Having only ever had minor dealings with the police in my life, such as applying for a passport, it's been interesting to try to figure out how criminal police interrogation works in USA. I've watched a bunch of those interrogations on Youtube now and, in short, police is a total liar and a thief.
People often ask at the police station, "Am I under arrest?" Where does this question come from? Weren't they told that they were under arrest before they arrived at the interrogation room in front of the cameras and mikes? Is this not breach of protocol by the police?
Anyway, when you are at the police station, how is it somehow in question whether you are under arrest or not? Unless you are a witness or victim who showed up voluntarily to give testimony at the police station, yes, you are under arrest, duh. Police officers can call it "detained" sometimes, but it is a distinction without a difference. How is this not obvious?
To the question, the police often answers, "Let me explain everything," and proceeds to explain nothing. Instead, they go straight to leading questions.
Then there's also the business with "rights", the right to remain silent etc. However, the "rights" are only for those explicitly arrested. Therefore, declaration of arrest is delayed as long as possible, preferably until *after* self-snitching. In a rare case when the arrest and rights are spelled out to the detainee before the interrogation, somehow almost nobody makes use of the rights. Part of the reason is that the police weasels when reading the rights, "So you understand your rights, yes? Sign here please. Now, how about...?" and thus the interrogation continues regardless of the rights.
And commentators of the videos often say that the detainees are "not smart". In my view the problem is the culture. The police is geared to trick the system and the detainees are being encouraged to ignore their rights.
Ukraine is pleading for binding security guarantees to ensure long-term survival. Allies just aren’t ready to do that yet.
Despite months of conversations about the subject, the Western alliance is still divided over nearly every element of how to respond to the request, according to five European diplomats.
Should NATO, which Ukraine is aspiring to join, be having that conversation? Or should the world’s biggest military powers provide individual pledges? Are any guarantees short of NATO membership worthwhile?
And, officials are wondering, what even constitutes a “security guarantee”?
My answer is that security guarantee is Article 5. It's Nato membership after the war. But to demonstrate that there is commitment to this promise, Nato should act right now as if Ukraine were already a Nato member and as if Article 5 had been invoked.
Article 5 has not been put to a real test yet. This is the test.
What is there to fear in following through with the promise? Collapse of Russia? USSR collapsed and nothing bad happened. Nothing bad to Europe anyway. Don't be nuke cowards.
Why chicken out and make wishy-washy commitments? According to the Budapest Memorandum, USA, UK and Russia were supposed to provide security assurances for Ukraine. This failed. Minsk Agreements — Russia, France, and Germany — also failed. Don't imagine that chickens can tame the bear. Okay?
(But -on your reading, Obama would be liable, too! What a can of worms...)
You're like an incurable drunkard, imagining that everybody else must be drunkard too but hiding it. I mean, being hyperpartisan you think everybody else must be hyperpartisan too but hiding it.
I'm not hiding it. I am not partisan at all. I do not care what happens to Obama. Or Clinton. Or Biden. I do not care what happens to the entire USA tomorrow. I do not care what happens to Trump either. It's just worrisome that you type obviously false stuff about your own country when it's very easy to know better half a globe away.
Your use of the term "insurrection" indicates -to me- either an uncritical reliance on propaganda from the MSM or a Woke vocabulary perverting your common sense...
Insurrection is when you see the government — or a branch of it — being overrun. Note that Antifa/BLM did not overrun government or court buildings. Jan 6 rioters did — on the sign given by their President. That's a coup attempt and insurrection. There's been a steady stream of convictions to this effect for two years now.
If green thinking is the point, then all industrial pollution matters, not just emissions. The mining of metals and production of chemicals, how to recycle or dispose of them, everything.
