Category Archives: FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation

If — in my own head — I hit a universal note just about right in Facebook or other conversation, I may simply wrench it from context and publish it here in this category as a mix of observation and, I hope, a writer’s wisdom.

FTAC: Reflexive Control –> Feudalism

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

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Moscow and Company — the dictatorships of the world — require that their loyal patriotic subjects live in a feudal information bubble (that’s what state-controlled press is all about) and view themselves as defending their homeland and majority religion. The encouragement of nationalism and religiosity — and the suppression of political competition and criticism — sustains the despotic in power, and that whether nominally “Brown” or “Red-Green”.

To manipulate the western competition — EU/NATO — I believe Moscow has “played” terrorist organizations or media (like Kavkaz Center) to produce the “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” that induces or pushes democracies toward nationalism.

In military and political science circles — and KGB — a part of the the technique of getting an enemy to do what is wanted without firing a shot is called “Reflexive Control”:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/02/07/ftac-the-new-nationalists-and-moscows-reflexive-control/

If you are democratic, freedom loving, liberal, politically engaged and you have bought into extreme conservative or ultra-liberal politics in the past ten years, you may just have been — as I believe I have been while traveling in the conservative ranks — duped and possibly partly so by “Active Measures”, another lovely term of art for political agitation and propaganda.

Now look again at America’s Trump Administration and its “Russian Question”, the subject of ongoing FBI investigation.

Active Reflexive Control Hypothesis

Stimulation of “Allahu Akbar Terrorism” –> “Patriotic Nationalist Response” (“Brown”)

Complement: “Defensive Socialist Response” (“Red-Green”) to Threatened Reappearance of Fascism)

Moscow’s intention: concentrate power and wealth in the familiar oligarch manner “above politics” as supported by an immense KGB/FSB political control element while producing sufficient division and turmoil in the EU/NATO states to degrade cooperative democratic politics and return power to wealthy and ruthless feudal cabal.

So far, so good for Mr. Putin.

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FTAC – Middle East Conflict – Schematic

25 Saturday Feb 2017

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

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I know — Russian anti-Semitism -> Rise of Nazism -> Cold War and the Soviet effort in the middle east — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/ –> KGB invention of Yasser Arafat, the PLO, and the Palestinians –> Hamas and Linda Sarsour.

Even outlined, there’s a lot to know — but the Palestinians today should know it too: Moscow and its cronies have made good use of them, i.e., made a lot of money skimming off the money thrown into the middle east conflict.

If you get the chance to read about Moscow / Russia and anti-Semitism and the middle east, take the time. The conflict will look very different and the criminal motivations for it all the more clear.

For those benefiting financially and socially from programs associated with a sustained “middle east conflict”, the resolving of the same may spell “nakba” – a sudden loss in institutional and personal organization.  Not only has the middle east conflict turned out its share of profiting millionaires and billionaires, it has provided Far Left (mostly) and some Far Right entities a good reason for getting up in the morning.

BackChannels wonders what readers think: should the Middle East Conflict be regarded as a necessary evil, a useful grinder between “eastern” and “western” — despotic and democratic — political interests?

Or should it be resolved before another generation of Palestinians — given 70 years of Arab-driven isolation and The Preoccupation With Israel, they may now be a People even though it remains unclear which jailer, Hamas or the PLO, may best exploit them — suffocates beneath the will of its Moscow trained or aided handlers?

Note that while Moscow turned briefly westward, President Putin has revived the state as an ultra-nationalist neo-imperial enterprise with its barbarism on display in both Syria and Ukraine.  As such, it has sustained its relationships with other autocratic and kleptocratic entities, including at the highest level Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny and Ayatollah Khamenei’s brutal theocracy — and then at lower levels relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP, if not others.

Related on BackChannels

BDS Cult Modules

Excerpt – 1920s – The Spread of Hate – Russia -> Germany | An Excerpt from Laqueur

Palestinian KGB

These Too are the Palestinians

Tip to the KGB’s Amplification of Middle East Anti-Semitism

Moscow’s Feudalism

Posted September 23, 2015.

Beyond talk, what have dictators ever done for their people?

Men of honor?

Well, they have made themselves powerful millionaires and billionaires, but they have taken from the mass of their own people their dignity and independence.

Jewish Business News.  “4 Hamas Billionaires and 600 Millionaires Turning Civilian Suffering Into Hard Cash.”  July 25, 2014.

The Guardian.  “The Guardian view on Turkey’s repression: stop this stalemate.”  November 28, 2016.

