#vladimir putin wins election

[bewithus4u]

Putin Strengthens Hold on Russia through Controlled Election

Introduction: President Vladimir Putin solidifies his power in Russia with a heavily managed election, securing a massive victory for himself. Key Points: Election Results: Putin wins with 87.3% of the vote, with a high turnout of 77.5%. This victory allows him to remain in power until at least 2030. Lack of Opposition: Most opposition candidates are eliminated, leaving Putin without any…

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#7news australia #7news live #alexey navalny #election #news australia #president #protest #putin president #putin president again #putin wins #putin wins election #putin wins presidential election #putin wins russia election #russia #russia election #russia news #russia president #russia president vladimir putin #russia ukraine war #russian president #russian president vladimir putin #seven news australia #vladimir putin puppy #vladimir putin wins election #world news

[odinsblog]

There was no election in Russia.

There was no campaign.

There were no debates, which was unsurprising, because no issues could be debated.

Above all, there were no real candidates, bar one: the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, the man who has just started his fifth, unconstitutional term in office.

Russians did line up at polling stations, but these were not actually polling stations. They were props in an elaborate piece of political theater, a months-long exercise in the projection of power and brutality.

While that exercise unfolded, Putin’s only significant political opponent, Alexei Navalny, died under mysterious circumstances in a prison north of the Arctic Circle. Two Russian presidential candidates collected the requisite number of signatures to stand, both said they opposed the war in Ukraine, and both were removed from the ballot.

Three practically unknown people were allowed to remain on the ballot, but they did not criticize Putin and did not oppose him in any way. One of them declared that he hoped Putin would win. In Russian-occupied Ukraine, men in balaclavas forced people to vote at gunpoint.

Some Western media nevertheless covered this orchestrated drama as if it really were an election. Reporters interviewed voters, cited “exit polls,” even commented on the “results,” as if these things mean anything in a country whose leadership lies openly about everything: economic statistics, war casualties, Russian history. Reuters ran a headline declaring Putin had won “in a landslide.” The earnest coverage was exactly what Putin hoped he would get. He knows, after all, that he is an illegitimate leader, and he knows that he abandoned the Russian constitution.

This non-election was his messaging exercise, designed to show Russians, and the rest of the world, that he intends to stay in power anyway, illegally.

(continue reading)

#politics #russia #sham elections #russian election #russia is a terrorist state #russian sham elections #authoritarianism #authoritarian dictatorships #russian fascism ☭ #vladimir putin is a war criminal #sham russian elections #fake elections

[mariacallous]

From Taiwan and Finland in January to Croatia and Ghana in December, one of the largest combined electorates in history will vote for new governments in 2024. This should be a cause of celebration and a vindication of the power of the ballot box. Yet this coming year is likely to see one of the starkest erosions of liberal democracy since the end of the Cold War. At their worst, the overall results could end up as a bloodbath or, marginally less bleakly, as a series of setbacks.

At first glance, the stats are impressive. Forty national elections will take place, representing 41 percent of the world’s population and 42 percent of its gross domestic product. Some will be more consequential than others. Some will be more unpredictable than others. (You can strike Russia and Belarus from that list.) One or two may produce uplifting results.

However, in the United States and Europe, the two regions that are the cradles of democracy—or at least, that used to project themselves as such—the year ahead is set to be bracing.

It is no exaggeration to say that the structures established after World War II, and which have underpinned the Western world for eight decades, will be under threat if former U.S. President Donald Trump wins a second term in November. Whereas his first period in the White House might be regarded as a psychodrama, culminating in the paramilitary assault on Congress shortly after his defeat, this time around, his menace will be far more professional and penetrating.

European diplomats in Washington fear a multiplicity of threats—the imposition of blanket tariffs, also known as a trade war; the sacking of thousands of public officials and their replacement with politicized loyalists; and the withdrawal of remaining support for Ukraine and the undermining of NATO. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the return of Trump would be manna from heaven. Expect some form of provocation from the Kremlin in the Baltic states or another state bordering Russia to test the strength of Article 5, the mutual defense clause of the Western alliance.

More broadly, a Trump victory would arguably mark the final dismantling of the credibility of Western liberal democracies. From India to South Africa and from Brazil to Indonesia, countries variously called middle powers, pivot countries, multi-aligned states—or, now less fashionably, the global south—will continue the trend of picking and choosing their alliances, seeing moral equivalence in the competitive bids on offer.

The greatest effect that a Trump return could have would be on Europe, accelerating the onward march of the alt right or far right across the continent. Yet that trend will have gained momentum long before Americans go to the polls. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are looking over their shoulders as the second wave of populism affects the conduct of government.

The wedge issue that is threatening all moderate parties is immigration, just as it did in 2015, when former German Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed in more than 1 million refugees from the Middle East in what is now seen as the first wave of Europe’s immigration crisis. This time around, the arguments propagated by the AfD (the far-right Alternative for Germany party), Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and similar groups across the continent have permeated the political mainstream.

The past 12 months have seen European Union decision-making constantly undermined by Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary, particularly further support for Ukraine. For the moment, he stands alone, but he is likely to be joined by others, starting with the newly returned Prime Minister Robert Fico in Slovakia. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has struck a tacit deal with Brussels, remaining loyal on supporting Ukraine (against her instincts and previous statements) in return for effectively being given carte blanche in Italy’s domestic politics.

In September, Austria seems almost certain to vote in a coalition of the far right and the conservatives. A country that has (ever since the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1955) prized its neutrality and been keen to ingratiate itself with Moscow has already been uncomfortable giving full-scale support to Kyiv. We can expect that support to soon be scaled back.

One of the few countries with a center-left administration, Portugal, will see it join the pack of the right and far right when snap elections are held in March. The previous incumbent, the Socialist Party’s outgoing Prime Minister Antonio Costa, was forced to quit amid a corruption investigation.

The most explosive moment is likely to occur in June, with the elections to the European Parliament. This reshuffling of the Euro-pack, which happens once every four years, was always seen in the United Kingdom as an opportunity to behave even more frivolously than usual. In 2014, the British electorate, in its inestimable wisdom, put Nigel Farage and his U.K. Independence Party in first place, setting in train a series of events that, two years later, led to the referendum to leave the EU.

Having seen the damage wrought by Brexit, voters in the remaining 27 EU member states are not angling for their countries to go it alone. However, many will use the opportunity to express their antipathy to mainstream politics by opting for a populist alternative. Some might see it as a low-risk option, believing that the European parliament does not count for much.

In so doing, they would be deluding themselves. It is entirely possible that the various forces of the far right could emerge as the single biggest bloc. This might not lead to a change in the composition of the European Commission (the diminished mainstream groupings would still collectively hold a majority), but any such extremist upsurge will change the overall dynamics across Europe.

Far-right parties in charge of governments will see themselves emboldened to pursue ever more radical nativist policies. In countries in where they are junior members of ruling coalitions (such as in Sweden), they will apply further pressure on their more mainstream conservative partners to move in their direction.

