Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

X-Pression: American Fascist Nationalist GOP

27 Friday Oct 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Updated and revised post from October 26, 2023

I had had three X tweets here, but they were not showing to my satisfaction, so I have recreated the one that matters most.

A responsible #RepublicanParty would end #Denialism and the sustained entertainment of #FeloniousTrump as a potential #AmericanPresidentialCandidate–but your assembly of Americans-In-Name-Only appear unable to question #DJT‘s #AbsoluteReactionaryDemagoguery. For that, it appears you have chosen to destroy your nation.

#GOP #MikeJohnson #Trumpsters->#AmericansInNameOnly #AINOS

Posted to X on October 26, 2023 by J. S. Oppenheim.

I have found “X-pression” becoming pointless as the forest wakes up, all of the birdies go tweet tweet tweet and one’s own expression drowns in the cacophony. Nonetheless, X interaction feels engaging and here serves as part of a morning routine involving strong coffee, access to a portion of the world’s best journalism online, and, sigh, also a collection of voices practically medieval in their bludgeoning unreason.

–33–

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, Gaza: Hamas Lies to Arab & Palestinian Communities

18 Wednesday Oct 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

First things first: Israeli Precision Guided Rockets neither miss their their targets nor fail to destroy them in their entirety.

The explosion that took place did so in a parking lot, and it produced no cratering nor damage to nearby buildings.

Next: Arabs may lie to save face and sustain pride in allegedly blameless fashion.

I would ascribe such behavior to primitive, medieval, and tribal mentality and would do so across cultures inclined to both humiliate and spoil their boys as humiliation motivates the development of the malignant narcissist.

The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) analysis has included review of Israeli military launch records; radar air activity tracking records; reverse-tracked rocket fire traced to the proximity of the hospital, i.e., rocket trajectory show the launch took place south of the hospital–and not far from it; and independent video of the actual failure of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s rocket.

In intercepted audio communications, launch controller-tracker officers note the location of launch as a cemetery behind the hospital . . . . So there’s the location south of the hospital–a cemetery!–and both cause and opportunity to lie about the attempt.

Related Online

Mishra, Tarun and Mohsin Shaikh. “Israeli Air Strike or False Flag Operation by Islamic Jihad? Over 500 dead in an Explosion at Gaza Hospital: Here is What We Know So Far.” Business Today, October 18, 2023.

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled.” BackChannels, July 10, 2022.

Whitaker, Brian. “Lying is a cultural trait of Arabs, says Barak.” The Guardian, May 22, 2002.

Addendum: October 25, 2023.

Harris, Shane. “U.S. details intelligence it says clears Israel in Gaza hospital blast.” The Washington Post, October 24, 2023.

Regarding the matter of Hamas having lied to Palestinians to cover the shame attending a failed rocket launch (while blaming it on the other guy), the ways have always been several: cover, deflect, deny, erase, fabricate, frame, and omit.

–33–

Linkage: Israel-Ukraine; Russia-Dictatorships & Terrorists

07 Saturday Oct 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No more clear an example of #MedievalVModern may appear than the war that has broken out between and . For Hamas, only the weapons are modern. The motivations have been deeply medieval, well rooted in directed misperception, i.e., disinformation, fabrications, lies promoted and sustained by edict and enforced by unquestionable and vicious authority. In essence-this on the Gaza Strip-the have been perceptually controlled by their own “leaders”, and they are now bound to be driven to destruction by them too.

For possibly most of the public, the story may be that Israeli settlers went wilding in Gaza and Gazans fought back, e.g., https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/6/palestinian-killed-as-israeli-settlers-attack-west-bank-town-of-huwara, but what has rolled out in the past day appears a full-scale Hamas battle plan, one with infiltrated shock troops and rockets (more than 2000 of them so far). In first fast response, BackChannels has forwarded through X background on antisemitism-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/02/01/ftac-endemic-russian-anti-semitism-a-note/-and ’s related handling of the : https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/04/22/ftac-moscow-suffocates-the-palestinians/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/. The behavior of those who would call themselves (and bridle at the hash term ) appears just as barbaric and vicious as it must have in the 10th Century when the same displaced the last Khazar outpost.

