Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

FTAC: Big Picture Made Small: Moscow’s Narrative Arc from the End of the Cold War

10 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, France, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

A friend on the social network tagged me on the matter of Marine Le Pen as a friend of Putin. Forthwith my answer –>

Regarding Marine Le Pen – https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/08/white-house-putin-paris-00024054 – she’s a problem for the western alliance.

After the dissolving of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, some KGB elite found themselves driving cabs, i.e., out on the streets, stripped of power and privilege. It didn’t take long for part of that set to determine to regenerate themselves, perhaps through their former networks (I’m mythologizing but keeping to milestones in the greater narrative arc), and set about taking revenge against the west.

1994 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances Ukraine gave up its Moscow-controlled nuclear warhead inventory in exchange for promises that it would never be invaded (by Russia, among others).

1996/7 – https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6 – Ayman al Zawahiri spent his winter in the company of the KGB.

1999 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings; https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/08/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible/ .

2000 – http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/03/27/russia.elex/index.html – Putin’s election results.

9/11/2001 – I would call the event a Russian “Reflexive Control” operation by proxy against NATO. Whatever the truth of the matter, it provoked the proud flesh of a wounded west into a far rightward motion, i.e., the “New Nationalism”. In France, and with Putin’s blessing, Marine Le Pen picked up on the pride.

I’ll add another one or two touchstones here.

2011 – the Arab Spring and desertification lead to protests in Syria against a callous regime quick to respond with violence to any challenge of its authority. The same had also a mighty lever in enjoining the “War on Terror” against any enemy it wish to call a terrorist. Spillover: mass migration -> NATO, starting with Turkey, the same became a stimulus for greater nationalism accompanied by xenophobia. Most affected: Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the United States.

2016 – America caught the DTs –>

In the listing of years as the perhaps KGB penchant for clever aggression, the whole has gone with the “ones” — 1991; 2001; 2011; and if the invasion of Ukraine had been squeezed in right, 2021.

Putin’s Russia has been cooking on all of the medieval burners, numerology somewhat included, and, indeed, NATO has now to catch up with the array of conditions and threats fashioned by Moscow since the end of the Cold War, and Moscow, representing the Russian “Mafia State”, has some advantages given European and North American appetites for every illicit good and service moving around the planet. It and its buddies among dictators and thugs view the west both as turned toward nationalism (sadly true in part) and morally degenerate — but in Ukraine it has drawn a response remarkably different from what it had imagined. The key to that has been its criminality and barbarism. The cruelty displayed over time and across the post-Soviet Russian space of interest has been effective as regards inspiring hate for everything associated with Moscow. Whether the New Nationalists, Le Pen included, view themselves as part of the problem in light of Putin’s behavior, we shall see. One thing they won’t want will be domination by the Stalinist Russian.

Published to YouTube on March 24, 2017.
Published to YouTube February 27, 2022.

Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Birthday: September 11, 1877.

The Moscow Times. “Putin Renames Police Unit After Bloody Cheka Founder Dzerzhinsky.” September 23, 2014.

Regarding the Soviet’s own mid-1980s plans for dissolving itself, I recommend Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Also helpful but may need the reader’s own web sleuthing to find the DVD: Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya’s video, Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (the URL is active at the time of publishing this post), a documentary assembled among the living, including the FSB detective Litvinenko who rebelled at the agency’s takeover by criminals. For the middle of the post-Cold War narrative and it’s most notable moment, YouTube hosts this short feature from ABC13 Houston: “Remembering 9/11 | Archive Footage We Will Never Forget” (posted to YouTube September 11, 2018).

–33–

A Note on Russia’s Criminal President and the Long Effort to Destroy Western Political Coherence, Cohesion, and Will

21 Monday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Karen Dawisha -> Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya’s “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case” -> David Satter’s “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power” -> Anna Politkovskaya’s A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya -> John Schindler’s “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence” -> 9/11 : Reflexive Control -> New Nationalism — in Wikipedia, “Neo-Nationalism” — in EU/NATO and its effects in Great Britain (BREXIT), Hungary (Orban), Italy (Far Right), Poland, Turkey (Erdogan’s feudal revanche), United States (Trump).

