Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts

March 3, 2025

What do they think of Trump's cozy relationship with Putin in the other Manchester? By Hal M. Brown


February 14, 2025

Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference for an audience of one, Donald Trump, By Hal M. Brown

 ..

Vance didn’t give a hoot about what the people in the room thought about his speech at the Munich Security Conference when he went on and on lambasting our allies for things like arresting protesters who violated the no-protest zone at abortion clinics.which he decribed as an affront to free speech. Of course there was no mention of the country which was the home of Alexei Navalny where exercising free speech can get you poisoned and imprisoned. 

Considering that this is a security conference and there’s a war raging in Europe, what did the audience hear about Ukraine? We barely heard crickets.

Fom Vance’s speech.

Now Yeah. I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but we, we gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security and normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. Now I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard, and I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.

As you see above according to Vance “the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within.”

Here’s another piece of pro-Russian propaganda Trump will like:

Now we're at the point of course that the situation has gotten so bad that this December Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few $100,000 of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. 

Clearly the real audience for his speech was primarily one person, Donald J. Trump, his lord and master. The message to Trump is that he is saying that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to Russia. Secondly, it was the anti-woke and pro-life members of MAGA who bother to tune in to morning television.

Vance is deluded if he thinks Trump actually cares about any of the pro-life falderal. Nobody who thinks rationally would doubt that the notoriously cheap Trump would readily pay for an abortion for a woman he inconveniently impregnated. Mathematicians don’t have a number infinitesimal enough to measure how little Trump cares about aving the life of the unborn.

I listened to Vance for as long as CNN was broadcasting it. That gave methe the idea for this Substack. Then I found the entire text. If I was a real journalist I’d read the entire thing and comments on all the thingsI thought were relevant. Instead I just searched for the words “Ukraine” and “Russia.” 

Addendum on reviewing the entire speech I found this part just plain weird:

And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. 


UPDATES: 

From Vance Tells Europeans to Stop Shunning Parties Deemed Extreme, NY Times

Vice President JD Vance told European leaders on Friday that their biggest security threat was not military aggression from Russia or China, but their own suppression of free speech — including efforts to block hard-right parties from joining governments.

An audience that was largely expecting Mr. Vance to lay out the Trump administration’s priorities for the trans-Atlantic alliance, NATO military spending and negotiations with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, instead received a lecture on what Mr. Vance described as the continent’s own failures in living up to democratic ideals.

Those failures, Mr. Vance said, included efforts to restrict so-called “misinformation” and other content on social media and laws against abortion protests that he said unfairly silenced Christians.

Perhaps most strikingly, the vice president called on Europeans to drop their opposition to working with anti-immigration parties, calling them a legitimate expression of the will of voters angered by high levels of migration over the last decade. Those parties include the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, parts of which have been classified as extremist by German intelligence.

Excerpt:

None of this was particularly well-received by Europeans at the conference listening to the speech — and according to Politico's White House reporter Dasha Burns, the anger and derision burst out in the overflow room. The audience reportedly groaned as Vance highlighted the "threat from within," and one woman in attendance shouted out, "he's such a puppet!"

"In the end, there was palpable shock and anger," Burns concluded.

Trump and his associates have often not been met with the reactions they were hoping for when speaking on the world stage. In one of the most well-known incidents, diplomats openly laughed at Trump as he gave a speech to the United Nations in 2018 — though after the fact he insisted they were simply "laughing with me."

If you want to see what I am thinking throughout the day follow me on BlueSky here.

For those who want to wade through the entire speech, below. I added paragraph breaks where I thought they made sense from CSPAN is the text of Vance’s speech.

00:00:12

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. It is now my honor and pleasure to welcome the Vice President of the United States, Mr. JD Vance, who was here last year as senator, and we are very happy that he has come back to Munich, and we are very much looking forward to his speech. Please welcome Vice President JD Vance.

Show More 00:00:54

Well, thank you and thanks to all the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals and thanks especially to the hosts of the Munich Security Conference for being able to put on such an incredible event. We're of course thrilled to be here. We're happy to be here. And you know, one of the things that I wanted to talk about today. is of course our shared values and you know it's great to be back in Germany as you heard earlier. I was here last year as a United States senator. 

I saw a Foreign Minister, Foreign Secretary David Lammian joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now, but now it's time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been Fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples to use it wisely to improve their lives, and I want to say that you know I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I've been so impressed by the hospitality of the people even of course as they're reeling from yesterday's horrendous attack. And the first time I was ever in Munich was with, was with my wife actually who's here with me today on a personal trip, and I've always loved the city of Munich and I've always loved its people, and I just want to say that we're very moved and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community. We're thinking about you. We're praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come. 

Now Yeah. I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but we, we gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security and normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. 

Now I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. 

For years we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard, and I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them. 

Now within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not. And thank God they lost the Cold War. They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build, as it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity just as you can't force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe, and we believe those things are certainly connected. And unfortunately when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners. 

I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be hateful content. Or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action. 

I look to Sweden, where 2 weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not in fact grant, and I'm quoting, a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief. And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. 

A little over 2 years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 m from an abortion clinic and silently praying for 3 minutes. Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son, he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person's decision within 200 m of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. 

Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person, but no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones. Warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. 

In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation like for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leak leaked from a laboratory in China. 

Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that. In Washington there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump's leadership we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer in the public square, agree or disagree. 

Now we're at the point of course that the situation has gotten so bad that this December Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few $100,000 of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn't very strong to begin with. 

Now the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear, and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still, which of course brings us back to Munich. Where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. 

Now again, we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them. Now to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid vote a different way or even worse, win an election. 

Now this is a security conference, and I'm sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that's great. Because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. 

