Israel, Kurdistan, Ukraine – President Trump’s Astonishing (and Breaking) Appearance of Betrayal

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics

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betrayal of democracies, betrayal of democratic movements, Erdogan, Israel, Kurdish freedom, Kurdish People's Struggle, President Trump, Turkish dictatorship, Ukraine, Ukrainian Freedom Struggle, Western Wall comment

TrumpBetrays-170517-1313

Look at it. Read about it. Weep. And then read the update . . . .

First, The Donald dissed Israel with the astonishing statement delivered by a diplomat that the Western Wall was a part of “the Israeli-occupied West Bank”.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-diplomacy-idUSKCN18B2K2 – 5/16/2017

Update on the Western Wall Remark – May 17, 2017

“This isn’t your territory. This is in the West Bank. It is a private visit by the president, and it’s not your business,” responded one US official, according to the Times of Israel.

Israel’s Channel 2 identified the official as David Berns, the political counselor at the US Consulate in Jerusalem, and said he was accompanied by economic adviser Jonathan Shrier, who also was involved in the row.

Source: http://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-post/20170517/281655370004552

BackChannels much appreciates the dogged primary journalism.

BackChannels also feels David Berns should have been briefed as to the significance and sovereign possession of the Western Wall. If he had been apprised of the history involved, then shame on him with little mercy for what he may be suffering through today.

Notes Aaron Klein writing for Breitbart and angling for another knock at the Obama Administration: “Berns is a career officer at the State Department who has been working at the U.S. Consulate since August 2015. In other words, he received his position there during the Obama administration. According to his LinkedIn profile, Berns served from January 2002 until present as a foreign service officer with the State Department.”

BackChannels News Pass-Along on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/BackChannels/

Next, The Donald as good as told the Kurdish forces now fighting ISIS — an invention partially produced by old Baathist military officers and Assad’s own wishes to produce the image of “Assad v The Terrorists” — that they were “PKK” — an all but defunct communist movement born in the late 1970s — and he would cooperate with Turkey in their suppression.

If you’re informed, you know what just took place, especially if you have been fighting ISIS as part of the “YPG” (People’s Protection Units) or “YPJ” Women’s Protection Units).

One correspondent noted that in the joint appearance, “The Donald cited PKK @ 5:20, whereas Erdoğan cited YPG/PYD @ 11:50.”

True.

In essence, Erdogan appears to have just gotten President Donald J. Trump to not only endorse his dictatorship but the potential for the continuing suppression and potential cultural annihilation of the Kurds who in his benighted opinion should have no defenses at all.

Regarding BackChannels statement about the Kurdish People’s struggle for a unified state:

. . . Turkey pretends on the surface that they are willing to help Kurdish President Barzani in Iraq but behind the scenes, they are doing everything in order to prevent an independent Kurdistan: “They view the Kurdistan issue as a matter of survival for them. As the Kurds of Syria move closer to America and walk away from the PKK and the Marxists, the Turks are trying to paint them as Marxists, Iranian agents, Assad agents and terrorists. It is all in order to prevent the Kurds of Syria from getting access to the sea. That is the primary reason why Erdogan came to the US.”

Sherkoh Abbas speaking on behalf of the Kurdish People and as quoted in the following publication and URL:

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kurdish-dissident-erdogan-to-pressure-trump-into-opposing-kurdish-independence/ – 5/16/2017

Slinging mud stops working when one catches the spatter and gives it a good look.

By way of research a decade ago, BackChannels has come to view the PKK as a marginalized organization with its leader Abdullah Ocalan sitting in a Turkish jail. The conflation of the old PKK with the whole of Kurdish forces and their aspirations may misguide the public. BackChannels will try to obtain an up-to-date clarification involving the integration of Kurdish political movements across the several suzerains maintained by adverse hosting/subjugating states.

Millions of Christians in the United States and the Jewish People recognize political defamation and demonization — and readers worldwide should as well. That the same may be meted to the Kurds by Turkish President Erdogan bodes ill for the western democracies against the feudal absolutism embraced and promoted by Moscow-Tehran.

