W. Niederhut

Ben, Newsflash. You are one who brought up Trump (above) with your absurd comment about "Trump possibly (being) right about NATO." I responded to your Trump comment by posting a reference from Dr. Fiona Hill about the marked contrast between Biden and Trump vis-a-vis NATO and Putin. Trump was a disaster on NATO and support for Ukraine. Hill should know, because she was Trump's own expert advisor on Russia. Did you study Dr. Hill's commentary? As for the current Ukraine crisis, Biden was correct in warning us about the impending invasion and working to rally our allies to respond with weapons and sanctions. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and the Fox News pundits ridiculed Biden's warning, and Tucker Carlson has been prominently featured on Russian state television as a Putin apologist during the past month. Trump praised Putin as a "genius" for invading Ukraine. As POTUS, he and Paul Manafort altered the Republican Party platform in Cleveland in 2016 to withhold armaments from Ukraine in their border war with Russia! Putin is a war criminal, and his atrocities in Ukraine are an abomination. Simultaneously, he is engaging in nuclear blackmail-- openly threatening to use his hypersonic nuclear missiles. He recently flew nuclear armed aircraft into Swedish airspace, and has threatened Finland and Sweden about joining NATO. This is a very dangerous situation in which Putin is behaving irrationally and erratically. Nuclear brinksmanship and the risk of a global nuclear catastrophe must be avoided. As for your daily diatribes blaming Biden for Putin's shocking atrocities, let me ask you a question. Do you also blame FDR for Hitler's blitzkrieg of Poland in 1939? And, if so, why? Explain your reasoning.

Ben, It's time for your daily reality check. The U.S., U.K., and NATO have played a critical role in Ukraine's surprisingly successful resistance to the Russian ground invasion. And Putin's puppet, Donald Trump, was dead wrong about NATO. Take a break from Glenn Greenwald and study this brief analysis by Trump's own former Russian policy advisor, Dr. Fiona Hill. Former top Trump Russia adviser details the sharp contrast between Trump and Biden https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/former-top-trump-russia-adviser-details-the-sharp-contrast-between-the-former-president-and-biden/ar-AAU5Chu?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

Joe, This kind of menacing, violent Trumplican behavior has been a worsening problem in the U.S. during the Trump era. My hunch is that we have all witnessed this Trumpian phenomenon in recent years-- people threatening clerks and employees about mask mandates, driving their trucks into crowds of George Floyd protesters, etc. It's part of a general breakdown in rational, constructive conviviality in American society, triggered by the Trump GOP's cynical exploitation of bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and hostility to science. Ben has consistently been on the wrong side of the eight ball on this issue-- e.g., denying the seriousness of the unprecedented, violent January 6th attack on the Congress by Trump's right wing mob, and minimizing the gravity of the Whitmer kidnap plot. What's equally absurd is watching people evoke George Orwell and 1984 in the context of criticizing the basic rule of law-- including attempts to investigate and prosecute right wing threats and violence in the U.S. The tide of Trump/GOP right wing violence in the U.S. isn't accurately measured by body counts alone, as Ben is claiming. Think of the Nashville bomber as an example. He blew up half of a city block without killing anyone except himself.

What utter bunk. Your narrow focus on mortality stats alone is a misrepresentation of the numerous right wing domestic terror plots and non-fatal attacks on institutions and individuals in the U.S. since 2015 -- including the right wing January 6th attack on the U.S. Congress. As for "division," the entire Trump movement since 2015 has been predicated on ethnic demagoguery and division of society by racist appeals to white supremacy in the U.S. Trump's division of U.S. society along racial and cultural fault lines has proceeded in parallel with the Kremlin's cyber warfare promoting social division in the U.S. and the promotion of Trump's election in 2016 -- including Russian hacking of voter registration bases in multiple U.S. states prior to the election. Trump's popularity in the 2016 Republican primaries surged when he called for a ban on Muslim immigration and started attacking Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "drug dealers." Simultaneously, the U.S. experienced a marked increase in white hate crimes, which was not limited to fatalities. In fact, Trump's persistent racist rhetoric since 2015, and his refusal to condemn right wing white supremacists has normalized the kind of right wing violence that we all witnessed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Trump has been accurately characterized as a "stochastic terrorist"-- a demagogue who has directly incited violence in the U.S. And let's not forget about the epidemic of Trumplican threats and violence against U.S. election and public health officials, businesses, airline hostesses, and citizens tasked with enforcing mask mandates during a deadly pandemic! http://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/7033.jpeg

