Peace: My Career Path

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On any given day a person is displaced, tortured or killed, usually the United States shares the blame

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. I cannot be silent. — Martin Luther King (Cohen & Solomon, 1995; King, 1967).

What are you willing to do for your deepest held beliefs? In September 2015 I moved to Moscow Russia to seek political asylum, knowing that I may never return. I almost died there. In September 2018 I will return yet again to help Russia subvert the United States.

Internationally, the United States is the most violent country in the world. Conservative estimates are that the United States has killed 6 million civilians and soldiers since the end of World War 2 (Tirman, 2011). The London based non-governmental organization Amnesty International explained that, "Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed…at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame" (Human Rights & US Security Assistance, 1996). The United States "maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries" (Vine, 2015). Today the United States nearly spends more on its military that the next fourteen countries combined, accounting for the third of global spending on arms (Carroll, 2016; U.S. defense spending compared to other countries, 2019; Taylor & Karklis, 2016). The United States is the biggest arms seller in the world, selling half of all weapons on the global arms market, many of these arms are sold to friendly dictatorships which use the equipment to brutally suppress domestic and regional threats (Theohary, 2016; United States biggest arms seller, 2016). There are countless examples of American wars being waged today, such as the America's proxy War in Yemen. In the War in Yemen, the United States supplies the planes, arms, and logistical support to Saudi Arabia, it trained the pilots and it refuels the planes in the bombing runs against Yemen (Pawlyk, 2018; Turse, 2011; Wickenden, 2018). According to the United Nations, Yemen now has the "the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time". Yemen faces the fastest growing cholera epidemic ever recorded (Nikbakht & McKenzie 2018; Carey & Algethami, 2018).

In The Death of Others, Tirman (2011) asks why the average American is concerned about the number of American troops killed in foreign wars, "but are indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number [of civilian casualties]" (Tirman, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015). The author cites three reasons for American's indifference. First, our self-image called the "frontier myth" – in which righteous violence is used to subdue or annihilate savages. The second reason is racism which ties closely into the frontier myth. The third is what social scientists call "just world" theory, which posits that humans "naturally assume that the world should be orderly and rational. When the 'just world' is disrupted, we tend to explain away the event as an aberration." Therefore Americans tend to ignore or blame the victims of American wars (Tirman, 2011, 2012).

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King (1963)

If you were asked to be a member of the Underground Railroad for a slave would you participate? In Nazi Germany, if you had the chance to hide a Jew in your home, would you do it? Conservatively, the United States has killed as many people as Jews in the Holocaust, and they are continuing this death toll even today. While conservatives actively support the deaths of millions, liberals ignore the death tolls and instead focus on the deaths of mass shootings and deaths at the hands of the police, which is an infinitesimal fraction of the people that the United States government kills everyday. “All empires die of indigestion” Napoléon Bonaparte mused (The empire that is dead, 1996). The United States is on the precept of rapid decline and collapse. The last two empires, the Soviet Union in 1991, and the British Empire in 1956, both collapsed peacefully because of the invention of the nuclear bomb (Brown, 2001). Based on my social science research for the past two decades I am convinced that the United States and its people, inventor of the atomic bomb, is different, the United States will not go quietly into the night. Despite my virulent hatred of United States foreign policy and its arrogant and self-righteous people as a whole, I love the culture that I grew up in, I love a small handful of individual people in this county, and I love so much about this incredible capitalist empire. My deepest desire is for the United States to collapse and become a shadow of itself, but to implode peacefully and let China takes its rightful place as leader of the world, as it has done for the majority of the history of mankind.

I have worked in the Peace Movement for two decades. The Peace Movement in the United States is a farce full of "useful idiots". I have a viable plan to create a peace movement in the United States, but I do not have the resources or support of the American oligarchic government (Study: US is an oligarchy, 2014). Space prohibits me from explaining the history of the subversion of political movements by the United States and my personal experiences trying to launch a career in the Peace Movement in Washington DC in 2014 and 2015. As a result, in 2015, over a year before Trump was elected, I moved to Moscow, Russia to help subvert the United States and seek political asylum. I smuggled over a secret cyber security document to show the Russian government my sincerity. I had an incredibly troubling experience, while applying for political asylum the FSB (KGB) lawyer, across the street from the infamous Lubyanka headquarters, had me draw up a list of all of the websites I had created. I had the list on his desk and before I said anything, he pointed to my peace movement political action committee website and said this site is unacceptable. This told me three important factors:

• Unsurprisingly, like the United States, this proved the FSB was monitoring my internet activity and already knew about the website.
• At least at the time, the Russian government was not interested in me developing a peace movement against the United States.
• More importantly it showed that I would have to get the explicit permission of the Russian government to do anything in Russia. As a KGB spy in East Germany, Putin watched the collapse of the Soviet Union and is extremely anti-protest.

