29 Tuesday Nov 2016
Predictably, the Kremlin maintains that moving state-of-the art missiles into Kaliningrad is a response to American ballistic missile defenses which have been deployed in Eastern Europe. As usual, Moscow depicts all its military moves, even ones which are destabilizing to regional security, as cosmically defensive, so great is the Western threat to Russia.
Source: Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us | Observer
Relevant on BackChannels: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.
28 Monday Nov 2016
For articles and books authored by Pacepa, the order is chronological. All listed have had a glance, at least, but with the exception of Red Horizons, which has been ordered.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. Red Horizons. Regnery, 1987.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “The KGB’s Man.” The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “A New Cold War.” WND, September 23, 2012.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “Evidence Shows KGB’s Hand in JFK Assassination.” WND, November 21, 2013.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “The Secret Roots of Liberation Theology.” National Review, April 23, 2015.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. Looming Disaster. (PDF). WND, 2016.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai. “Next Trigger Event: 1/1/17.” Intelligence Matters, WND, August 18, 2016.
Ledeen, Michael. “The Greatest Spy Speaks About the Threat to America.” Forbes, September 4, 2016.
Wikipedia. “Ion Mihai Pacepa”.
–33–
27 Sunday Nov 2016
I have no fear of death now whether it comes from cancer or from a paid Russian assassin. but I do feel I have an obligation to use my experience to warn America of the dirty tricks that can be played against her. And if I have one message for my adopted country, it is this: the Cold War is not over; the new cold war is between the Russian mafia and the United States; and in this new cold war, the Russian mafia has every tool, every weapon, every intelligence asset at its disposal that the old Soviet Union had. America is facing a nation led by gangsters — gangsters who have nuclear weapons . . . .
Lunev, Stanislav and Ira Winkler. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: Russia’s highest ranking military defector reveals why Russia is more dangerous than ever. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.
” . . . and some of those weapons are actually on American soil, as I will explain” finished the ellipses left in the quotation block.
One hesitates when typing such a sentence.
At minimum, the import calls for digression.
Was Lunev’s 1999 book disinforming as regards the “suitcase bomb” question?
Or has the matter been suppressed?
Or has the asserton been just too large and scary a possibility to hang on for long without donning the tinfoil hat?
That too is a possibility as searches for a related 60 Minutes report — “The Perfect Terrorist Weapon” — produces reference online, but to get at the episode appears to involve hitting one of dozens of iffy “torrent” type (illicit share site) web addresses.
BackChannels will plead with both the legal and faint of heart on that potentially disastrous next step — and not take it.
So one may toss Lunev’s page-turning statement into the “don’t know /won’t know” bin, at least, so BackChannels and its readers may hope, for a good long time.
Less questionable: the Russian state as a “mafia state” and international mafia enterprise:
Investigators in Spain have been at the vanguard of the fight against Russian organized crime, warning fellow NATO members for years of the dangers posed by what they call state-sanctioned syndicates, an issue that’s become more acute since the conflict in Ukraine rekindled Cold War distrust.
After a briefing by Grinda, one of the prosecutors, in Madrid in 2010, U.S. officials concluded that Putin runs a “virtual mafia” state where the activities of criminal networks are indistinguishable from those of the government, according to a classified cable from the U.S. embassy in the Spanish capital that was published by WikiLeaks.
Russian security services control criminal groups and use them to do things the government “cannot acceptably do,” Grinda was cited as telling U.S. officials at the time.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/putin-allies-aided-russian-mafia-in-spain-prosecutors-say – 6/29/2016.
At the base of this post is a 14-minute trailer for a 91-minute documentary (subtitled) about Russian mafia — “Thieves by Law (Ganavim Ba Hok).”
Meyer, Josh. “Ex-Soviet Spy Testifies on Hidden Weapons.” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2000.
National Terror Alert. “Suitcase Nukes”.
Yablokov, Alexei. “Comments on Russia’s Atomic Suitcase Bombs.” Frontline, PBS, n.d.
In time, Louie and Z left the shores of the Atlantic for Zurich, Switzerland – and a far more menacing situation: A meeting with a high-ranking Russian General offering his government’s arsenal for sale.
“We’re talking long-range missiles, tanks, submarines, everything,” Z said.
The danger was driven home last week with the New York indictment of notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Boot, captured in Thailand in March. He was charged with selling weapons to a terrorist group to be used to kill Americans.
