Paul Whelan’s problem was that he is a straight white man, so the US regime had zero interest in getting him back. Not black or jewish, not even gay, so he was dead last on the list to be traded.
Whelan also slipped up and admitted to being a Trump supporter. So during the Biden years, it is likely that disinterest turned to actual hostility, and they intentionally left him in a Russian prison.
Imagine the humiliation of being in prison for years, then a black lesbian millionaire shows up and immediately gets all the help in the world to be released as fast as possible. If I were him I would hate the US government by that point.
To be honest, I think the only reason Whelan ever got out is because the Russian government was trying to get rid of their remaining incarcerated Americans. It is likely that, if the choice was theirs, the Biden team would have intentionally left him out of the exchange. Again, simply punishment for being a straight non-jewish white conservative.
But I do think he was affiliated with the US intelligence services, as his personal record is, umm, weird. I think it isn’t impossible that he was in military intelligence in the Marine Corps as well, and his bad conduct discharge was faked to assist his cover story for the FSB. By the way, “administrative specialist” is a real military job, but is also the cover for MI specialists who don’t want to be identified as MI. I know this from personal experience.
Maria Butina on the other hand didn’t do anything. Funnily enough I briefly met her several years ago at a party in Moscow. I think she was just very ambitious and saw the US as a promised land to make a name for herself.
I can easily imagine a Russian expat having a little too much to drink at parties, and exaggerating her personal relationships with high-ranking officials back home (Putin? Yes I know him, we’re great friends).
What screwed her over, I think, was timing. Trump’s election in 2016 was a massive shock, and basically every leftist in the country was some mix of suicidal and homicidal. They wanted blood, but couldn’t string up Trump, so they needed someone else to string up. And Masha happened to be there, talking a little too much and drawing too much attention to herself. And she was that “Russian connection” that the leftist media desperately wanted to pin on Trump and his supporters.
All that said, Masha is a very special woman, which is proven by her wealthy male admirers in the republican party continuing to correspond and offer support to her even years later. Of course the leftard journalists tried to spin this as more proof of the Russian connection, but it is silly. She is just a special gal who leaves a very good impression on the men she meets.
Ironically, Masha did succeed in her goal to make a name herself and is a hero, just not in the way she intended. God works mysteriously.
Ian Kummer
I now have a new YouTube channel that I will use to upload videos from my travels around Russia. Expect new content there soon. Please give me a follow here.
Also feel free to connect with me on Quora (I sometimes share unique articles there).
Whelan was arrested in 2018. So why didn’t Trump try to get him released during his first term?
That’s the billion dollar question, isn’t it?
Whelan was arrested in 2018. So why didn't Trump try to get him released during his first term?
Ian, sometimes you sink into rightwinger idiocy, and this taints your (otherwise insightful) analysis. I’m talking about things like “punishment for being a straight non-jewish white conservative” or “every leftist in the country was some mix of suicidal and homicidal […] They wanted blood”.
Whelan has never been acknowledged to be an intelligence operator (although he almost certainly was, as you said, imho, correctly). It means that legally (at least in the US) he was just a civilian, and thus he was considered a “hostage”, and states on principle do not do spy swaps in these cases. It has nothing to do with him being whatever, furthermore, his ordeal happened during the first Trump presidency (including sentencing), so it is so there was ample opportunity for the right to intervene.
For that matter, states rarely take hostages but the US (and the West, more generally) does it very often (because it can get away with it), regardless of whether the right or the left is in power, and for multiple interconnected reasons. The primary reason is likely just for provocation, very much like the constant “Russian airspace violations” in the Baltic (complete bs, but there is a “case” every week or two, nowadays the drones around air bases is the new stuff). Or sowing panic, preparing the population for a confrontation, or trying to restrict normal contacts with the constant sword of Damocles hanging above anyone’s head in the form of a possible spy scandal, or just getting hostages for future swaps.
