Those Americans in government who are supporting Putin in his miserable diatribe. These people are traitors.
They care nothing for our democracy and do everything to help further the despotic regime of a corrupt killer.
They have jumped on board with this villain and his protégé, Donald Trump , who offers a ‘bloodbath ‘ to all of us who don’t support his corruption . He also continuously distorts the truth . And gets his legal fees paid by his supporters.
As Timothy Snyder has pointed out how critical journalists are for the survival of Democracy, he himself is a truthteller. I have considered him to be a part of my soul, as a person of deep knowledge who will share history and the truth as well as he possibly can. Thank you, Timothy Snyder.
Spent the weekend reading about past terror attacks within Russia and stumbled upon some history that I was not previously aware of, the Circassian genocide during the near 100 year Circassian War. Circassian region is what is now Russia that borders the Black Sea, Sochi was not Russia until the 1860’s. The similarities of this history have a lot in common with the invasion of Ukraine today. Circassians were mostly Sunni Muslims, and called “subhuman” by Russian Generals. Circassians suffered a similar fate as the Crimean Tatars and Cossacks. Forced relocation. Mass executions of civilians, complete burning and destruction of their cities, towns, and villages, replaced by ethnic Russians. Those that survived, including children were sent deep inside Russia in order to dilute and extinguish their cultural existence. So it’s not a coincidence nor surprising that Sunni Isis K has a grievance with Russia from recent Syria, Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and long ago Circassia.
I recall Putin's FSB blew up Russian apartment buildings -- murdering Russians within -- as pretext for Chechen war. From that perspective, letting ISIS do the actual killing of Russians so as to blame Ukraine is accepting a gift.
Ouch... This window story is even harder to believe than the old "little green men" story. Let's hope that the Speaker of the House will need the Dems to keep him in office, and in exchange, the Speaker will allow the house to vote to help out in the Ukraine. It is a crazy world where we talk about windows and little green men and the Dems helping a Jan 6 insurrectionist, but there we are. You can't make this stuff up.
Forgot to mention…there are two articles in today’s Guardian about this incident. One covers the known information about the attack while the other one analyzes how the Kremlin’s messaging is diverting attention away from its sprawling FSB’s failure to take the warnings of an ISIS-K imminent attack seriously. I couldn’t help seeing an implied comparison to the way Netanyahu’s security apparatus wasn’t convinced of any immediate Hamas danger. Of course, I could be wrong here because it is a convenient frame but it may not be an accurate frame. I’m assuming both Bibi and Putin will keep any evidence of the security missteps out of view for as long as possible.
Dictators follow a pattern. In order to maintain popularity and control inside the state, they all too often contend that the state is threatened by outsiders.
Do you think that Putin deliberately ignored the warning, believed it was real but ignored it so that he could use it for his propaganda? And, the videos, are they not only to attract recruits but to dissuade reluctant Ukraine supporters from further involvement through horror, disgust, and intimidation at the carnage they see in Moscow but don't see so vividly in Ukraine?
False flag attacks like this one may be, have been a tool of dictators and other political leaders forever. The Reichstag fire just a century ago helped Hitler solidify his grip on Germany. The WMD debacle at the UN plunged the US into misdirected decades of loss of blood and treasure in Iraq - for what?
The House is in recess now for two weeks. It must be brought back and the aid bill for Ukraine MUST be passed. The votes are there. The only one blocking it is that Putin-Trump tool, Mike Johnson. More congress people (including Democrats) need to sign the discharge petition to sidestep Johnson and get the bill to a floor vote. It is that simple.
Russian media are reporting that the four men apprehended in Bryansk, which is as close to Belarus as it is to the war zone in Ukraine, were paid $5,000 each by ISIS. Perhaps they were paid — as decoys.
All seemed to be Tajik. At least one spoke no Russian. They were spotted early on driving a conspicuous Renault. ISIS promptly released a photo of three of the men together, as if to say, Yup these are our boys. Clever of you to catch them.
