Category Archives: For Women

Celebrities who can be trained to spread desired messaging

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Yesterday, a former US government official, Mike Benz, published an article on the USAID program to integrate imperialist messaging into popular music. Among those prominently named are: Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa & (of course) Pussy Riot. Also discussed in the piece are 22 rappers from around the globe, who have visited the US State Department over the years and been trained to write lyrics that dovetail with US imperialist interests.

The argument that USAID is necessary to fight global hunger, advocate for democratic rights, etc, is a fraud– a cynical concoction of Western intelligence. Trump/Musk are shutting down the notorious CIA fronts of USAID & the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) because of it’s fake left bias, which the fascists despise.

This has nothing to do with democracy, as Trump/Musk seek to reshape US intelligence in their Nazi image. Note that “Trump/Musk” and “intelligence” is an oxymoron.

It was a convenient starting point for the Trump/Musk government wrecking ball because so many people recognize this imperialist corruption. Only a few well-paid rainbow warriors (pic above) have protested the shutting down of USAID & NED. Perhaps the State Department can coax one of these celebrity assets into writing lyrics about the unfairness of this defunding. Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue, etc, would give it a great review– for sure. That’s their job.

“Celebrities who can be trained to spread desired messaging” is the exact State Department phrase which became the title. These trainable celebrities are fascist collaborators & sympathizers. The irony is that most of these puppets weren’t fascists to start, but the Black Hand has corrupted them and that’s the Faustian deal one must make to become a celebrity. These iconic defeatists see no hope, no path to fight Trump/Musk, taking all their political cues from the CIA Democrats. These trained celebrities who learned nothing from history are Vichy France.

Vichy collaborators were paraded though the streets of liberated Paris with swastikas drawn on their foreheads, while the women also had their hair shaved-off for giving aid & comfort to the Nazis from 1940-44. The population of France lined their streets to spit upon & hurl verbal abuse at these fascists, seething with revolutionary anger & class hatred of the bourgeoisie. Fascism, which flows out of imperialism, is the bitterest enemy of democracy and that’s the lesson of WW2. The masses of the world still hate Nazis, and it is this retribution of the international working class that historically awaits celebrities trained to spread desired messaging.

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Transgender athletes in mixed & co-ed sports

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Preface: This is my follow-up conclusion to “Trump to ban transgender athletes in women’s sports”, published yesterday and linked here.

Perhaps the final hurdle in this ideological debate is the question of transgender participation in co-ed sports. There are sports where women compete against men. Equestrian jumping & horse racing feature women jockeys competing against men from the Kentucky Derby to the summer Olympics. Auto racing forever changed with Danica Patrick. In these mixed sports (which men still dominate), gender doesn’t matter as much, since it is the horse or vehicle that is doing most of the work. Therefore transgender isn’t a competitive issue in these such sports.

For co-ed sports, there are rules to divide men & women– usually equally. For example, in most adult co-ed softball leagues there are 10-player teams (4 outfielders), divided half women & half men. The batting order has to alternate boy-girl-boy-girl, and if a guy is walked (intentionally or not) he gets second base while next batter up (female) gets a walk to first. This effectively disallows pitching around the men.

Transgender participants in co-ed sports need to be considered as their birth sex. If that fair-play rule violates their sensibilities, then don’t play. That’s how it goes in sports where competitive athletes don’t allow enabling. From all of us to them, “In you can’t play by the rules then form your own league or STFU.” Assuming they know how to play, a co-ed softball team with 5 transgender biological males playing as women would be unbeatable in most recreational leagues.

As I’ve discussed, this is an easy political victory for Trump when he needs it most. His anti-immigration policies, along with Elon Musk’s government takeover have backfired domestically, while his plan to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and build a casino resort for the rich on its ruins have been internationally rejected & condemned. Transgender athletes is a minor issue in comparison, but it gives Trump a much-needed credibility boost and thus more room for his fascist maneuverings. It allows Trump to go on the attack, with moral superiority over the Democrats. In Trump’s warped mind, canceling Biden/Harris DEI initiatives gives him the authority to attack anyone on the left. To be clear: DEI is fake left. Socialists who think & act like this writer are the true left, which is the real target of Trump & DEI/CIA Democrats.

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Trump to ban transgender athletes in women’s sports

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Donald Trump has announced today that he will ban all transgender athletes from competing against girls & women in sports. This is to apply to all ages, from grade school competition through NCAA & professional leagues. This after the Biden/Harris administration had backed their legal participation in women’s sports for years as part of their sweeping identity politics campaigns.

Much of this story was brought to a head by the controversy surrounding San Jose State University’s (SJSU) women’s volleyball team. The transgender athlete in question is Blaire Flemming (pic above), who led the 2024-25 SJSU women’s volleyball team in kills (314), kills per set (3.88) and total sets played (81). Second on the team in kills was Nayell T’ia with 228, and 3.45 kills/set. No other Spartans women’s volleyball player had more than 169 kills last season. A link to SJSU 2024-25 women’s volleyball stats is here.

A cursory look at these statistics, nullifies any argument that a transgender athlete creates no competitive advantage for a NCAA women’s volleyball team. Blaire Flemming was arguably SJSU’s most effective women’s volleyball player last season. Teammates & opponents describe how much higher Blaire Flemming can jump and how much harder she hits the ball, as compared to biological women.

Upon wide-spread discovery of this transgender athlete, NCAA opponents refused to play against SJSU women’s volleyball in 2024-25, as numerous matches were forfeited over principled opposition to a transgender athlete competing against women.

This is not a difficult issue for most of the population. Most people feel transgender people have democratic rights, but allowing them to compete as women in sports isn’t one of them. In fact, allowing this form of unfair competition only serves to increase society’s hatred towards those who are transgender. The problem here isn’t Blaire Flemming, the problem is the corrosive identity politics of the Democratic Party that (by design) irrationally divides society.

The team captain of SJSU women’s volleyball, Brooke Slusser, is suing her head coach, the university, and the conference over this, after being made to be the roommate of Blaire Flemming, without being told about Flemming being transgender [!!]. Apparently, SJSU & the NCAA knew Blaire Flemming was transgender when transferring to SJSU from Coastal Carolina in 2022.

