Suffice the clip to post as a matter of record and on this site an emblem of the themes often brought up here: “Red Brown Green”; now “The Newest Nobility” (has Obama attached to “Red Brown Green”? Do the world’s wealthiest live by different rules? Are the piratical in business and politics free to act as 21st Century feudal lords? Is the west and much of the aspiring world to be dragged backward into the medieval mode and therefore enslaved by the most “mafia”, the most ruthless and sadistic among autocrats?
Those who work in the OHCHR see themselves as an independent and neutral agency of the UN dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights. Indeed, in many instances, well-intentioned OHCHR officials draft valuable reports for council-appointed experts that call out various countries’ violations of freedom of speech and use of torture and arbitrary arrest. In addition, they support the High Commissioner’s role as an independent voice that can criticize countries for human rights abuses.
At the same time, it is also OHCHR officials who supply the material demanded by politically-motivated if not Orwellian resolutions initiated by non-democracies like Cuba, China, and Syria.
Choose your world: the one of fairy tales and lies that serve the despotic and the death they bring to innocents — or the one of integrity and hard truths that serve none but God and humanity in both the greatness of one and the frailty of the other.
Obama may be misguided or misled or in cahoots with what I guess I’ll call the “Newest Global Nobility” — very wealthy people who cooperate with one another in various ways while maintaining a popular screen of differences in their ideological or political rhetoric.
Khamenei — and his brother — appear themselves to be without boundaries, and perhaps unwittingly, the U.S. / NATO have opened the gates to Iranian power in Iraq — and, bear with the writer, Iran-manipulated ISIS (that’s the story I feel I’ve seen) provides both key and lever for that condition. Khamenei with ISIS has the leverage to convince Iraq’s Shiite community that it needs him in their defense, when, probably, he helped open the way for ISIS into Iraq and influenced the stall of the ISIS summer 2014 campaign north of Baghdad.
Complicated?
Putting on a show in “political theater” has been the Soviet way / post-Soviet neo-feudal KGB / FSB way, and Iran has been part of that all the way. The sanitizing and prettying up of the Camp Liberty crowd may signal Obama’s own complicity in this developing arrangement between emerging 21st Century neo-feudal politicians.
While “Red Brown Green” may be defined by the revanch skeleton of the Soviet Union in the form of a “Newest Nobility” — Putin-Khamenei as anchors, Assad, Orban, and Erdogan as lesser lords — the American and NATO roles in making adjustments on behalf of Really Big Money seems much less visible.
Is The Money Democratic or Republican?
Or is The Money just concerned with itself and include to manipulate whatever suits its accumulation best?
Are we watching the invention of a true-to-life (and politics) Global Monopoly Board?
BackChannels doesn’t know the answer to that question yet, but it’s coming to know how ruthless Soviet / post-Soviet and KGB-derived politics may be, and that to the extent that “false flag operations” and manipulated horrors like ISIL are possible in the cause of the acquisition of human but inhuman and psychologically disturbed (and disturbing) power.
Whether that “Moscow Apartment Bombing” kind of behavior (KGB false flag, according to Karen Dawisha) has found a place in the west remains to be verified (by some preponderance of evidence), but that Obama has been giving Khamenei a hand — Yemen ceded to the Houthis, apparently; the western coalition response to Daesh slowed before being made to response to atrocity (e.g., the enslavement and slaughter of the Yezidis; the intervention on behalf of the Kurdish community in Kobani) with some plans seemingly leaked — seems plain. In Obama’s world, inaction appears to have become as good as action as regards enabling and encouraging the development of increasingly bad news.
Russian news agencies say prominent opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow.
The Interfax news agency cited a law enforcement source as saying that Nemtsov was shot four times by an unidentified assailant late in the evening on February 27 and died of his injuries.
Moscow’s Tverskoi District Court has sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny to 7 days of administrative arrest for disobeying police during an unsanctioned gathering on downtown Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square in support for the people convicted earlier on Monday to prison terms for involvement in the May 6, 2012 clashes between protesters and police.
The Kremlin doesn’t invent anti-European or anti-establishment ideas, it simply supports them in whatever form they exist, customising their tactics to suit each country. They’ll support the far left or the far right — in Greece they support both. Despite its economic plight, the new Greek government’s first act was not a protest against European economic policy but a protest against sanctions on Russia. Only then did it tell its European creditors that it might not pay them back.
The following section has appeared already once on BackChannels but it bears repeating and may be seen in several locations as the fray between the neo-feudal dictatorships and the democratic open societies becomes more obvious and pressing.
Red Brown Green
Red = Soviet, post-Soviet, Putinesque neo-feudal Russia.
Brown = New Nationalist Movements — an allusion to the drifts of Orban’s Hungary and a part of the mix involved in Erdogan’s Turkey.
Green = Islamofascism generally with Ayatollah Khamenei possibly the most central element in driving the form worldwide, fromDaesh in IraqtoHezbollah in Argentina.
