Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
@Kasparov63
Jan 2, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
🎯 Inconstancy is deadly. It also further exposes the futility of defense-only support. A nation cannot long survive under constant barrages even if they shoot down 90%. They have to be able to go on offense, to destroy the launchers, to raise the costs for Russia.
Allowing Putin to murder Ukrainian civilians daily for "as long as it takes" is unacceptable. If its allies want to war to end, Ukraine must be armed to win. If this doesn’t happen, Putin believes he can wait out Western aid.
How pathetic it is that after two years of Putin's all-out war on Ukraine, EU & US support wavers more than China, Iran, and North Korea's for Russia. The free world has every advantage except will. Economic & military might to crush Russia in Ukraine 10 times over and it sits.
The cost will be far higher when NATO is involved directly. And why wouldn’t Putin do it, after its most powerful member states keep backing down now? Remember, the risk isn’t if Russia can win, it's if Putin thinks the West won’t fight. Same for Taiwan.
NATO is a piece of paper in the end, and without the collective will to fight, its defense promises are worthless. When Russia increases hybrid warfare against Poland and Latvia, will the US and Germany rush to their aid or find more excuses? What does Putin see now?
The Republicans are blocking Ukraine aid so they can say Biden wasted billions if things get worse. The White House can refute that cynical ploy by using executive power to do what is right for American interests by seizing Russian assets and arming Ukraine to win now.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Kasparov63

Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Feb 12
Are even the largest American banks now rushing to bend the knee to Trump? After years of @Renew_Democracy sending donated money via our @Chase account to fund humanitarian causes in Ukraine, this week became a nightmare, especially for those most in need. Full report follows.
I believe in coincidences, but JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon are going to have to convince me this doesn't have anything to do with Trump's lawsuit against them and rumors they are dropping "politically sensitive" accounts now.
Here is what happened in detail, and the subsequent obfuscation and apparent account closure that followed what was first good faith support for routine transactions seems very strange. What of it, @Chase? @ChaseSupport? People must suffer for Dimon to make amends with the White House? Your customers deserve better. Ukrainians deserve better. I demand a response.

Since Monday afternoon, Feb 9, @Renew_Democracy’s team has been trying to provide funding for humanitarian support to people in Ukraine, as we have for years. But starting Monday, Chase Bank made this complicated and then impossible, and now appears to be closing our accounts without explanation.
-One of our team members has spent the better part of the last 3 days on the phone with countless teams at Chase to wire the money to our recipients.
-Every time we submitted a wire request, we went through hours of follow-up. Each time they promised that the wire would be sent. Each time it was refused with conflicting reasons (or no reason at all) given.
-The first time, they claimed it was because the transaction had been “flagged by the U.S. Treasury.” This was false. Our legal counsel checked every recipient and all are 100% clean. Chase ultimately agreed that this was not the issue.
-After the 2nd failure, they brought in several members of different teams all arguing with one another about whose responsibility it was to get this money out the door and providing conflicting information about what should be done in a marathon 2+ hour phone call. The conclusion was that it was a simple processing failure.
-So we tried again. No reason was given for the 3rd failure.
-After the 4th failure, they finally notified us that the actual wire limit was literally half of the official wire limit that they had initially communicated to us. This is an incredibly basic piece of information that should not have taken 4 wire transfer failures and countless hours to communicate.
-So with this in mind, we made a 5th attempt with the newly-discovered correct limit in place, which again, inexplicably failed.
-So while Ukrainians freeze and die, Chase has been giving us the run-around. While we assumed at first that they were acting in good faith to rectify the problem, Chase has now informed us that they are closing our bank accounts and credit cards. No reason given.
-To sum up, Chase has prevented us from sending life-saving aid to Ukraine and appears to have closed our accounts for trying to do so.
Read 4 tweets
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Feb 8
You are only told to stick to sports when you say something those critics disagree with. I heard it from Communists, from Putinists, and when I criticized Obama‘s Russia policy. Today I hear "stick to chess" from MAGA, who would also censor US athletes the way dictatorships do.
Of course MAGA celebrates musicians & athletes who publicly praise Trump. It’s merely a cudgel, a cynical & hypocritical attempt to silence. I don’t favor turning actual events into political stages, but press conferences? Interviews? Either you have free speech or you don’t.
US Olympians represent the United States, not Trump. To conflate the leader with the nation and the flag is a common autocratic tactic. Criticizing the government is the most American thing, illustrated by the counter-example of dictatorships where it lands you in jail.
Read 4 tweets
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Feb 2
Trump isn’t being fooled by Putin. He doesn’t trust him or believe him. It’s worse. He agrees with him. Trump wants what Putin wants, envies what Putin has, and is imitating Putin’s transformation of Russia into a dictatorship.
Any help the Trump admin provides Ukraine will be happen only if it is overwhelmingly in Trump's personal interest, like everything else he does. Congress locking down his agenda until he restarts US aid to Ukraine and applies strong sanctions on Russia, for example.
Support for Ukraine is popular with Americans, even Republicans, but Trump doesn’t budge on this issue, loyal to Putin since 2016 despite Putin spitting in his face repeatedly. Unfortunately, the GOP won’t challenge Trump on this or anything else.
Read 5 tweets
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Jan 24
Yes, as I wrote in my "Putinization of America" articles in the Atlantic. ICE is Trump's Rosgvardia, given impunity (or "total immunity" in Vance's words) for loyalty to Trump personally. Encouraged to violate the law, then told they'll be punished only if MAGA loses power, etc.
"This is why the resistance must center the principles at stake. Does America have rule of law or not? The first line in defense of an incipient police state is: “You don’t have anything to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong.” This fallacy is soon replaced by: “It could happen to anybody,” as the regime sees the value of using arbitrary persecution to spread fear. Again, fear is the autocrat’s goal, as is simply doing many things every day. Even if you don’t like him or his policies, the longer he is there, doing things, the more the autocrat starts to feel inevitable, like the sun rising each morning.

