for - Elites avoiding accountability - also Costco fuel elites - dictators - Putin - Kim Jong - Assad

for - childhood bullying - bullied while a child - Putin was bullied - Trump was bullied - King Jong Un was bullied - Aces Too High - Adverse Childhood Experiences

for - key insight - Putin is trying to create autocratic governments all over the world - geopolitics - Putin's influence in Georgia

Worth, Robert F. “Clash of the Patriarchs.” The Atlantic, April 10, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/05/russia-ukraine-orthodox-christian-church-bartholomew-kirill/677837/.

A fantastic overview of the history, recent changes and a potential schism in the Orthodox Church with respect to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.

Die beiden Pipelines Nord Stream 1 und 2 sollten pro Jahr 110 Milliarden Kubikmeter Erdgas aus Russland nach Europa transportieren Für ihr neues Buch hat Marion van Renterghem rekonstruiert, wie die russische Führung unter Putin die Abhängigkeit Europas und vor allem Deutschlands von russischen Gas systematisch ausgebaut und ausgenutzt hat, bis mit der Fertigstellung der Pipelines durch die Ostsee die Invasion der Ukraine für Russland zu einem kalkulierbaren Risiko wurde. https://www.liberation.fr/idees-et-debats/marion-van-renterghem-poutine-a-tisse-un-reseau-de-gazoducs-sur-tout-le-continent-europeen-pour-le-pieger-20231026_NRMNZHWJ45ASPM7FNJN3GAF2FU/?redirected=1

After the Maidan revolution the US started to integrate Ukraine into NATO through unofficial means.

By June 2020 they were recognised as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner (https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_176327.htm)

A year later in 2021 the US and Ukraine signed a "Charter on Strategic Partnership" which declared that the US supports Ukrain's aspirations to join NATO (https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/).

It's important for the West to stop demonizing Putin - it's just an elaborate form of saber rattling. And here it is a method to go ahead.

Impossible to have a truce agreement as proposed here (have just one country in NATO).

Putin is merely at the extreme end of the spectrum of people with ACE. Indeed we could take the title of this article and substitute with many other people, in public as well as our own private lives: How X's childhood is affecting us all. We all know at least one person we could substitute for X!

This could be a key moment in time to launch a global Bottom-up, rapid whole system change initiative.

Information warfare against Russian propaganda against its own people will not work.

Kill two birds with one stone.

That's the core of the matter, and a short-circuit which invalidates Putin's entire reasoning.

Putin is bending historical facts to fit his idealistic claims. Which means his goal is implementing that static ideal of a strong Russia, not adapting it to allow for progress.

That takes us back to before the scientific revolution.

Will this reality overcome the pride threshold of him losing this epic war?

Putin wanted this violence. He planned it for years but as they say "careful what you wish for, it just may come true". Putin will win the battle but will lose the war.

This is the critical observation - everything is interconnected. It is a nexus of problems that requires that we deal with all dimensions of the problem simultaneously.

Putin is the nexus of so much that is wrong with the world. He is like an octopus that has its arms in multiple crisis of the planet.

The political polarization of the US, the ascendancy of the puppet government of Trump and the blatant cognitive dissonance of the extreme right who are impervious to facts is reminiscent of the propaganda imposed upon the Russian people themselves for one reason - it was part of Putin's master plan: https://youtu.be/FxgBuhMBXSA The US population has been split by Putin's information warfare system, the same one he uses on the Russian population.

The fake news programmed by Russian propaganda about the Ukraine war has worked effectively to mislead the Russian populus: https://youtu.be/kELta9MLOzg The same pattern of psychological manipulation has also had the same impact in the belief system of the typical hardcore Trumpist.

Each highlighted statement expresses political talking points aligned to induce trump-like support.

Trump introduced new marketing and strategy, formulated using concepts and metrics mastered by Reality TV and Hollywood and then paired with advertising propaganda and "selling" techniques to create a "Brand". This is after-all Donald Trump, this is what he does, has done and is the only way he has found to make money. Trump built the "brand" (just barely) while teetering on self destruction.

His charismatic persona became "the glue" that allowed creative narratives to stick to certain types of people in-spite of risk. Trump learned OTJ how to capture a specific type of audience.

The mistake people make about Trump is assuming his audience to be "Joe Six-Pack", redneck's with limited education! This assumption does not have merit on its own.<br /> * There is a common "follower" theme among his audience that is exploited by those who: * Bought the "licensing rights" to the master-class Trump "how-to" course.

...Hence, even cutting a small amount to the West would “hurt” it, but not Putin.

Putin's stated goal isn't even about Ukraine directly, just about preventing its shift to the west politically. https://youtu.be/1qS6J-WbTD8?t=1364

Looi, Mun-Keat. ‘The Covid-19 Yearbook: World Leaders Edition’. BMJ 371 (16 December 2020): m4728. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4728.

Perhaps the best defense against active measures is a little bit of activism of our own

The US Justice Dept. "has identified more than six members of the Russian government" involved in hacking the DNC. Arrests and prosecutions are unlikely, but they have made a habit of filing charges as a way of discouraging foreign hackers.

Russian accounts on Facebook were attempting to incite violence within the U.S.

A timeline of Paul Manafort's ties to Russia.

... "Frontline" will give consumers not just a story via a two-part documentary on Vladimir Putin, "Putin's Revenge," which begins tonight and looks at the evolution of his thinking about, and animus toward, the United States.

At 10 p.m., it will post online virtually every bit of all its interviews, or 70 hours of 56 interviews. They're with figures big and small, ranging from former big-time U.S. intelligence officials such as James Clapper and John Brennan to Putin confidantes, journalists, policy experts and others whom you don't know but have a lot to say on this important and ambiguous topic.

Both the video and transcripts will be easily searchable and annotated right here.

http://go.pardot.com/e/273262/frontline-film-putins-revenge-/23b4b/70048029

In 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which targets Russian human-rights abusers: It freezes their assets and deprives them of visas.

. . .

The Magnitsky Act drives Putin nuts. It means that his men can’t act as they always have, i.e., with impunity. Now there are consequences, which is a problem for Putin. Four countries have Magnitsky acts: the U.S., Britain, Estonia, and now Canada. (They passed theirs last week.)

Browder is a driver behind these Magnitsky acts, and Putin hates him for it, understandably. Twice in 2013, he tried to add Browder to Interpol’s wanted list, and twice he failed, because Interpol knew that Putin was politically motivated. Browder is not a criminal. He is an anti-criminal, which is why Putin targets him.

. . .

In the wake of Canada’s new Magnitsky act, Putin has tried again. Tried for a fifth time. Interpol has accepted his request. Worse, the U.S. government seems in partnership with the Kremlin: Our government has revoked Browder’s visa. (American-born, Browder is a British citizen.)