Candelestine

To be fair, a multipolar world is fine. It's not in our, or anyone else's really, interests to try to dictate to other overseas peoples how they should structure their lives and governments. We did give it a shot, make no mistake, but it doesn't tend to work out all that well.

We have no ability to stop the rise of places like China and India though, so fine, rise. We'll only run into problems if this whole "spheres of influence" thing makes them think they can attack someone we have a security treaty with. That would be a problem.

You want to use economic or social power instead of military power though? Try to convince people instead of force them at gunpoint? Fine. No big deal. These methods honor their freedom. That's a multipolar world we can work with.

Tucker is our most famous right-winger. That's basically it. He can say whatever the hell he wants, due to our first amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This includes a freedom to willfully lie, unfortunately, unless one has been placed under oath.

No one wants this war, or wishes it on anyone,” said Tal Beeri of the Alma Research and Education Center

Bit naive imo. Netanyahu is a bit of a strongman that catastrophically failed to keep his people safe, which betrays the most foundational appeal of such a figure. His approval rating demonstrates this, and he's facing criminal charges to boot.

He has one route forward for personal preservation--more war.

If our government is too paralyzed to help fund their defense, there are ways to bypass that.

A lot of the pro-Ukrainian youtube celebrities, guys like Artur Rehi, organize nonprofit fundraisers to buy necessary military equipment for them, and then dude goes and drives it there himself from his home in Estonia. And videos the whole thing and publishes it on his youtube, so people can see what their donations bought. Transparently.

What they need most is drones capable of carrying a weaponized payload, and those don't require a full-on military-industrial complex to supply. A person can just buy 50 from normal commercial suppliers and send them, and that is very directly helpful assistance.

We may need Uncle Sam to help out with the Bradleys and F-16s and such, but so much of this war has been and continues to be waged by light infantry using whatever they can get their hands on.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Yeah, I don't think they care.

Anyone else find it funny how the values bleed over in both directions? It's westerners that would complain about discrimination, in Russia, that's just life. Life is hard, so no whining, more or less. Off to the front lines with you.

I am well aware that much of the work occurs behind the scenes. However, that does not excuse numerous failures. I am not willing to simply give them the benefit of the doubt and my trust, a position that I simply find prudent. They are an agency of my democratic government, and we should pay attention and be critical.

Fair point. Though I still do not think their "counter-intel is fine". Ukrainian counter-intel appears strong, but ours is lacking, unless you count the work of journalists. The work of civilians like Christo Grozev should not be necessary though.

Counter-intelligence work does not require one to move to China or Russia when the targets that need detection are not operating in China or Russia.

I'm saying that very few of our institutions have the resources and experience necessary to fight back against any form of espionage. Our intelligence agencies do, so I would appreciate a pivot from intelligence-gathering and destabilization operations, which are a part of their mission, to counter-intelligence against our rivals, which is also part of their mission. This seems to have been neglected, given how Russian spies have managed to perform assassinations in the west, become Italian admirals and German fintech CEOs, and do on-the-ground surveillance in Ukraine in support of their invasion.

I am deeply disappointed in our CIA these days. Their intelligence gathering is fine, but they should be protecting us as well.

Problem with espionage assets is they're hard to catch. I think they're popping out of the woodwork now because Russia is leveraging them too hard as an asset, out of blatant desperation. Once high ranking ones are detected and removed, they're time consuming to replace.

Over the short scales of a single war, they're a finite asset. Just like missiles. Can't be replenished in the quantities that you'd really like to have.