Conversely, countries that saw a surprising resurgence of the mainstream in national elections this year are unlikely to see that trend maintained. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s success in staving off the right was achieved only by cutting a deal with Catalan separatists. This led to protests by Spanish nationalists and a situation that is anything but stable.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s victory in Poland was at least as remarkable because the far-right Law and Justice party (PiS) government had used its years in government to try to skew the media and the courts in its direction. Expect PiS gains in June.

The most alarming result of 2023 was the return to prominence, and the verge of power, of Geert Wilders. The Dutch elections provide a how-not-to guide for mainstream politicians. The willingness of the center-right party of the outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte to contemplate a coalition with Wilders’s Party for Freedom emboldened many voters who had assumed their vote would be disregarded.

In Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, the so-called firewall established by the main parties to refuse to govern with the AfD is beginning to fray. Already, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is working with them in small municipalities. Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader, has dropped hints that such an option might not be out of the question at the regional level.

If the AfD gains the largest number of seats in the June European Parliament elections (opinion polls currently put it only marginally behind the CDU and ahead of all three parties in Scholz’s so-called traffic light coalition), then the momentum will change rapidly. It could go on to win three of the states in the former communist east—Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg—next autumn. Germany would enter unchartered territory.

These dire predictions could end up being overblown. Mainstream parties in several countries may defy the doom merchants and emerge less badly than forecast. Given recent trends, however, optimism is thin on the ground.

There is one election, however, due to take place in the latter part of 2024 that could produce not just a centrist outcome, but one with a strong majority in its parliament. Britain, the country that left the heart of Europe, the island that until recently was run by a clown, could emerge as the lodestar for modern social democracy. The irony would be lost on no one.

[suratan-zir]

"Alyaksandr Lukashenko says at a meeting with Vladimir Putin that the Wagner wants to go west. To Warsaw and Rzeszów. "On a trip"."

In other words, Russian mercenaries threaten to attack Poland.

Before that, Putin said that the Polish territories were gifted to Poland by Stalin and that "if our Polish partners have forgotten about it, we will remind them." The same things he said about Ukraine back in 2022 when declared war: "Ukrainian land was a gift from Lenin."

You may not take his threats and deluded pseudo-history seriously. Russia is weakened by the ongoing war and certainly can't win a conventional war against NATO. But as long as Russia exists, it will try to cause chaos and harm the West by all means available to them. If not with missiles, then with bribery, hacker attacks, interference in elections and more.

#Poland #russia #belarus #putin #russia is a terrorist state

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

The full transcript is not yet up, at the time I am posting this to my queue (09:35, 14 March, 2024). But I fully expect it to be, soon.

Synopsis: Russia is holding its presidential election this weekend. And even though Vladimir Putin is the only real candidate, he wants to make it appear as though Russia is a real democracy. So he is aiming for around 70% turnout, with 70% of the vote (so there's plausible deniability that the election is rigged, unlike those dictatorships where the "winner" gets 90%+ of the vote)

See, now in places like Russia (and Iran, for example), sitting out an election is a valuable form of protest.

America works differently, because we still do have multiple parties -- for now. But as authoritarian actors on the rise at every level of our political system, I'm not sure how much longer that will last, if we keep letting them.

#2024 elections #around the world #faux democracies #Russia #vladimir putin #NPR Morning editition

[play-now-my-lord]

are you an internet leftist hoping to win points by signalling allegiance to the hot tendency of the moment? That's great for you, I love what you're doing with your life. Here's a hot tip. America is the only country that matters. Are American labor unions in the news? If they are, maoism-third-worldism is what the cool kids are into. Treat the DSA as the final boss of class struggle. If they're not, is it an American presidential election year? You'll want to flag allegiance to some kind of insanely corrupt Leninist cult. We're talking mercenary ideological prostration to Vladimir Putin specifically that would make the CPRF blush. If neither of those is true - American unions are looking impotent and talking about the next Democratic Party primary makes you sound like Nate Silver - you'll want to post through some kind of actively humiliating fusion of first-world (ideally American) nationalism and vague communist slogans. Remember the guy with the American flag leotard, posting about how Marx would love the Red Sox with his dick flapping free in the breeze? Strive to be that guy. Anyway, I hope all this helps

[qqueenofhades]

You know, it remains absolutely wild to me how... like... we know exactly who is responsible for this, where, when, and why. There's a short list of like 10 people. It looks like this:

Donald Trump, for being a fascist narcissistic grifter, con man, and criminal, who nonetheless managed to weaponise enough white grievance, backlash against Obama, voter apathy, Clinton smears from the Republican slime machine, and leftist moral posturing to get elected as President and have three Supreme Court picks, all of which were obtained dishonestly;

Mitch McConnell, for being the absolute worst, not to mention proudly on record as wanting to obstruct everything a Democratic president ever does, a power-hungry shriveled racist who refused to even hold hearings for Merrick Garland and then filled that seat with Neil Gorsuch, colluded with Trump to force Anthony Kennedy to suddenly retire and install drunken sex abuser frat boy Brett Kavanaugh, then jammed Amy Coney Barrett onto the bench to fill RBG's seat, eight days before the 2020 election, in brazen open hypocrisy of everything he had said about SCOTUS and election years, since the only principle that matters to him is maintaining Republican power;

Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett themselves, for doing exactly what they were put on the court by theocratic dark money fundamentalist operatives to do, and joining Bush-era fascists Thomas, Roberts, and Alito to overrule Roe vs Wade, as the culmination of decades of deliberate and openly stated Republican policy;

Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News disinformation ecosystem, for creating the alternate reality that made Trump possible and continues to empower his sycophants, supporters, cronies, and other bad actors, and generated much of the anti-Clinton slime and smears that made their way into the mainstream, were endlessly repeated by so-called respectable media outlets like the NY Times, and poisoned the American electorate, already disposed to misogyny, against the most qualified (and historic) Democratic Presidential candidate there has likely ever been;

James Comey, for deciding to issue the "we are still investigating HER EEEEMAILS!" letter a week before the 2016 election, which took just enough off Clinton's increasingly narrow margins to put Trump over the top thanks to the rigged and racist Electoral College, which has often functioned exactly as designed in helping non-popular-vote-winning Republican presidents into power;

Vladimir Putin, for running a well-attested and repeatedly confirmed wide-ranging disinformation and interference campaign in the 2016 election to boost Trump, the Kremlin's pet stooge, and discredit Clinton, as part of his overall and equally well-attested scheme to disrupt and destroy Western liberal democratic institutions and boost Russian power;

And like... in terms of direct, locatable, empirically provable concrete responsibility, that's it. I'm even being charitable and leaving Bernie off this list, though I feel that he played a major part in creating both the 2016 clusterfuck and the "I'm too good to ever vote unless for my perfect socialist messiah" attitude that now prevails among much of the Online Left. That is a small number of names. Their actions are all verifiable in public records and a wide variety of news sources, both partisan and non-partisan. (Protip, anything you can only find in one news source that precisely matches your own ideological beliefs is, uh, deeply suspect.) I'm a historian. I work with verifiable facts and evidence, even if they might lead me to conclusions that I personally don't like. And any wide-sweeping broad generalisation, with absolutely no specific evidence or sources cited, is... not how it works and will get you a bad mark on an essay or research project every time.