ESPN has written multiple articles on this matter, in which they refuse to identify the transgender player as Blaire Flemming, in order to “protect privacy.” The privacy of Blaire Flemming’s roommates & teammates are of little-to-no concern to ESPN and this identity politics crowd. The mission of these moralist Democrats has been to create a post-modernist wonderland in female athletics, where protesters are silenced, while the “rights” of a handful of transgender athletes are tightly safeguarded.

Every male athlete in competition discloses that he is male to the NCAA. Every biologically female athlete does the same. But according to identity politics logic, transgender athletes can lie about their gender and are politically protected. For the record, Blaire Flemming is listed as “female,” not transgender, on the SJSU 2024-25 women’s volleyball page. This deeply unpopular & reactionary political position is despised by 99+% of athletes and the fans who watch. It allows a fascist imbecile such as Donald Trump to posture as a reformer for justice & common sense, and only the Democrats can do that.

One final note on gender identity. I always refer to Blaine Flemming as Blaine Flemming. That avoids the he/she them/they identity politicking. When I write about any athlete, I almost always use their first & last name together. For instance, Roki Sasaki was the most coveted MLB free agent this winter, and as a sportswriter I had to publish extensively on that. Notice that his name is Roki Sasaki, not Sasaki. Excessive use of a last name without the first dehumanizes the subject. In two long articles on Roki Sasaki, I referred to him by his last name only a few times over the course of thousands of words. I also referred to him, as a pronoun.

With men & women you easily can use pronouns. But with transgender, I prefer to use their full name only & always– writing & speaking. It’s the most accurate (& comfortable) way to write I’ve discovered. Consider that as my accepting nod of approval to transgender people who are having a hard time identifying themselves. The more these transgender people support the Democratic Party, the more voiceless & confused they become.

Liberals cry that “outing” a transgender person is a crime, when really it is a public reckoning of personal truth. You’re an adult now, so deal with it. It’s always uncomfortable, but more importantly it’s necessary. If you checked “female” to the NCAA when you are a transgender biological male, then you fundamentally lied. Enabling this pathological form of dishonesty is the root of all our problems.

Statistically speaking, as far as sample size goes transgender athletes are an extreme outlier. This means you can’t have a NCAA division of transgender competition because the numbers aren’t anywhere close to supporting it and never will be. There are so few of them, that if transgender people want to compete then they need to do it under rational scientific guidelines, meaning man/woman determination by birth gender. If there’s any question, then the athlete must submit to genetic testing, just like drug testing. Transgender athletes don’t get to make up their gender, or claim identity with a specific gender and make that a fact, which Democrats have shamelessly supported.

This isn’t an infringement on the rights of transgender people, it’s just a fair solution to a new problem. Instead of solving it rationally, the Democrats have tried to cynically exploit the issue of the rights of transgender athletes. What the Democrats always leave behind in the process are the rights of the great majority: in this case it’s the female athletes who have had to live, locker room, shower & compete with an unidentified transgender athlete that has been secretly protected by the NCAA from revealing their true biological gender. That’s creepy & murky murky.

The Blaine Flemming’s of the future will have to compete with the boys & men. It took Trump to do this, after 99% of the population already had clearly expressed their feelings on this issue. It’s an easy political win for Trump, always a specialty of the Democrats. Notice that I almost always refer to Donald Trump as Trump, and that’s because Trump is a dehumanized persona.

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NCAA, NIL, and US politics

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College sports have exploded since the landmark Ed O’Bannon v NCAA decision in 2015, which now allows NCAA student athletes to earn NIL money for themselves. This came into reality by 2020, and since then it’s been the NCAA trying to self-regulate NIL payments to athletes, followed by student athletes challenging these new rules in court– and often winning.

A well-written recent ESPN article by Dan Murphy titled “Texas senator aims to help NCAA regulate athlete payments”, indicates that Capitol Hill lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are ready to give the NCAA what it wants.

What’s at stake is big money. According to this ESPN article, “the Big Ten and SEC each raked in more than $850 million in their most recent fiscal year, leaving even their power conference peers in the ACC ($706 million) and Big 12 ($511 million) significantly behind.”

The core issue is collective bargaining rights for NCAA student athletes. The NCAA (& US lawmakers) are against it, while most student athletes don’t understand its revolutionary implications. To have collective bargaining rights, means you must be an employee that earns for an employer. Athletes that play big-time NCAA sports do just that, yet the NCAA insists their student athletes aren’t employees.

When such an impasse is reached in bourgeois politics, this is when its lawmakers & courts get involved, by crafting legislation into laws that don’t violate basic rights as defined by the judiciary– in theory at least. This is always a biased process, colored by class & personal interests.

It is worth recalling the only American institution which is exempt from federal antitrust laws is Major League Baseball (MLB). In 1922, the US Supreme Court made one of its more reactionary rulings which still stands, in Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League, ruling that baseball was a “purely state affair” and not interstate commerce. The court concluded that profiting from local “human effort and skill” in the sport did not constitute interstate commerce. The court found that transporting teams to play in other states was a “mere incident, not the essential thing”.

What was at issue was the ‘reserve clause’, which kept MLB players bound to their club for life. The owners of MLB were granted anti-trust exemption by a business-friendly government, which kept players salaries artificially suppressed. It wasn’t until MLBPA legal representative Marvin Miller (pic below) challenged this in court in the 1970’s that free agency came to MLB, and eventually all the major sports leagues.

These same issues are in play today with the NCAA’s leading universities acting as owners to keep NIL athletes from forming a union and having collective bargaining rights. The NCAA doesn’t consider it’s money-earning athletes to be employees, even though they can be (and are) paid by universities & alumni boosters to make money for them. These athletes clearly work for the NCAA, and if that isn’t the definition of an employee, then what is? The courts have taken this legal position on every NCAA attempt to control NIL-athletes ability to earn, etc, as the courts don’t buy the NCAA’s argument that NIL athletes aren’t employees.

