The geopolitical alliance we don't want to talk about: hearts and minds edition

U.S. aircraft carriers in the Arabian sea

The war in Vietnam was all about winning hearts and minds and in the early 21st century things are no different. But instead of dropping propaganda leaflets on enemy soldiers, today the battle for hearts and minds is waged online and in the media.

Recently I have become a fan of Russia Today, or as they are now known after their recent re-branding, simply RT. I started following them regularly after their site was the only place I could watch coverage of Kim Jong Il's funeral, which was awesome by the way.

Clearly this name change was meant to downplay the fact that Russia Today is a slick modern 24 hour cable news propoganda channel supported by the Russian government. Not only do they broadcast their news channel on satellite but they also do a pretty good job with social media. As you can see they even sponsor tweets and do so (shockingly) especially when the topic is an issue the President's liberal base vocally disagreed with him on.

Putin sees that the West dominates the international media discourse and he is using every tool at his disposal to try and level the playing field and force America to deal with the same level of scrutiny that Russia has to deal with. Putin wants to undermine the West's version of events and is still reeling from a serious loss when the West's intervention in Libya succeeded. Russia initially opposed action in Libya but later relented in the face of international pressure.

Russia and Putin don't want to see a repeat of what happened in Libya when dealing with Assad for a lot of reasons. Chief among them is Russia's decades old alliance with Syria, and oh yeah, their only naval base outside of the former Soviet Union just happens to be in Syria. Russia has sent one, possibly two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean Sea in what seems to be an attempt to deter the United States from attacking Syria and possibly Iran at the same time.

On a deeper level, I think Russia has to support Syria in case Putin's brand of "soft authoritarianism" becomes inadequate as a mechanism for him to maintain power and he is forced to start using mass violence against his own people as Bashar Al-Assad is now. Putin fears that if another domino in what seems to be a wave of western supported revolutions is allowed to fall, the West will get a new puppet, Russia will lose an ally and the Russian people will be further emboldened to reclaim their country from Putin's corrupt grip.

So the RT probably wants to convince us to stop our government from attacking Iran and Syria. RT often posts about Iran's capabilities in an attempt to convince the American people that any military action would be suicide. I happen to agree with them. But in light of current events I am not sure a confrontation can be avoided. After the failure of the watered down UN resolution against Syria because of Russia and China's veto we have closed our Embassy in Syria and leveled new economic sanctions against the Iranian central bank. These are not encouraging developments.

I fear we may be headed inexorably toward conflict with Iran and Syria and by extension Russia and China. I don't understand why the President feels the needs to take such a belligerent stand on Iran. The American people are tired of war and don't want to see another military adventure in the Middle East even if it means Iran might be able to join the already pretty large nuclear club.

As the situation continues to deteriorate, the British government is banning an Iranian TV channel ostensibly because they failed to pay a fine. I predict we will see more stories like this one as the battle for international hearts and minds goes on. And now that Julian Assange will be getting a show on RT I worry that soon I won't be able to hear the admittedly biased version of events coming from Moscow and be forced to go back to the BBC for something a little closer to the truth than the mainstream media here in the United States is willing to tell.

The Defense Industry attempts social media

Now that the Super-committee has failed, billions of automatic cuts to the federal budget will soon go into effect.

What does this mean for the world's most powerful military you ask? Well, if  Congress does nothing it means $450 billion in cuts...over 10 years. Yes, over 10 years. Most of the mainstream media coverage of this story leaves out that last little detail.

A $45 billion cut in what is estimated to be a total defense / homeland security / intelligence / veterans affairs budget of somewhere near $1.2 TRILLION a year (not the $750 billion official appropriation) is probably not that big of a deal. But the defense industry has put aside their parochial concerns for their own individual weapons systems and are working together to oppose these cuts.

"Astroturf" is the term for when a corporation needs to make it look like they have popular support, and boy is Second to none an AstroTurf operation if I have ever seen one. A dead giveaway is the full color glossy posters these defense industry workers are holding up:

To be honest though, I expected more from the combined resources of Boeing, BAE, Northup Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics to name just a few.

They don't even have a Facebook page, and only 373 people have "liked" the page, including me. Pretty pathetic.

They did however suggest that I use a specific hashtag when "supporting" their campaign: #secondtonone

But without anyway to engage with people, how do they expect these social media efforts to pay off?

Moreover, when the official figure for how much we collectively spend on drones, aircraft carriers, tanks, satellites and nuclear weapons dwarfs all the other major countries in the world combined, do we really have anything to worry about?

I do feel bad for these workers. I don't want anyone to have to lose their job. But if just some of the trillions of dollars we spend on the military could be used to ween the United States off oil we wouldn't need to maintain the global military force we have today.

The greatest irony of this AstroTurf campaign is that even if the budget was cut by almost $100 billion a year, the United States still wouldn't be second to anyone. Second to the rest of the world combined maybe, but I think that is probably good enough don't you think?

Who follows you on Twitter?

After creating my twitter account back in March, I have recently surpassed 500 followers. And as Ron Burgundy would say "I am kind of a big deal."

Here are some of the highlights that made me laugh when I got the email from Twitter telling me that they started following me.

Alexander The Great hun? Pretty sweet.

And Archie McPhee? I mean I am the mayor of that place on Foursquare, I should hope they would start following me. For those of you who don't live in Seattle, you are missing out. Check out their awesome website: http://www.mcphee.com/shop/

The Mayor. Again, I am a pretty big deal. You know you are jealous.

And what set of Twitter follower would be complete without Turd Blossom himself. Yeah, this one made me fall out of my chair laughing.

Last but not least:

 
Yes! All of Western Civilization has realized how awesome my tweets are. Suck it world.

Astronomy Binoculars

Now that the Northwest is finally moving into the star gazing season, I am super excited that my astronomy binoculars have finally arrived.

Thanks Amazon.com and Celestron! I can't wait to test them out.

One of the main reasons I wanted something to compliment my telescope is to better watch when the International Space Station passes over. If you haven't ever seen it, you are missing out. When the ISS is transiting the sky it is by far the brightest and fastest moving object in the sky. I highly recommend Twisst. In my experience Twisst is the best use yet found for Twitter. If you list your city in your Twitter profile it will tweet at you with the time the space station will pass over and what direction you should look.

In the meantime take a look at these amazing pictures of the Space Shuttle Endeavor docked with the ISS: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/e27depart.html