It's obvious that nobody is thinking holistically about this. Nobody except a few isolated ecofascists. In the mainstream politics, we have the half-assed bottle recycling scheme that is nowhere near the recycling scheme that was in effect in Soviet Union. And we have silly initiatives like banning plastic straws while leaving plastic covers for cups. Essentially just turning everything into a such a stupid joke that no ecologically minded person wants to be associated with it - and clearly isn't, otherwise the initative would be sensible.
As you may know, the government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car’s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, [but] Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.
I still wonder how this obvious fact is not obvious and finds no consideration in the current wave of "green thinking". It is obvious: There is no green thinking. There is only greenwashing.
Edit: The issue has a catchy name these days, 'Nickel Pickle'
I'd like to continue this... But your ability to ignore reality and accept Democrat Party narratives as Gospel makes that a pointless endeavor!
You did not see the insurrection unfolding in front of you and even in hindsight you refuse any facts about it. This condemns you as a wilfully blind hopelessly brainwashed partisan sycophant.
I do not care anything about the Democrat Party. Lock Hillary up, if you want. Lock her up and never let her out, if you think there's a reason for it.
But here's the catch: Trump promised to do it. He was armed with the same allegations and investigations as you, but he did not do it. So, assuming Hillary should be locked up, Trump FAILED in a matter of national interest! Somehow you do not fault Trump for this. You fault Hillary. You do not fault the judicial system, but the criminal for failing to incriminate herself, confess prior to trial and go to prison by herself.
I fault the judicial system here. The law you cited, Trump should easily fall under it for his stealing of confidential documents and for famously tweeting info from his secret intelligence briefing. Trump has not been locked up for this dangerous breach of law - should be, but hasn't. A systemic problem with the judicial system.
A boat capsized in Italy's Lago Maggiore. Four people drowned. The boat was full of Israeli and Italian spies. Corriere della Sera speculates there was some operation related to Russian oligarchs going on.
I forecast that Erdogan will win the elections because he has done so much good for Turkey.
Congrats, Erdogan. He had three problems to overcome: - Inflation - Unemployment - The earthquake
Promising everybody free gas handily did this. Distributing some deepfakes about the opposition and bribing one opposition party leader may have helped also.
Barack and Hillary were both guilty; for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18), for obstruction of justice, and (You'll like this one the best:) Surely a "high crime and misdemeanor"!
So here we have it. When it comes to Democrats, your standard is: Guilty if suspicious. But when it comes to Republicans, your standard is: If not convicted, then pure as angels - and pure as angels even if convicted!
Instead of being prosecuted [of obstruction of justice] in the appropriate venues, they were turned loose to concoct and promote The Russian Collusion Hoax™...
You care about obstruction of justice? But you did not care about it when Trump did it. Trump fired the FBI director Comey, among other things, because of his way of handling the Hillary email server investigation. That is, fired because of an ongoing investigation. This is obstruction of justice.
And, of course the way the way Russian collusion investigation was handled by Trump was obstruction of justice all the way. For example, William Barr had a memo defending Trump's witness tampering in that investigation. The relevant witness tampering by Trump, along with his Russia collusion, is detailed in Mueller report. As you (don't) know, Mueller report detailed the crimes, but decided to not render judgment.
I'm quite sure, ersi, that you believe "Watergate" was a serious crime! But that's because you're not a serious person. Nixon's sin in that fiasco was his loyalty to hapless underlings.
You're right, I mostly think in terms of policy and perfidy, when it comes to their "crimes"... Would you have had Britain do without Churchill during WW II — had he been a kleptomaniac? (Actually, I suspect you would. Like I said before: You're not a serious person.)
And you think you are serious for failing to identify a single crime? Well, yeah - it is a serious personal failing. I seriously wonder how it is possible to live beyond age thirty like this. Probably you developed this incapacity at a later point and did not have it earlier.
Whenever we talk about American politics or American influence, I have to remind myself that you wish my nation -if not actual ill- at least a comeuppance and eventual but permanent fall from prominence on the world stage.