*

Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city: “The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch.”

http://mirror2.polsri.ac.id/wiki/wp/k/Khazars.htm (see “Addendum, June 19, 2023” on BackChannels for related data).

*

Today’s Khazarian and Rus descendants and others who have come to define Ukraine’s cultural, ethnic, and tribal endowments in total have become , overwhelmingly lawful, fair and just, and peaceful in business and in general comportment while the most corrupt of persistent medieval thugs, Viktor Yanukovych, had been booted back to Moscow by general popular revolution, e.g., https://world.time.com/2014/02/22/ukraines-president-flees-protestors-capture-kiev/ and with the moral support of Ukraine’s army.

Hamas X Russian Political Absolutism, Barbarism, and Mafia

While Russia professes good will daily through its X-platformed embassy sites, its claims inevitably belie its own horrendous evil in the realms of chaos and mass destruction. The at-hand BackChannels references: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/06/28/a-dark-mirror-in-language/. For those most evil, language may be perverted to cover crime in the present and humiliation in the past as the rogue malign narcissistic psychology fashions strategies in language to match.

For the adverse personal and political psychology in play: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/10/malignant-narcissistic-process-distilled/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/paranoid-delusional-narcissistic-reflection-of-motivation/.

Whatever Russia and the entities within its sphere of Soviet/post-Soviet Era influence may say of their enemies, it’s certain that they are describing themselves and their own ethical, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. Their leaderships prove predictably corrupt and (out of necessity) dishonest and repressive. As a collection of , none–from in Syria to the in Afghanistan–can bear critics or rivals anywhere close to home, and all have made their bones on atrocity, brutality, and mass murder. In yet another BackChannels package-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/-waits this gem: https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6.

, in my -inspired desktop world, has with his KGB/FSB cohort proven immune to inconveniences posed by conscience (note: I’ve made a trope of “delusional, grandiose, and messianic ideation with an absence of normal boundaries, conscience, and limits” as shorthand for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the political expression of the same beneath the label of “Malignant Narcissism”). For perhaps the most horrifying example of Putinesque stage management and perceptual control: AKA , and here-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/.

When it comes to bombing apartment buildings in the dead of night, none have done it better than who today threatens nuclear annihilation using the same methods in language inversion and psychological project to blackmail the west into the abandonment of Ukraine. And that’s “above the table”, i.e., in plain sight.

*

The speech came after hardline political scientists and commentators in Russia said a return to nuclear testing could send a powerful message to Moscow’s enemies in the west. “I hear calls to start testing nuclear weapons, to return to testing,” Putin said.

Some in Russia have called for Putin to detonate a nuclear bomb to show the west that Moscow’s patience over its support for Ukraine and apparent unwillingness to negotiate is wearing thin.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/vladimir-putin-escalates-nuclear-rhetoric-with-threat-to-resume-testing

*

Hamas has long found a sympathetic (or sympathetic-acting) presence in Mikhail Bogdanov, Moscow’s envoy to the Middle East. While it has been an independent actor, it appears to have also long-ingested the former communist state’s anti-Semitic rants and emphatic absolutism while holding itself n place with methods familiar to all dictatorships (for overview: https://freedomhouse.org/country/gaza-strip/freedom-world/2023).

Much has been written about the . For quick reference->

Mustaffa, Munira. “Russia: The mafia as the state.” The Interpreter, August 31, 2023.

Rachman, Gideon. “Putin, Trump and the meaning of a mafia state.” Financial Times, August 28, 2023.

Wikipedia. “Mafia State”.

*

Israel has been hampered in its assistance to Ukraine by a deconfliction arrangement with Russia over Syrian airspace (e.g., https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/russia-sees-military-coordination-with-israel-syria-continuing-2022-02-26/). Nonetheless, The Jewish State has arrived today with biblical, global, and modern histories. In Israel it has a homeland; around the world, it contains communities of all races and cultural strands bound together by Judaism, its Torah, and Jewish experience and lore across thousands of years; and it has so contributed to the ideas of the west that the entire political culture may refer to itself as “Judeo-Christian” as well as “Greco-Roman”. The barbarians from European North and Asian East have in Russia chosen to remain defined by whatever fear they may install in others and then tribute exact or steal in wealth. That’s what they did in the Byzantine and Medieval Eras, and that is what they are doing now.