Freedom House.  “Freedom in the World 2016: Russia”.

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FTAC – On the Taming of the Wild Press

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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Unlike Sputnik, which serves Moscow, the American press is free and not in the flattery business.

Many journalists who achieve a decent wage from a major newspaper have done so on their investigative doggedness and straightness.

American presidents both craft but also inadvertently create their own image – and thinking Americans (aye, there’s the rub) don’t rely on just one news presentation or “cut” on an important story to produced in their own minds at least a seemingly reliable image of a state of affairs.

In government, of course, the stakes rise and the accuracy of intelligence becomes even more critical to power.

In Moscow: for President Putin, the world is – or is made – as he wishes to see it, and he himself is seen as he would have the public know him. There the press has been intimidated, steered, and trained, and from time to time “disciplined” by murder.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/ten-years-putin-press-kremlin-grip-russia-media-tightens

Elementary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2015/russia (2015)
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/28/putin-now-seeking-to-intimidate-journalists-into-not-covering-his-opponents/ – 6/28/2016
http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/06/20/putin-rebuilding-the-iron-curtain-in-his-typical-hybrid-fashion/ – 6/20/2015
http://www.gq.com/story/journalism-in-vladimir-putins-russia – 1/13/2017

“The situation in Khimki is not normal; this is a kind of military dictatorship,” says Yevgeniya Chirikova, a member of In Defense of Khimki Forest, a local environmental group. “Journalists and public figures are constantly being threatened. It’s as if our local authorities cannot accept any different way of thinking.”

Over the past year there has been a series of violent attacks on independent journalists here, culminating in the controversial death in late March of newspaper designer Sergei Protazanov, who had been preparing an issue of the oppositionist Grazhdanskoye Soglasiye devoted to electoral fraud in Khimki’s March 1 mayoral contest. That election was won by the candidate of the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party.

Weir, Fred.  “Russian Journalists Face Violence, Intimidation.”  The Christian Science Monitor, April 28, 2009.

Addendum

When asked by journalists of contacts between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives, he deflected the questions and put the focus instead on what he described as “illegal” government leaks and “dishonest” media coverage.

“The press is out of control,” he said. “The level of dishonesty is out of control,”

After weeks of disclosures in newspapers over turmoil in his administration, he told one reporter to “sit down” for a rambling question.

“Tomorrow, they will say: ‘Donald Trump rants and raves at the press,'” Trump said. “I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people . . . .”

Holland, Steve.  “‘I’m not ranting and raving.’  Trump on defensive in first solo news conference.”  Reuters, February 17, 2017.

In a Twitter rant that extended into work hours, Mr. Trump at once dismissed the entire Russia story as “fake” and made up, and pledged to hunt down the officials in the government who have supplied the details. He demanded an apology from the “failing” New York Times and accused the news media of making up stories and sources, even as he said he wanted those sources apprehended.

Weisman, Jonathan.  “Trump Denounces ‘Low-Life Leakers,’ Pledging to Hunt Them Down.”  The New York Times, February 16, 2017.

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FTAC: Why Ain’t You Special?

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Russia, Turkey

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The modern west is fighting the feudal past.

Where feudalism appears as though it might prevail, those invested in their most parochial definitions of culture — x gender x race x religion — take license to express views congruent with their view of power.

Our world has come to naturally combine states founded on ethnolinguistic traditions (our inventory stands below 7,000 living languages with several lost to disuse annually), and most have come to recognize the legitimacy of that course, with the existence of accommodating but still assertive mixed states. Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, Pashtun, and Russians 　 have coherence in legacies far predating the uptake of Christianity or Islam, and one may wish for each such some more peaceful survival and co-evolution in the world. The English — the British Empire and the surviving Crown System states — have taken a more heterogeneous course founded in “modern” or more recently established post-Enlightenment ideals and values.

Moscow begs to object, but in deeply hypocritical fashion, and often criminal, it cuts deals before the immense force of “realpolitik”. Kadyrov, Moscow’s tribal anchor for Chechnya, has validated honor killing and imposed (I think) the wearing of traditional “Islamic” dress in his state. The authoritarian minerets-are-our-helmets Erdogan needs little description as regards his sense of mission. And Mahmoud Abbas . . . alas, KGB — he doesn’t represent “The Palestinians”: he represents political absolutism.

In our lovely all-mixed-up democratic estate, the “absolutists” whom I conflate with “malignant narcissists” appear to have similar ideas about their exceptional character in the history of the world.

