W. Niederhut

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

Well, Steve, I'm shocked, shocked to hear that Donald Trump lied about his familiarity with burner phones... 🤥 The 7 1/2 hour gap in Trump's 1/6 phone logs makes Nixon and Rosemary Woods look like amateurs.

Rupert Murdoch has been working overtime lately to impugn Biden's reputation, and, IMO, this Murdoch/WSJ editorial needs to be interpreted in that context. The incessantly repeated Murdoch propaganda meme-- which Sean Hannity openly acknowledged on Fox last week -- is that Biden is "weak," demented, and inept, etc. Yet, the reality is that Biden has dramatically united NATO, after four years of Trump trying to de-fund and destroy it. (We have heard Murdoch's "Biden is weak" meme repeated here on the forum several times daily by Benjamin Cole ever since Putin invaded Ukraine.) As for the current geopolitical crisis, it's mainly about Putin. Putin successfully defeated the Neocon CIA/NATO/Saudi/Mossad proxy war against the Syrian government-- with a major assist from Donald Trump-- and most likely pressured Trump to surrender to the Taliban at Doha in 2020. Let's recall that Trump also withdrew all but 2,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan before Biden's inauguration in January of 2021, while refusing to share military intel with Biden's transition team. So, beyond Ukraine, the major impending geopolitical crisis, IMO, is the partial collapse of U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and the grim predicament of the U.S./Saudi/UAE/Israeli Axis vs. the Moscow-Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus Axis-- an unintended consequence of the disastrous Bush-Cheney-Neocon "War on Terror." Baghdad is now under the control of the Iranian allied Shiites who comprise two-thirds of Iraq's population. And the Saudi's are entangled in a brutal war with the Houthi Shiites in Yemen. What happens to Israel and U.S. hegemony if the corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (UAE, Qatar) fall? . Meanwhile, what of relevance can we learn from JFK and the history of the past sixty years? 1) One of our major geopolitical blunders after 11/22/63 is that we alienated the entire Arab world by our unbalanced support for Israel and step-wise abandonment of a viable two-state solution for the Palestinian people-- something which American statesmen like Forrestal and JFK would not have done. 2) Then the Neocon "War on Terror" worsened the situation by inadvertently creating the Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah Axis. The Wolfowitz plan failed miserably. On the positive side, NATO is coming together well in response to Putin's disastrous invasion of Ukraine. Putin shot himself in the foot. It's critical to avoid escalating the Ukrainian War into a potential nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. Ergo, Rupert Murdoch is wrong. Biden is playing a difficult hand well.

Well, it looks like Judge David Carter answered my question just a few hours after I posted it last night. Meanwhile, the Congressional 1/6 investigation still seems to be proceeding at a snail's pace. Wasn't the Congressional 1/6 committee originally planning to conduct public hearings back in January?

Bob, Do you have an opinion about a 20 year sentence for Donald Trump and his Willard Hotel cabal for conspiring to obstruct Congress's certification of a U.S. Presidential election? Ginni Thomas?

Steve, The Battle of Kursk was the biggest tank battle in world history. Massive. In a weird way, the current Russian military debacle in Ukraine reminds me more of the Battle of Tannenberg in eastern Prussia at the beginning of WWI, which is the subject of Solzhenitsyn's first Red Wheel novel-- August 1914. At Tannenberg, the bureaucratic Russian military command was completely disorganized and inept. The Russian troops were poorly supplied, exhausted, and hungry, and Samsonov's entire Russian Second Army was encircled, massacred, or captured in the fateful battle. The Russian Army in 1914 was managed by a bunch of corrupt sycophants, similar to Putin's flying monkeys. The technology is vastly different, but the Russian empire, 108 years later, is still governed by a corrupt, inept autocracy.

Ben, This is garbage-- nothing but pseudo-intellectual blather based on erroneous assumptions. For example, your UK author wrote, "Two days after the news broke that Trump didn't collude with Russia..." Huh? That speaks volumes. He, obviously, doesn't understand the facts in the case. Newsflash. The Mueller Report never concluded that Trump did not "collude" with Russia. That was merely the bogus spin in the right wing media.