Ben, Your above post is a highly misleading distortion of the data. Right wing domestic terrorist attacks in the U.S. have not been limited to the murders of immigrants. The recent surge in right wing domestic terrorism has also targeted racial and religious minority groups in the country-- blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Jews, and LGBT citizens-- journalists, and "liberals," including Democratic members of Congress and other public officials, like Governor Whitmer. How many mosques, synagogues, and black churches in the U.S. have been attacked in recent years? It's a very serious problem. From the reference I posted above: Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. “What is most concerning is that the number of domestic terror plots and attacks are at the highest they have been in decades,” said Seth Jones, director of the database project at CSIS, a nonpartisan Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in national security issues. “It’s so important for Americans to understand the gravity of the threat before it gets worse.” More than a quarter of right-wing incidents and just under half of the deaths in those incidents were caused by people who showed support for white supremacy or claimed to belong to groups espousing that ideology, the analysis shows. Victims of all incidents in recent years represent a broad cross-section of American society, including Blacks, Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, Asians and other people of color who have been attacked by right-wing extremists wielding vehicles, guns, knives and fists. Dozens of religious institutions — including mosques, synagogues and Black churches — as well as abortion clinics and government buildings, have been threatened, burned, bombed and hit with gunfire over the past six years.

He would probably sell more copies of this new book if he put a photo of Jackie in a bikini on the cover... 🤥