In the Middle East, the Palestinians have served Russia as a block and goad to the west and the burgeoning and vibrant cultures associated with the democratic open societies of the world whose freedoms may be well symbolized by Israel’s vitality.

In Eastern Europe, Ukraine by revolution, election, and today war has in every possible way become part of the west, leaving Russia to attempt its capture and subjection or destruction even while “Muscovy” dies or destroys itself for its own archaic and deeply displaced, misguided, and perverse ambitions.

*

Also related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/07/26/ftac-palestinian-kgb-the-palestinians-abused-and-plundered-by-their-own/.

*

Related Reading

Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Nekrasov, Andrey. Director. Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File AKA The Murder of Litvinenko.

Wikipedia. “Russian Imperial Movement”.

###

Elon Musk ISO Self-Navigating Soul

08 Friday Sep 2023

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Have these emperors no clothes?

Putin has turned out a monster fairly bathing in blood; Trump has been all but declared a felon several times over–his image will lose the “alleged” before the charges against him; and here Musk, the world’s wealthiest industrialist appears ill-informed and lacking in insight. The first two I would cast as feudal-medieval thugs and in modern parlance “malignant narcissists”; the third has expressed concern for his fellow travelers in the most democratic terms, but while his platform, literally, and stature give him a mighty voice, he appears without background for the world he may view, also literally, from outer space.

Here follow three brief X-Riposte (I guess) to his callous and naive suggestion on Russia’s ethnocide in Ukraine: “Both sides should agree to a truce.”–>

I know I know my little bit of history in relation to Russia but am no match for Ph.D’s in Russian Studies–and to my own disadvantage, don’t speak a word of the language. On the other hand, inflection points and nodes may emerge from broad and general knowledge (plus boundless curiosity), and that much I have enjoyed in abundance. With respect to Russian history, I do know that those who crossed from what is today Scandinavia found the northern soil of the new continent thin and consequently would roam south for more fertile land (credit the thought to Pipes, Richard.  Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974).

For vision, it helps to have background, engagement over time, an understanding of historic as well as present issues, and awareness–sometimes in depth–of variables contributing mightily to the way things look and, in fact, appear real and true with high confidence.

For Elon Musk and others, Russia has behaved in the manner of a criminal enterprise since the early mid-1990s. It’s leader’s malign narcissistic psychology has been expressed through especially cruel and sadistic operations in service to his development of political power. He hasn’t Russia’s better interests in mind but rather the defense of his own projected and sustained heroic image, and given his underlying fear of humiliation–or related cowardice–has no reverse gear, however irrational the prospect of his own continued success may appear.

Over time, BackChannels has covered Russia’s establishment of its anti-Semitic beliefs and traditions, its transfer of related thought to Adolph Hitler, and its yoking of the Palestinians to its own hate and related political paradigms.

Packaged here for compression, all cited URL’s may be unpacked but perhaps not in a simple hour or a day, but to any devoted to seeing how things work and have worked, what matters a little more time?

For the technology-enabled future of greatest benefit to humanity, both Putin and Trump must be defeated as the anachronistic and far bent personalities each has become. For Ukraine, there will be no security for Russia left as a politically intact and ever ruthless and vicious kleptocracy with imperial ambitions; for the United States, there should be no drift into criminal horse dealing of its own and the compromising of the privileges, prerogatives, and rights of citizenship without bounds of the nation’s Constitution and established political and social ideals, processes, and traditions.

# # #

Tsar Nobody Steals the Holocaust and Related Absurdities

22 Saturday Jul 2023

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Here’s the premise for the above title:

One step down, Retired European wrote, “Exactly, Russia is the new Nazis”, and to that I responded:

And the posts are still there for all who would be good to find courage.

