FischerKing Profile picture
Oct 24, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This is from the memoir of current head of CIA William Burns. In 1989 he served under Secretary of State James Baker in a strategic planning role as communism fell. Here he outlines negotiations re German reunification - take note of highlighted part in context of Ukraine now. Image
More on the negotiations - the Russians aren’t lying about NATO: Image
More from Burns. Here he is discussing how the Russian foreign policy establishment felt about NATO expansion in 1995 under Yeltsin, long before Putin was on the scene. No one listened then either: Image
Clinton went ahead with NATO expansion despite warnings from US embassy in Moscow that it was a bad idea. Here is Burns noting that George Kennan, who developed original containment policy toward USSR, viewed it as huge error: Image
And here is Burns summing up his view of NATO expansion - keep in mind he published this in 2019, before this current war. Image
Here is Burns in a private email to Secretary of State Condi Rice in 2008. MAP refers to ‘Membership Action Plan,’ and was a neocon push - Dick Cheney in particular - to rapidly expand NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia. Russian elite - not just Putin - was totally opposed: Image
Burns described his final meeting with Putin as US ambassador. This was way back in 2008: Image
Sometimes I read that no one was ever proposing Ukraine for NATO, that Putin made it up. That’s not how current CIA director Burns described it. Here is statement from 2008 at Bucharest summit, shortly after meeting from prior tweet: Image

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More from @FischerKing64

Oct 21
1/McDonald’s has had an interesting trajectory. If you watch a film from ca 1980, there are scenes of trim privileged white kids hanging out there (Ordinary People). Kids of doctors and lawyers. Well into the 90s it was still a place that middle class kids held a birthday party.
2/Somewhere around 2000, the marketing shifted to blacks. They showed teens on stoops in Brooklyn calling it ‘Mickey Ds.’ This coincided with the total disappearance of the white middle class birthday party - and the set aside party room.
3/Some time later, the marketing didn’t seem targeted at any group at all. It just focused on tasty food that was almost certainly very bad for you. The market was lower class people who were overweight.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 17
The unipolar moment resulted in nearly all American foreign policy officials believing they can just go around the world and do anything they want. They were not challenged in this thinking, and now they mostly are incapable of thinking in a new multipolar world. They've become mediocrities trapped in groupthink, despite all the obvious failures.
Something similar seems to have happened in the political parties. An America on top of the world produced the same kind of politician in both parties who thinks we can just borrow $$ endlessly, bully the entire world endlessly, that the debt doesn't matter. And all the real disputes have centered on fairly trivial social issues. Boys in the girls bathroom is important, but not as important as $35 trillion in debt.
On the GOP side, Trump upended this trajectory. He points out things aren't looking so good at home, that the old way of thinking isn't working. He took out the Bush dynasty. And now you have all kinds of people from JD Vance to DeSantis who are new, more effective kinds of figures.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 3
Something for the Nixon fans. Back in 1974 Jack Margolis, after listening to the Watergate tapes, compiled a slender pamphlet titled "The Poetry of Richard Milhous Nixon." He presented Nixon's remarks as though they were profound ruminations on the issues of the day. Very funny. I will excerpt a few below.
This one deals with the complexity of the times, called "Mixed Emotions" Image
This one called "One Million Dollars" was Nixon pondering inflation Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 5
Being a night owl isn’t about staying up late for whatever reason, to drink or party. It’s about feeling a release of tension, an ease in the dark, that lets you do the work and study that makes you happy. Something about broad daylight creates a pressure to be involved with things, move with the hustle and bustle of people in the streets, when really you need solitude and silence.
I’ve spent my entire life trying to be an early bird, even following Kant’s schedule of waking each day at 5am. But it never took. I still try for pragmatic reasons and have to do it for work etc. But in the middle of the night - that’s when I’m really awake.
Benjamin Franklin was also famous for getting up early, to be productive. But when you read about his life, particularly in later years, this was more an aspiration than a reality. I suspect he was a night owl who fought hard against it. I throw this in given July 4 just passed.
Read 4 tweets
May 13
There is this debate about obesity. People trying to pinpoint the cause. Seed oils. Chemicals. But really it’s just obvious massive overeating, over consumption. People who are very bored, who have little to live for, and seek distraction. Obesity is a disease of abundance.
I think this is obvious, and that the search for conspiratorial causes (which are not always without merit) is also a sign of a lazy society where everyone has what s/he needs and simply doesn’t care very much. It’s a society without any deeper meaning.
Trying to pin 500 lb women on seed oils or plastics or lack of nutrients that can be cured by supplements - this is a grift of course. But it’s also an effort to look away, and to not recognize that we have a fat, lazy society because we have solved so many primal problems.
Read 4 tweets
May 4
Men of true principle - who take their racism seriously - will not go anywhere near this woman. Brown eyes are just a deal breaker… Image
This woman is also beyond the pale: Image
So is she - straight outta the gutter: Image
Read 7 tweets

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