In politics, as in physics, force is mass times acceleration. The administration is mounting a barrage of attacks, with great urgency, to break through the resistance of American legal structures, sometimes by using legal and relatively popular policies (deporting convicted criminals, for example) as cover for likely illegal and relatively unpopular policies (deporting immigrants without due process). The fabricated urgency is a tell: No war, no terrible crisis, compels the president to violate the Constitution. But the administration is breaking down norms and setting precedents faster than judges can stop it. Of course, ignoring judges is also part of the plan."

theatlantic.com/international/…
Also, in my Next Move substack in July, more specifically: "In 2016, Vladimir Putin created Rosgvardiya—a new, militarized domestic law enforcement apparatus. Russia had no shortage of police agencies; it inherited several from the Soviet Union, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). So what made Rosgvardiya different? It operated directly under Putin’s authority.

Unlike Putin and Rosgvardiya, Trump did not create ICE. However, the 50% boost in ICE’s ranks that Trump is pursuing under OBBBA would change the face of any agency. Now that Gavin Newsom has taken Trump to court over the latter’s deployment of the California National Guard, the president is likely looking for more hassle-free and pliant institutions to do his bidding, and ICE could be the perfect outlet for those ambitions. If nothing else, ICE’s behavior in the past half year ought to make a dramatic expansion of the agency the object of intense public scrutiny."
thenextmove.org/p/dont-miss-th…
Read 4 tweets
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Jan 24
Trying to predict the outrages of autocrats is hopeless because their superpower is to generate constant shocks to dominate the environment. But what’s happening in Minnesota is method, not madness. Trump wants violence, to radicalize & divide, to create pretext for crackdowns.
First, to claim only he can solve the crisis (that he is creating), a typical formula. Chaos & violence push people toward a "law and order" strongman. Also, as the midterms approach, the grounds must be prepared for interfering with the democratic process for "security" reasons.
Having lived through a similar, nationwide version of this in Trump's model, Putin's Russia, it’s not easy to fight against. And Trump and many of his gang have passed the point at which they feel they can afford to lose power, even in Congress. It’s a perilous moment.
Read 6 tweets
Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Jan 15
When you think of despots and media, it's often of Big Brother on every screen or Pravda publishing the party line. That may be how it ends, but that's not how it starts. Chilling effects, appeasement, producers and publishers toeing the line unquestioningly. My latest:
It's natural to question the source when something is published by an outlet known to be in the tank, or in the pocket, of a partisan owner. But when a previously respected outlet like CBS suddenly starts acting like a White House press shop, few are prepared.
As documented about the fall of Russia's free press, it doesn't all become Pravda overnight. Having nominally critical outlets support the regime in one specific way, or via a few specific people or shows, is more effective early on than blanket censorship or control.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(