War Warnings??                          #206

By Hank Silverberg 

On August 31, 1939, at a place called Gleiwitz, a small group of men dressed as Polish soldiers attacked a radio station on the other side of the nearby German border. The men were actually German soldiers under a false flag. And the incident was used, as planned, by Adolph Hitler as an excuse to invade Poland the next day. It touched off World War Two, though the United States did not get involved for another two years. 

I thought about this rarely-mentioned history the other day when U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Vladimir Putin could make up a similar excuse for invading Ukraine. His misinformation campaign on the internet is already underway. 

(Map of Eastern Europe courtesy of nationsonline.org)

Russia has been building up its forces along the  border for months, and is demanding that Ukraine never be admitted to NATO, the European and American military alliance that held the Soviet Union at bay for decades during the Cold War.  

Putin wants assurances that the United States will  agree not to expand NATO anywhere. He even wants some of the countries admitted in the last decade to be kicked out.

US intelligence says Russia has prepared a false-flag operation to invade Ukraine (yahoo.com)

Putin has been trying to resurrect the borders of the old Soviet Union and its eastern European sphere of influence since he took power in Russia after the failed war against Chechen rebels in the 1990's.  The Russian leader, a former KGB operative in the old Soviet Union, annexed the Crimea in 2014 and has already intervened politically in Belarus.

Soft annexation: Inside the Russian takeover of Belarus - Atlantic Council

Just last week Putin gladly sent troops to Kazakhstan at the request of authoritarian President Kassykm-Jomart Tokayev who has had trouble suppressing massive protests.    

Russia sends troops to put down Kazakhstan uprising as fresh violence erupts | Reuters

All of this has rattled our allies in Europe and presents President Biden with few alternatives. Biden has talked about massive financial sanctions against Russia, including disruption in construction of the Russian Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany. And some bills have been introduced in Congress to back that effort.  It would severely damage the Russian economy but it could also spell trouble for the German economy.  

Russia warns it will sever ties with the US if it sanctions Putin over Ukraine crisis (yahoo.com)

All this is playing out amidst a large internet  misinformation campaign directed by Moscow and aimed at Ukraine and the United States. It comes at a time when America and much of Europe is focused on a nasty pandemic and descent at home over how to battle it.  

The stakes are very high, perhaps higher than 1939.  

I am not a foreign policy expert and will not opine on what the U.S. should do. But if there is a shooting war,  we may have no choice. Remember  Russia remains a nuclear power. 

We simply can't afford to put our heads in the sand and ignore her design on Ukraine.  On this issue the Republicans in Congress must forget about their differences with Biden and follow his lead. 

I am glad about one thing. Biden is a skilled politician who has some very good people working for him. If Trump was still in office, Putin would get whatever he wanted.  

The Old Dominion in Reverse!

(Youngkin's Inaugural address courtesy Gov's office)

As I previewed last week, Virginia now has a new Republican Governor. Glenn Youngkin took over as the 74th Governor this past Saturday and immediately set the state back a decade, if not more. 

First a few facts:

1 )Virginia governors can not serve consecutive terms. Two Democrats, Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, served as the last two governors. Northam had a Democratic majority in the General Assembly for the last two years of his term. 

2) When Northam left office, the state had a $3.8 billion budget SURPLUS, even with the pandemic economy.  

3) The state's schools as a whole are ranked 4th best in the country. 

4) The state is ranked 5th as a good place to do business on the annual Forbes magazine list, and has been in the top ten since 2006.   

5) The unemployment rate in December, 2021 was 3.4% and on a downward trend.  

6) Eighty percent of Virginia's population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine and 68% are fully vaccinated.  

These are facts, not party propaganda. 

So, what is the first thing Glenn Youngkin does?  

Republican Glenn Youngkin takes flurry of executive actions after swearing-in as Virginia’s governor (msn.com)

He is messing with the public schools by banning the teaching of "inherently divisive concepts," including "critical race theory," even though CRT is not in the curriculum in any school district in the state. And he is bringing in a Secretary of Education who wants to help him expand the use of Charter Schools. That leaves lots of questions on what an "inherently divisive concept" is. Will we see challenges to curriculum that talks about things that make a lot of parents nervous, like the horrific  details of chattel slavery, the cruel American wars against indigenous peoples, Jim Crow or the Holocaust? 

