On paper, the leader of the California secession movement lives in an apartment complex near San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood. But in reality, the Calexit campaign is being run by a 30-year-old who lives and works in a city on the edge of Siberia.

Louis Marinelli heads the secessionist group Yes California. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the organization has gone from an unknown fringe group to one discussed seriously in mainstream media.

What has not been discussed as prominently is Marinelli’s deep ties to Russia.

A former right-wing activist from Buffalo, New York, Marinelli first moved to Russia almost a decade ago. He studied at St. Petersburg State University, the alma mater of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He returned to the United States to campaign against LGBTQ rights as part of the National Organization for Marriage.

Marinelli then returned to Russia. He would marry a Russian citizen, and the couple moved to San Diego, where Marinelli launched a political career based on a platform of California secession.

“I immigrated to California, and I consider myself to be a Californian,” Marinelli says from his apartment in Yekaterinburg, a city of about 1.4 million just east of the Ural Mountains and about 1,000 miles from Moscow.

In an interview with The California Report, Marinelli confirms he’s living and working in Russia as a teacher.

More in link plus audio: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/12/13/from-his-home-in-russia-calexit-leader-plots-california-secession/

SEP 2016. Moscow welcomes the (would-be) sovereign nations of California and Texas:

The speaker was calling for California’s independence from the United States.

Alexei Gavrilko nodded approvingly. A burly, bearded, camouflage-wearing separatist from eastern Ukraine, he said he had come to the posh Moscow hotel just outside the Kremlin to “communicate with colleagues” representing separatist and secessionist groups from the United States, Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.

During a conference dubbed the Dialogue of Nations, Gavrilko listened carefully to Louis Marinelli, head of the Yes California group that is determined to hold the Golden State’s “independence referendum” in 2019.

“For the first time in history, we, the people of California, who were conquered and annexed by the American military about 170 years ago, will have a chance to express our voice to either remain a state in the American union, or instead, to pursue a path toward a nationhood,” Marinelli said solemnly.

Gavrilko, who is from the unrecognized but de facto independent Donetsk region, and the entire separatist crowd cheered and applauded. They did it again, louder, when Nate Smith, a self-proclaimed “foreign minister” of the Texas Nationalist Movement, promised that one day, the independent Lone Star state “can formally exchange ambassadors with your free and independent countries.”

The arrival of Californian, Texan, Puerto Rican, Northern Irish, Catalan, Italian and Lebanese secessionists to mingle with activists from several unrecognized separatist territories in former Soviet republics is becoming a tradition as Moscow turns to belligerent, anti-Western nationalism coupled with a readiness to take up arms against its former Soviet vassals.

Moscow uses these gatherings to promote its political agenda, gain more political leverage in the West and push for the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine, a former lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party said.

“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html

The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,

“The more the West is disunited, the more beneficial it is to Russia,” Sergei Markov said, adding that the secession of California and Texas — a prospect that would appear to be something of a long shot — would “undoubtedly benefit” the Kremlin.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-separatists-snap-story.html

After that Tuesday, you know the one, I went to work straight away, getting ready. Grief be damned. My preparations were intuitive but deliberate, and these weeks later I find myself in a place of calm resolve, clear on what’s required of me. Preparing to do it. Preparing. For those grasping for a path, I’d like to share how I got here. There’s nothing special about it. Anyone can repeat the process.
Well, I do have one leg up on you that made all this easier, I’ve been trained as an organizer (what I mean by that is another essay for another day) and if you’re serious about opposing what’s coming, I suggest you get trained as an organizer too (I’ll get to it in Part Three, promise). What follows is not for the organizers though. This is for those of you who’ve realized more is required of you… But have no idea where to start.

For context, let me state some truths I hold self-evident:
1 Donald Trump will be President.
2 The next 4–8 years will be very, very, very bad. Worse than most folks are currently allowing themselves to confront. There is no telling how long it will take us to recover. (If you just thought, “8 years? He’ll be so awful, there’s no way he gets reelected,” please consider where that type of confidence has gotten us thus far.)
3 How bad this gets rests a great deal on us. Not just how hard we work but how smart. How well we work together.
4 The work that must be done will not be done online.
5 Each of us already has everything we need to confront this moment.

