'America, You Are Not Alone': My Latest ‘Hot Type’ Column in Byline
My weekly Hot Type column in Byline Supplement documents Russia’s attacks on 22 countries to show that America is just another campaign for Moscow and Musk just another oligarch
***Please take out a membership to support the light of truth.***
In Saturday’s Hot Type column for Byline Supplement, I pulled from RadPod’srecent interview with geopolitical analyst Dr. Michael MacKay as a bit of shock therapy for America. We are neither unique, nor alone. We need to encourage Americans to rise above the noise and understand that variations of Musk and Trump exist in other countries that Russia is targeting.
Thank you as always to everyone who supports my work here and at Byline. I believe the work of independent investigative reporters exposing the transnational crime wave has revealed the failing of corporate media in stark contrast.
If you are not yet a member of Byline, I urge you to become one or to take advantage of unlocking a free report. In the meantime, I am authorized to send a copy of my reports upon request to bettedangerous/gmail.
Below is an excerpt from Saturday’s Hot Type:
Hot Type: America, You Are Not Alone
In her latest exclusive Hot Type column, Heidi Siegmund Cuda documents Russia’s attacks on 22 countries to show that America is just another campaign for Moscow and Elon Musk is just another oligarch.
It’s rare for an independent woman reporter like me to be invited on high-profile radio shows to discuss my work. Generally, independent investigative reporters, who can freely speak to truth to power, are studiously ignored by colleagues in legacy media, whose normalizing and euphemisms cloaking the rise of fascism allowed a decapitation strike on America by an organized crime ring run out of Moscow.
That I am a repeat guest on The Thom Hartmann Program — America’s top progressive radio show — has helped propel my words out to his six million listeners, expanding my reach, for which I am truly grateful.
This week, the topic was what we can do to stop the fascist train heading toward America. Having just interviewed geopolitical analyst Dr. Michael MacKay, who has documented the war in Ukraine daily for a decade, I had some solid suggestions:
President Biden should announce the United States supports the immediate admission of Ukraine to NATO.
He should lift all restrictions on the use of weapons — allow the armed forces of Ukraine to defend their country from Russia’s invasion as they see fit.
Declare the Russian Federation a terrorist state.
Demand US enforcement agencies release the list of 600 US-based Russian propagandists being monitored by the Kremlin, as reported in the FBI’s ‘Doppelganger’ affidavit. They include: politicians, businessmen, reporters, comedians, academics, think tank analysts, military veterans, bloggers, and influencers.
And critically, pressure Joe Biden to declare an information war.
MacKay explained America is just one of the countries targeted by Russian hybrid warfare to manipulate election outcomes, and the attacks follow a predictable pattern. MacKay, who has a doctorate in political philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, has been engaged with Ukraine’s civil society since the renewal of independence, working as a university lecturer, the director of an Internet access project and an election observer. He has also been a pivotal source in multiple definitive reports for Byline such as our original Unmusked report and my first report on Russia’s full-scale invasion.
He wrote the following list, documenting examples of Russian violence and active measures in what he describes as the first decade of World War III:
Chechnya: In two wars and invasions, Russia destroyed the independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Moldova: Russia invaded in 1992; Russia put its puppet Vlad Dodon in power in 2016; Maia Sandu defeated the Russia faction in 2020 and 2024; "Transnistria" remains occupied by Russia
Belarus: after a fraudulent election in 2020, Belarus under Alexander Lukashenka became a Russian puppet regime, part of the so-called "Union State of Russia and Belarus"
Georgia: Russia invaded in the early 1990s, grabbing Abkhazia; Russia invaded in 2008, grabbing Tskhinvali region (so-called "South Ossetia"); the pro-Russia Georgian Dream party seized power after fraudulent elections – it is the faction of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, a prominent member of the Putin-Kremlin crime syndicate
Ukraine: Russia falsified the 2004 election to make Viktor Yanukovych appear to win – the Orange Revolutions forced a repeat run-off election; Yanukovych was finally put into power by Putin and Paul Manafort in 2010; the Revolution of Dignity of the Ukrainian people (November 2013-February 2014) led to Yanukovych fleeing Ukraine; on the same day Yanukovych fled – February 20th, 2014 – Russia invaded Ukraine
United Kingdom: Russia illegally financed the "Vote Leave" campaign and tipped the Brexit referendum so the UK crashed out of the EU in 2016
Netherlands: Russia sponsored the GeenPeil referendum against the EU and against Ukraine – the pro-Russian side won
Italy: Russia sponsors the Northern League political party, which has at times been part of the governing coalition
France: Russia sponsors Marine Le Pen and other far-right political parties