John Fugelsang suggested yesterday that, "Release the Kraken," may also be Ginni Thomas's code words for asking Clarence to fulfill his bi-annual husbandly duties... 🤣

Ben, You got suckered by the M$M Trumpaganda on this one. This is, precisely, why you need to read the Mueller Report. The truth is that Manafort, (Stone, Trump, et.al.) stonewalled Mueller's investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign's collusion with the Kremlin (Kilimnik, Veselnitskaya, Assange) as I pointed out above. The investigation was inconclusive. Secondly, Mueller found ample evidence that Trump had obstructed justice, but did not indict Trump because the DOJ did not permit him to indict a sitting President.* *What the Mueller Report Says About Obstruction https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/what-the-mueller-report-says-about-obstruction/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvbubkILk9gIVLCCtBh0FuwEdEAAYASAAEgKRJ_D_BwE

So, Ben, basically, you're arguing that O.J. Simpson was innocent of murder, then? Got it. As for the aborted Mueller investigation, if you study the details, you will learn that the investigation was stonewalled by Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Donald Trump, and others who either refused to answer key questions, or repeatedly committed perjury (as in Manafort's case.) As Pat Speer pointed out, (above) Trump also obstructed justice during the investigation by floating pardons for key witnesses, including Putin's long-time employee, Paul Manafort. If you misinterpreted the aborted/stonewalled Mueller investigation as finding Trump innocent of "collusion" with the Kremlin in 2016, you need to do some remedial reading. As for reading studies, I've done it on a weekly basis for decades, and, no. In quality studies, the abstract and conclusions are summaries of the actual data. In contrast, you have a cognitive tendency to formulate theories that ignore the data. Here are the two analyses of the M$M and the 2016 election I referred to above. The gist of it is that the M$M and social media sabotaged Hillary Clinton in 2016, not Trump. https://cyber.harvard.edu/publications/2017/08/mediacloud https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php

Ben, With all due respect, this is complete bunk. You need to go back and study the history of the U.S. M$M coverage of the 2016 Presidential election. You also need to read the Mueller Report. It's obvious from your posts that you never read it. When was the Steele Dossier first published in the U.S.? How did it impact the 2016 election? Any clue? What did the analyses of the M$M coverage of the 2016 election by the Berman Institute at Harvard and the Columbia Journalism Review find? Dirty tricks by the Clintons? Are you kidding? Are you aware that Dean Baquet put the kibosh on any pre-election NYT stories about the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, while running weekly headline stories about Hillary's Emails and Anthony Weiner's laptop?

Outstanding historical summary, Mr. Caddy. Thanks for posting this. It stands in sharp contrast to the multi-year deluge of Kremlin disinformazia about Ukrainian history. If only the Russian Federation had adopted Viktor Yushenko's economic reforms after the collapse of the USSR-- instead of regressing to a Putin-ist totalitarian police state-- Russia and the world would be in a much better place today.

Interesting read at Slate today. A Russian journalist dates the decline and fall of journalism in the fascist Russian Federation to December of 2013. Ukraine war: I was a reporter for Russian state-run media, and I saw it all fall apart. (slate.com) March 23, 2022

Kirk, Oliver Stone is, justifiably, the patron saint of the JFKA research community, but his opinions about Putin and the fascist Russian Federation are sadly mistaken. It's a bizarre misinterpretation of Putin-ism by many on the right and left of the political spectrum in the U.S. Those on the right (Fox News, Trump, et.al.) have lionized Putin for his fascist authoritarianism. Those on the left (including Oliver Stone and the Consortium News crowd) have lionized him for his opposition to the U.S. military-industrial complex (and the related Neocon "War on Terror.") I mentioned (above) that my only real criticism of Stone & Kuznick's excellent Untold History series was their tendency to downplay the atrocities (and geopolitical agenda) of Stalin-ism-- because the series was focused on exposing the atrocities of the Dulles brothers and the U.S. military-industrial complex. The same thing could be said about Oliver Stone's defense of Putin-ism today. Because Stone has been focused on exposing the atrocities of the CIA and the U.S. military, he has overlooked the atrocities of Putin's fascist police state.

I've been waiting for the ROCOR/MP bishops in America and Western Europe -- one of whom I have taken out to dinner in happier times-- to condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Thus far, silence. They would be cutting their own throats to speak up. These are the guys who went under Moscow's thumb in 2007. I suspect that all of them are privately aggrieved by what is happening in Ukraine, including Moscow Patriarch Kyril Gundyayev, himself, but they dare not criticize Putin. If they did, they'd probably end up drinking radioactive tea. Interestingly, Moscow Patriarch Kyril's own grandfather was sent to the Solovki Monastery concentration camp by the NKVD back in the day.

