Under the leadership of Josef Stalin, the Soviet Union’s internal security services were led by a People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. Two of the most famous Commissars were Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentiy Beria. Both committed appalling atrocities and both wept like babies when they fell out of favor and faced execution. These people were nothing like James Comey. They weren’t even like our most notorious and unscrupulous FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. We have no history of comparable purges and cruelty and we’ve never executed any of our top intelligence or security officers. Yezhov and Beria should have sought sanctuary in a foreign country when they still had the chance to flee, but you won’t find similar cases here to compare to theirs.
Vladimir Putin’s experience in the KGB during the Cold War informs how he sees the world today. It was the future head of the KGB, Ivan Serov, who shot Nikolai Yezhov “in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane in Moscow.” While Stalin sent an assassin to Mexico City to bury an ice-axe in Leon Trotsky’s skull, Putin does the same to his political enemies whether they’re in London or Kiev.
That’s the context for reading this:
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said his country is ready to offer James Comey asylum if the former FBI director should face political persecution.
“If Comey will be under the threat of political persecution, we are ready to accept him here,” Putin said, speaking at the president’s annual, televised question-and-answering session with the Russian people. “It sounds very strange when the head of the security services writes down a conversation with the commander-in-chief and then leaks it to the media through his friend.”
Yes, Putin is trolling Trump and America extremely hard with this level of disingenuous bullshit. But, at the same time, he knows what he would do to a security chief who secretly documented incriminating conversations with him and then leaked them “to the media through his friend.” He’d kill them without the slightest apprehension, hesitation or remorse.
He knows that Trump won’t do this, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t assume that Trump wants to. That’s why Putin chooses to troll us in this specific way. It’s based on his experience. It’s how he thinks.
I assume that James Comey is smart enough to not make any extensive foreign travel anytime soon.
Are you saying that there are differences in norms between the US and Russia or that Trump is just too lazy to do anything at all?
I don’t think Trump is in the habit of ordering people killed.
Not yet, anyway.
He doesn’t approve of murder by drone strikes?
Just indiscriminate bombing. Although US has once again taken the lead in civilian casualty rates:
I think it’s about time for one of your contributors to remark that the Russian intelligence operatives masquerading as diplomats in the US are intelligent, cultured individuals with a knack for making small talk at parties, because after all, if that’s the case, how could they possibly be a problem?
The crickets brigade doesn’t feel up to it.
Cheep shot, Boo.
And then there’re guys like Richard Burt, a registered lobbyist for Russian interests, who drafted Trump’s Mayflower Hotel foreign policy speech for him.
It’s not the spy-novel suave diplomats or intelligence operatives who seem to be behind this story but the sold-out American lobbyists for a foreign country and its corporations. Time to shine the lights on the real rats in Washington. They are on K Street, operate within both parties, and most have “distinguished careers” in government and the private sector.
It might also be helpful to trace the money launderers.
And it is not just Russia we need to be concerned about. Look at Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other nations who have stronger ties to our Congress than their constituents do.
All Trump did was throw a few more alligators and water snakes into the swamp.
The irony being that Trump and his cronies are the biggest globalists in this whole sorry charade. Because money talks, and spends, everywhere.
The world is one big plunder patch for Trump.
No need to be concerned about Russia at all if we would only stop provoking and insulting them. They have honestly offered to be our partners, after all, in not just economic endeavors but in the war against IS/AQ. And we keep giving back the back of our hand.
The Deep State, the MSM and all their followers, now including many ill advised and poorly counseled Dems, seem heck bent on continuing to prod and provoke the bear, as if getting into another cold war and dangerous arms race is a favorable outcome that needs no debate.
I probably should get going on that backyard fallout shelter …
I guess that “treason” is OK so long as it is “jes’ bidness”.
Putin just wants to be friends, Roger Stone told me.
Why would we not trust that?
Oliver Stone rather, durrr
Both Stones are down with their Putin luvv.
An important interview by Ollie Stone, and done professionally. Which is to say, he took an independent-minded approach to his subject, wasn’t afraid to ask some tough questions, and most importantly wasn’t beholden to corporate suits and their Deep State overlords in the IC/Pentagon who ultimately call the shots.
But I realize many here would probably prefer hacks like Megan Kelly doing the interviews — leading, loaded questions which assume facts not proven, always driving the DS simplistic New Cold War narrative of Putin Bad, US Good.
My bet — as I have not watched the interview — is that Stone’s interview is slightly more fawning than Kelly’s, but in the end not much different. She proved herself to be out of her depth with softball questions easily batted away by autocrats who are prepared. The same is happening with Alex Jones, who played her like a fiddle and released the full interview himself.
Slightly more fawning is the understatement of the year. Stone’s an embarrassment.
Stone challenged him directly on a few matters — Crimea, the alleged Russkie hacking of the US election, why in the world he keeps using the term “partner” to refer to the US, the wisdom of running yet again in 2018 for another term. Probably one or two other areas I’m now forgetting.
Hardly fawning. Definitely more prepared and precise interview questions by Stone. But not corporate-driven questioning like Kelly which assumed facts not proven, dishonest questions designed to malign and provoke.
But get back to us on the interviews when you’ve seen at least one hour of them.
The Alex Jones interview: I hope NBC gets boycotted to the hilt for enabling that dangerous idiot.
Leave Vlad alone… he’s just misunderstood.
Jill Stein
From Russian activist to politician: Yevgenia Chirikova…
FP: Why do you think there’s no mass environmental movement in Russia?
Chirikova:
Oil is at fault for everything. We have a raw material state. In a place where resources like oil, gas, diamonds, and coal are the most important thing, human beings are not important. You don’t need to develop your industry, or any kind of scientific institutions, or think too much. You say, “I’ll just sell oil, and I’ll just live on this oil money.”
Smart citizens who understand what’s happening and are not okay with this become enemies of the state — enemies of this oligarchy that is based on raw materials. And the authorities try to punish them in various ways. You’ll see arrests and imprisonment of environmentalists, violence, murder. Because that’s the system — raw materials are more important than people.
○ Annual deaths in the U.S. due to pollution and toxic chemicals?
and on cue – fresh from Buzzfeed
https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil?utm_ter
m=.lsDR9Pxyz#.mrBxlDP8q
Recording a narrative verdict at Westminster coroner’s court, coroner Shirley Radcliffe said: “I have concluded that there is inconclusive evidence to determine his state of mind and intention when he [Scot Young] came out of the window.”
Reno, who dated Young on and off for five-and-a-half years, said he told her he had taken cocaine every day for three weeks before he was admitted to hospital in early December.
He then told her on the phone: “I’m going to jump out of the window. Stay on the phone, you will hear me.”
“The vice president has retained Richard Cullen of McGuire Woods to assist him in responding to inquiries by the special counsel.”
Vlad might still do it. He doesn’t care where our how as long as the person can no longer talk. He has a big investment in his puppet and will do whatever is necessary to protect it. See the list of various dead Ukrainians who have had anything to do with either Cohen, Manafort or others.
The universe is seriously out of alignment when Vladimir Putin displays more common sense than any American politician except Al Franken and Bernie Sanders. Seriously, our whole elite establishment is insane.
Maybe I’m dense, but killing him after his having recorded and leaked information seems a little slow on the uptake. Getting information from him about what else he knows would seem more reasonable.