Let me say that one more time: Each of us already has everything we need to confront this moment.
Attempting to codify how I found my way to this clarity of purpose, a metaphor presented itself. Odd, I thought, considering I’ve only been surfing twice and never really stood up on the board. Then I remembered that David Mitchell line, “…your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

Step one: Dive deep.
Like a surfer paddling out past the place where the waves break, the most efficient path to a place of preparedness and poise is to dive underneathe. Taking the waves head on can sap your strength as they buffet you back, erasing progress. The most efficient way through is to dive deep.
For some, this may be the most challenging step. The work is emotional and internal. It demands that you confront yourself honestly:
What do you value in life, at the most basic level?
Where does your power come from?
What are you willing to sacrifice in order to defend your values?
There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. There is only honesty and denial. The moment you read them, you knew the answers. Maybe some rang clear like a bell. Others shuttered soft, muffled. But the answers are already there. Don’t settle for the first one you find, though. Keep digging. Bust through walls, dynamite discomfort, self loathing and fear to get to them. Get over it. Push through. If not for you, for us. We need you.
These answers are your compass. With out honest ones, you’re already lost.
While you’re searching for them, tune out the rest of the world. Stay off the internet. Don’t watch the news. Disconnect. Go quiet. Strive to find your way with out the distortion of other’s opinions and perspectives. There’s a reason I’m telling you how I got here, but not where I am. My way forward is not yours. Your gifts are not mine. All of us being our best selves, that’s how we protect the things we care about. That’s how we oppose what’s coming.

Step Two: Look Around… continues here: https://medium.com/angelinaburnett/whats-next-part-two-55af745cd148#.uxx04996c

Trump expected to sign cyber security executive order Tuesday

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on cyber security on Tuesday, a source familiar with the situation said, marking the first action to address what he has called a top priority of his administration.

The order is expected to commission several different reviews of the government’s offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, according to two other sources briefed on a draft of the order that circulated last week.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/trump-expected-to-sign-cyber-security-executive-order-tuesday-source/

For the next thirty seconds, I want you to disregard all political affiliation and ponder this;

How many ‘coincidences’ does it take to make a fact?

In the first week of December Sergei Mikhailov, the head of the Russian FSB cyber unit was in a meeting, when men came in, put a black bag over his head, and dragged him out. He hasn’t been seen since. And now he’s been charged with Treason, presumably for giving information to the United States of America. He’ll face a secret military tribunal and nobody will ever know what happens to him.

Shortly thereafter Ruslan Stoyanov, head Russian FSB counterintelligence whose job it would have been to find spies, was also arrested as a traitor.

In the last week of December, an ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump was murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on December 26, 2016. Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is named in the dossier.

Now before you re-activate your partisan brain, consider for a moment that Exxon Mobil, under Rex Tillerson, brokered a deal with Russia in 2013 for 60 million acres of Russian land to pump oil out of, but all that Russian oil went through pipelines in the Ukraine, who heavily taxed the proceeds, and were applying for admission into NATO at the time.

Putin subsequently invaded Ukraine in 2014, secured the routes to export the oil tax-free by sea, and took control of the port where their Black Sea Naval Fleet is based, by taking the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine by force and not giving it back. This was Hitler-tier imperialism that broke every international law in the free world.

After Obama sanctioned Russia for the invasion, they could only pump oil from approximately 3 of those 60 million acres. But now Rex Tillerson is soon to be our Secretary of State, and as of today, there’s information circulating that Donald Trump will likely unilaterally remove all sanctions against Russia in the coming days or weeks.

You realize that Putin will make half a trillion dollars from that much untapped oil, right? All pumped tax-free through Crimea, stolen from Ukraine, now owned by Russia?

You realize that Putin may have subverted our government just to become the richest man on the planet, right?

You realize that placing Trump in the Presidency may never have been the primary objective of the Russian election interference, which was simply to put a man in place who could be blackmailed into giving Rex Tillerson, recipient of the Russian Order of Friendship medal, power and influence, right?

