Category Archives: 21st Century Feudal

ISIL – Groomed for a Role in “Assad vs The Terrorists”?

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syria

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Posted to YouTube by Euronews, October 1, 2015.

As noted: http://www.newsweek.com/us-accuses-assad-aiding-islamic-state-through-airstrikes-338582 The bad guy catches a break, enough to put together an army. Assad’s priorities — always flanked by Putin and Khamenei — have shown up in the news over time.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/01/politics/john-mccain-cia-russia-airstrikes/ – 10/1/2015

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russia-strikes-more-u-s-backed-rebels-in-syria/ – 10/21/2015

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/06/21/al-tanf-bombing-russia-assisted-isis-attacking-us-backed-fsa-group-cluster-bombs/ – 6/21/2016.

If you want to see what Assad had been fighting instead of western-back revolutionaries, have a look at the destruction of Homs (in the video at the bottom of this post).

BackChannels is not suggesting ISIL was never hit but rather that it has been groomed and shaped over the years for a role in  “Assad vs The Terrorists”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks

On this list, you will see that al-Nusra gets some early “licks” in in Damascus but, ISIL, which assembled into the “Islamic State” a couple of years into the war (around 2014), does not show up in association with Damascus until April of this year. Now there’s conspiracy-think: why not a 2014 or 2015 car bombing in Damascus credited to ISIL. And why this year? Perhaps they started taking hits from Russian jets. Finally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Syria

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

Addendum – October 13, 2016

WikiLeaks released an August 2014 e-mail from Hillary Clinton to John Podesta, who currently serves as her campaign chairman, stating that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” Evidently President Obama has not heeded Hillary’s concern, or chose to ignore it. In December 2014, Obama praised Saudi Arabia’s significant role in helping to fight ISIL (also known as ISIS and the Islamic State) during a meeting in Washington with the Kingdom’s Minister of Interior Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz. And at a meeting he hosted with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, at the White House in February 2015, Obama said, “Qatar is a strong partner in our coalition to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.”

Klein, Joseph.  “Saudi Arabia and Qatar Bankroll ISIS – And the Clinton Foundation.”  Frontpage, October 13, 2016.

BackChannels believes the post-Soviet Moscow axis — Moscow-Damascus-Tehran — chose, as it resisted the challenge to Assad’s authority, to emphasize fighting the west first by first combating the defecting officers who took up leadership of the Free Syrian Army while holding off, or shaping, the al-Qaeda-type organizations coming onto the field (reference, again, Lucy Westcott’s report in Newsweek, “U.S. Accuses Assad of aiding ISIS Through Airstrikes” (June 2, 2015) and compare that with more recent reports on Russia’s air campaigns both leading to the “Concert in Palmyra” (Russian jets appear to have bombed a refugee camp the next day) and the more recent barbarism, including the wanton destruction of hospitals taking place in Aleppo.

One might also have a glance a Michael Weiss’s “Russia’s Double Game with Islamic Terror” (The Daily Beast, August 23, 2015) —

Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the “Russian special services have controlled” the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions. In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad.

Putin — and everyone else with a yard of the political science classroom — knows that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” induces some patriotic nationalist response, just as a bee sting causes the flesh to swell.  The same therefore becomes a tool of a greater political force: what if you could get the “worst of the worst” to now and then hit a western target?  Of course, each drama would amplify injured state’s existing political divisions by giving voice to the “defense leagues” and each state’s most conservative leaders while also reaching through the old comrade networks and combative Muslim defense circles in their hate-the-west-first presumptions.

It turns out the URL cited near the top of Klein’s piece says nothing about “. . . clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL . . . .” from Saudi Arabia or Qatar!  

