Posts Tagged ‘UKRAINE’
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 12, 2022 at 12:10 am
On February 28, CNN’s website published the following headline: Russia faces financial meltdown as sanctions slam its economy.
The story opened:
“Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”
That unprovoked attack opened on February 24, with missile and artillery attacks, striking major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin believed that the conquest of Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Intent on restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union, he had swept from one successful war to the next:
- In 1999-2000, he waged the Second Chechen War, restoring federal control of Chechnya.
- In 2008, he invaded the Republic of Georgia, which had declared its independence as the Soviet Union began to crumble. By war’s end, Russia occupied 20% of Georgia’s territory.
- In 2014, Putin invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched only verbal condemnations.
The reasons:
- Fear of igniting a nuclear war;
- Belief that Russia was simply acting within its own sphere of influence; and/or
- Then-President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO and displays of subservience to Putin.
NATO emblem
Russia had began massing troops on the Ukrainian border in 2021.
When the invasion came, the United States and its Western European allies retaliated with unprecedented economic sanctions.
Among the resulting casualties:
- The ruble crashed.
- Russia’s central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%.
- Economists predicted the Russian economy could decline by five percent.
- The West—especially the United States—froze at least half of the $630 billion in international reserves that Putin had amassed to stave off tough sanctions.
Then the war bogged down for Russia:
- In late August, Ukraine, using missile systems supplied by the United States, destroyed Russian ammunition dumps and a Russian air base in Crimea.
- By September, Ukrainian forces recaptured much of the northeastern Kharkiv region, including the city of Izium, which the Russians had been using as a logistics hub.
- On September 21, Putin announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 military reservists. All male citizens below 60 are now eligible to be drafted.
- This, in turn, led at least 194,000 Russian men to such neighboring countries as Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
In short: The war is not going the way Putin assumed it would.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is not the first time a dictator has guessed wrong about the results of his actions.
On September 1, 1939, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered his armies to invade Poland.
Almost a year earlier—on September 29, 1938—he had bullied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier into surrendering the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
The Munich Agreement whetted Hitler’s appetite for greater conquests—and fueled his contempt for England and France: “Our enemies are little worms,” he said in a conference with his generals. “I saw them at Munich.”
He believed he could conquer Poland, and Chamberlain and Daladier would meekly ratify his latest acquisition.
Adolf Hitler
So he was stunned when, on September 3, 1939, Britain and France—however reluctantly—honored their pledged word to Poland and declared war on Germany.
“What now?” Hitler furiously asked his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Ribbentrop had no answer.
Knowing that Germany lacked the resources for a long war, Hitler had intended to fight a series of quick, small wars, gobbling up one country at a time. Now he found himself locked in an endless war with heavyweights France and England—and eventually the Soviet Union and the United States.
He stayed locked into that war until he committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and the Third Reich officially collapsed on May 7.
Fifty-eight years later, on March 21, 2003, President George W. Bush’s attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
George W. Bush
The war started impressively, with 1,700 air sorties and 504 Cruise missiles.
Within two weeks, American ground forces entered Baghdad. After four days of intense fighting, the Iraqi regime fell. By April 14, the Pentagon reported that major military operations had ended.
On May 1, 2003, Bush declared that the war was won.
But then American forces became embroiled in an endless, nationwide guerrilla war. Eighteen years later, the United States was still fighting in Iraq.
The war that Bush had deliberately provoked:
- Took the lives of 4,484 Americans.
- Cost the United States Treasury at least $2 trillion.
- Allowed Iran—Iraq’s arch enemy—to eagerly fill it.
- Frightened and repelled even America’s closest allies.
- Killed at least 655,000 Iraqis.
- Frightened China and Russia into expanding the size of their militaries.
And Putin?
- A major reason for his attack: To prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
- But it has frightened Sweden and Finland into joining NATO.
- After four years of the Putin-appeasing Trump administration, the United States, under President Joe Biden, has aggressively supplied sophisticated weapons to Ukraine.
- Through a series of humiliating battlefield defeats and by enraging millions of Russians with a draft, Putin has locked himself into a no-win position.
- And NATO is now fully revitalized to meet future Russian threats.
Thus do the worst intentions of hubristic dictators often come undone.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 10, 2022 at 12:10 am
Vladimir Putin believes himself to be a serious student of history. If so, he has drawn the wrong lessons from the past.
During the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815) Great Britain encouraged Indian attacks on American settlers.
One of the worst of these attacks occurred on August 30, 1813, when over 700 Creek Indians destroyed Fort Mims, near Mobile, Alabama. About 500 militiamen, settlers, slaves and Creeks loyal to the Americans were slaughtered or captured.
Fort Mims massacre
Inflaming the Indians against settlers didn’t help the British on the battlefield—in the American Revolution or the War of 1812. But it did incite long-lasting hatred by the vast majority of Americans against the British—and even greater hatred of the Indians.
To cite one example: The Fort Mims massacre inspired General Andrew Jackson to take the field, eventually destroying the Creeks as a nation and wresting Florida from Spain for the United States.
The British lost their American colony. And the Indians were gradually driven from their dominance of the continent.
