Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

FTAC – Part of a Starter Kit for New Progressives

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by 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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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.

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Mahmoud Abbas: KGB and Groomed to Lie

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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Islam orders the Muslim to be honest to himself and others. This order repeatedly comes in the Noble Qur’an and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS). Islam orders the Muslim to tell the truth even if it is against the teller’s interest. Orders him not to cheat or deceive other people. A Muslim is ordered by Allah to be honest in his words and deeds, privately and publicly alike.

http://www.islamawareness.net/Honesty/honesty_article003.html

Portions of The Other Side have been considered as Holocaust denial by some critics,[8] especially the parts disputing the accepted number of deaths in the Holocaust as well as the accusations that Zionist agitation was the cause of the Holocaust,[9] a charge that Abbas denies.[10]

When Abbas was appointed the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, he wrote that the “Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind” and that he does not deny it,[11] and said that “When I wrote The Other Side … we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks”.[12] More recently, in 2013 he reasserted that part of his thesis that “the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis”.[13][14] In 2014, he stated the Holocaust was the “most heinous crime in the modern era”.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Other_Side:_The_Secret_Relationship_Between_Nazism_and_Zionism

Apparently, Mr. Abbas spreads lies when at war with Israel but shrugs through the truth when its suits him.

Or perhaps when it suits his family’s wallet.

These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/306179-palestinian-kleptocracy-west-accepts-corruption-people

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/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

The architect of the Holocaust, Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, was one of the first to deny its existence. While escaping the Nuremberg trials and evading international law, Eichmann befriended Nazi supporters in Argentina who published an anti-Semitic magazine titled “Der Weg,” or “The Way.” The magazine aimed to disprove what they called “the falsehood of the 6 million.” The magazine claimed the Holocaust was nothing but a libel, that there were never any gas chambers in Hitler’s Europe and that the Jews collaborated with the Third Reich in order to have another country for themselves after thousands of years in exile. According to Eichmann and the magazine’s publishers, the Jews were willing to sacrifice themselves to gain a national homeland.

Many Arabs were enthralled by this theory, and a young doctoral student by the name of Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority, even wrote a dissertation on the subject titled, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism,” which opened the door for several different conspiracies on the subject of the Holocaust to develop.

The Arabs were among the first Holocaust deniers to adopt Eichmann’s theory.

Cohen, Edy.  “Adding Insult to Injury.”  Israel Hayom, April 23, 2017.

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

In the proverbial east, so it would appear, what may not be accomplished honestly may be accomplished through guile — and if not guile, plain lying and force.

One social trope BackChannels has heard regarding lying: “Any who lie to you don’t respect you.”

Fair enough.

BackChannels wonders to what extent those who lie to others, especially Palestinians who lie to Palestinians, respect even themselves.

Posted to YouTube by Human Rights Watch, August 29, 2016.

Related

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/29/palestine-crackdown-journalists-activists

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/israel/palestine

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/palestine-state-of/

http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/topics/palestinian-violations

Expect updates to this post as more material comes together on Abbas representative of the end of a long cycle of totalitarian dictatorship — perhaps more gently, “authoritarian governance” — comes into view on the world stage.  Today’s political crooks get covered in global media and come to look exactly as they have painted themselves throughout the course of their careers.  Mahmoud Abbas?  KGB — he has the record of it, and once marked is marked forever with that organization — so whose interests, apart from his own, is he really representing?

Abbas has also made for himself a record as a Holocaust denier although he has backed away from that lunacy — still, one may wonder how many unwarranted words — assertion of fact that just aren’t true — he has still to recover.

–33–

Also in Media: “The Operational Ranks and Roles of Female ISIS Operatives: From Assassins and Morality Police to Spies and Suicide Bombers” – ICSVE – April 23, 2017

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Religion

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“. . . . You know they have an office for Daesh women? If somehow you forget yourself and speak loudly or take off your gloves, you should pray that if Daesh catches you that it is the Daesh men. You can beg the men, you can apologize, there is a chance that they would limit their abuse to verbal. Daesh women have no hearts.”

