Birding Through the Proxy Wars
Hope is the thing with feathers
All of these proxy wars, including the one playing out in Congress, are part of a showdown between Russia and the US.
When I tweeted out those words this morning, it was after listening in to the Kremlin Lounge with geopolitical analyst Monique Camarra. We get together on Wednesdays, like we do with Lucid on Friday, and Bette on Sundays and Tuesdays, and we discuss current events with a sharp focus on the Great Information War.
Hybrid warfare is war, as HiFi reminds us, and it was never “meddling.” This war began in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and pretended otherwise, and when military psyops were deployed to sway the UK referendum and the outcome of the 2016 US election.
As investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr wrote on February 27, 2022 in her Great Information War thread:
It wasn't just Ukraine. We now know Russia began another offensive in Feb 2014. Against the West. Specifically, but not exclusively, America. How do we know this? Because the FBI conducted a forensic, multi-year investigation. That almost no-one paid any attention to.
The Mueller Report. You've heard of it. But probably as a headline about how it didn't "prove" collusion between the Kremlin & Trump campaign. We can come back to that. What it did prove - BEYOND ANY DOUBT - was that Russia attacked 2016 US election through multiple routes.
And just *one* of the ways Russia attacked 2016 US election was via the tech platforms. Especially: Facebook. This was a military technique, it pioneered in Ukraine in 2014. By 2016, it refined, iterated & supersized these. Most brilliantly of all, they were entirely invisible.
And it wasn't just Russia. Companies such as Cambridge Analytica. Political operatives such as Manafort. Amoral opportunists such as Cummings. They learned how to exploit a platform that was totally open - anyone could do so. And totally closed - no-one could see how.
In 2016, we knew none of this. Russia & other bad actors acted with impunity &, in some cases alignment. But now, through the sheer bloody hard work of academics, journalists & FBI, we do know.
But it was complex, messy, difficult. So..We brushed it all under the carpet…
We failed to acknowledge Russia had staged a military attack on the West. We called it "meddling". We used words like "interference". It wasn't. It was warfare. We've been under military attack for eight years now.
This failure is at the heart of what is happening now in Ukraine. Because the first offensive in the Great Information War was from 2014-2022. And Putin won.
And he won by convincing us it wasn't even a war.
We fell for it. We said it was "just ads" that "don't work anyhow". And "a bot didn't tell me to vote". Facebook is still an open threat surface. Exploited by authoritarians from Philippines to India to Brazil to Hungary. It's maybe not a world war. But the world is at war. But it wasn't 'just ads'. It was war. And it's absolutely crucial that we now understand that Putin's attack on Ukraine & the West was a JOINT attack on both.
That began at the exact same time.
Across the exact same platforms.
And so here we are in 2023 — unsafe, unsettled, as wars rage on multiple fronts and too many analysts focus on the micro and not the macro. As Camarra said this morning, these proxy wars are accelerating and it is my opinion, when you see our elegant and eloquent President Joe Biden standing next to an unpopular corrupt leader who takes a call with Putin rather than meeting with President Zelensky, that the greater stage is the showdown between Russia and the US — two world powers that have been at war, with only one side declaring.
For Russia is always at war with the West.
And I believe as Keir Giles has taught me, the only way we fight back is for Western leaders to declare the war.
Jackie Singh and I have a solution — we can’t undo the brainwashing that’s already been done, but we can supplant the previous with new training. We want to launch an extremism countering project that is tied to economic revitalization and creation of a labor force. She worked as the lead cyber threat analyst for Biden’s 2020 campaign, and she is also a veteran. She sees the information war that is being waged around the crimes in Israel and we both know we are not safe in 2023, as staged horrors designed to keep people in fear, anger, despair, and un-whole, will continue.
As the zoom out girl, I see it all as a way for corrupt men to seize power — if the people are divided by any memes necessary the strongmen take what they want.
But they are criminals — so they try to take our courts, our Congress, undermine our military and continue to inflame and wedge and use the name of God to manipulate the populace — all to obfuscate their crimes.
It is not a clown show — it’s a proxy war.
The 21st century playbook is to not know anything, noted Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
The idea is to fill people’s heads with such great confusion, they give up on truth.
So in defense of truth, I write on.
Hope is the thing with feathers.—Emily Dickinson
In her Lucid session last week, our hearts heavy from the horror of Oct. 7, I dropped a line in the chat toward the end:
“On a lighter note, I’m on bird watch…”
I explained that I just put up bird feeders in mom’s backyard — a squirrel buster wild bird feeder, a nyjer seed feeder, a suet feeder — to accompany her hummingbird feeders. Nine red hearts immediately appeared on my post from the heavy-hearted crowd, who then shared their own birding stories.
I told the group we’ve been looking out the window each day awaiting the arrival of wild birds.
I even tied a yellow ribbon around the nyjer feeder, which attracts goldfinches — it’s a trick to make them think it’s a bird. Last time I deployed the ribbon trick in my own home a decade ago, they showed up in 24 hours and before I knew it, I had a soup kitchen, as the flock grew year after year.
But this time, days went by, and no birds — just the squirrels, trying to outwit the baffles and the buster but to know avail.
This morning, just as I finished the call with Monique Camarra, I went outside to adjust the ribbon, hope being the thing with feathers and all.
As I walked away, I heard the first tweet. Then another, and then another.
I looked in my mom’s lemon tree, and there were some little gray birds.
I didn’t have my binos but they looked like oak titmouses — they have a distinctive crest.
And one flew over to the squirrel buster, and then another.
And then they flitted off.
Then I heard another tweet, and a bird flew over to the njyer feeder.
And then I looked up and saw two acorn woodpeckers in my mom’s old oak tree.
And the birdsong plays on… I hear them as I type this, a reminder that war is hell for the birds, and all living things.
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. Some of you prefer making subsidizing donations via venmo, and it’s always greatly appreciated. If you wish to gift a membership, you can do so by donating to the ko-fi or venmo accounts, and indicate it’s for a gift, or do so here.
Founding Members will be invited to our monthly Founder’s Day events — please upgrade to Founding Member if you would like to join us for these special intimate occasions to meet global experts.
All paid members receive invites to our ‘Speakeasy’ zoom salons, and weekly wellness checkins, Bette’s Happy Hour.
Also, a private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous@gmail.com. 🥹
“We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.”—David Pepper
“I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.”—David Pepper
“The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.”—Martin Sheil
💘
“I say a silent prayer of thanksgiving as I walk upon the earth.”-Audrey Peterman.
“May the viral hope for truth and humanity wash away the chaos of these years.”-S.C., Bette community member
“Something Sacred never dies in almost all of us, who can hear the invitation of Truth…”-words from a Bette Dangerous community member
“Non-violent protest is a life-affirming activity as it seeks to promote a more humane society.”-Ellen Zucker
“Nothing but blue skies from now on…”-Irving Berlin
💘