I wish the same for Russia, if that helps. And for Russia first. In this life my ultimate wish is to have a peaceful border between Estonia and Mongolia.
As FBI Director Comey said: "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." Ya can't, ya just can't prosecute a Clinton!
Are you pretending to be outraged over this? This is exactly the way how Trump is still not behind bars - the establishment has decided to refrain from prosecuting. And his crimes - insurrection and election rigging - are much bigger than Hillary's - an email server. You are free to pointlessly disagree.
(Perhaps you'd like a similar list of Republicans from me? )
No, not a similar list! What I want is a list of crimes, first of all in order for you demonstrate that you have an idea what a crime is. And yes, preferably crimes by Republicans that you find objectionable, so as to prove that you are not hyperpartisan.
As things stand now, you are hyperpartisan and you have no clue what a crime is. Hint: What I listed for Trump are all crimes in lawbooks. They are actions and behaviour that get people behind bars - and you see people going behind bars around Trump for those things. Also, they are things you defended merely because Trump did it. I thought it hardly possible, but your cluelessness is increasing.
So you went the stupidest route, trying to disprove Trump's crimes. An easy refutation of this route goes as follows: Think if a Democrat had done all that, would you denounce him or not?
In your case, the refutation is even easier: You denounce any and all Democrats simply because they are Democrats. Crime or virtue have no bearing in your considerations. Whenever you mention things like "fair trial" and "constitutional principle", it's exclusively to promote the power of Republicans or to cover Republican butt when they fail.
Trump is a massive failure. He does not stand for any principle you claim to stand for or any princple he himself claims to stand for. For example, you would claim to be against autocrats, I presume. Trump is a proud autocrat, as demonstrated by his actions.
It must be that for you only words matter. If the words are nice, e.g. somebody has the label "Republican" slapped on them, then things are fine. Actions do not matter at all. For me it is the other way round. Actions speak louder than words. Trump is convicted by his actions.
What business fraud do you refer to? Over-valuing his properties in loan applications, perhaps? You know, better than I, that no bank tenders a loan without doing its own estimation of value of collateral offered.
But if banks do their own estimation anyway, why over-value the properties in loan applications? You see, it IS a crime to over-value the properties in loan applications and under-value them in tax reports. The deeper point here is that you are not even denying the crime - you are justifying it! Why would you justify it? Trump did it, therefore it is all good.
Tax evasion? You mean not paying more in taxes than required by law? At any rate, tax evasion -as you term it- is not a crime.
Tax evasion IS a crime! People sit locked up because of this. Most notoriously, this is what Al Capone was locked up for.
IRS has internal investigations about why IRS allowed Trump to evade taxes, so IRS knows that Trump has evaded taxes. If IRS were consistent, not covering up for rich and pretend-rich dudes, it would report itself to the police.
Election rigging? You apparently think the word "find" is a synonym for "fabricate"... In your world, that may be so! (In which case, I'd ask when Al Gore will be getting out? )
Ha, again not even denying the crime! The crime is okay for you because Trump did it. But Trump did more than "find me 11 000 votes!" He set up false electors, some of whom are now under criminal investigation. Any reason why Trump should not be under criminal investigation? Just the political cover-up reason: It is undesirable to make Trump accountable for anything he did in office. Better to have Trump go down with something silly and mundane like pussy-grabbing prior to office.
Or ask those who have already been convicted of it. Again, the only reason why Trump is not on trial for this is that a conviction of a former president would indicate that the office of the president has some accountability. Nobody in either political party wants this.
You seriously ask why I'm eager to have a criminal run my country? Have you heard of Joseph Robinette Biden?
Indeed, I understand. For you it's no problem to have a crooked criminal in the office. You just want it to be your crooked criminal - and even better when he is an autocrat to boot.
Yeah, I'd kinda like to see actual evidence and a conviction following a fair trial... (These concepts may be foreign, to you. Or are they just superfluous, when you don't like someone?)
