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Monthly Archives: February 2023
Richard Spencer: Five Things to Know – Anti-Defamation League
Posted: February 20, 2023 at 12:54 pm
1. RICHARD SPENCER IS AN ALT RIGHT LEADER.
Spencer has become the most recognizable public face of the alt right, a loose network of people who promote white identity and reject mainstream conservatism in favor of politics that embrace implicit or explicit racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Spencer coined the term alternative right (from which alt right is derived) in 2008 in an article in Takis Magazine, a far-right publication. At the time, Spencer was using alternative right to refer to people on the right who distinguished themselves from traditional conservatives by opposing, among other things, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and open immigration. As a spokesperson for the alt right, Spencer has tried to use the media to mainstream racism and anti-Semitism.
During the 2016 presidential race, the alt right gained national media attention for two things: supporting Donald Trump and online trolling. On Election night 2016, Spencer exulted in Trumps victory. The Alt-Right has been declared the winner. The Alt-Right is more deeply connected to Trumpian populism than the conservative movement, Spencer tweeted. Were the establishment now.
Spencer was one of the promoters and scheduled speakers at the August 12, 2017 Unite the Right alt right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was ostensibly organized to oppose the removal of Confederate monuments. The rally attracted more than 500 white supremacists and many hundreds of counter-protesters, and confrontations between the two groups sparked violent clashes. A white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring a number of other people.
That weekend, Spencer's website announced that Unite the Right was the beginning of the white civil rights movement.
It seems that Spencer may have spoken too soon. Since that weekend in Charlottesville, dissension and infighting has overtaken the alt right movement. On one side are the American Nationalists who believe white supremacists should appeal to whites by using innocuous symbols like the American flag, and avoid openly white supremacist symbols like swastikas. On the other side are the National Socialists and other hard-right groups whose members display white supremacist symbols at rallies and dont care about optics or appealing to the white middle class. Spencer walks the line between the two groups. Although he does not wear or publicly promote any white supremacist symbols, he did align himself with the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), a neo-Nazi group. The group acted as a security force at his speeches at Auburn University in Alabama in 2017 and at Michigan State University in 2018.
Spencer appears to be testing out new ways of attracting attention. In October 2017, two months after Unite the Right, he returned to Charlottesville to lead 35-40 people in an unannounced flash mob a reprise of Augusts tiki torch march. Afterwards, Spencer called it a great success and a model for future events. This kind of small event with no advance warning hugely diminishes inherently risky interactions with law enforcement or counter-protesters. Spencer only employed the flash mob model a couple of times before turning his attention to scheduled public events like campus speeches.
Spencer wants to establish a white ethno-state in the U.S. and believes that whites should live separately from non-whites and Jews. While Spencer generally shies away from blatant displays of anti-Semitism, he began expressing anti-Semitic views more openly in 2014, when he wrote that Jews have an identity apart from Europeans. At a press conference two years later, he announced that he did not consider Jews to be European (i.e. white in alt right nomenclature).
Spencer has been influenced by a number of other white supremacists, including the late Sam Francis, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and retired professor Kevin MacDonald, who wrote a series of anti-Semitic books, which Spencer has promoted. Spencers white supremacist organization, the National Policy Institute (NPI), featured MacDonald as a speaker at its annual conferences in both 2015 and 2016.
At the 2016 conference, a number of people in the audience threw Nazi salutes after Spencer hailed Donald Trumps victory in the presidential election. Spencer refused to condemn the salutes.
Spencer has aligned himself with groups and individuals who openly express virulent anti-Semitism, including TWP and Patriot Front, a Texas-based alt right group. Members of both groups have attended and acted as security at his events. Spencer has also shown a willingness to work with anti-Semitic leaders such as Matthew Heimbach, the former head of TWP, and Mike Enoch Peinovich, who runs The Right Stuff website.
Spencer was an editor at Takis Magazine and worked at The American Conservative as an assistant editor. In 2010, Spencer founded online journal Alternative Right, which he used to promote white nationalism until he left in 2012.
Spencer was named president of NPI in 2011, and he also runs two associated ventures--Radix Journal, a publication featuring essays on white nationalism and other issues, and Washington Summit Publishers, which publishes the work of racists.
In January 2017, Spencer founded Altright.com, an online sounding board for the movement. The site was created with the help of Swedish white supremacists and is part of a venture called the AltRight Corporation. Spencer and his Swedish partners, Arktos Media, a far-right publishing company, and Red Ice Radio, a video and podcast platform featuring racists from around the world, want to bring the message of white nationalism to mainstream audiences.