That’s hardly a scene from “The Sopranos.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/undercover-look-inside-the-russian-mob/ – 5/13/2008.
http://www.rferl.org/a/putins-mafia-statecraft/27329898.html – 10/27/2015.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/crimean-gangland-putin-s-seaside-mafia-state.html – 6/23/2015.
http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_security_concerns_russian_mafia_back_on_agenda7083 – 7/25/2016:
In the 1990s, the so-called “Russian Mafia” was Europe’s new nightmare, an overblown threat surging west into Europe instead of Soviet tanks. In the 2000s, it had become a cliché, the thriller-writer’s staple. Now it is back on the agenda, with serious concerns that organised crime has become a ‘fifth column’ of the Kremlin’s effort to undermine European security.
http://uatoday.tv/crime/mafia-friends-of-president-putin-wanted-in-spain-642267.html – 5/3/2016.
http://uatoday.tv/crime/seven-members-of-russian-mafia-arrested-in-spain-681260.html – 6/28/2016.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/putin-allies-aided-russian-mafia-in-spain-prosecutors-say – 6/29/2016.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/armine-sahakyan/the-export-other-countrie_b_11009200.html – 7/15/2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Lunev
–33–
26 Saturday Nov 2016
On Feb. 15, 1966, the government announced that Father Camilo Torres had been killed in an encounter with Colombian troops. The wars went on; Camilo became the revolution’s holy mascot.
At the time, we who were covering the story wondered: How long would these ”wars” between the disaffected, nihilistic young and the wealthy landowners and priests who ran Colombia actually last? Five years? Ten? Maybe even — God forbid — 15?
In fact, these wars have lasted 52 years, with 220,000 dead on both sides, and with the 6,800 or so Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known always as FARC, ruling over 18,000 peasants. In the isolated valleys and rivers of that mountainous land, they were using the peasants in part as a workforce for coca, and thus cocaine, production.
26 Saturday Nov 2016
Tags
21st Century Feudalism, 21st Century Neo-Feudalism, Active Measures, disinformation, information warfare
The story of the 20th century was also the story of the battle against censorship. But what happens when a powerful actor systematically abuses freedom of information to spread disinformation? Uses freedom of speech in such a way as to subvert the very possibility of a debate? And does so not merely inside a country, as part of vicious election campaigns, but as part of a transnational military campaign? Since at least 2008, Kremlin military and intelligence thinkers have been talking about information not in the familiar terms of “persuasion,” “public diplomacy” or even “propaganda,” but in weaponized terms, as a tool to confuse, blackmail, demoralize, subvert and paralyze.
Like freedom of information, free dialogue between cultures is key to the liberal vision of globalization. The more cultural exchange we have, the more harmony we will have. But what should we do when the Kremlin begins to use the Russian Orthodox Church and compatriot organizations abroad as elements of a belligerent foreign policy that aims to subvert other countries?
Source: The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money – 11/22/2014 – by Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss.
PDF location:
http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/PW-31.pdf
25 Friday Nov 2016
In paraphrase, the prompt was how would Hitler have been viewed if he had not produced the genocide of the Jews of Europe, i.e., The Holocaust.
Hitler would not have been Hitler without the ‘racial” foundations of Nazism already laid through the 1920s.
I’ve noted only recently the near concurrence of Stalin’s installation as the leader of the Soviet Union, the establishment in 1928 of the Muslim Brotherhood (in response to western colonial abuses, but also accessing religious supremacist thought in defense of Egyptian Muslims), and the already-built intellectual ferment — papers circulating in universities — for Nazism.
I have tried venturing toward the kind of conversation Stalin may (!) have had with Hitler in the course of coming to a delusional agreement over the parsing of Europe between them and then Hitler’s treacherous move against the same.
It’s too soon to draw the comparison “Stalin : Hitler” as “Putin : ? ” , but that there is a conversation between feudal powers may be something that cannot be either doubted nor overlooked nor in content — i.e., what’s the story behind the public’s glimpses of Manafort, Millian, and Kilimnik? — known.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/paul-manafort-ukraine-kiev-russia-konstantin-kilimnik-227181
What appears to my _imagination_ is a conversation involving medieval lords and their knights, who are today well paid “nobility” suited up in suits and carrying briefcases full of explosive agreements.
From the Politico article:
Joking aside, Trump has demonstrated more interest in Russia’s affairs than in perhaps any other area of foreign policy. And his laissez faire approach toward Russia’s confrontational relations with its neighbors, combined with his open admiration of its authoritarian President Vladimir Putin and his employment of Manafort, have led experts from across the political spectrum to predict that a Trump presidency would augur to the Kremlin’s benefit.
How far passed is the election season “past” as America moves toward the inauguration of its new President?
The conversation prompted here is only quasi-public or constrained by the social distribution chosen for the original topic post. Therefore, we may be of the public, but we may also note in passing that this now old “Trump-Manafort” news has been discarded from the public conversation.
As news, it’s old news.
As a theme (for foreign policy wonks) it may remain relevant, but as much becomes a conversation between specialized journalists and researchers, and therefore politically irrelevant.
The public will rush on to the next day’s headlines, and the same will overlay, blanket, and suffocate the previous day’s curiosity and its items of interest.