The actual evidence is in front of you. Take a look! There are people in Trump's circle who have been convicted based on it. Insurrection: A growing line of leaders of Oath Keepers, Proud Boys etc. Stormy Daniels hush money: Michael Cohen. Tax evasion and fraud: Trump's corporations, even though somehow not Trump personally. But if Trump's corporations are guilty, how is it fair to assume Trump is free of guilt?
Yup, I get it. All these trials are unfair - because they are against Trump. A fair trial can only be in favour of Trump
But there's still "Russian Collusion"! Ask Rep. Adam Schiff, late chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence: He's seen the evidence! (He's been saying so for years...)
The collusion indictment is the least desirable for the establishment. It would highlight that foreign powers can meddle with American elections. The establishment does not wish to remind the world of it.
But election rigging is possible to pursue, because Trump himself keeps constantly reminding everyone of it. His phone calls are still in memory. If smaller things fail to silence Trump, I predict that his election rigging will be promptly taken up and prosecuted swiftly.
"Stormy" Daniels has, to date, paid upwards of $5m to Trump in legal fees. (Remember: Her original lawyer is serving a prison sentence...)
She owes $.5m, not $5m.[1] And it's legal fees for a dismissed case raised by a lawyer whom she had dismissed. Legal fees are owed to the other side's lawyers, not to the other side. Definitely it's a messy situation, but she is a messy person. Messing with Trump guarantees messiness.
Still, Michael Cohen was locked up in this affair, and once she manages to charge Trump on a similar basis, Trump will fall too. It's a matter of finding a diligent lawyer for her instead of another predator.
You are right, ersi, that the establishment will do everything it can to prevent a Trump second term. But to no avail, I predict.
A few honest questions: - How is it unclear that Trump is a criminal regarding to e.g. business fraud, tax evasion, election rigging, and insurrection? What kind of proof (besides a court conviction) would convince you? You don't believe your own eyes, so what do you believe? - Why are you so eager to have a criminal lead the country?
Well, who am I kidding. The answer is of course: It's a partisan thing. He is not a Democrap!
1 I understand that it is just a difference of zeroes and zeroes mean nothing to you. But to bookkeepers and bankers there's a difference.↵
In the interview, he says that the leading countries of the world, almost all of them, have lost a sense of direction. Trying to make Ukraine a member of Nato was a massive mistake and brought about the current war, but now the only option is to make Ukraine a Nato member. In Kissinger's opinion, loss of Sevastopol would threaten the integrity of Russia and therefore Ukraine should not take back Crimea.
About Taiwan, Kissinger thinks the tensions are to be solved later, the only solution is time.
And Kissinger prophesies that Japan will soon build own weapons of mass destruction.
In other reporting (Financial Times) it is claimed that Kissinger has been fiddling behind the curtains in Africa to persuade Ukraine into a ceasefire.
You are quoting empty words from Durham. Those words are empty because they are a restatement of general legal principles, nothing specific to the actual investigation, nothing specific about any person or action. Sheer blather.
The Select Committee has referred Donald Trump and others for possible prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2383, including for assisting and providing aid and comfort to an insurrection.
As you (obviously don't) know, lesser actors, such as leaders of Oath Keepers, have been successfully prosecuted and locked up under this very point. Locking up Trump for the same is just a matter of finding a brave prosecutor. There are no other obstacles. But they'd prefer to lock him up for something lesser, e.g. suppose he fails to cough up the $5m he owes to E. Jean Carroll. Or Stormy Daniels. Or tax evasion. These are preferable options for the establishment than to take him down for his hardest offenses like election rigging and insurrection.
100% false. Everything that Durham has taken to court has failed, which is a rare achievement for such reports. But most things that he denounces and criticises he does not recommend any charges against anyone or changes to current procedures, so those are empty denouncements.
