confiscation is proven not to reduce any crime. It's done to get votes from people ignorant of the facts and this govt. knows it's disliked immensely so disarm the public. It's amazing how security services will support a communist like govt. though we're a democratic nation. They are all easily manipulated and the thinking is better them than us, though the "us" isn't safe from them either. History repeating itself?
Turd's gun confiscation scheme is for the same reason as the tyrants named in the main article--disarming the good guys to ensure his safety from a necessary uprising.
As read through this article in the New Yorker I noticed several parallels between the behaviour of Putin and Justin Trudeau. It's more than a little scary.
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Let’s take the story back to Moscow. We know the story of how Tsar Paul I was assassinated by people around him. Khrushchev was overthrown and replaced, eventually, by Brezhnev. Under Putin, is there any possibility of a palace coup?
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There is always a possibility of a palace coup. There are a couple of issues here. One is that [the West is] working overtime to entice a defection. We want a high-level security official or a military officer to get on a plane and fly to Helsinki or Brussels or Warsaw and hold a press conference and say, “I’m General So-and-So and I worked in the Putin regime and I oppose this war and I oppose this regime. And here’s what the inside of that regime looks like.”
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At the same time, Putin is working overtime to prevent any such defection while our intelligence services are working overtime to entice just such a defection—not of cultural figures, not former politicians but current security and military officials inside the regime. This happened under Stalin, when General Genrikh Lyushkov of the secret police defected to the Japanese, in 1938, with Stalin’s military and security plans and a sense of the regime. He denounced him at a press conference in Tokyo.
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So now we’re watching Moscow. What are the dynamics there with the regime? You have to remember that these regimes practice something called “negative selection.” You’re going to promote people to be editors, and you’re going to hire writers, because they’re talented; you’re not afraid if they’re geniuses. But, in an authoritarian regime, that’s not what they do. They hire people who are a little bit, as they say in Russian, tupoi, not very bright. They hire them precisely because they won’t be too competent, too clever, to organize a coup against them. Putin surrounds himself with people who are maybe not the sharpest tools in the drawer on purpose.
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That does two things. It enables him to feel more secure, through all his paranoia, that they’re not clever enough to take him down. But it also diminishes the power of the Russian state because you have a construction foreman who’s the defense minister [Sergei Shoigu], and he was feeding Putin all sorts of nonsense about what they were going to do in Ukraine. Negative selection does protect the leader, but it also undermines his regime.
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But, again, we have no idea what’s going on inside. We hear chatter. There’s a lot of amazing intelligence that we’re collecting, which is scaring the Chinese, making them worry: Do we have that level of penetration of their élites as well? But the chatter is by people who don’t have a lot of face time with Putin, talking about how he might be crazy. Always, when you miscalculate, when your assumptions are bad, people think you’re crazy. Putin pretends to be crazy in order to scare us and to gain leverage.
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Do you think that’s the case with this nuclear threat?
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I think there’s no doubt that this is what he’s trying to do. The problem is, we can’t assume it’s a bluff. We can’t assume it’s a pose of being crazy, because he has the capability; he can push the button.
He can’t think for himself. A mere copycat thirsting for ego and power. A sad little boy trying to play big time.
confiscation is proven not to reduce any crime. It's done to get votes from people ignorant of the facts and this govt. knows it's disliked immensely so disarm the public. It's amazing how security services will support a communist like govt. though we're a democratic nation. They are all easily manipulated and the thinking is better them than us, though the "us" isn't safe from them either. History repeating itself?
Turd's gun confiscation scheme is for the same reason as the tyrants named in the main article--disarming the good guys to ensure his safety from a necessary uprising.
As read through this article in the New Yorker I noticed several parallels between the behaviour of Putin and Justin Trudeau. It's more than a little scary.
.
Let’s take the story back to Moscow. We know the story of how Tsar Paul I was assassinated by people around him. Khrushchev was overthrown and replaced, eventually, by Brezhnev. Under Putin, is there any possibility of a palace coup?
.
There is always a possibility of a palace coup. There are a couple of issues here. One is that [the West is] working overtime to entice a defection. We want a high-level security official or a military officer to get on a plane and fly to Helsinki or Brussels or Warsaw and hold a press conference and say, “I’m General So-and-So and I worked in the Putin regime and I oppose this war and I oppose this regime. And here’s what the inside of that regime looks like.”
.
At the same time, Putin is working overtime to prevent any such defection while our intelligence services are working overtime to entice just such a defection—not of cultural figures, not former politicians but current security and military officials inside the regime. This happened under Stalin, when General Genrikh Lyushkov of the secret police defected to the Japanese, in 1938, with Stalin’s military and security plans and a sense of the regime. He denounced him at a press conference in Tokyo.
.
So now we’re watching Moscow. What are the dynamics there with the regime? You have to remember that these regimes practice something called “negative selection.” You’re going to promote people to be editors, and you’re going to hire writers, because they’re talented; you’re not afraid if they’re geniuses. But, in an authoritarian regime, that’s not what they do. They hire people who are a little bit, as they say in Russian, tupoi, not very bright. They hire them precisely because they won’t be too competent, too clever, to organize a coup against them. Putin surrounds himself with people who are maybe not the sharpest tools in the drawer on purpose.
.
That does two things. It enables him to feel more secure, through all his paranoia, that they’re not clever enough to take him down. But it also diminishes the power of the Russian state because you have a construction foreman who’s the defense minister [Sergei Shoigu], and he was feeding Putin all sorts of nonsense about what they were going to do in Ukraine. Negative selection does protect the leader, but it also undermines his regime.
.
But, again, we have no idea what’s going on inside. We hear chatter. There’s a lot of amazing intelligence that we’re collecting, which is scaring the Chinese, making them worry: Do we have that level of penetration of their élites as well? But the chatter is by people who don’t have a lot of face time with Putin, talking about how he might be crazy. Always, when you miscalculate, when your assumptions are bad, people think you’re crazy. Putin pretends to be crazy in order to scare us and to gain leverage.
.
Do you think that’s the case with this nuclear threat?
.
I think there’s no doubt that this is what he’s trying to do. The problem is, we can’t assume it’s a bluff. We can’t assume it’s a pose of being crazy, because he has the capability; he can push the button.
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin#intcid=_the-new-yorker-bottom-recirc_3ae6a4de-4ca8-459c-a43f-78181159b6c3_tny-900pubdates-180rundates
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