Ben, You seem to be drawing precisely the wrong conclusions about this case, and seem to lack awareness of the facts about the more general issue of right wing domestic terrorism in the U.S. Are you aware that two of the ring leaders in the Whitmer kidnapping plot already entered guilty pleas? Meanwhile, it sounds like these recent acquittals were based on the premature timing of the FBI arrests, questions about FBI entrapment, and a lack of unanimity in the juries about the specificity of the plots. But the kidnappers clearly discussed plans to abduct and murder a U.S. governor-- in retaliation for her COVID public health mandates! Trump openly encouraged this kind of loony resistance at the time. As for the broader issue of the rise of right wing domestic terrorism in the U.S., it is real, and serious. Are you familiar with the cases of Cesar Sayoc, the Coast Guard bomber, and the numerous right wing provocateurs who set fires and attacked police while posing as George Floyd protesters? Like the Whitmer kidnap conspirators, their goal was to foment a civil war. I'm re-printing a year-old article on the subject for WaPo non-subscribers.* Did you happen to hear in your "news" sources about the recent four year prison sentence for Lonnie Coffman, the Alabama Trumplican who brought homemade napalm bombs to the U.S. Capitol on January 6th? *The rise of white domestic terrorism in America Data shows a surge in homegrown attacks not seen in a quarter-century www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/?itid=hp_mr_1 April 12, 2021 Domestic terrorism incidents have soared to new highs in the United States, driven chiefly by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The surge reflects a growing threat from homegrown terrorism not seen in a quarter-century, with right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipsing those from the far left and causing more deaths, the analysis shows. The number of all domestic terrorism incidents in the data peaked in 2020. Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. At the same time, attacks and plots ascribed to far-left views accounted for 66 incidents leading to 19 deaths. “What is most concerning is that the number of domestic terror plots and attacks are at the highest they have been in decades,” said Seth Jones, director of the database project at CSIS, a nonpartisan Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in national security issues. “It’s so important for Americans to understand the gravity of the threat before it gets worse.” More than a quarter of right-wing incidents and just under half of the deaths in those incidents were caused by people who showed support for white supremacy or claimed to belong to groups espousing that ideology, the analysis shows. Victims of all incidents in recent years represent a broad cross-section of American society, including Blacks, Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, Asians and other people of color who have been attacked by right-wing extremists wielding vehicles, guns, knives and fists. Dozens of religious institutions — including mosques, synagogues and Black churches — as well as abortion clinics and government buildings, have been threatened, burned, bombed and hit with gunfire over the past six years. Kenneth Robinson, pastor of Briar Creek Road Baptist Church in Charlotte — one of several predominantly Black churches attacked in the spring and summer of 2015 — said some members remain apprehensive. “Trauma is a way of life for us,” Robinson said. “So we grieve, but we keep pushing forward.” Both far-left and far-right attacks hit groundbreaking levels in 2020, the database shows, with far-right incidents still the much larger group. The 73 far-right incidents were an all-time annual high in the CSIS database, which goes back to 1994. Left-wing attacks reached 25 in 2020. Those incidents include multiple attempts by extremists to derail trains to hinder oil pipeline construction and at least seven incidents in which police and their facilities were targeted with guns, firebombs and graffiti. The incidents included the burning of a Minneapolis police precinct during protests over the death of George Floyd. In August, a supporter of President Donald Trump was shot dead in Portland, Ore., by a suspected gunman who was a self-described antifa supporter. That killing was the only death last year attributed to far-left violence, the data shows. There were two deaths attributed to far-right attacks. The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol spurred renewed national attention on domestic terrorism and on hate-driven violence. The Post focused its analysis primarily on far-right attacks since 2015 because they account for a clear majority of the rising domestic terrorism events and fatalities charted by the CSIS. The far-right incidents last year broke into distinct waves emerging amid government shutdowns in the spring, widespread racial demonstrations in the summer and confrontations over the presidential election results in the late fall, The Post’s review of the CSIS data shows. The CSIS database is one of the best public sources of information about domestic terrorism incidents, which the group’s analysts define as attacks or plots involving a deliberate use or threat of violence to achieve political goals, create a broad psychological impact or change government policy. That definition excludes many violent events, including incidents during nationwide unrest last year, because CSIS analysts could not determine whether attackers had a political or ideological motive. Data released by the CSIS on Monday includes the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol as one of 11 far-right terrorism incidents that month — the most for any January in the database. The new report highlights more involvement in far-right attacks and plots by military service members, veterans and current and former police officers, some of whom participated in the riot at the Capitol. Following the Capitol incident, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told federal lawmakers that confronting domestic terrorism is a top national security priority of the agency. Nearly every state has seen at least one domestic terrorist attack or plot in recent years, The Post’s analysis of the database shows, a notable expansion of the communities afflicted by terrorism over prior decades. “January 6 was not an isolated event,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2. “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon.” Domestic terrorism data The