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3774

Here’s an excerpt from that source:

>> 2. It is important that once we engage ISIL, as we have now >> done in a limited manner, we and our allies should carry on until they are >> driven back suffering a tangible defeat. Anything short of this will be >> seen by other fighters in the region, Libya, Lebanon, and even Jordan, as >> an American defeat. However, if we provide advisors and planners, as well >> as increased close air support for the Peshmerga, these soldiers can defeat >> ISIL. They will give the new Iraqi Government a chance to organize itself, >> and restructure the Sunni resistance in Syria, moving the center of power >> toward moderate forces like the Free Syrian Army (FSA). In addition to air >> support, the Peshmerga also need artillery and armored vehicles to deal >> with the tanks and other heavy equipment captured from the Iraqi army by >> ISIL.

Unless “Leaks” changes — too late now! — the claim made about the URL doesn’t jive.

Addendum – November 5, 2016

His fellow prisoners were members of ISIS. “Abu Muhammad al-Joulani, (founder of the Jihadist group, Jabhat al-Jabhat al-Nusra) was rumored to be there. Mohammed Haydar Zammar, (one of the organisers of the 9/11 attacks) was there. This is where the Syrian part of ISIS was born,” he said.

Alghorani is convinced that members of ISIS were released strategically by Assad. “From the first days of the revolution (in March 2011), Assad denounced the organisation as being the work of radical Salafists, so he released the Salafists he had created in his prisons to justify the claim … If you do not have an enemy, you create an enemy.”

Cordall, Simon Speakman.  “How Syria’s Assad Helped Forge ISIS.”  Newsweek, June 21, 2014.

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Moscow -The Terror – With One Reservation

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Posted to YouTube by France 24 English, Sept. 14, 2016.

Anything is possible — for that, catch up with what lends itself to scrutiny on Snopes — but what is probable: Could there be a Russian connection to al-Qaeda today?

“It is not fashionable to accuse the Russians of having any ties to Middle East terrorism today. Indeed, some conservatives seem to think the U.S. and Russia can work together to defeat radical Islam.

“The analyst and author Jeff Nyquist asks, “When we learn that a leading commander in ISIL was born in the Soviet Union and trained in Russia, we ought to wonder what is really going on?” Omar al-Shishani, the Russian commander in ISIL (also known as ISIS or the Islamic State), has been reported to be the group’s overall military chief.”  — Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, September 30, 2014.

Why would post-Soviet Russia continue its involvement with terrorist organizations?

To promote “political absolutism” — AKA “dictatorship” — worldwide; To weaken European Union and NATO cohesion and resolve.

How might Russia today use “the terrorists”?

By creating a problem only the “strong man” might resolve.

This time around, it may not be the cause of the terrorist that Moscow supports but rather the reaction to the same.  In essence, every “Allahu Akbar Attack” promotes a patriotic and nationalist response in the receiving state.  Every injured body politics swells with the insult to its security — and then it may take stronger measures to forestall the next.  There may be an opposite heightened response as well from the feely-touchy sort that gamely adopt the sympathetic position and become a part of the heightened Far Left.  The division created by “what to do?” then serves Moscow in its renewed existence as a medieval enterprise.

Applicable reference on this blog: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“; “FTAC – America’s Division Leans Toward Moscow“.

How many years of accumulated experience has Russia in these methods?

From the Soviet Era and NKVD forward: about 80 years experience using violence as a part of producing a Political Theater of the Real, which might be better thought of as medieval spectacle and tableaux.

Basis for this view?

Mikhail Bogdanov’s November 2014 meeting with PFLP in Moscow shortly before a PFLP attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.

Moscow’s refusal to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations plus evidence of direct Russian military support for Hezbollah operations in Syria.

Soviet Era Moscow’s exploitation of violence and terror in its own political expansion and long history as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Taras Kuzio’s analysis in “Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism?” (New Eastern Europe, January 22, 2015) may bring readers up to speed on how it is that Iran is today a U. S. State Department designated state sponsor of terrorism and Russia is not.

Realpolitik – Work With Moscow or Confront and Resist?

That’s a tough question for BackChannels.