These cases are always a headache for the other side (usually Russia and China) because, again, states in general are not eager to do swaps of what they consider civilians for a ton of understandable reasons. In the same time they have a responsibility for helping their citizens in every possible way, so a Butina type hostage is always a big-big problem. The Huawei executive’s case, detained in Canada, was similar to China.
Yes, Maria Butina was almost certainly a hostage (as you noted, again, correctly), and hers was just another from a long string of similar cases that had been pursued by the left and the right alike. Furthermore, the whole thing, too, transpired during Trump’s presidency, when the executive power was in the hands of the right, so blaming the left for this is just patently ridiculous.
Communist here. He is absolutely right about the western leftist. They are aligned with the ruling class, because the ruling class pays them to work in bullshit NGO jobs to defuse any revolutionary potential they may have. Follow the money
Communist here, too. What you say about Western leftitsts is absolutely irrelevant to the question at hand even if it’s true. Mostly true but Westeners usually confuse the actual left and liberals (a rightish political ideology), and the Western left does have certain progressive aspects etc. I don’t want to go into details here, the question is not that simple. Furthermore, what you said also characterize the Western right. But again, this is irrelevant here because we were talking about a certain aspect of the Western left that is mostly existing in the hallucinations of the Western right. Anyway, as a communist you are obliged to go deeper than what is irrelevant and/or commonplace.
I respectfully disagree. I’ve been called a nazbol by these freaks too many times to believe that I am also hallucinating. Also, since he’s coming from an American context I’m using leftist in the way (I believe) he is using it.
Scientifically speaking, leftISM is a right-wing ideology with a left-wing veneer; it is the ‘left’ wing of US Imperialism.
The Biden administration’s goal in getting Griner released while ignoring Whelan was two fold: shoring up the female vote in the United States and offering a W to the global LGBTQCIA+ community. The support of the second group is critical for US Imperialism.
“Scientifically speaking” 🙂
Again, this is irrelevant here. No one disputes that the Western left (the big time left) is actually on the right, and even its progressive ideas are just distraction (just like the racism on the right). I just pointed out to Ian that what he thought about some current events were not related to the US spectrum of left or right. So again, I didn’t write anything about the left per se.
Furthermore you are wrong about the Griner/Bout exchange just as Ian, and you mention the same rightwinger bs as him. Well, wasn’t Biden’s decision, the Russians didn’t want to exchange Whelan for Bout. Because for both parties, the Griner/Bout exchange was an exchange of similar “assets”. Bout was a hostage, everyone knows that, and Griner was detained on charges that were at the edge of being just plausible, ie. she was a hostage, too. Russians made the US taste its own medicine. Whelan, on the other hand, is likely a real spy (or he was exceptionally stupidly giving the impression of being one), even if the US doesn’t acknowledge it, so the Russians wanted to exchange him with a real spy of theirs. It was openly stated by the Russians.
I really doubt the Russians cared who they traded for Bout, who btw I met in person last monthy. As for Griner, no one has denied that she was carrying drugs at the time of her arrest, but still inexplicably insist that her arrest was unfair.
When I reply to your comment do you get any kind of notification?
I see it in an rss feed
So it works for you? Another reader is complaining it doesnt.
