Kropotkin’s quotation puts me in mind of a purported Q and A with Mahatma Gandhi:

Q: ‘What do you think about Western civilization?’
A: ‘I think it would be a very good idea.’

But imagine that you’re in the Twilight Zone, or in a parallel universe, watching as the fading Western Empire goes full-tilt loose cannon and attempts to exert full command-and-control of the planet.  A refusal to cede to the inevitability of a multi-polar world in power and influence, trade, including ridiculous nationalistic levels of imposed tariffs, killing sanctions, wars in 40% of the nations on the globe (Africom and re-purposed cold war 2.0 NATO), cyber-space, and more.

♫ can’t get enough of that novichok, novichok, novichok...♫

Oops! New York Times corrects Skripal story, says no ‘dead ducks’ or ‘sick kids’ from ‘Novichok’, 6 Jun, 2019, RT.com

“The New York Times has corrected a report that UK officials had shared photos with the CIA depicting children and animals who’d been exposed to the so-called Novichok nerve agent after coming into contact with the Skripals.

Well of course it was the Evil Russians!  Didn’t Russians also shoot Roger Rabbit?  We’d been discussing this 2014 interview with Tulsi Gabbard on my post ‘analyses of the leaked ‘Deal of the Century’ I/P peace plan’ that I’d found that day and posted in comments, mainly wanting to feature her anti-Palestinian Hasbara.  As I remember it, this ‘blame’ started the horrific sanctions on Russia.

‘Well who the hell cares about Abu Dhabi’s mum, who the fuck’s she to us, anway?’ hollered Rear Admiral Michael Gilday.  General Rear Gild-the-Lily blustered on: ‘Who the fuck needs ‘evidence’, when we have Intel from Mossad?  And they say those terr’ists had attached magnetic limpet mines, those evil devils.  I don’t know how they delivered them; bathyscaphes or those friggin’ Russian spy dolphins for all I know, but who the hell cares? We know because Mossad told us so.

(click for larger)

When I’d first seen this report at aljazeera.com yesterday, I’d wondered about its accuracy, bias, etc: ‘‘India considers action against Pakistan after suicide attack, India’s foreign ministry said US supports New Delhi’s right to self-defence against cross-border attacks, aljazeera.com (with video featuring Sir Namasté Modi), but I’d also seen the Nuclear Clock even closer to midnight, as this seemingly intractable Elephant in the Room, Kashmir, between two nuclear powers…looming once again.

Now it would be easy to breeze by the major importance of this barbaric malfeasance cover story, save for the fact that dying empires are apt to find enemies that needn’t be, in the  case of the Western Imperium to exert total command and control of the world, and create enemies to pass legislation and military budgets to ‘fight the __ (fill in the blank) menace’ in this case China, no matter how administrations dress up the term, it’s still the new Axis of Evil doctrine.  Also at play is OBOR geopolitics.

(Pershing II missiles being transported away from a US base in Heilbronn)

Will John Bolton rescind it?  By all accounts he was the maniac who’s convinced his Boss Tweet to pull out of the INF (Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty).  Bolton will be in Moscow today and tomorrow and will discuss (cough) the issue with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, National Security Advisor Nikolay Patrushev,  FM Sergei Lavrov, and possibly Vladamir Putin on Tuesday.

Politikḗ on Twitter: 'Bellingcat’s new magnum opus'

(It’s longish, but instead of making a Part II, I’d thought it might serve as a reference for readers in the future, so one will have to do.) ; )

This is by way of Old News by now, but I’ve been trying to catch up.  You’ll know about this Deep Throat voice:  ‘I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration; I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations’, NY ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ Times.com, Sept. 5, 2018, (& handily included: Leer en español 阅读简体中文版閱 讀繁體中文版 한국어로  읽기日本語で読む)

Updates at the end of comments.

What we know (as opposed to Darth Cheney’s known unknowns) is that yesterday, Friday July 13 (Not april fools day, however), Deputy AJ Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of 12 Russian members of GRU, a military intelligence agency, and that they had “corresponded with several Americans through the internet”, including an associate of the Trump campaign (assumedly Roger Stone).