The mention of a white supremacist organization serves as a topic starter.  The conversational partner wanted to know whether the same related to Russian ultra-nationalism.

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FTAC – “Gaza Fortress” and Suzerainty

10 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Politics

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“Gaza Fortress” has been pretty much defeated as regards its ability to obtain rockets, if not build them, and its ability to overwhelm the IDF in some kind air and tunnel blitzkrieg. In addition to the plain physical facts of the fighting life, Hamas has made its role as a kleptocratic politically repressive organization glaringly obvious to the people of Gaza, who may not be able to do very much about it but perhaps burn with growing resentment.

Hezbollah, the advanced army of the Ayatollah, on the hand . . . .

http://www.thetower.org/3505oc-report-hezbollah-has-more-rockets-than-27-nato-countries-combined/

At the moment, Russia has been supplying S300/400 surface-to-air missile systems to Hezbollah in Syria, but with nothing said about their being smuggled back into Lebanon.

I would imagine — having only imagination for data, lol — that such a large stockpiling may be destroyed at the outset of war with Israel.

After having been isolated by the Arab Powers over time, I don’t think anyone can deny the existence of a separate “Palestinian People” — but we sure can deny the cooked up KGB narrative that engineered Yasser Arafat and the PLO and produced a system of clans and leadership profiting from the continuous enforcement of the misery of the same.

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

Everyone wants “peace in the middle east” as if Israel were the problem, but few to none in my experience care to revisit what the Soviet Union put together for the refugees of 1948 and how it has continued to this day to meet with Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP and to in effect sustain the conflict in its anti-western, anti- rule-of-law, and now displaced anti-Semitic enthusiasm.

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

…

As an aside: I advocate for joint Israeli-Egyptian suzerainty for Gaza (let’s let Gaza Youth Breaks Out (GYBO) know). Such an arrangement would provide for democratic home rule but joint foreign oversight over the external affairs of the suzerainty.

Elsewhere in the world, as with Balochistan as mastered by Pakistan, the arrangement exploits the suzerain for its resources, but I think that Gaza and Israel have developed more than enough day-to-day arrangements in basic services and shipping/trade that little would change while the exploiting of the Palestinians by Hamas would be reduced.

Back to rant: please tell me why Moscow has been kept offstage in discussions of the plight of the Palestinians?

 

Relevant to the politics of the Soviet / post-Soviet space:

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/24/ftac-moscows-presence-in-the-middle-east-conflict/

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FTAC: The New Nationalists and Moscow’s Reflexive Control

07 Tuesday Feb 2017

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

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

Historically, Moscow has devoted itself to managing political perception domestically (thank George Orwell for the parables) and producing political influence in its target states. The depth of the totalitarianism is what strikes us, but other aspects of the state’s diplomacy seem within bounds until one starts looking into 20th Century intellectual and political history.

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

Today, “Moscow” represents the ultra-nationalist neo-imperial version of KGB-style political expression. It loves conservatives! And does so because it may helped create the same using the same methods with the addition of the possible manipulation of “Allahu Akbar Attacks”, for each one of those has induced a greater patriotic nationalist response!

I hedge but a little to leave it to others to connect a few more dots.

Why conservatives?

Feudalism.

The divisions formed by the urging to demonize one’s opponents and idolize one’s hero conforms exactly to the medieval mode (and for my conservative readers, our impression of Muhammad’s medieval Islam) encouraged by President Putin’s architecture of power in Moscow.

Where Trump may do no wrong and the “Libtard” Left and Far Left have nothing to offer beyond their cries of outrage (over every little thing!) — and Trump, his plutocratic business class, and the host of “Right Wing Nuts” and, now, “Alt-Right” (White Supremacists) may do nothing good for the country — we may have a “Brown” vs “Red-Green” national politics bent out of shape by foreign influence and manipulation or simple contagion.

Not only has President Trump today a critical issue continuing to develop over Credibility, Integrity, and Trust (CIT), but his followers do as well.

For the term “lamestream media” (Red State has done the etymology) to pervert to a general smear employed by Far Right media to throw doubt on traditionally highest integrity reporting is one thing: however, to have then convinced a large portion of the American population that it cannot generally trust reportage in The New York Times (or Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, etc.), that is quite another — and pretty much what Moscow would enjoy if it could have only centrally controlled the process of confusing and obliterating the critical reading and reasoning facility of so many American minds.

On that, BackChannels repeats but a little differently with the employment of the passive voice: it may have been known that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” would induce a patriotic nationalist response!