In December 2017, Spencer announced that he had formed a new organization with other alt right leaders. In a departure from previous alt right groups, which organizers dismissed as amateurish, Operation Homeland was unveiled as a core group of alt right leaders and activists poised to lead the movement as a whole. The group held a demonstration in December 2017 in Washington, DC, to protest the acquittal of an undocumented immigrant in the 2015 murder of a young woman in San Francisco.
Spencer has embraced the young internet activists who create the racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic memes, symbols and slogans that characterize much of the alt rights online presence.
He has focused on getting college students to attend his annual events, including the NPI conference, and hes had some success: the 2016 NPI conference was attended by 200 to 300 people, many of them young. This was a marked increase over the attendance at the previous years event, which attracted just 120 to 175 people.
(The 2017 NPI conference was turned away from its usual venue, and was held at a farm in Maryland, attracting about 100 attendees. When the owners of the farm found out about NPIs white supremacist ideology, the group was asked to leave).
In 2016, Spencer launched a college tour to bring his white nationalist message to campuses nationwide. He spoke at Texas A&M University in December 2016 and at Auburn University in April 2017.
In October 2017, he spoke to a small, mostly hostile audience at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he was accompanied by members of Patriot Front and Identity Evropa, an alt right group that has since disassociated itself from Spencer.
In March 2018, he spoke to a small group of supporters at Michigan State University, while members of TWP fought with antifa activists outside, leading to a number of arrests. After the MSU speech, Spencer decided to cancel his college tour, saying he would try to find other methods of reaching the public.
In 2014, Spencer attempted to hold the annual NPI conference, titled The Future of Europe, in Budapest, Hungary. When Hungarian authorities banned the conference, Spencer was arrested when he attempted to hold the conference anyway. Some of NPIs supporters, including Jared Taylor, managed to hold a watered-down event in Budapest without Spencer, who was then banned for three years from the visa-free Schengen area of Europe, which includes most of the European Union. In 2016, the Home Office of the British government banned Spencer from visiting Great Britain, citing his white supremacist views.
In November 2017, Polands state-run news agency PAP, citing unnamed Foreign Ministry sources, reported that Polish authorities had extended Spencers ban from the Schengen area for another five years.
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Richard Spencer: Five Things to Know - Anti-Defamation League
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Federalism – Definition, Examples, Cases, processes – Legal Dictionary
Posted: at 12:49 pm
Federalism is a type of government in which a central, or federal, government, and one or more regional governments work together to form one political system. Federalism is best recognized as a type of government wherein the powers are divided between the levels of government, and the people are subject to the laws at each level. Examples of federalism can be seen in the countries of the United States, Canada, and India, to name a few. To explore this concept, consider the following federalism definition.
Noun
Origin
1780-1790 Americanism
Federalism is a form of government in which a central government and smaller regional governments control the same geographical territory. Authority in such a government must be delineated, to minimize conflict between laws of each level. The terms federalism and confederalism both originate from the Latin foedus, which means treaty, pact, or covenant. These terms were synonymous until the nineteenth century, when federalism became more representative of the unification of the two types of government, and confederalism began being used to refer to the grouping of governments at the state level.
Federalism, as it is known now, concerns the sharing of governing power between national and state governments, which is why state governments have their own laws, which are separate from those of the central authority. When the Constitution was being drafted, the Federalists advocated for a more powerful central government, while the Anti-Federalists wanted the central government to have limited authority.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the governing document prior to the U.S. Constitution, the United States did, in fact, have a weaker central government, considered by many to be ineffectual. As the Constitution was drafted, the framers proceeded with the intent to increase the federal governments powers, without creating an overbearing authority.
The term Federalist refers to an individual who favors a strong central government, with governmental power being divided between that government and various regional governing levels. European federalism is reflected throughout history, as the continent has been comprised of significantly more separate nations or territories than North America. European federalism leans toward a weaker central government.
This differs from how a Federalist might be characterized in the United States, where federalism refers to a more powerful central government, and regional governments that retain their own lawmaking authority.
While American federalism in the modern sense is a lot closer to European federalism, some U.S. citizens feel that the federal governments power has exceeded what was perhaps intended by the countrys Founding Fathers. Most citizens who might consider themselves federalists by the modern American federalism definition, actually argue for the federal governments powers to be limited, particularly the powers of the judiciary.