Source: The Operational Ranks and Roles of Female ISIS Operatives: From Assassins and Morality Police to Spies and Suicide Bombers – ICSVE

Most pass-along through BackChannels now shows up on the blog’s Facebook page.  However, with this latest from the counterterrorism research community, BC felt it might be helpful to produce greater awareness of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism.  As Muslims prove most frequently the targets of “Islamist” zealots, BackChannels would venture to suggest that that majority of the world’s military and paramilitary forces and the journalists covering the same have interest in the study of “violent extremism” and the many experiences and methods that channel humans toward the obliteration of conscience.

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FTAC: A Note on Faiths, Political Attitudes, and Beliefs

23 Sunday Apr 2017

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

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What happens when friends talk and compare notes, and discover they’re no long “on the same page”?

Attitudes rest on beliefs, and beliefs don’t always rest on empirical evidence nor good conscience and empathy.  Beliefs may be grown on lies, and when it comes to the once Soviet-engineered “middle east conflict”, there is a cultural Petri dish loaded up with lies to induce, motivate, and sustain anti-Semitism in the Arab world and in the world at large with a focus on Zionism.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/social-grammar/

When a friend changes the conversation so abruptly, the conversation has a chance to change.

The sun did not revolve around the earth.

And the earth was found to be other than flat.

Lo and behold . . . .

In addition to the early and academically relaxed BackChannels page on “Social Grammar” — how we learn the ropes around family, clan, tribe, and nation in the process of language uptake and with it the ingestion of the culture into which we have been borne, there are couple of other pieces quietly alluded to the in above note from the awesome conversation:

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

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

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

Online, there’s telling BBC interview involving the Soviet instigating of Somalia’s Ogaden War:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

Around the world — and not least in the United States with President Donald J. Trump’s rants about “Fake News!” — the world may be having a quiet conversation — a social back channel consideration of which this post is a part– behind the storms of news that concerns itself with the authenticity, validity, and reliability of what is delivered to it in media.

For a few moments “back there” in time — perhaps only some months to years — I was getting word of a “post-constitutional America” and coming across such “lovely” (bogus) concepts as “illiberal democracy” (ain’t no such thing as the first principle in the establishment of democracy has been and remains that of embracing “classical liberalism”, a dignifying, loving, magnanimous, and magnificent view of humankind that speaks to every person’s potential nobility in freedom and in power) and “post-fact” world (facts, like red traffic lights and the dangers of leaping from heights) appear to persist despite their “post-modern” dismissal.

Democracies are not illiberal.

The world is not “post-fact”.

And while Muhammad may have had the final word on God as enforced by war in his place and in his day, the world with its nearly 7,000 living language cultures persists in proving greater than any one perspective on God, nature, and the universe or the many curses and miracles that accompany our human experience.  The evolution of our species — Homo Sapiens sapiens in its totality — and within it the emergence of human awareness, self-awareness, and the development of conscience may prove a thing greater than the observations and arguments of the many prophets and shaman who have accompanied and determined mankind’s cultural history.

–33–

FTAC: The Yankee Responds

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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Article of Interest: 

https://www.eu-foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/21/analysis-from-the-su-24-crisis-to-the-moscow-ankara-rapprochement-leadership-and-foreign-policy-doctrines/

Passage of Interest: 

From our comparative analysis, it emerges how both Russia and Turkey present astonishing similarities in their leaderships styles. It is important to outline such feature of the nations’ political life because, being both “leader-politics” countries, the style of their leaders influences greatly the shaping of the national political agenda and the strategies used by the states to pursue such agendas.

