Originally published at: EXCLUSIVE: He Accidentally Won a Michigan House Primary. He Also Attended the Jan 6 Protest. - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Tom Smith sort of stumbled into the Republican nomination in his Michigan House district. But based on dozens of posts he made on social media, Smith’s path to the Jan. 6, 2021 protests against President Donald Trump’s election loss was far more deliberate. After unearthing the series of messages, which were posted to the X.com…
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Nothin’ (with them) is ever a coincidence.
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CIA director Ratcliffe’s 8-hour visit to Moscow in a very large plane may be related to Russia’s attack on a military plane in Germany.
Update: Putin will likely wait for parliamentary elections in Russia (September 18-20) to take place and perhaps the distraction of the US midterms (November 3) to make a large military move like the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Current events consider mobilization in Kaliningrad, and clearing of border areas. In any case, the war of attrition will continue and no backing-off from Russia. The mid-20th century philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis noted that Russia was not a communist or socialist state so much as a bureaucratic capitalist state with centralized control. The tendency to continue building such a state is irreversible in the state’s own imagination. Hence, the collapse of the USSR occurred with a whimper, and after 1998 it was back to business as usual. Castoriadis wrote in the post-WWII years:
“The concentration of capital and technical developments necessitate ever larger investments. These requirements can only be met through increased exploitation of the proletariat. But this very exploitation soon comes up against an insurmountable obstacle, namely, the fall in the productivity of labor when labor is overexploited. From this stage on there is only one solution possible for the exploiters, whether bourgeois or bureaucrats: external expansion through the annexation of the capital, the raw materials, and even the proletariat of their opponent.
This is merely the supreme expression of the fundamental tendency of concentrated capital, the tendency to expand not merely in relation to its own absolute size but in accordance with its dominant position in the worldwide relation of forces. Today this means the appropriation not merely of a larger share of the profits but of all the profits. One can appropriate all the profits for oneself, however, only if one appropriates all the conditions and sources of profit, in other words, if one secures domination over the entire world economy.”
While Putin knows he cannot secure domination of the entire world economy, he understands there is a struggle to do so by different power blocs, and he can certainly act as a disruptor in achieving a certain outcome. All or nothing. There was this notion, pushed especially in the early 2000s, that Russia was becoming a “normal country”, but the events of 2012 and thereafter, which saw the rise of the silioviki and empire visions, showed this was not the case. The West and particularly Ukraine have been exhausted by Putin’s crazy war, and it has ruined quality of life in Russia. But Putin keeps his eyes on the prize, even as he is about to keep on keeping on blathering about taking all of the Donbas and rattling his nukes.
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The current GOP, the Pro-Crime Party!
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. I did not enter the Capitol or trespass on restricted grounds,” Smith said.
Prove it!
You were still protesting, the peaceful transfer of power that is quaranteed in the Constitution and now you want to be in that body? As what, a fifth column?