European federalism examples can be found in countries like Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, and Switzerland. Germany and the EU are the only areas in the world where members of the federal upper houses of government are not elected, nor appointed, but are actually comprised of members of their constituents regional governments. A similar system could be seen in the early days of American federalism.
The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, created in 1913, changed how Senators from the various states would be elected from that point forward. Prior to that point, U.S. Senators had been elected by the states legislatures, rather than by the citizens themselves.
A classic example of federalism at the Supreme Court level occurred in 1803, when outgoing President John Adams signed a commission for William Marbury to become a justice of the peace, but the newly minted Secretary of State James Madison declined to deliver it. Marbury sued Madison to force him to deliver his commission. This all-reaching authority, of a Secretary of State to ignore a presidents appointment of a judge, became the focus of the Supreme Courts review of the matter.
Chief Justice John Marshall, in this matter of Marbury v. Madison, set a precedent by establishing the idea of judicial review a crucial element to the checks and balances system put in place to prevent any particular branch of the federal government from becoming too powerful. In accordance with Chief Justice Marshalls decision, the Supreme Court,for the first time ever, declared a law which had been passed by Congress, and signed by the President to be unconstitutional. The Constitution did not specifically provide the Court with this power; however, Marshall believed that the Court should have an equal role in comparison to those of the other two branches of the federal government.
As is to be expected, federalism in other countries is defined a little differently. Here are a few examples of federalism as it exists in other countries:
Australias federation officially began on January 1, 1901 the very first day of a brand new century, give or take a year. When the United Kingdom colonized Australia in 1788, six colonies were established that would eventually go on to be self-governing. During the 1890s, referendums were held by each of these colonies governments to determine whether or not they would become a unified, self-governing Commonwealth.
The colonies all voted in favor of federation, thereby establishing the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Australias federalism closely resembles that of Americas original model, though it substitutes a presidential system with a parliamentary system.
A presidential system was established in Brazil in 1889, after the fall of the countrys monarchy. Federalism was established by Deodoro da Fonseca by decree, but every Brazilian constitution since the first in 1891 would go on to confirm this form of government, even if some of the newer documents would make some changes to the specific principles.
Power became centralized in Brazilian government in 1937 under President Getulio Vargas, with the establishment of an authority that would permit the appointment of state governors (interventors) at will. Brazil has gone on to become one of the largest federal governments in the world.
In Canada, powers are divided between the countrys federal parliament and its provincial governments. Canadas Constitution Act of 1867, formerly the British North America Act, defines which powers are assigned to whom. Matters not covered by the constitution are normally handled by the federal government; however, there have been, and continue to be, long-standing conflicts over which level of government is entitled to jurisdiction on a variety of matters, including taxation and natural resources.
The Government of India (also known as the Union Government) rules over a federal union consisting of 29 states and seven union territories, and provides perhaps the most comprehensive example of federalism. Indias government is more complex than the governments of other countries, specifically because it operates on three separate tiers, each of which is assigned executive powers in accordance with the Constitution of India. In this way, Indias government resembles the United States, which also delegates powers to three separate branches: the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch.
Indias government originally operated on the principle of a two-tiered system, as dictated by its Constitution, which consisted of the Union Government (the Central Government) and the State governments. The third tier, Panchayats and Municipalities, was added later on.
Presently, the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution assigns governmental jurisdiction to the three tiers by way of three lists: the Union List, the State List, and the Concurrent List. The Union List handles matters of national importance, such as national security, foreign affairs, and currency. Only the Union Government can make laws pertaining to these areas. The State List does what its name suggests, delegating power to the State governments to preside over matters involving State and local importance, such as police, agriculture, and trade.
Finally, the Concurrent List blends the two aforementioned powers together and governs matters of interest to both the State and Union governments, like marriage, adoption, education, and trade unions. Both governments have the authority to make laws pertaining to these subjects. However, should conflicting laws be drafted, decisions then default to the Union government.
Fiscal federalism refers to the division of the various government functions, and how financial matters are to be distributed among the levels of government. More specifically, fiscal federalism deals with the transfer of payments, or issuance of grants, to lower level governments, so that the central government can share its revenues with the lower levels.
The federal government relies on a system of fiscal federalism to provide incentive for the states to adopt federal rules and standards while, at the same time, increasing the states operational revenues. To this end, there are two primary types of transfer: conditional, and unconditional. A conditional transfer from a federal government to a state or local government comes with a particular set of conditions, as the name suggests.