***

The same theme invited a more congenial follow-up:

For my followers in many social media quarters, the concept of “Malignant Narcissism” as a political interpretation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder needs no introduction.

***

In the region of the Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova wrote, “Terrorist methods have become routine for the #Kievregime and the most odious terrorists in world history would envy the scale of it.”

Hence my response:

hhttps://twitter.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1682763932501508096?s=20ttps://twitter.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1682763932501508096?s=20

***

Chelsea, Edward, and Julian

Twitter lends itself most of all to squawking and very little to I-Thou conversational exchange. Here, #SovietPostSovietRussia claims human rights violations for traitors with heart, courage, and narcissistic leanings who may have–I’m not certain–been able to address their core issues (in order of mention: America is being run like a prison camp; intrusion into private lives is possible, undeniable, and probable; and there should be no state secrets-everything should be online) via other channels and methods. In any case, adult, cognizant, and sophisticated Americans should understand that all states have secret lives and ours in America fewer than others (although that’s a box always a little bit compelling for unpacking).

and his crew have been the schoolyard bullies who want your lunch money and your lasting fidelity to their glory. So far, none but a pissed off Prigozhin, another former criminal, has dared question Putin’s military leadership. The idea of the Tsar right up there with God appears to remain fixed in the Russian psyche, which has also practical fear of so obviously criminal a power as Tsar Nobody knows all of their secrets, controls their careers and paychecks, has ways of assaulting (or murdering) any Russian, so far, anywhere in the world by means traditional–that would be defenestration, for example–and surreal, i.e., Polonium Tea.

In effect, Putin has all of Russia enslaved to and within his own delusional and malign narcissistic fantasia.

None dare leave who have “achieved” any stature within his realm.

–33–

Medieval Russia v. Modern Russia

14 Friday Jul 2023

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Putin may believe himself the personification of Russia, i.e., that Putin is Russia, but Putin is not Russia, and the cognizant and educated among Russians know it and know furthermore the Kremlin feeds Russia’s public–“The Masses” given Putin’s weird Imperialist-Stalinist revanche–garbage.

Given the dangers, including nuclear blackmail as evidenced by the mining of the Zaporizhzha Nuclear Power Plant, the possession of so-called “tactical nukes”, and the inveigling of Belarus in nuclear threat ambition, Putin may be expected to fail from within.

This morning, I posted two notes to European and global security expert Nicolas Tenzer’s Twitter feed–>

“…& muscled back”, i.e., muscled their way back into power, making Putin’s 1999 election a triumph in the realm of totalitarian state perceptual control–related reference on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/ | https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/ (Putin appears to have had now a lifetime of serious issues with apartment buildings).

***

What is a feudal tyrant doing as the head of a still powerful and promising Russia?

Part of the answer involves a cosmic “Why not?”

As a gang, disaffected KGB–out of power, out of work in suddenly post-Communist Moscow–may have had a thick-as-thieves coordination and ruthlessness fit to their former secret policing mission and experience. Then too, they would have garnered the cooperation and interest of the post-Cold War peaceful of a productive Europe and North America.

“Why not?” for that as well.

Add condemnation, disapproval, and strong “red line” talk–TALK!–for aggression or barbaric actions undertaken on behalf of absolute power from Chechnya to Afghanistan to Ukraine and the United States (remember the Internet Research Agency!)–all squawk on the part of The West while all remained barbaric and criminal on the part of Moscow and its favored circles of disreputable mediocrities.

Left to grow Russia in his own mafia, mercenary, parochial, post-Soviet, rapacious, and ruthless manner, Putin put Russia’s army and his own demented narcissistic will on the big step into Europe, first Crimea in 2014 in response to the big “Nyet!” and boot given his lackey Viktor Yanukovych, and then the greater portion of the Breadbasket of Europe herself in February 2022.

Have Russians the will or wish themselves to be made criminal, desperate, dumb, and enslaved?

Have the less evident “forces of order” the intent and will to embrace and support those ends?

Perhaps Putin has finally gotten a certain attention secretly craved.