My Career Path

Education

I already have earned three degrees, I have a bachelors in marketing, I am a lawyer, and I have a Masters in International Relations. My law school thesis on American violence in Colombia was my second published book. Currently I am earning a master’s degree in Sociology from ASU while concurrently earning a Masters from a very prestigious university in Moscow, Russia. I am studying in Moscow as a career path for two reasons: 1) To understand and learn the way the Russian elite run the country 2) Make crucial contacts in the Russian government. This university’s alumni includes some of the top leaders and elite of the former Soviet Union. I will apply for an internship at a Russian think tank in the summer of 2019. After graduation my career goal is to work for a Russian think tank or for a member of the Duma, Russia’s congressional body, advising Russia on how to subvert the United States. The ultimate, long term career path is in one to two decades, is to be the first American to ever be elected to the Russian Duma.

Russian NGO

While in Moscow in 2015, “by chance” I met a former member of the номенклату́ра – Soviets ruling class while walking my dog in Бу́тово, a “bedroom community” in Moscow. “Ivan” worked for decades around members of the KGB and has numerous KGB contacts. I am almost certain that he is former or current KGB/FSB himself. “Ivan” suggested that I start a NGO in Russia for as little as 5,000 rubles, which he was researching for me last week. Despite pushing the limits of the security services patience when I lived in Moscow before, “Ivan” gave me explicit permission to return to Russia when I met him in Moscow in May, as long as I did not pursue political asylum again.

References

Brown, D. (2001). 1956: Suez and the end of empire. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education1

Carey, G. & Algethami, S. (2108). Your Questions About Yemen’s Humanitarian Crisis, Answered. Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-22/who-s-to-blame-for-pestilence-near-famine-in-yemen-quicktake

Carroll, L. (2016). Obama: US spends more on military than next 8 nations combined. Politifact. Retrieved from https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/13/barack-obama/obama-us-spends-more-military-next-8-nations-combi/

Cohen, J. & Solomon, N. (1995). The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Retrieved from https://fair.org/media-beat-column/the-martin-luther-king-you-dont-see-on-tv/

King, M. (1967). Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. Common Dreams. Retrieved from https://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm

King, M. (1963). Letter from a Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963. African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Nikbakht, D. & McKenzie, S. (2018). The Yemen war is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, UN says. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/03/middleeast/yemen-worlds-worst-humanitarian-crisis-un-intl/index.html

Pawlyk, O. (2018). General argues to continue refueling Saudi Planes in Yemen fight. Military.com Retrieved from https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/03/13/general-argues-continue-refueling-saudi-planes-yemen-fight.html

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. (2104). BBC. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

Taylor, A. & Karklis, L. (2016). This remarkable chart shows how U.S. defense spending dwarfs the rest of the world. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/09/this-remarkable-chart-shows-how-u-s-defense-spending-dwarfs-the-rest-of-the-world/?utm_term=.c2f5f0466665

The empire that is dead. (1996). The Herald. Retrieved from http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12123024.The_empire_that_is_dead/

Theohary, C. (2016). Conventional arms transfers to developing nations, 2008-2015. Congressional Research Service (a division of the Library of Congress). Retrieved from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R44716.pdf

Tirman, J. (2011). The deaths of others: the fate of civilians in america's wars. London, UK: Oxford University Press.

Tirman, J. (2012). The forgotten wages of war. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/opinion/the-forgotten-wages-of-war.html

Tirman, J (2013). ‘Kill anything that moves: the real American war in Vietnam’ by Nick Turse. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-anything-that-moves-the-real-american-war-in-vietnam-by-nick-turse/2013/01/25/f6f8db0c-5e95-11e2-90a0-73c8343c6d61_story.html

Tirman, J. (2015). The human cost of war and how to assess the damage. Foreign Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2015-10-08/human-cost-war

Turse, N. (2011). America's Saudi air war. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/2011316131230188238.html

U.S. defense spending compared to other countries (2018). Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

United States biggest arms seller, sold $40 billion in arms, says report. (2016). FirstPost. Retrieved from https://www.firstpost.com/world/united-states-biggest-arms-seller-sold-40-billion-in-arms-says-report-3176084.html

Human Rights & US Security Assistance (1996). Washington Office of Amnesty International. Wickenden, D. (2018). The American Bombs Falling on Yemen. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/the-american-bombs-falling-on-yemen

Vine, D. (2015). Where in the world is the U.S. military? Politco. Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321

Notes

[FOOTNOTE - 4 [iv]] This is an actual political term.

[FOOTNOTE - 5 [v]] Not his real name. I was told not to publish details of what happened in Moscow when I was living there before, lest the government would not allow me to return.

[FOOTNOTE - 6 [vi]] From Helen Keller to Charlie Chaplain, Americans often sanitize famous Americans. For a more in depth study of this trend, see Loewen, J. (2008). Lies My Teacher Told Me for Young Readers: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong. New York City, NY: New Press