Stay with me, here, okay? The apparent suicide of a fired Transport Minister is raising more questions than answers. Was it actually suicide? Or was it “Suicide”? As an example, remember the days when a man and his daughter were poisoned with a toxic nerve agent? That would be Sergei and Yulia Skripal, and this nasty stuff called Novichok. So this month, Roman Starovoit died by suicide. It’s certainly convenient. It’s always convenient. No official reason was given for his firing. He was apparently under investigation for embezzling.
Why am I telling you this? Because it happened in a country where our president admires their president. This is what he wants – dictatorial control. And I bet he would enjoy making “examples” of his supposed enemies, which are 95% of the US. MAGA is a known quantity that he knows is rabidly supporting him. Anyone else who says something against tRump, or pushes back, is his enemy. If you take out MAGA and, oh yea, the GOP, that’s a lot of room for enemies. If you say something, do something, call someone, and it gets back to him? Yoikes! Let me show you a bit of this article from CNN:
More than three years into Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine, the Kremlin’s political vice is tightening again. Fealty to the regime is no guarantee of safety, and there are fewer places to hide from increasingly brutal consequences. For Russians with long memories, old fears are rising. “There’s a smell of Stalinism from this story,” wrote exiled Russian dissident Ilya Yashin on X. And that stench is permeating beyond the halls of the transport ministry. With Putin now settled into the second year of his fifth presidential term, the Kremlin has in recent weeks been moving to shut down any remaining threats.
Now you have an idea of why I’m concerned. We all know Trumpolini loves Putin and wants to be like him. He is already shoving the country into authoritarian rule. It gets worse every day. Our options are decreasing. BUT. No one is giving up on fighting this crazy man-child. I’m putting this out there because we need to know.
All of those in the US need to know how TrumpleThinSkin trying to emulate Putin. The problem is that he doesn’t have the self-control for it, as witnessed by the 2 am Truth Social explosions. But as he dives into authoritarianism, it’s something that needs to be watched by all of us. I saw a different article today about ICE using tear gas on migrant workers at a farm, for heaven’s sake! That was purely an (unneeded) example of showing power.
Independent election monitoring, already on its last legs in Russia, may now also be a thing of the past. On Tuesday, Golos, Russia’s only remaining independent election watchdog, announced it was closing down. The decision, it said, came after its co-chair Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to five years in prison in late May, after a court found him guilty of running activities for European election monitoring network ENEMO, deemed by Russia to be an “undesirable organization.” Golos denies the Soviet Union charge, but said the verdict put all its participants at risk of criminal prosecution. The Golos case, opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza argues in a Washington Post op-ed, smacks of another Putin trademark: holding long-term grievances and meting out delayed retribution.
Kara-Murza believes that Golos’ original sin was not in 2024, but in documenting widespread parliamentary election violations in 2011, the year Putin announced he would return to the presidency after a brief hiatus as prime minister. The protests that followed were the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union. “It was a real scare for Putin, his moment of greatest weakness,” writes Kara-Murza. “And he never forgave those who, as he put it, attempted a ‘color revolution’ in Russia. This is the real reason for Grigory Melkonyants’s prison sentence. And it’s not just politics where the pressure is rising.
Remember El Presidente Imbécil’s oligarchs? All the people who put money into his campaign and then got positions in his cabinet, or, say, became a ‘special government employee’? That’s called CYA, folks. For one thing, they had it to spare. For another, they knew how much Agent Orange LOVES money, because it’s all about the grift. Being on his cabinet is a grift in and of itself. A lot of things can be done when you have a position in the government.
Let’s remember that we are a democracy, but we need to take the lesson of Putin to heart. That’s where tRump’s shenanigans are leading. I don’t want to worry about everything I say or everything I post here. Yes, we are a small blog. Still, we keep saying the quiet parts out loud. I hope others will see this too. It’s needed. And we need to keep fighting. We will!
Thanks for sticking with me!
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