Why?

Karen Dawisha detailed how the Soviet nomenklatura prepared in the mid-1980s for the demise of their state and what would have been their fall from grace but for plans to capture the state’s assets for themselves.

Mission accomplished.

Husband and wife Andrew Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya documented in part how former KGB driving cabs determined to return to their former status in power as politically criminal agents with the master who seems today busy with trying to steal back a state that had gotten rid of its Moscow puppet. Once again, Moscow’s premier secret police–from Okhrana to Cheka to FSB–have succeeded in destroying goodness and justice in Russia (the west may be only waiting for the Russians to figure out how they have been themselves once again enslaved).

David Satter has made a mission of convincing the world that Putin’s ascent to power was predicated by the KGB’s false flag bombing of apartment buildings over which the fingers would point toward Chechen Rebels. Given the Kremlin’s penchant for absurd lies, barbaric acts elsewhere, and dramatic political theater and reputation for Orwellian perceptual control across time, I’ve been convinced.

Anna Politkovskaya reported directly on the brutalizing of Chechen villages to drive men and boys into the camps of experienced Chechen terrorists while sustaining an Islamist warlord in power.

According to John Schindler, the KGB had terrorist Ayman al Zawahiri of hijacker coordination fame as a guest over the winter of 1996-7, which makes sense of a timeline that fits with the KGB’s “recovery” of its less savory powers a little earlier in the mid-1990s (do watch the Nekrasov documentary for what happened in the gap between the “end of the Cold War” and the launching of revenge for the Soviet loss in Afghanistan and subsequent bankruptcy).

Aside, those fond of serial coincidences may enjoy looking up Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday and taking into the consideration the role of “1” in the dissolving of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the September 11 attack on the United States in 2001, the start of civil war in Syria in 2011, predicated in part on fighting “The Terrorists” (together with the west), and now the Russian Invasion of Ukraine here in 2021.

Hey, wait a minute!

Lol.

(“Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps”).

Motivating terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center while working with western security to eliminate terrorism . . . that’s pretty slick, but it fits with the temperament of the damned that have also sustained the Middle East Conflict and countless other “frozen conflicts”– as well as dictatorships — worldwide, and it also helps answer the question as to why the west has bent backward so often for so long in the interest of sustained peace beneath the black cloud of mutually assured nuclear destruction.

To this point, the west (again, Zawahiri, KGB, from 1996, it’s easy to see) has been repeatedly bitten by Islamic Terrorism, albeit less lately than in previous decades, and thereby encouraged to stand up for its own cultures — and Christian or secular governments — while treated to waves of migrations motivated by once Soviet-backed conflicts, crime-related violence (at the transnational level), and economic despair (note: although desertification in the presence of global warming has had nefarious political effects, including motivating appeals to despots for relief).

When Obama offered the “reset”, the decision point to join the west over Syria’s agricultural woes — and later to the United States said, “don’t forget who you are” — as well as the stern warning to Putin not to return to the “KGB Playbook” . . . it was already too late (really: have a look at 2016’s Putin-Trump billboard in Russia – or the old “laundromat” story – or the real estate stories).

So here we are with a monster dredged from fascist, feudal, and medieval quarters that now razes with blunt force and fire a modern state aspiring to a democratic, free, honorable, and peaceful future. While we have done more than stand by and watch–we have been responding to our more stranded neighbor–we haven’t faced the full criminal scope of the Russian President’s magical narcissistic beliefs and his related and wholly destructive behavior. Deluded and drunk in power, President Putin lies to himself and to Russia, and yet no one will either dare interfere with his course, and, quite possibly, no one knows how.

Have conditions in the west to become “existential” to do as Ukraine has been doing?

UATV English, March 21, 2022.
Live at posting.

–33–

Two Twitter Spears

15 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Life Online and the War in the Ukraine move fast!

With that speed, inspiration -> political punditry -> launch (something, anything, hope it works) has become a very short cycle.
***

Got to jump down turn around and send a missive flying
Go to jump down turn around and compose again . . . .
***
So it goes.