At this point, Congress has been asked to step into the fray, in the form of Ted Cruz (R-TX). Texas is a HUGE football state, and the University of Texas just joined the SEC, making the final four of the 2024-25 CFP. It’s the huge money at stake, in terms of TV revenue for football that is driving all this. Football generates over three times the revenue for the NCAA that basketball does.

NCAA hoops is booming too, particularly on the women’s side, as they finally have regular network TV broadcasts, largely catalyzed by the popularity of Caitlin Clark at the University of Iowa, etc. It’s the Big 10 & SEC that have expanded into super-conferences, who are taking the lion’s share of this revenue, and demanding more in the future. There is a perception among those in-the-know that the NCAA may become a two-tiered system– with elite schools competing for national titles in all the major sports, but especially football– and then all the rest just existing on the fringes. Some would argue that has happened already.

Ted Cruz has been brought in (& bought by) the NCAA to make sure no collective bargaining rights are appropriated to NCAA athletes. And so Congress has been entrusted to work out a system which favors the NCAA in its further exploitation of student athletes. No unionization means not having to pay insurance, health care costs, even pensions, etc, to student-athletes who have earned for the NCAA. Attempts at denying these employee-athletes their right to bargain collectively, and thus be a united fist against the NCAA, violate anti-trust laws and will be open to strong legal challenges in the courts.

This is a revolutionary issue for young student athletes, as this goes down to high school now. The window for elite athletic competition is small and it’s a young man’s/woman’s game. Young athletes need to learn their history and speak to each other on these issues. Today, all sports are designed to bring prestige & money to a NCAA university. Sports has tremendous value. Volleyball, skiing, gymnastics, etc, are now broadcast regularly on the major networks as weekend sports programming. If they don’t have football, then just about any other sport will do.

Regular TV has gone to total garbage, with AI now taking over. Reality TV is now largely sports-competition based, in case you haven’t noticed. That makes sports programming more coveted than ever. The NCAA is attempting to cap it’s cost/university. Right now each university is allowed to spend $20.5M/year in NIL money to its athletes. Of course, for Texas, Alabama, Ohio State & Michigan, that isn’t enough, so alumni boosters kick in another $5-10M annually to give them the competitive edge they insist on having. For all intents & purposes, these university presidents, athletic directors and conference commissioners are the NCAA.

So what we have is a closed loop between the bourgeois politics of Ted Cruz and the NCAA. What has been left out of this political discussion are the athletes voices. This NIL & transfer portal era in the NCAA has become a Wild West of unethical recruiting, broken promises on agreed-to deals, and endless transfers & lawsuits from aggrieved student athletes. What it has done to the product on the playing field is obvious. There are no more programs at these universities– football, hoops, baseball, etc. They are now rotating sports factories designed to make maximum financial profit every year. This applies to the NIL athletes too.

And what we have are a bunch of kids who don’t fully realize the bigger game they are part of. They want to compete at the highest level, and they also want to get paid & go pro. Their competitive nature inherently directs them away from turning to others for help in obtaining their rights as employees of the NCAA. That is the barrier these young men & women must overcome to help themselves. By uniting and joining with others, you become stronger and help yourself in turn.

Final thoughts: Football & men’s basketball are the only profitable NCAA sports. The House Settlement, (named after ASU swimmer Grant House) which allows NIL revenue-sharing with student-athletes (along with back pay for former athletes dating back to 2016), has received preliminary approval from a federal judge. As with every other capitalist institution & setup, there are vast inequalities in this NCAA-NIL system. Of the $20.5M annually currently allowed (set to increase in the future), 90% of it will go towards football ($~15M) & men’s hoops (~$3M). The vast majority of NCAA student athletes don’t have NIL deals, and have been completely unrepresented in the process.

What this will create is a two-tiered layer of athletics across the NCAA and on every campus. The vast majority will be regular student athletes, with an elite layer of NIL-athletes for whom this professionalized system was created. Yes, stars are important to winning and they grab the TV ratings, but in football & hoops you need a TEAM to win. When all the programs become stratified in the manner I’ve described, you don’t have teams anymore– just a bunch of guys with the same-colored jersey. Thus, the competition becomes less compelling on every level.

NIL money for student athletes has the potential to revolutionize athletics for the better, but as anyone can see, it is instead being used by the NCAA & its power conferences to increase their monopoly power over college sports, while enriching only an elite class of athletes. This mirrors how real-world capitalism deals with any social inequality issue– it promotes a thin layer of union bureaucrats, blacks, women, gays, etc, to create the illusion of fairness & equality for all. The logic of identity politics is: Because OJ Simpson became rich & famous, all blacks should be happy– and so on.

Unless student athletes unite and appoint their own legal & media representatives in this fight, then most of them will be excluded from any benefits or compensation. Deion Sanders, head football coach at the University of Colorado has the clout to get his players (including his own son) top NIL deals. LeBron James can get his son a lucrative NIL deal at USC for a year, until he goes pro. These are the people being enriched by NIL money, and it’s an advantage most student athletes don’t have.

Also note that these NIL expenditures didn’t get the Trojans into the NCAA Tournament, or the Buffaloes into the CFP. It turns out you need a group players who are willing to sacrifice for the greater good (along with top talent) to win. NIL deals distort that paradigm. How can a coach create a consistent winning culture & team camaraderie when top players transfer every year? At this point, sports are all about entertainment, with winning & excellence being secondary– especially in the NCAA.

The professionalization of college & high school sports is a modern reality. The idea of sports is that it is fair to all and merit-based, meaning those who are the most-talented & work the hardest will excel above the rest. The reality is that if you don’t have money-backed competitive advantages working for you, you will get crushed by those who do.

Sports academies offer specialized professional training and top competition for aspiring young talent, but they are expensive and out-of-reach for most working class families. College sports is becoming more bourgeois at its roots, because you need these such advantages to compete for NIL deals at top NCAA universities.

