Argument: Seizure of Evan Gershkovich Justifies Seizure of Russian Assets
Current Event: Russia will soon secretly try Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich who has been in Lefortovo Prison for over one year. Argument: The United States should exercise seizure powers against Russian international assets and properties over and above economic sanction seizures for every innocent American Moscow seizes as human leverage with which to…
Argument: Iran’s Theocratic Regime is No Longer a Legitimate Nation State Government
Argument: The theocratic dictatorship of Iran is so deeply involved in terror sponsorship, principal-agent terror relationships, terrorist proxy supply, and destabilization activities adversely affecting other legitimate nation states that it can no longer be considered a legitimate nation state government itself. Iran rather fits the description of a terrorist organization occupying a former nation state’s…
Keeping It Real: Reminders About The Dictators’ Club
The Dictators’ Club uses force, corruption, subversion, degradation, reeducation camps, unjust prosecutions, assassinations, and systematic lies to try to destroy opponents, dismantle free nations, and wage gray and open warfare to realize their expansionist plans. They are not likely to change unless they have to do so. Reminder on the Nature of Today’s Autocrat Regimes…
Designate Wagner Group and Putin Regime as a Transnational Terrorist Joint Venture in Ukraine
Ukraine and similarly situated independent states on Russia’s periphery suffer under the U.N. fiction that international humanitarian law (law of war or IHL) governs to protect them from a U.N.S.C. veto-wielding Russia while it is under the sway of Putin’s expansionist regime. It does not. The buck has never stopped on a despotic Russian veto…
Multilateral Supply Suppression in Support of Ukraine
Argument The “Ukraine Defense Contact Support Group” (DCG) and others supporting Ukraine should take collective action to suppress international supply lines of bombs and weapons to the Russian Federation for use against Ukraine and Ukrainian civilian targets under the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings,(CSTB) despite near certain anticipated challenges under Article 19(2) of…
Target Logic: Shahed-136 Drones
The Russians are aiming Shahed-136 drones at Ukrainian energy nodes, buildings, and other infrastructure items, such as communications. The Shahed-136 suicide drone uses commercially available GPS as a guidance system, making it susceptible to jamming devices. In December 2021, Israel’s Jerusalem Post published a well-informed advance warning of the capabilities of Iran’s Shahed-136 including longer range,…
Germany’s Choice Shines a Light on Moscow’s Strategy
The Nord Stream gas pipeline deal between Russia and Germany could enter its own coma along with Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, in whose system German military physicians found the Soviet nerve agent Novichok. In light of Moscow’s continuing willingness to use state terror to get its way, Berlin should question what authoritarian strings will be attached to the…