The powerful and wealthy of the world have always inhabited a world greater than their own family, clan, tribe, and nation-state: whether Chinese political elites or Forbes-listed billionaires, the world has no boundaries and its laws must suit them for them to keep them, provided, lol, they keep a lot of other interested parties — above the table and quite some distance beneath it — interested in their success and largesse.
–33–
23 Wednesday Nov 2016
This thin post telegraphs in web links a few of the essentials about President Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet ultra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian project and revanche. For the viewer, it may work as a portal both into related posts on BackChannels as well as a channel out for greater web-bound curiosity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-active-measures-modernised-tradition
Recently ‘Also in Media’:
Related:
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
The ROC has made billions from trading concessions granted to it by the government. It is increasingly asserting its position as the largest of the 14 self-governing Orthodox Churches and is using its political muscle in support of Putin’s aims. It’s no friend to evangelicals, especially in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, seeing them as puppets of the West.
But how has it become so powerful – and how is it using its power?
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the church received official privileges including the right to import duty-free alcohol and tobacco. In 1995, the Nikolo-Ugreshky Monastery, which is directly subordinated to the patriarchate, earned $350 million from the sale of alcohol. The patriarchate’s department of foreign church relations, which Kirill ran, earned $75 million from the sale of tobacco. But the patriarchate reported an annual budget in 1995-1996 of only $2 million. Kirill’s personal wealth was estimated by the Moscow News in 2006 to be $4 billion.
During this period, the church has been silent about genuine moral issues, such as Russia’s pervasive corruption and the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants in Chechnya. As Kirill begins his reign as patriarch, there is little reason to expect this to change.
Yakov Krotov, a liberal Russian Orthodox priest, recently compared Kirill to a “court Jew,” like Peter Shafirov, the foreign policy aide to Peter the Great. The role of the court Jew, according to Krotov, is to put a civilized face on a repressive system.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/putin-solzhenitsyn-kirill-russia-opinions-contributors_orthodox_church.html – 2/20/2009.
http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-the-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/
http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
In effect, Moscow, with its penchant for total control, bears responsibility for using the Palestinian refugees to block western democratic and open society (with free press) expansion while also milking the world under the guise of a good deed.
Moscow (Bogdanov) has met with PFLP in recent years (November 2014) and continues to refuse to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.
In Syria, and keeping with its “total control” outlook, it appears that Assad himself incubated ISIL as an element that could be used to blackmail and goad the west.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/
Examine, query, test each URL. As a post on Facebook, the cited URLs taken together tell a story about Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet transformation of Russia into an ultra-nationalist neo-imperial dictatorship.
–33–
22 Tuesday Nov 2016
Tags
anti-Semtism, Information analysis, Keith Ellison, political psychology, Soviet Era Influence in Contemporary Politics
Ellison stories speak to his relationships with CAIR, ISNA, Farrakhan, and others who have either articulated anti-Semitic and racist positions, especially Farakhan, or have been associated with questionable organizations, as for example CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
However . . . let the man speak.
In our online lives in the information ocean, all have been subject to surrounding currents and related choices in content selection. As I have had some time and understand that few have that luxury — and I don’t really have it (although I’m available for less public research tasking) — it may help at times to overview information about a subject and its tributaries. With that in mind, here also is an article about a 2016 Muslim Student Association (MSA, and in Minnesota) decision to REJECT BDS and anti-Semitic cant in its campus work.
http://www.mnrepublic.com/msa-avoids-divestment-and-anti-semitism-arguments/ – 3/8/2016.
Of course, there’s a slew of articles that analyze Keith Ellison’s leanings quite differently.
I may suggest that in the way of “reparative narcissists”, that their joining or including movements, organizations, or personalities with histories of discomfiting views — look up Farrakhan’s assistant Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and listen to his rant for a few minutes — intends drawing the same away from hate and violence because that is the character of a repairing personality.
Let the politician work — or even work his magic.
Here are a few “fast links” to opinions about politician and how he’s been seen in several ranks, especially the conservative and Jewish political communities.
BackChannels feels that if you listen to Keith Ellison in action and directly — and you have been informed of the role of the Soviet Union in forming up the PLO — then you understand something new about the generation of rhetoric in the politics of the middle east conflict and perhaps the promotion of internecine Jewish-Muslim conflict in the United States.
Simon Wiesenthal Center. “SWC: Congressman Ellison as DNC Chair is Wrong Signal at Wrong Time.” n.d.
http://www.meforum.org/2756/keith-ellison-stealth-jihad – September 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison
Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad’s 1993 Kean College Speech – 1:45:05 – Posted to YouTube August 29, 2014. Khalid Abdul Muhammad had been an assistant to Louis Farrakhan, and, apparently, an angry one to the end.
–33–
BackChannels 