Danchenko found not guilty on all counts
The verdict on Danchenko is in: not guilty.
I would be shocked if it were otherwise, given the legal problems of the case as well as the venue. I’ve written about this many times before, but the main point is that it’s really really hard to convict someone of lying to people who are extremely eager to believe your lies and are collaborating in those lies, and have no interest in finding out the truth.
I concluded long ago that there would almost certainly be no way for any of the Russiagate perps to be found guilty, particularly in the left-leaning courts and communities where the trials would be held. Many of them are also lawyers or people who work with lawyers frequently, and before they started Russiagate I believe they were very careful to do things in such a way that convictions would be highly unlikely and very difficult to obtain – if anyone ever discovered what they’d done in the first place (which they didn’t think would happen, either, although it ultimately did).
Yesterday, prior to the Danchenko verdict, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote this:
The culmination of this collusive arrangement, one of the great political dirty tricks in American history, was the FBI peddling to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, under oath, the uncorroborated rumor, innuendo, and sheer fabrications of the Steele dossier. Not once, not twice, not thrice, but four separate times, over close to a year and for months into his presidency, agents depicted Trump as a clandestine agent of Moscow.
This is where Danchenko comes in. A cagey operator whom the FBI credibly suspected as a Russian asset a dozen years ago, he was the main source of “intelligence” — which is apparently Russian for “gossip among drinking buddies” — that Steele turned into the faux reports that comprised the dossier.
In his probe into the origins of the bureau’s Trump-Russia investigation (codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane”), Durham discovered that, although Danchenko acknowledged that the Steele dossier was farcical, he also appeared to have misled the FBI regarding his sources. In particular, he made up a conversation with Sergie Millian — a loose Trump associate whom Danchenko doesn’t know and never actually communicated with. The result was the dossier claim that Trump and the Kremlin were in a “conspiracy of cooperation.”
That’s the background, which you probably already knew. But here’s the legal problem:
Durham charged Danchenko with four counts of lying about Millian… It is a tough case for Durham because it’s hard to expect a jury to convict someone for lying to the FBI about comparatively less serious matters when the FBI itself was blatantly and serially dishonest with a federal court — with apparent impunity…
Understandably, the more appalled the jury becomes over the FBI’s behavior, the less inclined it may be to convict Danchenko.
That is the heart of the matter, and it’s what occurred in the Sussman case as well, to the best of my recollection.
The Democrats and the MSM (a redundancy) will spin this as a big win for the Russiagate group. My sense is that most voters have moved on and are paying little attention at this point. Most people’s viewpoints on Russiagate and the FBI solidified a long time ago.
ADDENDUM:
I already wrote that I don’t think that the abomination known as Russiagate has any likely successful avenue for legal redress. I say that with a combination of regret and anger, but not every bad act has a legal solution. Our legal system is constructed – for good reasons – to make it difficult to prove guilt, in order to protect the innocent from being railroaded. That, unfortunately, is even true for those with great power who can do great damage and get off scot free.
One of the reasons this was almost inevitable in all the Durham cases has to do with venue. The Danchenko case was tried in Alexandria, Virginia, which is not only a deep blue area but one filled with members of the Deep State. I can’t even imagine how air-tight a case would have to be for someone like Danchenko to have been convicted in a venue such as that; I don’t even think such a thing would be humanly possible.
That’s why I don’t blame Durham overmuch.
Here’s part of what Durham said to the jury:
Durham was emphatic that in prosecuting Igor Danchenko for alleged lies about his sources for information that ended up in the bogus “Steele dossier,” the special counsel’s office was not defending the bureau. As reported by the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy, who is covering the trial, Durham concluded that “the FBI failed here,” observing that it “mishandled the investigation” and that its agents “didn’t do what they should have done.” Durham added that the explanation for the bureau’s appalling performance could be that it is “simply incompetent” or possibly that it was “working in coordination.” He does not appear to have stated with whom the FBI might have worked in coordination; the implication points to the Clinton campaign, which sponsored the dossier — opposition research based on which Hillary Clinton argued that Trump was a Putin puppet.
Something like that last contention – which I believe to be the case – simply does not have the sort of evidence that would have convinced this jury or any such jury in this venue, and I don’t think that Durham was wrong not to bring such a case.
