Since he is not paranoid, then he can sit closer to his people in a conference, right?
Posted on 01/13/2024 4:26:30 AM PST by FarCenter
A man under arrest by Russian internal security forces was seen confessing to a “crime”, in video posted on January 2.
He had been apprehended after allegedly posting a video on social media that purportedly showed air defenses near the Russian city of Belgorod. This city, on the border with Ukraine, was the target of Ukrainian missile attacks on the same day.
What was notable, though, about this confessional was that the man was flanked by two internal security officers who had the word Smersh emblazoned on the backs of their jackets.
Many people in the West remember Smersh from Ian Fleming’s early James Bond novels (and early films).
But there was nothing fictitious about Smersh itself. It was a real counterintelligence agency set up in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Indeed, the name Smersh (a blend of Russian words Smert’ Shpionam which translates into English as “death to spies”), was supposedly coined by Stalin himself. The fact that Smersh – with its alarming moniker – has reappeared may be seen as a further indication of the increasing clampdown on all forms of internal dissent in Russia.
...
In March 2023, Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-installed political leader of occupied Crimea, proposed the creation of a counterintelligence organization reminiscent of Smersh. This was due to his concern about a purported “fifth column” operating within Crimea.
Aksyonov’s proposal was implemented on December 4, 2023, when Lieutenant General Andrei Gurulev, from the Russian Duma’s committee on defense, announced the revival of Smersh in the “new territories” – that is, in those areas of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces.
The new Smersh, said Gurulev, would be an agency that will “work in approximately the same way in the new territories as did the old Smersh in the Soviet Union.”
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
Without reading the whole article, I’m guessing it’s because Putin is just as a much of a paranoid, mass-murdering thug as Stalin ever was and he’s getting desperate.
How close was I?
I don’t think Putin is paranoid. He really does have enemies.
For the same reason Biden has weaponized the DOJ, FBI, CIA, IRS and the courts: power.
all central governments will be resorting to this stuff.
Information dissemination leads to inevitable decentralization and the fall of millennia old power constructs
It’s cyclical. Episodes such as the Black Death, Reformation, Thirty Years War, Napoleonic Wars, and WW I&II destroy old power structures and level societies to some extents.
Then the population resumes expansion, resources become more expensive and scarce, society becomes more hierarchical and the stage is set for the next episode of “let them eat cake”.
We are now at about 80 years from the end of WW II, so the next expected cataclysm should be in a couple decades. It’s sort of 1890 or 1770.
The Black Death is currently destroying the American City States
Cultural analysis
yah...except this time around “too big to fail” is prolonging the inevitable
That pic looks like a power trip. “I get to sit at the head of the table. You get to sit where I tell you to sit.”
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