So against this short list of 8 people, all demonstrably bad actors with bad motivations, what does your average Online Leftist do? They blame Obama, who "said he would codify Roe vs Wade and didn't!" Well, you might say, did Obama ever have a filibuster-proof pro-choice majority in the Senate? No, he didn't, but that's not an excuse, it just means he and Harry Reid didn't try hard enough (this already after McConnell's announcement about making Obama a one-term president and obstructing everything). Obama had the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression on his hands, and then spent all his political capital passing the Affordable Care Act, lost the House in 2010 as a result and the Senate in 2014, and which, despite being an actual, y'know, codified law, has been subject to literally hundreds of Republican challenges to gut, reverse, or overrule it as much as possible? YOU'RE JUST MAKING EXCUSES! WHO CARES ABOUT THE ECONOMY? OBAMA COULD HAVE DONE IT IF HE CARED AND FORESAW THE FUTURE!

Likewise, the left's other favorite scapegoat is RBG, for not "retiring in time" or otherwise precisely predicting the moment of her own death and who would be in office at the time. Literally no blame for McConnell, the one who actually and deliberately crammed the three illegitimate justices onto the bench in defiance of all protocol and precedent. So let's see... the so-called progressives are blaming a Democratic black man and a liberal Jewish woman for the actions of a bunch of evil Republican white men. Or the other laughable false equivalence I saw yesterday, which claimed that ever since the Democrats were elected in 2020, civil rights, LGBT rights, and now abortion rights were being stripped away (with the clear implication that it was their fault). This just happened on its own, I guess, and not because specific Republican-controlled state legislatures and the Republican-packed Supreme Court had deliberately done this as a strategy of pursuing and consolidating fascist power even after Trump's forced departure from the scene. Name one non-Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema instance of the Democrats actively doing the same thing. I will wait.

This is not even to mention the leftists repeating straight-up QAnon propaganda about how Joe Biden is a racist sexist child molester and, I quote, "the literal scum of the earth." There are legitimate policy and performance grounds to criticise Biden on: his speech yesterday said all the right things, but it remains to be seen how much of a promised "whole of government" action will actually be made, including the available powers of the executive branch to which Biden, as chief executive, has access. His personal response has, at times, likewise seemed slow and flat-footed. But the Online Leftists have abandoned all pretense of a rational and reality-based critique, in favor of hurling the most overheated personal moral slanders possible, like the Puritans at a witch-burning. Again, I ask, we're supposed to believe that these are the progressives?

I saw a stat recently about how only 23% of American adults use Twitter. That is... not even one quarter of the country. Out of that, the Online Leftists are only a tiny percentage. These ideas are not popular or universal or just something that "everyone believes" outside of a carefully curated echo chamber. It may feel all-encompassing, but it's not, and frankly, its denizens seem to be interested in anything except building workable, practical coalitions, if it would mean taking any criticism or compromising on their exalted ideals (which, as I have noted throughout this post, really aren't as great as they seem). As I've said before, my own political views are as far left as it's possible to go, and yet, I doubtless will continue to receive more messages like the charming anon from the other day who told me to kill myself for being "bootlicking slime." This is how they like to communicate with people who otherwise agree with them on every policy level (at least as outwardly stated and certainly not as practiced). This... kind of seems like a problem.

I've likewise written before about how ideological revolutions to drastically remake societies with the Right Idea have never, ever succeeded, and only bring more pain, suffering, and death. To all those people preaching "revolution!" as the solution: you realize that all the idealistic young students manning the barricades in Les Miserables get shot, right? And that it's not an actual, legitimate political plan, not least because it isn't a plan? It's a reactive coping-mechanism magical-thinking wish that everything bad would just magically disappear in a burst of glory, and everything would be better now. It's comforting to daydream about, but it's not something any sane, rational adult really puts any stock in, since it's never something that has ever worked in history. What revolution? How? When? Surely you don't mean like the January 6 rioters, unless you do, since overthrowing the illegimate government with overwhelming violence is, oops, once again straight out of the right-wing playbook. Still waiting for those promised progressive ideals!

Basically, even in the unlikely event that they actually acquired it, I wouldn't trust the current crop of Online Leftists with power any more than I trust the Republicans, despite them outwardly sharing my beliefs and values. They haven't proven that they're interested in anything except punishing those who don't hold their exact narrow and rigid idea of "moral" views, blaming other people who again, think largely or entirely like them, threatening or using violence against anyone who disagrees with them, and finding ways to constantly excuse and ignore the actual perpetrators of illiberal Christofascism. All, again, while claiming to be progressive! Like the AO3 anti crowd, who thinks that perfect morality in the world can be achieved by aggressively and abusively policing the fiction that people write for fun in their free time, it's about using cult-like techniques and tactics to position the entire outside world as the morally inferior enemy and building in-group solidarity by attacking them. Which seems like, oh, I dunno... Trump supporters. Again. Womp womp.

I don't know. Call me an old person; I definitely am. But as terrible and cynical and generationally damaging as the Dobbs decision is, and how it represents the greatest legal denial of personhood and autonomy to American women in most of our lifetimes, there's something even worse about seeing the generation who claims to "know better" blaming the people who opposed it, excusing the people who did it, and then going straight into more nonsense about why it's not actually bad and/or twisting themselves into pretzels to invent the hypothetical (white, rich) woman who somehow won't be affected by this. Maybe that's just me in thinking that is a profoundly flawed and wrong response on literally every level, but you know, I suspect it's not. So yeah.

#hilary for ts #history #american history #politics for ts #long post

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has a reckless plan for achieving U.S. global dominance: giving away other countries’ territory.

Ramaswamy is already under fire for his objectively terrible plan to let China invade Taiwan after 2028 if he were elected. Now, the presidential hopeful thinks that Russia should be allowed to keep the parts of Ukraine it currently occupies.

“Our goal should not be for Putin to lose. Our goal should be for America to win,” Ramaswamy told CNN Thursday night.

Ramaswamy said that U.S. involvement in Ukraine is strengthening the Russia–China military alliance—and the only way to break that alliance and bring Russia around to the American side is to give Vladimir Putin what he wants.

“I would freeze the current lines of control, and that would leave parts of the Donbas region with Russia,” Ramaswamy explained. “I would also further make a commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO. But there are even greater wins that I will get for the United States.”

Ramaswamy seems to be under multiple false impressions with this diplomatic plan, the first being that the United States has the authority to simply give away parts of another sovereign nation. He also appears to believe that if he visits Moscow, he can single-handedly buddy up to Putin enough to convince the Russian leader to drop a highly advantageous military alliance.