database includes 980 incidents since 1994, the first year in the CSIS records. Incidents do not have to be adjudicated in the court system to be included. Dozens of incidents have no identified perpetrator but have details about the attacks, including evidence of motive and the target that led to the case being categorized in the database. The attacks and plots on U.S. soil are bucketed as far right, far left, religious or “ethnonationalist,” which supports nationalist goals that often include dividing society along ethnic lines. Under the CSIS system, the attacks on 9/11 are in the religious category because the perpetrators were Islamist terrorists. The data shows that far-right attacks diminished following a federal crackdown in response to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. In the attack, Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb outside a federal building, killing 168 people. It remains the deadliest homegrown terrorist attack in American history. Right-wing extremism began gathering fresh momentum after the election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, according to an April 2009 Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment. “Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda,” the assessment said. Some attacks do not have an easily discerned motive or a single ideological thread. To refine the types of extremism involved in each case, The Post compiled court records, social media postings, news accounts and other material from local, state and federal law enforcement authorities. For example, the extended review enabled the The Post to determine that at least 15 attacks or plots involved predominantly Black churches over the past six years. One of them was New Shiloh Christian Center in Melbourne, Fla. Three times in early 2015 fires were set at the church and cars vandalized. No suspect was caught. Some members left the congregation and others remain fearful, said New Shiloh Bishop Jacquelyn Gordon. “We all felt threatened,” she said. “I’m always on high alert, because I had no idea who did this.” Over the past six years, 16 mosques and 13 synagogues also were attacked or threatened by extremists on the far right, The Post’s analysis of the database found. One of those, Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel in Chicago, was hit with molotov cocktails in 2019. The perpetrators remain unidentified. Rabbi David Wolkenfeld said worshipers began to fret about security even as they gave thanks that the building was not destroyed. “It’s really hard. Shocking, shocking to see,” he said. “I’m at a loss when I think about that. Violence toward innocent people is just something I can’t get my head around.” Pastor Ernest Richards said he had the same sense of disbelief as he watched his church burning in July 2018, an incident that the CSIS includes as a far-left attack. The attackers set the church in Vale, N.C., afire and spray-painted the words “ANTI-GAY HATE GROUP” on a wall, apparently thinking it was a church with a similar name where a pastor was critical of homosexuality. A suspect was never identified. “I was just angry at a person who could do this,” said Richards, 88, who no longer leads the church. “My anger turned into a state of pity. How can you do that?” ‘Just because they’re mad’ Members of militias and other extremist groups — such as the KKK, Aryan Cowboys and the Base — had roles in at least 67 attacks since 2015, according to The Post’s examination. But a large majority of perpetrators appear from the data to be operating independently, a defining characteristic of many recent attacks, counterterrorism researchers have said. Some of those loners are prolific users of social media out of which they assemble a jumble of personal beliefs or ideologies, researchers said. The beliefs have included a tangle of white supremacy, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia and a host of baseless and debunked claims. One of the prevailing theories among far-right conservatives is about a “Great Replacement,” the belief that the White race is being replaced by people of color, according to a nationally representative survey of 1,000 American adults last month by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. The Post’s review of the database found 30 attacks or plots attributed to right-wing violence against Black Lives Matter since 2015, a large majority of them last year. Perpetrators beat BLM activists in the streets and attacked them with mace, knives, guns or explosives, records show. Right-wing extremists used their vehicles as weapons against activists, plowing into crowds of racial justice demonstrators on at least nine occasions over the past six years, according to The Post’s analysis. Businesses affiliated with racial justice protests were vandalized and torched, among them a Black-owned coffee shop in Shoreline, Wash. It was pelted with molotov cocktails after midnight on Sept. 30 last year. Darnesha Weary, co-owner of Black Coffee Northwest and a Black Lives Matter coordinator in Shoreline, said the shop later was vandalized with neo-poopoo graffiti. Weary expressed outrage about the attacks and the fact that no one has been caught. “No one should feel like they have the audacity to go try and burn someone’s building,” she said. “And just because they’re mad.” Social media and terrorism Bruce Hoffman, a professor and counter-terrorism specialist at Georgetown University, said extremists have exploited social media and the Internet in recent years to share theories, along with grievances, tactics and potential targets. “It’s the propellant,” Hoffman said about social media. “That’s what’s giving the reach.” From 2015 to 2020, the use of websites or social media such as Facebook and encrypted chat services by right-wing extremists rose in five of the six years, The Post’s analysis found. The Post review included a case if the social media engagement was mentioned by investigators in incidents or cited in news accounts. The trend peaked in 2020, with 24 incidents that The Post could identify. That represents about one out of five incidents of right-wing violence in that year. Extremists who lurk online and are unaffiliated with a group pose special challenges for law enforcement because they leave few clues about their intentions and targets, counterterrorism officials and researchers said in interviews. “Social media has afforded absolutely everything that’s bad out there in the world the ability to come inside your home,” one federal counterterrorism official told The