It's a good question to Trump. He's the one who has been going on forever how he received more votes than any president ever and, if it appears otherwise, it is because Democrats rigged the elections. It's the same guy who also said, "I need 11 000 votes, come on, give me a break!" in multiple phone calls during counting. So, yeah, what importance is the popular vote? I don't care, but election rigging is another actual crime in the books. The establishment needs to time one of the several available options correctly to take Trump off the race. They will.
From January 6th events it is known that you don't even believe your own eyes, so obviously you will not also believe when I quote the Mueller Report. Whatever. I'll quote it for myself.
The report spells out four very quirky "considerations that guided our obstruction-of-justice investigation" which run as follows.
"First, [...] we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment."
"Second, [...] we conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available."
"Third, [...] we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes."
"Fourth, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. [This report] does not exonerate him."
In summary, the report's scope is deliberately narrowed so as to avoid prosecuting the sitting president. Logically, this also means that he is not exonerated either. Still, the facts speak for themselves and could be pursued if wanted. Unfortunately you do not do facts at all and prosecutors do not want to pursue them for other reasons. Anyway, the Trumpite narrative that the Mueller Report found nothing and exonerated him is flatly-squarely false.
Edit: I notice you have high hopes for the Durham report. The facts are that all indictments raised based on it have resulted in acquittal. It's a 100% dead end. It is true that, in comparison, the Mueller report has not been tested in courts at all, but there are bigger reasons for this. Namely, the subject matter would make Trump and Putin look like international badass gangstas, gaining them both more popularity regardless of the outcome, which is the exact opposite what is needed these days.
Stormy Daniels case alone would suffice to lock Trump up. After all, Michael Cohen, who had a mere errand boy role in the case, served time for it, so the main actor can definitely be locked up too for at least as long.
What will you say, if and when Trump is elected to the presidency in '24?
My opinion/impression of USA has been at the rock bottom since W's era. It cannot sink any lower. But no, Trump will not be elected again. Even supposing that he managed to survive to the end line and miraculously gather more popular votes than Biden,[1] this time the political establishment will be certain to perform a counter-coup and remove him from office before he gets into office. Rest assured, things will not be allowed to go that far.
1 Remember that Hillary got more popular votes than Trump! Oh, I forgot already, you do not do facts. My bad.↵
The Russian Collusion investigation was not a fiasco. Mueller Report discovered enough direct contacts between Russian agents and Trump's campaign, in addition to known Trump's connections with Russia. There are political reasons why this line of investigation will probably not be pursued against Trump, not the least because it would make Putin more hip across the world.
The theft and coverup of confidential White House documents will certainly catch up with Trump. Also his tax evasion and other business practices. And his pussy-grabbing behaviour already has. Moreover, all Trump's efforts to claim election rigging by Democrats have died by now and his own rigging is catching up with him. This may already suffice to remove him from the race. If the January 6 line is pursued too, it will be more than enough.
The entire camp of Repubs is in such a bad shape that Biden can win. In my opinion, DeSantis should also be removed from the race due to crimes, same as Trump. The crime of DeSantis is touring Texas' immigrants around illegally, sufficient to demonstrate his unsuitability to office.
AI in AML:[1] AI blocked a customer's bank account when the account had a transfer labelled "Iran vakuutus" (Ira's insurance in Finnish; Ira is the customer's dog). A week later, the account is still blocked.
Likely the deployers of AI for AML purposes strongly overestimated what AI is capable of. They assume that AI gets everything right, so whatever AI blocks remains blocked and bank employees' manual access to customers' bank accounts has been removed (and employees possibly fired). This is the way the world goes under: Not because AI is intelligent, but because people attribute intelligence to it.
I propose that all the world's employees unite and fight this idiocy. Tell your bosses that they are fired and replaced by Management Decision Generator AI.
1 AML = transactions monitoring by banks to detect suspicious transactions.↵
Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces was hyped by Elon Musk as “groundbreaking”, and extensively advertised as a new frontier for “free speech” in politics. Instead, the results were a disaster.