And as anchor Jim Acosta rightly pointed out, Putin is unlikely to stop with Ukraine. He wasn’t satisfied with annexing Crimea in 2014 and now wants all of Ukraine. If he is allowed to keep parts of Ukraine, it’s possible that he’ll try to invade somewhere else such as Poland, a NATO member—which would require military intervention from the rest of the members.

This plan is just as bad as Ramaswamy’s strategy for Taiwan. Earlier this week, Ramaswamy proposed letting China take over Taiwan after 2028, which he believes is when the U.S. would build up its own supply of semiconductors. Taiwan produces about 60% of the global supply of semiconductors, which are microchips crucial to making all electronic devices.

Ramaswamy said he intends to dramatically up the firepower around Taiwan during his first term, to make clear to Beijing that they should “not mess” with the island until the U.S. has semiconductor independence. After that, China can do whatever it wants. It did not seem to occur to him that China would likely interpret these moves as acts of aggression and respond in kind. Nor does he seem to realize that it’s highly unlikely China would listen to his proposed arrangement.

But despite his only campaign points being battling “wokeness,” taking away rights, and, apparently, allowing authoritarian governments to do whatever they want, Ramaswamy is somehow rising in the polls.

#us politics #news #the new republic #republicans #conservatives #Vivek Ramaswamy #cnn #china #taiwan #ukraine #russia #gop #gop platform #foreign policy #world politics #jim acosta #Vladimir Putin #2024 presidential election #2024 presidential race #2024 elections

[1americanconservative]

@simonateba

Today is March 1, 2024, and because you are about to be hit by an unprecedented amount of propaganda and a deluge of disinformation from the left, I would like to state the facts again. 1- Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 when Democrat Barack Obama was in power. 2. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 when Democrat Joe Biden was in power. 3. Vladimir Putin invaded no territory when Republican Donald Trump was in power between 2017 and 2021. 4. Special Robert Mueller concluded that Donald Trump did not connive or conspire with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election and defeat Hillary Clinton. 5. I hate repetitions but let me repeat that the Robert Mueller investigation did not establish that Donald Trump or his campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. 6. While in power between 2017 and 2021, Donald Trump did not start a new war, he did not enrich the military-industrial complex. 7. Claims by the mainstream media that Vladimir Putin is blackmailing Donald Trump are false. 8. Claims by the mainstream media that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russia's disinformation are false. 9. The laptop belongs to Hunter Biden and seems to show what appears to be criminal activities. He's like everyone else innocent until proven guilty. 10. Claims that the Russians are AGAIN trying to interfere in the 2024 election to elect Trump are false and seem to be disinformation by the left. 11. Claims that everyone who questions sending billions of dollars to Ukraine for a war they may likely not win makes them a Russian agent or stooge are false and disinformation by the left. 12. Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments and 91 counts. But indictments are accusations that have to be proven in court. He's innocent until proven guilty. 13. Claims that Trump if re-elected will be deadlier than Hitler and end the presidency and democracy as we know them are unproven since he was president for four years and did not do those things. 14. Yes, Trump often says some outrageous things but he actually acted differently once in power between 2017 and 2021. 15. Claims that Tucker Carlson is a Russian agent because he interviewed Putin are false, he's a journalist who has more influence than many media houses combined. 16. Claims that everything the White House says is true and everything the Kremlin says is a lie is false. They both lie all the time, more often than they tell the truth. 17. I can go on and on, but because you will hear about Russia, Russia, Russia, disinformation, disinformation and disinformation, and election interference by the Russians every day until after the presidential election in 2024, I want you to be prepared and see everything for what it is. 18. Never forget to subscribe to my X because that's what allows me to keep doing this, to go to war every day against propaganda and disinformation, and to hit close to half a billion views here every month.

[odinsblog]

“It was December 1993, and I was sitting in my flat in Moscow, watching what must have been one of the first ever election night results shows on Russian television for a Parliamentary election.

It was an unusual spectacle, to say the least. Politicians, pundits and Russian officials were sitting around drinking champagne. And then this happened: On came an astrologer to deliver his celestial political forecast.

Looking back, it was quite appropriate really, because 30 years ago, Russians had stars in their eyes about freedom, democracy, and their country's future. That night, as well as electing a new parliament, the Duma, Russians also approved a new constitution. The constitution which, many years later, Vladimir Putin would change through a referendum to give himself the chance of twelve more years in power.

For a Russian election these days, you don't need astrologers or fortune tellers or crystal balls. I can tell you now pretty much what the result of next March's Russian presidential election will be. Vladimir Putin will win, and with a landslide.

There are several reasons for my confident prediction.

Russia's current political system is Putin's political system, his rules, his election. And although his will not be the only name on the ballot, his opponents are unlikely to include Mr. Putin's most vocal critics, arch rivals, and serious contenders. The president's most high profile opponents have either been poised, fled into exile or been put in prison. What's more, the Kremlin controls television. Vladimir Putin receives lots of airtime, and on tv, he's much praised, never criticized. Handy that, when you're seeking reelection.

And there's another reason he'll do well.

Meet Alexander. Alexander is a young tv reporter from northeastern Russia. At Vladimir Putin's end-of-year press conference recently, he stood up and declared, ‘We all support your decision to run in next year's election, because you've been in power for as long as I can remember.’ There are many Russians like Alexander who simply cannot imagine anyone else in the Kremlin, not because they idolize Vladimir Putin, they just see no alternative to him. I've often heard people here say, ‘Well, if not Putin, who then?’ The Kremlin has engineered that. It has cleared the political landscape of any potential challenges to the man who has ruled Russia as president or prime minister for nearly a quarter of a century, to make sure that those two words, that little question, ‘who then?’ is left unanswered.

Even the war in Ukraine and what are believed to be huge Russian military losses, don't appear to have sparked disillusionment in Russia's President and Commander-in-Chief.

It was Putin's decision to launch the full scale invasion, but some Russians believe that at a time of war, it is their duty to back their leader without questioning his motives or the consequences.

Crucially, the other thing you find a lot of here is indifference. Many Russians don't seem to care who's in power in the Kremlin. They just hunker down in their town or village and try to get through life as best they can. Indifference, too, benefits Vladimir Putin.

For all these reasons, his fifth election victory isn't in doubt.

But what I find much harder to predict is Russia's future. These are very dark times. Darkest, of course, for Ukraine, but for Russia, too. You can feel aggression in Russian society building. You can see repression growing, and you can see a leader who is determined, whatever the cost, to emerge from this war the winner.”

