The Roundup

Why Americans should avoid traveling to Russia, the sophistication of Iranian propaganda, Putin gets sworn in to his fifth term, Zelenskyy dodges another assassination attempt and more!

On a personal note, on Monday I was congratulated by Substack for getting my first 100 subscribers. And for those 100 subscribers I have to say thank you with all my heart. Everytime I get a new subscriber or someone liking a post or restacking a post, it lets me know that I did the right thing on starting this Substack in the first place.

What is the end game for this Substack? Four things: 1) making sure that Donald Trump never returns to the White House again, 2) a total crush of the MAGA movement, which is one of the biggest threats to the United States today, 3) a total crush of the Russian government of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin cronies because Putin is the single biggest threat to world peace today, and 4) crush or neutralize the authoritarian governments in China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. The good news is that if Putin is crushed, the other governments might be easier to weaken without Putin around. Or I hope that is the case. But we shall see…

Election News

Panama has just elected former security minister José Raúl Mulino as the next president. Mulino has pledged to welcome business and investment without forgetting “those who are hungry and in need of drinking water across the country.” He stepped in to run in place of former president Ricardo Martinelli, who took refuge inside of the Nicaraguan embassy after the local courts ratified his sentence for money laundering.

Russian Propaganda is Heating Up

With the US election in November, Russia is ramping up its propaganda efforts to make sure that Donald Trump wins. Someone posted this on Twitter/X where this message said “I'm Amelia. I'm 35 years old and I live in one of the US state. I will not be VOTING for BIDEN. How about you?”

The grammar is off. It should be “one of the US states,” not “one of the US state.” The US has 50 states, not one. It's an odd way for an American to say that he/she lives in one of the US states. If you live in the United States, people already assume that you live in a US state. Usually when two Americans meet in an out-of-town place (such as a conference or convention) that draws people from all over the US or meet somewhere online, they would give the actual name of the state where they came from, such as “I'm John and I'm from New Mexico” or “I’m Gladys and I'm from North Dakota.”

But then someone noticed that “Amelia's” message is way similar to three other posts that were supposedly made by other 35-year-old women saying that they won't be voting for Biden.

Then more people noticed that the photo that was attached to the original tweet from “Amelia” came from the Instagram account of Irina Krasniak.

Another person had ran “Amelia’s” post through an IP address finder site and found that the post had originated in Moscow.

From there a parody game was born on Twitter/X where people were posting their own parodies of “Amelia’s” post, where they kept the original text but changed the pictures.

Then people changed the text and picture to create even more original parodies like this one from “David McAmerica” who is 27 years old and lives in “Texas oblast.”

Here's my contribution to the parody game.

I swiped the picture of “Olga” from an Instagram account that posts photos of Russian army women. (I have a feeling that this account swipes all of those photos from other accounts.) I only mentioned that “Maryland oblast” has a warm water port as a parody of all of those fake Russian bot posts from a few months ago talking about Texas having “warm water ports.” (It would take a separate post to fully describe the topic of Russian troll bots being obsessed with Texas.) Of course anyone with half-a-brain would know that Olga isn't really standing in Baltimore nor would a Baltimore person ever say “nyet” instead of “no” or “nope.”

The Sophistication of Iranian Propaganda on the Black Lives Matter and Pro-Palestine Movements

Moj Mahdara, an Iranian American activist, has posted this video on her Instagram account where she talks about how sophisticated Iranian propaganda really is. In some ways, they are even better at aiming propaganda at Westerners (especially at those on the left) than Russia. She goes into detail about how they infiltrated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 and they are now focusing on the pro-Palestinian movement. The main reason why Iran is doing this is that they hope that their propaganda will eventually weaken America from the inside so much that it will eventually collapse. It's obvious that Iran is playing the long game here. Everyone needs to watch this video, especially if you're currently involved in the pro-Palestinian movement.

Powerful New Ad From The Lincoln Project

One of the latest ads from The Lincoln Project hits home about how voting for Donald Trump or any other GOP politician is a vote for Vladimir Putin.

