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Category Archives: International Development

Brief Reference: Wagner Group in Africa

28 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, transnational crime

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Africa, corruption, Wagner Group

State capture is a particularly nefarious form of systemic corruption, which has defined certain African countries in recent years. It entails private individuals gaining such a profound influence over senior officials that state institutions prioritise the welfare of those private interests over the public good.

There is a triangular pattern to such arrangements. The external partners and the colluding political actors profit handsomely – while the public foots the bill.

Siegle, Joseph. “How Russia is pursuing state capture in Africa.” Africa at the London School of Economics, March 21, 2022.

In the inverted and upside-down Moscovian underworld inhabited by criminals, mercenaries, and warlords, life’s rich with looted diamonds and gold and other of Africa’s natural resources commandeered by force — well, gentleman’s agreements up top — and worked by slaves. “Working” with impunity, Wagner operations have been associated with disinformation campaigns, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, rapes, and accounts of torture.

Topside, as it were, Russia has been able to leverage Wagner power in weakened states into concessions, commercial contracts, and access to airbases and ports.

Apart from selling arms and natural resources, Russia may not know how to make money in ways above board and transparent, but it knows how to steal all that it wants. In mafia fashion, even the reference “Wagner Group” has submerged into enshadowed networks.


he Wagner Group is one of the most well-known and prolific PMCs in the world. Nevertheless, exact details about the group are difficult to confirm, with its organizational structure remaining deliberately obscure. The Wagner Group does not officially exist, with the name instead applied to an overlapping network of businesses and private military forces that are believed to enjoy the implicit but unrecognized support of the Russian state (Foreign Policy, 6 July 2021).1

In recent years, the Wagner Group has actively engaged in conflicts across multiple countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Syria, Libya, Mozambique, and CAR. Reports also suggest that they have engaged in activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, and Sudan (Africanews, 22 March 2022), with operations in up to 30 countries across the world (Center for Strategic & International Studies, September 2020).

Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). “Wagner Group Operations in Africa: Civilian Targeting Trends in the Central African Republic and Mali.” August 30, 2022.

BackChannels scrapes up the outside story, lol, as it sees the world through Windows–but what a world is now online for gathering in the research of extraordinary journalists and institutions and having at hand a broad and thorough impression of challenges to civility, democracy, law, and peace worldwide. Here with this short patch of reference related to Russia’s hybrid aggression in the cause of immense theft–no ethical, human, or moral cost is too high for plundering states and suborning the dictators who had thought they were in charge–comes a display of transnational crime breathtaking in its depravity and scope.

If only Africans knew what was being done to them with Moscow’s endorsement for Moscow’s pleasure.

Reference: Wagner Group in Africa

Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). “Wagner Group Operations in Africa: Civilian Targeting Trends in the Central African Republic and Mali.” August 30, 2022.

Clarke, Colin P. “How Russia’s Wagner Group is Fueling Terrorism in Africa.” Foreign Policy, January 25, 2023.

Clarke, Colin P. “Russian Mercenaries are Destabilizing Africa.” The New York Times, January 31, 2023.

Ehl, David. “More than mercenaries: Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa.” DW, February 28, 2023.

Fasanotti, Saini. “Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa: Influence, commercial concessions, rights violations, and counterinsurgency failure.” Brookings, February 8, 2022.

Katz, Brian, Seth G. Jones, Catrina Doxsee, Nicholas Harrington. “Moscow’s Mercenary Wars.” Center for Strategic & International Studies.” September 2020.

Mackinnon, Amy. “Russia’s Wagner Group Doesn’t Actually Exist.” Foreign Policy, July 6, 2021.

Siegle, Joseph. “How Russia is pursuing state capture in Africa.” Africa at the London School of Economics, March 21, 2022.

Skrdlik, Josef. “Report: Wagner Mercenaries Profit from Central Africa’s Blood Diamonds.” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), December 7, 2022.

U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Treasury Sanctions Russian Proxy Wagner Group as a Transnational Criminal Organization.” Press Release. January 26, 2023.

Walsh, Declan. “Putin’s Shadow Soldiers: How Wagner Group Is Expanding in Africa.” The New York Times, May 31, 2022.