The democratic open societies of the west may be obligated to confront aggressive dictatorships but by using the broad suite of business, diplomatic, political, and social tools that might deflect all parties from open conflict and its amplification and expansion.  Perhaps the Obama Administration has been doing as much all along.  However, as this post-Cold War and now “Cold Struggle” aspect of western relations with Moscow comes into focus, western constituencies and representatives may have to ask about the development of state compromises and dependencies associated with Moscow’s feudal revanche.

The wealthy of the world — the one-half of the one percent, the world’s global business, financial, and political elite — may ask themselves (depending on how busy some may be with defense contracts) how the promotion of fear through state-driven displays of violence and terror suit the greater commercial viability of expanding non-defense business and consumer markets.

Fast Links

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/how-the-soviet-union-transformed-terrorism/250433/ – 12/23/2011.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-russian-roots-of-terrorism/ – 9/30/2014.

http://www.jrnyquist.com/the-dark-side-of-the-moon.html – 2/9/2015.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-says-hezbollah-hamas-arent-terrorist-groups-50783 – 11/16/2015.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/27/report-russia-actively-supporting-a-designated-terrorist-group-in-syria/ – 1/27/2016.

Fast Links – BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/29/ftac-americas-division-leans-toward-moscow/ – 8/29/2016

Fast Links – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

On Russia and Terrorism – Two Excerpts

“It is now interesting to see in what way history repeats itself. And why should history not repeat? – Especially when successful strategies may be used again and again, with nobody the wiser. We were manipulated in 1939-45, and we have been manipulated in the period 2001-2014. Of course, it is not that Hitler and bin Laden were nice guys. It is merely that we allowed ourselves to become so absorbed in fighting a lesser enemy that we completely lost sight of the greater enemy. Worse, this greater enemy manipulated us in ways that are shameful to have permitted. Once again, we turned a blind eye to Russia’s preparations to take over Europe; that is to say, preparations to take full advantage of our distraction.”  — From J. R. Nyquist, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” February 9, 2015.

“In the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union sponsored waves of political violence against the West. The Red Brigades in Italy and the German Red Army Faction both terrorized Europe through bank robberies, kidnapping, and acts of sabotage. The Soviets wanted to use these left-wing terror groups to destabilize Italy and Germany to break up NATO. State-sponsored terrorism was a deeply Soviet phenomenon, but its practice did not stop when the Soviet Union ended. While state sponsorship continues, terrorism has mutated into something even harder for us to understand and respond to. But some of the roots of today’s terrorism go back to the Soviet Union.” — Nick Lockwood, “How the Soviet Union Transformed Terrorism,” The Atlantic, December 23, 2011.

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FTAC – “Syria is the World Without Israel”

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Religion, Syria

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Syria is the world without Israel. It is the world of Pharaoh in which four dictators, Assad flanked by Putin and Khamenei, his enablers, and another benighted soul, among others, Baghdadi, each believes himself representative of law. Together, they have recreated an image of the medieval world, a complete theater of politics and war.

Israel has received and provided medical services to Syrians for many years now. It leaves the politics of each person in need outside the hospital.

As this tragedy began in 2011 in Dara where a mild protest was met with the arrests and torture of students, it got formed rapidly into a statement about absolute power. No democracy; no talk; no compromises. The prize for each kleptocratic dictator, for each absolute ruler: the power to make others suffer with impunity.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

With the company of others, the Jews left Pharaoh a long time ago.

God proved greater than the tyrant.

The prompt: “A world without Israel would be so peaceful.”

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FTAC – Clarification on Syria’s Medieval Meltdown

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/06/02/assad-or-burn-it-assad-burns-it/

Moscow-Damascus-Tehran chose a long time ago to sustain political absolutism and produce between themselves a medieval spectacle, “Assad OR The Terrorists” AKA “Assad vs The Terrorists”. To get “The Terrorists”, Assad chose to bedevil noncombatants and early FSA, whose officers defected from his own corps, while allowing al-Nusra and others greater space and time — an act of incubation, deselection for combat — to consolidate.

