Putin the Pirate

24 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine, United States of America

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EU/NATO, New Nationalism, New Russian Imperialism, Putin the Pirate, Russia v NATO, Russia v Ukraine, Ukraine's Frozen Conflict, Vladimir Putin

Well, he stole Robert Kraft’s Sacred Superbowl Ring, so what wouldn’t he steal?

Kraft’s ring now appears on display in the Kremlin’s library, quite a trophy brought home to Moscow by Russia’s Boss of Bosses.

From CNN:

The 4.94-carat ring is in the Kremlin’s library, where all official state gifts are kept, he said. It is worth more than $25,000, according to multiple reports from 2005.
A Kraft spokesman said Sunday the story is a humorous anecdote that Kraft “retells for laughs.”
“He loves that the ring is at the Kremlin and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin,” said Stacey James, a spokesman for The Kraft Group.
Eshchenko, Alla and Faith Karimi. “Russian president: I did not steal Super Bowl ring.” CNN, June 17, 2013.

No. Putin didn’t steal it. It was a gift!

🙄

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Will Ukraine be a gift too?

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Putin the Pirate has done a few things under the table upside-down and sideways over decades to weaken western political coherence, cohesion, and resolve. Start with the KGB’s handling of Zawahiri over the winter of 1996/7. In connect-the-dots fashion, I believe that stay led to the attack by jet hijacking Islamists on 9/11 that in turn goosed the pride of western states in their Christian and independent political cultures and led to what has been referred to as the “New Nationalism”.

When bees sting and flesh swells, the response has not been called “proud flesh” for nothing.

The popular western response in enmity and fear regarding Islam has not been misplaced in relation to Islamic Extremism and related Islamist Terror, but the same has given rise to blood-and-soil nationalism, authoritarianism, and actual autocracy in some EU/NATO states. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (one nation under Trump for a while) have each seen their open democracies challenged by demagoguery or political perversion.

We may also take note of the “01s” in dates: 1991-dissolve of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy following American intercession opposite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (from which Russia was forced to retreat in 1989); 2001-the September 11 attacks took place on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, quite a gift for a Moscow bent on revenge for its losses in Afghanistan-and, no, Putin didn’t do it–it was obviously radical Muslims assembled and deployed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden; 2011-The Horror taking off in Syria that would send millions of refugees into NATO (Turkey, which today hosts about 3.68 million Syrian refugees), the European Union (0.7 million-Germany), and Scandinavia (0.3 million), another goad for the defense of the rightly ethnolinguistic state cultures settled and enjoying the benefits of, well, being themselves, the only problem being a concomitant drift toward the same feudal-medieval worldviews and fascination with authority held by Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, and Vladimir Putin; 2021-Russia’s repeated threats by military feint against Ukraine, a young democratic state seeking NATO accession, and, by extension, NATO itself, but not quite as Ukraine remains without accession.

So hey, Bob (Kraft), George and George, Jr. (Bush), where are you today with Putin (the thief)?

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Where and when are dictatorships to be stopped?

Is it when one or another has engaged in political repression and breathtaking plunder at home?

Should it be when the security service agents and agent provocateur show up within the borders of one’s democratic state?

Should it be when the tanks roll into a neighboring state struggling for its own sovereignty against barbaric force and the possibility of a return to corrupt, kleptocratic, and tyrannical governance?