Add the reaction to the vaunted threat posed by refugees from Muslim-majority states, especially Syria, and what illness do Moscow’s target states develop?

Xenophobia!

(Regarding Assad’s indirect engineering and incubation of ISIL as an ideal political tool — a goad for blackmailing the west; a useful foil for demonstrating Moscow’s latest military technology — Moscow’s defense sales have risen on such demonstrations; and in the end the best of enemies prepared for vanquishing — how glorious!): https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/)

Web Search: “Moscow, Marine Le Pen”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/marine-le-pen-front-national-russian-kremlin-putin-invasion-annexation-crimea-ukraine-2014-a7566196.html – 2/6/2017.

Web Search: “Moscow, Donald J. Trump”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/russian-intelligence-trump-moscow – 12/14/2017 — Take another look at President Trump’s NYT derogating tweet.  Of course there’s more on BackChannels involving Trump, Manafort, Kilimnik, Millian (the paired combinations make for pretty good web searches) and, of course, and sadly,  the imbroglio involving Christopher Steele’s report.

Web Search: “Moscow, Viktor Orban”
https://newrepublic.com/article/132778/vladimir-putins-little-helper – 4/19/2016.

Web Search: “Moscow, Recep Tayyip Erdogan”
BBC.  “Putin Mends Broken Relations With Turkey’s Erdogan.”  August 9, 2016.

Yo, bro’!  Get the picture as President Putin’s Moscow might wish you to get it, albeit without knowing quite so much?

Marine Le Pen appears to represent the French national soul — but with a crooked grin or mouth; President Trump’s own surreal first week and the start of another needs no rehashing here; Viktor Orban has fashioned himself as another palace-building, well palace refurbishing, autocrat; and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political repression and Islamist expression have ditched EU accession and imperiled the NATO arrangement in Turkey.

Related on BackChannels

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

Related on the Web

Featured in Hungarian Spectrum: http://hungarianspectrum.org/2016/04/30/viktor-orban-moving-in-2018-to-the-place-of-his-dreams/

Thomas, Timothy L.  “Russia’s Reflexive Control Theory and The Military”.  PDF.  Journal of Slavic Military Studies 17:237-256, 2004.

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FTAC – Yemen – A Note to Sunni Militia

06 Monday Feb 2017

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

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Clarifying the battlefields of the Islamic Small Wars (my term) has been an issue since I began reading the news and blogging.

With perhaps the ascent of the Far Right, the “crusader west” analogy may have a little more substance, but it really isn’t true.

What AQ-types do, especially in the way of cruelty, sadism, and subjugation, goes against the grain of a normal and healthy humanity, and, frankly, Muslims seem themselves ever first in the path of the “jisadists”.

A western organization would first secure their children away from the fighting and work not to confuse noncombatants with warriors. That’s not going to make life fair to warriors who draw western attention, but if the same focus instead on fending off Iranian aggression and the alignments with Hezbollah and such, that may change the perception of who is fighting and why.

As regards Syria, Moscow today continues to represent feudal political absolutism — dictatorship, police state, mafia state, all of that — but this time (and this 25 years after the dissolving of the Soviet Union) as an ultra-nationalist imperial project counting on barbarism and its nuclear threat to get its way in the world. As such, it has managed to abet the destruction of Syria, produce some arms sales out of the horror put on display, and otherwise run its economy and cash reserves down to where it can do little more than loom large and hold its positions.

Syria is an immense tragedy, and the historic credit for it will most certainly go to Assad as flanked by Putin and Khamenei.

Charges against the west are often more assumptive and rhetorical than observed and reasoned. In the political psychology involved, there’s often a measure of the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation” — the target may be accused of harboring the motivations actually intended by the one pointing the finger.

In politics, narcissism often serves to cover an injury to the psyche (terms of art: “narcissistic mortification”; “splitting”) and over time, the cover abetted by anger and resentment can become quite malign and in such a way as to come to serve none but the afflicted himself. Go down the lists of the world’s dictators, and one may see the process repeating itself beneath different banners across time (with regard to dictators: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”).

And the walk turns out for most reliably miserable.

Revisit Mugabe’s history.

The post was written in response to a plea for western attention to drone strikes in Yemen that allegedly were killing any number of noncombatants, including children.  Such “news” gets mixed up with post-operation battlefield assessments — but for a few hours to days, the propaganda is the thing.

Here’s what had happened.

Washington (CNN)Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of former al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in a joint American-UAE raid against the terror group Sunday, according to the girl’s family.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who directed attacks against the US, was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/politics/yemen-raid-daughter-al-qaeda-leader/ – 2/1/2017.

