Category Archives: Conflict – Culture – Language – Psychology

Moscow -The Terror – With One Reservation

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Posted to YouTube by France 24 English, Sept. 14, 2016.

Anything is possible — for that, catch up with what lends itself to scrutiny on Snopes — but what is probable: Could there be a Russian connection to al-Qaeda today?

“It is not fashionable to accuse the Russians of having any ties to Middle East terrorism today. Indeed, some conservatives seem to think the U.S. and Russia can work together to defeat radical Islam.

“The analyst and author Jeff Nyquist asks, “When we learn that a leading commander in ISIL was born in the Soviet Union and trained in Russia, we ought to wonder what is really going on?” Omar al-Shishani, the Russian commander in ISIL (also known as ISIS or the Islamic State), has been reported to be the group’s overall military chief.”  — Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, September 30, 2014.

Why would post-Soviet Russia continue its involvement with terrorist organizations?

To promote “political absolutism” — AKA “dictatorship” — worldwide; To weaken European Union and NATO cohesion and resolve.

How might Russia today use “the terrorists”?

By creating a problem only the “strong man” might resolve.

This time around, it may not be the cause of the terrorist that Moscow supports but rather the reaction to the same.  In essence, every “Allahu Akbar Attack” promotes a patriotic and nationalist response in the receiving state.  Every injured body politics swells with the insult to its security — and then it may take stronger measures to forestall the next.  There may be an opposite heightened response as well from the feely-touchy sort that gamely adopt the sympathetic position and become a part of the heightened Far Left.  The division created by “what to do?” then serves Moscow in its renewed existence as a medieval enterprise.

Applicable reference on this blog: “Syndicate Red Brown Green“; “FTAC – America’s Division Leans Toward Moscow“.

How many years of accumulated experience has Russia in these methods?

From the Soviet Era and NKVD forward: about 80 years experience using violence as a part of producing a Political Theater of the Real, which might be better thought of as medieval spectacle and tableaux.

Basis for this view?

Mikhail Bogdanov’s November 2014 meeting with PFLP in Moscow shortly before a PFLP attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.

Moscow’s refusal to designate either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations plus evidence of direct Russian military support for Hezbollah operations in Syria.

Soviet Era Moscow’s exploitation of violence and terror in its own political expansion and long history as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Taras Kuzio’s analysis in “Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism?” (New Eastern Europe, January 22, 2015) may bring readers up to speed on how it is that Iran is today a U. S. State Department designated state sponsor of terrorism and Russia is not.

Realpolitik – Work With Moscow or Confront and Resist?

That’s a tough question for BackChannels.

The democratic open societies of the west may be obligated to confront aggressive dictatorships but by using the broad suite of business, diplomatic, political, and social tools that might deflect all parties from open conflict and its amplification and expansion.  Perhaps the Obama Administration has been doing as much all along.  However, as this post-Cold War and now “Cold Struggle” aspect of western relations with Moscow comes into focus, western constituencies and representatives may have to ask about the development of state compromises and dependencies associated with Moscow’s feudal revanche.

The wealthy of the world — the one-half of the one percent, the world’s global business, financial, and political elite — may ask themselves (depending on how busy some may be with defense contracts) how the promotion of fear through state-driven displays of violence and terror suit the greater commercial viability of expanding non-defense business and consumer markets.

Fast Links

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/how-the-soviet-union-transformed-terrorism/250433/ – 12/23/2011.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-russian-roots-of-terrorism/ – 9/30/2014.

http://www.jrnyquist.com/the-dark-side-of-the-moon.html – 2/9/2015.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-says-hezbollah-hamas-arent-terrorist-groups-50783 – 11/16/2015.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/01/27/report-russia-actively-supporting-a-designated-terrorist-group-in-syria/ – 1/27/2016.