*If ever a head of state has experienced an “Oh F***” moment, it has to be Cristina Kirchner who has found herself and her government in the glare of intense global scrutiny in the wake of the death of of Alberto Nisman. The world has gotten the sense of what would inform her motivation to have Nisman out of the way, and now — as I read the news — it appears the global “Red Brown Green” aspect of a revanch post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia (revanch for those who enjoy privilege at any cost to others, including their own greater constituencies) has become clear as well.
News from Yemen (from back in the USSR/RF) —
During the meeting, the Houthi delegation promised an array of lucrative contracts in exchange for Moscow’s recognition of the Ansarullah’s authority.
The delegation assured that the Houthis will soon take control of oil-rich Marib Province, which they say will yield billions of dollars per day.
Let’s not forget Mikhail Bogdanov’s meeting with the PFLP back in the first week of November 2014.
The abandonment of principle characterizes the geopolitical space operated by The New Gang of Bad Little Boys (and Perhaps One Girl). No doubt, however, these play hard among themselves as well, but before the press approaches internecine differences, it’s just as well to note the cooperation between “political absolutists” disregarding the ideological and state interests that would be otherwise ascribed to them. As malignant narcissists — every one of them — what they have in common is the possession and want of immense power and wealth in service to their securing boundless “narcissistic supply” — they would be in their own halls of mirrors eternally glorious — and some day to be remembered as such (or else!).
Waiting to pounce on me from my inbox this morning: “Please report that Nicolas Maduro wants to visit Ecuador to seek international support . . . .”
My correspondent alludes to a source within Ecuador’s government: ” . . . the visit will be in April or June . . . .”
Is this really such a good time — a good year even — for travel?
With a country, one cannot simply water the plants, check the faucets, lock the doors and leave, and this is not such a good time for Nicolas Maduro for doing even so little as that.
Reuters reported Tuesday, “A teenager was fatally shot at an anti-government protest in the western city of San Cristobal on Tuesday, state officials said, exacerbating tensions in Venezuela amid an economic crisis and crackdown on the political opposition.”
Kluiver Roa was 14 years old. His father was reputed to be a member of opposition party Copei. Although an arrest was made, Reuters reporters found cause to call the crime scene circumstances — what actually happened — “confusing”.
Camouflaged police smashed into the mayor’s office and carried him away . . . Mr Ledezma was on a list of people and foreign powers named by Mr Maduro last week as attempting to bring down his administration.
Reliant on mineral wealth for wealth, the “Red Brown Green” arc of power’s extension into developing South American economies may be suffering from the same malady: the west’s intent to finish off the Soviet Empire.
It has been about 25 years since the Soviet dissolved without also dissolving the “perks” of the Party privileged and all of its direct associates, including associate leadership in distant states.
Is the Party over?
It appears the power mad — political species “Narcissus communist proto-fascist” — were dependent on climbing oil revenues — the miraculous abundance of “black gold”, and all of it theirs for the taking — for sustaining and growing both the functional and symbolic elements of power within their spheres of control, from state’s military equipage to the payouts in patronage that created the “nomenklatura”, which along today’s neo-feudal path appears to be a “Newest Nobility”, now rapidly deflating while being urged toward productive development investment — including investment in human development — and (gasp!) rule of law.
Financially strangling, the politically dying may be expected to put their people in their own place first, i.e., the privileged may be counted on to make themselves the last to give up privilege.
End Games, New Games
In the Awesome Conversation on Facebook, I often remind that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe — another old Soviet tentacle — remains in power. What he has done to Zimbabweans, including the reintroduction of cholera in relation to withholding from a rival funds for water sanitation chemicals, seems of no account: in the “one man, one vote, one time” democratic ways of much of Africa, Mugabe will celebrate turning 91 this Saturday.
As our “malignant narcissists” appear to reject criticism, eliminate rivals, and cultivate a ceaseless “narcissistic supply“, one must expect politically geological aftershocks — or revanch birth pangs — basically kicking (whether leaving the world or coming into it) from the Fall of the Soviet Union and the latest squeeze on the oxygen supply that is cold hard cash at the wellhead.
Update – February 27, 2015
The regime’s favourite charge to level at hostile politicians is plotting to overthrow the government, often in conspiracy with the United States. But it is the president, Nicolás Maduro, who is staging a coup against the last vestiges of democracy. Venezuelans call it an autogolpe, or “self-coup”.
“He is alive, as long as nations are alive and struggle for consolidating independence, justice and kindness. I have no doubt that he will come back, and along with Christ the Saviour, the heir to all saintly and perfect men, and will bring peace, justice and perfection for all.”
The massive Gaza protests this year, organized by the Workers World Party, were about promoting antisemitism rather than concern for Palestinians. These protests excluded Arab voices so they could be free to demonize Israel. Worldwide, almost each time Syrian Palestinians brought a Free Syrian flag to protests, they were met with harassment, and, in some cases, violence. As one Palestinian woman from the Yarmouk Ghetto of Syria said, “We have been used.”
Antisemitism has been used to silence non-Jewish activists opposed to Russia and Iran.
Red = Soviet, post-Soviet, Putinesque neo-feudal Russia.