Here’s the sort of thing Dachenko’s defense argued, just to give you some of the flavor of the thing:
…[T]here are four false-statements counts, all related to Danchenko’s alleged fabrication of a conversation with Sergei Millian, a loose associate of Trump’s with whom there is no evidence that Danchenko ever spoke. Danchenko’s lawyers are stressing that Millian did not testify and Durham could not disprove that a conversation may have taken place over an Internet app rather than a conventional phone — although they also insist that Danchenko never claimed to be sure that the person with whom he spoke was Millian.
That sort of “plausible” deniability was more than enough for this jury.
More here:
The special counsel [Durham] is using tried-and-true “lying to the feds” charges to unravel for the public the hoax—which on its face requires painting the FBI as dupes. Yet every filing and witness question is instead building Mr. Durham’s case of rank FBI malfeasance.
Mr. Danchenko pleaded not guilty, His trial—and prior to it Mr. Durham’s unsuccessful prosecution of Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann—has by now yielded a scandalous portrait of an FBI willing to take nearly any step—and cut any corner—to harm Donald Trump…
While Mr. Durham presents evidence Mr. Danchenko lied to FBI handlers, there is as much evidence the FBI closed its eyes to glaring problems in his story…
Partisanship and incompetence aren’t crimes, so the FBI isn’t in the dock. But Mr. Durham is making the case for the public—and it’s as ugly as they come.
That was written on October 13, towards the beginning of the Dachenko trial. It foreshadowed the ending, which in my opinion was a foregone conclusion.
Is Liz Truss aleady on the way out?
If so, that was quick.
In six short weeks, Liz Truss has succeeded in angering all wings of her party. Most now agree she can’t fight the next election.
Britain’s latest prime minister, who won a Tory leadership contest with promises of tax cuts and “growth, growth, growth,” by Friday had driven supporters on the Tory right to send furious WhatsApp messages bemoaning her latest U-turn on corporation tax as more of her planned budget crumbled.
“I’ve never known the atmosphere to be as febrile as it is at the moment,” one veteran Tory MP who backed Truss in the leadership contest said. Another MP who supported her said: “It feels like the end. I think she’ll be gone next week.”
Tory MPs began casting around wildly for mechanisms to oust Truss and candidates to replace her. While party rules make that complicated, rules can be changed and Truss’ removal is fast becoming a question of when, not if.
From what I’m reading, Truss seems to have projected a combination of weakness and incompetence, as well as fear and indecision. Not a great combination. I think very few Western leaders are up to meeting the multiple crises we’ve been facing lately, but Truss is apparently particularly unready.
Here are some of the details:
Two weeks ago the PM said she was “committed” to the triple lock [definition here]”, so payments rise by whatever is higher: prices, average earnings or 2.5%.
But her spokesman has now said she was “not making any commitments” on government spending.
It comes after ditching flagship tax cuts announced in the mini-budget.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s move to tear up most of last month’s mini-budget announcements has reassured investors, but left Ms Truss battling to salvage her authority.
A decision on what to do with pensions from next April has not yet been made, and would normally be expected this autumn.
The probable replacement:
A group of Tory MPs have settled on the idea of a joint ticket of Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak to take over from Truss. “Rishi and Penny got over two-thirds of the parliamentary party between them on the final MPs ballot,” one Tory rebel organizer said. “You have a critical mass already backing them.”
The article mentions what I’d already suspected, that ousting Truss this year would make her the shortest ever British PM. It’s by no means clear that will happen, however. Truss does have some supporters, or at least some people who are not in favor of replacing her so soon.
The polls indicate that a general election now would result in a huge Labour victory, and people are assuming that whenever it does come (see the rules on that) it will definitely feature a turnover to a Labour government. Of course, the fact that the current Tory party isn’t providing competent leadership does not mean that Labour would do any better at all. But this is the way of politics: when one party sinks the other rises, and the results can sometimes be even worse.
Biden says gas in California has always cost $7 a gallon
“The inflation report is out. Have you seen gas prices around here in LA? It’s 7 bucks a gallon almost,” a reporter asked Biden as he paid for food at a Los Angeles-based taco shop.
“Well, that’s always been the case here,” Biden replied. “You know, it’s not — what — nationwide, [gas prices] came down about $1.35, and they’re still down over a dollar. But we’re going to work on, housing is the big, is the most important thing we have to do in terms of that.”