Fast Links – BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ – 10/2/2015.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/08/29/ftac-americas-division-leans-toward-moscow/ – 8/29/2016

Fast Links – Wikipedia

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

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

On Russia and Terrorism – Two Excerpts

“It is now interesting to see in what way history repeats itself. And why should history not repeat? – Especially when successful strategies may be used again and again, with nobody the wiser. We were manipulated in 1939-45, and we have been manipulated in the period 2001-2014. Of course, it is not that Hitler and bin Laden were nice guys. It is merely that we allowed ourselves to become so absorbed in fighting a lesser enemy that we completely lost sight of the greater enemy. Worse, this greater enemy manipulated us in ways that are shameful to have permitted. Once again, we turned a blind eye to Russia’s preparations to take over Europe; that is to say, preparations to take full advantage of our distraction.”  — From J. R. Nyquist, “The Dark Side of the Moon,” February 9, 2015.

“In the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union sponsored waves of political violence against the West. The Red Brigades in Italy and the German Red Army Faction both terrorized Europe through bank robberies, kidnapping, and acts of sabotage. The Soviets wanted to use these left-wing terror groups to destabilize Italy and Germany to break up NATO. State-sponsored terrorism was a deeply Soviet phenomenon, but its practice did not stop when the Soviet Union ended. While state sponsorship continues, terrorism has mutated into something even harder for us to understand and respond to. But some of the roots of today’s terrorism go back to the Soviet Union.” — Nick Lockwood, “How the Soviet Union Transformed Terrorism,” The Atlantic, December 23, 2011.

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FTAC – “Syria is the World Without Israel”

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Religion, Syria

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Syria is the world without Israel. It is the world of Pharaoh in which four dictators, Assad flanked by Putin and Khamenei, his enablers, and another benighted soul, among others, Baghdadi, each believes himself representative of law. Together, they have recreated an image of the medieval world, a complete theater of politics and war.

Israel has received and provided medical services to Syrians for many years now. It leaves the politics of each person in need outside the hospital.

As this tragedy began in 2011 in Dara where a mild protest was met with the arrests and torture of students, it got formed rapidly into a statement about absolute power. No democracy; no talk; no compromises. The prize for each kleptocratic dictator, for each absolute ruler: the power to make others suffer with impunity.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

With the company of others, the Jews left Pharaoh a long time ago.

God proved greater than the tyrant.

The prompt: “A world without Israel would be so peaceful.”

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FTAC – Clarification on Syria’s Medieval Meltdown

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

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https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/06/02/assad-or-burn-it-assad-burns-it/

Moscow-Damascus-Tehran chose a long time ago to sustain political absolutism and produce between themselves a medieval spectacle, “Assad OR The Terrorists” AKA “Assad vs The Terrorists”. To get “The Terrorists”, Assad chose to bedevil noncombatants and early FSA, whose officers defected from his own corps, while allowing al-Nusra and others greater space and time — an act of incubation, deselection for combat — to consolidate.

No one likes this story — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/ — because it suggests that Syria has been made into a complete theater of politics and war, courtesy of Putin, Assad, Khamenei, and, led into it by the early easing off, Baghdadi. The display or tableaux moves “the masses”, but it wasn’t necessary but to defend the politics of dictatorships (“different talks — same walk”) — and Syria has been all but destroyed by it.

We know there is such a thing as the medieval world because we look back on it.

The medieval takes up space in the world’s museums.

Is there such a thing as “modern”?

Perhaps time blends ages and experiences.

One may be certain, however, that what Assad has brought about in Syria combines modern aesthetic and social norms — recall that Concert at Palmyra — with a deeply medieval politics, one that feasts on blood and sets the other side up for doing as much.  Driven from the land or killed: noncombatants and perhaps the more modern of revolutionary units.

Posted to YouTube by Al Jazeera English, September 12, 2016.

Posted to YouTube by AFP News Agency, September 12, 2016.

BackChannels feels that Assad flanked by Putin and Khamenei and accompanied in their medieval journey by Baghdadi are “all in” for “absolute power” — “Different talks, same walk” — and none have either “internal brakes” or personal incentives for compromise.  However, external influences, starting with state (or “state”) money and either the want of it or the loss of it, might apply.

Also, for Putin, greater state interests plus, perhaps, interest in his reputation in history, may come to bear — no pun intended — for as the destruction of Syria intensifies and western intervention remains limited, it’s himself as much as Assad, the head of a Russian “client state”, who may in the world’s memory bear the brunt of responsibility for the horror of it.