And check this: The State Department has undergone a purge. People who have been there since the ‘70s have all resigned or been asked to leave. The diplomatic branch of the United States government will now be Tillerson’s workplace alone. Rex Tillerson is now the real man in charge of international affairs, doing the real deals. Trump is just a figurehead tweeting about torture and crowd size, insulting Mexico for the lulz, and photoshopping his hands so they look bigger.

Guys, what is really going on?

Putin has vast experience blackmailing billionaires as leverage to pry apart self-destructing superpowers from his KGB days. And what’s happening in the USA of 2017 fits that modus operandi to a tee.

After reading through the Steele paper, and seeing that the only real criticism of it has been that it seems too good to be true, I’m definitely inclined to believe that the CIA and FBI aren’t just pretending to be concerned in the name of party politics (especially since they very rarely see eye-to-eye on anything).

Don’t you find it suspicious that Trump hasn’t made any move to stop sucking up to Russia despite the fact that his entire intelligence network is telling him that the FSB played him like a fiddle, and was directly responsible for sabotaging the American election? Instead, he’s just flipped into indignant denial mode and still aggressively pursues a close economic relationship with a nation who is directly opposed to the USA in every geopolitical way imaginable.

We need to wake up before it’s too late.

America has had its lunch money stolen by the yard bully, and now he’s dangling it in front of us all saying he didn’t do shit. And the average Trump follower just doesn’t care. No matter how damning the evidence, if the news isn’t pro Trump, then it’s “fake news.” The degree of collaborationist sentiment and blatant disregard for Truth in the face of infiltration by our most dangerous geopolitical threat is truly staggering. Most trump supporters would have Hillary executed for using a private email server, but would let Trump, Tillerson, and the Russian government get away with a massive scheme like this, and smile about it.

Diminishing or ignoring what is happening isn’t going to solve anything. Are you honestly telling me that you don’t see a conflict of interest here that potentially endangers our National Security? Because it looks like the Cold War just ended, only we didn’t win. Putin’s job is done here, now he can just sit back and watch us go at each other. The allies that we haven’t yet alienated actually feel horrible for us, and secretly fear that America will tear itself apart in the next 4 years.

So the question is, what are you prepared to do? I know it feels like there’s nothing you can do, but here is something you can do: Contact your Senators and Representatives to tell them that you oppose Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, and aggressively support the Congressional Hearings by telling your Congress people that you want Trump’s tax returns subpoenaed, and the allegations in the Steele Dossier investigated. Demand a full and fair investigation into the objective Truth of the matter, whatever it may be, for the safety and security of America.

Or you can convince yourself this is still about the election, just say “Hillary lost, Trump won”, and let it slide. But if we do that, there may be no coming back from it. And I don’t think anyone wants that.

However, if it turns out that is what everyone really wants, well I mean hey, I guess we had an awesome run with this “Democracy” thing…

This article has been distributed elsewhere around the web for maximum exposure.

Sidenote: I was going to cite and link to all the facts presented here, but those who don’t wanna hear the facts will just shriek ‘fake news!!!!’ anyway.

So fuckit.

J

In a great ironic twist, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has been promising to lead the investigation of Hillary Clinton even now that Donald Trump has become president, and is now under fire himself for use of an illegal private email server.

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Rep. Chaffetz to the FBI, explaining:

The Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to the FBI on Wednesday morning for possibly breaking Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C. Sec. 793(f) of the federal code, which makes it unlawful to send or store classified information on a personal email. As was recently resurfaced by the Democratic Coalition’s #TrumpLeaks program, Rep. Chaffetz lists his personal Gmail address on business cards brandished with the Congressional seal. Rep. Chaffetz sits on the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, which has jurisdiction over “internal and homeland security,” among other things.

“The mishandling of classified information that concerns the national security of our nation is something that the FBI takes very seriously,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition. “The irony is unparalleled- Representative Chaffetz, the person who led the charge against Secretary Clinton’s personal email server use, could actually be the one who is breaking the law and putting our national security at risk in the process.”

This coalition brings up several good questions.

First, will Chaffetz be able to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton while he himself is suspected of doing the exact same thing she’s accused of doing?

http://theproudliberal.org/congressional-gop-utterly-silent-after-jason-chaffetz-busted-using-personal-email-server/