–33–

Over Coffee–Opinion, Reading, and Viewing Recommended: Russian Payoffs to European Politicians; Chinese Balloon; Ilhan Omar

05 Sunday Feb 2023

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Great Britain and United Kingdom, International Development, North America, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AOC, Chinese Balloon, Collusion--No Delusion, Ilhan Omar, Medieval v. Modern, Modern Americans, Ocasio-Cortez, Politically Modern People, Russian Political Mafia Methods, Trump and Russia

Russia Paid Off European Politicians In Relation to Ukraine and Violence Elsewhere

Since Russia launched its brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s overseas aggression has reached a fever pitch. Yet Russia can still rely on the occasional friendly voice in Europe: Last November, for example, far-right Italian local legislator Stefano Valdegamberi penned an op-ed decrying the EU’s decision to designate Russia a terrorist state as “a serious mistake” that “foments conflict by denying historical truth.”

But what Valdegamberi didn’t mention was that he had long been collaborating with a secretive Russian lobbying group with a direct link to the Kremlin. Since at least 2014, that group had designed plans to channel cash to European politicians to help it legitimize Russia’s occupation of Crimea and promote pro-Moscow policies inside EU countries.

Laine, Martin, Cecilia Anesi, Lorenzo Bagnoli, and Tatiana Tkachenko. “Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia’s Annexation of Crimea.” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, February 3, 2023.

Reading Highly Recommended–>

Greg Olear’s 2018 investigation of how the world works between Donald J. Trump, Russia’s political interests, and related mafia and ill-gotten wealth.

America Has Lost Its Objectivity Over “Spy Balloon”, Says Chinese Pundit–And He’s Right

Influential commentator Hu Xijin blamed American “politicization” and “hype” for preventing the incident from escalating, saying that competition to look tough on China meant that the United States “has already lost its objectivity.”

Shepherd, Christian. “China blames U.S. politics for ‘overreaction’to suspected spy balloon.” The Washington Post, February 5, 2023.

In the normal course attending diplomatic incidents, investigations ensue, and with “spy data” presumed already transmitted, there would seem not much point in destroying the technology involved in the overflight. Of course, there was Gary Powers too, so Biden did what ranting Republicans appeared to expect in the way of “tough” leadership. It was not a good decision nor display of national air and space defense–the object should have been addressed and turned or interdicted on or just past arrival in American air space.

China has already apologized for the incident–“On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that the balloon was theirs, but called it a “civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes,” that had gone off course. And the ministry expressed rare “regret” for the incident.” Beijing should now follow up with details regarding the research mission and its technology, in general, while the U.S. Navy attempts retrieval of the drowned payload.


The Silencing by Removal of Ilhan Omar From the Foreign Affairs Committee

The angry header displayed this morning in The Jerusalem Post: “Decision to remove Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs Committee was overdue -editorial: What makes Omar particularly dangerous is that while she spews blatant antisemitism, she pretends not to be an antisemite.”

Omar herself had asked (same article), “‘Why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the (National Rifle Association), or fossil fuel industries or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying group that is influencing policy?'”

Conservative and liberal Americans have now to ask this question: what else is off the table?

Who hasn’t an ox?

Our American system relies on compassion, education, intelligence, open discourse, earnest problem-solving abilities, and respect, not religious or tribal hate.

Apparently, some Jews–not this one although I have become with experience very much an American of Jewish descent–believe Ilhan Omar’s election and voice should be nullified where it most counts, and suspicion, for that is what is expressed by, “. . . pretends not to be an antisemite”, put in place of of argument, education, and reason. The only lesson imparted: don’t mess with the Jews, even if and when they are wrong.


Posted by PBS to YouTube, February 2, 2023.

–33–

“We Are All One Family” — #Ukraine #NATO #Europe #Democracy #Freedom #Western Civilization — Stand!

01 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Europe, International Development, North America, Northern Europe, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

decency, democracy, dignity, freedom, New Years Day 2023, Ukraine, western civilization, Zelensky

Office of the President, Ukraine, New Year’s Eve and Day, 2023.

###

A Note on the Demise of the Medieval Rus

09 Monday May 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, International Development, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Qualities of Living (QOL), Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, transnational crime, Ukraine

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Medieval Rus, medieval v modern, Putin Ruins Russia, Russia v Ukraine War

The Rus warlords Oleg of Novgorod and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and other related works on the history of the Eastern Slavs.

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

McGill Wikispedia. “Khazars: Rise of the Rus”. n.d.