For instance, should a lower level of government be offered one of these transfers, it must agree to whatever spending instructions are given to it by the federal government in order to receive the transfer. An unconditional transfer, on the other hand, typically comes with no spending instructions, and is usually a cash or tax point transfer.
In the mid-20th century, it became obvious that people involved in automobile accidents were more likely to sustain serious, or even fatal, injuries when they were not secured into the vehicle. The federal government did not have the authority to create a law requiring all people to wear seatbelts, so another road to safety was taken. The federal government offered the states a monetary incentive to enact their own seatbelt laws.
Over a period of years, millions of dollars were handed out to states that passed primary seat belt laws, requiring all passengers to be restrained in motor vehicles. The money, once transferred to the states, could be used for any purpose that related to highway safety issues. This was a boon to states that needed to repave highways, install more traffic signals and signage, to address other safety concerns.
Fiscal decentralization refers to the taking away of certain fiscal authority and responsibilities from the federal government, in favor of the regional or state governments. This gives the local governments the authority to raise taxes, and to determine their own expenditures. While fiscal federalism has been described as more of a guide containing fiscal principles that are to be followed, fiscal decentralization involves putting theory into practice and applying those principles to their applicable situations.
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Federalism - Definition, Examples, Cases, processes - Legal Dictionary
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Microsoft is ‘leading the pack’ in artificial intelligence with ChatGPT and shares could jump 15%, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says – Business Insider Africa
Posted: February 18, 2023 at 6:10 am
Microsoft is 'leading the pack' in artificial intelligence with ChatGPT and shares could jump 15%, Wedbush's Dan Ives says Business Insider Africa
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Brown University dean weighs in on artificial intelligence and ‘M3GAN’ movie – WJAR
Posted: at 6:10 am
Brown University dean weighs in on artificial intelligence and 'M3GAN' movie WJAR
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Brown University dean weighs in on artificial intelligence and 'M3GAN' movie - WJAR
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What has Perseverance found in two years on Mars? – Science News Magazine
Posted: at 6:08 am
- What has Perseverance found in two years on Mars? Science News Magazine
- NASA's Perseverance Rover Set to Begin Third Year at Jezero Crater NASA Mars Exploration NASA Mars Exploration
- Mars rover completes first sample storage depot Spaceflight Now Spaceflight Now
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What has Perseverance found in two years on Mars? - Science News Magazine
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Eddie Jones reveals NRL legend Andrew Johns was on the verge of a shock code switch in 2005 – Daily Mail
Posted: at 6:07 am
Eddie Jones reveals NRL legend Andrew Johns was on the verge of a shock code switch in 2005 Daily Mail
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Micronations 2023
Posted: at 6:07 am
A micronation is a recently self-proclaimed state that is not officially recognized by a supranational body, such as the United Nations. It is not the same as a microstate, which is a tiny country that has its own formally known government (such as the Vatican or the South Pacific country of Tuvalu). Instead, a micronation claims independence but is not recognized as an independent state and is unable to engage in its own trade with other recognized states. They are usually short-lived, lasting for only a few hours to a couple of years, and are often the product of one individual or group claiming sovereignty.
Micronations claim land for themselves, often in support of libertarian values or in protest against an unpopular government move, and may even issue their own currency and passports to citizens. However, these passports and money are not recognized by other sovereign states and are of no value outside of the micronation.
The Republic of Minerva was an attempt to build a libertarian haven on a human-made island near Fiji in 1972. The island was soon destroyed in a takeover by the nearby country of Tonga. The Free Republic of Liberland is another attempt at creating a libertarian haven, this time in Eastern Europe on the border of Croatia and Serbia. No country recognizes it formally except for Somaliland, an autonomous region in Somalia.
Some micronations are created by people who believe that they have a historical claim to the land. For example, the Crown Dependency of Forvik in Scotland is a micronation based on the claim that the area, located in the Shetland Islands, does not legally belong to the United Kingdom.
Other micronations are created in protest against government policies. For example, the Principality of Hutt River, located in Australia, was established in 1970 by Leonard Casley in protest against wheat production quotas.
Some micronations have become sites of tourism and merchandise sales, such as the Conch Republic in Key West, Florida. The airport in Key West even boasts a sign saying Welcome to the Conch Republic, even though the micronation never attained formal recognition. Tourists buy t-shirts and other merchandise to celebrate the micronation, mostly as a gimmick.