President Erdogan has turned Turkey into a now de facto dictatorship while the ruling powers in Moscow have resumed their promotion of disingenuous speech — actually . . . lying — and the distribution of “active measures” and related propaganda (just look up “alternative media” and “alternative news” and the garbage that fills the minds of those who patronize the biggest dump of Orwellian “untruth” that has ever been milled out of a basement — where it should have stayed.

Update – On American Cooperation with Turkey on the Defeating of Kurdish Aspirations for Independence – May 17, 2017

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Armored vehicles flying American flags, American soldiers posing for photos with Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militants and incessant reports on US-YPG relations have been the top news in Turkey in recent days, all suggesting that the United States was heading toward an alliance with the Kurds on the Syrian battlefield.

Turkish officials reacted sometimes harshly, sometimes more guardedly, to this alliance in the making. The US administration finally said the last word with statements from their officials that Washington had decided to give direct weapons assistance to the Kurds. Although American officials tried hard to explain that the weapons will be going to the Syrian Democratic Forces, everyone knows that the backbone of that force is the YPG. This radical decision by the Trump administration has naturally become a topic of international politics.

“Will arming of YPG help open Kurdish corridor in Syria?” Al Monitor, May 15, 2017

Perhaps “The Donald” at the podium was schmearing President Erdogan after all.

Yesterday, the day of initial publication for this post, BackChannels installed in the title the hedge, “Appearance of Betrayal”. With that, readers have perhaps entered a new era, not so much of “Fake News”, a term Trump’s Administration with autocratic tendencies has used to undermine faith in the mainstream media, but of high-level “Fake-Outs”.

Reference

KYIV, Ukraine—Using artillery, tanks, and rockets, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian forces along the front lines in eastern Ukraine on Sunday and early Monday morning, highlighting, once again, that the February 2015 cease-fire has failed.

“This is barbarism,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Monday in response to the attacks, according to a tweet from his press secretary, Svyatoslav Tsegolko.

http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/30/this-is-barbarism-ukrainian-troops-on-high-alert-as-war-intensifies/ – 1/30/2017

WASHINGTON — President Trump cast doubt on whether Moscow is backing separatists engaged in the recent escalation of fighting in eastern Ukraine, appearing to side with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has long denied involvement in the conflict despite evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Trump said he did not take offense at the outbreak of a lethal bout of fighting in Ukraine that came within a day of a phone conversation he had with Mr. Putin, saying of the recent clashes, “we don’t really know exactly what that is.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/us/politics/ukraine-trump-putin-separatists-poroshenko.html – 2/6/2017

According to multiple accounts, the Trump campaign has successfully worked behind the scenes to make sure the new Republican platform would not pledge the lethal defensive weapons Ukraine has been pleading for from the United States. Trump’s forces have tabled a platform amendment that would call for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia, and have substituted “appropriate assistance” for “providing lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine’s military. Removing sanctions and blocking lethal military assistance to Ukraine are the two primary goals of Putin’s foreign policy. The Republican platform is handing those goals to Putin on a golden platter.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2016/07/18/trump-deferring-to-putin-deleted-gop-platforms-call-to-supply-ukraine-with-lethal-defensive-weapons/#1236d19a30ba – 7/18/2016 (election season maneuvering)

https://www.unian.info/politics/1819686-us-military-assistance-to-ukraine-opening-up-portals.html – 3/13/2017

http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/economic/419801.html – 5/5/2017

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PSA: Ukrainian Freedom Marches, May 20, 2017

15 Monday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Ukraine

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2017, democracy, Freedom Marches, May 20, mobilizations, pro-democracy, protests, Russian nationalist fascism, Ukraine, Ukraine conflict, Ukrainian Freedom Marches

It’s been 3 years and over 10,000 people dead, 23,000 wounded and over 1.5 million displaced people in Donbas region. We all know that this bloody conflict is a covert Russian war against Ukraine, and its objective is to destabilize Ukraine and to prevent it from ever having a chance to be a part of Europe and exist independently from Russian influence.

But many Americans don’t realize that the war in Eastern Ukraine is far from being over.

This is why we will march and rally on May 20th to raise the awareness about an on going Russian aggression and to ask the US for support.