5/8/2022

5/9/2022

Putin’s delusional accusations regarding Nazism in Ukraine better fit description as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” than any dominant or significant political stance held in modern Ukraine, and the same may better inform Russians and the residents of EU/NATO of the character of his insanity than any truth about international affairs.

While The Great Paranoid Leader confuses and inverts reality–Putin’s the fascist blood-and-soil nationalist even while wearing his anti-fascist St. George’s ribbon today–and bluffs with the same convincing act that stalled the mob foaming around KGB headquarters in East Germany (ref. para. 4) at the fall of the German Democratic Republic (December 1989), he can do nothing either to alter past or present realities (as more accurately and truthfully conveyed and apprehended in the Open Information Space of the democratic open societies of the west) or now his own declining and ignominious image before the world. The development of a partially criminal and fraudulent KGB in the mid-early 1990s has in Ukraine finally reached NATO’s western-leaning Ukrainian buffer, a state once controlled in its corruption by Moscow. As Ukraine engaged Putin’s bombarding and invading forces to push them back and safely beyond its own sovereign writ, one may only wish Russia’s dictator would develop conscience, insight, integrity, and guilt.

As the murderous fraud Putin has been, he has no possession of good character and cannot purchase any authentic nobility. Deep down, I suspect he knows as much himself, and it is that (along with the narcissist’s early “Narcissistic Mortification“) that makes him so touchy as well as dangerous and errant.

One may hope that modern Russians when more fully and accurately informed en masse will finally part ways with their distant medieval and barbaric forbears.

Related Online

Amelin, Anatoliy, Andrian Prokip, Andreas Umland. “The Forgotten Potential of Ukraine’s Energy Reserves.” Harvard International Review, October 10, 2020.

Bubola, Emma. “‘A Frightening Repeat’: Ukrainian World War II Survivors Face Conflict Again.” The New York Times, March 24-25, 2022.

Dixon, Robyn and Mary Ilyushina. “On Victory Day, Putin defends war on Ukraine as fight against ‘Nazis’.” The Washington Post, May 9, 2022.

Furlong, Ray. “Showdown In Dresden: The Stasi Occupation And The Putin Myth.” RFE/RL, December 2, 2019.

Jankowicz, Mia. “Captured Russians said their leaders lied about the plan to invade Ukraine, leaving them unprepared for fierce resistance.” Business Insider, March 7, 2022.

Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945. (New Studies in European History.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005.

Kuzio, Taras. “How Putin’s Russia embraced fascism while preaching anti-fascism.” Ukraine Alert, Atlantic Council, April 17, 2022.

Motyl, Alexander. “Yes, Putin and Russia are fascist–A political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition.” The Conversation, March 30, 2022.

Nekrasov, Andrei and Olga Konskaya. “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case” also titled, “Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File”. 2007.

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

Prentice, Alessandra. “Ukrainians fear fiercer assault as Russia marks Soviet WW2 victory.” Reuters, May 9, 2022.

Ruane, Michael E. “Kyiv was surrounded in 1941 as the Nazis closed in. The Russian army defended the city.” The Washington Post, March 4, 2022.

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

Snyder, Timothy. “Germans must remember the truth about Ukraine–for their own sake.” Eurozine, July 7, 2017.

Stanley, Jason and Eliyahu Stern. “Putin’s Fascism.” Tablet, March 20, 2022.

The White House. “G7 Leaders’ Statement.” May 8, 2022.

Walker, Shaun. “How the Soviet Union’s Fall Pushed Putin to Try and Recapture Russia’s Global Importance.” History.com, February 28, 2022.

Walker, Shaun. “Putin uses Victory Day speech to rehash list of grievances against west.” The Guardian, May 9, 2022.

Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Mortification”.

Wikipedia. “Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany”.

Wikipedia. “War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine”.


9/24/2008


3/10/2022
4/3/2022


5/9/2022

–33–

Victims of the German Democratic Republic: Brief Reflection on Germany’s Forgotten Internal Immigrants

28 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Germany, International Development, Philosophy, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Civilizational Compensation, Cold War Era, East Germany, GDR, Philosophy of Happiness and Time, Soviet Era

Deutsch: Deckblatt der MfS-Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge
Date, 1 January 1976, Source: BStU, GVS MfS 008-100/76; Author: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit der DDR | “Cover sheet of the MfS Guideline No. 1/76 for the development and processing of operational processes”; Ministry for State Security DDR. Online Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung .

***

Decomposition (Zersetzung): ” . . . hidden psychological destruction of dissidents . . . .”

***

Persons of Interest in Relation to this Post: Evelyn Zupke; Hans D. Ripperger; Kristina Olney; Michelle Bachelet; Mike Mutterlose (URL’s language is German).

Cause: Aid and Compensation for the harms and indignities imposed on those trapped within the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic and subject to enslavement and punishment at the hands of the state’s secret police, the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit).

Related: The 1619 Project

We mere humans just don’t own time. For atheists, time is just a fact of life.

We do, again, and each as representative of Homo Sapiens sapiens, and for better or worse, own our memories.

It has been our species’ great misfortune to find always some portion of our numbers made to suffer at the hands of others.

Forget “God, Nature, and the Universe”. The earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, and volcano would seem possessed of physics and entirely dispossessed of conscience except that some of us believe that in the presence of one or the other, divine providence destroyed our lives or saved them.

Degradation, dehumanization, enslavement, subjugation, subjection, and other such evils–those are different, and in the history of our species, one sees the chains and whips changing hands by turns, and, sigh, we may feel ourselves lucky if wielding the whip . . . but then nothing lasts beyond bearing except a number of nefarious processes that we perhaps have not wrestled sufficiently into the past. So here we may acknowledge that we don’t get to erase our bad memories; we don’t get to retrieve the dead; we may or may not have some revenge on our tormentors–and if it was ourselves that held the keys and snapped the whips, our day–we know it secretly–has come–or will.

I believe it in the tendency of our species to develop awareness, compassion, conscience, consciousness, empathy, greater integrity and reason, and at the end of every dastardly era, great human sensibility and wisdom.

I was asked not long ago to help promote the cause of the internally displaced in place of the once Soviet-controlled and Communist German Democratic Republic.

Imagine, if you will, going to sleep in one dismal but predictable awful cultural, legal, political, and social circumstance and waking the next day without a country–and afterward a “democratic open society of the west” that prides itself on compassion but hasn’t much in place for you–and then years later when it does . . . you’re no more important in it than you were in the other place.

Perhaps one’s personal circumstance has become more bearable , the powers that be more polite, and amends for the insufferable past made with good will whether or not sufficient to quells bad memories and the residuals in nightmares.

*

I have found in overview–remember my analytical discipline: collect, select, and opine–that East Germany’s internal migrants, all of whom went to sleep in one place in time and woke up in another entirely–have not been overlooked but perhaps underserved in the regions of cultural and economic development. In the Soviet way, they had been locked down in time, suffocated, surveilled, deprived of normal human political and social processes, and subject to deliberate state-driven control, diminishment, and, ultimately, erasure.

How would even the most benevolent of modern societies “compensate” for that experience?

Well . . . there is today the business of living well enough to create and enjoy better memories in freedom and with at least a modicum of privacy (although the “modern” appear to have some new horrors on the horizon, e.g., massive intrusion via data sifting) as well as dignity and security.

*

Now and then, I haul out Qualities of Living (QOLs) a conceptual alternative to thinking about power as an expression of grandiose narcissistic ambition with accompanying control and influence ascribed to a potentate absolute or constitutional. What if power were more often the power to bring extraordinary improvement to geopolitical space in the many dimensions to be appreciated by the inhabitants of a given space?

*

After 1990 “the whole software of life changed” for east Germans, says Markus Kerber, a bigwig at the interior ministry. Short-term pain was inevitable. Average labour productivity in the east was 30% of that in the west. Kohl’s decision to exchange Ostmarks at a 1:1 rate for Deutschmarks made swathes of firms uncompetitive overnight. Those that survived struggled with the western rules they had to import wholesale. By one estimate, 80% of east Germans at some point found themselves out of work.

Perhaps the Treuhand could have proceeded more gently, some argue today.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

*

Cultural and economic adjustment, development, inclusion with some foresight and vision may turn out the key that will finally fix the past in the past where it needs to be. In this day, however, quite a number of cultures, groups, and just plain people have taken up the causes of yesterday, exhumed and tallied abuses, ranted high and low for justice, but the best all may do is not relive what’s gone and take pains–whatever it was–not to see it happen again.

Related Online

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.

Chapple, Amos. “The Secret Lives of the Stasi: Chilling photos uncovered by a German artist reveal the Stasi’s methods to monitor and terrorize their citizens.” RFE/RL, December 12, 2018.

