Category Archives: International Development

FTAC: On the Tetanus Vaccine Mass Sterilization Rumor and Potential Interaction with East-West Conflict

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, International Development, Kenya, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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Inspiration for anger: http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mass-sterilization-kenyan-doctors-find-anti-fertility-agent-in-un-tetanus-vaccine/ (banner: “Health Impact News: News that Impacts Your Health that Other Media Sources May Censor!”).

One might wish that others posting in the world’s open and socially networked web environment would be responsible about it and take the additional 30-seconds it may take using Google search (or Bing, whatever) to check out claims. This particularly vicious sterilization-by-vaccine rumor has been in circulation for decades.

BC’s immediate response to the post follows.

Disinformation.

The story may be a good example of Soviet Era “Active Measures” carried forward into the post-Cold War period. It appears this claim has been in circulation for decades, and not only in Kenya but several other developing nations.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine-sterilization/ | https://africacheck.org/2016/05/25/analysis-why-does-an-old-false-claim-about-tetanus-vaccine-safety-refuse-to-die/ | https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/old-rumours-resurface-the-tetanus-vaccine-story/ | https://www.unicef.org/kenya/media_15665.html

Take note of the nations involved — Mexico, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Philippines, Argentina, Bolivia — and their interaction with east-west (Moscow v Washington) conflict.

https://www.workers.org/2009/world/julius_nyerere_1105/

I cannot prove my thesis, such has been the nature of manipulation from “behind the curtains” down through the ages, but often enough, it would seem those who most claim to be interested in Justice turn out also to be the most obsessed with acquiring Absolute Power — and that “by any means necessary”.

In 2014, The Washington Post got involved in this surreal silliness, noting that, “The issue is far from settled: The government says it tested the same vaccine for the presence of the hormone and found none. The government and the Catholic leadership group even used one of the same labs to test the samples, apparently receiving different results” (Abby Ohlheiser, “The tense standoff between Catholic bishops and the Kenyan government over tetanus vaccines”, November 14, 2014).

The possibility of chicanery should not be overlooked in relation to deeply partisan interests.

While the history of the Catholic Church and Communist Movements has been complex, both systems counsel power as absolute, whether the Power of Almighty God or the Power of Communal Man. At least one source-at-a-glance notes the blending of the two in the 1960s through infiltration.

Whatever the fine points of history may be — and the devils are always in the details — “framing” a medical miracle, whether vaccination for polio or vaccination for tetanus as an evil thing, would seem itself a deed most evil and intended to sow discord and fear. Why? Those who promote malicious perception may then portray themselves as the bearers of hope and order.

Related online and associated with similar partisan religious motivations:

Shalzad, Asif and Jibran Ahmad. “Monstrous rumors stoke hostility to Pakistan’s anti-polio drive.” Reuters, May 2, 2019.

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Venezuela: Background for the Liberal Perspective

03 Friday May 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, South America, transnational crime, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns’”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos’”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

Instead of abetting or encouraging the survival of President Nicolas Maduro’s now brutal regime in Venezuela, Representative Ilhan Omar may do better to review how starvation came to visit the South American state — wondrously rich with resources — in the first place.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck it Poor.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Venezuela as petrostate had a fine run on high and rising oil prices, but as crude pricing fell, the state discovered discovered itself as yet . . . undeveloped — and foremost in its oil sector. From the above cited Foreign Policy piece:

The problem for Chávez was that many of the PDVSA’s then-managers wanted to increaseproduction, by continuing the development of Venezuela’s technically challenging heavy oil fields. To do so, they needed to reinvest more of the company’s earnings rather than hand them all over to the government. So the managers had to go.

It was only the beginning of the mismanagement of Venezuela’s oil reserves.

What about other sectors of the economy?

On agriculture, here’s an excerpt from The Washington Post (Mariana Zunig and Nick Miroff, “Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them”, May 22, 2017):

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

Several of his cavernous hen houses sit empty because, Escobar said, he can’t afford to buy more chicks or feed. Government price controls have made his business unprofitable, and armed gangs have been squeezing him for extortion payments and stealing his eggs.

As well known to other communist and socialist bureaucracies, the government owns all, but to play the role of an enlightened hub for all that the state needs and needs to share equally, it has to have something to distribute. As the oil economy collapsed, much around it appears to have caved as well.

Add desperation to insolvency: what the government hasn’t discouraged, ordinary thieves — not to blame them too much for their response to starvation — have apparently stepped in to pick up the slack.

Alas, also, Venezuela’s program had some items it distributes all too well for cash:

The network used a string of heavily guarded nightclubs to generate profits from the forced prostitution, which where then laundered through at least eight companies the group owned.