The internet has somewhat changed the face of micronations, as people are applying global communications technology to concerns about national borders and issues of statelessness. Bit Nation was an attempt to create an international country without any boundaries, and it even issued passports to people who applied to become citizens.
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Inside a sex toy factorys clever uses of tech and science, including cloning OnlyFans models and 3D p… – The US Sun
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Russians Now See a New Side to Putin: Dragging Them Into War
Posted: at 5:58 am
MOSCOW Russians thought they knew their president.
They were wrong.
And by Thursday, it appeared too late to do anything about it.
For most of his 22-year rule, Vladimir V. Putin presented an aura of calm determination at home of an ability to astutely manage risk to navigate the worlds biggest country through treacherous shoals. His attack on Ukraine negated that image, and revealed him as an altogether different leader: one dragging the nuclear superpower he helms into a war with no foreseeable conclusion, one that by all appearances will end Russias attempts over its three post-Soviet decades to find a place in a peaceful world order.
Russians awoke in shock after they learned that Mr. Putin, in an address to the nation that aired before 6 a.m., had ordered a full-scale assault against what Russians of all political stripes often refer to as their brotherly nation.
There was no spontaneous pro-war jubilation. Instead, liberal-leaning public figures who for years tried to compromise with and adapt to Mr. Putins creeping authoritarianism found themselves reduced to posting on social media about their opposition to a war they had no way to stop.
Other Russians expressed themselves more openly. From St. Petersburg to Siberia, thousands took to city streets chanting No to war!, clips posted on social media showed, despite an overwhelming presence by police officers. OVD Info, a rights group, said more than 1,700 people were arrested across the country.
And in Moscows foreign policy establishment, where analysts overwhelmingly characterized Mr. Putins military buildup around Ukraine as an elaborate and astute bluff in recent months, many admitted on Thursday that they had monumentally misjudged a man they had spent decades studying.
Everything that we believed turned out to be wrong, said one such analyst, insisting on anonymity because he was at a loss over what to say.
I dont understand the motivations, the goals or the possible results, said another. What is happening is very strange.
Ive always tried to understand Putin, a third analyst, Tatiana Stanovaya of the political analysis firm R. Politik, reflected. But now, she said, the usefulness of logic seemed at a limit. He has become less pragmatic, and more emotional.
On state television, Mr. Putins most powerful propaganda tool, the Kremlin tried to project an air of normalcy. The state-run news media characterized Thursdays invasion as not a war, but a special military operation limited to eastern Ukraine. Mr. Putin was shown meeting with the visiting prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, as though he were still shrewdly carrying on his day-to-day business.
This is not the beginning of a war, Maria V. Zakharova, the foreign ministrys spokeswoman, said on television. Our desire is to prevent developments that could escalate into a global war.
Meanwhile, Russias stock market plummeted by 35 percent and A.T.M.s ran short of dollars. On the countrys internet, still mostly uncensored, Russians saw their vaunted military sow carnage in a country in which millions of them had relatives and friends.
The world has turned upside down, said Anastasia, 44, protesting the war in central Moscow Thursday evening despite an imposing presence of riot police officers, and bursting into tears. She gave only her first name for fear of reprisal. I cannot even imagine the consequences; this is a catastrophe.
Many Russians had bought into the Kremlins narrative that theirs was a peace-loving country, and Mr. Putin a careful and calculating leader. After all, many Russians still believe, it was Mr. Putin who lifted their country out of the poverty and chaos of the 1990s and made it into a place with a decent standard of living and worthy of international respect.
Its so strange that Russia could attack anyone, a 60-year-old pensioner said on Thursday as she walked through the breathtaking Moscow park, Zaryadye, that international architects designed ahead of the soccer World Cup Russia hosted in 2018. This has never happened before in history.
Like many on Thursday, she declined to reveal her name in the fear that the outbreak of war could bring with it a new crackdown on peoples freedoms.
One of the countrys ever-dwindling number of rights activists, Marina Litvinovich, called for an antiwar protest to be held in Moscow on Thursday evening, and was promptly arrested. Police buses and riot police descended on Pushkin Square, where she had urged people to gather. An actor posted a directive from his state-run Moscow theater claiming that any negative commentary about the war would be seen by the authorities as treason.
In the last three months, as American officials warned that Mr. Putins troop buildup was a prelude to an invasion, Russians dismissed such talk as a Western failure to understand their presidents fundamental determination to manage risk and avoid rash moves with unpredictable consequences. And with leading opposition figures imprisoned or exiled, there were few figures with the influence to organize an antiwar movement.