Additional Reference

CBS/AP.  “Syria cease-fire — Assad’s “last shot” — seems to hold.”  September 13, 2016.

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FTAC – From Correspondence – Focusing on the Despotic

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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

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Dictatorships – “Different Talks – Same Walk” — they have nothing to do with any restricted political vision except to exploit language for the eventual attainment of “unlimited narcissistic supply.”

Truly, they flatter themselves, eventually leaving behind pyramids and billion-dollar mansions.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

Many make themselves living hell for others, unfortunately.

Successful states — plenty of cash across the geopolitical space and plenty to do as regards work — seem to me often well put together combines of public commitments and privately realized opportunities. As all things are worked out between actual persons and organizations, the general rule — public-private compacts, from the provision of infrastructure to area-wide tax policy to real estate development through to public regulation of production (environmental and labor legislation) and trade (controls on distribution and tariffs) — dissolves into improved qualities in living x area-sq.

In good societies, “qualities of living” (economic, physical, psychological, social, spiritual) should produce the benchmarks (casually stated: “are you better off today than you were so many years ago? And how so? And why?) to which constituencies and politicians respond.

The despotic evade popular judgment.

I think we focus too much on the “isms” and not enough on leadership and related social practices, but that feature in cultures need the poets out front. Depending on where one lives, the critics of power, especially despotic power, may be made to suffer in situ or in exile a long time.

Re. education — avoidance of indulging too many in the humanities and social sciences, or doing so through too much of a Far Right / Far Left professoriate, may make a political body too easily disinformed and misled. As I have no relevant power in that realm, or elsewhere, reparative action seems way beyond my reach.

I think generalists among writers have at best subtle influence over time.

A good conversation may be mild and yet moving.

The conversational partner had called for the removal of former communists from Russian politics; however, and President Putin included, the whole have transformed from the Soviet outlook and ditched the CPSU worldview, a process well underway but out of sight in the 1980s when the privileged of the Party had begun work on plans for afterward.  The “afterward” — December 26 of this year will mark 25 years of “afterward”) — has returned to Russians a deeply centralized national security state: FSB | Putin | Oligarchs.

Where the same has run the world into disturbing issues: Syria.

Barbarism, Corruption, and Cronyism v Rule of Law and Meritocracy

*

Medieval Political Absolutism vs Modern Democratic Distribution of Power

*

State-Based Development and Exploitation of Terrorists (as in the medieval realpolitik theatrical “Assad OR The Terrorists”) v Progressive Humanist Discipline in Military / Paramilitary Assessment and Response (as in modern Israel)

The items presented in “That v This” form need not be black-and-white in reality (or “realpolitik”) as the blend may be more the thing, but what’s on display in Russia- and Iran-enabled Syria is so bad as to make modern invention of the political themes involved very easy.  Stopping at an expanded “Medieval v Modern” three should suffice.

Through President Putin, certain features (like that KGB/FSB thing) of the Soviet Union have enjoyed a period of “Soviet Reunion”.  A number of characteristics associated with the period of dissolve around 1991 have been reversed, and the leader has returned to the people a certain boisterous quality.  However, the ambitious neo-medieval neo-imperial state’s “numbers” — military expenditures, reduced oil revenues, incidence of corruption throughout, capital inflows, reduced reserves — may be keeping internal development comparatively suspended.  That may do Putin’s popularity and reputation some damage over time.

General Reference

. . . the majority of the population sees the Kremlin not as the reason for the current economic recession but as the central power making a relatively successful attempt to consolidate society against external enemies that seek to strangle Russia economically. Somehow, it is not hard for the Kremlin-controlled media to find proof and symptoms—Western sanctions are presented as a major instrument of destruction, causing severe harm to the Russian economy; the oil price decline is declared to be the result of an anti-Russian plot; and even the situation around Ukraine is treated as an attack on Russian foreign trade, on Russia’s ability to cooperate with a neighboring market of 45 million people, and on the traditionally close economic ties between Ukraine and Russia. Over time, economic hardships have become a reason for the increase in public support of the president and his policies, not a reason for protesting.

Movchan, Andrey.  “Avoiding the Blame for Russia’s Economic Woes.”  Carnegie Moscow Center, March 30, 2016.