Connolly, Kate. “German reunification 25 years on: how different are east and west really.” The Guardian, October 2, 2015.

Crypto Museum. “Minesterium fur Staatssicherheit – MfS”.

“Germans still don’t agree on what reunification meant: Discontent may even be growing.” The Economist, November 2, 2019.

Hertzberg, Max. “Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung.” Max Hertzberg: Spies, crime and hopepunk, November 28, 2021.

Holden, Stephen. “Behind Closed Doors in Both Berlins.” The New York Times, November 6, 2014.

Iannetta, Massimo and Nina Toussaint, Dirs. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Documentary, 82 minutes, 2002.

Ivanova, Irina. “The Decomposition of the Soul.” Review. Indypendent, February 6, 2007.

Münz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .

Oltermann, Philip. “‘I’ve been shafted twice’: Stasi victims and their quest for compensation.” The Guardian, November 6, 2019.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Schultheis, Emily. “As Germany’s secret-police archive shutters, reckoning for its victims continues.” National Geographic, August 5, 2021.

Spiekermann, Uwe. “The Stasi at Home and Abroad: Domestic Order and Foreign Intelligence.” Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, Supplement 9, 2014.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

Stuchbery, Michael. “Why Germany will never forget the Stasi era of mass surveillance.” The Local, February 8, 2019.

Suarez, Hannah. “Stasi Museum–Germans spying on Germans, psychological warfare (Zersetzung)”. 21st Century Expat | Digital Nomad, December 7, 2019.

The Local. “Putin’s Stasi ID card found in Dresden archive.” December 11, 2018.

Wikipedia: “East German Round Table”; German reunification; German Unity Day; “Matthias Platzeck”; “Otto von Habsburg”; “Pan-European Picnic”; “Peaceful Revolution AKA Die Wende”; “Stasi”; “Stasi Records Agency”; “Zersetzung”.

Wilson, Katie. “Five films that shaped the GDR’s legacy–and what east Germans think of them today.” The Local: Germany’s News in English, September 25, 2019.


In the 1970s the MfS changed its secret police activities and began increasingly to use “softer” methods. The GDR leadership did not want to compromise its attempts to gain international recognition: persecution and repression were to be concealed. The MfS now focused more on preventive surveillance and so-called “psychic demolition”. It used manipulation and targeted rumours in its attempts to systematically intimidate individuals or groups, to ruin their reputations, isolate or criminalize them. Friendships were destroyed, and professional careers ruined without the victims even realizing why.

However, the change in methods did not lead to any let-up in the repressive pressure exerted by the MfS. And the aim also remained the same: to prevent the development of non-conformist or dissident ideas and behaviour.

Stasi Documents Archive. “Introduction – Ministry for State Security”.

The rest of the group agreed that the destruction of trust was one of the most painful legacies of their experiences in the GDR. The dense informer network meant that everyone spied on one another. Many did not find out who had informed on them until decades later, when they requested their Stasi file.

Bailey, Charlotte. “The Lingering Trauma of Stasi Surveillance.” The Atlantic, November 9, 2019.

So in the 1970s, the masterminds at Stasi School — formally known as the College of Legal Studies — decided on a new, more subtle tactic of repression, a way of stamping out rebellion without the overt use of force.

Instead of pounding their suspects into submission, they would send them mad. And so began the policy of Zersetzung.

The word meant disintegration or corrosion or decomposition. Today we would call it ‘gaslighting’ — playing with someone’s mind and self-worth until any resistance crumbles and he or she becomes either compliant or apathetic.

Rennell, Tony. “Stasi’s ‘no touch’ torture: It was the East German secret police’s most terrifying weapon – gaslighting mind games that drove its own citizens mad . . . and the lessons for today’s social media generation couldn’t be more stark.” Daily Mail, June 8-9, 2021.

Six phases of postwar immigration to Germany can be distinguished (see table 2; see also Martin 1991; Münz and Ulrich 1993; Rudolph 1994; Seifert 1995). The first phase was dominated by the immigration of Germans: expellees, citizens of the GDR, other ethnic Germans

Münz, Rainer and Ralf E. Ulrich. “Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945-1997.” Research & Seminars, University of California-Davis, Center for German and European Studies, 1998. Alternative Reference: https://www.worldcat.org/title/changing-patterns-of-migration-to-germany-1945-1997/oclc/40780392 .