Ron, My wife and I met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (the Greek Orthodox "Pope") at the Phanar in Istanbul in the summer of 2000. While we were waiting for an audience with his grace, Archdeacon Tarasios, there was an Estonian Orthodox priest in the waiting room, and we learned that Bartholomew had recently become the titular head of the Estonian Orthodox Church independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. It is common knowledge that the MP had been infiltrated and controlled by the NKVD/KGB since the 1920s. As far as I know, the situation in the Ukraine was similar to that in Estonia. Many Ukrainian Orthodox Christians did not want to be under the thumb of Putin's Moscow Patriarchate. So, Patriarch Bartholomew granted them autocephaly as an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2019. I seriously doubt that NATO or the U.S. had anything to do with Bartholomew's actions, but I could be mistaken.

Alexei Navalny sentenced to nine years in the Gulag-- after surviving a KGB assassination attempt by poisoning. Remember when Trump insisted that any investigation of Navalny's poisoning needed to be conducted by Russia? Then, after doctors in Germany reported that Navalny had been poisoned, Trump said that he had doubts about the medical report? Can't make this stuff up. https://www.axios.com/putin-critic-alexei-navalny-sentenced-to-nine-years-in-prison-0b682bee-4ee3-42cf-b292-04ac4e35e700.html

Kirk, Putin's KGB/Moscow Patriarchate ROC has also actively persecuted gay and lesbian people. Sadly, it's something that they have in common with some red state Protestant Evangelicals in the U.S. nowadays. It's not my concept of Christianity. "If a man hates his brother, how can the love of God be in him?" As for Putin's MP, the ROCOR never believed that it was a canonically legitimate church after 1925. It's not my job to judge them, but I never went along with the MP annexation of the ROCOR in 2007. Regarding the child abuse issues-- they are horrific anywhere. I have known and worked with a number of abused ex-Catholics over the years. I also once treated a priest who was referred for sexual misconduct (with adults.) I read somewhere that 10% of the entire population of the U.S. are disaffected ex-Catholics! 30 million? My mother was a Roman Catholic, the daughter of Slovenian immigrants to the U.S. When the news about child abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston first surfaced in the U.S. M$M back in the day, I asked my mother about it and she said, "That never happened here!" (In Colorado) But, as we eventually learned, it happened everywhere. It was endemic.

Fascinating reference, Steve. Thanks for posting this. Obviously, the Warren Commission was mainly interested in Raigorodsky's knowledge of the Oswalds and George De Mohrenschildt in Dallas, but the interview also offers some interesting history of the mid-20th century schism between the exiled Russian bishops of the ROCOR and the Metropolia that eventually became the OCA. My own spiritual father/mentor, Fr. Alexey Young, wrote the definitive book on the history of that ROCOR/Metropolia schism, as referenced in the Orthodox Wiki article here. https://orthodoxwiki.org/ROCOR_and_OCA