We demand that the Russian assisted militia immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine ASAP.

If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government sticking to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by all means necessary, in order to restore territorial integrity of the Ukrainian nation. American Government needs to be tough on Russia.

Above: BackChannels edited (re-paragraphed) excerpt from the San Francisco promotion for the May 20, 2017 march.

Primary Sources

http://zvamy.org/ (Calendar Section)
&
https://www.facebook.com/pg/ukrainianfreedommarch/events/

Individual Pages

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-in-naples-fl/?instance_id=12776301

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-washington-dc-may-20th/?instance_id=12776296 – https://www.facebook.com/events/1772468566416946/ –

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-phoenix/?instance_id=12776291

http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/may-20th-san-diego-ukrainian-rally-in-solidarity-with-dc/?instance_id=12776294

https://www.facebook.com/events/293951561048912/ (San Francisco)

“Hot Russian Aggression”

Field Documentary, RFE/RL, 2/7/2017

For democracy, for classical liberalism, for dignity and freedom, for rule of law (as opposed to the rule of thugs), fight back. Attend or publicize the above-listed marches.

BackChannels finds its unbelievable how so active a war as that taking place in Ukraine — and brought to Ukraine by invading Russian forces — has been so off the headlines in major media. To catch up with events, BackChannels has a portal page, “Ukraine Conflict Resources – Short List“.

Choose your Ukrainian conflict reporting or news outlet and get acquainted.

Russia has launched an unprecedented active measures / disinformation campaign across the web in association with its feudal aggression in Ukraine, and if you have been well informed, you may take measure of that yourself by having a look at the “alternative media” and “alternative news” outlets or the propaganda listings appearing to the right of the videos displayed here. You will find plenty evidence of “reflection in the mirror” or what BackChannels refers to as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” in Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s portion of the “information warfare space”.

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Belarus’s, Kazakhstan’s and Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

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

Russia has deployed as many as 10,000 troops in eastern Ukraine for more than a year and has actively sought to hide the deaths of its soldiers, according to a new report that provides a comprehensive assessment of the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbor.

The report was published Thursday by the Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates Russian media and reports on Russian affairs, also detailed the Kremlin’s provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry and vehicles to separatists in Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict since April 2014.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/how-russia-invaded-ukraine/ – 9/18/2015.

As Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day today, Poroshenko said that more than 2,500 Ukrainian servicemen and 7,500 civilians had been killed since the outbreak of the war in the spring of 2014.

In an interview with Holos Ukrainy, the official journal of the Ukrainian parliament, the defense minister, Viktor Muzhenko, specified today that 3,064 members of the security forces had been killed in the east since the start of what the Ukrainian government calls the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in April, 2014.

Of this number, Muzhenko said, 2,636 were soldiers in the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the others presumably being volunteer fighters or servicemen in the National Guard, police or State Border Service. 2,148 of the VSU casualties were combat losses.

http://www.interpretermag.com/day-1023/ – 12/6/2016.

Related from 2015:

http://www.interpretermag.com/an-invasion-by-any-other-name-the-kremlins-dirty-war-in-ukraine/

8 December 2016 – A new United Nations report out today has confirmed that Ukrainians living close to the “contact line” – the area between Government-controlled and armed group-controlled territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – not only suffer due to fighting near their homes but also face the threat of landmines and unexploded ordinance as well as have to contend with severe restrictions on movement.

According to the Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine launched today by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between mid-August and mid-November, at least 32 civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents and another 132 injured. Between mid-April 2014 and 1 December this year, more than 2,000 civilians are estimated to have dined while an additional 298 were killed in the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17.

Conflict-related civilian injures are estimated between 6,000 and 7,000.

“It is of deep concern that Government forces and armed groups operating in civilian areas do not take all feasible precautions against the effects of fighting, resulting in damage to schools, kindergartens, and medical facilities,” noted the report.

It added that it was worrying that Ukrainian military forces and armed groups continued to be positioned in civilian homes and buildings in villages and towns adjacent to the contact line.

The report also raised concern that armed groups in the self-proclaimed “Donetsk people’s republic” and “Luhansk people’s republic” continue to deprive people of their fundamental rights as well as of effective mechanism for redress.

