#musk and Putin

[rejectingrepublicans]

🎶

To the tune of Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

🖕

[socialjusticeinamerica]

It’s no comfort that no matter how bad we think our problems are it’s always worse someplace else.

[republicansaretheproblem]

[strawlessandbraless]

November 5th is coming

Like to charge, reblog to cast

[sleepy-bebby]

Wha-

Oh you mean like Russia’s sovereign wealth fund???

[chaoticace22]

i'm back on my bullshit hope it's okay

[fuck-u-maga]

[justacynicalromantic]

Elon Musk was forced to reveal who financed his purchase of Twitter. Amongst owners are two Russian oligarchs close to Putin and sanctioned over the Russian invasion of Ukraine: Petr Aven and Vadim Moshkovich.

Petr Aven is a Russian billionaire, founder of Alfa Group, which is one of the main wallets for Putin. Aven also attended a meeting with Putin on February 24, 2022 to mark the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

Vadim Moshkovich owns Russia's largest agricultural holding Rusagro. Naturally, he also attended the meeting with Putin on February 24, 2022 and, like Aven, did not protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[charlesoberonn]

Fascist and pro-Putin propagandists Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk are trying to exploit the fact there're no good English sources on Gonzalo Lira to pass off their narrative that he's some brave dissident persecuted by a cruel tyrannical Zelensky.

Gonzalo Lira isn't a journalist. He's a YouTuber. He wasn't arrested for criticizing the Zelensky government (he's been doing it for years), he was arrested on suspicion of collusion with the Russian government.

The fact he's been spreading pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation since the before the war, appeared on Russian state-owned networks, and has a Russian official pleading on his behalf, makes me suspect the same thing.

As for the torture, that is just a straight up fabrication. No source for it whatsoever.

I know the Ukraine war has been bumped off the radar of a lot of people by newer flashier conflicts, but it's still extremely important to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people against Putin's invasion and his many cronies like Tucker and Elon.

[tomorrowusa]

Historian and writer on democracy Timothy Snyder says that there should be no question as to who is dominant in the Musk-Trump relationship.

Allies and aides to Donald Trump should be increasingly concerned by Elon Musk’s proximity to and influence on the US president-elect, the Yale historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder said. “Trump is a little guy, and Musk is a big guy when it actually comes to having money,” Snyder said. “And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.” [ ... ] Snyder expects that Trump’s soon-to-be home, the White House, will be a stage for uncomfortable and damaging discord between the president-elect and his most powerful ally, the world’s richest man. “I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk,” Snyder said. “People can’t help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn’t. He’s never really had money. He’s never even really claimed to have money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money. But he’s never been able to pay his own debts. He’s never been able to finance his own campaigns. “Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially.” [ ... ] Since Trump’s victory in November, from Mar-a-Lago in Florida to Notre Dame in Paris, Musk has been constantly at Trump’s side, earning the satirical nickname “first buddy” but also an appointment with the biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy to jointly head the “department of government efficiency”, or “Doge”, a group tasked with meeting Trump’s wildly ambitious campaign promise of slashing trillions from federal spending. Considering instances of Musk’s apparent influence over Trump as the president-elect has struggled to control congressional Republicans – an unruly party already split on how to continue funding the government they also want to defund – Snyder said: “All the threats that Trump is now going to issue – ‘I’m going to primary people, I’m going to sue people’ – Musk is going to pay for that, not Trump. And when Trump needs money for anything, he’s going to be asking Musk. “Unless Trump breaks it off right now, he’s going to be in this kind of dependent relationship for the rest of the way, because you get used to people giving you money … and I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.”

Prof. Snyder has invented a name for this peculiar relationship.

“So I thought about this dependency position,” Snyder said. “I was going to call it Muskotrumpovia, because I think Musk is a more important person, but Trumpomuskovia had a nicer ring to it. “And also, I wanted Muskovia because I wanted the idea of Russia to be there in the background, because a lot of smart Russia hands are saying this all the time: this is kind of like the 1990s in Russia. You have the doddering, rich-but-not-very-rich president [Boris Yeltsin], surrounded by more youthful, more active, ambitious oligarchs. That’s the kind of scenario [America is] in.”