Post, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss law enforcement matters. “And so that makes it hard for law enforcement to see potential tripwires and indicators.” Among the extremists drawing inspiration online was Taylor Michael Wilson, a 26-year-old from Missouri. Before and after Wilson attended a deadly 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, he immersed himself in right-wing propaganda, court records showed later. On Oct. 22, 2017, Wilson slipped into the engine compartment of an Amtrak train and pulled the brakes in a remote stretch of Nebraska. At the time, he was carrying a .38-caliber handgun, ammunition speed-loaders and a knife. He also had with him a business card for the neo-poopoo National Socialist Movement, court records show. After a struggle, a train conductor pinned him down until authorities arrived. Wilson later told a deputy: “I was going to save the train from the black people,” records state. Federal authorities later confiscated more than a dozen firearms, including an automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, tactical gear and white-supremacist literature, documents show. A roommate told investigators Wilson joined a neo-poopoo group after meeting members online. Wilson expressed interest in “killing black people,” court records show. Wilson pleaded guilty in 2018 to a count of terrorism attacks and other violence against railroad carriers and mass transportation systems. He was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. Growing threats Attacks on immigrants have been recurring in recent years. So have attacks on people of color assumed to be immigrants or Muslim, according to statements by perpetrators during the episodes as recounted by the victims. There have been 15 anti-immigrant-related incidents since 2015, resulting in 27 fatalities and dozens of injuries, a review of the CSIS cases shows. Some of those attacks drew national attention, including an Aug. 3, 2019, massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, by a gunman who authorities say posted a manifesto railing against a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. The shootings left 23 people, including eight Mexican nationals, dead and two dozen others wounded. But there also were local incidents, such as the shootings in Wisconsin by now-convicted killer Dan J. Popp of his neighbors. On March 6, 2016, Popp, then 39, approached a father and son in the hallway of the apartment complex where he lived, court records show. Popp demanded to know where they were from. When they told him they were from Puerto Rico, Popp said, “Oh, that’s why you don’t speak English.” Popp retrieved a rifle from his room, told them, “You guys got to go,” and shot dead Jesus R. Manso-Perez, 40. He kicked down the door to another unit that belonged to a Hmong family. Popp found them hiding in a bedroom and killed Phia Vue, 36, and Mai Vue, 32. During his trial for homicide, a jury rejected a claim by Popp that he was insane. A judge sentenced him in February 2018 to life in prison. Among emerging trends is the number of military service members and veterans involved in attacks and plots in recent years. The Post found 36 instances in the CSIS data from 2015 through January 2021, including the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In that incident alone, more than 40 people charged with conspiracy and other crimes had served in the military, according to another, separate Post analysis of arrests related to the riot. More than a dozen were current or former law enforcement officers, including police and corrections officers. Police officers, government officials and politicians also were targets in 2020 in at least 15 right-wing domestic terrorism attacks or plots, a review of the CSIS data shows. In Monday’s CSIS report, the security group warned that right-wing extremists are increasingly attempting to recruit military service members and veterans. The report, titled “The Military, Police, and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States,” cited a Department of Defense report sent to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees last month. That report said that DOD “is facing a threat from domestic extremists (DE), particularly those who espouse white supremacy or white nationalist ideologies.” One of the right-wing terrorism incidents in 2020 involved Navy veteran Timothy Wilson, 36. He had been planning for months to commit some kind of attack that was based on his hatred of Black people, Jewish people, the federal government, refugees and other potential targets, according to a federal affidavit. Wilson, a father of four who worked for a time at a charitable organization after his Navy stint, communicated with other extremists through an encrypted chat app, the affidavit shows. He shared bombmaking techniques, boasted about his arsenal of guns and ammunition, and talked about recruiting potential collaborators, according to the affidavit. His contacts included Jarrett William Smith, a 24-year-old Army infantry soldier stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., who offered information online about how to make improvised explosive devices, according to federal investigators. On Facebook, Smith wrote about traveling to Ukraine to fight with a far-right paramilitary group, investigators said. Smith was arrested and in February 2020 pleaded guilty to unlawfully distributing instructions for making explosive devices. He was sentenced in August to 30 months in prison. For his part, Wilson began meeting an undercover FBI agent who was posing as an extremist collaborator. Wilson plotted to bomb a public building, and in March 2020, as coronavirus shutdowns were taking hold, Wilson decided to accelerate his plans and blow up a hospital treating covid-19 patients, according to investigators. Wilson accepted an offer from an undercover agent of a truck he was told contained explosives. When authorities tried to take him into custody, Wilson fatally shot himself. In congressional hearings in recent years, counterterrorism specialists and other witnesses told lawmakers the federal government needs more data on domestic terrorism to understand how to address the rising violence. “Any expert is going to tell you that this is the most serious security threat to the American people today,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who held oversight hearings in 2019 that questioned the federal response to rising white-supremacist violence. “And yet we don’t have any good description of the magnitude and the dimensions of the problem.”