The explanation?
(1) Biden lives in the moment; past and future don’t exist.
(2) Biden’s been rereading Nineteen Eighty-Four, and since “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia” worked for Ingsoc, he figures it’ll work for him.
(3) Math is hard.
(4) The last time Biden bought gas in California was never.
(5) Newsom told him so.
Actually, though, I think I know what Biden might have been trying (and totally failing) to convey. It would go something like this: ‘It’s always been the case that gas is more expensive in California than in other states. You know, it’s not as high elsewhere right now as in California — nationwide, gas prices came down about $1.35 from their recent high, and they’re still down over a dollar from that. But in terms of inflation, what we’re going to work on, housing is the most important thing we have to do in terms of that.’
You can still find enormous fault with the message, but at least it would be intelligible. What Biden said was not.
Biden has never been a particularly intelligent man, nor has he been a good communicator. Now his thoughts are more confused than ever, and his communications are more fragmented. You shouldn’t need a translator to understand a president’s meaning when he speaks – although you can’t go wrong if you always assume that Biden is intending to excuse himself and blame others, or bend the truth to his own advantage. In that, he’s not much different than many politicians; just more so, and also so cognitively challenged that it’s hard to tell what the thought is behind the words.
Some would say there isn’t a thought behind the words. But I’ve long differed on that. I think that despite his cognitive decline, Biden retains the ability to understand the basics, to connive and to lie, to be corrupt and nasty, and to play to his leftist base. He’s just nowhere near as good at it as he’d like to be, and not even as good at it as he used to be.
Open thread 10/18/22
Here’s Ken Berry doing the best Fred Astaire imitation I’ve ever seen, including his mannerisms and walk. Come to think of it, though, I’ve never seen another Fred Astaire imitation:
The Gramscian march through arts institutions – and arts funding
Some years ago – perhaps ten? – I pretty much stopped going to art museums. Most of the exhibits were no longer of art I wanted to see, and even the ones that seemed promising turned out to be an excuse for relentless leftist political venting by curators and the people writing the copy accompanying each work of art. The final straw, I seem to recall, was an exhibit (I forget where) of 19th and early 20th Century American paintings that served as an occasion for the repetitive trashing of the US as an irredeemably racist, sexist, everything-baddist country.
Today at Ace’s there’s a post describing the recent attack by climate activists on a Van Gogh in a London art museum. It turns out the museum authorities seem to have given it the go-ahead:
ou have most likely heard by now about the eco-vandals who threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery. Actually, it wasn’t so much vandalism as it was performance art.
As shown in the photo immediately below, and in the video embedded in Fen de Villiers tweet just below that, a phalanx of media had set itself up to witness the event. The vandals were not only unchallenged when crossing barriers set up to protect the artwork, but they were then allowed to perform their stunt, with plenty of time to pose and make statements to the assembled media, without any efforts by the museum staff to stop them…
It’s not just the left-wing politics of individual museums that are the problem. It is structural throughout the industry. For art museums to receive the most prestigious accreditation, they must be engaged in left-wing activism.
In one of the cities I have lived, there is a museum – which somehow remains a source of great civic pride – which displays virtually nothing but art that professes hatred of the United States and western civilization. There is no expectation that the featured artists have any actual artistic talent, only that they identify with a victim group and that their art conveys a bold statement about how much they detest this country and its heritage.
This museum recently sent out a press release touting its re-accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, which it states is “the highest national recognition afforded the nation’s museums.”
This leftism has been going on for a long time, and it’s encouraged by the money- and credentials-granting institutions. No wonder it’s taken over so seemingly completely.
In connection with my recent Saturday dance post, I happened across a discussion of an article that had been written by the well-known dance critic Arlene Croce in 1995, which ties into the subject I’m writing about here. It struck me when I read about it that these policies were already well-established nearly thirty years ago, perhaps even longer. Here are some excerpts from what Croce wrote, in which she explained why she wouldn’t be reviewing some dance performance art about AIDS, by choreographer Bill T. Jones, who is black, gay, and HIV-positive (Jones is still alive, by the way, so he must have still been around when treatments improved) [emphasis mine]:
I have not seen Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here and have no plans to review it. . . . By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. I think of him as literally undiscussable—the most extreme case among the distressingly many now representing themselves to the public not as artists but as victims and martyrs…
What Jones represents is something new in victim art—new and raw and deadly in its power over the human conscience.
