W. Niederhut

Good quote by Solzhenitsyn about the difference between superficial punditry and discernment.

Understood. I was simply pointing out that Litwin's lame attempt to smear Oliver Stone's JFKA work on the basis of what is happening with Putin right now is based on a fallacy. Two separate subjects. Isaac Newton had some erroneous 17th century theories about alchemy, but they don't invalidate his groundbreaking Laws of Motion and Thermodynamics.

Since I've been obsessed with the subject of Stalin, Putin, and Soviet and Ukrainian history this week, I've stumbled upon another good history article, to add to those that I have already referenced by Fiona Hill and Robert Service. This one is from the Smithsonian Magazine.* IMO, part of the problem in accurately perceiving Putin that many in the U.S. M$M are struggling with-- including Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, et.al.-- is rooted in a general denial of the historic crimes of Stalinism. Because of the well-known crimes and horrors of N-a-z-i-ism, and the Red Army's heroic role in defeating the Wehrmacht in WWII, many in the West have tended to deny or overlook the horrors and abominations of Stalinism-- of the Gulag, the mass murders, and systematized torture tactics of Beria's Cheka/NKVD/KGB. It began after 1917-- almost a quarter century before WWII. IMO, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick were so focused on exposing the "untold" crimes of the U.S. military-industrial complex in their Untold History series, that they tended to minimize the historic crimes of Stalinism. And, of course, Stalin assiduously hid his crimes against humanity from the West. So, it's difficult for many modern liberals (and some conservatives) to understand why, for example, many Ukrainians wanted to see Stalin's communist, terror state collapse during WWII. It was a dreadful police state. Eastern Europeans, likewise dreaded the arrival of the Red Army in their countries at the end of WWII. Pillaging and rape of women by the Red Army was the norm in Eastern Europe in 1945-- and Milovan Djilas almost ended up in the Gulag for protesting about it to Stalin. (Stalin had no objection to the rapine.) * The 20th-Century History Behind Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression. Now, Russia is using that chapter to paint Ukraine as a poopoo nation https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-20th-century-history-behind-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-180979672/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

This is a fallacious attempt to discredit Oliver Stone's accurate, groundbreaking work on the JFK assassination. How so? It's a fallacy to argue that Stone's opinions about Putin and the Ukraine have any bearing on his JFKA work. They are two entirely different subjects. It's like arguing that Isaac Newton's opinions about alchemy invalidate his Laws of Motion.

Paul, I concluded back in 2007 that the Russian Federation had devolved into a nationalist/fascist police state, after Putin and his FSB seized our ROCOR in Western Europe and North America. At the time, I heard ROCOR sermons that sounded a lot like Mussolini diatribes, except that they were spoken in Russian. Something was terribly wrong with the picture. Alexander Dugin's influence on Putin and his fellow Russian fascists explains a great deal.* So, I don't think it's far-fetched to compare what Putin is doing in Ukraine to what Hitler did in Yugoslavia, Poland, and Russia. (Fiona Hill has also used the Hitler analogy.) Conversely, there were a number of European nations and regions that simply laid down their arms and let the N-a-z-i police state occupy them (e.g., Austria, Sudetenland, Denmark, Norway, etc.) But what were the consequences? True, those who promptly surrendered to Hitler saved their buildings, (unlike Warsaw or Belgrade) but what happened to their citizens? Many (Jews, Roma, socialists, etc.) were promptly rounded up and sent to concentration camps. I believe that the same thing will happen in Russian-occupied Ukraine to those opposed to Putin's fascist police state. Putin will establish a Stalinist reign of terror. He has already done the same thing in the RF-- murdering journalists and sending opposition politicians like Navalny to the Gulag. * https://www.rawstory.com/this-dark-and-disturbing-figure-is-advising-putin-s-inner-circle/

Ron, I'm not a WSJ subscriber. Can't stomach the idea of paying Rupert Murdoch for anything. (I read this article for free today.)