Oxenstierna, Susanne.  “Russia’s defense spending and the economic decline.”  Journal of Eurasian Studies, January 2016, 7:1, 60-70.

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Also in Media: “NCRI – National Council of Resistance of Iran – MEK resettlement from Iraq marks another blow for the Iranian regime”

12 Monday Sep 2016

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The four-and-a-half-year-long process of relocating members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) to countries of safety was successfully completed on September 9, 2016 when the last 280 Camp Liberty residents left Iraq for Albania.

The achievement is not without cost, however. The residents left Iraq dispossessed of both personal and collective property, and have had to met the costs of resettlement themselves.

Source: NCRI – National Council of Resistance of Iran – MEK resettlement from Iraq marks another blow for the Iranian regime – 9/10/2016.

Related on BackChannels: “On Human Rights Day, Iran is Again Covered in Blood” – Maryam Rajavi.”  1/18/2015.

Posted by the United States Government on September 28, 2012:

The Secretary of State has decided, consistent with the law, to revoke the designation of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its aliases as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under the Immigration and Nationality Act and to delist the MEK as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224. These actions are effective today. Property and interests in property in the United States or within the possession or control of U.S. persons will no longer be blocked, and U.S. entities may engage in transactions with the MEK without obtaining a license. These actions will be published in the Federal Register.

With today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.

The Secretary’s decision today took into account the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, their historic paramilitary base.

The United States has consistently maintained a humanitarian interest in seeking the safe, secure, and humane resolution of the situation at Camp Ashraf, as well as in supporting the United Nations-led efforts to relocate eligible former Ashraf residents outside of Iraq.

**

Several thousand members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, PMOI or MEK, a group of intellectuals dedicated to democracy, the rule of law and tolerance to people of others religions, have been facing repeated missile strikes and army assaults in Iraq by Tehran’s proxies. The PMOI are the ayatollahs’ most feared opponents, as their democratic interpretation of Islam poses a direct challenge to the mullahs’ claim to power through religious rule.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is eager to massacre 2,000 defenceless refugees in Camp Liberty, where they live close to Baghdad. The last rocket attack on the group was on October 28, 2015, when 24 residents were killed and many more wounded. The United Nations refugee agency has recognized all Camp Liberty residents as asylum-seekers and refugees under international protection but seems unable to provide them with adequate security or protection from attack.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albania-deserves-credit-for-saving-threatened-iranians-03-08-2016#sthash.mNxtbn3a.dpuf – 3/9/2016.

Related Reference

http://www.voanews.com/a/us-albania/3190311.html – 2/14/2016

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/massoud-khodabandeh/can-albania-meet-its-obli_b_9355764.html – 3/1/2016 – Given the MEK’s renunciation of violence, their track record across ten years at Camp Ashraf, and the American government’s delisting in 2012 (there as was no mention of that in Massoud Khodabandeh’s article), BackChannels posts the related URL but with reservations.

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Russia’s P&R Cocktail – New Nationalism May Meet Falling Reserves with Religion

09 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion, Russia, Ukraine

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CHITA, September 9. /TASS/. The Russian Reserve Fund will be exhausted over the course of the next year, the budget deficit financing will start from the Russian National Wealth Fund, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Lavrov told journalists on Friday.

“The Reserve Fund, as I remember, will be used up over the next year,” Lavrov said. He added that once the fund is exhausted, the budget deficit financing will start from the National Wealth Fund.

http://tass.com/economy/898846 – 9/9/2016

Russia spent 18.4 percent of its reserve fund in a single month to plug deficits in the federal budget, Finance Ministry figures released Tuesday have revealed.

The country’s reserve fund fell from $38.18 billion to $32.2 billion during the course of August 2016, shrinking to just over a third of pre-crisis levels.