Hundreds of individuals also remain missing.

Excerpt – http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55750#.WRngwtQrJlY – 12/8/2016

Highlights

The total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Crimea and eastern Ukraine is 1,590,056 as of 3 April 2017, according to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.

IOM assisted over 137,000 vulnerable IDPs and conflict affected people in 24 regions of Ukraine.

Lack of funds made 40% of vulnerable IDPs IOM assisted with cash in Ukraine refuse medical treatment, according to the post-distribution monitoring of IOM’s project in 13 regions of Ukraine.

http://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/iom-s-assistance-conflict-afflicted-people-ukraine-march-2017 – 3/31/2017

–33–

Also in Media: “Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington” | The Ukrainian Weekly | May 14, 2017

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by commart in Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Politics, Ukraine

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D.C., democracy, freedom, pro-Ukraine, protest, rule of law, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine Freedom March, Washington

The march – with a full police escort – is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Washington Monument and conclude at the Holodomor Memorial, near Union Station, where a vigil is to be held, concluding at approximately 5:30 p.m.

Among the invited guest speakers are analyst Paul Goble, Peter Borisow, president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation; other noted Ukraine advocates are expected and, at the time of writing, were still being confirmed, among them Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly. Clergy from the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish and Muslim faiths in Ukraine have been invited to properly represent the people of Ukraine.

As stated by Mr. Skibicki: “We demand that the Russian-backed terrorists immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine. If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government to stick to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by providing modern defensive weapons in order to help the Ukrainian people restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are NOT calling for American troops to be deployed to Ukraine.”

Notice on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ukrainianfreedommarch/

–33–

From Kurdistan – “Black Flag Down”

12 Friday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Kurdistan

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American duplicity, American resolve, ISIS, Kurdish forces, Kurdish YPG, Kurdistan

https://twitter.com/DefenceUnits/status/862985541834481664

Backgrounder

In the News

AMUDA, Syria — At long last, those of us struggling to maintain a fledgling democracy in Northern Syria have been buoyed by the announcement from the Trump administration that the American military will begin to directly arm the Kurdish men and women who make up the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Those forces have been America’s most valued and effective allies in the war against the Islamic State.

This is something we’ve asked for repeatedly during the nearly three years our militias have been fighting the Islamic State and winning, victories achieved despite tough odds and a lack of heavy weapons. We’ve steadily driven the jihadists back hundreds of miles to the brink of defeat at Raqqa. The Islamic State won’t give up its self-styled capital easily. This military aid will be crucial in finishing the job.

But as President Trump prepares to meet next week with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — no friend to the Kurds in Syria or in his own country — we ask the American president and people to be mindful of the enormous sacrifice the Kurdish people have made in this fight, and the importance of the unique democratic system we have worked hard to build in the area of Northern Syria known as Rojava.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/tv/replay/crossroads/x5lt7gn

https://dailymotion.com/video/x5lt7gn

–33–

Also in Media: “Hacking, Leaking” – Report of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing, March 30, 2017: “DISINFORMATION A PRIMER IN RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES AND INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS”

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Philology, Political Spychology

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Active Measures, disinformation, foreign meddling in elections, political spychology, Soviet post-Soviet

Sen-Disinfo-Rpt-3-30-2017-hacks-img

Then, in May and June 2015, the first publicly known large-scale disinformation operation, dubbed “Saudi Cables,” tested an innovative tactic: hacking a target, exfiltrating compromising material (kompromat), setting up a dedicated leak website under false flag, and then passing files to Wikileaks for laundering and wide distribution.9 Between June 2015 and November 2016, at least six front organizations sprung up as outlets for compromised files by GRU: Yemen Cyber Army, Cyber Berkut, Guccifer 2.0, DC Leaks, Fancy Bears Hack Team, and @ANPoland.