Brown = New Nationalist Movements — an allusion to the drifts of Orban’s Hungary and a part of the mix involved in Erdogan’s Turkey.
Green = Islamofascism generally with Ayatollah Khamenei possibly the most central element in driving the form worldwide, fromDaesh in IraqtoHezbollah in Argentina.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.
Fascism Red Brown Green continues to develop rapidly while Washington applies some brakes — sanctions, reductions in oil revenues by way of whatever forces and machinations adjust those downward — but nonetheless looks on while Syrians (and the last of the refugees of 1948 holed up in Yarmouk Camp) continue with immense suffering, while Orban and Erdogan continue their drift toward “political absolutism”, and the Khamenei regime fails not only to upgrade its humanity but succeeds spectacularly in pirating from the Persians.
Soviet interest in anti-Semitic expression follows a similar course: deflection of attention from its own evildoing, which includes the bureaucratic and military raiding of the assets of others — from farms to factories — on its own soil or within its own sphere of control.
All of the above: Soviet-devised anti-Semitic propaganda designed to whip Arab hostility toward Jews into a frenzy.
There was money to be made in building and sustaining that hate at a level useful to Russia’s foreign ambitions (again, reference Pacepa and Rychlak’s Disinformation).
Has anything changed since the Soviet self-dissolved?
Putin, both as a child —
Another important detail from Gessen’s biography that captures the emotional chaos of Putin’s childhood environment: He spent a great deal of time with an elderly Jewish couple who lived across the hall and told his official biographers that he “did not differentiate between his parents and the old Jews.”
— and as a young student, has had a different experience with the Jews. The result, perhaps:
(JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID.
Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s office. But since the event was on Shabbat, Lazar initially declined the invitation, explaining he was prevented from carrying documents, among other religious restrictions.
So Putin ordered his staff to prepare an alternative entrance and security-free route just for the rabbi, according to one of Lazar’s top associates, Rabbi Boruch Gorin.
“It is unusual, but the security detail acted like kosher supervisors so Rabbi Lazar could attend,” Gorin said.
To him, the Sochi anecdote illustrates Putin’s positive attitude toward Russian Jewry — an attitude Gorin says is sincere, unprecedented in Russian history and hugely beneficial for Jewish life in the country.
In the image-creating object-moving machinations of an absolute political authority (AKA “dictator”, “malignant narcissist”, “ruler”, etc.), the Jews and Israel may be made into the proverbial “football” and kicked between “teams”, the “anti- anti-Semitism” card proving as effective as, perhaps more powerful than, the common adoption of anti-Semitic stance to whip up popular fervor for “the father”, the abu, one or another of the kind of authority inclined to march their people into financial bankruptcy and spiritual ruin.
At the poker table, a card withheld signals threat — it might be nothing . . . or it could trump what the opponent holds.
Putin knows both poker-faced confrontation and the power of a few judicious words, but it’s just those characteristics that may symbolize also the intent of the “vertical of power” (a phrase paired with Putin in eternal metonymy) to measure his progress — and Russia’s progress, although “MosVegas” leaves a large portion of Russians hungry and ignored (Reference: Judah, Ben. Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013) — by way of amassed control, wealth, and power — and more the lawless power to inhibit, thieve, and terrify than invest capital and yield statewide economic development, which are complaints voiced in the books comprising this blog’s “Russian Section”.
. . . that unrestrained immigration, failure to adapt to the Western life, non-existent border policy and political correctness will kill more people unless the leaders of the European Union themselves choose to do something about it. Because, make no mistake about it, unless we put an end to the endless religious intimidation and bullying, we have only ourselves to blame, and the dream of a nations of Europe will crumble in no time. The European Union has to make a stand if it does not want another Paris, London or Madrid. It has to call a spade a spade and say it clearly and unequivocally that the problem lies with Islamic fundamentalism. No matter if it is called Hamas, Isis, Islamic Jihad or Al-Qaida, it is here, and it is ready to wreak havoc on the values of liberty. The EU has to make clear that honour killings, forced marriages, travelling jihadists in and out of Europe and hate fuelled sermons from certain mosques, inciting hatred against jews, christians and everything that the West stands for, is not acceptable.
That may be okay considering such as Putin, Assad, Khamenei, Orban, and Erdogan may not be serving their own constituents all that much either — but then why should they? They’re living in palaces — or intending as much — and the lives of others — reddish, brownish, white, or of any other caste or color — would appear to matter so much less to each.
“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
― Theodore Dalrymple
What seems to be missing is addressing the problem, and the problems that surround it, with a truly hard look, and with discussion. What, for instance, should we in the West really be doing about the many statements by Muslims that they feel “offended” and see themselves as victims — all coupled with an apparent inability to see that modern-day slavery, the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim countries, or even Muslims of other sects; not to mention throwing homosexuals off buildings, beheadings, stonings and burning people alive — might offend others?
In other words, in some Muslims, there often seems to be a pronounced lack of empathy that apparently creates a fluctuation between a mentality that is sometimes passive (victim) and sometimes aggressive (dominating).
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