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-spends-18-of-its-reserve-fund-in-august-55223 – 9/6/2016

Long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea and unproclaimed war in the Donbass, Ukraine had become a religious battleground. Despite the warning of Yurii Chernomorets, Cyril Hovorun, and other observers, none of the leading Ukrainian and Western politicians foresaw the threat posed by an increasingly aggressive form of Orthodox Christianity being promoted by Moscow. As events in Ukraine have now shown, Orthodox fundamentalism is no less aggressive than Islamic fundamentalism, and the “Russian Spring” is no less bloody than its Arab counterpart.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/orthodox-terrorism – May 2015

If anyone thought Europe’s wars over religion were finished in 1648, the current standoff with Russia illustrates that that is not the case.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/#5cda28ee6881 – 5/21/2015

All of the above: the writing on the wall.

Putin and the oligarchs, slow to develop Russia’s internal economy, “T-34 Tank Tomatoes” notwithstanding, have now to face a precipitous drawdown on the state’s more convenient national reserves, and helping the state’s leaders meet that challenge: (FSB-enforced) faith in the exceptional magic of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Gaze upon that infernal cocktail that is equal parts politics and religion and find the terrible beauty of its love match in mixture: the greater the destruction and hardship wrought by one, all the greater the glory and proof of Divine favor provided by the other.

Says BackChannels.

Complementing Reference

http://www.eastwestreport.org/articles/ew05108.htm – Winter 1997 – “Orthodoxy, Oil, Tabacco, and Wine: Do They Mix?” East West Report.

http://www.geopolitika.lt/?artc=4593 – “The Rise of Russian Nationalism” – 4/4/2011.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/25/putin-s-number-one-gunman-in-ukraine-warns-him-of-possible-defeat.html – 7/25/2014 (on the invasion of the Donbass but linked here by the purpose of the demonstration of power and annexation of Crimea).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-orthodox-church/#5cda28ee6881 – 5/21/2015.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/09/russia-ultra-nationalist-crackdown-150916131749975.html – “Behind Russia’s ultra-nationalist crackdown: Despite targeting neo-Nazis and other hate groups, the Kremlin is rolling out its own version of the ‘Russian world’.” – 9/23/2015.

http://rbth.com/opinion/2016/02/10/why-has-the-world-waited-so-long-for-a-catholic-orthodox-reconciliation_566661 – 2/10/2016 – “Why has the world waited so long for a Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation?”

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/how.the.russian.orthodox.church.is.backing.vladimir.putins.new.world.order/81108.htm – 3/3/2016.

http://religious-nationalism.blogspot.com/2016/03/putin-wars-and-russian-orthodox-church.html – 3/13/2016.

http://christiantimes.com/article/thousands-fast-and-pray-after-vladimir-putin-signs-new-russian-law-restricting-religious-freedom/58896.htm – 7/14/2016.

KGB/FSB | ROC

A secret Soviet-era document uncovered in Estonia suggests that Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and spiritual leader of tens of millions of Christians, was a fully fledged KGB agent.

Accusations that Alexy, elected Patriarch in 1990, co-operated closely with the KGB under the code name ‘Drozdov’ (Thrush), have circulated since a parliamentary commission was allowed a brief peek at secret police files in Moscow in 1991.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/feb/12/1 – 2/12/1999

Liberation theology, of which not much has been heard for two decades, is back in the news. But what is not being mentioned is its origins. It was not invented by Latin American Catholics. It was developed by the KGB. The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which we at the top of the Eastern European intelligence community nicknamed Christianized Marxism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417383/secret-roots-liberation-theology – 4/23/2015.

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: The two texts that follow—they are actually two parts of a single essay—are of crucial importance for an understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Communist Yoke. They were written by a true confessor of Orthodoxy, who died in prison in the Soviet Union in 1971 for having written these and similar texts. They are presented here as a direct response to the plea of the author himself (p. 484 of Russia’s Catacomb Saints): “This betrayal… must be made known to all believers in Russia and abroad, because such an activity of the Patriarchate… represents a great danger for all believers.” The texts are primary documents exposing with direct and irrefutable proof the conscious betrayal of Russian Orthodoxy by its own hierarchs.

http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/cat_tal.aspx – “The Moscow Patriarchate and Sergianism: An Essay by Boris Talantov.”  Orthodox Christian Information Center, circa 1968.  Related in Wikipedia: “Russian Greek Catholic Church“; “1943 Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church“; “Patriarch Sergius of Moscow“.