Finally, in past year, the timeline of US-election operations began to align. In early March, GRU began to train its well-established, semi-automated targeting tools from worldwide military and diplomatic targets to US political targets. Between 10 March and 7 April, GRU targeted at least 109 Clinton campaign staffers with 214 individual phishing emails (with 8 more attempts on 12 and 13 May). 36 times Clinton staffers clicked a malicious link (the success rate of actually breaching the account after a victim clicked this link is 1-in-7). Russian intelligence targeted Jake Sullivan in at least 14 different attempts beginning on 19 March, each time with a different malicious link against two of his email addresses. GRU targeted Hillary Clinton’s personal email account at least two times in March, but the available data show that she did not fall for the password reset trick. The military intelligence agency also targeted DNC staffers with 16 emails between 15 March and 11 April, and 3 DNC staffers were tricked into clicking the treacherous “reset password” button on 6 April 2016.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-trid-033017.pdf – 3/30/2017 PDF; same available in other formats (for -e-readers:

https://archive.org/details/ActiveMeasuresPrimer

Passed to BackChannels in the way of all free press, the Senate report retells not only the story of Russian infiltration of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and subsequent access to internal exchanges in e-mail, it touches on the history, scope, and techniques of KGB-style methods involved.

–33–

Orwell in America – President Trump’s Sudden Firing of FBI Director Comey

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology

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21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Comey, firing, Orwellian, political integrity, Trump, Trump's Russian Question

“It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Mr. Trump wrote in a letter to Mr. Comey.

“The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them,” he wrote. “Having refused to admit his errors, the director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.”

Ballhaus, Rebecca. “Trump Fires FBI Director Comey.” The Wall Street Journal, A1, A4, May 10, 2017.

Comey’s errors?

Publicly commenting after close of investigation on Clinton’s e-mails, an act with which then candidate Trump and later President Trump appeared to have had no issue.

That’s one error.

That’s it.

One possible other, not cited as an error, might be Comey’s heading up the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign effort and Moscow.

The format of Trump’s ire and its delivery appears to BackChannels that of j’accuse, the Jacobin’s pointing the finger at all suspected of political heresy.

Regarding the President’s claim of having had no business with Russia — it might be true; however, the query may be also complicated by Russia’s feudal gaming over time plus the business class in which he resides.

At this point, the reader may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s duplicitous and manipulative feudal character and its kleptocratic ends:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

Motivation?

Feudal wealth; feudal power; absolute and above and beyond questioning — if not rule by divine right, then by way of most worldly thuggery.

Reminder: Flynn

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-russia-today-rt-kremlin-media-vladimir-putin-213833 – 5-6/2016:

I saw the relation with Russia as necessary to the U.S., for the interests of the U.S. We worked very closely with them on the Sochi Olympics. We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal. We beat Hitler because of our relationship with the Russians, so anybody that looks on it as anything but a relationship that’s required for mutual supporting interests, including ISIS, … that’s really where I’m at with Russia. We have a problem with radical Islamism and I actually think that we could work together with them against this enemy. They have a worse problem than we do.

Flynn’s statement sounds true enough on the surface, but place it beside this analysis of ISIL and it’s role in the east v west, feudal v modern contest:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/04/09/ftac-reprise-how-isil-serves-moscow-damascus-and-tehran/

BackChannels thesis: Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran ditched a mild revolutionary opposition in favor of the al-Qaeda type organizations, so as to produce for themselves and the west a political spectacle, “Assad v The Terrorists”, certain to aggrandize themselves while blackmailing and goading the west in the direction of complicity with — or weakness in the face of — each their own totalitarian dictatorships and kleptocracies.

General Michael T. Flynn, proving less than one-hundred percent honest with Vice President Pence in relation to his Moscow-related experience got himself fired in much the same brusque manner as now former FBI Director Comey.

Here’s a smattering of related URLs, but the main thing here is to remind of Flynn’s connection to Trump’s denial of his initial team having had nothing to do with Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-michael-flynn-russia-money-20170316-story.html – 3/16/2017

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-paid-mike-flynn-45k-moscow-speech-documents-show-n734506 – 3/16/2017

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/31/michael-flynn-new-evidence-spy-chiefs-had-concerns-about-russian-ties – 3/31/2016

Reminder: Manafort

The header alone should operate like Proust’s fabled taste of Madeleine, for Manafort falls into place with Yanukovych, Putin’s puppet deposed by cause of his own corruption in Ukraine, and then Sergei Millian — http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-sergei-millian (1/19/2017), Konstantin Kilimnik — http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-russia-manafort-235850 – 3/8/2017 – and on to the dreaded “Steele Dossier”, which has done Trump’s reputation some damage while being simultaneously dismissed for appearing itself beyond corroboration — http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/comey-intel-community-could-not-corroborate-trump-dossier/ – 5/8/2017.