On football:

When the NCAA kingpins who rule the Big 10 (now 18 schools) decided it would be a good idea to bring UCLA, USC, etc, into their conference because it benefits Michigan & Ohio State football, that doesn’t work out so well for the other sports whose west-coast athletes now have to fly to Rutgers & Maryland for conference competition. This is one example of the nefarious & destructive influence of football in college athletics.

In many ways football needs to be it’s own entity– apart from universities & education– because it is so powerful it can swallow up any school. It can absorb any evil such as organized crime & gambling in the NFL. The Universities of Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Texas, USC, Alabama, etc, are beholden to football. The power it has over alumni is incalculable.

Football often defines that institution, and in this era of branding & NIL rights, that is more powerful than ever. Football is the PR department for the University of Miami Hurricanes and has been since Howard Schnellenberger. The same goes for FSU under Bobby Bowden, and the Florida Gators under Steve Spurrier & Urban Meyer. UCF in Orlando has become a top-25 football program out of nowhere due to massive financial inputs from the university, alumni & boosters.

The problem of the NCAA & NIL rights can’t be divorced from football. It is an addicting game, but it has a tremendous cost which is largely overlooked. Football ruins the lives of people who don’t even play, but instead bet compulsively on it. Lots of them are former high school/college players who never made it any further, yet somehow believe they have some special insight into the game. They don’t. It’s a physical, punishing game that grinds its participants into retirement. CTE, Parkinson’s, etc, are just a few of the long-term brain afflictions that await football greats when they retire.

These realities need to be widely discussed and accounted for when collective bargaining issues such at NCAA NIL rights are at stake. It’s the athletes who are competing in field hockey, soccer, wrestling, etc, that are being excluded from these discussions. It’s the university athletic directors, presidents & power conference commissioners (based on football), that are running the NCAA in their own interests. The NCAA student athletes need to come together under the banner of collective bargaining to have any voice in their future.

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Pussy Riot reeks of provocation

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There’s a lot of fake political art out there: sophisticated propaganda that broadcasts liberal values to a liberal audience. Pussy Riot’s performance of A Punk Prayer (2012) occupies that pole: focusing on feminist-LGBT rights, while maintaining an explicitly anti-Putin line that dovetails with an undying support for the fascists in Kiev. It’s strictly identity politics & anti-Putin propaganda for these CIA cut-outs known as Pussy Riot.

Staged in brightly-colored balaclavas to conceal their identity, while punching & kicking the air in ‘punk defiance’, these feminist, pro-war phonies have existed under the protective wing of western imperialism for over a decade.  A Punk Prayer is nothing more than a provocative publicity stunt by a bunch of imperialist-backed puppets. After such a time, what is the balance sheet on their popular influence?

First, no one knows any songs by Pussy Riot. No kids have Pussy Riot content on any of their playlists, or seriously recommends their music. No members of Pussy Riot play any musical instruments or have any songwriting chops. No one can even name all the band members, or how they met, etc. Everything about Pussy Riot is shrouded in mystery. All their songs lyrics & political statements come straight from Langley, VA & the US State Department. Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon about Pussy Riot is they are so well known in the media, without having any real fans– or content.

Pussy Riot’s western support is entirely from a wealthy political class & the fake corporate media. Since being mercilessly exposed as nothing more than anti-Russian propaganda by myself in the late 2010’s, Pussy Riot were branded “foreign agents” by the Russian government at the end of 2021, confirming my political & artistic analysis. As a musical artist, these imposters never fooled me, as I smelled a rat with Pussy Riot from the start.

At this point in history, Pussy Riot now labels itself an “activist art collective”, because they are obviously not a band or even musicians. Their “concerts” are a joke— instead of performing music, they talk about their feminism/lesbianism at length, then chant anti-Putin vulgarities while dumping water on the crowd. In 2020, Pussy Riot was online promoting a fake tour that didn’t exist, due to venue lockdowns at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Promoting Pussy Riot as ‘punk’ is no longer tenable, as all they do now is issue NFT crypto and promote US State Department propaganda through their website Mediazona. Here’s a cozy photo of Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, with Antony Blinken in 2022.

Mediazona is a US-supported media propaganda outlet focused on anti-Putin opposition, founded by Nadya Tolokonnikova & her Pussy Riot cohorts in 2014. This has become Pussy Riot’s primary vehicle for “activism”, since their musical “popularity” has waned due to inconvenient facts coming to light. Once again, can you sing (or even hum) a single Pussy Riot song? Do you know ANYONE who can?

Pussy Riot has become a world famous “act” with no recognizable content. That’s quite remarkable, and reveals much about the state of art in today’s world. The art market has become completely corrupted by big money to the point where there is no art– only dressed-up propaganda narratives packaged as ‘art’.

In 2012, Nadya Tolokonnikova was listed as Time Magazine’s ‘100 Women of the Year’, while also receiving the LennonOno Grant for Peace. In 2019, Tolokonnikova received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from Rhode Island School of Design – for being a “powerful voice in the fight against tyranny,” while The Guardian ranked her #4 in Best Art of the 21st Century, for her Punk Prayer video. In 2023, Nadya Tolokonnikova was awarded the Woodie Guthrie Prize, rendering that honor meaningless while muddying the name of that great original folk singer. And so it goes, as Hillary Clinton is a big fan of Pussy Riot.

Kathleen Hanna was The Punk Singer (2013), the unmistakable voice of Bikini Kill, the last great rock band (in this artist’s opinion). What happened to Bikini Kill is what happened to the entertainment industry overall. Kathleen Hanna embraced Pussy Riot around the time her (long overdue) documentary was released on Netflix, so clearly her support for Pussy Riot helped with the movie distribution. For what it’s worth, The Punk Singer is a good documentary film and that’s what happened to Bikini Kill & rock music.