Similarly, Vladimir Putin has turned to Chechen mercenaries for help in conquering Ukraine. They are known as “Kadyrovtsy” or “Kadyrovites” after their leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin strongman.
Human rights groups, witnesses and survivors have for decades accused them of murders, kidnappings and the torture of Kadyrov’s rivals and critics.
Just as the Indians hoped to use their alliance with the British to defeat their Anglo-American enemies, so, too, do Chechen mercenaries hope to ingratiate themselves with the Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Yet that alliance has not advanced Russia’s fortunes on the battlefield, just as the British-Indian alliance did not gain victory for the British.
As Niccolo Machiavelli, writing more than 500 years ago in The Prince, warned: “[Mercenaries] have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to man, and destruction is deferred only as the attack is. For in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”
Moreover, the atrocities committed by Indians and Chechens only inflamed their enemies to seek revenge.
In his masterwork, The Discourses, Machiavelli offered a lesson on the power of mercy even in the midst of war.
“Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general, was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it. A teacher charged with the education of the children of some of the noblest families of that city decided to ingratiate himself with Camillus by leading those children into the Roman camp.
“Presenting them to Camillus the teacher said to him, ‘By means of these children as hostages, you will be able to compel the city to surrender.’
“Camillus not only declined the offer but had the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back. Then he had a rod put into the hands of each of the children and directed them to whip the teacher all the way back to the city.
“Upon learning this, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.”
Summing up the meaning of this, Machiavelli writes: “This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity. It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
“…History also shows us how much the people desire to find such virtues in great men, and how much they are extolled by historians and biographers of princes….Amongst these, Xenophon takes great pains to show how many victories, how much honor and fame, Cyrus gained by his humanity and affability, and by his not having exhibited a single instance of pride, cruelty or luxuriousness, nor of any of the other vices that are apt to stain the lives of men.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
Then there has been Putin’s use of terror-attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Using bombers and long-range artillery, Putin has tried to compensate for losses on the battlefield by terrorizing Ukrainians into surrender.
Adolf Hitler applied the same tactic against an equally stubborn Great Britain during the Second World War. in 1940-41.
Unable to invade England because the British Navy controlled the sea, Hitler turned to terror-bombing.
He believed he could terrorize Britons into demanding that their government yield to German surrender demands.
From September 7, 1940 to May 21, 1941, the Luftwaffe subjected England—and especially London—to a ruthless bombing campaign that became known as The Blitz.
The undamaged St. Paul’s Cathredal, December, 1940
During 267 days—almost 37 weeks—between 40,000 and 43,000 British civilians were killed. About 139,000 others were wounded.
But the terror-bombing only inflamed Britons to fight Germany even more stubbornly.
Vladimir Putin has learned nothing from these historical lessons.
He has employed mercenaries and terror-bombing against patriotic Ukrainians—who continue to sweep Russian forces from their country.
If he employs even “small” tactical weapons, he risks triggering a fullscale NATO response—thus destroying the Russian empire he hopes to re-create.
Finally: Even if he conquers Ukraine, he will inherit a hate-filled population thirsting for revenge at every opportunity.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 6, 2022 at 12:29 am
In the United States, World War II—at least, that part of the war fought in Europe—used to be celebrated in movies and TV shows like “Combat!” and “The Rat Patrol.” Today, it’s largely forgotten, except by veterans groups and the conflict’s rapidly aging veterans.
But in the Soviet Union, “the Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany is still celebrated as the triumph of Soviet strength and determination against horrific odds and losses.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is unlikely to be remembered so fondly.
On April 28, 2006, Putin publicly stated that the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.
“As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.”
Putin was sounding a warning: He saw himself as Russia’s savior who would restore its lost empire.
Vladimir Putin
His invasion of Ukraine—officially called a “special military operation”—was intended as an important step toward that restoration.
Begun on February 24, the invasion targeted the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in an attempt to overthrow the democratic government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukrainian troops were outgunned and outnumbered. As in the case of the Soviet Union in 1941, Western military analystss expected the attack to quickly succeed. The Biden administration offered to evacuate Zelensky to safety.
Zelensky refused: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
But after weeks of combat, Russian forces retreated, stymied by ferocious Ukrainian resistance.
In July, the last city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk fell to Russia after weeks of artillery bombardment and street fighting. But the Russians made little progress as they tried to conquer the remainder of Donbas.
In late August, after weeks of buildup, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in the southern region of Kherson. Ukraine deployed newly arrived missile systems supplied by the United States and other Western countries to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and a Russian air base in Crimea.
By September, Ukrainian forces launched a rapid offensive, recapturing much of the northeastern Kharkiv region, including the city of Izium. Previously, the Russians had been using this as a key logistics hub.
Volodymyr Zelensky
On September 21, with Russian forces bogged down or retreating, Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 military reservists. All male citizens below 60 are now eligible to be drafted.
There are exceptions: Employees in IT and telecommunications, finance, “systemically-important” mass media outlets and interdependent suppliers, including registered media and broadcasters.
Still, the announcement set off a massive exodus of at least 194,000 Russian men (and their wives or girlfriends) to such neighboring countries as Turkey, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
During World War II, this would have been unthinkable: Whether driven by patriotism or a desire for vengeance on their German tormentors, Russians at all levels threw themselves into the conflict.