Posted to YouTube August 18, 2009.

Born into poverty in pre-World War I Berlin, Mr. Mielke joined the Communist youth movement at age 15, and his career epitomized the grimness of Communist rule in East Germany, where assassination, kidnapping, execution, denunciation and intimidation were used to achieve and maintain power under the long, menacing shadow of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Mielke and the ministry for state security kept the 16.5 million people of East Germany obedient to Communism and repressed dissent for more than 30 years. Not only did the ministry pursue an effective campaign against those it regarded as enemies of the state, but its army of 90,000 agents and 260,000 informers finally turned East Germany into a country that spied on itself.

Binder, David. “Erich Mielke, Powerful Head of Stasi, East Germany’s Vast Spy Network, Dies at 92.” The New York Times, May 26, 2000.

Posted by Movie Coverage to YouTube September 17, 2012. URL play-dot-google-dot-com has a version with English subtitles. It’s a fine movie.

*

Is “living well” the best revenge?

I don’t know, but both alone and in community we most naturally make ourselves comfortable and secure if, when, and where we can. “Living well” with agency, autonomy, dignity, efficacy, freedom, inclusion beats all of the alternatives, and living well with some thoughtful planning for ourselves, our own, and others . . . I would call that repair and profound improvement.


Addendum: Related Online and Worth the Visit

Verhulst, Dominic. “HOHENSCHÖNHAUSEN: State Security Prison – Former East Berlin – DDR”. Photography.

–33–

Three Medieval Stooges and One MODERN Adult Nation

05 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Iran, Russia, Syria, Ukraine

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

medieval v modern, Ukraine v Russia

Thousands of Ukrainians are continuing to express support to European integration and protesting against decision of Ukrainian government to refuse signing of association with EU in Vilnius. 27 November 2013. Kyiv, Ukraine.

March 5, 2022: In the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian army seized 30 units of Russian equipment.

“I want you to know why thousands of people all over my country are on the streets. There is only one reason. We want to be free from a dictatorship. We want to be free from the politicians who work only for themselves, who are ready to shoot, to beat, to injure people just for saving their money, just for saving their houses, just for saving their power. I want these people who are here, who have dignity, who are brave–I want them to live a normal life. We are civilized people, but our government are barbarians. That’s not a Soviet Union. We want our courts not to be corrupted. We want to be free . . . .” Posted to YouTube by A Whisper to a Roar, February 10, 2014.

–33–

In the Air — Corruption, Dirty Money, Greed, and Kleptocracy: America’s Latest Dark Night

11 Saturday Dec 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, International Development

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

America's Hollowing, American Coherence & Cohesion, medieval v modern


Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: “Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be made to be cruel to the kind.”

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php


Biological Warfare I Covid-19


Official trailer for Unlocked, a 2017 British and American release from Lionsgate.

“Wuhan Flu” or planned Pfizer windfall?

I and thee may never know that answer.

While China had been slow to accede to the multilateral Biological Weapons Convention and expressed interest in biological warfare competition, the world has not committed to the Wuhan Level 4 Biological Laboratory narrative regarding Chinese state culpability. There above (viewable on Amazon Prime Video) is the trailer from a counterintelligence thriller directed by the British auteur Michael Apted and released to the viewing public in 2017, about three years before the natural/unnatural dissemination of the COVID-19 strand and its effects.

So we may not know how Covid-19 got started, but we well know what it has done to our species’ natural biological and social existence, and we know who and what the disease has decimated financially or enriched beyond estimation.

Biological Warfare II Narcotics


Posted to YouTube by AML Films, October 26, 2021. Related on BackChannels: “A Glimpse of America’s Deepest Undertow”, September 23, 2021; “An American Report Card”, October 4, 2019.

While narcotics are money makers for burgeoning Transnational Crime Organizations as well as stimulus for police and paramilitary counter-narcotics budgets worldwide, the same represent also a form of biological warfare (snorted, swallowed, poked, and smoked into human frames with myriad rationales) that effectively deflects and degrades the energies and lives of untold millions worldwide while facilitating as well cultural and social chaos, decay, and despair. However made, narcotics money percolates upward — or across if sufficiently funded for the experience (Robin Williams: “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you are making too much money”) — and the $1 billion slurried up from Kensington Avenue becomes one Big Billion Dollar Infusion for spending in and around Philadelphia or anywhere else it may care to go.