Good analysis of Putin and the Ukraine War by an emeritus Oxford professor of Russian history, Robert Service (not to be confused with the doggerel poet who wrote, The Cremation of Sam McGee.) Service foresees a brutal Russian military "victory," followed by an untenable occupation. (Probably the only time I've ever referenced an article associated with Stanford's Hoover Institute.) The Two Blunders That Caused the Ukraine War Robert Service, a leading historian of Russia, says Moscow will win the war but will lose the peace and fail to subjugate Ukraine. How Putin could be deposed. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cause-ukraine-war-robert-service-moscow-putin-lenin-stalin-history-communism-invasion-kgb-fsb-11646413200

When I was recently catching up on the literature about Bobby Kennedy's murder, (e.g., A Lie Too Big To Fail, The Polka Dot File) one of the things that really hit me was the shocking perfidy of Hoover's FBI staff (and the LAPD) in suppressing all of the blatant evidence of the conspiracy. Fernando Faura lived through the whole charade in the summer of '68, and he kept mentioning that 400 FBI agents were on the case. Yet, the 400 consistently failed to follow up on the remarkable leads that Faura himself was investigating-- other than threatening witnesses like John Fahey, and trying to prevent them from talking to anyone about what happened! Meanwhile, Hoover was schmoozing with the mafiosi at Santa Anita. If I recall correctly, there was a scene in Oliver Stone's movie, Nixon, of Hoover whispering sweet nothings in someone's ear at Santa Anita after RFK's murder.

Pete, Strange synchronicity. I'm currently reading The Gulag Archipelago, and I had just read the passage you quoted (above) last night. I came across another passage in the book today that also relates to Putin's current police state and the firebombing of Ukrainian cities. The gist of it was Solzhenitsyn lamenting that the Cheka/NKVD leaders who tortured and imprisoned millions in the Gulag were never brought to justice in the USSR. Solzhenitsyn believed that the country needed to fully acknowledge and repent of its horrific crimes against humanity in order to avoid repeating its historic crimes in the next generation. That never happened. Instead, they ended up with KGB Major Vladimir Putin-- a man whose father was an NKVD "Destruction Brigade" officer, of the kind who arrested Red Army Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the German front in 1945 and sent him to the Gulag for 10 years! And Vlad Putin, himself, actively sought a position in the KGB as a young man-- something that Solzhenitsyn and his college friends refused to do in the 1930s.

O'Neill, certainly, uncovered far more about Dr. Jolyon West (from those cached UCLA files) than John Marks did in 1979. Marks found next to nothing about Jolyon West's relationship with Gottlieb and MK-ULTRA in his 1979 cache of CIA records. As in William Joseph Bryan's case, Richard Helms, apparently, shredded the evidence in 1973.

Kind of strange that I just mentioned Putin's oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev here yesterday, in the context of reviewing the history of Russian black ops in Ukraine during the past decade, as described in Catherine Belton's book Putin's People. A former Fox News Director Jack Hanick has just been indicted today for running a Kremlin propaganda corporation with Malofeyev.* Meanwhile, Russia Today laid off its American staff today. My belief is that Rupert Murdoch has also been getting billions from Putin's KGB oligarchs to promote Kremlin disinformazia in the U.S. Just a hypothesis at present. IMO, it's no accident that so many journalists on both ends of the political spectrum "faceplanted" on Ukraine and accurate reporting about Putin's totalitarian police state. * Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia Former Fox News Director Jack Hanick Indicted for Helping Russia (yahoo.com)