Hindsight is, obviously, 20-20-- even in myopic, pro-Putin, Trump Republican circles! Did anyone predict that Putin would invade? Even Jeff Carter, a guy with possible inside information, opined that Putin would not invade. BTW, did Glenn Greenwald ever apologize for face-planting on Ukraine?

Ben, I'm not implying that you're some sort of pedophile like Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, (although I've heard that pedophiles are fond of Thailand) but this recent Gaetz incident reminded me a bit of your daily diatribes about the Biden administration and NATO not doing enough to protect Ukraine from Russia. Interestingly, Jeff Carter's opinion (above) is quite the opposite-- i.e., that the Russian military has been unfairly victimized by U.S. and NATO military and intelligence technology in Ukraine.

Kirk, Since this is a conspiracy theory forum, I might as well blurt it out. My theory is that Jeff's real name is Gurdjieff Khatersky. He was born in Irkutsk in 1950, where his father served as a Gulag prison camp commandant. Young Gurdjieff studied journalism and propaganda theory at the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute, then worked for ITASS in Vladivostock, before emigrating to Vancouver and changing his name to Jeff Carter. In Canada, he has worked for Russia Today, and is currently being paid in Bitcoin. Just a theory... 🤥

Interesting lecture on Ukrainian history from the Middle Ages to the present.

Chris, Putin has, apparently, surrounded himself with a hierarchy of FSB-aligned sycophants during the past twenty years. See, for example, Putin's People, by your fellow Brit, Catherine Belton.* As for Jeff Carter's latest post, I'm shocked, shocked to hear that Jeff is still trying to blame NATO for Putin's truly horrific decision to invade Ukraine and commit war crimes on a grand scale. At least Jeff isn't repeating Ben's daily memes about NATO and Biden weakly dithering, etc., etc., etc. As a footnote, Jeff has repeatedly refused to answer my question about whether he shares Putin's openly expressed contempt for liberal democracy. * https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-Took-Back-Russia/dp/B083QLZ4QZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PD2U07NXSU3S&keywords=putin's+people+by+catherine+belton&qid=1649282968&sprefix=Putin's+people%2Caps%2C440&sr=8-1

I would characterize him as a nationalist. He, obviously, rejected the Marxist-Leninist ideology of his youth. At the same time, he has been openly contemptuous of liberal democracy. My take is that his mission is to restore and aggrandize the nationalist state. So, ideologically, he's similar to Hitler and Mussolini.

Sandy, I have a different notion about what makes Putin tick, which I hinted at in an earlier post about his life history. He's not a Donald Trump-- not merely a narcissist motivated by self-love. My belief is that Putin grew up with a life script along the lines of, "Don't cry, mother, we will restore Mother Russia and avenge the deaths of our people." Recall that Putin's mother survived the siege of Leningrad, where her son, Putin's older brother, was killed, and his native city was mercilessly bombed. Over one million Russians died during the siege of Leningrad. So, for example, Trump was a draft dodger and Putin was a disciplined, dedicated KGB officer for years in Dresden prior to the collapse of the USSR. The collapse must have been a bitter, humiliating pill for him to swallow, given his life history and putative life script. But he stayed the course, ascended to the throne, and triumphed in the re-conquest of Chechnya and the annexation of Crimea. The failure of his Ukraine invasion is his first set back as Tsar, and he has been enraged about it. Rather than focusing on mere self-preservation, I believe Putin would annihilate Europe if NATO and Poland attacked Russia. He's a fighter.

There's nothing funny about this tragic FUBAR war in Ukraine, but here's a little schadenfreude...

Finnish Intelligence Officer Explains the Russian Mindset – Ricochet April 4, 2022

Sandy, A Russian nuclear war with NATO would be unwinnable, but my hunch is that Putin would respond to any Polish (and German/NATO) military aggression against Russia with rage. Would he, possibly, nuke Europe out of spite? I wonder. Look at what he has already done in response to Ukrainian resistance! Who foresaw the mass bombing of entire residential communities in Ukraine -- apartment buildings, hospitals, theaters, and schools? It has been utterly irrational-- serving no constructive purpose. It's analogous to what Hitler did to Warsaw, Belgrade, and Putin's native city of Leningrad. (And Hitler also wanted to destroy Paris out of spite, when he knew that the Third Reich was doomed.)