On the same day Putin announced the mobilization, he threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend not simply Russia but the Ukrainian territory his forces had captured:
“Our country possesses various means of destruction. When the territorial integrity of our nation is threatened, we, of course, will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people.”
To underscore his threat, he added: “Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”
Putin’s threats have heightened world tensions and triggered speculation as to whether he would use nukes—against Ukraine or NATO countries, including the United States.
Volodymyr Zelensky thinks Putin is not bluffing.
President Joe Biden initially assured Americans there was no cause for concern. But since then the United States has stated that it has warned Putin that any use of nuclear weapons would trigger a catastrophic (non-specific) response against Russia.
Seen against the backdrop of Russia’s titanic victory in “the Great Patriotic War,” Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons actually underscore Russia’s weakness, not its strength.
Consider:
- “The Great Patriotic War” lasted almost four years—from June 22, 1941, to May 7, 1945.
- Russia’s opponent, Nazi Germany, was the most-feared military power in Europe.
- The war cost the Soviet Union at least 26 million lives before ending with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
- Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Germany itself.
- For Russians, this was truly a “people’s war,” won through massive sacrifice and heroism—and without the use of nuclear weapons, which did not then exist.
Seventy-seven years after the end of World War II:
- Against the smaller and initially ill-equipped Ukrainian army, Russia has enjoyed a huge advantage in manpower and material.
- Yet so low is Russian morale that Putin has been forced to offer huge bribes to foreign mercenaries and even convicted criminals to refill his dispirited legions.
- Ukrainians, fueled by patriotism and a desire for vengeance, are fighting—and winning—their own version of “the Great Patriotic War.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 5, 2022 at 12:21 am
On June 22, 1941, with 134 Divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin, the longtime Soviet dictator, was stunned. The invasion had come less than two years after Germany had signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.
On August 23, 1939, Stalin had signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact with German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
The reason: Each dictator got what he wanted—for the moment. Hitler was planning to invade Poland in a matter of days—and he wanted to avoid a war with the Soviet Union.
And Stalin got what he wanted: The eastern half of Poland.
Joseph Stalin
The agreement stunned the world. Since 1919, Nazis and Communists had fought bitter battles against each other in the streets of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
When this was replaced in 1933 by the Third Reich, German Communists were rounded up and imprisoned, if not murdered, by Hitler’s ruthless secret police, the Schutzstaffel (“Protective Squads”).
For the moment, however, all of that was conveniently forgotten.
And, surprising as it might seem, each dictator harbored a secret respect for the other.
After Hitler launched a blood-purge of his own private Stormtroopers army on June 30, 1934, Stalin exclaimed: “Hitler, what a great man! That is the way to deal with your political opponents!”
And Hitler was equally admiring of Stalin’s notorious ruthlessness: “After the victory over Russia,” he told his intimates, “it would be a good idea to get Stalin to run the country, with German oversight, of course. He knows better than anyone how to handle the Russians.”
Adolf Hitler
But Hitler hadn’t forgotten his life’s ambition to conquer the Soviet Union and utterly destroy “the scourge of Jewish-Marxism.”
Stalin received numerous warnings from the United States and Great Britain about the coming invasion. But he dismissed them as efforts by the West to trick him into violating the pact and turning Nazi Germany into his mortal enemy.
When informed of the attack, Stalin at first believed it was being made by rogue German forces. He refused to order an immediate counterattack.
Upon being convinced that the Wehrmacht intended to wage all-out war, he went into a funk in his dacha and shut himself off from everyone. To his closest associates he wailed: “Lenin left us a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!”
Meanwhile, the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground by the awesome Luftwaffe. And the Wehrmacht was advancing at a rate of 25 miles a day.
German soldiers marching through Russia
On July 3, after 10 days of brooding (and probably drinking heavily) in his dacha, Stalin finally took to the airways across the Soviet Union.
Never a spellbinding orator, Stalin spoke in slow and faltering tones. Nevertheless, his opening words were startling: “Comrades! Citizens! Brothers and sisters! Men of our army and navy! I am addressing you, my friends!”
Stalin had never addressed an audience this way, and he never would again.
He said the “peace loving” Soviet Union had been attacked by “fiends and cannibals” who wanted to restore the rule of the landlords and Czars. He claimed the non-aggression pact with Germany had given the army much-needed time to rearm and reorganize its forces.
This was accompanied by orders unprecedented in any other army: Those taken prisoner by the Germans were to be considered traitors—and shot or imprisoned. Those suspected of wounding themselves to avoid combat were also subject to summary execution. So were soldiers who had been legitimately wounded in battle but were suspected of inflicting those injuries.
The first two years of the war—1941 to 1943—proved disastrous for the Soviet Union.
During the first six months—June to December, 1941—German armies lured huge Soviet forces into gigantic “cauldron battles,” surrounding and exterminating them. An estimated 5.7 million prisoners of war (POWs) fell into German hands. Of these, at least 3.5 million died in custody.
But then the infamous Russian cold and snows of winter halted the Wehrmacht before Moscow.
In the summer of 1942 German forces once again mounted a ferocious offensive, driving all the way to the Volga—and Stalingrad.