No, Pussy Riot isn’t here to save humanity from catastrophe though their fearless activism. They are instead stooges of imperialism. Pussy Riot receives complete support from the corporate media and every other capitalist institution. A February 2021 Greyzone investigative article titled ‘Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal’, confirmed this. Pussy Riot’s role in this NATO propaganda campaign is discussed in it:

New leaked documents show Reuters’ and the BBC’s involvement in covert UK FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] programs to effect “attitudinal change” and “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” alongside intel contractors and Bellingcat… As a UK FCO contractor, the Zinc Network said it was “delivering audience segmentation and targeting support” not only to Meduza, but also to Mediazona, a supposedly independent media venture founded by two members of the anti-Kremlin performance art group Pussy Riot. One of Mediazona’s founders, Nadya Tolokonnikova, shared a stage with former US President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation’s 2015 conference. The following year, Tolokonnikova trashed now-imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, claiming, “He’s connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he’s proud of it.”

For the record, Julian Assange is a heroic journalist, beloved by hundreds-of-millions worldwide, who was unjustly persecuted by the imperialist governments of the US/UK for years over phony sexual assault claims, for the crime of telling people the truth about government-approved war crimes, etc. Pussy Riot attacks Julian Assange (and anyone else who speaks for the oppressed masses) for inspiring revolutionary thinking & action. As reactionary puppets of imperialism, Pussy Riot reeks of provocation.

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Extended Play Singles (2024)

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This Extended Play project began in Sanford, FL before the COVID-19 pandemic, as a collection of ‘swan song’ singles. With the release of “The Electric Cat” this project is complete and has been re-named Extended Play Singles. Cover photo, artwork & production by Tom Pearce. It is now available on your favorite streaming platform.

I’m also pleased to announce that Magnified (2012) has been re-released onto the major streaming platforms. It’s very complicated how these songs are put up and then later disappear, but that’s a reality of the modern mp3 streaming market. Platforms for upload & distribution change their policies, get bought out, go out of business, etc. Independent artists are constantly being taken down, moved back, marginalized & de-platformed to make more room for Beyonce & Taylor Swift.

The current artistic situation is untenable, and talented artists in every sphere: music, film, arts & literature are being squeezed out in favor of mediocre corporate phonies. This is why popular music, film & culture are at such a low level. There is no money for real artists. The idea of Trump and his billionaire class cronies, including all the Democrats, is to silence & destroy all the artists. Everything from Trump’s anti-immigrant racism, to the #MeToo campaign’s false feminist hysteria is meant to divide oppressed workers with ignorance & false political narratives.

No serious artists are allowed to perform anymore, and the list of blacklisted talent is staggering. It began with Kevin Spacey being witch-hunted with false sexual assault allegations in November 2017, as the #MeToo campaign instantly became known to the world. Every bourgeois media news outlet was part of this reactionary feminist campaign to attack prominent artists such as Kevin Spacey, and effectively remove them from the entertainment industry. Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Murray, and countless others have been ‘cancelled’ by the #MeToo campaign, which is an identity politics prong of the CIA Democrats overall offensive on the working class.

Until there is revolutionary change in global society– meaning our economics & politics– there can be no substantial art & culture allowed into the mainstream. Only more football. All significant art taking place today is happening ‘underground’, meaning outside the corporate sphere. Thus, underground art is cut off from a mainstream breakthrough by every tentacle of monopoly capitalism & imperialism.

Those performers advocating for political reforms, while defending the Democratic Party, are lazy liberals. As proof: What impact did they have on Election 2024? The fascist Donald Trump steamrolled the imperialist flunky Kamala Harris, and now the Democrats & corporate media are looking forward to working with Trump in attacking the working class. On that, they are always united.

For real artists, the art is about the art. It’s not a vehicle to make money or a pathway to “stardom”. It’s about what you put into it and how it affects people– including yourself. It was fun to make this music, and certainly worthwhile, but when you’re all out of songs and no one in control will let you have the stage, then you move on to something else. That’s what I’ve done.

The music still lives, and that’s the point. As long as people care about music, film & art, it will live on. I had ideas I needed to express to the world in musical form and I hope it will inspire listeners & fans to do the same in their own creative way. That’s all an artist can do.

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Election 2024: final notes

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Pre-election articles are here & here. Election night coverage is here.

Third party candidates as a composite (and where they were allowed on the ballot) had a hard time cracking the 2% threshold in any state. A total media blackout, combined with social media censorship, legal attacks, etc, dooms third-party candidacies to irrelevance, as both major parties claim they have the only “winnable” and “serious” candidates. It’s only when those terms are so distorted by cynical politics that this can be true, as it was in 2024.

The right-wing attack ads were endless and for much of that we have Elon Musk to thank. This crypto-currency billionaire fascist has just been elevated to political power without receiving a single vote. What we have is political opportunism & backroom deals, with nothing for working class voters– red or blue.

No left voice was allowed to be raised & taken seriously in the corporate media during the entire two-year presidential campaign. Jill Stein & the Green party, etc, orbit the Democrats. The Greens message in 2024 was “Vote Kamala, but if you can’t, then vote for Jill Stein instead of Trump.” Does this sound like a serious strategy? How can a political alternative be built with this approach? In short, it isn’t and it can’t.

Meanwhile, RFK, Jr endorsed Trump and (like Elon Musk) is in line for a cabinet position after being kicked out of the Democratic primaries. The Democrats went with a ‘Biden or bust’ strategy, until they couldn’t maintain that fiction anymore. Top CIA Democrats including Barrack Obama forced Joe Biden to step aside for Kamala Harris after his disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump on June 27. By then the primaries were over, with the delegates assigned to Biden, so a replacement candidate had to be installed. The Democratic party primary in 2024 was a rigged farce by any political definition. People noticed, and it surely influenced their voting in the general.

Recall that in 2020, Kamala Harris was schooled & badly defeated by Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) in an early primary debate. Despite being an early favorite (rising star, etc), Kamala Harris quickly faded into irrelevance– until Joe Biden put her on his ticket as VP. Nothing she did earned her that title, she simply checked the right boxes while being a toe-the-party-line yes-woman. No one thought anything of her as a VP, until Joe Biden was being pressured by party leaders & big donors to drop out of the race.

For a former state prosecutor, Kamala Harris is remarkably wooden & dull. She clearly wouldn’t have survived an open & fair primary in 2024. Instead, Kamala Harris was enabled every step of the way, the same way the Democratic party handled candidate Joe Biden until late June. The same way the DNC rigged the machinery & rescued Biden in 2020, and Hillary Clinton in 2016, both times from fake leftist Bernie Sanders (D-VT).