We don't think you hear this term burden sharing, but we think it's an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger. But let me also ask you, How will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don't know what it is that we are defending in the first place? I've heard a lot already in my conversations, and I've had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room. I've heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that's important, but what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe is what exactly it is that you're defending yourselves for. 

What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important. And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. 

Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results, but there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. If you're going to enjoy competitive economies, if you're going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains. Then you need mandates to govern because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things, and of course we know that very well in America. 

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that's the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society. And of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost 1 in 5 people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It's a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all-time high. 

The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone, and of course it's gotten much higher since, and we know the situation, it didn't materialize in a vacuum. It's the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And of course I can't bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. 

But why did this happen in the first place? It's a terrible story, but it's one we've heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately too many times in the United States as well. An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction? 

No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants, but you know what they did vote for. In England, they voted for Brexit, and agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they're voting for political leaders who promised to put an end to out of control migration. 

Now I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don't have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children, and they're smart. I think this is one of the most important things I've learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don't generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy, and it's hardly surprising that they don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. 

It is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. And speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential. 

And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. But what German democracy, what no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't. 

Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future. Embrace what your people tell you, even when it's surprising, even when you don't agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence knowing that the nation stands behind each of you, and that to me is the great magic of democracy. It's not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It's not even in the great institutions that we built together as a shared society. 

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice, and if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little. As Pope John Paul II, in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other, once said, Do not be afraid. We shouldn't be afraid of our people even when they express views that disagree with their leadership. 

Thank you all. Good luck to all of you. God bless you. Yeah




August 24, 2023

Moscow murders make Milwaukee murders look lame: Putinym Вот что будет, если трахаться с Путиным

 

If you don't read Russian you'll have to read the blog to get the translation 
of my title above.


By Hal Brown

By the time I finished watching the season two finale of "Only Murder  in the Building" (see yesterday's blog: Murders in Milwaukee vs. Murders In The Building: What I'll Be Watching Tonight) and turned on the news I learned that when it came to making the news with a dramatic story Putin had won the night.



As you can see from the screen grab of the BBC website above the presumed Putin Prigozhin assassination bumped the GOP debate and Trump's legal troubles off as the top story. I think this is indicatve of the international perspective of what is the most improtant news to cover.

Fox News, in contrast, relegated the story to a minor spot:

The New York Times prioritized the debate story online...
... but dropped it to the very bottom of the print edition front page:
Click above to enlarge image

The Washington did the same with their online and their print editions:

I undertand why local media puts American news on as the top story but I think the Russia story is equally important, an opinion reflected by the editors of the print edtion of The NY Times.

Anyway you look at it, there were two major stories last night.

The plane being shot down came with an amazing video which makes it a compelling story for television.

Click above to view with real life commentary

The caught on video amazing assassination - although one is foolish to be amazed by it - came before the debate and was referred to when Nikki Haley accused Ramaswarmy of "choosing a murderer" for saying supporting Ukraine is not a "priority for the United States."

From the debate:

“Look what Putin did today, he killed Prigozhin,” Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor said Wednesday night during the first Republican party presidential candidate for the 2024 election after being asked how she would respond to the war in Ukraine if she were elected. 

She continued, “When I was at the U.N., the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.” Reference.

From HUFFPOST

 U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley landed perhaps the biggest blow against Ramaswamy during a heated exchange over aid to Ukraine. Ramaswamy argued that U.S. support for Ukraine against Russian aggression should be used for defending the U.S. border instead.


“You are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. ... You would make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience and it shows. It shows,” Haley said, drawing an eruption of applause from the debate audience. 

The broadside is the closest Haley has come to a breakout moment during the race so far. The former South Carolina governor has struggled to gain traction in early nominating states.


In terms of sheer drama a group of GOP president wannabes shouting over each other watching a plane carrying 10 people presumably including the leader of the Wagner Group and his chief deputy being blown out of the sky and crashing and burning (see more video and photos on Newsweek here) was literally a murder in Moscow (literally somewhere 30 minutes north of Moscow on its way to St. Petersburg).

Not only is this being reported as a murder in Moscow but there is also a possible mystery in Moscow because there are some questions being asked whether Prigozhin himself staged this assassination so he could disappear and live out his life in some safe haven. 

If he managed to do this Putin could probably find him and get rid of him for sheer vengeance but he wouldn't be able to make it public. Although the psychopath would like to look Prigozhin in the eyes telling him that vot chto sluchilos', kogda ty trakhalsya Putinym as he shot or poisoned him he'd have to settle for a live video.

Either way it's a win for Putin. He shows that anyone who dares staging a coup against him is signing their own death warrant and will be subject to a public execution. In fact, this is what it was called on MSNBC's Morning Joe just after I typed these words. They added that it seems more than a coincidence that someone was their to take a video of it as if it was staged for television.

The candidates merely metaphorically murdered, or attempted to murder each other. There was, or might have been, a real murder which demonstrates why President Biden's firm support of Ukraine is vital to democracy.

Ironically, while none of the GOP candidates in the debate won the night it is fair to say that both Biden (thanks to Putin) and Putin himself, albeit in very different ways, can claim to have come out victorious.

Addendum:

I am hearing comments on MSNBC saying that the timing of the crash might be relevant in that it came exactly two months after Prigozhin moved his troops towards the Kremlin. I would suggest that while Putin wanted to "celebrate" the two month anniversary he also might have wanted to provide must-see American counter programming to the GOP debate. If Trump thought his own Tucker interview would be good counter-programming, Putin certainly outdid him.

Afternoon update: 

As far as news: on The Washington Post website the Russia story is on the top of the page, the pending Trump arrest second, and the debate third:





30 Barbies: Not good at parenting or at the maths. By Hal M. Brown

 In the past few days we’ve had Trump or his minions prove that they probably failed their math  (or as the Brits say “maths”)  in grade sch...