Germany: Russia sponsors Die Linke (far left) and AfD (far right) in Germany
Hungary: Russia sponsors the Orbán regime that is in power
Slovakia: Russia sponsors the Fico regime that is in power
Romania: Russia sponsors far-right/populist candidates that are doing well in presidential and parliamentary elections now
United States: the Soviet Union and Russia cultivated Trump as an asset since the 1980s; Russia completed elite capture of the Republican Party by 2016; Russia decisively manipulated elections in its favour in 2016 and 2024; Russia sponsored the insurrection of January 6, 2021; Russia exercises reflexive control of the richest oligarch in the United States, Elon Musk
Kazakhstan: Russia invaded in January 2022 after violent protests turned into an anti-authoritarian movement; Kazakhstan remains a country that has never enjoyed democracy but it cannot be considered a firm Russian ally
Armenia: Russia maintains a sovereign base at Gyumri; Armenia's membership in the Russia-led CSTO turned out to be useless when Azerbaijan re-occupied/liberated Nagoro-Karabakh
Venezuela: the Russia-backed Nicolás Maduro regime has falsified elections and clung to power to prevent the re-establishment of democracy
Syria: Russia started a bombing campaign against the Syrian people in September 2015; Russia backs the Assad regime without limit in order to crush the Arab Spring
MacKay explained that the United States for Russia is just another campaign. And that to Russia, Trump is just another Yanukovych. They even had the same groomer in convicted felon Paul Manafort, who worked to install both men into power.
“It's important to remember how the Orange Revolution got started in 2004,” said MacKay. “Russia engaged in an active measure to put across their candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, as the President, and they falsified the runoff election.
“This was a surprise to people at the time because people had a sense that maybe the oligarchs were involved… the ties to the Russians were not actually obvious, although people knew that the Russians had poisoned his opponent Viktor Yushchenko, and disfigured him terribly.”
He said he was present in Ukraine as an election observer when an international effort resulted in a repeat runoff election during Christmas of 2004.
“It was fairly conducted, and Yushchenko won, which was the result that the first one had… people were not able to really digest what had just happened in Ukraine, because the day after that election, there was a large tsunami in the Indian Ocean, and that took over the news cycle.”
He said the Russians got more emboldened and a comeback was mounted for Yanukovych.
“The Russians did a better job at influencing Ukrainian politics and manipulating their elections,” he said. “Putin brought in Paul Manafort to be a curator for Yanukovych, remade his image... And by 2010, and I was at that election as an observer as well, Yanukovych defeated Yulia Tymoshenko.”
Yanukovych initiated the ‘lock her up’ chant, that would later be repurposed for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
He said violence is often a part of these active measures stories, and when Ukrainians revolted at Yanukovych’s last-minute refusal to initiate a step for the country to move toward the EU, brutal police crackdowns morphed into the Revolution of Dignity.
“The same pattern is playing out in Georgia right now, as Georgian Dream — the pro-Russian faction — summarily pulled out of Georgia's process of joining the European Union after they stole the election,” said MacKay. “So during the Revolution of Dignity, Yanukovych lost control over the security forces. He never had control of the Army, and he fled on February 20, 2014, on instructions from Putin, he flew away from his equivalent of Mar-a-Lago in a helicopter, and the very same day, Putin launched the operation to invade Ukraine in Crimea. So he minted a medal for Special Operations Forces to give the starting date of World War Three, which we're in now, which was February 20, 2014.”
Among the myriad mistakes the West repeatedly makes is not viewing these global events through the perspective of Russia.
“Russia is always at war, but it’s clear when it comes to conventional warfare, they’re not very good at it,” MacKay said…
Among the Russian-sponsored trickery: referendums, malinformation campaigns, third party spoiler candidates, misogyny targeting women candidates, oligarchs funding politicians, narrative warfare driven on virtual battlefields, well-funded domestic propagandists delivering pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine narratives, while wrapped in the flag of their respective countries to obfuscate intent. Poisoning the democratic wells to disengage voters leading to low voter turnout, which makes its easier to manipulate extremist results. Poisoning and defenestrating opponents of the regime. Assassinations and hacking…
“They’re not that clever,” he said. “Russians do not cause these catastrophes. They're not even really arsonists that set fire to things. They're the person who comes to the scene of the arson after it's already there and just pours more gasoline on it.”
As 2016 continues, if we turn to Moldova, Russia succeeded in bringing their man into power, a mirror of the Trump-Clinton campaign, where effort was directed at discrediting the woman candidate, ‘burn the witch’ style.