I earlier likened this entire campaign to episodes of House of Cards (2013-18). In Election 2024, Kamala Harris played the role of Jim Matthews/Jackie Sharp, meaning she was used & manipulated by higher powers to achieve their interests, in this case, handing the 2024 election to Trump. Opportunism, addiction to fame, flattery & celebrity, along with hubris allowed Kamala Harris to be manipulated by CIA Democrats– who prefer Trump to anything on the left. Kamala Harris & Joe Biden are now both lame duck losers. Joe Biden finally lost his grip on power because he’s an incoherent zombie. Kamala Harris never really attained any power because she’s a pretender. She’s not ruthless or smart enough in the eyes of the ruling class. That’s how she got played.

Kamala Harris started with all the momentum she needed to win, but ran a conservative run-out-the-clock campaign– befuddling insiders by avoiding press conferences, interviews, etc, for weeks on end. This was when most Americans barely knew who she was. It was a major red flag for someone running for US president, and a turning point for the Trump campaign. To Donald Trump’s credit, he apparently listened (by his standards) to his advisors more in 2024 than in 2020. Trump was able to posture himself as a folksy populist while Kamala was in hiding.

Whoever ran the Harris campaign wasn’t giving her the advice she needed to win. That’s perhaps a House of Cards episode in itself. Kamala Harris needed to tack left, anti-war with voters to beat Trump, but the CIA Democrats wouldn’t allow that. Thus Kamala Harris became politically indistinguishable from Joe Biden. When asked in an interview near the end of the campaign, Kamala Harris said she wouldn’t have done anything different as VP. That made her an easy target for Trump’s attack-ad campaign, bottomlessly funded by right-wing billionaires.

The Democrats relied on identity politics to mask Kamala Harris’ class politics. It didn’t fool voters in key battle ground districts. Being a black woman doesn’t mean anything in the arena of class & power politics. MeToo feminism, Black Lives Matter & LBGTQ+ campaigns are CIA Democratic attack dogs they unleash on the left & working class. It is a program of imperialist entitlement to create a thin later of representative stooges. Most voters despise these well-funded liberal snowflakes.

As I mix among the people the day after Election 2024, I see & hear very little jubilation. People are relieved this debased election is over, but they aren’t optimistic about the future. Most of those who voted for Trump realize he’s a sociopath & ignoramus, but they hate the Democrats even more and blame them for their misery. They have good reason for that, but the fact is nothing can be done about Trump & the CIA Democrats until workers & youth break from both parties of capitalism and take up the fight for socialism.

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS.org) is the organ of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), which is the Trotskyist party of revolutionary internationalism. Any nationalist reformist programs & union bureaucracies are tools of the capitalist fake left, and must be smashed by worker-led organizations with a revolutionary program, as they all paved the way for Trump.

Speak openly with your friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc, about the important issues which were never discussed during Election 2024. Issues such as the imperialist drive to WW3, capitalist induced climate change, the forever COVID pandemic, attacks on democratic rights along with ever greater social inequality can no longer be ignored & suppressed. The only way these issues will move front & center in public debate is if workers & youth organize and act in revolutionary solidarity against the capitalist ruling class. I encourage all my fans & readers to read the WSWS and join the SEP.

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Democratic party collapses in Election 2024

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Donald Trump won all seven battleground states: PA, WI, MI, GA, NC, NV & AZ to secure the Electoral College and become the next US president. This result was predictable and discussed here.

According to all the pollsters, Kamala Harris “underperformed” in the urban centers, on college campuses & with minorities. ‘Hillary 2.0’ is an apt description, as Kamala Harris failed to connect with working class & younger voters. Kamala Harris was a candidate of Wall Street & the military, and took a right-wing stance on immigration which didn’t endear her to key voting demographics.

Starting with how she was selected, to the billionaire support she courted, Kamala Harris didn’t fool enough voters in traditional demographics, most of whom ranked the economy & the direction of the country as their top issues. As far as protecting democratic rights goes, it was a major issue for voters, and attacking students & activists protesting IDF genocide in Gaza of the Palestinian population turned-off a lot of potential Democratic party voters– especially those in college & Muslim-Americans.

Trump didn’t win Election 2024 because he is popular. He won because it’s obvious that the imperialist Democratic party no longer offers any opposition to Republican fascism. The Democrats under Biden-Harris have started a war with Russia in the Ukraine, and a war in the Middle East with Israel as attack dog for US imperialism against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria & Iran– all with full Democratic party support.

The Trump party also won the Senate, defeating Democratic incumbents & overwhelming challengers in WI, MI, PA, NV & MT to take a 56-44 majority in the upper house, after pundits predicted only a 51-49 Republican edge. The House of Representatives is murkier as of this writing, but the Democrats are expected to regain control. [late edit 11-8-24: Senate is expected 54-46. Republicans will maintain their House majority, completely wiping out the Democrats in all three branches of federal government.]

This is nothing less than a collapse of grassroots support for the Democratic party. The party with money from big donor contributors, more favorable corporate media coverage (with star power endorsements), and arguably better political machinery infrastructure in key battleground states– lost. The Supreme Court has been packed with Trump appointees, meaning all three branches of the American government, executive, upper legislative & judicial will be controlled by MAGA fascists.

Workers & youth of the US and around the world must organize themselves under the banner of class struggle– independently of the Democratic party, the union apparatuses, and the fake left organizations such as the DSA and their associated NGO’s & other non-profits. This pseudo-left milieu is the reason Trump won in 2024.

The Supreme Court ruled this past summer that the president is above the law, while Trump has stated to his supporters that they don’t need to worry about elections & voting anymore. Those who rightfully fear the consequences of a second Trump presidency must rally around a political program of social equality & anti-war opposition to both major parties.

The Democrats have been floating olive branches to Trump for weeks now, shamefully acquiescing to fascism when it became clear that the Harris-Walz campaign was flailing. The only way to defeat fascism is by mass collective action from the only source of economic value, the international working class.