The tech genius that Elon is, even after the total failure of getting an audiofeed out under his own account and then barely managing to get it out under a different account, said, "Nothing like this has been done ever before." Really? What has not been done ever before? A technology fail? An audiofeed? An announcement for presidential campaign broadcast online? All of this has been done before.
It's just Elon being his normal self, inventing things that have been done before. Thus far, Elon Musk fanboys have credited him for inventing electric cars, space travel, and online payments (and internet and AI and tunnels), now they can also credit him for inventing, idk, audiofeeds? presidential elections?
Before his bid for presidential candidacy, DeSantis was ahead in the polls, astronomically ahead of Trump. Quite amazing for someone who had not even officially entered the race. The polls turned around a month ago. With this kind of campaign launch, things will get worse for DeSantis, not better.
DeSantis will have to redo the whole campaign launch thing somewhere else a second time. Or maybe he'll have to do nothing, because according to me, Trump won't make it anyway (his witch hunt lawsuits will catch up with him).
In my opinion, Ukrainian counteroffensive has already begun. It began at the latest with the Belgorod diversion.[1] It began silently and cautiously. The desire for victory is strong, but so is the need to avoid mistakes and failure.
The idea about a huge counteroffensive may have been thrown out at first as propaganda to scare Russians. It took on a life of its own and now there is high pressure to make it happen. It was called Spring Offensive, but now we are in summer, so the timing has been a miscalculation. Also, USA finally agreed to give some fighter jets, but if the counteroffensive is to include those, the delivery and training of pilots takes its time. So one way to look at it is that the huge counteroffensive will take some more time to prepare. But in my opinion it already started and this is what it looks like.
1 Ukraine is denying responsibility, but the diversants were in Ukrainian uniform (complete with signs in the colours of Ukrainian flag) and carried Ukrainian equipment, so the diversants are not quite 'green men' and not quite intra-Russian insurrectionists. Ukraine denies responsibility because the West is opposed to Ukraine's operations on Russian soil. Meaning, the West's position is that only Russia is allowed to invade, occupy and conquer (well, Western traditional colonial powers can do it too of course), not anyone else, not even when being invaded and occupied.↵
In TLDR News' video Is the Russian Minority in the EU Being Persecuted?, which purports to give you both sides of the story so you can make up your own mind, the phrasing of the problems betrays the well-known colonial instincts - of both Russia and the West. Namely, according to the video, Estonia and Latvia are now banning the use of Russian language in state institutions and schools. So the video's implied answer to the title question is a resounding "Yes, when it comes to the Baltic countries!" (different from the title, all instances of alleged persecution are restricted to the Baltic countries instead of the EU).
All the way up to the 1970s it was indeed normal in the West and in Soviet Union to ban languages in schools and separate children from parents in order to eradicate culture, e.g. indigenous minority children in USA, Nordic countries, and Russia, and of course those countries never thought indigenous languages should be used in official state institutions, duh. This is where TLDR is understandably coming from. They are colonial annihilists turned cosmopolitans, there's no way to fix this. However, it is factually wrong to adress the matters in Estonia and Latvia in the same terms. In reality, Estonia and Latvia have been keeping up two state-supported school systems in parallel: in the official state language and in Russian language. Debates about withdrawing the support from Russian-language schools have been ongoing for decades, several agreed deadlines have passed without action taken. The first good opportunity in my opinion to pull the rug from under Russian-speaking schools was in 1994 when Soviet/Russian army (and some portion of Russian civilians along with it) left the Baltic countries, but no, Russian schools are still in 2023 here as they were back then.
Anyway, many Russians are already putting their children in Estonian-language schools ("for the future of the child"), some such schools have a good share of such Russians (and other foreign children) and nobody is banning them from using their own language among themselves the way both Western and Soviet authorities used to do up to 1970s (Soviet/Russian authorities even now). The situation in Estonia and Latvia has nothing in common with colonial practices. We are just reducing the strain on state budget that we were never supposed to have in the first place, if we were to act as per actual Western values.
