Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Vladimir Putin and the Dearth of Russian Leadership" video.

@TemplarOnHigh He makes mistakes on occasion, admits them, and adjusts his pitch accordingly. What startles people is that Pete isn’t afraid of making bold statements and going out on a limb. I think of him as the stunt driver of geopolitics. He’s a bit of a daredevil. But he’s not irresponsible. He combs through the data to find the insights he passes on to us.
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I think he’s extemporaneous. There are three, maybe four types of presenters. There are those that work off note cards. There are those that script their presentation and either memorize the scripted speech or read it. And then there are those that know the subject matter to such a great depth that they can truly speak extemporaneously. Oh, and the fourth are the jackasses that spout off with very little or no expertise. They might work off a script, they might use notecards, or they might just say whatever 💩 pops into their mind.
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A point of order wrt Russian organized crime. The Russian Mafiya (as it has styled itself in more recent times) has always had interlocking directorates with the communist party, particularly with the KGB. The KGB was the overseer of smuggling operations which benefited party members with luxury goods. The KGB was the court of appeals for disputes arising in the “second story economy”—the trade of pilfered public goods and labor. One could write a book about the rise of civil engineer/government bureaucrat Shoigu with regard to diversion of state resources to this criminal marketplace. He is more than a Putin stooge. He is a powerful leader of a criminal faction in his own right. This overlap between the criminal and political goes back to the CHEKA under Lenin, from the earliest days of the Revolution. While you might have a hard cadre of ideologist true believers in the party, you also had literally criminal gangs used to punish the enemies of the state with violence and robbery. (A short history lesson: These enemies of the state where not necessarily political enemies, but the “Kulaks”. Initially the Kulaks were those successful farmers that accumulated land and a bit of capital. After they were destroyed, it became the farmer that owned 3 cows while his neighbor had 1 cow. Later still, the farmer with two cows was the enemy. Finally, private ownership of cows was effectively forbidden.) Thus it is not an exaggeration to say that the FSB/KGB had interlocking directorates. The FSB oversaw the criminal factions, and the leaders of the criminal factions worked their way into the FSB/KGB leadership. As Russian organized crime began expanding internationally, the FSB paved the way and had their backs. Organized crime factions that didn’t subordinate themselves fully to this system could be punished by “anti-corruption” campaigns as well as the internecine violence you might expect.
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