Trump thinks he's Vladimir Putin but he's more like Boris Yeltsin – but stupid instead of drunk like ol' Boris.

[rejectingrepublicans]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This clown couldn’t even pass a background check. He’s not an actual employee. He reports to Putin an Xi directly. WTF!

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[republicansaretheproblem]

[contemplatingoutlander]

TIMOTHY SNYDER: I am sending around "Oligarchs’ Island" again, in the immodest conviction that this little satire will have more analytic and predictive power than most of what you read or watch this coming year. snyder.substack.com/p/oligarchs-...

"Oligarchy is an island.  Aristotle knew that oligarchs from various countries will have more in common with one another than they will with their own people.  This is all too true of Trump and the oligarchs he brings to power in America." --Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder creates an unusual metaphor in "Oligarchs' Island," that nevertheless works. Below is the "cast."

Gilligan = Elon Musk, "the South African Putinist oligarch.... Like Gilligan, Musk bumbles with language and relationships and everything else, but has an undeniable centrality to the plot and to life on the island." 

The Skipper = David Sachs, "the South African Putinist venture capitalist.... Sachs is, of all of our characters the most devoted proponent of the Russian dream.... If anyone on Oligarchs’ Island diverges from the Putinist line, they can expect humorless discipline from Sachs." 

Thurston Howell (The Millionaire) = Peter Thiel, "the American investor with New Zealand citizenship, born in Germany and raised in South Africa.... Just as Thurston Howell was disturbed by Gilligan's frantic activity, Thiel can be displeased with Musk.... Howell refuses to work; Thiel activates others to do destructive one another." 

 Lovey Howell (The Millionaire's wife)= JD Vance--"Lovey is a subordinate character to Thurston on Gilligan's Island, just as Vance is Thiel's client.... Both Lovey and JD are vain about appearance and correspondingly bold in their cosmetic choices."

Ginger Grant = Donald Trump--"these two characters share character and career. Both are vain entertainers.... Both are sensitive to the appearance that they might not matter that much to the overall plot."  

The Professor = Vladimir Putin, "Russian dictator and in all likelihood the world's wealthiest man. Whenever the people stranded on Gilligan's Island have a problem, they turn to the Professor.... The Professor has a dark secret: he is not as competent as the others think.... Putin also has secrets.... He knows that the Russia of its own propaganda does not exist, that the oligarchs' dream is a nightmare.  He also knows that today's oligarchs are tomorrow's victims."  

 Mary Ann = Usha Vance--"Mary Ann is the forgotten character on Gilligan's Island, the one who is perhaps more than she seems.  She knows how to remain in the background, but in fact has skills that the men around her lack.... she develops plans and cultivates allies."

Here's an excerpt showing how "Oligarch's Island" works as a metaphor:

I suspect that... thinking of an Oligarchs' Island sitcom episode will accurately predict what these people will do.  Consider what is happening right now as episode 1 of season 1: Ginger (Trump) has the idea that she should make her own decisions about the members of her cabinet (cue recorded laughter).  Some Americans not involved in Russian networks such as Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley share the belief (cue recorded laughter) that they might join Ginger's cabinet (more cued laughter here, obvious misunderstanding of the Putinist logic of Oligarchs' Island).  Those two Americans maintain that Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine, and so are predictably rejected by the Russian-South African oligarchy.  The Skipper (Sachs) is on the case with a stern tweet: Ginger's appointments must be pro-Russian.  Ginger follows with her own submissive tweet, discarding Pompeo and Haley.  Ginger hopes to at least get her instructions directly from the Professor (Putin).  Ginger claims that she was able to call the Professor (cue laughter).  The Professor denies the call took place (cue more laughter).  Ginger says she asked the Professor not to escalate in Ukraine.  The next day Ukraine suffered one of the biggest drone attacks of the war.  Then the Russians blew up another dam in Ukraine. Those things happened.  The ridiculous and the criminal.

[edited]

____________________ NOTE.:The Gilligan image was modified from its original Bluesky source to emulate the typical formatting of substack's automated quotes.