Are these the kind of people ISIS, or Al-Queda before it, would recruit to infiltrate a sophisticated, security conscious target?
Perhaps the real terrorists melted into the frightened crowd (many of whom were not allowed to drive their cars home) and are safely en route to home base, perhaps south across Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, to rest up for another strike.
As an octogenarian I don’t intuitively understand how to keep a thread going on substack. Consequently I don’t know how to add another very important source of what’s happening in Russia’s war-footing press releases - the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) daily provides the latest documented evidence on the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Israeli-Hamas war, and the threats in the China-Taiwan situation. It’s truly a treasure trove of reliable information and yesterday’s report goes into detail about the topic of Russia’s informational strategy and tactics.
Thanks Dr. Snyder for all those details and, more importantly, reminding us that the Kremlin will turn to its spin doctors to add a chaotic sense of confusion about the incident in their unstated effort to unsettle their citizens’ efforts to understand what happened so that they find it difficult to blame the Kremlin in any way…as well confuse the Kremlin’s supporters abroad by giving them fodder for writing/airing supportive stories of the Kremlin being beset by its self-described enemies Ukraine and/or NATO while ignoring the ISIS-K claims.
Typically great piece by Professor Snyder. If you have not done so, read his masterpiece, “Bloodlands,” a book that will stay with you for as long as you live.
Unfortunately there are parallels between the majority of Russians and the majority of supporters of authoritarian rule, whether they be the adherents of Trump in the US, LePen in France, or Orban in Hungary, just to name three of many. These folks are somehow dependent on their strong [sic] men for guidance as to what their opinions should be, and abandon any notion of thinking for themselves. It is sad, more so because ultimately they damage their own futures as well as those of the rest of us.
Those Americans in government who are supporting Putin in his miserable diatribe. These people are traitors.
They care nothing for our democracy and do everything to help further the despotic regime of a corrupt killer.
They have jumped on board with this villain and his protégé, Donald Trump , who offers a ‘bloodbath ‘ to all of us who don’t support his corruption . He also continuously distorts the truth . And gets his legal fees paid by his supporters.
As Timothy Snyder has pointed out how critical journalists are for the survival of Democracy, he himself is a truthteller. I have considered him to be a part of my soul, as a person of deep knowledge who will share history and the truth as well as he possibly can. Thank you, Timothy Snyder.
Spent the weekend reading about past terror attacks within Russia and stumbled upon some history that I was not previously aware of, the Circassian genocide during the near 100 year Circassian War. Circassian region is what is now Russia that borders the Black Sea, Sochi was not Russia until the 1860’s. The similarities of this history have a lot in common with the invasion of Ukraine today. Circassians were mostly Sunni Muslims, and called “subhuman” by Russian Generals. Circassians suffered a similar fate as the Crimean Tatars and Cossacks. Forced relocation. Mass executions of civilians, complete burning and destruction of their cities, towns, and villages, replaced by ethnic Russians. Those that survived, including children were sent deep inside Russia in order to dilute and extinguish their cultural existence. So it’s not a coincidence nor surprising that Sunni Isis K has a grievance with Russia from recent Syria, Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and long ago Circassia.
I recall Putin's FSB blew up Russian apartment buildings -- murdering Russians within -- as pretext for Chechen war. From that perspective, letting ISIS do the actual killing of Russians so as to blame Ukraine is accepting a gift.
Ouch... This window story is even harder to believe than the old "little green men" story. Let's hope that the Speaker of the House will need the Dems to keep him in office, and in exchange, the Speaker will allow the house to vote to help out in the Ukraine. It is a crazy world where we talk about windows and little green men and the Dems helping a Jan 6 insurrectionist, but there we are. You can't make this stuff up.
Putin is the guy who claimed the CIA packed a Malaysian airliner with corpses and crashed it into Ukraine to make him look bad. Russians bought it.