No one likes this story — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ — because it suggests that Syria has been made into a complete theater of politics and war, courtesy of Putin, Assad, Khamenei, and, led into it by the early easing off, Baghdadi. The display or tableaux moves “the masses”, but it wasn’t necessary but to defend the politics of dictatorships (“different talks — same walk”) — and Syria has been all but destroyed by it.

We know there is such a thing as the medieval world because we look back on it.

The medieval takes up space in the world’s museums.

Is there such a thing as “modern”?

Perhaps time blends ages and experiences.

One may be certain, however, that what Assad has brought about in Syria combines modern aesthetic and social norms — recall that Concert at Palmyra — with a deeply medieval politics, one that feasts on blood and sets the other side up for doing as much.  Driven from the land or killed: noncombatants and perhaps the more modern of revolutionary units.

Posted to YouTube by Al Jazeera English, September 12, 2016.

Posted to YouTube by AFP News Agency, September 12, 2016.

BackChannels feels that Assad flanked by Putin and Khamenei and accompanied in their medieval journey by Baghdadi are “all in” for “absolute power” — “Different talks, same walk” — and none have either “internal brakes” or personal incentives for compromise.  However, external influences, starting with state (or “state”) money and either the want of it or the loss of it, might apply.

Also, for Putin, greater state interests plus, perhaps, interest in his reputation in history, may come to bear — no pun intended — for as the destruction of Syria intensifies and western intervention remains limited, it’s himself as much as Assad, the head of a Russian “client state”, who may in the world’s memory bear the brunt of responsibility for the horror of it.

Additional Reference

CBS/AP.  “Syria cease-fire — Assad’s “last shot” — seems to hold.”  September 13, 2016.

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FTAC – From Correspondence – Focusing on the Despotic

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

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Dictatorships – “Different Talks – Same Walk” — they have nothing to do with any restricted political vision except to exploit language for the eventual attainment of “unlimited narcissistic supply.”

Truly, they flatter themselves, eventually leaving behind pyramids and billion-dollar mansions.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

Many make themselves living hell for others, unfortunately.

Successful states — plenty of cash across the geopolitical space and plenty to do as regards work — seem to me often well put together combines of public commitments and privately realized opportunities. As all things are worked out between actual persons and organizations, the general rule — public-private compacts, from the provision of infrastructure to area-wide tax policy to real estate development through to public regulation of production (environmental and labor legislation) and trade (controls on distribution and tariffs) — dissolves into improved qualities in living x area-sq.

In good societies, “qualities of living” (economic, physical, psychological, social, spiritual) should produce the benchmarks (casually stated: “are you better off today than you were so many years ago? And how so? And why?) to which constituencies and politicians respond.

The despotic evade popular judgment.

I think we focus too much on the “isms” and not enough on leadership and related social practices, but that feature in cultures need the poets out front. Depending on where one lives, the critics of power, especially despotic power, may be made to suffer in situ or in exile a long time.

Re. education — avoidance of indulging too many in the humanities and social sciences, or doing so through too much of a Far Right / Far Left professoriate, may make a political body too easily disinformed and misled. As I have no relevant power in that realm, or elsewhere, reparative action seems way beyond my reach.

I think generalists among writers have at best subtle influence over time.

A good conversation may be mild and yet moving.

The conversational partner had called for the removal of former communists from Russian politics; however, and President Putin included, the whole have transformed from the Soviet outlook and ditched the CPSU worldview, a process well underway but out of sight in the 1980s when the privileged of the Party had begun work on plans for afterward.  The “afterward” — December 26 of this year will mark 25 years of “afterward”) — has returned to Russians a deeply centralized national security state: FSB | Putin | Oligarchs.

Where the same has run the world into disturbing issues: Syria.