Related Online

Brugen, Isabel Van. “Only 30% of FSB Would Back Putin if Another Mutiny Happens–Exiled Oligarch.” Newsweek, July 6, 2023.

Miller, Greg and Catherine Belton. “Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed.” The Washington Post, August 19, 2022.

–33–

A Dark Mirror in Language

28 Wednesday Jun 2023

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

The extreme narcissism known to dictators belies an unfortunate process.

More may be involved than being merely vain or having some egotism in need of some judicious but also liberating trimming: most of us–all of us–wish most of all to be what we call “ourselves” at our best, and each according to his own best assessment of abilities–and if we become too full of ourselves (offstage), we may encounter reminders, including from our own self-observing selves, that we are not all that.

Let us sit and sip more quietly.

On the other hand, the clinically (NPD) and politically (malignantly) narcissistic have a tougher self-assignment, and that is to 1) hide the damage done to them when they were helpless or incapable of their own effective defense and 2) cover it with an undamaged and much more competent and greater courageous-heroic image that would be and which becomes their own New Person–The Greatest.

The greater achievement for The Greatest: validation confirmed by love, but a capital-V “Validation!” confirmed by the Applause and Roar of the Crowd–High-Powered VALIDATION!, Limitless and MIGHTY!

We have all the right to transform from children into pretty good adults, but The Greatest want a greatness beyond the boundaries of the good.

Terms one encounters for the malign: delusional, grandiose, messianic.

Behaviors: unconscionable, unscrupulous, ruthless.

In casual description: beyond limits; without boundaries.

Eventually: criminal.

“Those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity,” Mr. Bondarev said in his email. “To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes.”

Trojanovski, Anton. “‘They basically got everything wrong’: A Russian diplomat speaks out on the war.” The New York Times, May 23, 2022.

In the dark mirror of language, the most primary lie in service to the speaker’s image may be the inverted accusation–on this blog, the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”. The narcissist is always beautiful, good, and right, and the targets unfailingly bent and ugly even though by every objective measurement and view, the narcissist is the evil.

The Greatest must be the greatest as well–not merely pretty good or, son of a gun, lucky!

Image matters and the means to produce it may be obfuscated and covered over, and in the dark mirror, the lies–the lying–really takes off. Putin, poker faced, insists that Russia attacks only military targets.

https://youtu.be/a245RkGUXfk; https://youtu.be/c1xFSCDy8Jo; https://youtu.be/q2nfuIP2tU0; https://youtu.be/8_XCe86resg.

The Greatest lie to aggrandize and enrich themselves, their cronies, families, and networks; to confuse the judgments of others; to perceptually control their fans, marks, and targets–and they lie most of all to hide their crimes.

June 28, 2023.

–33–

Reference: Journalist, Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm In Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings

03 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fake News?

If only it existed in the Mainstream Press (Fox News excepted at present).

Fake Presidents?

At least two exist and both have represented rival superpowers.

One has been putting on a clown show in the United States.

One remains in power in Russia.

Meanwhile others in Moscow are still wondering whether there is a domestic political aspect to the crisis and whether rogue elements of the security forces are in some way involved in an attempt to provoke a state of emergency in Russia or the cancellation of elections.

There is absolutely no proof of this, but a little noticed article in the Moscow newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda by a respectable journalist Alexander Zhilin is now attracting attention.

Zhilin wrote on 25 August that President Yeltsin’s health was failing and that a plan with the codename “Storm in Moscow” was being hatched in the Kremlin . . . .

Zhilin’s article is interesting because it was written before the bomb explosions.

Waal, Tom de. “World: Europe: Russia’s bombs: Who is to blame?” BBC News, September 30, 1998.

During this fateful summer when Moscow was awash with rumors, I was friendly with a Russian political operative who was well connected to the higher levels of Russian power. When I met him, he told me about the growing fear in the Kremlin about the possibility of losing power and the indications that Moscow would be the scene of a huge provocation. He said that the issue was the security of Yeltsin and his family in the case of a handover of power. He said that if there was no agreement on terms, “they will blow up half of Moscow.”