—Steve Rosenberg, BBC's Moscow correspondent, on Russia’s short lived democracy turned autocratic dictatorship

#politics #ukraine #russia #russian invasion of ukraine #vladimir putin #russia is a terrorist state #vladimir putin is a war criminal #authoritarian state #dictatorships #russian elections #russian election #dictators

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 30, 2024

On Wednesday the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute for the Study of War published a long essay explaining that Russia’s only strategy for success in Ukraine is to win the disinformation war in which it is engaged. While the piece by Nataliya Bugayova and Frederick W. Kagan, with Katryna Stepanenko, focused on Russia’s war against Ukraine, the point it makes about Russia’s information operation against Western countries applies more widely.

The authors note that the countries allied behind Ukraine dwarf Russia, with relative gross domestic products of $63 trillion and $1.9 trillion, respectively, while those countries allied with Russia are not mobilizing to help Russian president Vladimir Putin. Russia cannot defeat Ukraine or the West, they write, if the West mobilizes its resources.

This means that the strategy that matters most for the Kremlin is not the military strategy, but rather the spread of disinformation that causes the West to back away and allow Russia to win. That disinformation operation echoes the Russian practice of getting a population to believe in a false reality so that voters will cast their ballots for the party of oligarchs. In this case, in addition to seeding the idea that Ukraine cannot win and that the Russian invasion was justified, the Kremlin is exploiting divisions already roiling U.S. politics. 

It is, for example, playing on the American opposition to sending our troops to fight “forever” wars, a dislike ingrained in the population since the Vietnam War. But the U.S. is not fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainians are asking only for money and matériel, and their war is not a proxy war—they are fighting for their own reasons—although their victory could well prevent U.S. engagement elsewhere in the future. The Kremlin is also playing on the idea that aid to Ukraine is too expensive as the U.S. faces large budget deficits, but the U.S. contribution to Ukraine’s war effort in 2023 was less than 0.5% of the defense budget. 

Russian propaganda is also changing key Western concepts of war, suggesting, for example, that Ukrainian surrender will bring peace when, in fact, the end of fighting will simply take away Ukrainians’ ability to protect themselves against Russian violence. The authors note that Russia is using Americans’ regard for peace, life, American interests, freedom of debate, and responsible foreign relations against the U.S.

The authors’ argument parallels that of political observers in the U.S. and elsewhere: Russian actors have amplified the power of a relatively small, aggressive country by leveraging disinformation. 

The European Union will hold parliamentary elections in June, and on Wednesday the Czech government sanctioned a news site called Voice of Europe, saying it was part of a pro-Russian propaganda operation. It also sanctioned the man running the site, Artyom Marchevsky, as well as Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, saying Medvedchuk was running a “Russian influence operation” through Voice of Europe.

The far right has been rising in Europe, and Nicholas Vinocur, Pieter Haeck, and Eddy Wax of Politico noted that “Voice of Europe’s YouTube page throws up a parade of EU lawmakers, many of them belonging to far-right, Euroskeptic parties, who line up to bash the Green Deal, predict the Union’s imminent collapse, or attack Ukraine.”

Belgian security services were in on the investigation, and on Thursday, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo added that Russian operatives had paid European Union lawmakers to parrot Russian propaganda. Intelligence sources told Czech media that Voice of Europe paid politicians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland to influence the upcoming E.U. elections. Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper said the money was paid in cash or cryptocurrency. 

Czech prime minister Petr Fiala wrote on social media: “We have uncovered a pro-Russian network that was developing an operation to spread Russian influence and undermine security across Europe.” "This shows how great the risk of foreign influence is," Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte told journalists. "It's a threat to our democracy, to our free elections, to our freedom of speech, to everything."

There are reasons to think the same disinformation process is underway in the United States. Not only do MAGA Republicans, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine, but Russian disinformation has also been a key part of the House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden. 

Republicans spent months touting Alexander Smirnov’s allegation that Biden had accepted foreign bribes, with Representative James Comer (R-KY) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling his evidence “verifiable” and “valuable.” In February the Department of Justice indicted Smirnov for creating a false record, days before revealing that he was in close contact with “Russian intelligence agencies” and was “actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections.”  

On March 19, former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas testified about the investigation into Biden’s alleged corruption before the House Oversight Committee at the request of the Democrats. Parnas was part of the attempt to create dirt on Biden before the 2020 election, and he explained how the process worked.  

“The only information ever pushed about the Bidens and Ukraine has come from Russia and Russian agents,” Parnas said, and was part of “a much larger plan for Russia to crush Ukraine by infiltrating the United States.” Politicians and right-wing media figures, including then-representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), The Hill reporter John Solomon, Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, and other FNC hosts, knew the narrative was false, Parnas said, even as they echoed it. He suggested that they were permitting “Russia to use our government for malicious purposes, and to reward selfish people with ill-gotten gains.” 

The attempt to create a false reality—whether by foreign operatives or homegrown ones—seems increasingly obvious in perceptions of the 2024 election. There has been much chatter, for example, about polls showing Trump ahead of Biden. But the 2022 polls were badly skewed rightward by partisan actors, and Democrat Marilyn Lands’s overwhelming victory over her Republican opponent in an Alabama House election this week suggests those errors have not yet been fully addressed.

Real measures of political enthusiasm appear to favor Biden and the Democrats. On Wednesday, Molly Cook Escobar, Albert Sun, and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times reported that since leaving office, Trump has spent more than $100 million on legal fees alone. He is badly in need of money, and his reordering of the funding priorities of the Republican National Committee to put himself first means that the party is badly in need of money, too.

Donors’ awareness that their cash will go to Trump before funding other Republican candidates might well slow fundraising. Certainly, small-donor contributions to Trump have dropped off significantly: Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported last week that “[i]n 2023, Trump’s reelection campaign raised 62.5% less money from small-dollar donors than it did in 2019, the year before the last presidential election.”  

Billionaires Liz and Dick Uihlein have recently said they will back Trump, and Alexandra Ulmer of Reuters reported on Tuesday that other billionaires had pooled the money to back Trump’s then–$454 million appeal bond before an appeals court reduced it. But Ulmer also noted that there might be a limit to such gifts, as they “could draw scrutiny from election regulators or federal prosecutors if the benefactors were to give Trump amounts exceeding campaign contribution limits. While the payment would not be a direct donation to Trump's campaign, federal laws broadly define political contributions as ‘anything of value’ provided to a campaign.”

Meanwhile, the fundraising of Biden and the Democrats is breaking records. Last night, in New York City, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama joined Biden onstage with television personality Stephen Colbert, along with event host Mindy Kaling and musical guests Queen Latifah, Lizzo, and Ben Platt. The 5,000-person event raised an eye-popping amount—more than $25 million—and the campaign noted that, unlike donations to Trump, every dollar raised would go to the campaign.

In his remarks, Biden said that the grassroots nature of the Democrats’ support showed in the number of people who have contributed so far to his campaign: 1.5 million in all, including 550,000 “brand-new contributors in the last couple of weeks.” Ninety-seven percent of the donations have been less than $200. 