But they became bogged down in bitter house-to-house fighting. With the arrival of winter, Soviet forces surrounded the Wehrmacht’s powerful Sixth Army. The besiegers became the besieged. On February 2, 1943, Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrendered what remained of his army. The battle cost Germany 500,000 men, including 91,000 taken prisoner.
As the Red Army finally began to go over on the offensive, Stalin relaxed the iron controls that had long stifled creativity on the part of his commanders.
The infamous political commissars were removed from control over Russian generals. Gold braid and fancy uniforms were manufactured and rushed to the front as morale boosters.
The war would last another two years—costing the Soviet Union at least 26 million citizens—before it ended with the Red flag flying over Berlin.
Almost the entire western half of the Soviet Union was devastated—first as the Germans overran territory from the Polish border to the gates of Moscow, and then again as the Soviets slowly pushed them back to Germany itself.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 29, 2022 at 12:15 am
On November 22, 2019, Mark Shields—a liberal syndicated columnist—and David Brooks—a conservative one for The New York Times—reached disturbingly similar conclusions about President Donald Trump’s efforts to extort a “favor” from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
DAVID BROOKS: “What strikes me [is] that everyone was in the loop, that this was not something they tried to hide.
“This was just something they thought was the way politics gets done or foreign policy gets done, that there’s no division between personal gain and public service.”
MARK SHIELDS: “What I have underestimated….is the fear that Donald Trump exercises over Republicans. I mean, people talked about Lyndon Johnson being a fearsome political leader. They don’t even approach. I mean, he strikes fear into the hearts of Republicans up and down the line. And I think that….has been eye-opening in its dimensions.”
Nor did the GOP try to reign Trump in.
In a November 14, 2019 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warned: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”
For example:
- At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
- When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to block them from carrying out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
- In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.
The upshot of all this: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….”
On November 21, 2019, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attacked Republicans’ total rejection of the overwhelming evidence linking Trump with extortion:
Adam Schiff
“But apparently, it’s all hearsay. Even when you actually hear the President….that’s hearsay. We can’t rely on people saying what the President said. Apparently, we can only rely on what the President says, and there, we shouldn’t even rely on that either….
“We should imagine he said something about actually fighting corruption, instead of what he actually said, which was, ‘I want you to do us a favor, though. I want you to look into this 2016 CrowdStrike conspiracy theory, and I want you to look into the Bidens.’
“I guess we’re not even supposed to rely on that because that’s hearsay….That would be like saying you can’t rely on the testimony of the burglars during Watergate because it’s only hearsay, or you can’t consider the fact that they tried to break in because they got caught. They actually didn’t get what they came for, so, you know, kind of no harm, no foul. That’s absurd.
“The difference between [Watergate and Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukraine] is not the difference between [Richard] Nixon and [Donald] Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one. And so, we are asking, where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who are willing to go beyond their party to look to their duty?
“But the other defense besides ‘It failed, the scheme failed, they got caught,’ the other defense is ‘The President denies it.’ Well, I guess that’s case closed, right?
“….This President believes he is above the law, beyond accountability. And in my view, there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical President who believes they are above the law.”
* * * * *
The United States has indeed become a polarized country. But it’s not the polarization between Republicans and Democrats, or between conservatives and liberals.
It’s the polarization between
- Those intent on enslaving everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their Fascistic beliefs and agenda—and those who resist being enslaved.
- Those who believe in reason and science—and those who believe in an infallible “strong man” who rejects both.
- Those who cherish education—and those who celebrate ignorance.
- Those who believe in the rule of law—and those who believe in their right to act as a law unto themselves.
- Those who believe in treating others (especially the less fortunate) with decency—and those who believe in the triumph of intimidation and force.
Those who hoped that Republicans would choose patriotism over partisanship got their answer on February 5, 2020. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles: Obstruction of Congress and Abuse of Power.
It’s natural to regret that the United States has become a sharply divided nation. But those who lament this should realize there is only one choice:
Either non-Fascist Americans will destroy the Republican party and its voters that threaten to enslave them—or they will be enslaved by Republicans and their voters who believe they are entitled to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes.
There is no middle ground.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 28, 2022 at 12:07 am
On November 14, 2019, the CNN website showcased an opinion piece by Jane Carr and Laura Juncadella entitled: “Fractured States of America.”
And it opened:
“Some worry that it’s already too late, that we’ve crossed a threshold of polarization from which there is no return. Others look toward a future where more moderate voices are heeded and heard, and Americans can find better ways to relate to each other. Still others look back to history for a guide—perhaps for what not to do, or at the very least for proof that while it’s been bad before, progress is still possible.”
A series of sub-headlines summed up many of the comments reported.
- “I was starting to hate people that I have loved for years.”
- “Voting for Trump cost me my friends.”
- “I feel like I’m living in hostile territory.”
- “Our children are watching this bloodsport.”
- “A student’s Nazi-style salute reflects the mate.”
- “Our leaders reflect the worst of us.”
- “I truly believe I will be assaulted over a bumper sticker.”
- “It already feels like a cold war.”
It’s natural to regret that the United States has become so self-destructively polarized. And to wish that its citizens could somehow reach across the chasm that divides them and find common cause with one another.