“It was all dumping on Maia Sandu, the female candidate. But to complete the story: she is now the president, and has won two successive elections because of Moldovans success in overcoming Russian active measures, which compared to what the Americans have faced and the Ukrainians have faced is just massive for the Moldovans. Despite their corruption, despite the oligarch Ilan Shor, who they expelled and started to reduce his influence. Sandu won in 2020 and in 2024.”
It’s worth noting that not only does Ilan Shor sound kinda like Elon Musk, but Shor was sentenced in 2017 to 7.5 years of prison in absentia for fraud and money laundering and in 2023 his sentence was increased to 15 years and all his Moldovan assets were frozen. After living under house arrest in Israel, he just fled to Russia this year, where he was granted citizenship.
The patterns could not be more stark. And it’s clear the Moldovans understand their two possible futures: part of Russia or part of the EU.
America is surrendering its future, by not looking toward other countries to see the pattern and perspective of Russia.
By capturing the executive branch, they capture the administration and installing someone like Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head the FBI means the FBI becomes NKVD, said MacKay. He believes Americans are woefully unprepared for the decapitation strike that is coming. Reading reports like the new Spotlight on the Shadow War: Inside Russia’s Attacks on NATO Territory by the US Helsinki Commission could offer Americans clues, which documents how Russia’s sabotage campaigns have accelerated since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In addition, a crash course in civics and history would be helpful in America.
“The United States is large, important and powerful, but to its enemies, it's just another target,” MacKay said.
Until Americans understand what they’ve just given away and start looking around the world to see they aren’t alone, they’ll just continue retreating into their own Russia and Fifth Column engineered unrealities.
Poland understands this.
The country is engaging in a crash rearmament to deter Russian aggression and closed its Russia consulate and told its staff to leave the country due to acts of sabotage and cyberwarfare.
And Polish leaders have no problems articulating reality. Two weeks ago, the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski addressed a Russian delegation at an annual meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation with Europe in Valletta, Malta, with the following words:
“The Helsinki Process was basically a grand bargain between the then communist bloc which sought the confirmation of the borders in Europe and the then West, which wanted respect for human rights in the Soviet bloc. Today, Russia respects neither borders nor human rights. There are no free media in Russia, there are no honest elections, and there are more political prisoners than in the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev at the time of Helsinki. When the Soviet Union collapsed, we encouraged Russia to become a normal democratic nation state. But they failed. It proved too difficult to emerge from their own political culture. Russia’s rulers chose the path of an aggressive, repressive kleptocracy.
“My message to the Russian delegation is the following: we are not taken in by your lies; we know what you are doing — you are trying to rebuild the Russian empire, and we will not let you. We will resist you every inch of the way. You are successful in destroying Ukraine, but you are also destroying the future of your own country. Until you stop this brutal war, you should not be here.”
Slava Ukraini, Georgia, Romania, Moldova, Poland, Finland, and all the other countries fighting Russian colonialism.
America, you are not alone.
Oh, America, look around you. Stop with this lack of imagination. Men like Musk and Trump are cultivated as democratic assassins. That Moldova expelled their fraudster oligarch, convicted him in absentia, and seized his assets is exactly what we could and should be doing.
America is endangering the world by failing to stop Musk, who has now turned his sights toward destroying democracy in the UK and Canada.
Two things I have never forgotten in the years that I have interviewed Dr. MacKay:
Trump is a fake rich guy, because all money launderers are fake rich guys.
To Putin, Trump is just another Yanukovych.
The above is an excerpt from my Hot Type column. As always, I ask those who can afford to support a small global team of investigative reporters to please take out a subscription to Byline Supplement.
I also understand that if you are not able to do so at this moment, the good chaps at Byline allow me to send the column to Bette members upon request, as I noted above. Just zip a request to bettedangerous/gmail. New members will also find they are invited to unlock one report at the Byline site.
To my Bette members who support both publications, please forward the column to your allies.
A private link to an annual membership discount for older adults, those on fixed incomes or drawing disability, as well as activists and members of the media is available upon request at bettedangerous/gmail. 🥹
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
In my Substack account's Activity section today, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Notice that a high school classmate subscribed to Byline Supplement after she read your 'America, You Are Not Alone' after I posted it to my Facebook Friends! We never know who is going to be impressed enough to take action.
In my Substack account's Activity section today, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Notice that a high school classmate subscribed to Byline Supplement after she read your 'America, You Are Not Alone' after I posted it to my Facebook Friends! We never know who is going to be impressed enough to take action.