Tonight, Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, the president’s primary forum for national security and foreign policy, pointed to Russia’s devastating recent attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid and called again for Speaker Johnson to bring up the bipartisan national security supplemental bill providing aid to Ukraine that the Senate passed in February. She warned: “Ukraine’s need is urgent, and we cannot afford any further delays.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#War in Ukraine #Russian disinformation #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Russia #Putin #Mike Luckovich #National Security #propaganda wars #Right Wing propaganda

[mariacallous]

While the failure to break through Russia’s fortified defensive lines on the southern axis this summer has been disappointing for Kyiv, the news on the diplomatic and political front is far more alarming.

Speaking about the progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in early December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told The Associated Press: “We wanted faster results. From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.”

While Ukraine has achieved some limited successes this year, with results in the Black Sea in the summer and a Kherson-region bridgehead firmly established east of the Dnipro River in the fall, the lack of significant territorial gains is a bitter pill to swallow for Kyiv.

But despite these setbacks, with the final taboos overcome regarding providing the heavy weaponry and long-range missile capabilities needed to win this war, the trajectory of the conflict was still arguably trending in Ukraine’s favor, according to many Western military experts, just as long as the coalition of democratic nation states maintaining Ukraine’s wartime economy held strong and the arms transfers kept arriving.

Winter’s developments, however, paint a far worse picture. Given the immense risks ahead, it is imperative that Kyiv starts preparing now for a future in which that coalition has fragmented.

In Europe, election victories for allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia’s Robert Fico and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders have potentially added further blocks on European Union financial and military aid packages. Hungary’s Viktor Orban now has more leverage in his attempts to disrupt the bloc’s Ukraine policy, including holding up a new round of sanctions on Russia and a proposed 50 billion euro ($54.9 billion) aid package, even if his opposition to the EU opening accession talks for Ukraine has been successfully navigated by the bloc.

Orban was previously isolated inside the EU, which overtook the United States as the largest overall donor of aid to Ukraine over the summer. If Wilders manages to form a governing coalition and become prime minister, it could not only imperil the planned transfer of Dutch F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, but also become a major threat to future EU aid packages going forward.

Winter has also seen a truck driver protest in Poland and Slovakia, which have been blocking Ukrainian border crossings in a dispute over EU permits for Ukrainian shipping companies, which has in turn impacted the flow of volunteer military aid coming into Ukraine.

While Kyiv will be disappointed by these events, they are not insurmountable. Support for Ukraine remains high in Brussels, and Orban has proved himself capable of relenting on similar packages in the past, leveraging Hungary’s veto in exchange for EU concessions toward Budapest. Individually, member states such as Germany and the Baltic nations also continue to send substantial military aid to Kyiv outside of the structures of the European Union.

The news from the United States, however, is far more bleak. Speaking to reporters on Dec. 4, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan laid out in stark terms that the funds allocated by the government for Ukraine were spent, warning that if Congress did not pass further funding bills, it would impact Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

“Each week that passes, our ability to fully fund what we feel is necessary to give Ukraine the tools and capacities it needs to both defend its territory and continue to make advances, that gets harder and harder,” Sullivan said.

The White House has been trying to pass a $61.4 billion aid package for Ukraine (part of which would go to replenishing U.S. Defense Department stocks), tied together with a package of aid to Israel and Taiwan, which is being blocked by congressional Republicans in a dispute over the Biden administration’s border policies.

Despite a majority of Republicans supporting increased military aid to Ukraine, bills trying to secure further funding have stalled in both the Senate and the House of Representatives since the caucus of far-right, pro-Trump House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as the speaker of the House of Representatives, replacing him with Ukraine military aid opponent Mike Johnson.

After Johnson was elected speaker, he appeared to walk back his opposition to Ukraine funding, in an apparent bid to win over some of his Reaganite skeptics in the Republican Party. However, he has chosen to try to leverage the urgency of the Biden administration’s Ukraine package to advance the Republicans’ anti-immigration platform.

This is no longer isolated to the House, as even pro-Ukraine senators, such as Lindsey Graham, joined Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in blocking the White House’s security package amid chaotic scenes in the Senate. With Senate Republicans falling in line with the legislative agenda of the House’s hard-right “Freedom Caucus” Republican wing, Ukraine will enter the Christmas period under sustained Russian aerial bombardment with depleted air defense ammunition stocks.

The United States is incapable of replenishing those stocks due to the domestic political wrangling of a small band of hard-line, anti-immigration Republican lawmakers, and Ukrainian civilians will likely die as a result of this amoral legislative obstinance. In Kyiv, where I live, the sense that these conservative lawmakers are willing to recklessly endanger Ukrainian lives for selfish political ends is palpable.

The Biden administration has expressed a willingness to compromise in order to try to break the impasse, but there is no certainty in where these negotiations could go. The size of this aid bill is itself a strategic move. The $61.4 billion package dwarfs any of the previous U.S. aid packages to Ukraine (which as of August 2023 totaled more than $77 billion), representing a more “one and done” approach to meeting Ukraine’s military aid needs for the entirety of 2024 and the remainder of President Joe Biden’s term.

If it passes, there will be no further opportunities in the short term for the Make America Great Again caucus to hold Ukrainian aid to ransom.

But the problems don’t stop there. The United States and Europe have both failed to produce enough artillery ammunition to meet Ukraine’s needs, and this shortfall led to South Korea becoming a larger supplier of artillery ammunition in 2023 than all European nations combined. But Korea’s supplies are not limitless, and U.S. and European production is still not at the levels needed to sustain Ukraine going forward. If this shortfall is not addressed, the consequences could be disastrous.

There are more hopeful signs that these problems are well understood, and that the coalition of nations supporting Ukraine remains committed to the cause in the long term. “Wars develop in phases,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in a recent interview with the German public broadcaster ARD in early December. “We have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times,” he said.

Everything now points to a long war in Ukraine, although none of this should have been unforeseeable for Western policymakers and defense chiefs. Ukraine’s top military c, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, gave a much-publicized interview with the Economist in November, in which he said “just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate.”

These comments, however, despite appearing to create the impression of a public rift between Zaluzhny and Zelensky, are not a concession of defeat from the four-star general. Zaluzhny made clear that he is trying to avoid the kind of grinding attritional warfare that favors Russia’s long-term strategy for wearing Ukraine down.

But a long war also heightens one of the biggest threats. Even if the Biden administration manages to get the new aid package over the line, effectively securing Ukraine’s military funding for 2024, the specter of another presidency for Donald Trump still looms large on the horizon. The polling for Biden less than one year away from an election is deeply concerning, and Trump’s prospects for victory need to be taken seriously, even in the face of his growing legal jeopardy.

A second Trump presidency would imperil not just U.S. democracy, but also the entire global world order, and the consequences for Ukraine could be potentially devastating. Trump’s refusal to commit to continuing to support Ukraine should be setting off alarm bells—not just in Kyiv, but across Europe too, where the greatest impacts from this change of policy would be felt.