Still, “kompromat” aside, there’s Manafort — and then question of how the leading consultant to the world’s bloodiest dictators got on to Trump’s campaign team in the first place.

One may leave that question in the shadows because that’s where it’s bound to live given the silence prized by political mafia and political consultants alike. However, one may take note of this passage in the Politico article:

Manafort stressed that his work in Ukraine was intended to steer Yanukovych towards more pro-Western policies and more engagement with the European Union. And Kilimnik told POLITICO that “one thing that was grossly under-reported to date is the effort that Paul Manafort undertook to help Ukrainian leaders defend Ukraine’s interests and move the country towards [a European Union] Free Trade Agreement.”

Yet Yanukovych in 2013 backed away from a commitment to that agreement, and fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread protests over government corruption.

We’re a suspicious lot, we Americans, a condition amplified always by missing datum.

At the same time, we have been also subject to traditional KGB “Active Measures”, i.e., efforts to massively disinform and misguide EU / NATO constituencies, and it may take both an army of responsible editor-readers and plain curious and independent Americans to get a true measure on states of affairs.

Here’s the problem:

Manafort could be the “good guy”, a guy making great money transitioning the world’s worst leaders toward western and conscionable standards.

How would BackChannels or the public know?

It seems in the President Trump “Trust Me” stories — on the economy, foreign affairs, immigration — that suspect alleys dead-end in political space.

It also seems to BackChannels that former FBI director Comey’s tenure has been particularly scrupulous as regards the investigator’s legal permit to share information with the public. As much appeared in play before the public last month during the “House hearing on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election.” The same may be shared in closed sessions with select elected public representatives: is the public to trust whom it has elected to oversight?

The public has no choice beyond what it has with its vote, and it either elects its officials for their integrity or it fails and suffers endless doubts.

The leftward Mother Jones has gone full tilt on news of Comey’s firing.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-james-comey-firing-watergate-russia-1 :

Not since Watergate.

How else can one start an article about President Donald Trump summarily firing FBI chief James Comey?

. . . This is reminiscent of when President Richard Nixon dismissed Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth. Nixon canned Cox rather than cooperating with his investigation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/donald-trump-firing-james-comey-investigation-fbi-russia (by David Corn, May 10, 2017):

Last month, Comey appeared before the House intelligence committee, and his testimony put Trump in a bad spot. Comey noted that the FBI had no information to support Trump’s baseless charge that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump before the election. He was practically calling Trump a nut or a liar. Then Comey, in an unprecedented move, revealed that the FBI had been investigating interactions between Trump associates and Russia since last July. It was a stunning moment: the FBI chief disclosing his bureau was running an investigation that could lead to his boss, the president. All of this showed the Trump-Russia scandal was still on fire.

If Trump fired Comey to impede the Russia investigation, he possibly engaged in obstruction of justice. That is a crime. That is a case for impeachment.

Naturally, Trump was enraged. He has dismissed the Russia story as fake news and a hoax. Comey said it was nothing but.

What don’t we know?

In an Orwellian society, the matter would end with authoritarian contempt, Orwell’s communist-socialist totalitarian “boot in the face”, a world in which the government’s monopoly on information and continuous diversion and suppression of criticism and truth were so notorious that interpreted through the work of the socialist George Orwell — Eric Arthur Blair — the same has left its stamp indelible on the informed western conscience.

http://www.george-orwell.org/

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

President Trump’s imperious and sudden decapitation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation smacks of the feudal approach to criticism and threat to authority. Instead of allowing James Comey and his organization to come up empty handed, which result may have required only the President’s inaction, President Trump will now forever have appeared to have lashed out at someone he perceived as an actor and source intending to undermine this authority.

