W. Niederhut

John, Math and logic were two of my strongest subjects in college. The "logic" of my question about Dresden vs. Munich in the Cold War era is that they were two cities with comparable populations under two very different political and economic systems-- the Soviet/Stasi communist police state vs. Western free market democracy. Who among us would have preferred to live in Dresden in the 1960s and 70s? No one. And, incidentally, Vlad Putin spent most of his KGB career in Dresden.

Not too surprising that any Houston Astros fan would get booed in Yankee Stadium, but it couldn't have happened to a sleazier ass clown... 🤥 'Coward' Cruz! Ted Cruz hid in closet amid insurrection then fueled Trump's big lie | Watch (msn.com)

John, In my case, you're preaching to the choir about the dark side of capitalism and the exploitation of the working classes, but I also agree with Churchill that, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for every other form of government." Seriously, would you have opted to live in Dresden or Munich in the post-WWII era? The Soviet Bloc or the Western democracies despised by Putin? Soviet communism was a socio-economic experiment that failed miserably, and Putin has, certainly, turned the Russian Federation's nascent democracy into a totalitarian, neo-Soviet style dictatorship. No one knowledgeable about the RF doubts that tragic reality. Look at Navalny's case! As for Putin's destruction of Ukraine, IMO, it was never about feeling threatened. It's about Russian nationalism, grandiosity, and militant imperialism. Putin wanted to restore the Crimea and contiguous territory in the Donbas to the Russian empire. And he is contemptuous of the Ukrainian people, the people who were starved to death by the Soviet government in the 1930s. I have had some direct, personal experience with Russian nationalists through my involvement in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. I tend to think of that subset of recent emigres as the "neo-Soviets." And they are quite different than the older generation, non-Soviet "White" Russians. I have even, at times, listened to neo-Soviet Russian nationalists whose speeches closely resemble those of Mussolini.

Yes, and there is nothing remotely equivalent in American history to Trump's multi-faceted efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election-- including his fraudulent high pressure campaign against Raffensperger and state officials in Georgia. Does Clarence Thomas really believe that Graham should be held to a more lenient standard than the rest of us, for using his high office to fraudulently subvert an election result? Where is the logic in that?

Apparently, our new forum member from the MAGA-verse, M. Koch, still hasn't figured out that Operation Fast & Furious was launched by the Bush/Cheney administration, in an attempt to trace guns to the Mexican cartels. But, more importantly, it's another MAGA deflection by M. Koch -- a moronic Both Siderist/What About-ism-- to change the subject from Trump and his election-hacking accomplices (including Senator Lindsey Graham) evading accountability for their unprecedented 2020 political crimes. Isn't it great having our once scholarly forum thread cluttered with this kind of Faux MAGA nonsense? 🤥

If anything, people in positions of authority and responsibility should be held to a high standard in cases of criminal conduct, including election fraud, shouldn't they? That's one thing that puzzles me about these endless evasions of accountability by Trump and his election-hacking accomplices. They behave as if their political offices excuse them from complying with laws and procedures that the rest of us routinely obey.

John, I agree that the U.S. would view this as an existential threat, but Mearsheimer's analogy is absurd on several counts. For one thing, if we think of an analogous "Russian domination of South and Central America" on the borders of the Russian Federation, what have the U.S. and NATO actually done? Talk to people in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc. They have eagerly welcomed the opportunity to be free and protected from domination by Putin's neo-Soviet police state-- after their terrible experiences under the Soviet yoke in the post-WWII era. Among other things, Stalin systematically sent his ethnic neighbors to the Gulag, as Solzhenitsyn described in detail. And, in true Stalinist fashion, Putin is even now exfiltrating Ukrainian civilians to Russian prison camps! As I asked you earlier in our discussion, would you have opted to live in Dresden or Munich in the post WWII era? U.S./NATO "domination" of Western Europe after WWII has consisted in supporting freedom and economic prosperity. The same thing has been true, more recently, in Eastern Europe. Those people don't want to be oppressed by Putin's police state. Here's a story from this past week that speaks volumes about Putin's Russian Federation today. Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate in concert Ukrainian conductor shot and killed by Russian troops for refusing to participate... - Classic FM October 17, 2022

Frankly, I'm fed up with people who continue to make excuses for sociopaths like Putin and his compromised American asset Donald Trump-- blaming others for their sociopathic conduct. Putin is a war criminal. No one forced him to invade and bomb Ukraine, while committing mass murder of civilians. He has intended to annex Ukraine for years. Trump is also a criminal, who conspired to overturn the results of our 2020 U.S. election, and even incited a violent armed attack on the U.S. Congress. Rather than repeating the same old Putin apologetics, try to educate yourself about the history of Putin and his totalitarian police state.