Trump’s first impeachment was over his attempt to extort Ukraine to search for compromising material that he could use against Biden in the 2020 election, and there is no reason to believe that Trump has moved on from this. Many in Washington expect that a second Trump presidency will be marked by his desire for revenge against anyone that stood in his way. As the U.S. analyst and author Michael Weiss told me, “Trump’s first impeachment was over Ukraine, and he sees it as an abscess to be lanced. … A Trump presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine.”

There are also signs that the Russians are acutely aware of this, and that their strategy in the short-to-medium term is simply to hold out in Ukraine long enough for a Trump presidency to pull the plug on the vital military aid keeping the Ukrainians in the fight. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently remarked that the Russians expect the war to last beyond 2025, and in an address to his own propaganda think tank, Putin said that Ukraine would have a “week to live” if Western arms supplies were halted.

Ukraine cannot plan for a war that may extend beyond 2025 without preparing for a potential Trump presidency and all that would entail. The Ukrainian government must prepare for every eventuality, including a White House that is actively hostile toward Kyiv. To his credit, Zelensky appears to have acknowledged this possibility, going as far as inviting Trump to visit Kyiv.

Putin has made it perfectly clear that he sees his war in Ukraine as being part of a wider war that he is waging against the entire West. Western policymakers to take him at his word on this. Putin and his regime have been waging a hybrid war against the West for many years, and he considers his support for European extremists such as Fico, Wilders and France’s Marine Le Pen to be part of that war and part of undermining the Western liberal democratic institutions, such as the EU and NATO, that stand in opposition to Putin’s tyranny.

But there is no single individual on the planet more important to Putin’s global war agenda than his pet authoritarian in Mar-a-Lago.

Moscow’s goals in Ukraine remain unchanged; the Putin regime still maintains maximalist aims in Ukraine and is in this war for the long haul, with the total subjugation of Kyiv as its goal. Putin made his position very clear during his annual news conference. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also been explicit about this, and Europe should take the ongoing threat that a Trump administration poses to Ukraine seriously. There may well be a potential future in which Europe is forced to carry the burden of Ukraine’s war without its North American ally at the helm of the coalition, or even at the head of the collective defense strategy at the heart of European foreign policy.

Looking forward to 2024, there remains no path to peace in Ukraine without a Russian defeat. Looking beyond 2025, the future of Ukraine as a free and democratic nation-state, and potentially the entire security of Europe, hang in the balance.

This is why Europe, in particular, cannot afford to be complacent in the face of the rising threat of a Trump presidency. Opening EU accession talks for Ukraine is a good start, but until the bloc can match or outperform Russia’s current levels of ammunition production, the tide will start to turn against Ukraine if U.S. leadership on this war continues to falter. The truth is that U.S. leadership on this and on any other pressing international issue cannot be guaranteed.

For Ukraine to stand a chance of victory, its allies must begin preparing for catastrophe now.

[thegreatwhinger]

Putin's Mild Ride

Have you noticed that the articles about Putin winning the election in Russia almost inevitably have a sentence about the outcome never being in doubt?

That's to create a contrast – strongly implied if not stated outright – between the political system in the United States and Russia, though the media in both countries act as propaganda arms for their governments.

Though let's be honest. Presidential elections in the United States aren't exactly hotbeds of choice either.

The US is notorious for making things as difficult as possible for third parties while those in the mainstream, the Democrats and Republicans, are both corporate entities and not only are backed by the same groups/individuals but even managed/advised by the same people.

The rhetoric differs, the policies? Not so much because in the United States we get a shiny veneer of choice, not the reality.

It's worth mentioning that Vladimir Putin is 71 years old and appears fairly robust while Joe Biden is ten years older and way too many people seem to think that he's done something amazing when he gives a single speech without drifting off to stories about Corn Pop.

While Donald Trump is 6 years older than Putin, though a fabulist and an entitled idiot.

Yeah, we've got it great over here.

#Vladimir Putin #Democrats #Republicans #Joe Biden #Donald Trump #Corn Pop

[tomorrowusa]

Turkey/Türkiye held local elections over the weekend and the secularist democratic opposition did surprisingly well. It spells bad news for authoritarians – both at home (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) and potentially across the Black Sea (Vladimir Putin).

The Turkish party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered big losses in local elections held on Sunday. Ekrem Imamoğlu, the incumbent from main opposition party CHP, led the mayoral race in Istanbul by nearly 10 percentage points after more than half the votes had been counted, Reuters reported early on Monday. CHP also retained its mayoral seat in Ankara and gained another 15 seats in cities across the country. Erdoğan conceded defeat for the AK Party, the AFP reported. The opposition's win is a blow to Erdoğan, who has been in power as Turkey's prime minister or president since 2003. Since he is also a close partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin — even though Turkey is a NATO member — the defeat of Erdoğan's party could change the two countries' relationship. If Erdoğan's AK Party had won resoundingly, the victory would be used in Ankara to "justify a close relationship with Russia in the eyes of the Turkish public," Marc Pierieni and Francesco Siccardi, researchers at think tank Carnegie Europe, wrote last week. [ ... ] Erdoğan's administration has been talking to Moscow about setting up a gas hub in Turkey as Europe weans itself off natural-gas imports from Russia.

The Financial Times has more specific figures on the shift in fortunes for the two largest parties. Erdoğan's AK Party is often called the AKP.

Overall the CHP captured 38 per cent of the national vote, while support for the AKP fell to 35 per cent. In the 2019 local election the AKP notched up 44 per cent of the vote, with the CHP well behind at around 30 per cent, according to Anadolu data

As an aside, Turkey has a great sounding national anthem called İstiklal Marşı. It's the only anthem I'm aware of that has the word coy in its lyrics.

#turkey #türkiye #local elections #istanbul #democratic opposition victory #ekrem i̇mamoğlu #chp #cumhuriyet halk partisi #recep tayyip erdoğan #akp #adalet ve kalkınma partisi #vladimir putin #russia #bad news for authoritarians #victory for secularism #i̇stiklal marşı

[peakwealth]

You Run

Vladimir Putin, flanked by airline cabin crew (reportedly Aeroflot trainees), shortly before ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

Two recent quotes stick in my mind. The first one was from an American woman who escaped from a mass shooting incident after the US Super Bowl in Kansas City. (One dead, twenty-two injured.) Interviewed minutes later on TV, she said: In this day and age, you run.

I forget where I saw the second quote but I thought of it after Donald Trump's threat to pull the plug on NATO, should he be re-elected this year. It's as if the devil had changed sides.

Near panic broke out across Europe. Trump was willing to throw European countries, previously known as America's allies, to the wolves.

Vladimir Putin, do as you please. Ukraine, prepare to be sacrificed. And by extension, Taiwan, your time is up.

I keep coming back to this: the West isn't what it used to be. I think of myself as fortunate to have grown up in a 'eurocentric' world order, or the outcome of the second world war if you prefer. It may have been delusional but it was printed on perfume bottles: PARIS - LONDON - NEW YORK.