The arts bureaucracy in this country, which includes government and private-funding agencies, has in recent years demonstrated a blatant bias for utilitarian art — art that justifies the bureaucracy’s existence by being socially useful. This bias is inherent in the nature of government . . . by the late 80’s, the ethos of community outreach had reached out and swallowed everything else; it was the only way the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] could survive. The private funders soon knuckled under to the community-and minority-minded lobbies—the whole dynamic of funding, which keeps the biggest government grants flowing on a matching-funds basis, made the knuckling under inevitable. But ideology had something to do with this. . . . The ideological boosters of utilitarian art hark back to the political crusades of the 60’s—against Vietnam, for civil rights. The 60’s, in turn, harked back to the proletarian 30’s, when big-government bureaucracy began. And now once again after a 30-year lapse we are condemned to repeat history.
Croce located the beginning of these policies prior to the late 80s, by which point she says they had “swallowed everything else.” I vaguely recall the flap that her essay made in the 90s, because I followed dance criticism at the time. But I understood neither its significance nor its dangers. But now we see the decades-later results of the trends she described.
Monday roundup
(1) No-filter Joe strikes again and insults Pakistan. Diplomats in the region have to clean up the mess:
Pakistani officials said Saturday they had summoned the US ambassador to the country following recent comments made by President Joe Biden that doubted the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Los Angeles on Thursday, Biden said Pakistan was “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” because it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion,” according to a transcript of the speech released by the White House.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shot back Saturday at Biden’s comments. “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and we are proud that our nuclear assets have the best safeguards as per IAEA requirements,” Sharif tweeted, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “We take these safety measures with the utmost seriousness. Let no one have any doubts.”…
A US official confirmed to CNN that Blome was summoned by Pakistan’s foreign ministry following Biden’s remarks. Those remarks frustrated US diplomats in the region, the US official said.
(2) Why are these sorts of gain-of-function experiments still being allowed to go on? The ostensible reason is “getting ahead of a future outbreak,” but the possible benefits seem small compared to the possible risks. In this case, Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories researchers took the very-contagious but relatively mild Omicron strain and wedded it to the original more-lethal strain, and got a COVID virus that killed 80% of the mice it infected. Here’s a link to the research report.
(3) Alan Dershowitz writes about academia’s sacrifice of meritocracy to mediocracy. Politics and right-think have become all-important:
It is not surprising that universities will have to lower academic standards for performance if they lower academic standards for admission. It would be unfair to admit some students on lower academic admissions standards and then impose historic performance standards on them. That would make it difficult for them to compete against students who had to meet more rigorous standards for admission.
That’s one way of eliminating one of the objections many people have to affirmative-action admissions: that many such students struggle academically once admitted.
(4) Russian drone attacks in Kyiv:
Russia blasted the Ukrainian capital with a deadly wave of “kamikaze” drones Monday, in a renewed attack that set apartments ablaze as soldiers fired into the air…
Ukraine said the attacks included Iranian-made drones, which it has accused Moscow of increasingly deploying as it runs low on precision missiles, and appealed again for Western allies to provide aerial defensive help.
(5) More information comes out implicating Warnock in evictions:
…[W]hat Warnock said is not true, as the Free Beacon reporter Andrew Kerr, who broke the story, explained:
“Warnock is lying. 12 eviction lawsuits have been filed against residents of the building owned by his church since 2020. I talked with some of those sued who paid over 2 months’ worth of rent in court fees to stay in their homes. 2 lawsuits resulted in court-ordered evictions.”
Another detransitioner speaks
This young Canadian woman tells the story of how easy it was for her to get drug and surgical treatment to transition at a very young age. It not really an unusual tale, either, and it shows the degree to which the medical and psychology establishments have betrayed children and parents:
Open thread 10/17/22
Compare and contrast: three women dance ballet to classical music
The other day the following little ballet to music by Beethoven, set on three women, appeared in my YouTube recommendations. And so I watched it. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t much like it: too static, very “on the music” in a way that seemed rigid and unimaginative, no especially interesting patterns in the placement and movement of the women in relation to each other, and ornate “fussy” arms with wrists that break the line.