What Putin is doing right now in Ukraine is merely the most recent chapter in his 20 year KGB/oligarchic ops to divide and weaken Western democracies in Europe and the U.S. in order to expand Russian hegemony. It's much worse than Americans realize. What most people don't know is that the Soviet KGB never disappeared. It merely went under the radar during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-- as did Dresden-based KGB Major Putin-- before eventually assuming control of the Russian Federation in the guise of "democratic" leaders like Putin (and his mentor Sobchak.) Yeltsin would never have come to power without tacit KGB support. And the KGB had long anticipated that the USSR would collapse. They prepared for it. In the process, the Russian Federation under Putin devolved into an international, oligarchic, KGB-directed crime syndicate. And they were very aggressive with ops to de-stabilize Western democracies-- using oligarchic money to fund right wing politicians throughout Europe (including Boris Johnson , Le Pen, and Berlusconi) and Trump in the U.S. The goal was to weaken and divide NATO, the EU, and U.S. society. Putin and Russian oligarchs like Konstantin Malofeyev also funded superficially "Orthodox" fascist right wing agitators to destabilize Ukraine, as early as 2010 in Donetsk, four years before Putin's green men seized the Crimea in 2014. An excellent book detailing this history is Catherine Belton's Putin's People. Chapter 14 details Putin's Ukraine and EU ops during the past decade. Chapter 15 focuses on Putin's KGB/oligarchic recruitment and entrapment of Donald Trump. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-Took-Back-Russia-ebook/dp/B07VMZYK13/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1646273626&sr=8-1

Paul, I urge you to study Hill's latest commentary above. It is quite erudite, and displays a profound grasp of European and Russian history, in addition to direct, firsthand observations of Putin, (including Putin's threats to Trump about using hypersonic nuclear missiles) some of which were not publicized previously. Meanwhile, Russ Baker's WhoWhatWhat magazine has just called out Fox News pundit Glenn Greenwald for his moral relativism and faceplant on Ukraine.* Personally, I gave up on Nietzschean moral relativism after my sophomore year in college. As Huey Lewis put it, "Sometimes bad is bad." Perhaps Jeff will eventually undergo a long overdue paradigm shift and acknowledge his Ukraine faceplant, but I won't hold my breath... * https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/international/from-russia-with-hate/

Jeff, You have posted a lot of absurd bunk on this forum during the past five years, but this utterly erroneous comment about Dr. Fiona Hill really takes the proverbial cake. Is RT paying you with Bitcoin this month? I urge people interested in understanding Putin and the Ukraine crisis to read Dr. Fiona Hill's erudite, informed analysis (above) to judge its merits for themselves.

It can't be said any more clearly and precisely than Dr. Fiona Hill says it here. But, as usual on this thread, the important signal is obscured by noisy non-sequiturs. Part of Ben's problem is that he never seems to discern the difference between informed scholars and noisy, marginally-educated pundits.

Highly informative discussion about Putin and the current Ukraine crisis by Russia expert and former Trump advisor, Dr. Fiona Hill. It's a lengthy interview, but very much worth reading. In addition to discussing Western illusions about Putin, Hill explains that Putin told Donald Trump that he would use nukes, if necessary, if the U.S. and NATO interfered with his plans to re-establish the Russian empire. Trump didn't seem to understand what Putin was saying. Among other subjects, Hill discusses the Chechen War, and Putin's history of readily using weapons like plutonium and Novichok to poison people-- as in the attacks on Litvinenko, Skripal, and Navalny. ‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340?utm_source=pocket-newtab February 28, 2022 Excerpt Reynolds: So, similar to Hitler, he’s using a sense of massive historical grievance combined with a veneer of protecting Russians and a dismissal of the rights of minorities and other nations to have independent countries in order to fuel territorial ambitions? Hill: Correct. And he’s blaming others, for why this has happened, and getting us to blame ourselves. If people look back to the history of World War II, there were an awful lot of people around Europe who became N-a-z-i German sympathizers before the invasion of Poland. In the United Kingdom, there was a whole host of British politicians who admired Hitler’s strength and his power, for doing what Great Powers do, before the horrors of the Blitz and the Holocaust finally penetrated. Reynolds: And you see this now. Hill: You totally see it. Unfortunately, we have politicians and public figures in the United States and around Europe who have embraced the idea that Russia was wronged by NATO and that Putin is a strong, powerful man and has the right to do what he’s doing: Because Ukraine is somehow not worthy of independence, because it’s either Russia’s historical lands or Ukrainians are Russians, or the Ukrainian leaders are — this is what Putin says — “drug addled, fascist Nazis” or whatever labels he wants to apply here. So sadly, we are treading back through old historical patterns that we said that we would never permit to happen again.