Barbarism, Corruption, and Cronyism v Rule of Law and Meritocracy

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Medieval Political Absolutism vs Modern Democratic Distribution of Power

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State-Based Development and Exploitation of Terrorists (as in the medieval realpolitik theatrical “Assad OR The Terrorists”) v Progressive Humanist Discipline in Military / Paramilitary Assessment and Response (as in modern Israel)

The items presented in “That v This” form need not be black-and-white in reality (or “realpolitik”) as the blend may be more the thing, but what’s on display in Russia- and Iran-enabled Syria is so bad as to make modern invention of the political themes involved very easy.  Stopping at an expanded “Medieval v Modern” three should suffice.

Through President Putin, certain features (like that KGB/FSB thing) of the Soviet Union have enjoyed a period of “Soviet Reunion”.  A number of characteristics associated with the period of dissolve around 1991 have been reversed, and the leader has returned to the people a certain boisterous quality.  However, the ambitious neo-medieval neo-imperial state’s “numbers” — military expenditures, reduced oil revenues, incidence of corruption throughout, capital inflows, reduced reserves — may be keeping internal development comparatively suspended.  That may do Putin’s popularity and reputation some damage over time.

General Reference

. . . the majority of the population sees the Kremlin not as the reason for the current economic recession but as the central power making a relatively successful attempt to consolidate society against external enemies that seek to strangle Russia economically. Somehow, it is not hard for the Kremlin-controlled media to find proof and symptoms—Western sanctions are presented as a major instrument of destruction, causing severe harm to the Russian economy; the oil price decline is declared to be the result of an anti-Russian plot; and even the situation around Ukraine is treated as an attack on Russian foreign trade, on Russia’s ability to cooperate with a neighboring market of 45 million people, and on the traditionally close economic ties between Ukraine and Russia. Over time, economic hardships have become a reason for the increase in public support of the president and his policies, not a reason for protesting.

Movchan, Andrey.  “Avoiding the Blame for Russia’s Economic Woes.”  Carnegie Moscow Center, March 30, 2016.

Oxenstierna, Susanne.  “Russia’s defense spending and the economic decline.”  Journal of Eurasian Studies, January 2016, 7:1, 60-70.

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FTAC – Syria, Compressed

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

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This is basic:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

And the confusion in the “battlespace” fails to recognize the true oppositions in the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy.

The correct framing: the 25th anniversary (Dec. 26) of the dissolve of the Soviet Union.

The correct opposition:

“Medieval Political Absolutism” vs “Modern Democratic Distributions of Power”

The medieval axis: Moscow-Damascus-Tehran + others who invest themselves in authoritarian politics. Fair slogan for the kleptocratic dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

The dictators are those who walk all over their own constituents (or subjugated populations).

The modern axis: the United States, NATO, the open democracies of the west and worldwide.

There are a lot of fence sitters — Pakistan may be one — but the medieval world is on full display between Putin, Assad, Khamenei, AND Baghdadi.

I don’t know when the perception of the witness of the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” will kick in, grow, and align within the lovers of broadly distributed freedom and prosperity worldwide, but this blog has been working on that for a while.

By now, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may know the extent to which his enterprise had been enabled in its infancy to service to serve in these ways:

  • A collector of “jihadist” passion;
  • An organization suiting the blackmailing of the west in a political theatrical one might call “Assad OR The Terrorists” — never mind the both operating as tyrants;
  • A goad to the west, especially mixed in with the hapless of Syria’s mass migration;
  • An excuse to destroy (“Assad or We Burn It”) Syria and depopulate the region for the greater political control of the despotic powers.

Those who merely follow each day’s headlines (and Russian post-Soviet disinformation) will not “see” the political reality that is Syria.  They will see the glorious “Assad vs The Terrorist” and witness Moscow’s latest in military technology set loose on the landscape, while those who dig, and those who have memory — all the way back to Daara, 2011 — will get the whole story, understand it, and perhaps be enraged by what it represents.

Related

Like Syria itself, Daraa has been ripped apart by five years of conflict. What began as a local protest movement against the Assad political dynasty slowly morphed into an international proxy war that’s drawn in the United States, Russia, Iran and nearly all of Syria’s neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are displaced. While it’s difficult to find a Syrian who honestly believes there’s an end in sight, there’s some agreement about where it all began: with Omar’s friends. The graffiti they dared to paint on the schoolyard walls has become an origin myth for Syria’s tragic conflict — not just for the citizens of Daraa, but for the entire country.