Sources for the first tweet date back to the Putin-Trump bromance of 2016 and the Republican chorus of denials over Russia’s onslaught of methods of perceptual channeling and control that were to be popularly known as “Active Measures”–>

It’s impossible to miss Russia’s criminal anger and resentment of the modern world in its aggression against the west as its secret police and other elements got to their feet in the shadows of the “End of the Cold War”. Out to the edges of the former Soviet spheres of conflict, control, and influence, an habitual penchant for Absolute Power and the endorsements of political theater and terrorism became fixtures of political behavior in Chechnya and Syria as well as Afghanistan (Russian arms and materiel were to support the Taliban all the way back to Kabul).

To this day, Russia’s leadership has shown the world nothing of modern compassion, conscience, constructive ambition, empathy, or humanity while demonstrating only the feudal-medieval barbarism and rapacious destructiveness and greed of the police state it has become and that it intends to impose on Ukraine and the west.

–33–

A Note on Putin’s Unbridled War on Integrity

11 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia, transnational crime, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Start with what cannot be found outside of the mind of the malignant narcissist, i.e., the traumatic memory of “Narcissistic Mortification”. Diminishment. Humiliation. Shame. Whatever it was–a bullying theft on the street; an instance of sexual abuse by an authority or other overwhelming power; a “Jack and the Beanstalk” beat down by a parent–would have set off two related processes: covering over the moment and making of it either a terrible personal secret not to be shared or, perhaps, a complaint to shadow and ruin the life (for Putin, one might choose the former option, i.e., compartmenting the trauma); and splitting off the invention of a noble and undamaged self abetted by deceit in the creation of an heroic personal theater.

Most of us toughen up some with psychic injury, adjust our behavior to avoid a repeat experience or engage from a position of greater determination to prevail with dignity and strength. We’ll talk back to the nasty, speak truth to power, or dare introduce the bully to punishment as we produce greater force or response in relation to the presence of the same.

Chin up, in other words, and walk a little taller.

The malign might demand greater compensation in the way of power and emotional assurance. It may not be how they are or might be as ordinary persons that matters: it’s how they look–how others may perceive them–as extraordinary personages that matters most, for deep down they are still hiding their own humiliation and the dreaded fear of its return.

And how may one hide the truth?

Lie about it.

And how may one control the perception of others?

Create around or before them sufficient convincing theater to get them to do as one’s image may demand.

Punks have an easy list at their disposal: cheat, deceive, lie, and steal.

Get her a ring–who cares how you do it?–if it comes to that.

🙂

The personal and smaller matters lend themselves to convenient chicanery.

The corrupt and evil among politicians know more difficult strategies: big lies, deflections; false accusations, false flags, false presentations.

Where Putin lives, notch it up with military, paramilitary, and secret police forces tasked to manage state-devised compromise and reflexive control operations as well as total perceptual control buttressed by the methodical elimination of all of the sources of competition and criticism.

And should anyone in the darkness and shadows fuck up . . . cover it up–practice helps–and lie about it.

And should anyone possessed of integrity observe and report what has taken place, well, there are ways in which politically criminal and ruthless power may choose to defend its good image while in fact engaged in the most execrable evil.

A Few Reflections on Putin’s KGB Manual Updated to Support State Capitalists

How to Create Friendships with Powerful People

How to Deal with Adverse Intelligence or Related Battlefield Results

How to Discourage Democracy and Produce Healthy Authoritarians and Powerful Families Using Reflexive Control

How to Get Education

How to Handle the Dead the Modern Way

How to Handle the Memory of the Dead in Wartime

How to Honor the Dead in Small and Large Groups

How to Handle the Press

How to Inspire and Lead Troops Into Battle

How to Tell a Whopper!

How to Win Election to Presidency

How to Install a Useful War

How to Win Hearts and Minds in War

I’m sure there are other similarly clever methods for developing bear hugging personal relationships and influencing nations, quietly, and from behind the curtains, and as sources, insights, and opportunities develop, I may add to the above useful instructions.

Related Online

Bella, Timothy. “Thousands protest in Melitopol after Russian forces reportedly abduct mayor with a hood over his head.” The Washington Post, March 12, 2022.