Youngkin also removed the mandate for K-12 students to wear masks in school, even though there is some question if he has the power to prevent local districts from enacting their own mask mandates. And of note, no one who was crowded into the small room where these Executive Orders were signed was wearing a mask. 

Two of the biggest school districts in the state, Arlington and Fairfax Counties, have already indicated they will ignore the Governor's Executive Order and will maintain mandatory masking and they are being joined by a number of others particularly in Northern Virginia. 

The Executive Order directly conflicts with legislation approved by the General Assembly last session mandating that school districts statewide follow the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control on Covid. That guidance still includes mandatory masking for K-12 students.   

And Youngkin has removed Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative which is aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions at a time when the effects of Climate Change are having a substantial impact on our daily lives. (Youngkin says the initiative raises utility bills.) Also of note, his new Secretary of Natural Resources is a former lobbyist for the coal industry and a former EPA director under President Trump who stripped many of the country's recent environmental regulations.        

Governor Youngkin signs 11 executive orders – The Bull Elephant

Not all was bad. Youngkin did set up a Commission to Combat Anti-Semitism, though one must wonder, considering his flirtation with Donald Trump and the Alt-right, how credible that will be. 

He also set up a Commission to Combat Human Trafficking.  

In Virginia, the General Assembly really has more power than governors limited by law to one term.  Mr. Youngkin, who has no political experience, will have to deal with a split General Assembly. Republicans now control the House of Delegates, but Democrats still control the State Senate. It will be interesting to see how he works with them. 

Covid Testing Scams!

If there is one thing I learned from my years as a 

consumer reporter, is that nothing is sacred to scam artists. If they think they can make money off it, they will do it, no matter who it hurts or even kills. The latest rip-off: phony websites and suspicious in-person Covid-19 testing sites that are used to collect personal or insurance information from you. 

The Better Business Bureau says some of them appear on-line to be affiliated with a local pharmacy, but aren't.  When you arrive, they take your information, like insurance card and driver's license number. Then they put a swab in your nose and promise test results in a day or two. But the test is fake and the results never arrive. The information they mined can then be used for identity theft.   

In another version of the scam, you fill out all that information on-line, and pay a small fee for an appointment. But when you arrive the pharmacy has no record of your reservation because the website was a scam. 

One particular problem here is "look-alike" websites that may mimic legitimate ones. 

BBB Scam Alert: Getting a COVID-19 test? Make sure the testing site is real

The best advice is to stick to government health department websites for legitimate testing sites and avoid any unsolicited calls or messages about testing. Also, read the fine print on anything you are asked to sign. 

You can track such scams at: BBB Scam Tracker℠ | Find and Report a Scam | Better Business Bureau. 

Bye Bye OAN??

If you think Fox News is bad, try OAN, the One America News Network. It's blatant propaganda and has really been the Trump Propaganda Network since 2015. Well, here is some good news. DirectTV,  which has been the largest distributor of OAN, has now told the company their contract will not be renewed. It will disappear from DirectTV, which is owned by AT&T, sometime in the spring when the current contract runs out. That leaves Verizon Fios as the only major program distributor

for OAN, though the network is also streamed on-line. Let's all send some e-mails to Verizon to get them to also drop this purveyor of fake news as soon as  possible. Now, before you scream censorship, please realize OAN is not an objective news source. In fact, it's not news by any definition. It's like a constant misleading commercial for right-wing wackos, including the DFP (Defeated Former President). 

Thank You, General 

I can't let this blog go by this week without mentioning the death of an American hero you may not have heard of. Brigadier General Charles McGee died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 102. His family says he had his right hand over his heart when he died. 

The General was one of the first Black men to fly for the United States in war when he joined the famed Tuskegee Airmen in 1942. He was one of the most highly decorated members of that squad. 

McGee eventually flew 409 combat missions in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam. I met General McGee at the Smithsonian's  Air and Space Museum Annex in Northern Virginia a few years ago. He was signing copies of his auto-biography, which I have read. He didn't think of himself as a hero. The book is not a literary masterpiece, but worth reading. It recalls his fights both abroad and at home by an American warrior who had success at everything he was asked to do.  Rest in peace, General, and thank you.  

(Your suggestions for, and comments on this blog are welcome). 

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