To sum up, one could say that all the facts taken into account here highlight the presence in both countries totalitarian democracy regime, centred on the figure of the all-powerful leader. None of the leaders actually ever rejected the principles of the pluralistic state. In the official national narrative, both of them could be overthrown by a democratic election. But why should this happen, when they embody the essence of their national identity. Just like Putin is THE Russian man, Erdogan image is moulded on THE Turkish one.

“In the official national narrative, both of them could be overthrown by a democratic election. But why should this happen, when they embody the essence of their national identity. Just like Putin is THE Russian man, Erdogan image is moulded on THE Turkish one.”

Perhaps if each were more secure with such an assertion, the press in each state would be free (it’s an easy look-up as to how they are not) and their political rivals less often inhibited, jailed, muzzled, or murdered.

The truth is each may be wrong about himself (there’s also an interesting psychology at play in their “malignant narcissism” and respective kleptocracies), and that’s why open and vibrant national conversations supported by “fair and free elections” matter in democracies — and not at all in dictatorships.

Additional Reference

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/russia

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/turkey

https://rsf.org/en/ranking

https://rsf.org/en/russia

https://rsf.org/en/turkey

–33–

Also in Media – TRT Live Coverage of Turkish Referendum

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Turkey

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/11/notes-on-erdogans-emerging-regime/ – 8/11/2016.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/10/ftac-putin-and-erdogan/ – 8/10/2016

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/21/also-in-media-the-countercoup/ – 7/21/2016

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/18/also-in-media-erdogans-islamist-mobs-know-that-their-moment-has-finally-arrived-coffee-house/ – 7/18/2016 (outbound reference)

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/17/dictatorships-putins-erdogans-different-talks-same-walk/ – 7/17/2016

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/06/30/putins-swipe-at-nato-via-erdogan/ – 6/30/2016

“At the end of the day”, which has come this day to Istanbul, Turkey will have as “Presidential System of Government”, i.e., as suggested by the above video from Moscow, another state featuring a paranoid “centralized government” featuring an autocrat, his military, including secret police, and his aristocracy.

 The amendments were received with heavy criticism from opposition parties and non-governmental organisations, with criticism focusing particularly on the erosion of the separation of powers and the abolition of parliamentary accountability. Constitutional legal experts such as Kemal Gözler and İbrahim Kaboğlu claimed that the changes would result in the Parliament becoming effectively powerless, while the executive president would have controls over the executive, legislative and judiciary.[36][37] On 4 December, the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), Association for the Support of Contemporary Living (ÇYDD) and the Trade Union Confederation held a rally in Ankara despite having their permissions revoked by the Governor of Ankara, calling for a rejection of the executive presidential system on the grounds that it threatened judicial independence and secular democratic values.[38]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referendum,_2017

https://turkeypurge.com/freedom-house-turkey-suffers-worst-decline-in-freedoms-in-last-decade – 2/1/2017

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/turkey

——

http://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-constitution-guarantees-press-freedom-but-thats-not-the-whole-story/a-37768976 – 3/1/2017:

“Those who report critically land behind bars,” stated Carl-Eugen Eberle. The media law expert heads the German branch of the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of publishers, journalists and industry insiders. IPI actively supports press freedom and, like similar organizations such as Reporters Without Borders or Writers-in-Prison, it appeals to political leaders, sends letters and travels to problematic countries.

Since the coup attempt in July 2016 and the resulting state of emergency in Turkey, the state of freedom of press in Turkey has drastically worsened, according to IPI. Reporters Without Borders has spoken of “repression on an otherwise unknown scale.”

–33–

FTAC: Moscow, Islamic Terrorism –> Reactionary Politics

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

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

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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–

FTAC: Reprise: How ISIL Serves Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran

09 Sunday Apr 2017

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

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Again: Assad (w/ Putin and Khamenei looking on) incubated ISIL as a tool with several interesting functions:

–A “jihadi” trap that has drawn thousands of fighters to itself, including from Chechnya, to serve as a “Kill Zone” for the type. Not a bad idea, eh?