But that is to ignore the brutal truth that America now faces a choice:
- To submit to the tyrannical aggression of a ruthless political party convinced that they are entitled to power to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes; or
- To fiercely resist that aggression and the destruction of those democratic processes.
Consider the face-off between President Donald J. Trump and Army Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
Vindman is a retired United States Army officer who served as the Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council. He was also a witness to Trump’s efforts to extort “a favor” from the president of Ukraine.
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman
Адміністрація Президента України [CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)%5D
In July, 2019, Trump told his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold almost $400 million in promised military aid for Ukraine, which faced increasing aggression from Russia.
On July 25, Trump telephoned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “request” a “favor”: Investigate 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who had had business dealings in Ukraine.
The reason for such an investigation: To find embarrassing “dirt” on Biden.
It was clear that unless Zelensky found “dirt” on Biden, the promised aid would not be forthcoming.
“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman, who had heard Trump’s phone call, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. Government’s support of Ukraine.
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”
Trump denounced Vindman as a “Never Trumper”—as if opposing his extortion attempt constituted a blasphemy. Republicans and their shills on the Fox News Network attacked him as well. As a result, he sought physical protection by the Army for himself and his family.
(On February 7, 2020, he was reassigned from the National Security Council at Trump’s order.)
Donald Trump
On November 15, 2019, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields appeared on The PBS Newshour to offer their reactions by Republicans and Democrats to Trump’s extortion attempt.
David Brooks and Mark Shields on “The PBS Newshour”
DAVID BROOKS: “The case is very solid and airtight that there was the quid pro quo. All the testimony points to that. And, mostly, you see a contrast. The first two gentlemen that testified on the first day, they were just upstanding, solid public servants.
“I felt like I was looking back in time, because I was looking at two people who are not self-centered. They cared about the country. They were serving. They had no partisan ax to grind. They were just honest men of integrity.
“And I thought we saw that again today with [former Ambassador to Ukraine] Marie Yovanovitch. And in her case, the day was more emotional, because you got to see a case of bullying against a strong, upstanding woman.
“And so I thought she expressed—like, the heavy moments of today where when she expressed her reaction to how badly she was treated. And so that introduces an element of emotion and pathos into what shouldn’t be just a legal proceeding. It should be something where people see the contrast between good people and bad people.”
MARK SHIELDS: “This is a story of corruption—corruption not in Ukraine, corruption in the United States.
“I mean, why? Why did they go to such lengths to denigrate, to attack, to try and destroy and sabotage the career of a dedicated public servant [United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich], a person who had put her life on the line? Why did they do it? What was it, money? Was it power?”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 8, 2022 at 12:11 am
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, conscience comes with a price. It can range anywhere from house arrest to years of imprisonment in the Gulag—to being shot or poisoned by the FSB, the secret police successor to the infamous KGB.
It has always been so.
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. He fought to modernize Soviet armament, as well as develop airborne, aviation and mechanized forces. Almost singlehandedly, he created the theory of deep operations for Soviet forces.
But he fell victim to the paranoia of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court quickly sentenced Tukhachevsky for treason. Hours later, he was executed.
Among his friends had been Nikolai Sergeyvich Zhilayev. a Russian musicologist and the teacher of several 20th-century Russian composers. Knowing that he was a marked man, Zhilayev did something truly extraordinary.
He had a large portrait of Tukhachevsky in his room, and after the announcement that Tukhachevsky had been shot as a traitor to the homeland, Zhilayev did not take the picture down. If discovered, it meant instant arrest—and almost certain execution.
When the secret police came for him, even they were awed: ”“What, it’s still up?”
“The time will come,” Zhilayev replied, “when they’ll erect a monument to him.”
As, in fact, has happened.
Standing before a Russian judge, accused of vandalism for participating in a demonstration against Putin’s suppression of human rights, 19-year-old Olga Misik dared to speak truths most Russians fear to even whisper.
Olga Misik
From her statement to the court on May 11, 2021:
The prosecution is putting all its efforts into proving that I am implicated in the incident. I’m not going to spend much time showing that they can’t even do that professionally: They are using falsified fingerprint analysis, and, as you saw when you were examining the evidence, there was no trace of paint on my clothes….
But what does that matter when no law was broken? What difference does it make whether I was there or not when no crime was committed?….There is a crime, and it was committed by the police and the prosecutors. And I very much hope, Comrade Judge, that you will not become an accomplice to this crime.
This is precisely why I demand a complete and unconditional acquittal. I am not accepting any half measures, like settling for a fine. I am sure of my innocence and am prepared to uncompromisingly defend it to the end….
The past nine months have been very difficult, you know, and I wouldn’t like to repeat them. I kept thinking to myself, What could have happened if, and, Everything could have gone differently. But I was lying to myself, because nothing could have gone differently.
From the moment I picked up the constitution, my fate was set in stone, and I accepted it with pride. I made the right choice, and making the right choice in a totalitarian state will always have horrifying consequences. I always knew I’d end up behind bars—it was only a matter of when.
My lawyer brought up Sophie Scholl [a German student and anti-Nazi political activist] today. Her story is shockingly similar to mine. She was put on trial for flyers and graffiti; I’m being tried for posters and paint.