I sensed the uneasiness but did not know how to assess the prediction of my friend. I had no illusions about Yeltsin and his cronies but it was hard to imagine that a man who came to power as a result of a peaceful anti-communist revolution with massive public support would be willing to murder his own people to hold onto power. Developing events, however, were to change my mind.

At 9:40 p.m. on September 4, a truck bomb exploded in Buinaksk, Dagestan’s second-largest city. It destroyed a five story apartment building, which housed soldiers from the 136th Motor Rifle Brigade.

Satter, David. “How Putin Became President.” American Interest, Hudson, May 19, 2016.

In a curious twist to the story, the liberal bi-weekly Novaya Gazeta published an investigation on Monday into a bomb discovered in the city of Ryazan last year. The FSB eventually said it had planted the bomb but that it was a fake and the incident was part of a training exercise. Local eyewitnesses said the timer and explosives were real.

Cockburn, Patrick. “Russian intelligence produces apartment bombing evidence.” Independent, March 17, 2000.

I’ve ordered John B. Dunlop’s book The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2014) and expect to find some “lovely” devils in the details but no change in the thesis relayed by the above quotations: power in Moscow, Yeltsin’s or Putin’s–or as controlled by Russia’s secret political police, the FSB–has proven itself criminal, ruthless, and unconscionable by bombing apartment buildings in the dead of night while Russian families slept in peace, and they did it in the interests not of real power, but of a display of power, i.e., of their own narcissistic image as controlled in a theater of their own making.

The false-flag operation, “Storm in Moscow”, supported the election of Vladimir Putin (for the length of his life, apparently) and the launching of a barbaric war featuring most of all the brutalizing of Chechen villages, sending the men into the ranks of rebels and putting in control the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.

The betrayal of ordinary Russian people: unfathomable.

And perhaps ordinary Russians should know the truth.

Cited or Related Online

About Operation “Storm in Moscow” AKA “Moscow Apartment Bombings”

Cockburn, Patrick. “Russian intelligence produces apartment bombing evidence.” Independent, March 17, 2000.

Knight, Amy. “Finally, We Know About the Moscow Bombings.”The New York Review, November 22, 2012.

Satter, David. “How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life. Tablet Magazine, Hudson, August 30, 2017.

Satter, David. “How Putin Became President.” American Interest, Hudson, May 19, 2016.

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

Waal, Tom de. “World: Europe: Russia’s bombs: Who is to blame?” BBC News, September 30, 1998.

About the Barbaric and Malign Narcissistic Character of Russian State Ambition

Olear, Greg. “Vladimir the Terrible.” Prevail. June 12, 2020.

Politkovskaya, Anna. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Nekrasov, Andrey. Director. Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File AKA The Murder of Litvinenko.

On BackChannels

Oppenheim, James S. “A Note on Tweeting Up Russia’s Barbaric Feudal-Medieval Revanche.” BackChannels, April 12, 2023.

Oppenheim, James S. “Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91.” BackChannels, July 19, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissism.” BackChannels web page.

Oppenheim, James S. “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled.” BackChannels, July 10, 2022.

Oppenheim, James S. “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.” BackChannels web page.

Russian power appears to lie first and foremost to Russians while maintaining for itself the burden of truths about which it cannot and dare not speak–at least not until found out. Given the work of many journalists possess of abundant curiosity and integrity, Russia’s powerful have been today well observed, investigated, and reported on extensively, and for the top rank, the same would seem today fully found out.

A few brave individuals did try to investigate the Ryazan incident. When the State Duma, which was controlled by the regime, voted three times against opening an inquiry into the incident, an independent social commission was created that included several deputies, among them, Sergei Yushchenkov and Yuri Shchekochikhin, an investigative journalist with the independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Yushchenkov was shot dead outside his apartment building on April 17, 2003. Shchekochikhin was poisoned in July 2003. Litvinenko and Politkovskaya also investigated the bombings only to be killed. In the wake of these murders, a curtain of fear descended in Russia over the issue of how Putin came to power.

Satter, David. “How America Helped Make Vladimir Putin Dictator for Life. Tablet Magazine, Hudson, August 30, 2017

–33–