Search term for following graphic: “American, UAE, raid, Yemen”.

gsearch-yemen-raid-170206-1009

The Seal Team met resistance, fought back, called in reinforcements, and got out with the computers that had been the objective of the raid.

“The raid resulted in the seizure of materials and information that is yielding valuable intelligence to help partner nations deter and prevent future terror attacks in Yemen and across the world,” the statement continued.

The Pentagon said 14 al Qaeda fighters were killed in the battle. Central Command said an internal review team “concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed in the midst of a firefight” during the raid, adding that “casualties may include children.”

The statement said than an assessment was ongoing to determine the exact number of civilian casualties.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/us-raid-yemen/ – 1/1/2017.

Thomas said the footage was part of the large amount of data taken in the raid. He said the team collected more intelligence and data “than we’ve gotten at any one time on AQAP up to now.” It included videos, computer and communications equipment and data.

http://nypost.com/2017/02/03/pentagon-botches-release-of-video-seized-in-yemen-raid/ – 1/3/2017.

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FTAC – When the “Liberator” Turns Out the Oppressor

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Philosophy, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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Moscow –

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

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

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

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

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

KGB-style “Active Measures” often target new generations who have little intellectual defense or means for recognizing hip propaganda.

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

In the Soviet Era, many “peace movement” organizations distanced themselves from the Communist Party (Soviet) as they witness the brutality of political repression in the several of the Soviet satellite states whose politics had brought them around to liberation from the Soviet system.

Today’s ultra-nationalist and neo-imperial Moscow have made comprehension of the Kremlin a little more difficult. In Orwellian _Animal Farm_ fashion, the banner of the state has switched to “State Capitalism” and the FSB/KGB, Putin, and the Oligarchs appear to be having a helluva good time! 🙂

Still, with Moscow’s earlier KGB engineering of Yasser Arafat and the PLO more and more known beyond the wonky circles of “Kremlin watchers”, the model for elite kleptocracy driven by Moscow, which is deeply invested in medieval political absolutism and totalitarian control, has been coming into popular view.

Who destroyed Syria by barrel bombing, chemical attacks, relentless and sadistic assaults (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/22/world/meast/syria-snipers-pregnant-women/) on noncombatants?

Moscow’s behavior has not been limited to middle east conflicts. Here’s a borrowing from Ukraine’s history of Russian oppression:

http://www.holodomorct.org/

The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.

The old politics in which the apparent “liberator” turns out the oppressor — and gets away with a lot of loot for doing it — needs a complete historic reexamination and overhaul.

Take a lesson from the Somali experience with the Soviet government in the Ogaden:

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

While BackChannels delivers the light version of history — much of what is needed is online — it wonders how to further wean from the Soviet Era experience the many remaining Left-Far Left organizations struggling to update their missions in the long shadow cast by the dissolving of the Soviet Union a little more than 25 years ago.

From the outset, BackChannels has invested itself in liberal humanist politics — look to the left of this copy and down the sidebar: the values promoted by this nonpartisan blog seem to the editor to place the humanity of humanity first and foremost in political thought and to be congruent with the advice suggested in the above invention From the Awesome Conversation: “The absence of conscience and empathy in leadership needs protesting worldwide.”

If you know how and when the Soviet KGB groomed Yasser Arafat for his role as leader of The Palestinians — Jordanian refugees in 1948 — can you still swallow the intellectual poison that has been the “alternative narrative” of the same?

Think about it.

Think about the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars amassed by Arafat and Abbas (both of whom have had KGB histories) while the Palestinians have been showcased for sympathy?

Apply the same to Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, both of them billionaires.

What if the newest of Far Left fist-raising acolytes had the choice between parroting the claims and narratives programmed within his new social climate and that of independently questing and reading for the truth, would he do choose to balance the former with the latter?

We’re going to find out.

Not only are online resources for research extraordinary today, but obtaining books relevant to the study of history and history and revolution, culture and cultural anthropology and psychology, and so on has never been less expensive!

For a quick pick-up on the previous century’s Cold War and related history, BackChannels recommends all of the volumes listed in “The Russian Section” of its library.

For insight into Soviet-style manipulation, BackChannels has a post listing works by KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

Where the adventurous and social rewards associated with “The Movement” — there are so many of them! — prove rewarding, may the reader of this blog consider also the responsibility of being himself an autonomous, independent, informed, and critically reasoning actor in his own political life.

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