Bertrand, Natasha. “Putin is going to extreme lengths to hide Russians who are dying while fighting in Ukraine.” Business Insider, May 26, 2015.

Davis-Marks, Isis. “Mass Graves in Ukraine Hold Thousands of Victims of Stalin’s Great Purge.” Smithsonian Magazine, September 3, 2021.

Dixon, Robyn. “Russian court abolishes country’s most prominent human rights group, Memorial.” The Washington Post, December 28, 2021.

Harding, Luke. ‘Old-style espionage’: Briton’s arrest feels like cold war throwback.” The Guardian, August 11, 2021.

Harding, Thomas. “Russian general killed and clutch of spy chiefs arrested.” National News UK, March 11, 2022.

Politkovskaya, Anna. “A Small Corner of Hell.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Simon, Scott. “Why Do Russian Journalists Keep Falling?” NPR, April 21, 2018.

Stewart, Will, Chris Pleasance, and Tom Brown. “Putin ‘has placed the head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch under house arrest because he is furious at security services for failing to warn him’ that Ukraine could fiercely resist invasion.” Daily Mail, March 11, 2022.

Tiplady-Bishop, Lottie. “Jeffrey Epstein boasted about ‘flying to Moscow to visit Vladimir Putin’ as secrets behind his millions are revealed.” The Sun, July 19, 2020.

Whitmore, David. “Potemkinism.” The Power Vertical, RFE/RL, September 3, 2010.

The Telegraph, March 8, 2022.
History on YouTube, March 7, 2022.
The Telegraph, February 23, 2022.

–33–

FTAC: On NATO’s Avoidance of Potential Nuclear Exchange Involving Russia’s Emperor Putin

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Great Britain and United Kingdom, North America, Political Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The West had perhaps thought the Cold War over on December 25, 1991 with the announcement at noon of the Soviet Union’s dissolving itself in bankruptcy, but here with are with a post-Soviet KGB/FSB President Putin in power who while demonstrating his idea of logical reasoning repeatedly proves himself barbaric, inhuman, and irrational and only best in his expression of unhelpful and wholly destructive madness. He appears to have no insight as regards his own malign and narcissistic disorder, but his army knows it, his generals see it, his inner circle suffer for it and none appear able to stop him.

It would appear that KGB Lt. Colonel President Emperor Tsar Putin has given himself the power to destroy Russia pretty much on his own through the employ of those he has managed to suborn to himself and who now appear to tremble before him.

For Ukrainians, who are but the latest to catch Tsar Putin’s cross-hairs, the question comes up as to why EU/NATO so far refuses Ukraine offensive weapons sufficient for controlling its air space. The Atlantic Council circulated a germane answer in the form of a survey of experts and simple chi-square chart, and this morning when both plea and question came up on Facebook, I felt bound to respond.

From the Awesome Conversation

In what follows, I’ve added URLs where they would be otherwise absent in plain text.

Out of laziness, perhaps, I’ve chosen to plant surprises, helpful ones, in the URLs and forego the creating of standard reference (a “Related Online” section has been otherwise a BackChannels desktop publishing tradition).

Here’s the thinking regarding NATO’s official avoidance of war with Russia beneath the black cloud of Mutually Assured Destructed attached to any exchange of nuclear weapons and related and possibly out of control (worse: computer-controlled, according to Putin) escalation.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-big-story/what-are-the-risks-and-benefits-of-us-nato-military-options-in-ukraine-our-strategic-risk-calculator-has-answers/

Note: Russia boasts two related threat assets: 2000 “tactical nuclear weapons” and fast-and-crooked (rather like Russia’s leadership itself) “hypersonic missiles“. Both may be easily looked up online.

Where the United States has forsworn first use of a nuclear device, Russia’s mafia-style doctrine has gambled on a smaller is larger option–and it is because the world has this smaller-leverages-larger nutcase getting everything he wants predicated on his demonstrations of ability to launch wars by proxy, his show of barbarism, especially in Syria (now Ukraine, and who’s next?), his support for “frozen conflicts” and terrorist organizations, and his employment of methods of political blackmail and compromise (look up Jeffrey Epstein’s visit to Moscow) and intimidation, he presents before all the challenge of shutting down what he would regard as his life’s work, piece of ____t that he is.

