Russian Terrorism, and Dictators- Theirs and Ours

There is not much more I can say regarding my feelings about Russia, and its mafia leadership. The facts are clear- it is a terrorist state. It is corrupt. It treats is citizens as subjects. It seeks to conquer and destroy and create havoc. It is the path of Russia for the last 100 years, for hundreds of years. That much should be clear after their actions this week. What is just as clear is that Ukraine will never give up, and my sincere hope is that the US, Europe, and the rest of their supporters will never abandon them.

Russia is a terrorist state.

Now, closer to home, I recently caught one sentence by… he must not be named- that is, our own would-be dictator as he announced his intention to run for “president”- I put the word in quotes as his designs on the office have nothing to do with being a president, but more a strongman, a tyrant, a dictator.  The one sentence I did catch in the news, which immediately turned my stomach, was some derogatory line about the US Justice department.  It was in keeping with his “style”; that everyone in our government, all its agencies, should support him fully and blindly, otherwise they are traitors, to be dismissed and forever ostracised by the Party, whatever the definition and proper noun chosen to signify said “party”. Either way it sounded like something said by a 1930’s fascist leader, not a former president of the United States.

As a follow up, from last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, I found nearly the same statement, about the same department. From the article Special Council To Lead Trump Probes. The italics are my own.

Mr. Trump as president repeatedly stated that the attorney general owes a president personal loyalty and should deploy the Justice Department against his political enemies.

That from a US president! Not from Stalin, or Assad, or Kim, or Putin! Our president. If this is not clear evidence of tyrannical designs, and knowing that this is how he went about the business of destroying our country for four long years, grounds for arrest and imprisonment for life in itself, then we as a country are sunk. Food for thought.

 

Momentary Observation- Changes in Russian Posture

Russia seems to be backing off with its rhetoric, at least in the news sources I view. This tells me that Putin may be listening to those from his inner circle, something that is clearly a difficult prospect for paranoid, isolated dictators. The question is why? Is he threatened by the unity of the rest of the world against his criminal intentions? Is it because internal dissent is increasing and his rhetoric is backfiring internally? Maybe he is realising his tenuous situation and where his country is headed? Or perhaps he overstepped strategically, revealed to much information and all of these options are still on the table? Just guesses on my part.

Examples of Putin’s ranting from a few weeks back that are no longer at the top of the headlines:

• reports about nuclear capabilities
• talk of invading Poland, other NATO countries
• talk of retaliation “like the world has never known”
• the “de-nazification” of Ukraine

While we do not know precisely what is happening in Russia, we have a fair idea. There are clearly those who oppose the war- there is dissent. There is also endless disinformation that confuses Russians as well as westerners. What we must remember is this- nothing has changed in this geographic region. The former Soviet Union is alive and well, albeit rebranded, still controlling the media, manipulating its people through fear, threat of violence, terror, and isolation. Many Russians have not recovered from the Soviet era; they are still living under a dark, hopeless, depressing authoritarian state. Don’t be fooled by thinking otherwise.

Our only hope is that the younger generations especially, those who have felt freedom over the last 30 years, refuse to give it up. The only answer for a free Russia, and a free world, is for the removal of its current dictator and the dismantling, finally, of the Russian mafia state allowing the people of Russia to actually choose their path.

The Continued “Conflict of Ideologies”; Egotism, Greed, and the End of Putin

UPDATE: 05 March, 2022 at 1725 MTN.- The big news today seems to be that Putin has declared he will not impose martial law in Russia. So now the question becomes, just when will he impose martial law in Russia? This is the next big step in cutting his own throat, and I am personally counting on him to add this to his list of mistakes very soon. The people of Russia are being held hostage, lied to, beaten, and imprisoned. We know that the majority of Russian’s do not support the killing of their neighbors. It is up to them just as much as it is up to the heroes in Ukraine to fight against the totalitarian regime now fully in place in Russia. Martial law will give them one more push to do so. Freedom awaits!