Addendum: Let me add that the moronic, redundant commentaries around here about the U.S. "booby-trapping" Putin into invading Ukraine are predicated on willful ignorance about Putin's true history, and his longstanding geopolitical agenda. Our sophomoric Putin apologists-- Chris Barnard, Benjamin Cole, et.al.--need to do some remedial reading. https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-Took-Back-Russia/dp/0374238715/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1666572097&sr=1-2 Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche―a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach―and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match―Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

John, My apologies. What questions have I not answered? I must have missed them-- which is easy to do with all of the constant non sequiturs and Fox News and YouTube posts on the board recently. Also, what threats have the U.S. and NATO posed to Putin's fascist police state during the past 20 years? Surely you don't imagine that the U.S. and NATO have had any intention of attacking Russia militarily, do you? The notion is simply absurd. If anything, the U.S. and NATO have assiduously attempted to avoid WWIII. Now Putin has pushed the West to the brink with his nuclear threats and brutal rape of Ukraine. Putin mainly feels threatened by Western economic prosperity and freedom-- and derides the West as decadent for tolerating things like free elections, term limits for democratically-elected officials, and civil rights for gay and lesbian citizens. He is openly contemptuous of liberal democracy. Meanwhile, he and his GRU goons have aggressively fomented ethnic and cultural strife in Europe and the U.S. in order to divide and weaken their perceived enemies. To what end? The man is evil-- a psychopath. I've been studying him for the past 15 years, after he and his FSB goons seized the ROCOR. I lived through that whole sordid process in the ROCOR from 2000-07. Putin wanted the ROCOR parishes in Western Europe and the U.S. for espionage purposes. KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent: Konstantin Preobrazhensky, Various, Andy Glad Graphic Design: 9780615249087: Amazon.com: Books

Thin gruel for a psychopath, eh, Jeff? Get a clue. You conveniently forgot to mention Putin's systematic serial murders of journalists, critics, and disaffected associates during the past twenty years, as he destroyed the RF's nascent democracy and turned it into a totalitarian police state. How about the poisoning and incarceration of Navalny? Now we can add months of war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and threats of nuclear blackmail to the list of Putin's psychopathic behaviors. Putin's psychopathy isn't a meme. It's a psychiatric fact. I can't educate Russia Today employees, or our YouTube "scholar," Chris Barnard, but I urge the intellectually curious to read Putin's People by Catherine Belton.

But, John, surely as a good Irishman, you must disapprove of Putin's FSB-controlled Russian Federation imposing their autocratic empire on a smaller neighbor like Ukraine? What does Putin's repressive police state have to offer the Ukrainian people? Even his oligarchic economy is corrupt-- essentially a crime syndicate. Aren't self-determination and basic liberty important values for nations? Granted, the U.S. CIA/military complex has destroyed democratic regimes and supported dictators throughout the world in the post WWII era, but not so much in Eastern Europe. The democracies in the former Soviet Bloc have, naturally, sought protection and autonomy from the Kremlin-- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc. The U.S. and NATO have not imposed totalitarian police states on Eastern Europe nations. Conversely, Putin has promoted a right wing fascist regime in Hungary (and in the U.S.)