Addendum: A few psychological details about Putin. His older brother died during the horrific N-a-z-i siege and bombardment of Leningrad during WWII. Imagine the formative influence that his mother's PTSD must have had on young Vlad. (A common issue for children born after the death of an older sibling.) During Putin's childhood, the city of Leningrad, including Tsarskoe Selo, were literally reconstructed from the rubble. Subsequently, Putin spent his entire career in the KGB running anti-NATO ops from Dresden during the gradual dissolution and collapse of Soviet hegemony in the GDR and Eastern Europe. He must have experienced the collapse of the USSR as a bitter disappointment. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick did an admirable job in their Untold History series of describing the impact of WWI and WWII on Russian attitudes toward Germany and Eastern Europe. JFK had also acknowledged this aspect of Russian history in his negotiations with Khrushchev. Since the era of Napoleon, Russians have tended to view Poland (and, formerly, East Prussia) as a corridor for Western European invasions of Mother Russia.

Sandy, From what I know about Putin's narcissism and Russia's long history with Poland, I believe that any military intervention against the Russian Federation by the Poles would end in utter disaster-- provoking unfathomable rage and reaction in the Kremlin. If you study Putin's behavior in recent years, he has frequently made threats (to Trump, according to Fiona Hill) and bragged about his indefensible hypersonic nuclear missiles. He seems grandiose and "trigger happy." The man is unhinged, IMO. His failures in Ukraine have only aggravated the problem. It would be foolish to further bait such a narcissistically wounded bear.

‘They were all shot’: Russia accused of war crimes as Bucha reveals horror of invasion Ukrainian forces liberating the town near Kyiv find streets littered with corpses of civilians and burned-out Russian tanks https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/they-were-all-shot-russia-accused-of-war-crimes-as-bucha-reveals-horror-of-invasion

Good analysis by David Ost at Common Dreams today. There Is No Left Position That Justifies Putin's Attack on Ukraine On Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and the Left https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/04/02/there-no-left-position-justifies-putins-attack-ukraine April 2, 2022

Is Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible Putin's favorite movie? I re-watched Eisenstein's 1944 classic, Ivan the Terrible, Part I, last night. Stalin admired the film, along with Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, (1938) and used both films for propaganda purposes during WWII. (Part II was suppressed until 1958 in the USSR.) Eisenstein died of an alleged heart attack in 1948, at age 50. Stalin hated Ivan the Terrible, Part II, and halted the filming of Part III. Both films (Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible) feature scores by Sergei Prokofiev, and Nikolai Cherkasov in the starring roles, but the DVD sound quality is terrible. (A high quality modern recording of the Prokofiev score for Alexander Nevsky, by the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, is only available on VHS tape, and I was able to buy a copy of the VHS many years ago on eBay.) The themes have resonated in Russia (and Soviet) history-- that the Rus need a powerful despot to protect their Third Rome from enemies within and without-- the Livonians, Crimean Tatars, Kazakhs, etc. In both films, the nefarious Western Europeans are depicted as sinister, beardless Papal legates who conspire to undermine Russian unity and despotism. (The nefarious Papists are also featured in Mussorgsky's classic opera, Boris Godunov.) Not much has changed in that regard during the past few centuries of Russian history. https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Terrible-Pt-Nikolai-Cherkasov/dp/6305090211/ref=sr_1_7?crid=1UMWNDPC7PJ1W&keywords=ivan+the+terrible+dvd&qid=1648835273&s=movies-tv&sprefix=Ivan+the+Terrible%2Cmovies-tv%2C105&sr=1-7

Re-posting this commentary for Chris B. Chris has recently re-posted his Mearsheimer video and repeated the old Russia Today mantra blaming NATO for Putin's democidal invasion of Ukraine. The last time I checked, Ukraine was a sovereign nation with a democratically-elected President, and the Russian Federation had become a totalitarian police state where journalists and opposition politicians were being poisoned and/or sent to the Gulag.