Forgot to mention…there are two articles in today’s Guardian about this incident. One covers the known information about the attack while the other one analyzes how the Kremlin’s messaging is diverting attention away from its sprawling FSB’s failure to take the warnings of an ISIS-K imminent attack seriously. I couldn’t help seeing an implied comparison to the way Netanyahu’s security apparatus wasn’t convinced of any immediate Hamas danger. Of course, I could be wrong here because it is a convenient frame but it may not be an accurate frame. I’m assuming both Bibi and Putin will keep any evidence of the security missteps out of view for as long as possible.
Dictators follow a pattern. In order to maintain popularity and control inside the state, they all too often contend that the state is threatened by outsiders.
Do you think that Putin deliberately ignored the warning, believed it was real but ignored it so that he could use it for his propaganda? And, the videos, are they not only to attract recruits but to dissuade reluctant Ukraine supporters from further involvement through horror, disgust, and intimidation at the carnage they see in Moscow but don't see so vividly in Ukraine?
False flag attacks like this one may be, have been a tool of dictators and other political leaders forever. The Reichstag fire just a century ago helped Hitler solidify his grip on Germany. The WMD debacle at the UN plunged the US into misdirected decades of loss of blood and treasure in Iraq - for what?
The House is in recess now for two weeks. It must be brought back and the aid bill for Ukraine MUST be passed. The votes are there. The only one blocking it is that Putin-Trump tool, Mike Johnson. More congress people (including Democrats) need to sign the discharge petition to sidestep Johnson and get the bill to a floor vote. It is that simple.
Excellent, as always.
Russian media are reporting that the four men apprehended in Bryansk, which is as close to Belarus as it is to the war zone in Ukraine, were paid $5,000 each by ISIS. Perhaps they were paid — as decoys.
All seemed to be Tajik. At least one spoke no Russian. They were spotted early on driving a conspicuous Renault. ISIS promptly released a photo of three of the men together, as if to say, Yup these are our boys. Clever of you to catch them.
Are these the kind of people ISIS, or Al-Queda before it, would recruit to infiltrate a sophisticated, security conscious target?
Perhaps the real terrorists melted into the frightened crowd (many of whom were not allowed to drive their cars home) and are safely en route to home base, perhaps south across Uzbekistan to Afghanistan, to rest up for another strike.
As an octogenarian I don’t intuitively understand how to keep a thread going on substack. Consequently I don’t know how to add another very important source of what’s happening in Russia’s war-footing press releases - the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) daily provides the latest documented evidence on the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Israeli-Hamas war, and the threats in the China-Taiwan situation. It’s truly a treasure trove of reliable information and yesterday’s report goes into detail about the topic of Russia’s informational strategy and tactics.
Thanks Dr. Snyder for all those details and, more importantly, reminding us that the Kremlin will turn to its spin doctors to add a chaotic sense of confusion about the incident in their unstated effort to unsettle their citizens’ efforts to understand what happened so that they find it difficult to blame the Kremlin in any way…as well confuse the Kremlin’s supporters abroad by giving them fodder for writing/airing supportive stories of the Kremlin being beset by its self-described enemies Ukraine and/or NATO while ignoring the ISIS-K claims.
Typically great piece by Professor Snyder. If you have not done so, read his masterpiece, “Bloodlands,” a book that will stay with you for as long as you live.
As a Canadian, a father and a grandfather,
I offer a timely Prayer on this Palm Sunday, for all of our world to mindfully use as we struggle against strong evil forces.
To preserve our Democracy here against Trump and preserve the Ukraine people against Putin.
"St. Joseph and St. Michael the Archangel defend us [them] in battle.
Be our [their] defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil [advocates and agents],
May God rebuke them we humbly pray, and by the power of God,
Cast into hell Satin [Putin , Trump] and all evil spirits,
Who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls,
Amen."
Unfortunately there are parallels between the majority of Russians and the majority of supporters of authoritarian rule, whether they be the adherents of Trump in the US, LePen in France, or Orban in Hungary, just to name three of many. These folks are somehow dependent on their strong [sic] men for guidance as to what their opinions should be, and abandon any notion of thinking for themselves. It is sad, more so because ultimately they damage their own futures as well as those of the rest of us.