The first steps have been to erode his financing, hit his backers, and get Mother Russia — i.e., someone more authentically representing her — to take care of him.

The medieval world hates the modern–and His Malignance hates what he cannot absolutely control and plunder.

Update: An Argument for Increased Ukrainian Surface-to-Air Defenses

Rogoway, Tyler and Thomas Newdick. “Ukraine Needs Ground-Based Air Defenses Way More Than MiGs. Here Are the Best Options.” The Warzone, The Drive, March 10, 2022.

–33–

Three Medieval Stooges and One MODERN Adult Nation

05 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Thousands of Ukrainians are continuing to express support to European integration and protesting against decision of Ukrainian government to refuse signing of association with EU in Vilnius. 27 November 2013. Kyiv, Ukraine.
March 5, 2022: In the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian army seized 30 units of Russian equipment.
“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets. There is only one reason. We want to be free from a dictatorship. We want to be free from the politicians who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money, just for saving their houses, just for saving their power. I want these people who are here, who have dignity, who are brave–I want them to live a normal life. We are civilized people, but our government are barbarians. That’s not a Soviet Union. We want our courts not to be corrupted. We want to be free . . . .” Posted to YouTube by A Whisper to a Roar, February 10, 2014.

–33–

Medieval v Modern: Russia’s Irredentist Quest to Conquer and Reclaim the (Orthodox Religious) Past

27 Sunday Feb 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Russian soldiers killed: 3,500; Russian tanks destroyed: 100+; Russian combat vehicles destroyed: 500+; Russian jets shot down: 14.

If I could, I would give you tomorrow’s news NOW!

Unfortunately, cluing in the world to yesterday’s news and Russia’s blood-and-soil religious fantasia might be easier.

To such elites, all of whom fall on the spectrum of Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic, WEIRD for short, Putin represents an atavism whose motivations they cannot understand. The Kremlin strongman adheres to a distinctly throwback view of international relations where the use of force is normal, and countries protect their national interests unapologetically, with all the instruments of national power. Putin’s wholehearted embrace of religiously-infused nationalism, which boasts a venerable history in Russia, leaves WEIRDs befuddled yet has real resonance among average Russians. Western doubts that the former KGB man has “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” miss the point, but then the West has never understood Russian Orthodoxy very well. No matter what Putin really believes, his public embrace of religiously-grounded national conservatism provides his regime with an ideological anchor, one which happens to view Ukraine’s subservience to Russia as a spiritual as well as geostrategic necessity.

Schindler, John. “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War.” Top Secret Umbra, February 24, 2022.

Related on BackChannels: “Read and Weep: Signal of the Return of Endemic Russian Anti-Semitism: Bausman: Russia Insider: January 15, 2018.

I’ve heard that religious wars are the bloodiest as there are no ends to arguments about the Divine or even its existence.

Screen capture February 20, 2022.

Perhaps EU/NATO should have seen this coming with the truth about 9/11 (i.e., where terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri spent winter 1996-7 courtesy of the KGB) and the reflexively controlled “New Nationalism”.

I’ll go “Full Tonto” on you here and add to the plausibility of the related “Truthers”: “Explosive cutting of a steel girder using Dioplex 30mm” (Alford Tech, YouTube, October 8, 2013); “Jonathan Cole-9/11 Experiments: The Great Thermate Debate-AE911Truth.org (AE911Truth, December 3, 2010).

Of course, Plausibility in no way neutralizes Deniability.

However, add at least one or two sideshows.

On the same day gun rights activist Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent, the president stressed his support for gun rights at an NRA meeting.

Mak, Tim. “The NRA, Maria Butina and Trump”. NPR, April 27, 2019.

Okay, no biggie, but Butina most certainly chose to target with her charms a most conservative institution representative of not only America’s heartland but its gun-and-hook and healthy outdoor and clean living heart.