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can lead a man to data, but you can't make him think. -- W. Niederhut I've tried to lead our local Putin apologists to the data, but I can't make them think. Who is Vladimir Putin, really, and what has been his geopolitical agenda during the past quarter century? They're still swearing by Mearsheimer, and blaming the West for Putin's longstanding imperialist/FSB agenda in the deconstructed Soviet Union. I attribute much of the ignorance about Putin to the pervasive Kremlin propaganda that has been funded in the West during Putin's tenure in the Kremlin-- and to the justifiable distrust of U.S./NATO/CIA propaganda. But, wake up, fellas! Putin is, in fact, a psychopath. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books Even as Putin is bombing civilians and infrastructure throughout the Ukraine, his apologists are still blaming the West for his war crimes! It's bizarre. Imagine blaming liberal Western democracies for Hitler's blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939... "Hitler needs lebensraum!" "There's a noose around Germany's neck!" etc., etc. Chris Barnard, John, Cotter, Benjamin Cole, et.al., obviously haven't taken my advice about studying Catherine Belton's historical opus, Putin's People. And they have repeatedly dismissed Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin's debunking of Mearsheimer. As a general rule, people should trust historians more than social theorists. Historians focus on data, not theories. Perhaps our Putin apologists around here could, at least, take the time to study this Atlantic book review of Putin's People. I'm including some brief excerpts about Putin, the FSB, and Ukraine. A KGB Man to the End The origins of Putin’s worldview—and the rise of Russia’s new ruling class Review: ‘Putin’s People’ by Catherine Belton - The Atlantic September 2020 Excerpt But the pivotal political event for Putin took place in 2005, when a pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, came to power in Ukraine after a street revolution. The Russian president blamed these events on American money and the CIA (an organization that, for better or worse, never had anything like that kind of influence in Ukraine). “It was the worst nightmare of Putin’s KGB men that, inspired by events in neighboring countries, Russian oppositionists funded by the West would seek to topple Putin’s regime too,” Belton writes. “This was the dark paranoia that colored and drove many of the actions they were to take from then on.” Not coincidentally, this scenario—pro-Western-democracy protesters overthrowing a corrupt and unpopular regime—was precisely the one that Putin had lived through in Dresden. Putin was so upset by events in Kyiv that he even considered resigning, Belton reports. Instead, he decided to stay on and fight back, using the only methods he knew. Although the American electorate awoke to the reality of Russian influence operations only in 2016, they had begun more than a decade earlier, after that first power change in Ukraine. Already in 2005, two of Putin’s closest colleagues, the oligarchs Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev, had begun setting up the organizations that would promote an “alternative” to democracy and integration all across Europe. With the help of intermediaries and friendly companies, and more recently with the assistance of xxxxx farms and online disinformation operations, they promoted a whole network of think tanks and fake “experts.” Sometimes they aided existing political parties—the National Front in France, for example, and the Northern League in Italy—and sometimes they helped create new ones, such as the far-right Alternative for Germany. The most important funder of the British Brexit campaign had odd Russian contacts. So did some cabinet ministers in Poland’s supposedly anti-Russian, hard-right government, elected after a campaign marked by online disinformation in 2015. The pro-Russian “separatists” who would later launch a war in eastern Ukraine got their start around 2005 too, with an even more apocalyptic result. Russian propaganda deliberately sought to divide Ukraine and polarize its citizens, while Russian corruption reached deep into the economy. Within a decade, the Russian operations in Ukraine led to mass violence. Some of the Ukrainians who attended Kremlin youth camps or joined the Eurasian Youth movement during the 2000s—often funded by the “charities” created by Malofeyev, Yakunin, and others—took part in the storming of Donetsk’s city-administration buildings in 2014, and then in the horrific Russian-Ukrainian war, which has disrupted European politics and claimed more than 13,000 lives. Russian soldiers, weapons, and advisers fuel the fighting in eastern Ukraine even now. All of these Russian-backed groups, from refined Dutch far-right politicians in elegant suits to the Donetsk thugs, share a common dislike for the European Union, for NATO, for any united concept of “the West,” and in many cases for democracy itself. In a very deep sense, they are Putin’s ideological answer to the trauma he experienced in 1989. Instead of democracy, autocracy; instead of unity, division; instead of open societies, xenophobia. Amazingly, quite a few people, even some American conservatives, are taken in by Russian tactics. It is incredible, but a group of cynical, corrupt ex-KGB officers with access to vast quantities of illegal money—operating in a country with religious discrimination, extremely low church attendance, and a large Muslim minority—have somehow made themselves into the world’s biggest promoters of “Christian values,” opposing feminism, gay rights, and laws against domestic violence, and supporting “white” identity politics. This is an old geopolitical struggle disguised as a new culture war. Yakunin himself told Belton, frankly, that “this battle is used by Russia to restore its global position.” Ultimately, all of these tactics had their culmination in the career of Donald Trump. In the last chapter of Putin’s People, Belton documents the activities of the biznesmeny who have circled around Trump for 30 years, bailing him out, buying apartments in his buildings for cash, offering him “deals,” always operating in “the half-light between the Russian security services and the mob, with both sides using the other to their own benefit.” Among them are Shalva Tchigirinsky, a Georgian black marketeer who met Trump in Atlantic City in 1990; Felix Sater, a Russian with mob links whose company served, among other things, as the intermediary for Trump buildings in Manhattan, Fort Lauderdale, and Phoenix; Alex Shnaider, a Russian metals trader who developed the Trump hotel in Toronto; and Dmitry Rybolovlev, an oligarch who purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion in 2008 for $95 million, more than double what Trump had paid for it in 2004, just as the financial crisis hit Trump’s companies.

