Columbia protesters occupy building, smashing windows; worker: 'They held me hostage'

[Torchlight]

84. I believe (w/ no evidence for or against) that the majority of the protesters are sincere

and acting in good faith.

I also believe the good-faith protesters are being manipulated by outside interests that are more interested in exploiting chaos, any chaos, that can be purchased. Chaos has been the signature move of Moscow the past dozen years or so, and like an auteur's film, this has a deep Cyrillic odor to it.

After Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service took over the management of the late Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency (the troll farm in St Petersburg where the phrase "I hope I'm wrong, but..." became profitable), it's not difficult for me to imagine rubles going to pay down loans for a handful of influential leaders, posters, and/or protesters.

And if this is indeed, what's happening (or in part), then I gotta think that FIS has mastered the art of exploiting and enlarging otherwise much less consequential national divisions into spicy recipes for a stew of national crises.