Original Post- 05 March, 2022 at 08:22 MTN.
The more things change, the more they stay the same- certainly this is true of the differences between the west… the differences between freedom, rule of law, justice, liberty, and life in modern Russia, at least as imposed by the rulers of the state. For perspective, we only need look back to purges, gulags, secret police, and the Terror that happened in what was then the Soviet Union. According to The “Beginning of the End for Putin”, and article on the Foreign Affairs website on March 2nd, 2022, a Levada Poll in Russia puts people’s fears of retaliation by the state against them at its highest since 1994.  That says volumes about where Russia- and its dictator- now find themselves. 

Putin took office on 31 December, 1999 and immediately began a course towards the past. According to Masha Gessen, in The Future is History, within a couple of years Putin had put “military officials in 25% of the top government jobs, had monopolised state media, and reversed judicial reforms.” He also began writing history (and rewriting it)- depending on how one views the limited information released on such events as the Moscow theater bombing, the Beslan school siege, the apartment house bombings, and the wars in Chechnya around that time, to mention a few points. What Putin did was nothing short of rebranding- what were essentially advertising agencies stepped in and created Putin, his party, “opposition parties”, and carefully choreographed responses to the attacks mentioned above, taking full advantage of each one to chip away at the few reforms that had been made in years since the fall of the iron curtain. 

And now it is 2022, and Putin’s egotism, his personal greed and that of his cronies, along with his paranoia and dissociation with reality- or so it seems- is putting his tenure at great risk. And good riddance. Nothing good can come of war, but if the world can find a way to find some sort of positive outcome from the current situation, the fall of Vladimir Putin, and a second chance for freedom in Russia, and relative peace in eastern Europe must be part of that outcome.

Pressure from the world must hold steady, and grow daily, become stronger and stronger, and not let up until we see images of Putin’s dead body flashing across all the screens of the world. This is the best chance the world is going to get, and we must take it. 

 

 

Momentary Observation- On the Brink of World War III

UPDATE- 24 February, 2022- The Russian invasion of Ukraine is underway. WWIII in the making… Putin said he would not invade. He also said he would not use nuclear weapons. Our nuclear shields had better be up, as a madman is on the loose and he is capable of anything.

 

Original Post- 23 February, 2022
The imaginary lines are being crossed. Our greatest fears are being realised, at least those of us that grew up in the 1980’s. I keep having visions of Ronald Reagan, and the fears of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction for the uninitiated- the doctrine that if nuclear war begins, no matter who starts it, both sides will end up completely destroyed.)

Why do I bring up MAD? For those of us who caught the blurb recently, Biden and Putin discussed nuclear war and agreed that neither would “push the button.”  Curious, that meeting, and agreement. Out of nowhere it seemed to me. And then, the “Ukraine crisis” begins in earnest.

And where are we really… the Supreme Soviet still controls all (Putin and the oligarchs), the cult of personality still rules, the KGB still enforces their will upon the people (now FSB- headed by the one and only Putin under Boris Yeltsin), the nomenklatura and apparatchiks still fill the proper posts, the proletariat are still poor and downtrodden, agitprop still fills the airwaves and newspapers (oligarch/ “state”-owned) and in our era even more damaging are the hundreds of millions of cell phones and computers fed with it, history is still revised with facts disappearing down the memory hole, and now the Terror may never have happened- again (so much for reconciliation).

The work of the party is sacred.

The west is the enemy, with only one purpose- to destroy the great empire.

From the czar to the Bolsheviks, to Lenin and Stalin, to a very brief and failed attempt at freedom, and back to the czar. History continues to repeat itself, and it seems that we continue to be oblivious to that fact. What must be realised by all is this- Putin is living in some long- gone century, dreaming; the Russian Empire is an anachronism. This is the 21st century and freedom, liberty, and democracy will prevail.

Let us hope that the taste of freedom that so many have had, more so in Ukraine than many other places in the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries, will make it impossible for totalitarianism to succeed in its latest plot. Sit tight, as the future proves to be interesting.