Like she was, I am essentially on trial for thought crimes. My trial is very similar to Sophie’s, and today’s Russia really resembles Nazi Germany.
Right up to the guillotine, Sophie did not stray from her beliefs. Her story inspired me not to agree to charges being dropped. Sophie Scholl is the embodiment of youth, individuality, and freedom. I would like to believe that to be another thing that makes us similar.
The Nazi regime eventually crumbled, as will the fascist regime in Russia. I don’t know when it will happen, be it a week, a year, or decade, but I know that someday we will be victorious, because love and youth always prevail….
Sophie Scholl’s last words before her execution were, “The sun still shines.” Indeed, the sun still shines. I couldn’t see it out the window of the detention center, but I always knew it was there. And if now, in such dark times, we can turn to the light, then maybe victory isn’t so far after all.
In his 1960 poem, “Conversation With an American Writer,” the Russian poet, Yevgeney Yevtushenko spoke for those Russians who had maintained their integrity in the face of Stalinist terror:
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It’s not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
Demonstrating his own moral courage, on August 22, 1968—the day after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia—Yevtushenko sent a telegram protesting the invasion to Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Aleksei Kosygin:
In Russia—under Czars or Commissars—acting on moral courage is no small thing.
A revered poet demonstrated it in 1968. And a teenage girl demonstrated it in 2021.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 7, 2022 at 12:11 am
For 300 years, Russians feared the wrath of their czars, who ruthlessly decreed what their subjects could read, write and say.
Protests were brutally punished, even by so-called “enlightened” Czars. Catherine the Great had Cossack rebel Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev beheaded, then drawn and quartered.
Catherine the Great
Czarist rule ended in 1917, when the installation of a democratic Provisional Government. But just nine months later, the Bolsheviks seized power—and starvation, mass executions, forced exiles and repression of religion, speech and press followed until Communism collapsed in 1991.
Then came the wholesale corruption and ineptness of Boris Yeltsin’s brief reign. When Yeltsin picked Vladimir Putin, a former member of the KGB, as his successor, many Russians welcomed his arrival.
Unlike the fat, alcoholic Yeltsin, he appeared to be a man’s man who plunged into icy rivers, slammed opponents to the floor in judo matches, and—shirtless—hunted tigers and bears.
He promised that so long as ordinary Russians stayed out of politics, they would enjoy a level of personal independence totally absent during the 74-year Communist regime.
But, gradually, that promise was revealed as a lie.
At no time has that been more true than following his brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Most Russians can’t imagine waging war against a “brotherly nation.”
Ukraine vs. Russia
Putin’s government unleashed a massive propaganda campaign to convince Russians that Russia was battling Fascists and taking no casualties. And many have believed it.
(Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is Jewish, and Western intelligence agencies estimate that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have died.)
Nevertheless, thousands flocked to streets and squares throughout Russia despite government threats of prosecution for high treason.
More than 6,500 demonstrators were arrested over a five-day period. Several Russian and Ukrainian news outlets were blocked for covering the invasion.
One of those who has repeatedly demonstrated against Putini’s repressive regime is Olga Misik, a former journalism student at the University of Moscow.
Olga Misik
Accused of vandalism, standing before a judge who could sentence her to literally any punishment he wished, 19-year-old Olga Misik dared to speak forbidden truths about life in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
On May 11, 2021, she did so again in a Moscow district court.
Below follows relevant portions of her statement to the court:
And maybe I was scared on the way to the protest after all, but I knew I had no other choice. I understood that anything else would be wrong. That if I stayed silent this time, I would never be able to forgive myself….
Of course I was at that protest. I don’t regret it and more so am proud of my actions. In reality, I had no choice. I had to do everything in my power, thus I have no right to regret it. And if I had the option to go back in time, I would do it again.
If I was being threatened with execution, I would do it again. I would do it time and time again, until it finally started to make some change. They say that doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
I guess hope is insanity. But not doing something you believe in, just because everyone around you thinks it’s pointless, that is learned hopelessness. And better to be insane in your eyes than hopeless in my own….
Denying my participation in the protest would not only be unprincipled, it would erase all of the fear and agony, all we have achieved, all of my pain and rage. I can’t afford such dishonor with which our interrogator and prosecutor live their days….
A fascist government never seems fascist from the inside. It seems like just some minuscule, inconsequential censorship and some targeted repression that will never reach you. I’m not the one on trial today. Today, you are deciding not my fate but yours, and you still have a chance to do the right thing.
You can’t keep lying to yourselves. You know what goes on here. You know what it’s called. You know that there is good and evil, freedom and fascism, love and hatred, and denying that there are sides to take would be a colossal lie.
Those who chose evil have preordered their tickets to the defense table. The Hague awaits all who had a hand in this chaos. I am not promising victory tomorrow, the day after, in a year, or 10. But someday we will win, because love and youth always win. I can’t promise to make it there alive, but I really hope you live to see it.
You’re lying to yourselves if you maintain that I am here because of the protest at the office of the prosecutor general….You know why I’m here….You know what I’m actually being tried for.
For reading the constitution. For my political positions. For being named person of the year. For my principles. For my actions.