–However: the same ploy turns out for bribing the west — “Assad OR The Terrorists” in relation to the promotion of tyranny (that’s referenced in the terms “absolute power” and “political absolutism”);

–and for depopulating an ecologically troubled landscape (prior drought drove Syrians to protest their government’s disinterest in their starving;

–and for goading the west with mass migration, a part of the concept of “death (to America) by a thousand cuts”.

The combination of the “ownership” — ability to manipulate — an al-Qaeda-type machine (ISIL) — and the costs associated with fighting it plus the costs of absorbing the misery in human desperation that Syria has created . . . and the political costs of the western conversation that has led to reduced cohesion through a polarized politics have indeed damaged EU / NATO internal popular strength.

All in all, ISIL, The Terrorists, in one place, kind of, has turned out a great idea for Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran. The same also get to make themselves look good when fighting their very own Bozo clown (keeps getting up, so their forces can knock it down.

How Moscow Earns Back Some of its Costs for Syria’s Misery

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

Down into the Works: Origins of ISIS

The origins of the ISIS Emni were revealed in a chance discovery of documents in 2014, owned by Haji Bakr (aka Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi), a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s Air Defense Force. Haji Bakr became the architect of ISIS’s intelligence apparatus–the Emni. Previously jailed in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, along with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as well as other embittered former nationalistic Iraqi intelligence officers, Haji Bakr emerged in the leadership of a group, which, after plotting together in Camp Bucca from 2004 to 2008, reunited in 2012 to create the clandestine organization that eventually became known as the “Islamic State.”[3] Eager to retaking power and re-establish Sunni dominance, by making Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi their emir and later “caliph” of what in actuality is a totalitarian state–these former intelligence officers cleverly gave the organization an Islamic face, carefully modeled after the former Iraqi Baath regime but now cloaked in Islamic garb.

Speckhard, Anne and Ahmet S. Yayla.  “The ISIS Emni: Origins and Inner Workings of ISIS’s Intelligence Apparatus.”  PDF.  Perspectives on Terrorism, 2:1, February 2017.

BackChannels’ Perspective

Assad chose to battle back The West first and only confronted at critical junctions the al-Qaeda-type organizations coming into the fight.  In essence, he allowed the same to gather and duke it out while he defined the war he believed most advantageous to himself in relation to his power and image as a modern dictator.

Most related piece on BackChannels:

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

Next best:

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

The conversation continued, and as it is immediately at hand, here’s the addendum ending with a note on “Moscow-Tehran” —

Take the long view of dictators who have produced state support for terrorism: Saddam Hussein: gone; Muammar Qaddafi: gone; Bashar al-Assad: he’s hanging on.

When the Soviet Union dissolved 25 years ago, it did so with a plan for the survival of the “privileged of the Party” (source: Karen Dawisha’s book). It appears that “Colonel, President, Emperor” Putin has succeeded in restoring Russia’s autocratic state with its totalitarian PRESENTATION of states-of-affairs and its imperial ambitions intact. Reagan called it an “Evil Empire” and now we’re seeing it again, but it’s not what it was through the Cold War.

Now we’re approaching the end of the end of the Soviet Union. The Russian State is financially weak (low cash reserves; most related assets have been “parked” in the “rule-of-law” west); it has developed wars on two fronts with Syria and Ukraine; it may other issues, patently criminal, with its “frozen conflicts” (for practical purposes, ungoverned spaces amenable to the inspiring of James Bond movies). It has at least one trump card left to play: nuclear war — and that’s what we’re hearing in hints: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-07/u-s-launches-missile-strike-on-syria-in-response-to-gas-attack

“Moscow-Tehran” — I don’t know which may be the “stronger” party, but they are both nutty with malignantly narcissistic leaders who may embrace their own destruction as glorifying. The psychology of martyrdom seems well known as regards Islam but the psychology of sacrifice in Russian culture is to me obscure.

–33–