From major flag-bearer of democracy Anne Applebaum:

in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America. And their motives are curiously familiar. All around them, they see degeneracy, racial mixing, demographic change, “political correctness,” same-sex marriage, religious decline. The America that they actually inhabit no longer matches the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America that they remember, or think they remember. And so they have begun to look abroad, seeking to find the spiritually unified, ethnically pure nations that, they imagine, are morally stronger than their own. Nations, for example, such as Russia.

Applebaum, Anne. “The False Romance of Russia.” The Atlantic, December 12, 2019.

Donald Trump’s in this too: “Trump again praised ‘smart’ Putin amid Ukraine invasion and said the US had become a ‘stupid country’ (Alia Shoaib, Business Insider, February 27, 2022), and with good reason — on this blog, “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements” (October 9, 2021) — if I do say so myself (and I do).

Mike Pence, far to his credit as regards devotion and pledge of faith to his nation’s ultimately humanist and secular Constitution, has taken a hard line on Russia.

So, in my best Orwellian: Trump Medieval! Pence Modern! And “Pompeo Medieval!”

The Cold War–the west’s struggle against Russia’s Soviet Union and its Communist Party–has been regarded as having ended on December 25, 1991 in relation to the bankrupting of the state in relation to its defeat in Afghanistan in 1989.

With relation to America’s national security interests and international peace, what arrangements were made between the United States and Russian security cultures in 1992?

I have no answers for that.

America’s wacky political paranoia, however–more for entertainment than righteous cause, some portion of Americans has loved The X-Files, made pilgrimage to Area 51, and bought in on UFOs–has also produced a notorious anti-Constitutional Administration (2016-2020) — with its Head of State fully entangled with Russian money — and has done so in defense of lost eras and lost powers.

What happened back there — in 1992, perhaps — to bring us to this passage with a now former authoritarian American president steaming in the wings while a deeply disturbed and piratical Russian power in the figure of one Vladmir Putin makes a mess of modern Ukraine?

I have been breathing for 15 seconds after the last question mark, and I still don’t know. 🙂

However, we of EU/NATO geopolitical space have seen in action Russia’s Active Measures, Cyber Warfare, related Destabilization Measures, Hybrid Warfare, and the twists of a “New Nationalism” accompanied by authoritarianism and mafia drift in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (add France in the making of a big deal about Marine Le Pen) — and on this day a warning and perhaps a bid from Russia presaging nuclear warfare.

Applebaum, Anne. “The False Romance of Russia.” The Atlantic, December 12, 2019.

Financial Times. “Ukraine war news from February 27: Moscow places nuclear forces on high alert, BP exits stake in Rosneft, Norwegian oil fund divests from Russia.” Live Updating Ukraine coverage. Financial Times, February 27, 2022.

Good Times Bad Times. “Ukraine Defends and Waits for Supplies. Day 3. YT Video. February 26, 2022.

Hayden, Michael Edison. “U.S. White Nationalists Group Linked to Pro-Kremlin Propagandist.” Southern Poverty Law Center, October 6, 2020.

Michel, Casey. “How Russia infiltrated the world of American religious-right filmmaking.” Think Progress, February 8, 2019.

Mak, Tim. “The NRA, Maria Butina and Trump”. NPR, April 27, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “Trump’s America in Retrospect: Russian Real Estate Entanglements.” BackChannels, October 9, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “United States of America — Basic Training.” BackChannels, February 2, 2017.

Rampton, Roberta. “U.S. Vice President Pence’s hawkish tone on Russia contrasts with Trump approach.” Reuters, August 4, 2017.

Samuels, Brett. “Pence: Biden’s Russia sanctions ‘don’t go nearly far enough’.” The Hill, February 25, 2022.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

Schindler, John. “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War.” Top Secret Umbra, February 24, 2022.

Shoaib, Alia. “Trump again praised ‘smart’ Putin amid Ukraine invasion and said the US had become a ‘stupid country’.” Business Insider, February 27, 2022.

Sosa, Michele Gama. “The Deadliest Religious Conflicts in History Explained.” Grunge, January 24, 2022.

Stewart, Katherine. “Christian Nationalism Is One of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons.” Opinion. The New York Times, January 6, 2022.