Matt, Obviously, there were people in the intelligence community who knew in 2002 and early 2003 that the Bush/Cheney administration was making a fraudulent case for invading Iraq. Even Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill complained in his memoir, The Price of Loyalty, that Rumsfeld had been blathering about invading Iraq as early as January of 2001 (and also immediately after 9/11.) But Cheney and Rumsfeld had also staffed the Pentagon, CIA, and DOJ with PNAC insiders who intended to depose Saddam Hussein and implement their Project for a New American Century-- Wolfowitz, Feith, Zakheim, Krongard, Cherthoff, et.al. George Tenet played along with the whole scam. He sat next to Colin Powell during his Iraq WMD "slam dunk" presentation at the UN.

I'll have to visit Denver's Museum of Natural History this fall to check out this exhibit. Thanks for posting. But, speaking of aeronautical and space museums, is there a more interesting one on the planet than the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on the Washington Mall?! That place is incredible-- exhibiting everything from the Spirit of St. Louis to Glamorous Glennis, the Mercury space capsules, and even Sky Lab.

Interesting stuff. Regarding the Garrison files, I recall reading somewhere, possibly in Destiny Betrayed, that most of Garrison's files had been destroyed by Harry Connick, Sr. Obviously, many of his files have survived.

Matt, IMO the outing of Valerie Plame by Cheney, Libby, and Rove was not an indication that the Bush/Cheney administration wasn't working closely with George Tenant and the CIA in their "War on Terror" ops. In outing Valerie Plame, they were retaliating, foolishly, against Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, for outing their fraudulent claims about Nigerian yellow cake uranium and Iraqi WMDs during the run up to the Iraq invasion in March of 2003. Incidentally, we learned during Fitzpatrick's investigation of Scooter Libby and the Valerie Plame affair that Karl Rove had been appointed in 2002 to chair a secret Bush/Cheney committee in charge of selling the American public on the necessity of invading Iraq. The Bush/Cheney CIA and Pentagon was closely involved in the entire Project for a New American Century/"War on Terror." At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld's #2 and #3 men were PNAC members Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. PNAC men at the CIA included Bush/Cheney appointees Dov Zakheim and Buzz Krongard (whose financial associates were involving in shorting UAL and AA stock prior to 9/11.)

Let's not forget about the mysterious death of Senator Paul Wellstone on October 25, 2002-- after Dick Cheney had privately threatened Wellstone for not supporting the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld push to invade Iraq. Wellstone was expected to win re-election to the Senate in November of 2002. Wellstone's friend Al Franken believes that Wellstone's October plane crash was no accident.

Iranian-made kamikaze drones are also killing children in Ukraine this month.

I recall reading in James Douglass's book, JFK and the Unspeakable, about Wayne January's claim that he saw a visitor who looked like Oswald at Redbird Airport a day or two before November 22, 1963. He was with some other guys who were making inquiries about the leased CIA airplane that flew from Redbird to Houston on the afternoon of 11/22/63. It left me with the impression that Oswald thought he was going to be flown out of Redbird with the Cuban/CIA assassination team on 11/22/63. He didn't realize that he was going to be ditched in Dallas and murdered as the patsy. Isn't Larry Hancock the expert on this subject?

Mark, My latest attempt to engage Mathew Koch in an honest discussion here is also my final attempt. Mathew, obviously, won't even respond to basic questions from forum members. He's a spammer.

Well, it looks like Mathew Koch has completely ducked my questions, while continue to swamp the board with his YouTube and Fox MAGA spam. Lucky us. Questions for Mathew Koch 1) Does Mathew endorse Trump's "Stop the Steal" Big Lie and the 2022 GOP candidates, like Kari Lake, who have publicly endorsed Trump's Big Lie? 2) Does Mathew deny that Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election by organizing slates of False Electors and inciting a violent attack on the U.S. Congress on January 6, 2021? 3) Does Mathew support the Kevin McCarthy/GOP plan to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare if Republicans regain control of the House in 2023? C'mon, Mathew. Take a break from posting your daily MAGA spam and answer the questions.

The story is also being covered by The Guardian today. Biden officials sued over delayed release of JFK assassination records | John F Kennedy | The Guardian

Benjamin Cole to Be Executed in Oklahoma Oklahoma Inmate Facing Execution After Supreme Court Rejects Appeal (commondreams.org) October 20, 2022

Mathew, Unlike you, I'm not Fox/YouTube "scholar." In fact, I was studying history (science, economics, etc.) at an Ivy League college while you were probably still wearing diapers. So, it's quite presumptuous of you --and, frankly, ridiculous-- to imagine that you know what I "watch," (almost nothing) or where I get my detailed, accurate information about American history and current events. As for Kari Lake, do you agree with her publicly stated opinion that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump? That's a very important, basic question about her suitability for public office. Is she honest, or does she endorse Trump's Big Lie? Also, do you agree with the Kevin McCarthy/GOP plan to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, in the event that Republicans regain control of the House in 2023? Please answer these two questions.