Ron, I think Bruce Cockburn wrote If I had a Rocket Launcher while he was touring Guatemala and Nicaragua during the Reagan/Iran-Contra years. He wrote a number of songs on that album about the Mott regime and the CIA/Contra war against the Sandanistas.

Matt, I suspect that many of us have long wanted to believe that Putin is an "Enlightened Autocrat." I know that I have. And, as I gradually learned about the deceptions and dark side of our CIA/NATO/Saudi/Mossad "War on Terror," I secretly applauded Putin's intervention against Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria in 2015. Putin, essentially, saved Syria from our coalition's proxy war against the Assad regime. Even his brutal war in Chechnya seemed possibly justified, in light of our common concerns about Islamic terrorism-- although some people suspect that Putin may have used a false flag attack on Russian school children to launch that war. Most of us tended to look the other way when Putin began murdering journalists and persecuting opposition party politicians after 2000. I became suspicious of the man when I gradually began to understand his methods in seizing the ROCOR in 2007. I heard some stories that were creepy. But, now that Putin is using thermobaric and cluster bombs in Kharkiv and Kyiv, a paradigm shift is in order for all of us. The man is revealing his inner Yuri Andropov to the world. Paradigm shifts are difficult. We are all invested in our working models of reality. In fact, it would be impossible for us to function without them. I have to admire Matt Taibbi for acknowledging last week that his perceptions of Putin were flawed.

The old Russia Today paradigm of "Ukrainian Nazis" and Putin the "Enlightened Autocrat" will, no doubt, persist in some circles, but most people, including Matt Taibbi, are getting in touch with reality this week. As Taibbi admitted, he was so focused on "NATO aggression" that he failed to take Putin's critics (inside and outside of Russia) seriously. One thing I have wondered about during the past few years is why Putin and Yanukovych cheerleaders in the West have been so silent about Yanukovych's imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko from 2011-14. Tymoshenko was only released from prison after the corrupt Putin puppet Yanukovych was deposed by a popular uprising in 2014. And the Kremlin also, reportedly, tried to assassinate Tymoshenko.

IMO, the occupation will be brutal-- Stalin-esque. Much of it will be hidden from Western awareness, as soon as the FSB is able to crack down on communication and Western reporting from occupied Ukraine. Putin and his FSB henchmen will draw upon a century of NKVD/KGB police state experience to control Ukraine, just as they have drawn upon a century of Soviet experience with disinformazia and state-controlled mass media to manipulate public opinion at home and abroad. Recall that the West was largely unaware of what was really happening in the Soviet Union for decades -- the Stalinist purges, Holodomor, and labor camps of the Gulag-- before Solzhenitsyn's work was finally published in Paris. Even Pasternak was published in Italy before his work finally appeared in print in the USSR. Stalin once said, "Ideas are far more dangerous than guns. If we forbid people to have guns, why would we allow them to have ideas?"

Matt Taibbi apologizes for "faceplanting" on Putin's invasion of Ukraine-- i.e., being so "fixated on Western misbehavior" that he failed to take Putin's critics seriously. Sounds familiar... 🤥 Note to Readers, on the Invasion of Ukraine A faceplant of my own. Note to Readers, on the Invasion of Ukraine (substack.com) Matt Taibbi Feb 24 2,846 1,515 Part of news and even commentary is admitting mistakes, and though I always made sure when discussing the subject to note Vladimir Putin could still invade Ukraine, I have to admit, I didn’t see this happening. Some old colleagues I trust, including some Putin-critical Russians, didn’t see it, either, but in many cases they just didn’t want to believe it, for reasons that are more understandable from their perspective. My mistake was more like reverse chauvinism, being so fixated on Western misbehavior that I didn’t bother to take this possibility seriously enough. To readers who trust me not to make those misjudgments, I’m sorry. Obviously, Putin’s invasion will have horrific consequences for years to come and massively destabilize the world. I fear there will be more to say soon, but I’ll leave it at that for today. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and I was wrong about this.