Wed 06 Nov 2024 03:15 AM CST

Post script: The role of the fake media in Election 2024 can be illustrated in a few NBC examples I observed. On Monday, election eve, NBC Nightly News reported “an earthquake” poll result in Iowa which claimed a 3-4 point edge for Kamala Harris in a red state that all the other polls had Trump easily winning. I turned off the news when I saw that and flipped to House of Cards on DVD.

Fox News coverage was amateur compared to NBC on Election Night. At 9:15 PM CST, I first saw the glum faces of NBC talking heads and knew the election was for Trump. Instead of admitting it & explaining this reality outright, NBC pundits maintained the fiction that Kamala Harris still had a chance. Blue wall and all that shit…

Fox (with lesser brains & technology) called Pennsylvania for Trump well before NBC. Donald Trump is being driven to a celebratory party of his supporters, ready to make a victory speech, and NBC still hasn’t called Pennsylvania, despite 90+% of the vote counted and Trump with an insurmountable lead. This was done partly to maintain false hope in the Democrats and partly to keep up the ratings– not necessarily in that order.

NBC will be hand-wringing its viewers for awhile, while they make their peace with Trump. As Joe Biden & Nancy Pelosi said after 1/6, “We need a strong Republican party.” In 2024, the Democrats got their wish.

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“The Electric Cat” mp3 release

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Preface: I feel this is my last original song. As a creative artist you eventually reach a point where you are out of songs, call it burnout or whatever, but it’s a natural process. You can’t be innovative as an artist forever. All are eventually overtaken by the next wave of revolutionary artistry and the new energy it creates. It’s similar to an athlete retiring, you have to accept it and move on.

In music this means if I return, it will be as a legacy act. That means no new songs, just fan favorites to make the paying audience happy. When you are a revolutionary artist, you have a chip on your shoulder and aren’t always willing to meet those fan expectations. Instead, you are challenging fans to meet YOUR expectations. That limits the fan base, but makes it more fanatical. It’s about deeply influencing those few who get you.

As a legacy act you are accepted, loved & paid, so it’s easier to return the love to the fans. Legacy acts only happen when there is money, and since that never happened for me, I’m not holding my breath. The political climate is still too reactionary for artists such as myself to be allowed venues that could connect us with a mass audience. Neo-McCarthyist witch hunting & blacklisting rule bourgeois politics & corporate mass media. MeToo, BLM, and fake ‘anti-semitism’ campaigns are CIA Democrat ‘big lies’ meant to intimidate & silence any genuine leftist opposition to capitalist imperialism.

My influence is still exerted as a blogger. Perhaps the most revolutionary thing I did in my musical artist career was creating this blog. No other artist (in any genre) has written as prolifically on so many subjects. The internet & social media made it possible, and my creative & effective use of these platforms has changed how people approach them. Blogging is now an artform. It is much easier to write an essay than it is to write a new song, so I’ll continue to express myself as an artist through blogging. Thank you to all fans for your continuing support!

Production notes & AI

After Tom recorded this song, we discussed artwork ideas, as usual. In real life the Electric Cat has died and I have no pictures, only images in my memory. I suggested a cartoon image, and that’s when Tom replied by suggesting an artificial intelligence (AI) app he had started using. There’s a learning curve which must be negotiated, but the result is this AI-generated image for “The Electric Cat”.

AI created a hyper-cartoon image for me (from no pictures) in just a few hours of email back-and-forth with my producer. Hyper-realism is a genre of art where the painter paints to exquisite detail. It takes a long time to complete a large canvas because every square inch is filled with painstaking detail. It’s extraordinary to look at, but often lacks soul or an important overall theme.

AI can produce images to a hyper-realistic level that display lifelike characteristics. AI doesn’t get offended and throw a hissy fit when I (the client) don’t like something it presented. In the hands of a learned technician, AI can do whatever you ask in a relatively short period of time. You just need to know what you want and how to communicate it.

These AI apps are much deeper & more powerful than photoshop, etc, which is how most pop art has been created for decades. This AI app took an idea (seed), and after Tom tweaked parameters & fed in descriptive details, developed it into what we wanted. In the past, I gave Tom ideas (or images) and let him run with them. He usually came back with something great and that was it. I learned not to expect anything in particular, because he’s not a graphic artist who can deliver exactly what I want from scratch. You have to be really gifted to do that, and neither of us are apt in that field.

AI apps replace (supersede) the efforts of entire marketing & art departments at major labels & studios such as Sony, Warner & Disney. Artificial intelligence has that power. AI can now take this Electric Cat image and mutate it into pop art quickly & cheaply, rendering high-quality, marketable images on demand. It’s almost too easy, and that’s the danger. Andy Warhol would smile, wryly.

If the song (or album) is a winner, artists now have the ability to create iconic artwork using AI. This solves a lot of problems for independent acts who don’t have access to major label resources. AI (in everyone’s hands) levels the playing field on that front, and opens up a world of new ones. There is a class of people who don’t want creative working people to know this.

AI is a big reason for the current entertainment industry & tech sector jobs bloodbath, for the reasons I’ve outlined above. Used in expert hands, artificial intelligence convinces you immediately. My experience happened to every Hollywood producer, director & entertainment industry bigshot upon being introduced to AI. In the future you are going to see more & more AI-generated content in music, film, TV, art, etc. It’s already started.

In music, Brian Eno has been an AI innovator, which is par for him. Ever since his first experiments in ambient music (early electronica) in the 1970’s, Eno has been a pioneer of self-generating, perpetual technology: first in music, then in images & film. Those who have led the way should be listened to the most, so no discussion of AI media use, potential, ethics & pitfalls can be closed until innovators such as Brian Eno have their say & are respected.