In reality, eurocentrism and the colonial empires that created it were already faltering by the time I came into this world. It took, however, a long time to see and accept it. As for the 'American century', it ended in 2001 with the apocalyptic scenes of 9/11 in New York City. As the towers collapsed, the world pivoted into a new era. To put it differently, the world was changing hands.

---------------

On February 24 2022 I woke up in a small, no-nonsense hotel south of Granada and went downstairs to have coffee at the bar. I flipped open my tablet and there it was:

RUSSIA ATTACKS UKRAINE

Until then I - we - had assumed there existed a fundamental contract with European history, immovably rooted in postwar reality: never again, no more major wars in Europe. No one in their right mind would want to mess with that contract.

Except that Vladimir Putin had just ordered his army across the border into Ukraine.

Now I wake up every day and want to hit my head against the wall as the Russian war of aggression grinds on. Grind, meat grinder, human waves, trench warfare. The words are all desperately wrong.

After two years of daily annihilation, hundreds of thousands of lives casually erased or ruined, it goes on and on. Both sides, it has been reported, are running short of young men to waste at the front.

We do not know exactly what goes on on those front lines. We hear about Russian soldiers dispatched to their deaths as a matter of course. But we do not get to see that, nor do we get any real casualty numbers. At the beginning of the war, things were more graphic, the bodies photographed where they had fallen. Two years on, we don't know. But the broken, blasted cities tell the story, as they do in Gaza: not many people walk away alive.

And now no one seems quite sure what to do about Ukraine. The war looks unwinnable because Putin does not care about the cost in human lives.

Why fight if you can't win? Is a negotiated settlement still possible? Land for peace would mean the partition of Ukraine accepted as a fait accompli. But can there be peace without justice for Ukraine, which would effectively be sacrificed in the hope of keeping Putin's Russia in check? Putin, however, cannot be trusted, nor can Trump for that matter.

Should Trump return to the White House, a new world order might emerge overwhelmingly inimical to the west or what would be left of it. It might not even be clear where the USA would position itself. As for the loss of Ukraine, in whole or in part, it would be like small change.

You can go on like this, endlessly turning over the options and arguments in your head, none of them acceptable: Ukraine's outright surrender? Or an indefinite ceasefire that would humiliate Kyiv but leave it attached to Europe?

Faced with a historic opportunity to rewrite everything, a moment of dizzying recalculation of how the planet works and who's boss, it is hard to imagine that China would hesitate to seize the moment. Others would follow, like India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, eventually lining up with Russia in an historic act of opportunism and Schadenfreude.

In this day and age, you run.

A lot is at stake in 2024.

[cuprohastes]

Things to Come

It is the year 2024: Amazon wants to have wholly owned company towns to persuade poor people to enter into indentured servitude. There is an election between an old guy who's quietly doing a generally good job, and a very loud serial rapist conman who's being taken to court for his many crimes including treason. Somehow there is still a debate as to who will win.

It is the year 2030: There are now four Amazon towns powered off grid by Tesla batteries. There is no news in or out. People are starting to notice this. Jeff Bezos and Elon musk are having a public fight over who owns Mars. Bezos brought up Twitter and Elon's announced X-Mart a direct competitor to Amazon. The Cybertruck's been recalled again, this time after the 50th person was cooked alive by the burning battery pack, which also locked all the doors.

It is 2040: Elon's died on Mars ina. 8ft cabin from every cancer known to man and three that are getting named after him. Apparently he declared that radiation shielding wasn't needed because Mars is too far from the sun for radiation to reach it. Jeff Bezos freeze dried corpse is still circling hte earth as of two years ago. The world watches with glee as Amazon is torn to shreds by ten thousand parties all of whom are laying claim to the 3 trillion dollars held by the company. Nobody is trying to take over Space-X or Teslas due to the historic 1.4 trillion dollars in fines and debt they collectively owe. Mark Zuckerberg is replacing all his organic parts with life support machines to keep his brain alive until a perfect way to upload himself to the metaverse is available. The metaverse is still shit and has only 1008 concurrent users.

Is tis 2042: Donald Trump has choked to death in his cell. The rumour is it was corpophilia: This will persist even after a FOIA reveals it was a cold two day old Big Mac smuggled in to him. The world rejoices. There is still a 24/7 video feed of Elon musk slowly mummifying in the remains of X-Mars. Questions regarding the rest of the colonists are answered when a Marsbot finally accesses the dome and finds that Elon turned off the oxygen after the twenty three women in the first wave of colonists refused to breed with him. There were twenty eight colonists and four of them had received vasectomies two months before liftoff. They had to take an axe to the thing Zuckerberg because it wouldn't stop screaming. In the UK, all politicians from the last 30 years have been placed in Wadsworth prison and are tried and guillotined daily. The Scottish won't stop laughing. The Irish have been drunk of their tits for the last six months. The Welsh have banned speaking English. This is not going well but they get much respect for taking a stand.

2050: Republicans are now legal to be hunted for food if you have a bow hunting license. Guns are finally restricted. Republicans state that this will result in a civil war. Gun crime and school shootings are down 1000%. The most popular book in the US is "Eating the Rich" a combination how-to on bow hunting, butchering and serving human flesh. The rest of the world is watching this with interest. The Russian federation is taking special notes. This year 80 clones of Vladimir Putin are euthanised in their tubes and eaten.

2055: There is no civil war and surprisingly few instances of Kuru. Texas has built a wall around the entire state to keep "the left" out. All jokes about marrying your cousin are now attributed to Texas, now known as the Lone Surname State. They have still managed not to secede.

2060: Gender is abolished, not through decree but by common agreement of the third generation brought up by Millenials, Gen Z and Gen Blue: The Green Generation. Cities are walkable. It is considered weird if you cannot walk to the shops in bare feet safely for at least half a year. Air quality has improved, winters are returning. Urban deer keep grasses down and provide local meat. Men and women wear dresses, biological sex can now be changed trivially with around 60 months of treatment. Marriage is now merely a fun tradition and churches all pay tax after the 2056 ruling that if they cannot provide evidence for their god that they have no more claim to universal truth than a social club. World hunger is solved by levying back taxes on jsut three megachurches. Summers are brutal but can be managed by passive cooling, and thermal gradient power generators for cooling.

2070: Everyone has UBI. Work is 4 hours a day, 4 days a week for most people. Many people have two or three jobs, not for money, but because they have diverse interests. Most companies are profit sharing or Co-operatives. The biggest global trauma is the English wearing socks with sandals. Global temperatures have dropped. The kids are kind and bemused by their aging relatives. Texas is still Republican and angrily making memes about "This is the future the left want" that are still really cool and fun looking suggestions. The southen US has replaced it's statues with Dolly Parton, who's revered as a saint. 40% of men have great tits. The President of the USA is catgirl. Things are going to be OK. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day the last Boomer died and everyone's going to get their grill out. Life's good: We're going to to be OK.

#shitposting #the future