As to other state institutions, in both Estonia and Latvia it is admitted that municipalities can operate in another, local majority language. E.g. Narva municipal council operates in Russian. Their communication with state institutions is to occur in the official state language however. But ordinary people can find state services in several languages, such as English-speaking people in English, and therefore also Russian-speaking in Russian (otherwise it would not work to e.g. accommodate Ukrainian refugees here). Foreign-language services in state institutions have always been expanding rather than receding.
About citizenship, Estonia and Latvia decided upon re-independence that automatic citizenship is given to those who can trace ancestry back to the pre-WWII countries. This was done mostly pro-actively by the state seeking out its citizens, while others need to go through a citizenship application process. This arrangement is better understood as a requirement for historical continuity instead of a requirement of ethnicity. Anyone whose ancestry can be traced back to the first independence gets the citizenship regardless of ethnicity. The dates involved are connected to independence, when we had it, when we ceased to have it, and when we regained it. So it's about history rather than ethnicity. From the Baltic point of view, non-citizen Russians are a non-citizen minority - like all other foreigners are minorities.
Russians do not deserve special minority privileges the way e.g. native/indigenous minorities would, because they are not native and indigenous. And not even properly minority - they have their majority native country immediately next door.
Moreover, we have security concerns that Western countries never had. Who wants to adopt so many Russians that they are about a third of your population? No hands? I wonder why. Also, the argument in the video that Russia would never attack Baltic countries is by now stupider than ever. The argument used to be that "Baltic countries are not worth it" but it has become now (in the video) "Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, so definitely it won't attack Nato countries". This is dangerously stupid. Baltic (and Polish) experts always maintained that Russia attacks completely regardless if they can afford it or whether it's worth it - and these experts have been proven correct. All other opinions have been proven wrong many times over. Russia's propaganda/information war that is now in worldwide awareness (namely, calling their neighbours fascists and Russophobes) has been going on forever in the Baltic countries and has been as false as it is right now regarding Ukraine. To use this propaganda as if this were actual information, the way TLDR does, is a fatal blow to own credibility.
Of course I understand that my post will clear up nothing for anyone. I have already explained all this for decades, but colonists remain colonists.
Edit: Here Deutsche Welle confronts Latvia's justice minister with the same topic and the minister needs to politely explain to Germans how stupid they are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHL5TTw00hc
When the same talking points are up in several Western outlets at the same time with the same Russian bent, it suggests yet another successful propaganda operation from Russia.
Scenario #1: Something unexpected will happen to Putin, causing uncertainty regarding the successor. Legally, the prime minister (Mishustin) is next in line, but he'd be a puppet and someone else would be pulling the strings. In Russia, it is illegal to suggest and discuss this scenario.
Scenario #2: Putin stays in power, further tightening his grip and making life worse for ordinary citizens. The war would continue and Russia would keep bringing up the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. Opposition's underground activities may enliven, but the overall situation would remain largely unchanged for long.
Scenario #3: The elite surrounding Putin gets fed up with the war and replaces him, possibly citing his health as a reason and making the shift appear as orderly and controlled as possible. The overall situation would continue as is. The most favourable moment for this scenario is next year's presidential elections.
Scenario #4: General discontent causes mass protests. Anybody can become next leader. The unrest and chaos may continue for long.
Scenario #5: Regions rebel. The centre would lose power, similar to the times of the collapse of Soviet Union.
Scenario #6: Infighting between the country's military groupings. (Could Prigozhin challenge Putin?)
At the end of the article, you can vote your favourite/likeliest scenario. I voted in agreement with the experts, which is #2. Amazingly, Finns in general also agree.
sure, when Democrats appear to do it. When Republicans do it, no problem.
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