Tsvetkova, Maria. “Russia, Ukraine agree to talks; Putin puts nuclear forces on alert.” Reuters, February 27, 2022.

Vasovic, Aleksandar and Alexander Marrow. “Russia, Ukraine agree to talks; Putin puts nuclear forces on alert.” Reuters, February 27, 2022.

Walker, Carter. “Who’s Charles Bausman? A closer look at the pro-Putin blogger who moved to Lancaster.” Lancaster Online, October 30, 2021.

Wikipedia. “Aleksandr Dugin“.

Wikipedia. “Night Wolves”.

Wikipedia. “Russia Insider”.

Wirestone, Clay. “Former Kansas congressman Pompeo quick to heap praise on Russia’s ruthless Putin.” Kansas Reflector, February 23, 2022.

–33–

Ukraine Pleas to Join EU While Russian Tanks Position for NATO’s Borders

26 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Poland, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Euronews, February 26, 2022.

What are the obligations–ethical, moral, and legal–attending the watching of a crime in process that may be stopped by main force followed by extraordinary strength in defense?

First, the rescuer must survive the disaster too!
🙂

Then comes the business well known to those for whom the preemptive strike has been a requirement, not an option.

As I chatype and type, Russia’s invading assets would seem to be racing toward NATO on rails in Belarus and out on the highways and streets of Ukraine . . . in other words, out in the open.

For all intents, post-Euromaidan Ukraine has demonstrated steadfast devotion to becoming part of the western assembly of open democracies bound beneath credible constitutions and related rule of law while Putin’s Russia has chosen the stance opposite, i.e., a state devoted to a capricious dictatorship and rule of force.

Marina Agaltsova, a lawyer with the Russian human rights group Memorial, said those who did protest were extremely brave, adding that “Russians are deeply terrified of arrests and court trials over rallying people to go out and protest.”

Human rights activist Marina Litvinovich urged Russians not to cry and “not to be afraid, but to just come out and say that they are against the war,” in comments on social media. Calling on people to protest is an offense under Russia’s restrictive laws.

Dixon, Robyn. “Attack on Ukraine brings rare sight in Russia: Protests in cities against Putin and invasion.” The Washington Post, February 24, 2022.

Perhaps I urge fools to rush in, and NATO is no collection of fools, although one may one note the post-9/11 turns toward authoritarianism or polarization in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Nonetheless, as Putin’s Push comes to shove, the reaffirmation of the security compact appears accomplished. The question at hand would seem to be not “If” but “When” as regards the timing of an engagement. BackChannels may assure readers of this much: Putin, as often as he may get away with this simple dance, will offer NATO hope as regards relief from attack–and then he will take it away. Brutally. Time and again.

So why wait for the monster to finish ravaging Ukraine and positioning his forces on NATO’s eastern flank before stepping into to end that dark carnival of carnage and destruction?

Putin practices treachery, he deceives, lies, and steals through the betrayal of trust: would it not be fit, would it not be best, to play him in kind?

Euronews, February 26, 2022.
NewsFromUkraine, November 18, 2017. Russia’s lost generation?
WION, February 24, 2022. BackChannels has seen arrest figures of 1,700. In Russia, Freedom is Slavery once again.
Bloomberg Quicktake: Now, February 26, 2022.

Dixon, Robyn. “Attack on Ukraine brings rare sight in Russia: Protests in cities against Putin and invasion.” The Washington Post, February 24, 2022.

Editorial Board. “Opinion: From the streets of Russia, protests rise to the war without a cause.” The Washington Post, February 25, 2022.

Marusic, Damir. “Seeng Putin Plain.” City Journal, February 24, 2022.

Stimpel, Zoe. “America Is Afraid of War. Putin Knows It.” Common Sense, February 24, 2022.

Regarding Russia’s Behavior as a Belligerent and Criminal Political Culture

Politkovskaya, Anna. “A Small Corner of Hell.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Satter, David. “The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror That Brought Putin to Power.” National Review, August 17, 2016.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014.

The three references were copied from “A Few References to Associate with Post-Soviet Russia’s Long Game” published on BackChannels on February 21, 2022.

–33–