Thirteen victims were rescued and more than 2 million euros (almost $2.4 million) worth of properties, cash, jewelry and vehicles, as well as weapons, were seized as part of the operation.

Albaladejo, Angelika. “Transnational Sex Trafficking Rings Cash In on Venezuela Crisis.” InSight Crime, June 28, 2018.

Basically, Maduro’s dictatorship and its military (and the state’s mafia) have had between narcotics — noted at the top of this blog — and sundry other criminal undertakings — some nefarious ways of raising cash for themselves.

In the global politics, the regime has also the support of other feudal and absolute powers: Beijing and Moscow have both made arrangements with the hard-struck “socialist” state, and Turkey, famously, has been buying up Venezuelan gold now scraped off the earth by others scrambling for useful cash.

The state of war has become a constant between Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, but the issues are worked either “by other means”i.e., “diplomacy” or through punitive measures that would be violent swipes — and they are that — without the gun play. What works and how far it goes may be indicated by Venezuela’s continuing decline into chaos, darkness, and despair.

The western-supported alternative President Juan Guaido has been able to inspire defections — and that is saying something about the state of the Venezuelan state — but not yet raise the army to compete with Maduro’s heavily leveraged forces.

Related on the Web

O’Connor, Tom. “Russia, China and Iran Defend Support for Venezuela, warn U.S. Cannot Tell Them or Latin America What to Do.” Newsweek, April 15, 2019.

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Venezuela and the Liberal Progressive Stance

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Caribbean Basin, Central America, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Cuba, El Salvador, Epistemology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, Guatemala, Honduras, International Development, Mexico, North America, Political Psychology, Politics, South America, United States of America, Venezuela

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Dickey, Christopher. “How Cuba Helped Make Venezuela a Mafia State.” Daily Beast, June 2, 2019.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Seven-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018. Full report: InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Report (PDF): 1) “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State'”, Mary 16, 2018; 2) “Drug Trafficking Within the Venezuelan Regime: The ‘Cartel of the Suns'”, May 17, 2018; 3) “The Devolution of State Power: The ‘Colectivos'”, May 18, 2018; 4) “The Devolution of State Power: ‘The Pranes’,” May 20, 2018; 5) “Colombia and Venezuela: Criminal Siamese Twins,” May 21, 2018; 6) “Honduras and Venezuela: Coup and Cocaine Air Bridge,” May 23, 2018; 7) “Dominican Republic and Venezuela: Cocaine Across the Caribbean,” May 24, 2018; 8) “Venezuela and El Salvador: Exporting Aid and Corruption,” May 25, 2018.

North American Continental Appetite for Narcotics
–> Cash –> Central / South America
–> Cartel –> Gangs –> Related Violence
–> Corruption of Authorities
–> General Insecurity
–> Displacement of Population | Northern Mass Migration

If you’re on the Soviet / post-Soviet flavored Left / Far Left Progressive Movement, the same that might obtain its image of the world from, say, 927+ or Mint Press, at least consider reading Christopher Dickey’s report on the Cuba-Venezuelan connection and the InSight Crime series on narcotics trafficking and the accumulation of wealth by nominally “communist” and “socialist” so-called “leaders” in captive Central and South American states.

Related Online: https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/369700/100million-diva-whitney-houston-blew-fortune-on-crack/
Related Online: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2018/November/mexico-and-unodc-present-second-opium-poppy-cultivation-survey.html (November 2018). Other states have poppy fields, of course, but the expansion of cultivation in Mexico for the production of heroin in North America should be perhaps more widely acknowledged.

Breaking: Montoya-Galvez, Camilo. “Senators Introduce bill to send $400 million in aid to Venezuela, strengthen sanctions.” CBS News, April 3, 2019.

In familiar Orwellian fashion, the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left simply ignores the sustained Soviet / post-Soviet investment in the underworld and what it does to societies everywhere it travels.

For decades Venezuela treated its oil reserves — as has Russia — as plunder for The People, which it was, while all the while failing to diversify its internal and trade economies. Who cared? There was money for everything — until oil prices fell.

And then there was nothing.

Or what was left were the sideshows: the selling off of gold reserves; the cocaine trade; sex-related human trafficking; and, nearer to this miserable late date, displacement and the bartering of everything.

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Shuafat: On the Edge Between Good and Evil

24 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Gaza, International Development, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Regions

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Screen capture from David Bedein’s “UNRWA in Jerusalem: Anatomy of Chaos”, Vimeo, January 29, 2019.