MOSCOW (AP) — He visited imperial palaces and construction sites. He presided at a Miss Universe pageant. He hobnobbed with city officials at gala functions and seemed to particularly enjoy dining on Russian sausage.

But Donald Trump did not strike any real estate deals here.

The New York real estate tycoon has his name on hotels, resorts and other properties from South Korea to Turkey to Panama, but none in Russia, though he repeatedly said he wanted to build a Trump tower in Moscow and discussed various deals in three visits dating back to 1987.

Vasilyeva, Nataliya. “Russian real estate deals never materialized for Trump.” AP, March 4, 2017.

One more excerpt, this from Reuters:

A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

Layne, Nathan, Ned Parker, Svetlana Reiter, Stephen Grey, Ryan McNeill. “Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.” Reuters, March 17, 2017:

The Reuters review of investors from Russia in Trump’s Florida condominium buildings found no suggestion of wrongdoing by President Trump or his real estate organization. And none of the buyers appear to be from Putin’s inner circle.

Addendum – Odd ‘n’ Ends

http://www.salon.com/2017/05/10/russia-is-trolling-the-u-s-over-james-comeys-firing-accusations-of-trumps-russian-connections/ 5/10/2017.

FTAC – Part of a Starter Kit for New Progressives

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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Active Measures, conflict as business, middle east conflict, Moscow and political misdirection, political concepts, political language, totalitarianism

Mr. Barsamian might enjoy tracing back Moscow’s role in the engineering of the profitable business that has been made of the Middle East Conflict and its efforts to sustain feudal political absolutism throughout the region.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

Most Americans — most of the international public — has never heard of “active measures” and “framing” as employed by Imperial, Soviet, and today post-Soviet Moscow, but it may help improve qualities of living worldwide — and help to preserve our ecosystem — if environmental and social progressives were to take stock of Moscow’s autocratic-totalitarian methods proven, so far, consistent across regimes and their revolutions.

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council

From KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

BackChannels regards itself as “progressive” but never “those progressives”. It endorses a fuzzy “Qualities of Living” concept, believes in the husbanding of the earth, counsels resistance to extremism, Far Left and Far Right and Other, and suggests always looking at presentations of problems twice.

Wikipedia also supports a page on “Active Measures”, and included on it is this observation:

“According to Stanislav Lunev, GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements against the Vietnam War, which was a “hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost”.[3] Lunev claimed that “the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad”.

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

I was young for the Vietnam War and on the draft rolls for just one college semester before Nixon brought to a close America’s role in the tragedy, but it’s easy to recall the “Mobilization Against the War”, the “kids” dressed up in beads and fatigues, in essence the alternative culture of the Baby Boom generation, so here decades later and learning of Moscow’s cynical application of plain old money in producing that zeitgeist comes as a surprise. Of course, it comes as no surprise that much of the more truly revolutionary and independent Left took note of Moscow’s tanks on the streets of foreign capitals (ref., as noted above, Wikipedia’s recounting of the history of the World Peace Council).

As regards the Middle East Conflict as a pretty good business for Palestinian leaders (Arafat and Abbas: multi-millionaires; Haniyeh and Mashaal: billionaires) but not for Palestinians, there’s much data online regarding corruption in the PLO/PA camp and plain exploitation by Hamas. Whether made rich by political corruption or bald crime and political repression, the basis for the “political absolutism” may be linked to the sustained feudal character of the societies involved and the related “malignant narcissism” of their leaders.

–33–

FTAC: Moscow, Islamic Terrorism –> Reactionary Politics

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

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21st Century Neo-Feudalism, east v west, Islamic terrorism, Moscow v NATO, New Feudalism

Old message on this message but perhaps new distillation.

The prompt for conversation was a Henry Farrell piece appearing in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/10/hungarys-government-wants-to-shut-down-its-most-prominent-university-that-may-be-backfiring/ —

Lines of compatible feudal power: Putin –> Assad, Khamenei; Putin–> Orban, Le Pen; Putin –> Erdogan; Putin –> Donald J. Trump.

Putin is not asking for cooperation, imho, but rather for a revived feudal politics pitting all against all for time while Russia ramps up its own military-industrial complex as a major driver of its internal economy.

