The US warned Moscow that ISIS militants were determined to target Russia in the days before assailants stormed the Crocus City Hall in an attack that killed scores of people, but President Vladimir Putin rejected the advice as “provocative.” … Earlier this month, the US embassy in Russia had said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts, and it warned US citizens to avoid such places.
I fully expect Putin will do everything he can to exploit this tragic attack for his own geopolitical goals, just as Republicans did in the wake of 9/11.
That doesn’t mean we should assume that Putin had any role in orchestrating the attack. He’s got plenty of blood on his hands without us inventing a new convoluted Truther conspiracy movement.
I was just admiring this wonderful electrum pectoral last night, while re-reading Manfred Lurker’s fine work, An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Egypt.
Jesus, let’s not get into the conspiracy theories, alright… Yes, Putin likes to go after his internal “enemies” that he sees as a threat and doesn’t think much of protecting Russian lives, but FFS, this is not some inside operation. I’m really tired of that line, given where it’s led us. It can be true that Putin likes plots and that the ISIL pulled off this attack and had their own reasons for it…
An old hippie band called picnic.
Because it’s part of their ideology that the west is Christian and the Middle east is Muslim. Even if people aren’t practicing Christians, they’re still Christian. It’s not accurate, but it’s part of their ideological understanding of the world. They are fighting “crusaders” in their view.
Okay. Good for you, I guess.
Right… that’s conspiracy bullshit and unless there is some proof, we should reject it out of hand.
Others have said, but I think we should be very clear leaders like Putin are not masterminds playing 5D chess, they are thugs. His complete failure to come up with any plan B in Ukraine besides attrition and war crimes for the hell of it should have made it clear. Of course he will try to turn anything that happens to his advantage, like any bully, but that doesn’t mean he is pulling strings. He is dangerous because he’s willing to be violent not because he’s brilliant.
thinking that they are some kind of tactical geniuses gives him (and other fascists) far too much credit, frankly. While things are not going well for Ukraine right now, let’s not forget, he believed it was going to be a cake walk and he’d be done with the war in like a couple of weeks.
Plus, this attack doesn’t even really fit with either his style or his motives. It doesn’t make Putin look righteous or strong; it makes it look like he dropped the ball on domestic national security because he’s overextended the country’s military efforts in Ukraine.
If he is able to turn the tragedy to his own advantage that will be due to how he spins the narrative, not due to the nature of the attack itself.
Yeah. Things are not going well for Ukraine because they have a population of 38 million, Russia has a population of 144 million, and if Putin has to lose more men than Ukraine has people then that’s the price he’s willing to pay. He has shown no military competence at all, just determination to never back down.
Edit: fixed the numbers. Sorry. I don’t know how I screwed that up considering I did double-check for current figures.
Not really. People were killed. I hate having such expectations met. And like @Brainspore noted, Putin has no shame and will work to exploit these deaths to justify his own selfish, callous, cruel behavior.
Oh yeah, Russia has very bad demographics. (Ukraine, as another post-Soviet state, has similarly poor, if maybe not quite as bad, demographics so that doesn’t help very much.)
There’s an argument that Putin invaded Ukraine for demographic reasons, on a now or never basis. A few more decades and Russian wouldn’t have enough men for the army, while conquering Ukraine would mean bagging 38 million more people, most of whom are Slavs who could (in the Russian imagination) be indoctrinated to be loyal Russians.
They were a much less wholesome local business; but there was also the “Isis Mobile Wallet” joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; which had the…exquisite…timing to launch in late 2013.
It was relatively swiftly given a suitably banal rebrand to ‘Softcard’; and is now a husk absorbed into Google somewhere.