By some accounts, the schoolkids were deeply political; they painted dozens of political slogans that day, and eventually set fire to a police kiosk to express solidarity with anti-police protests erupting across the Arab world. Omar remembers his friends a little differently. Sure, they had an eye on Egypt and Tunisia, but Omar says they defaced the school wall because they were teenagers, and it was the rebellious thing to do, not because they were die-hard revolutionaries.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-young-men-who-started-syrias-revolution-speak-about-daraa-where-it-all-began – 3/15/2016.

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Note – Russian “Influence Operations”

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, France, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Political Psychology, Russia, United States of America

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In the unruly and frequently unpredictable way of the web, Jakub Janda’s “Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat'” (Sept. 2) showed up on the desktop unaccompanied by other recent or breaking “influence news” and was simply passed along by BackChannels.

Not thirty minutes later (and published just six hours ago):

Priest, Dana, Ellen Nakashima, and Tom Hamburger.  “Intelligence community investigating covert Russian influence operations in the United States.”  The Washington Post, September 5, 2016:

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

Related in The Washington Post: “Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s” (Michael Birnbaum, March 8, 2015).

Related in Defense One: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/ (Patrick Tucker, July 24, 2016).

With even a little looking into “Russian influence operations”, one finds gems.

Here’s one from France:

The French Coordination Council of Compatriots is a subsidiary of the International Council of Russian Compatriots established in October 2003, the Putin equivalent of the Ausland Organization (AO) created by the Nazi Party in 1931 in order to mobilize the German diasporas to serve the Reich. This network now relies on the “Russian world” (Russkiy mir), an organization founded in 2007, which signed a collaboration agreement with the Orthodox Church in November 2009.[2] The first Forum of Russian Compatriots was held in France in September 2011 at the Russian Embassy. At the 3rd Forum organized in October 2013, French citizens of Russian origin were explicitly invited by the attending representatives of the Russian authorities to become vectors of the Kremlin’s policy in France.[3] In France the role of the Moscow Patriarchate in the seduction of the conservative right should not be underestimated. Since 2000 the Moscow Patriarchate has been taking over Russian Orthodox parishes formerly in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, reportedly with the occasional help of the Russian special services.

http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-party-france (Francoise Thom, June 15, 2016).  The Thom’s article is rich with information on Moscow’s infiltration of France’s cultural and political machinery.

From UK Scotland comes an account of “framing”, a technique that takes a given reality but sets out to cast the same in a disparaging manner:

It was a moment in which the people of Scotland were vulnerable, says independence campaigner Douglas Daniel, who was present at the vote count and wrote about it for the political website Wings Over Scotland.

At the time, he says, he knew nothing about the ROIIP team.

“It wasn’t until the articles speaking about ‘Russia’ and saying the process was flawed [appeared] that I became aware of their existence,” says Daniel.

Sure enough, by the end of the day after the vote, the ROIIP delegation’s damning verdict was all over the British and Russian press.

The vote in Scotland “[did] not conform to generally accepted international principles of referendums,” said Borisov, the delegation’s head.

https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/5368-brexit-how-russian-influence-undermines-public-trust-in-referendums – June 20, 2016 by Iggy Ostanin and Eleanor Rose for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which is supported by “grants by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the United States Department of State, the Swiss Confederation, the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Google Ideas and the Knight Foundation, i.e., Moscow’s opposition, including George Soros, whose own organization may have taken on some life of its own through staffers now associated with Black Lives Matter and other “western critics” (to put it very mildly).

In the above cited quotation and article, the “ROIIP” was Russia’s “election monitoring” organization that ended up predictably devising and promoting criticism certain to cause dissension in the Scottish electorate.