The sweethearts of EU and NATO who promote greater international cooperation and integration through shared humanist principles plus open passage plus trade haven’t perhaps relayed to their populations the complete criminal character of Moscow’s intentions and its methods, including the channeling, I believe, of Islamic Terrorism in target states to produce reactionary politics.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/03/11/reflexive-control-process-allahu-akbar-terrorism-new-nationalism-neo-feudalism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

BackChannels believes Putin’s Moscow has encouraged political polarization in its targets by using “active measures” to produce the “New Nationalists” (like Le Pen, Orban, and Trump) and sustain a still strident “Red-Green Alliance” — Old Comrades and Neo-Islamists — in the west. The main thing has been to get the “Brown vs Red-Green” extremism going while working with its destabilizing effects on true democratic politics.

Mission accomplished?

Yes — but at the same time, Moscow’s grand scheme may be close to being found out.

Related in the News

Moscow’s demonstrations of barbarism in Syria and Ukraine may underscore the direction of its internal intents.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/syria-war-showroom-russian-arms-sales-160406135130398.html

Kleptocracies are the cancers of states, and Putin, the KGB/FSB, and Russia’s “oligarchs” have had a field day enjoying the full flow of Russia’s productive assets far at the expense of Russians separated from the circles of centralized power. Toward the end or as declining cash reserves produce hardship throughout the state, wartime spending may become the heavy dessert found at the bottom of the devil’s barrel, for fear plus the intimidation that coincides with tests of loyalty may open pockets.

“Washington”, a metonym used the same way here as “Moscow” to represent the state and its leadership, knows that the Moscow-Tehran axis lies and, quite possibly, that it channels — through indirect manipulation — Islamic Terrorism (by choosing to fight the west and western-backed or western-endorsed everything first — “Moscow” cannot abide classical liberalism; by using old communist cadre and Islamists to sow the chaos in the world that it may then claim to stand as champion against (!) — convenient look-ups: “Terry Nichols, Philippines”, “Zawahiri, Russia”, and “Moscow Apartment Bombings” (HUGE false flag, that one): and of course there’s no questioning the existence of the “Moscow-Tehran” nexus in power and the continuing relationships both have with Hamas and Hezbollah and others (start with PFLP).

BackChannels believes that Washington has known all along that deals with Moscow and Tehran would not prove worth the ink used to sign them.

Moreover, if BackChannels and others believe Moscow complicit in the incubating of ISIS in Syria (look up Kyle Orton’s work on the matter), then it only makes sense to cut out the nonsense implied by the prospect of “cooperating” with Moscow in the projection of its related totalitarian narrative.

Also contributing to the above thinking: Russia has nearly 100 years of combined 20th and 21st Century history as an entity approving of or inured to terror as a political tool.

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

–33–

BackChannels

~ Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology

Category Archives: American Domestic Affairs

Israel, Kurdistan, Ukraine – President Trump’s Astonishing (and Breaking) Appearance of Betrayal

Update on the Western Wall Remark – May 17, 2017

Update – On American Cooperation with Turkey on the Defeating of Kurdish Aspirations for Independence – May 17, 2017

Reference

Regarding ISIS

Regarding President Erdogan Caliphate-Bound Turkish Dictatorship

Regarding the Kurdish People

Regarding Ukraine

PSA: Ukrainian Freedom Marches, May 20, 2017

Primary Sources

Individual Pages

“Hot Russian Aggression”

Field Documentary, RFE/RL, 2/7/2017

Also in Media: “Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington” | The Ukrainian Weekly | May 14, 2017

From Kurdistan – “Black Flag Down”

Backgrounder

In the News

Also in Media: “Hacking, Leaking” – Report of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing, March 30, 2017: “DISINFORMATION A PRIMER IN RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES AND INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS”

Orwell in America – President Trump’s Sudden Firing of FBI Director Comey

Reminder: Flynn

Reminder: Manafort

What don’t we know?

Addendum – Odd ‘n’ Ends

FTAC – Part of a Starter Kit for New Progressives

FTAC: Moscow, Islamic Terrorism –> Reactionary Politics

Related on BackChannels

Related in the News