I’m a newbie, as this is my first foray into AI as a creative tool. I’m mostly watched, giving input to Tom as needed, and observing the results of the process while asking questions as they arose. I’m not a techie, so I don’t know the app or how it works, etc. Ask Tom about that. For me it’s all about what AI can do, and when I see these-type results, I get excited. Producers now need to add ‘AI skills’ to their technical arsenal. These are the people who will replace all those who are getting pink-slipped. Honestly, I’m in favor of eliminating this parasitic layer of entertainment industry mediocrity. All they do is siphon money & influence away from the original artists who create all the cultural interest in the first place.

This experience has instilled awareness about what the technology is, and raised practical questions about its ethics. I believe the artist is ethically bound to tell their audience about any AI-generated content. Educate fans & be 100% honest about its use– no exceptions. It’s easy to fool a naive audience into thinking that you are better than you really are by having AI-generated content in the music, etc. Only full disclosure earns respect in this field, and cheaters must be ruthlessly exposed as phonies. Fans have a right to know, and always feel betrayed when it turns out they have been duped by charlatans.

Beyond that, AI can be harnessed & used limitlessly to enrich & simplify our lives. AI is a tool for human use and has enormous potential to help solve all of our most difficult problems. The technology itself is neutral. It comes down to who controls it that determines its destiny. That will be determined by class struggle. The mission of artists is to enlighten humanity. Using AI creatively & openly for the benefit of all is now part of that.

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The Electric Cat

Silently stalks & prowls throughout its habitat
The Electric Cat

Those crazy dogs got burs in their fur again. Drat! Why can’t they be more like that…?
Electric Cat

Silky & slinky with claws & a bite, lookout for that!

I give it food & love, it purrs by my side. I love that
Electric Cat

At its best and at rest, always respect that
Electric Cat

Felinus Electricus, a miniature Indian tiger cat
It’s all that
The Electric Cat

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Recorded 01-12-2024 in Eustis, FL by Tom Pearce

Production & AI artwork* (see notes) also by TomP at Last Minute Productions

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Why Kamala Harris will lose on November 5

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What seemed impossible only a few months ago has turned into reality. Donald Trump currently leads in all 7 battleground states according to Real Clear Politics.

Michigan 48.3 47.4 Trump +0.9
Pennsylvania 47.9 47.4 Trump +0.5
Wisconsin 47.9 47.8 Trump +0.1
Arizona 48.8 47.4 Trump +1.4
Nevada 47.9 47.1 Trump +0.8
North Carolina 48.5 47.5 Trump +1.0
Georgia 48.7 47.6 Trump +1.1

After Joe Biden was forced out by top Democrats following his disastrous June 27 debate performance, Kamala Harris was propelled to the head of the ticket and quickly surpassed Trump in WI, MI & PA– the three battleground states she needs to win to get to 270 in the Electoral College. But in the last month or so, Harris has been slipping in every state. Wisconsin & Michigan which she had initially flipped, have turned back to Trump; and Pennsylvania which Harris had held a slight edge has flipped red with Trump consistently ahead in the polls. How did this happen?

First & foremost, the Trump campaign has received a massive injection of money from fascist billionaires such as Elon Musk, and they have gone on the attack with scathing commercials. Kamala Harris & “Bidenomics” are inseparable, and that message is getting through to struggling American workers. The real economy isn’t working for 80-90% of the population, so Donald Trump can attack & ludicrously posture as a candidate of “hope & change.”

Secondly, Kamala Harris’ position of full support for Zionist genocide in Gaza and the broader war with Hezbollah & Iran that has metastasized, is deeply unpopular with student youth & the working class. Furthermore, slandering anti-war & anti-genocide activists as “antisemitic” is a cynical big lie. This is Kamala Harris, who is no different from Joe Biden, politically speaking. Their debated differences are superficial window dressing, and most people recognize that.

Cracking down on anti-war dissent on campuses across the country is deeply unpopular, and it has been led by the Democrats. Biden, Harris, AOC, etc, have all slandered anti-war genocide protesters as “antisemitic,” which is a big lie from the CIA Democrats. This anti-democratic policy has cost Kamala Harris the young voters she needed to win these all-important battleground states.

Thirdly, the Democrats racialist & feminist cards aren’t working either. These are key planks to their identity politics campaign, which is meant to divide the working class along artificial lines while ignoring class inequality. MAGA Trumpists are fascists, filled with white supremacists & actual antisemites, but they are never called out by Kamala Harris and the Democrats for what they are, all in the name of bipartisanship. Joe Biden said, “We need a strong Republican Party,” when asked why he wasn’t prosecuting Donald Trump for his 1/6 coup attempt. Democrats enabling Republicans is how the two-party system works.

This means the Democrats are going to lose on November 5, because Trump and the far right need this win more than the Democrats. If Trump loses, he & his party are finished. It would be a crippling blow to fascism, which a class of billionaires won’t allow. These elitists will do whatever it takes to ensure a Trump victory, while the Democrats will meekly acquiesce.

That’s not how the majority of the US population feels. What we have with Election 2024 were rigged primaries on both sides, where no leftist or 3rd-party dissent was ever allowed. Massive blacklisting & censorship campaigns were undertaken by both major parties, but particularly the Democrats whose target was anything on the left. Removing 3rd-party candidates from the ballot through legal challenges in Democratic-friendly courts and censoring leftists in the mass media were major prongs of the Democrats election campaign in 2024.

In other words, it was a massive disinformation & censorship campaign on both sides, full of lies, propaganda, and other distortions of the truth. Omission has been a primary distortion. Nuclear war, capitalist-induced climate change, etc, were basically off-limits to serious discussion. Any “debates”, “press conferences”, “interviews”, etc, were distortions of those terms, with “moderators” injecting their bias at every turn, bastardizing the professional terms “journalism” & “reporting”.

When Trump wins, and Kamala Harris graciously concedes, the Democrats will then begin to blame the “deplorables” for their defeat, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Deplorables are especially white working males who weren’t smart enough to vote for the Democrats because they are racist, sexist, anti-gay, etc. Deplorables are stooges of Vladimir Putin and that Russian conspiracy to take away all our freedoms, etc. Those who oppose funding Zelensky’s Nazi Azov Battalion in the Ukraine are “agents of Putin” & “antisemites.” All this is why Kamala Harris will lose on November 5.

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