Only after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 did Joseph Stalin finally start to scale back the anti-religious campaign, needing the moral support of the Church during the war. In the early hours of September 5, 1943, Stalin met with the three chief hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church and promised some concessions to religion in exchange for their loyalty and assistance. Among the concessions were the permission to open the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy, the release of imprisoned clerics, the return of some church property, including the famous Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. In return, the Soviet government put the Church under the control of its secret services.

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

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The UAV which penetrated Israel airspace from #Syria was…Israeli made?!

08 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Meir Javedanfar's avatarThe Iran-Israel Observer

In July an unknown UAV penetrated Israel’s airspace from Syria. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) did everything to bring it down, to no avail. This included firing patriot missiles and sending an F-16 fighter jet to shoot down the drone, all of which proved to be unsuccessful. Because of its small size and agility, the UAV stayed in Israeli airspace for apparently half an hour, which must have seemed like an eternity to the IDF.

Well, the story just got more interesting.

According to Arie Egozi who writes for the reputable aviation magazine Flight Global, Israeli military sources now suggest that the UAV was probably:

a Searcher 2 designed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) which was being operated by Russian forces deployed within Syria.

So it was one of our own UAVs which we sold to Russia. So that also means that the Russians are most probably…

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FTAC – Syria, Compressed

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Russia, Syria

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This is basic:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/02/syria-assad-vs-the-terrorists-how-isis-defends-assad/

And the confusion in the “battlespace” fails to recognize the true oppositions in the Syrian Conflict and Tragedy.

The correct framing: the 25th anniversary (Dec. 26) of the dissolve of the Soviet Union.

The correct opposition:

“Medieval Political Absolutism” vs “Modern Democratic Distributions of Power”

The medieval axis: Moscow-Damascus-Tehran + others who invest themselves in authoritarian politics. Fair slogan for the kleptocratic dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

The dictators are those who walk all over their own constituents (or subjugated populations).

The modern axis: the United States, NATO, the open democracies of the west and worldwide.

There are a lot of fence sitters — Pakistan may be one — but the medieval world is on full display between Putin, Assad, Khamenei, AND Baghdadi.

I don’t know when the perception of the witness of the “Syrian Conflict and Tragedy” will kick in, grow, and align within the lovers of broadly distributed freedom and prosperity worldwide, but this blog has been working on that for a while.

By now, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may know the extent to which his enterprise had been enabled in its infancy to service to serve in these ways:

  • A collector of “jihadist” passion;
  • An organization suiting the blackmailing of the west in a political theatrical one might call “Assad OR The Terrorists” — never mind the both operating as tyrants;
  • A goad to the west, especially mixed in with the hapless of Syria’s mass migration;
  • An excuse to destroy (“Assad or We Burn It”) Syria and depopulate the region for the greater political control of the despotic powers.

Those who merely follow each day’s headlines (and Russian post-Soviet disinformation) will not “see” the political reality that is Syria.  They will see the glorious “Assad vs The Terrorist” and witness Moscow’s latest in military technology set loose on the landscape, while those who dig, and those who have memory — all the way back to Daara, 2011 — will get the whole story, understand it, and perhaps be enraged by what it represents.

Related

Like Syria itself, Daraa has been ripped apart by five years of conflict. What began as a local protest movement against the Assad political dynasty slowly morphed into an international proxy war that’s drawn in the United States, Russia, Iran and nearly all of Syria’s neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are dead, millions are displaced. While it’s difficult to find a Syrian who honestly believes there’s an end in sight, there’s some agreement about where it all began: with Omar’s friends. The graffiti they dared to paint on the schoolyard walls has become an origin myth for Syria’s tragic conflict — not just for the citizens of Daraa, but for the entire country.

By some accounts, the schoolkids were deeply political; they painted dozens of political slogans that day, and eventually set fire to a police kiosk to express solidarity with anti-police protests erupting across the Arab world. Omar remembers his friends a little differently. Sure, they had an eye on Egypt and Tunisia, but Omar says they defaced the school wall because they were teenagers, and it was the rebellious thing to do, not because they were die-hard revolutionaries.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-young-men-who-started-syrias-revolution-speak-about-daraa-where-it-all-began – 3/15/2016.

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