Again (if you’re a BackChannels regular, you seen this point made many times), the purpose of the spin appears to be that of sowing discord and conflict in Moscow’s target states.

The point was writ large with the January 2016 announcement of a Congressionally-backed mission to review of clandestine Russian funding of European parties over the last decade:

A dossier of “Russian influence activity” seen by The Sunday Telegraph identified Russian influence operations running in France, the Netherlands, Hungary as well as Austria and the Czech Republic, which has been identified by Russian agents as an entry-point into the Schengen free movement zone.

The US intelligence review will examine whether Russian security services are funding parties and charities with the intent of “undermining political cohesion”, fostering agitation against the Nato missile defence programme and undermining attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/12103602/America-to-investigate-Russian-meddling-in-EU.html (Peter Foster, Matthew Holehouse, January 16, 2016).

Related (possibly): Bertrand, Natasha.  “America’s top spy just hinted at how much leverage Russia truly has over Washington.”  Business Insider, Military & Defense, July 29, 2016.

Additional Reference

Estonia

http://www.fpri.org/article/2015/10/russian-propaganda-disinformation-and-estonias-experience/ – 10/4/2015

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/russians-estonia-twenty-years-after – 7-8/2014 (Backgrounder involving Russophone relationships in Russia’s “near abroad”):

As I remember it, the first signs of danger started appearing close to ten years ago, when, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people in Russia and in former Soviet republics started expressing their discontent about the poor economic situation, social inequality, and political chaos. The post-Soviet emphasis on developing democracy gradually started to fade, replaced with other concerns, above all a critical attitude toward the United States and the West in general, which was considered to be responsible for the decline of Russia. The message of the Russian powers had changed, and everything from television and large-scale events to daily interactions and personal attitudes reflected this. The Soviet Union and its World War II victory became more hallowed; red flags, red stars, and portraits of Lenin and Stalin reappeared. So too did the glorification of the Russian Empire. Drivers in Ida-Viru County, for example, decorated their cars with the orange-and-black Ribbon of St. George, a symbol of military valor in czarist Russia. In an attempt to show pride in their Russian heritage by supporting both czarist and Soviet imperialism, these patriots seemed to forget that the Bolsheviks oppressed recipients of the Order of St. George and executed many of them.

Works by energy consultant Agnia Grigas always prove enlightening as regards Russian influence and policy in its foreign relations.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Russia%20and%20Eurasia/0812bp_grigas.pdf (Agnia Grigas, August 2012): “Legacies, Coercion and Soft Power: Russian Influence in the Baltic States“.

Ragozin, Leonid.  “Putin’s Hand Grows Stronger as Right-Wing Parties Advance in Europe.”  Bloomberg, March 15, 2016:

Ten days ago, yet another far-right party supporting Russia gained a foothold in an EU country, this time Slovakia. People’s Party, Our Slovakia won 8% of the vote in national elections, joining a burgeoning club including Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.

The far-right parties, which often stem from neo-Nazi groups and sport crypto-fascist insignia, are the most visible layer of the pro-Russia camp in Europe. With Europe engulfed in a migrant crisis sparked by the war in Syria, their anti-immigrant and anti-EU rhetoric is in hot demand across the continent, particularly in the east. Party leaders are frequent guests in Moscow, and many of them are closely linked to Russia’s own reactionary networks. Together, they are nudging the political mainstream toward radical nationalism, which these days often comes hand in hand with pro-Russian sentiment.

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_influence_operations_in_Estonia

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Also in Media: Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat’

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eastern Europe, Political Spychology, Russia

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“Intelligence officers under diplomatic cover were active also at the embassies of other states; however, the number of Russian intelligence officials was much higher. Unlike intelligence officials of partner states, Russian (and some other) intelligence officers did not declare their status to the BIS”, it added.“Such clandestine behaviour, concealing the affiliation to an intelligence service, clearly signals activities threatening the security and other interests of the Czech Republic”.

Read more at Czech intelligence alarmed by Russian ‘threat’, EUObserver, September 2, 2016.

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