Well, Jeff, here's strike number three for you. I posted last Thursday that, IMO, people in the West were finally seeing Putin for who he really is-- based on what I had observed in the ROCOR fifteen years ago. You dismissed my observations on the false grounds that they were based on things I had read in the M$M. Then, yesterday, Vladimir Sorokin wrote in The Guardian that Putin's mask had finally cracked. You dismissed Sorokin's observations as literary fiction and a mere personal dislike of Putin. Here comes strike #3... The Terrible Truth So Many Experts Missed About Russia The terrible truth so many experts missed about Russia before its Ukraine invasion. (slate.com) February 28, 2022

Interesting article by a history prof from the University of Michigan. Putin’s claim to rid Ukraine of Nazis is especially absurd given its history Putin's claim to rid Ukraine of Nazis is especially absurd given its history (theconversation.com) February 26, 2022 Excerpt The fact that Zelensky is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor and was raised in what he told The Times of Israel was “an ordinary Soviet Jewish family” was barely noted during the election. “Nobody cares. Nobody asks about it,” he remarked in the same interview. Nor did Ukrainians seem to mind that the prime minister at the time of Zelensky’s election, Volodymyr Groysman, also had a Jewish background. For a brief period of time, Ukraine was the only state outside of Israel to have both a Jewish head of state and a Jewish head of government. “How could I be a N-a-z-i?” Zelensky asked in a public address after the Russian invasion began. “Explain it to my grandfather.”

Putin Is Using Cluster Bombs in Kharkiv

Vladimir Sorokin's vivid, detailed description of Putin's reign of terror and the Russian Federation's descent into totalitarianism is historically accurate, literary metaphors aside. You strike out, once again. As for the history of the Russian Orthodox Church during the past century, I'm guessing that you are as clueless as most Western intellectuals. At most you have possibly read Solzhenitsyn or the Mitrokhin archival material (published at Cambridge as The Sword and the Shield) about the infiltration and control of the ROC by the NKVD/KGB after 1917. I doubt that you have read the more detailed historical writings of I.M. Andreyev on the subject. (You won't learn anything accurate on Wikipedia. It has been systematically edited since 2007.) "Partisan schisms?" As in Communist Party? Are you kidding? The exiled ROCOR heirarchs had anathematized the KGB-controlled Moscow Patriarch for nearly a century, following the murder of Moscow Patriarch Tikhon by the NKVD in 1921. There was no "schism" in the exiled ROCOR until it was seized by Putin and his FSB in 2007. I should know, because a dear friend of mine published a book on the subject many years ago. Putin's first Moscow Patriarch Alexey II (Ridiger) was a known KGB agent with the code name, "Drozhdov." The MP was a tool of the Soviet/Russian Federation state for the past century, managed by the KGB/FSB. After 2000, Putin used his FSB-controlled MP to infiltrate and seize the ROCOR in Western Europe and North America, through an internal political coup. (See Konstantin Preobrazhensky's 2009 book on that subject.) https://www.amazon.com/KGB-FSBs-New-Trojan-Horse/dp/0615249086/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2EO3WG3UXC57K&keywords=Konstantin+Preobrazhensky&qid=1646019918&sprefix=konstantin+preobrazhensky%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1 Putin cynically viewed the (White) Russian Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) as a mere international espionage tool for his fascist, totalitarian police state. It was the same process that the NKVD/KGB/FSB had used to infiltrate and control the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union after 1917 -- a complete sacrilege. Don't be fooled by Putin making a show of lighting an occasional candle in the Orthodox Church. I've seen Russian mafia guys do that much on religious holidays. Sadly, some delusional, right wing Republicans in the U.S. currently seem to think Putin is a "Christian nationalist." It's an act. He's no Christian. He's a murderer and a thief.