and possible the Governor of New York on the list of extremists if they wanted to be objective. Throwing in powerful political bullshit in with the genuine articles degrades the credibility and reputation of SPLC. They aren't Elie Wiesel Inc.

I wonder about the Southern Poverty Law Center being an extremist organization using words and target listings of individuals in the attempt to socially marginalize them. Alex Jones, Bo Gritz and Gary Demar all made the list with Alex Jones being listed first on the list of 129 extremist individuals. American individuals should be free from organizational social terrorism.

Sure the Southern Poverty Law Center includes numerous people that probably deserve being listed, yet I suppose they also omit numerous people and  organizations including ANTIFA, because they are leftist or communist.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friedrich-hayek/notes.html

https://www.infowars.com/