I might even be flattered by being singled out for a political trial, if only I really were singled out—when in fact the state is repressing anyone who has an opinion.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 6, 2022 at 12:10 am
“I just read her final speech. And you know what? I felt ashamed,” Andrei Chvanov, from Tatarstan, wrote on Facebook.
He was referring to Olga MisIk, a 17-year-old activist in the Russia of President Vladimir Putin.
“Because my threshold of fear is much lower….She holds strong, jokes, writes, and is 100 percent sure that she is right. And she is right. She sees the truth. And she is not afraid. Not many people in our country have such a gift.”
On July 27, 2019, Olga was among thousands of people attending an unauthorized protest in Moscow against the bar on opposition activists competing for seats in the Duma (parliament) election against Putin’s lackeys.
Heavily-armed riot police—wielding shields, batons and helmets—stood behind her. As if oblivious to their presence, Olga sat cross-legged in the middle of the street.
She pulled out her copy of Russia’s 1993 constitution and began reading from it.
Olga Misik
“I read four sections,” she said in a later interview “An article talking about the right to peacefully protest, an article saying that everyone can take part in elections, has the right to freedom of speech and that the people’s will and power are the most important thing for the country.”
Olga left the scene after the reading, but was later arrested on her way to a metro station. She was among more than 1,000 protesters arrested as a result of the rally. She had been detained four times in the past three months. She says she was peacefully protesting each time.
Misik was released after the protest in 2019, but she later found herself facing charges related to a protest in 2020.
According to the Moscow Times, Olga and two friends were accused of vandalism after police said they hung a banner supporting Putin arch-foe Alexi Navalny and other political prisoners on a government building.
In addition, said the indictment, they “splashed red paint on a security booth outside the Prosecutor General’s Office building in August 2020.”
Vladimir Putin
Misik wrote on social media that she was dragged out of her home by police after the 2020 protest.
Olga was sentenced on May 11, 2021, for vandalism. She received two years and two months of “restricted liberty,” which amounted to home confinement, including a curfew that required her to be inside her house from 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Her two friends received similar sentences.
Prior to her sentencing, Misik read a prepared statement to the court. At a time when millions of Right-wing Americans lust to replace democracy with the dictatorship of Donald Trump, this statement speaks volumes to Americans who would oppose this.
Here are its most moving passages:
People often asked, “Aren’t I scared?” More commonly outside the country than in Russia, because they don’t get the reality of life in Russia. They don’t understand the knock on the door in the middle of the night, the arrests and imprisonment without reason or cause.
They don’t realize that the feeling of despair is passed on to us through our mothers’ milk. And that that feeling of despair causes any semblance of fear to atrophy, infecting us with learned hopelessness. What use is fear if you have no say in your future?
I have never been afraid. I have felt despair, hopelessness, helplessness, disorientation, anxiety, frustration, burnout, but neither politics nor activism ever struck fear in me.
I wasn’t scared when armed thugs stormed my home in the night, threatening me with prison. They wanted to scare me, but I wasn’t afraid. I made jokes and laughed, knowing that the moment I stopped smiling, I would have lost.
I wasn’t scared when they put me in the detention center….My own fate was the last thing on my mind. It is very strange, maybe some sort of coping mechanism, but in those days I wasn’t afraid once….
I was worried and stressed about how things would play out, but unafraid. The night was beautiful. I was aware that it could be my last one in freedom, and yet that did not scare me.
However, after the search, for the past nine months, I have been scared constantly. Ever since the night in the detention center, I haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep once.
Every night I wake from the smallest of sounds. I keep imagining footsteps in the hallway. Panic washes over me from the sound of the gravel crunching under the wheels of cars outside my window.
I feel like all of the fear accumulated over the past nine months is most concentrated in this exact moment, in my final statement, because public speaking scares me more than the sentencing. My heart is racing at 151 beats per minute, and it feels as though it could explode any second now….
Someone said, “It’s impossible to be afraid if you know you’re right.” But Russia teaches us to always be afraid. A country that attempts to kill us every day, and if you’re not part of the system, you might as well be dead already.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 2, 2022 at 12:11 am
Next to the American flag, Republicans have loudly pledged their loyalty to the nuclear family.
And Florida United States Senator Rick Scott, in his “11 Point Plan to Rescue America,” is no exception.
Point 8: We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs. The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science.
In two succeeding sentences, Scott manages to ludicrously contradict himself. First he claims that the nuclear family is “God’s design for humanity.” In the next, he says that to contradict him is to “deny science.”
Here are the facts:
First of all, there is no scientific proof for the existence of God. It is simply a belief.
Second, the nuclear family—a married couple and their dependent children under the age of 18—is a fast-disappearing species.
Nuclear family – 1955
Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
There are currently just 23.1 million American homes with those ‘nuclear families,’ which is the fewest since 1959. So much for “God’s design for humanity.”
Point 9: Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies.
“Men are men, women are women”: Republicans seek to frighten voters into voting for them by appealing to the fear that “Gays and transgenders are coming for your children.”
Without offering proof, they slander their opponents as “groomers”—pedophiles who befriend children and build their trust, leading to their sexual abuse.