Asked of a child: “Who controls the camp?” — “Young militants control the camp, and when the Israeli army comes we throw stones at them. the army doesn’t come here a lot, and there is no authority here. We have nothing.” (05:38).

Related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

Primary lie told to the Palestinians: “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to fight to seize it from them.”

Close enough for untruth.

Related: Badil Staff. “Land Ownership in Palestine / Israel (1920-2000)

Oh, Palestinians — yon Jews never stole your land and ye shall know the 1948 and post-1948 truth about that war, about the Arab apartheid camps of your world, and about the “leaders” delivering the drugs, failing to sweep the streets, failing to guarantee the safety of basic housing and water and electrical supply.

Think about those words out of a child’s mouth: “There is no authority here.“


Screen capture from David Bedein’s “UNRWA in Jerusalem: Anatomy of Chaos”, Vimeo, January 29, 2019.

BackChannels has news for you: wherever the Soviet has meddled and Russia to this day maintains old criminal and feudal relationships, “there is no authority” but over and around the inner circles of absolute and capricious power.

While Abu Mazen — Mahmoud Abbas — flies around on a $50 million private jet (paid for out of resources intended for Palestinians), it appears the criminal trades have never been more overlooked on the ground beneath his wings.

For the feudal lords of the Gaza and the West Bank — and the handlers and greater powers of Moscow and Tehran — the Palestinian main base doesn’t really matter.

Money in their own pockets matters much more.

The streets of Shuafat have been left to become garbage strewn and rat infested while the minds of Palestinian children, generation upon generation, are made to entertain lies about their historic and political origins, about the Jews, the west, capitalism, democracy, humanism . . . everything.

“There is no authority here.”

In place of authority, what is there in Shuafat?

Vanity – a malign, merciless, and unyielding vanity on the part of those who would live well off the dispensing of misery to their communities.

What is good?

For the purposes of governance, perhaps start with authentic culture, education, opportunity, service.

What is evil?

Absolute power, abuse, dirtiness, dishonesty, intimidation, malignant narcissism, involuntary servitude, theft.

The Palestinians have gotten the mind fuck of all times in the dishonest framing of their predicament — thank the KGB and some generations of middle east leaders and compliant local powers for that.

The Cold War, the Soviet Era, has been over for more than 27 years. In its place: a mash-up of Russian feudal and mafia-style power.

Perhaps in the Shuafat enclave in Jerusalem, some should demand of their “leadership”, UNRWA, of themselves — even so young as to be able to say, “There is no authority here” — and of Israel adequate basic services plus authentic education and information subject to each their own inquiry and independence of mind, i.e., the end of the political suppression of the lawful, moderate, and optimistic.

Screen capture, Shu’afat, February 24, 2019.

Also related on BackChannels: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/10/20/ftac-mec-palestinians-a-people-waiting-to-be-born-again-honestly/ – 10/20/2018.

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Sudan’s Bashir: All About “Narcissistic Supply”

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Sudan

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Why whole constituencies suffer along with dictators and their criminal regimes, only God and a handful of political psychologists know.

In schematic from childhood to demonhood:

“Narcissistic Mortification” –> “Covering / Splitting” –> “Narcissistic Manipulation” (in practice, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder“; on BackChannels, “Malignant Narcissism“, “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” (the author’s own term) –> (“Excess of Joy Weeps“) : Experience of “Narcissistic Supply“.

As BackChannels may use the term “Covering / Splitting”, the reference is to masking over the defective, humiliated, or impotent self — it’s not uncommon for children to suffer — and suffer deeply — at the hands of a powerful and sadistic other in such a way as to demand a coping and defensive route in behavior in response. The “splitting” then may refer to the development of the heroic or heroic-appearing self and the daring exploration and development of congruent behaviors. Not all who would experience “narcissistic mortification” become malign in their response — some may be reparative in response — but some do wish to get the better of their tormentor in one-up mirror fashion.

“Narcissistic Manipulation” –> “Gaslighting” and “Perceptual Control” — in the linguistic or Orwellian sense, control of the target’s information, imagination, organizing (Gestalt functions) and perception plus predictions or prognostics.

What would you do to be loved (by the masses)?

Widely accepted by Kremlin-watching journalists: Vladimir Putin’s beloved KGB bombed several Moscow apartment buildings in the dead of night in a false-flag operation intended to promote fear of Chechen rebels and produce the election of Russia’s ideal man.

The mission proved successful.

In his acceptance speech, Vlad had tears in his right eye, whether from cold or joy, who can tell?

In any case, the Russian Army would go on to “fight” Chechen rebels (see KavKaz Center) in part by terrorizing Chechen villages not previously hooked up with units.