Some public figures with ties to the government reversed course, though they recognized it was too late. Ivan Urgant, the most prominent late-night comedian on state television, had ridiculed the idea of a looming war on his show earlier this month. On Thursday he posted a black square on Instagram along with the words: Fear and pain.
Ksenia Sobchak, another television celebrity whose father was mayor of St. Petersburg and a 1990s mentor to Mr. Putin, posted on Instagram that from now on she would only believe in the worst possible scenarios about her countrys future. Days earlier, she had praised Mr. Putin as a grown-up, adequate politician compared to his Ukrainian and American counterparts.
We are now all trapped in this situation, she wrote on Thursday. There is no exit. We Russians will spend many years digging out from the consequences of this day.
During the pandemic, analysts had noticed a change in Mr. Putin a man who isolated himself in a bubble of social distancing without parallel among Western leaders. In isolation, he appeared to become more aggrieved and more emotional, and increasingly spoke about his mission in stark historical terms. His public remarks descended ever deeper into distorted historiography as he spoke of the need to right perceived historical wrongs suffered by Russia over the centuries at the hands of the West.
The political scientist Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a close adviser to Mr. Putin until falling out with him in 2011, said he was stunned by the presidents dark description of Ukraine as a dire threat to Russia in his hourlong speech to the nation on Monday.
I have no clue where he got all that he seems to be reading something totally strange, Mr. Pavlovsky said. Hes become an isolated man, more isolated than Stalin was.
Ms. Stanovaya, the analyst, said she now felt that Mr. Putins heightened obsession with history in recent years had become key to understanding his motivation. After all, the war against Ukraine appeared impossible to explain strategically, since it had no clear resolution and would inevitably only increase anti-Russian sentiment abroad and escalate Russias confrontation with the NATO alliance.
Putin has brought himself to a place in which he sees it as more important, more interesting, more compelling to fight for restoring historical justice than for Russias strategic priorities, Ms. Stanovaya said. This morning, I realized that a certain shift has taken place.
She said that by all appearances, the ruling elite around Mr. Putin did not realize that Thursdays war was coming, and was uncertain about how to respond. Beyond state television personalities and pro-Kremlin politicians, few prominent Russians spoke out in support of the war.
But that, she said, did not mean that Mr. Putin risked any kind of palace coup, given his tight hold on the countrys sprawling security apparatus and his expansive crackdown on dissent over the last year.
He can still act for a long time, Ms. Stanovaya said. Inside Russia, he is practically secure from political risk.
Alina Lobzina and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting from Moscow, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Rostov-on-Don, Russia.
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Russians Now See a New Side to Putin: Dragging Them Into War
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Putin Loses It in Taped Meeting With Russian Officials
Posted: at 5:58 am
Kremlin via Reuters
After months of setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russias Vladimir Putin is apparently now left to demonstrate his toughness by getting into dust-ups with his own subordinates.
The Russian leader appeared to briefly lose it on Wednesday while meeting with government officials. The breaking point came when Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov publicly corrected Putin after he complained that some enterprises had not yet secured contracts for the construction of new aircraft this yeara formidable task given that the country has been cut off from many Western imports crucial to construction.
Footage from the meeting shows Manturov quickly shot back that investment projects were underway, but Putin cut him off to gripe that its taking too long.
There are no orders even for 2023 at some enterprises, he saidonly to be corrected yet again when Manturov told him all the enterprises have orders for the year and the Defense Ministry confirmed the number.
Putin, trying to keep his cool, responded by again insisting he was right and Manturov was wrong.
After the Trade and Industry Minister corrected him a third time, the Russian president finally flipped out.
Lets finish this, whats the point of sparring here with you? The directors told me [there are no contracts]. Really, why are you playing the fool? he scolded Manturov, demanding he get the job in a month and no later.
Russian state media appeared to seize on the confrontation to play up Putins macho image, reporting on his dressing down of Manturov but leaving out the trade ministers initial comments that there were in fact contracts for the year.
Putin also used the meeting as an opportunity to declare that all problems connected to his so-called special military operation against Ukraine would be fixed soon.
In the same breath, he claimed the country had not suffered any fallout as a result of the war.
None of what our enemy predicted for us happened. And this is, of course, thanks primarily to the citizens of Russia, their composure, all of our composure, readiness for challenges and to work in difficult conditions.
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Comments Off on Putin Loses It in Taped Meeting With Russian Officials