The truth is that gays don’t prey on heterosexuals but seek out others of their own sexual persuasion. The same is true for transgenders.
Meanwhile, the Republican party has had its own share of closeted pedophiles.
Among them:
- Josh (“18 Kids and Counting”) Duggar, recently sentenced to 12 years for possession of child pornography;
- Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who sexually molested four young boys when he was their high school wrestling coach.
Josh Duggar
As for “Unborn babies are babies”: Those who have not yet been born are fetuses.
While Republicans have waged an almost 50-year war against legalized abortion, they have waged an equally aggressive war against Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, food stamps, affordable housing, and aid to the blind and disabled.
In short: They oppose all those programs intended to help those who have been born.
Point 10: Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech.
The Democratic party is not trying to “deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech.”
On the contrary: It’s Republicans who have crafted laws to turn claimed religious beliefs into a weapon of discrimination.
A classic example: On March 26, 2015, Indiana’s then-Governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Mike Pence
This allows any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party.
Thus, a bakery that doesn’t want to make a cake to be used at a gay wedding or a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve lesbian patrons can legally refuse to do so.
Republicans have introduced similar “right-to-discriminate” legislation in other states as well—such as Kansas, Arizona and South Dakota. So far, all have failed to win passage.
Republicans claim they want to “get the government off the backs of the people.” But their fixation on regulating the sexual lives of Americans ensures government intrusions of the most intimate kind.
Point 11: We are Americans, not globalists. America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers.
This would be laughable except for the bitter truth: Countless numbers of Americans have lost their jobs because their companies deserted the United States for Third World nations like China, Vietnam or Mexico.
There are three reasons for this:
- To pay their employees far less than they would be paid in the United States;
- To avoid American restrictions on how employees can be treated; and
- To avoid enforcement of quality control regulations which ensure that products are safe and effective for use.
Republicans have loudly proclaimed themselves anti-globalists.
But when Donald Trump was President, the Chinese government granted 18 trademarks to companies linked to him and his daughter, Ivanka, within two months.
In addition, Trump won approval to register three dozen trademarks in China covering everything from bars and hotels to child-care and massage services, raising further concerns over potential conflicts of interest.
From 2005 to 2017, Trump filed for 126 trademarks in China for his business empire.
Rick Scott is a fierce defender of the former President and his policies.
As for Scott’s claim, “America will be dependent on NO other country”:
Like it or not, the United States can no longer separate itself from the rest of the world.
The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has badly affected American imports of grain products from Ukraine.
And the Coronavirus pandemic has led to crucial shortages in goods America has long imported: Medicines, electronics, auto parts, solar panels, toys, air conditioners.
Thus, this provision—like the rest of Scott’s plan—runs head-on into the ugliness of sheer reality.
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DICTATORS AND THEIR HUBRIS–AN UPDATE
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 12, 2022 at 12:10 amOn February 28, CNN’s website published the following headline: Russia faces financial meltdown as sanctions slam its economy.
The story opened:
“Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”
That unprovoked attack opened on February 24, with missile and artillery attacks, striking major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev.
Ukraine vs. Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin believed that the conquest of Ukraine would be a cakewalk. Intent on restoring the borders of the former Soviet Union, he had swept from one successful war to the next:
Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched only verbal condemnations.
The reasons:
NATO emblem
Russia had began massing troops on the Ukrainian border in 2021.
When the invasion came, the United States and its Western European allies retaliated with unprecedented economic sanctions.
Among the resulting casualties:
Then the war bogged down for Russia:
In short: The war is not going the way Putin assumed it would.
Vladimir Putin
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is not the first time a dictator has guessed wrong about the results of his actions.
On September 1, 1939, German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered his armies to invade Poland.
Almost a year earlier—on September 29, 1938—he had bullied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier into surrendering the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
The Munich Agreement whetted Hitler’s appetite for greater conquests—and fueled his contempt for England and France: “Our enemies are little worms,” he said in a conference with his generals. “I saw them at Munich.”
He believed he could conquer Poland, and Chamberlain and Daladier would meekly ratify his latest acquisition.
Adolf Hitler
So he was stunned when, on September 3, 1939, Britain and France—however reluctantly—honored their pledged word to Poland and declared war on Germany.
“What now?” Hitler furiously asked his Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop.
Ribbentrop had no answer.
Knowing that Germany lacked the resources for a long war, Hitler had intended to fight a series of quick, small wars, gobbling up one country at a time. Now he found himself locked in an endless war with heavyweights France and England—and eventually the Soviet Union and the United States.
He stayed locked into that war until he committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and the Third Reich officially collapsed on May 7.
Fifty-eight years later, on March 21, 2003, President George W. Bush’s attacked Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
George W. Bush
The war started impressively, with 1,700 air sorties and 504 Cruise missiles.
Within two weeks, American ground forces entered Baghdad. After four days of intense fighting, the Iraqi regime fell. By April 14, the Pentagon reported that major military operations had ended.
On May 1, 2003, Bush declared that the war was won.
But then American forces became embroiled in an endless, nationwide guerrilla war. Eighteen years later, the United States was still fighting in Iraq.
The war that Bush had deliberately provoked:
And Putin?
Thus do the worst intentions of hubristic dictators often come undone.
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