@mike805 Fair points. They didnt make stuff up out of whole cloth; they found existing fracture lines and drove wedges into them. That said, their efforts on the right during the Cold War were basically just marginal extremists--just as the FSB's efforts on the left today are. Their main effort just switched sides.

And that was kind of the point I was making (and why i talked in terms of the social order) about the demise of the Soviet system there. Yes, the siloviki still came out on top--but the social order OF SOVIET COMMUNISM perished, and a new one of Russian Nationalist MAFIA CAPITALISM rose in its place. #VladTheInvader is most accurately though of not as a new Soviet Premier under a different title, but rather as their Oligarch-in-Chief--and coordinator of a global #BillionairesInsurgency...which, while it is clearly MODELED ON the old Communist International (COMINTERN) is also just as clearly a different beast.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/harry-potter-internet-trolls-putin-reimagines-global-jim-ellsworth

Harry Potter and the Internet Trolls: Putin Reimagines the Global Revolution

A while back, I encountered Ron Radosh's article in The Daily Beast, in which the author describes President Trump's White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon telling him, at a party, that he was a Leninist whose actual objective was "to destroy the state ..

@RealJournalism Demented Donny still seems keen on a bromance with Vlad the Invader even while Vlad is actively trying to upset a US victory in Iran. Shows determination!
#DementedDonny #vladtheinvader

The truth is that HRH #QueenMailorderBridesky hits him across the hands with a ruler whenever he does something his boss #VladTheInvader doesn't like.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-takes-aspirin-recommended-doctors-rcna251804

Trump says he takes more aspirin than recommended by his doctors

Trump acknowledged that he takes a higher dose of aspirin than recommended by his doctors.

NBC News

"The EU, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have responded by capping the price at which their tankers may sell Russian oil to third parties at $47.6 a barrel. But the US has not followed. Nor has it followed through on a threat to punish buyers of Russian oil with secondary [tariffs]."

Trump continues to do the job #VladTheInvader hired him for. Make Russia Great Again! Yeah!

https://aje.io/fvvrgz

Russia’s funding for Ukraine war set to ‘contract’ as new sanctions loom

Years after Putin ordered full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s financial system is showing signs of vulnerability.

Al Jazeera

@florencewarren The longer #VladTheInvader's war is allowed to drag on, the more a smaller country like Ukraine starts to run into available manpower issues within the eligible demographics as they take casualties. Lowering the conscription age is, in some sense, eating their seed corn. But it's increasingly going to be all they have left to eat.

Plus, the older age minimum makes it all too easy for young Ukrainians (and their parents) to rationalize a trip abroad "for college, so they can do EVEN MORE to help defend the motherland!" as a strategy for "incidentally" getting them outside conscription's reach (or the reach of "stray" Russian missiles). Which puts the burden of Ukraine's defense overwhelmingly on the working classes who CAN'T AFFORD that escape hatch.

Hard choices for hard times. 😢

Wall Street shivers over ‘hot commie summer’ after Mamdani’s success

New York’s financial elite compare the city to crime-riddled Gotham after democratic socialist bests Cuomo in Democratic mayoral primary

The Guardian

#VladTheInvader wants all of Ukraine.

#KingBibiAntipas wants all of Palestine.

Both are willing to commit #genocide and annex occupied territory in violation of international law to fulfil their #EthnicCleansing ambitions.

Once upon a time, the world pledged not to allow that again. But #NeverAgainIsNow.

https://aje.io/jb9dxs

Putin confirms he wants all of Ukraine, as Europe steps up military aid

Trump made no pledge of assistance to Ukraine at NATO summit, but said he’d ‘try’ and sell Patriot interceptors.

Al Jazeera

@401matthall @SueDiOh Its a little of both. We (U.S. Intelligence Community) actually WATCHED him be bought--by the Kremlin via the Russian mob via Deutsche Bank--when his business incompetence had left him bankrupt with no honest lender willing to touch him, and he was terrified of actually being POOR. Because our due-course MISSION involved monitoring the Russians he was talking to, and he was too stupid to think that would necessarily expose HIM on the other end of the negotiations.

But youre absolutely right that his only real interest is in whatever his addled mind thinks will benefit him (malignant narcissist, remember), and as a native New Yorker, I've watched him screw friends, contractors, patrons, supporters, etc. FOR HALF A CENTURY, so I have no doubt that if he's reached the point where he thinks his new taxpayer-funded #craptocurrency scams will keep him rich for his remaining years, and his cult is beyond caring about ANY dirt they might release, he may get tired of having to be #VladTheInvader's beta all the time.

He might want to get checked for #PoloniumAllergies, though. Vlad doesnt have a lot of tolerance for oligarchs who start thinking they're independent....

Ironically, the main thing this war is demonstrating is why its absolutely essential THAT IRAN OBTAIN a nuclear weapons capability, ASAP.

Iran TRIED appeasing the West for decades, but while Europe and America were (pre-Trump) prepared to be satisfied with the results of a rules-based negotiation (the JCPOA), Israel responded first with a disinformation campaign AGAINST the agreement--and then with a long AND ESCALATING series of unprovoked attacks against Iranian sovereignty and a program that, for a long time, IAEA monitors & western intelligence agencies affirmed to be in continued, unilateral compliance.

Tragically, without a credible nuclear deterrent against the (illegally) nuclear-armed #IsraelAtWarCrimes, Iran has been unable to show the Zionist bully any reason why it shouldn't continue to do whatever the hell it pleases. And with America & its permanent UNSC veto standing resolutely--under both the #Donjjal AND #GenocideJoe Biden before him--as #GenocidesBodyguards as it advances the #EthnicCleansing of Palestine, it's all too clear they can't rely on anybody's strength but their own, and Allah's--notwithstanding the ineffectual protestations of a Russia that #VladTheInvader has mired in an unsolvable military mess of its own.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5442317/israel-iran-russia-conflict