Had history not had “grandiose and messianic” personalities, there would perhaps be very little of human history at all.

Be that as it may, many ages — feudal, medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, lol (whatever works) — have passed into a modernity in which knowledge and reason prevail in the fashioning and support of modern democratic, humanist, and secular law and policy. Reflecting that sea change in humanity, Europe has come up with a dozen “constitutional monarchies” bound up in a reasonably coordinated, cooperative, and peaceful “European Union” that should be, so BC opines, quite sensitive about states marching themselves backward into the bloody illusions of the past.

Putin’s way has brought out the dictator in some EU / NATO politicians (Erdogan, Orban, Le Pen, Trump), not all completely successful in their quest to be as if feudal lords in command of their tribes x (criminality), language, race, religion, perhaps wealth, but in someways successful enough. Ironically, and while working opposite the direction of the Russian collusion “witch hunt”, the Trump Administration has taken many measures along the crime- and dictatorship-fighting axis to dull the expansion of nefarious post-Soviet enterprise (on BackChannels, have a look at Venezuela).

BackChannels’ trope regarding dictatorships: “Different Talks — Same Walk!”

So back to Omar al-Bashir who cannot tolerate that Sudanese should get the world’s news coming out about his regime worldwide.

Al Jazeera English, February 19, 2019.

The news, however, does get out, making the dictator’s image increasingly indelible and negative in global conscience and memory.

Also Related Online

Abdin, Latifa. “Protests in Sudan: A primer on the ongoing unrest, two months on.” Open Canada, February 19, 2019.

Since coming into power in 1989, al-Bashir worked to systemically consolidate power by banning political parties, dissolving parliament and actively muzzling political dissent, through arrests, torture and executions, as recent events demonstrate. His government also worked to systematically ban trade unions, which played a key role in two successful popular uprisings in Sudan — one in 1964 and another in 1985.

https://www.opencanada.org/features/protests-sudan-primer-ongoing-unrest-two-months/

Africa News. “Sudan protest hub: Student rallies ramp up pressure on govt”. February 19, 2019.

Journalists – local and international, have been caught in the middle of the protests. Foreign reporters have been deported or ordered out over their coverage whiles local journalists have been arrested and allegedly tortured.
Rolls of daily and weekly newspapers have also been confiscated. A number of varsity professors in the capital Khartoum were recently arrested for attempting to stage a protest.

http://www.africanews.com/2019/02/20/sudan-protest-hub-africanews-updates/

RSF. “At least 79 journalists arrested in two months of protests in Sudan”.

These systematic arrests have targeted not only reporters covering protests in almost all parts of the country but also journalists who themselves dared to protest against the regime’s policy of censorship and arrests of journalists with the aim of restricting coverage of the protests.

https://rsf.org/en/news/least-79-journalists-arrested-two-months-protests-sudan

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FTAC: Circa 2009: Obama Racist for Attempting to Freeze Israeli Settlement Activity?

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, International Development, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Political Psychology, Russia

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I don’t think he was racist – just ambitious for that elusive Nobel that nobody really wants because the weaponizing of the Palestinian mind has been really about the feudal and totalitarian habits of a criminally political culture.
The American political construct has been essentially a humanist and reasoning mission at odds with the many civilizations and cultures that comprise the nation. We may have a Christian-majority nation, but we are not a Christian nation but something else, and some of that is nettlesome where the basis for policy has ethnic and tribal contributors. The feudal / medieval qualities of the past haunt all politics but especially so in “east-west” confrontation because the “east” remains mired in feudal worldviews.

FB – February 18, 2019

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Venezuela: Putin’s Choice

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, International Development, Political Psychology, Russia, South America, Venezuela

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Venezuela is of limited strategic importance to Russia, though it offers symbolic significance in demonstrating Putin’s reach into a region seen as Washington’s backyard. Russia doesn’t have the capacity to send forces there as it did to support Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, limiting itself to publicity stunts like a December visit by two nuclear-capable bombers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/russia-starts-to-worry-maduro-s-grip-is-slipping-in-venezuela – 2/6/2019

Big Crayon BackChannels suggests that nominally socialist Venezuela indulged its leaders in breathtaking kleptocracy while failing to develop its oil industry with care and taking measures to free and diversify the licit potential of its national economy (for coverage of the illicit potential possessed by Venezuela’s present leadership, one may click over to InSight Crime‘s eight-part series, “Venezuela: A Mafia State?”).

