#us intelligence

I have no wards for how fucked up and shameful all of this is.

So the USPS is now corrupted.

And the suspension of habeas corpus is terrifying.

Trump administration warns student visas are a ‘privilege’ that can be revoked

Pro-Putin stooges in the West are trying to rile up public opinion by claiming that aid to Ukraine will provoke World War III.

In fact, it is Putin who already considers himself at war with the West. His agents have been assassinating critics in the West since the 2000s. And since his illegal invasion of Ukraine, Putin's agents have engaged in acts of sabotage and terrorism in NATO countries.

The attempt to assassinate German arms executive Armin Papperger is just the latest blatant act of aggression by Russia.

The plot was one of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting Ukraine’s war effort, these sources said. The plan to kill Armin Papperger, a white-haired goliath who has led the German manufacturing charge in support of Kyiv, was the most mature. When the Americans learned of the effort, they informed Germany, whose security services were then able to protect Papperger and foil the plot. A high-level German government official confirmed that Berlin was warned about the plot by the US. For more than six months, Russia has been carrying out a sabotage campaign across Europe, largely by proxy. It has recruited local amateurs for everything from arson attacks on warehouses linked to arms for Ukraine to petty acts of vandalism — all designed to stymie the flow of weapons from the West to Ukraine and blunt public support for Kyiv. But the intelligence suggesting that Russia was willing to assassinate private citizens underlined to Western officials just how far Moscow was willing to go in a parallel shadow war it is waging across the west. Papperger was an obvious target: His company, Rheinmetall, is the largest and most successful German manufacturer of the vital 155mm artillery shells that have become the make-or-break weapon in Ukraine’s grinding war of attrition. The company is opening an armored vehicle plant inside of Ukraine in the coming weeks, an effort that one source familiar with the intelligence said was deeply concerning to Russia.

People constantly pooping in their pants worrying about World War III have probably forgotten that World War II was triggered by people endlessly trying to placate Hitler.

As a practical matter, consider that Putin's "3-day special operation" is now 866 days behind schedule. At the time the invasion began he had the second most powerful military in the world; he now has the second most powerful military in Ukraine.

Even before Western countries responded to the invasion with additional arms to Ukraine, resourceful local farmers were a factor in thwarting Putin's planned conquest.

Putin was not capable of defeating Ukrainian farmers in 2022 and he's even less capable of defeating NATO in 2024.

No one can be surprised by this...