Kind of. The RSS feed takes a long time to update
Well this is the Discusz plugin that I’m trying. If it’s an improvement for the reader I will keep it. But if everyone hates it then I’ll get rid of it lol
Ian, sometimes you sink into rightwinger idiocy, and this taints your (otherwise insightful) analysis. I'm talking about things like "punishment for being a straight non-jewish white conservative" or "every leftist in the country was some mix of suicidal and homicidal […] They wanted blood". Whelan has never been acknowledged to be an intelligence operator (although he almost certainly was, as you said, imho, correctly). It means that legally (at least in the US) he was just a civilian, and thus he was considered a "hostage", and states on principle do not do spy swaps in these cases. It has nothing to do with him being whatever, furthermore, his ordeal happened during the first Trump presidency (including sentencing), so it is so there was ample opportunity for the right to intervene. For that matter, states rarely take hostages but the US (and the West, more generally) does it very often (because it can get away with it), regardless of whether the right or the left is in power, and for multiple interconnected reasons. The primary reason is likely just for provocation, very much like the constant "Russian airspace violations" in the Baltic (complete bs, but there is a "case" every week or two, nowadays the drones around air bases is the new stuff). Or sowing panic, preparing the population for a confrontation, or trying to restrict normal contacts with the constant sword of Damocles hanging above anyone's head in the form of a possible spy scandal, or just getting hostages for future swaps. These cases are always a headache for the other side (usually Russia and China) because, again, states in general are not eager to do swaps of what they consider civilians for a ton of understandable reasons. In the same time they have a responsibility for helping their citizens in every possible way, so a Butina type hostage is always a big-big problem. The Huawei executive's case, detained in Canada, was similar to China. Yes, Maria Butina was almost certainly a hostage (as you noted, again, correctly), and hers was just another from a long string of similar cases that had been pursued by the left and the right alike. Furthermore, the whole thing, too, transpired during Trump's presidency, when the executive power was in the hands of the right, so blaming the left for this is just patently ridiculous.
That's the billion dollar question, isn't it?
Communist here. He is absolutely right about the western leftist. They are aligned with the ruling class, because the ruling class pays them to work in bullshit NGO jobs to defuse any revolutionary potential they may have. Follow the money
Communist here, too. What you say about Western leftitsts is absolutely irrelevant to the question at hand even if it's true. Mostly true but Westeners usually confuse the actual left and liberals (a rightish political ideology), and the Western left does have certain progressive aspects etc. I don't want to go into details here, the question is not that simple. Furthermore, what you said also characterize the Western right. But again, this is irrelevant here because we were talking about a certain aspect of the Western left that is mostly existing in the hallucinations of the Western right. Anyway, as a communist you are obliged to go deeper than what is irrelevant and/or commonplace.
I respectfully disagree. I've been called a nazbol by these freaks too many times to believe that I am also hallucinating. Also, since he's coming from an American context I'm using leftist in the way (I believe) he is using it. Scientifically speaking, leftISM is a right-wing ideology with a left-wing veneer; it is the 'left' wing of US Imperialism. The Biden administration's goal in getting Griner released while ignoring Whelan was two fold: shoring up the female vote in the United States and offering a W to the global LGBTQCIA+ community. The support of the second group is critical for US Imperialism.
"Scientifically speaking" 🙂 Again, this is irrelevant here. No one disputes that the Western left (the big time left) is actually on the right, and even its progressive ideas are just distraction (just like the racism on the right). I just pointed out to Ian that what he thought about some current events were not related to the US spectrum of left or right. So again, I didn't write anything about the left per se. Furthermore you are wrong about the Griner/Bout exchange just as Ian, and you mention the same rightwinger bs as him. Well, wasn't Biden's decision, the Russians didn't want to exchange Whelan for Bout. Because for both parties, the Griner/Bout exchange was an exchange of similar "assets". Bout was a hostage, everyone knows that, and Griner was detained on charges that were at the edge of being just plausible, ie. she was a hostage, too. Russians made the US taste its own medicine. Whelan, on the other hand, is likely a real spy (or he was exceptionally stupidly giving the impression of being one), even if the US doesn't acknowledge it, so the Russians wanted to exchange him with a real spy of theirs. It was openly stated by the Russians.
I really doubt the Russians cared who they traded for Bout, who btw I met in person last monthy. As for Griner, no one has denied that she was carrying drugs at the time of her arrest, but still inexplicably insist that her arrest was unfair.
When I reply to your comment do you get any kind of notification?
I see it in an rss feed
So it works for you? Another reader is complaining it doesnt.
Kind of. The RSS feed takes a long time to update
Well this is the Discusz plugin that I'm trying. If it's an improvement for the reader I will keep it. But if everyone hates it then I'll get rid of it lol