Judge for yourself, though:
However, the ballet evoked remembrance of ballets past. In case you think that business of the three dancers in a row behind each other is an innovation, let me introduce you to Balanchine’s “Apollo,” composed to Stravinsky in 1928. That’s nearly 100 years ago. It was extremely innovative at the time, and it has lasted. It’s about the birth and growth of Apollo, helped by the three muses of poetry, mime, and dance. Here are a couple of very short excerpts, performed by the very same company as that first clip above, the Royal Ballet:
Another long ballet comes to mind with the following short segment for three women (one man briefly enters about halfway in and rather quickly exits). Set to Chopin, it is Jerome Robbins’ “Dances At a Gathering” from 1969. I saw the original many times, and although the dancers in this video (National Opera of Paris, 2014) lack some of the expressive beauty and feeling and flow I recall from those earlier days, it will nevertheless give you some idea of what I’m talking about. The movements seem naturalistic and almost inevitable rather than strained:
I hesitated to put the following clip up, although it features three women plus three men from that same 2014 Paris Opera production, and is one of my very favorite segments from “Dances At a Gathering,” a work I consider a ballet masterpiece. It just doesn’t seem to have the sweep and power of this segment in the original when seen in person – at least, as I remember it. That was absolutely thrilling and made the audience gasp at what I call the “swoops” and the “tosses.” Here the swoops (3:14 to 3:45) aren’t done with the same abandon, and the tosses (4:34 to 4:48) look a bit like the men are throwing around sacks of potatoes. Picture something far more dramatic and yet appearing completely easy at the same time, an expression of pure delight.
And yet…and yet…it’s still is very beautiful. I think these dancers do as well as any modern dancers can – the sensibility of ballet has changed, and there is much more emphasis on technique – and the choreography remains impressive in its use of the music’s threes and dramatic crescendos:
Enjoy:
Walker and Warnock had a debate last night
Expectations were low for Walker, who’s not known for nimble speech. Apparently he way exceeded expectations, at least according to observers on the right (see this and this, for example, including some clips as well).
The way CNN covered the debate it seems to me that Walker really did land some blows, although CNN doesn’t quite say that. And the Savannah Morning News published an opinion column by Adam Van Brimmer headlined this way: “Herschel Walker beat expectations in Georgia U.S. Senate debate. Will it matter in election?”
Will it matter? My question exactly, and one that’s unanswerable. But here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Yes, Georgia, your favorite football icon showed political acumen in his first-ever debate showdown. He didn’t ramble. He didn’t get flustered. He didn’t talk about “bad air,” trees, evolution or a COVID-19 killing mist.
He was charming. He was quick-witted. He came across as the more genuine of the candidates – he out-Warnocked Sen. Raphael Warnock.
For a self-professed “country boy” who claims to be “not that smart,” Walker delivered a remarkable performance. He didn’t bother to visit the post-debate media “spin room” to clarify or expound on anything. The debate’s close was a mic-drop/football-spike worthy moment.
But the writer doesn’t think it will matter:
Can one good night – one good hour – negate months of buffoonery? In a race devoid of undecided voters, did Walker convince anyone to reconsider? Did he give Trump diehards confidence that he can win and that they, with few other Trump faves on the ballot, should take the time to go to the polls and vote for him?
Not likely…
Still, Warnock best recognize the threat ahead and take appropriate political action. Like most Georgians, he must have assumed Walker would make a fool of himself on the debate stage and Friday would serve as a de facto coronation. Even with Walker working to lower expectations – remember that “I’m not that smart” quote? – Warnock couldn’t have seen his opponent debating like a pro.
The article concludes with a reminder that Georgia requires that a candidate get 50% of the vote in order to avoid a runoff. Many people probably recall that that’s the way Warnock won in 2020 – in a runoff that occurred about two months after the regular general election, a runoff in which both Democrats won their Senate seats to give the Democratic Party a bare Senate majority (counting Kamala Harris’ vote) in the Senate.
I was unfamiliar with the Savannah Morning News or the writer Adam Van Brimmer, and so I did a little research. The guy is not a Walker fan. For example, here’s what he wrote just a couple of days prior to the debate:
Which brings us back to the [Walker/Warnock] debate…and what to expect.
I anticipate a cancellation…
Nothing [Walker] says or does from this point forward will sway undecideds to his side or motivate disengaged voters to come to the polls. Prior to the abortion allegations and his son’s damning tweets, Walker might have had some room to score political points in a tête-à-tête with Warnock.