Ben, This is bunk. The Steele Dossier didn't trigger the FBI investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign's numerous contacts with Kremlin agents. Here are the facts. Why the Discredited Dossier Does Not Undercut the Russia Investigation Donald J. Trump and his backers say revelations about the Steele dossier show the Russia investigation was a “hoax.” That is not what the facts indicate. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/us/trump-russia-investigation-dossier.html December 1, 2021 Excerpt Did the F.B.I. open the investigation because of the dossier? No. Mr. Trump and his allies have insinuated that the F.B.I. based the Russia investigation on the dossier. But when counterintelligence agents launched the effort on July 30, 2016, they did not yet know about the dossier. An inspector general report established that Mr. Steele’s reports reached that counterintelligence team on Sept. 19, 2016. The basis for the investigation was instead that WikiLeaks had disrupted the Democratic National Convention by releasing Democratic emails believed to have been stolen by Russian hackers, and that an Australian diplomat said a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser had bragged to him about apparent outreach from Russia involving an offer to help the campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Mrs. Clinton. Did the F.B.I. take any investigative step based on the dossier? Yes. The F.B.I. took the dossier seriously based on Mr. Steele’s reputation, and used some of it — without independent verification — for a narrow purpose that led to a dead end and became a political debacle. It included several claims from Mr. Steele’s memos in applications to wiretap Carter A. Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser with ties to Russia. In 2019, the Justice Department’s inspector general sharply criticized the F.B.I. for numerous flaws in those wiretap applications. While the dossier-tainted wiretap of Mr. Page has received significant attention, it was a small part of the overall investigation, which issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communications records, made 13 requests to foreign governments under mutual legal assistance treaties, and interviewed about 500 witnesses. Mr. Page was not charged with a crime, and only a handful of the 448 pages in the Mueller report focus on him. Did investigators rely on the dossier for their findings? No. The Mueller report does not present claims from the dossier as evidence, and many of the issues focused on by investigators did not come up in the dossier. The dossier makes no mention, for example, of a July 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and senior campaign officials including Donald Trump Jr., who eagerly accepted the request for a meeting after being told they were bringing dirt on Mrs. Clinton. Nor does the dossier mention that in August 2016, Konstantin V. Kilimnik — described in the 2019 Mueller report as having “ties to Russian intelligence” and in a partly declassified, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2020 as a “Russian intelligence officer” with possible ties to Russia’s election interference operations — flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Investigators established that the two had discussed whether Mr. Trump, if elected, would bless a peace plan effectively allowing Russia to control eastern Ukraine, and that Mr. Manafort had shared internal polling data and campaign strategy information with Mr. Kilimnik, which the Treasury Department later said he passed on to a Russian spy agency. (The government has not declassified evidence for its escalating accusations about Mr. Kilimnik.) The Senate report said Mr. Manafort’s “willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services” represented a “grave counterintelligence threat.” Did Mueller rely on the dossier for any criminal charges? No. The special counsel investigation led to indictments of 34 people and three companies. Many of those indicted — like Mr. Kilimnik — reside abroad and have not faced trial. Mr. Mueller obtained nine guilty pleas or jury convictions, including half a dozen close Trump associates. None of those indictments cited the dossier as evidence. The fact that Mr. Mueller did not obtain sufficient evidence to charge Trump associates with conspiracy is subject to disputed interpretations that overlap with the debate over the dossier’s significance. Trump supporters frame the lack of conspiracy charges as proof there was no collusion. By combining this with the false premise that there would not have been any Russia investigation without the Steele dossier, they portray Mr. Trump as a victim of a hoax. Beyond pointing out that there is a range of cooperation and coordination that falls short of the legal definition of “conspiracy,” Trump skeptics argue that Mr. Mueller never definitively got to the bottom of what happened in part because of Mr. Trump’s efforts to impede the investigation — like dangling a pardon before Mr. Manafort to keep him from cooperating. What was the main impact of the dossier? Beyond its narrow role in facilitating the F.B.I.’s wiretap of Mr. Page, the dossier’s publication had the broader consequence of amplifying an atmosphere of suspicion about Mr. Trump. Still, the dossier did not create this atmosphere of suspicion. Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia had been a topic of significant discussion dating back to the campaign, including before the first report that Russia had hacked Democrats and before Mr. Steele drafted his reports and gave some to reporters. Among the reasons: Mr. Trump had said flattering things about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, kept bringing on advisers with ties to Russia, had financial ties to Russia, publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton, and at his nominating convention, the party dropped a plank that called for arming Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels. In March 2017, the F.B.I. publicly acknowledged that it was investigating links between Russia and Trump campaign associates.

Yes, Putin and Russia are fascist – a political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition https://theconversation.com/yes-putin-and-russia-are-fascist-a-political-scientist-shows-how-they-meet-the-textbook-definition-179063 March 30, 2022