Moscow reads the news too, and while perhaps absent of conscience but mindful of money, it’s confidence in the success of the political societies once aligned, captivated, or enthralled with their relationship to the Soviet may be dimming. While perhaps putting a “little” money in the under-the-table pockets of its own, it has also watched parts of Central and South American states churn into cesspool of competing cartels and gangs destroying communities, exporting the nasty — the full smorgasbord of contraband — and for hundreds of thousands producing flight en masse anywhere that hasn’t become a personal no-security hell. Now the chief Phantom of the Soviet appears to be having a look-see at the future of at least one portfolio of debt accumulated by a once ideologically favored son and the picture just isn’t so wonderful as it must have once appeared.

Related Online

Aris, Ben. “Russia’s National Wealth Fund can withstand one more crisis vows Kudrin.” bne Intellinews. August 22, 2018.

InSight Crime. “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” Eight-part series, May 16, 2018 to May 25, 2018.

Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck It Poor: The tragic — and totally avoidable — self-destruction of one of the world’s richest oil economies.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.

Laya, Patricia. “Maduro’s Bid to Fly Gold Out of Venezuela is Blocked.” Bloomberg, February 1, 2019.

Meyer, Henry and Ilya Arkhipov. “Russia Starts to Worry Maduro’s Grip May Slip in Venezuela.” Bloomberg, February 6, 2019.

Paraskova, Tsvetana. “Russia Begins to Fear Maduro May Lose”. Oil Price, February 7, 2019.

Rapoza, Kenneth. “Could Russia Be Subject to Venezuela-Style Sanctions”” Forbes, February 19, 2019.

The Moscow Times. “Russia’s Reserve Fund Ceases to Exist: Budget deficits have exhausted the rainy day fund.” January 11, 2018.

Trading Economics. “Russia Cash Reserve Ratio”. Current.

Banning the trading of Russian bonds have been tossed around ever since Trump got elected. Anti-Russian politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken full advantage of Trump being caught in a Russian scandal to force the president to play super hardball with Vladimir Putin and anyone within a country mile of him.
Since taking office, Trump has already signed harsher sanctions against Russian individuals and Russian companies, making some of them extra-territorial. Extra-territorial means sanctions apply to non-U.S. citizens and entities transacting with the sanctioned firm subject to penalties.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/02/19/could-russian-bonds-be-subject-to-venezuela-style-sanctions/#9aa301d75664 – 2/19/2019

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Munich Security Conference: Pence’s Silent Moment; Brief Nod to Russian and Norwegian Energy Sourcing

18 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, International Development, Politics, Russia

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The whole liberal world order appears to be falling apart – nothing is as it once was. When Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and started the bloody conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, many considered him to be the major cause of global destabilisation. Nobody could have known that just a few years later the US President, of all people, would seriously challenge the current international order. Donald Trump questions free trade just like he questions the Western set of values or NATO. This has massive consequences – not just for us Europeans.

https://www.securityconference.de/en/publications/food-for-thought/single-view/article/food-for-thought-who-will-pick-up-the-pieces/ – 2/13/2019

Remarks by German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger covered a full palette of issues at this month’s Munich Security Conference, but as he has noted without defining the most central problem, i.e., that of placing the Feudal world in the future of the Modern one, an American President (“of all people”), a feudal lord himself in his more familiar domains, has come to lead a part of the charge right back into a bloody and barbaric western civilizational past.

Mike Pence, now associated with a glowing encomium about his leader that brought no applause — ” . . . I bring greetings from the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump” –> dead silence — delivered a bit of a mashup for the “Inaugural John McCain Ceremony”

Politico (“Munich Insecurity Conference”), caught a comment on Turkey that seems to BackChannels positively surreal given the distance President Erdogan has created between the potential of a democratic Turkey and the reality of an Islamist sultanate:

“We will not stand idly by while NATO allies purchase weapons from our adversaries,” he said, in an apparent reference to Turkey’s plan to buy the Russian S-400 missile defense system.
“We cannot ensure the defense of the West if our allies grow dependent on the East.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/munich-security-conference-angela-merkel-mike-pence/ – 2/18/2019.
Screen capture from 2015 RT video covering Moscow’s Inaugural Grand Mosque Ceremony.

Pence may have been taking sideways aim at Nord Stream 2, a perhaps more delicate matter than the selling of Russian defense missiles to a “NATO alley” for the purpose, one might suppose, of defending itself from the seller.

Then too, BackChannels wonders if enthusiasm may have been expressed for the development of other energy sources and pipelines, i.e., Baltic Pipe Project (related: “Polish, Danish grid firms give final nod to pipelines link to Norway gas fields.” Reuters, November 30, 2018).

Related Online: “Impressions from the Munich Security Conference 2019”.

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