At worst, he would struggle and be able to paint Warnock the bully and angle for sympathy…
…[Y]ou have those [Republicans] who find Walker an embarrassment and won’t vote for him even in the privacy of a polling booth or absentee ballot. They might not throw in for Warnock, but they have too much self-respect to cast a ballot for Walker.
Walker’s only incentive to go through with Friday’s showdown is to make history with the most dumbfounding and humiliating debate performance ever.
The only mystery is what excuse will he use to cancel?
He could pray for a hurricane evacuation, but the National Hurricane Center’s outlook shows no activity in the Atlantic Ocean.
He could feign illness – COVID-19 is still spreading in Georgia, and Walker’s magic COVID-killing mist isn’t a real thing.
He could manufacture an issue with the venue, which is so small the host isn’t making tickets available to the public and thereby violates Walker’s pledge that “this debate is going to be about the people.
Other problems could crop up at the 11th hour. A bus breakdown. Bad directions. A mix-up on time and date.
That’s what’s meant by “defying expectations.”
Russian leaders: intelligence officials all the way down
If true, this article on the Russian leadership is certainly depressing. I have no way to know whether it’s true, but my gut feeling is that it is.
It makes some interesting points, for example that the reason the Russian higher-ups didn’t stop hundreds of thousands of men from leaving the country to avoid conscription is that the emigration got rid of people who would be troublemakers and protestors anyway, leaving those who are more supportive of the Ukrainian war (and the regime in general) and/or more malleable. So why bother? Those leaving weren’t needed as additional cannon fodder – Russia has plenty of that – even though they tended to be among the more educated in the population.
Here’s the basic thesis of the article:
The main challenge to Putin’s power, then, comes not from the street but from within the regime itself…
Institutionally, the Kremlin has for years been effectively an extension of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. The three most powerful men in Russia today are all current or former FSB chiefs — Putin himself, the Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev and the current FSB head Alexander Bortnikov…
Modern Russia is not just a security state but literally a state that has been taken over by its own security services. Putin is the ultimate decision-maker and arbiter in various disputes between rival factions inside that extended FSB-connected ruling class…
So when we consider whether regime change is possible in Russia, what we are really wondering is whether some outside force could ever challenge the rule, not of Putin himself, but of the extended FSB clan that currently holds ultimate political and economic power.
The army has not played a decisive political role in Russia since the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953, when Marshal Georgy Zhukov effectively pulled off an armed coup by arresting and soon after murdering KGB boss Lavrentiy Beria. Ever since that painful showdown between soldiers and secret police, the KGB and FSB made very sure that Russia’s military had no role in internal security — most recently by creating the Russian National Guard, headed naturally by a former KGB man, Putin’s former body-guard Viktor Zolotov. The silent majority of Russia’s elite — the mid-level bureaucrats, professionals and business-people who have been robbed of their futures and their wealth by the war — are by all accounts collectively horrified by it. Notionally these people represent significant economic and bureaucratic power. But they have no organized political voice and generally have too much to lose to risk rebellion.
So when Kadyrov, Prigozhin and the other heavily armed patriotic critics attack the failed war effort, they are not so much challenging the status quo as jockeying for advantage within it. And they succeed in advancing up the chain of command to positions of greater influence. There are other critical voices… All have called for Putin to be more ruthless and aggressive in Ukraine…
The power of the extended FSB dwarfs that of any potential challengers except for one: a rising, angry people who feel cheated of victory by their corrupt leaders.
It doesn’t sound as though that last sentence describes an uprising that’s likely to happen, or is likely to succeed if it does happen.
As I read the article, it occurred to me that, although the situation in the US is markedly different in many ways, it’s nowhere near as different as one would like. In other words, the intelligence apparatus in this country has grown entrenched, partisan, and very powerful. It is putting out false information and withholding true information in order to get its preferred candidates elected, with the cooperation of the MSM to which it feeds selected information. Even when the intelligence community’s mendacious influence is exposed, nothing seems to change and the perpetrators go free and either continue in power or become pundits or behind-the-scenes string pullers.
Only half the nation’s citizens seem to care about this; the rest seem to either be ignorant of it or applaud it. And it’s not at all clear that there’s a good way out of this mess we’re in.