Russia is Getting Even More Repressive

A few months ago I recommended this YouTube channel called 1420—which was started by Daniil Orain as a way of very discreetly conducting street interviews of regular Russians to get their opinions on a variety of topics—as the best way for any Westerner to gain insight on the attitudes and opinions of the Russian people. It was a very risky endeavor for Orain and there were times when he had to abruptly end an interview because he spotted a cop nearby.

Orain has stopped doing the street interviews. The name of the channel has changed to Archives of 1420 by Daniil Orain and the last video was uploaded a month ago. He made this video where he explains why he decided to stop doing those street interviews.

Daniil Orain has started another YouTube channel that's simply called, well, Daniil Orain. It shows Orain sitting in a room behind a desk where he explains what is going on in Russia at the moment. One such example is that Russia has instituted a new wave of arrests of journalists and people now risk jail for holding a photo of the recently murdered dissident Alexei Navalny in public on the grounds that Nalvany's photo is now considered to be “extremist material.”

At least Orain has kept his old street interview videos online so you can still get a look at the views of the average Russians on a variety of issues.

Why Americans Need to Heed the US State Department's Advice Against Traveling to Russia

The State Department has warned Americans not to go to Russia ever since the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. There are Americans who are currently in Russian prisons—many of them held on trumped up charges—who have no idea if they will ever experience freedom again.

But some Americans aren't listening. One example is Gordon Black, a US staff sergeant who was stationed in South Korea. During his time there he met a Russian woman who lived in South Korea and they began a relationship. But then the relationship soured and she moved to Vladivostok in her native Russia.

Gordon Black was on leave while he was preparing to transfer back to the United States. He decided to take a flight to Vladivostok, without getting any authorization from his superiors, in an effort to meet his Russian sweetheart once again only to get arrested once he arrived. He has been charged with “theft causing significant damage to a citizen.” Now he's being held in a Russian prison for at least two months and his future is very uncertain. If he's lucky he might be used in a prison swap with the US. But it's possible that he might end up languishing in a Russian jail for years. All this could have been avoided had he not taken that flight to Vladivostok in the first place.

Despite the increasing risk of arrest in Russia on a variety of dubious charges, there are Americans who have made the move to Russia. The Daily Mail has a recent article about them (which includes the man behind the popular YouTube channel EXPAT American). The reasons why they made the move and are happy in their new country included their contention that Russia feels like how the US was back in the 1950s and about 20% of the Russian women look like supermodels.

The only thing I'm going to say about the Americans profiled in that Daily Mail article is that Russell “Texas” Bentley was an American who was also very happy when he moved to the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk (he used to give tours of the place to the few tourists who would actually visit), became a Russian citizen, and made English-language propaganda for the Russians until he was killed by those same Russians recently.

Inauguration Day in Russia

Russia had its Inauguration Day this week and Vladimir Putin was sworn in for his fifth term as president. (Yawn!) BBC News began its story about the inauguration with this sentence: “He could probably have walked it [to his inauguration] blindfolded.”

Another Zelenskyy Assassination Attempt Thwarted

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again managed to survive an assassination attempt. This one involved serving colonels, whose job it was to keep officials and institutions safe, allegedly hired as moles. Other targets included military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov and SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk. Malyuk said that this attempt was supposed to be a gift to Vladimir Putin before his inauguration for a fifth term as president of Russia. So much for that gift!

Barron Trump Will Be Fair Game Soon

Back in March I mentioned that just because Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron, is 18 doesn’t mean that he is fair game for any criticism. I said that we all need to hold off on criticizing Barron because he was still in high school and he still hadn’t said or done anything publicly that would warrant any kind of an attack.

Well Barron Trump is about to enter the political limelight. Not too long after his high school graduation, Barron will be serving as one of the delegates-at-large for the state of Florida at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Wisconsin in July. While that doesn’t mean that he should be attacked on day one of his delegate-at-large duties, if he says something offensive or he screws up in a major way then he would be fair game.

Barron will be serving alongside other delegates-at-large, including his half-siblings Eric, Donald Jr., and Tiffany, as well as Donald Jr.’s fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Tiffany's husband, Michael Boulous. It's going to be a total family affair. You just need to wait only two more months before you can begin to make your online comments about Barron, especially if he does something stupid or bad.

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