Steve, I consider myself an expert of sorts on the history of Russian (and Soviet KGB) Orthodoxy-- a subject that most Americans know almost nothing about. IMO, Putin's KGB-controlled ROC Moscow Patriarchate is a pseudo church-- a cynical tool of Putin's fascist police state. Kyrill Gundyayev and his MP heirarchs own the ROC buildings, chalices, and the vestments, but it's all for show. They are, in fact, the non-canonical successors of Stalin's KGB agent heirarchs -- including the late Patriarch Alexei II Ridiger, who was the KGB agent "Drozhdov" overseeing Putin's seizure of the free Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 2007. The current heirarchy of the ROC MP was never free of the NKVD/KGB/FSB. It was always a tool of the state-- merely transitioning from service to Soviet communism (and atheism!) to servicing Putin's fascist police state. As we can see from Putin's current campaign of war crimes and mass murder in Ukraine, the man is no more "Christian" than Joseph Stalin. He makes a show of lighting candles in the ROC buildings, while his ROC MP priests and bishops, literally, bless Russian missiles and assault rifles! It's pseudo-Christian fascism, somewhat similar to right wing Protestant Evangelical fascism in the U.S. today-- where the focus is on a kind of hypocritical, Puritanical tribalism, rather than on compassion and love for humanity. I used to chant services in Russian and English on the ROCOR kliros for a number of years here in Denver before Putin and his KGB-controlled Moscow Patriarchate seized the ROCOR in 2007. It was the end result of a multi-year, carefully orchestrated KGB op in Western Europe and North America. For many years, our ROCOR parish here in Denver was comprised about 50-50 of American converts and second and third generation "White" Russian refugees from the Bolshevik revolution. Since 2007, it has been comprised of recent Soviet emigre/Russian nationalists under the control of Putin's MP/KGB pseudo-church. After the Bolsheviks gained control of Russia, by 1925, they murdered the last legitimate Patriarch of Moscow, St. Tikhon, and used what was left of the ROC in Russia as a tool of the Cheka/NKVD. In the process, thousands of Russian Orthodox hierarchs, clergy, and laity were murdered and/or sent to concentration camps-- beginning with Solovki, which Solzhenitsyn accurately described as the "grandfather" of Stalin's Gulag. Most Russian Orthodox churches were dynamited by Stalin, or turned into gymnasiums and skating rinks. Stalin re-opened some ROC church buildings after the N-a-z-i invasion in 1941 in a cynical appeal to Russian "patriotism"-- but the Stalinist MP "church" was always a KGB-controlled propaganda tool-- analogous to Eisenstein's WWII Soviet propaganda film, Alexander Nevsky. If you watch Alexander Nevsky, notice that Stalin and Eisenstein never show any Russian Orthodox crosses, priests, or bishops in Novgorod or Pskov. They show the golden domes of the Russian Orthodox church buildings, but the appeal was solely nationalistic and pragmatic -- defending the Russian land from the nefarious Teutonic knights and Roman Catholic monks.

Matt, IMO, Putin is going to deal with the on-the-ground stalemate by continuing to escalate his missile attacks on Ukrainian cities-- the Hitler V-1/V-2 rocket approach. Mariupol is already a pile of rubble. 10 million refugees and counting. And his Cheka is already abducting and shipping Ukrainians off to the Gulag.

Boring and annoying. The anti-Biden propaganda in the Fox MAGA-verse has been blaring 24/7 lately, at a time when the U.S. and the planet could really use some constructive political unity. We're dealing with a homicidal maniac. And what's ironic about it is that the incessant anti-Biden propaganda is coming from the same people who have been gaga about Trump and Putin for the past five years.

60 years ago today. Columbia releases an album of folk songs sung by a young lad from Duluth, Minnesota with a cheap guitar and a harmonica. Surprisingly soulful songs from the sidewalks and coffee shops of Greenwich Village. Allegedly "borrowed" Dave Van Ronk's version of House of the Rising Sun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_(album)

Putin has already launched 1,000 missiles at Ukrainian cities, and is now firing hypersonic missiles. The man is a psychopathic mass murderer-- reminiscent of Hitler bombing the UK with V-1 and V-2 rockets. Nearly 10 million have fled; Russian forces are in Mariupol, hindering rescues https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/19/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-live-updates/

I've been saying this for the past 15 years, ever since Putin's KGB-affiliated Moscow Patriarchate seized the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) in 2007-- "Putin's Russian Federation is a fascist (nationalist) police state." The Russian Federation is all about "Us vs. Them"-- Bog's glorious chosen ones (the Rus) vs. the "unclean" West. I've witnessed it with my own eyes and ears. At Putin's big "Master and Magarita" war rally in Moscow today, his RT propagandist, Magarita Simonyan, referred to Ukrainians fighting Russian invaders as "unclean." Vladimir Putin’s Dystopian Mega-Rally in Moscow Is a Whole New Level of Crazy (thedailybeast.com) March 18, 2022 Excerpt Putin’s propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT and Sputnik, also spoke at the rally. She proudly reminded the attendees that she was one of the main agitators for Russia’s absorption of Ukraine’s Donbas region, repeating yet again: “Mother Russia, take Donbas home.” Simonyan asserted that in Ukraine, Russian soldiers are fighting “against the unclean,” using the word commonly describing imps and evil spirits in Russian fairy tales. She didn’t mention her own pre-invasion predictions that there would be no significant sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine, or her prior assertions that Ukrainians would welcome their Russian “liberators.” None of Simonyan’s predictions held up, but the crowd cheered after her speech—like they did for every speaker.