As biological weapons go, narcotics, not always deadly but nefariously life altering and frequently enslaving, work. Of course, drugs do kill and quite well too — about 100,000 Americans annually.

Corruption I


Posted by Funny Clips from TV & Movies, August 19, 2015 from the 2004 film Layer Cake.

One cannot underestimate the propensity for ruthless threat and violence on the part of the world’s smugglers nor ignore the impact of the kind of money involved in smuggling — arms, drugs, humans for labor and for sex — all are money (really, just business) to the cartels, freelancers, and gangs involved in inveigling the world in vice and looting it by force. It has gotten so bad that cocaine and funding for terrorism has become a negotiated commodity between statesmen as well as a major headache for intelligence and law enforcement authorities.

Add, perhaps, what goes on behind the curtains.

So what happens to all that dirty money?

As suggested about Philadelphia’s infamous Kensington Avenue narcotics market, what the dealers scrape off the streets moves around and upward into cars and real estate or onward to other criminal or terrorist enterprises (and backwards: no new products, no sales). With bulk purchases (e.g., cars rounded up for export and sales overseas) or luxurious ones, the very next sale cleans the money and into town it goes.

Corruption II Business Private and Slick

Business and politics in feudal systems structured around Absolute Power, whether of corporation or state, may have features resembling corruption–bribes become incentives, kickbacks rewards, the receiving of less noble hooch and nookie pleasant encouragement for sealing a less private, more notable and admirable business deal. The details may disappear in the vapors of hangovers and lost memories, and that’s the end of the story. Take it a little further, however, and an act of indiscretion, pleasantly offered, may become leverage for blackmail and coercion. Jeffrey Epstein socialized among and with the powerful of the world, and he had his relationship with Putin too: was what he was doing really about an old perv with his own treasury?

Are America’s wealthy in some ways destroying their own national culture for a little bit of business or, perhaps, doing so out of naivete?

You tell me.

*

What happens in El Norte moves into and may add to the chaos and misery known to Latin America in the sway of local and regional “narconomies”.

I have a Twitter trope that I’ll restate here without counting the letters:

North American arms–>south to Latin American gangs and cartels; LA migrants–>North; NA cash–>south; LA illicit everything–>north.

America’s black market arms (see Gaynor and Grillo in reference) are not the only ones reaching Latin America, but that the system has been large and persistent and with much related activity eating away at the country’s ethical, financial, moral, and social integrity, one wonders if it isn’t time for the “authorities” to get smarter and the “bad guys” — or the desperate — to have better options with perhaps a little less ambition before “what goes around” really does return in karmic fashion.


Reading Recommended

Brown, Julie K. Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story. New York: Harper Collins, 2021.

Hill, Fiona. There is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century. Boston: Mariner Books, 2021.

Michel, Casey. American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021.

Related Online

Applebaum, Anne. “The Kleptocrats Next Door: The United States has a dirty-money problem.” The Atlantic, December 8, 2021.

Aviles, Constanza Sanchez. “Corruption and illegal drugs: Reconstructing links, reversing the causes.” Global Americans, July 29, 2019.

CDC. “Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Top 100,000 Annually.” Press release, November 17, 2021.

Cenziper, Debbie, Will Fitzgibbon, and Salwan Georges. “Foreign Money Secretly Floods U.S. Tax Havens. Some of it is Tainted.” The Washington Post, October 4, 2021.

Executive Office of the President. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s Statement of Drug Policy Priorities for Year One.” Office of National Drug Control Policy, . PDF. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 2021.

Fact Coalition. “FACT Coalition Welcomes Treasury Move to Implement Corporate Transparency Act.” December 7, 2021.

FBI. “Counterintelligence”.

FBI. “Public Corruption”.

Felbab-Brown, Vanda. “The nexus between the illicit narcotics trade and corruption.” Brookings, November 17, 2021.

Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). “FinCEN Issues Proposed Rule for Beneficial Ownership Reporting to Counter Illicit Finance and Increase Transparency.” December 7, 2021.

Gaynor, Tim. “‘Iron river of guns’ flows from U.S. to Mexico.” Reuters, July 13, 2007.

Grillo, Loan. “Slow the Iron River of Guns to Mexico.” The New York Times, February 20, 2021.

Hudson Institute Kleptocracy Initiative.

Kaiser, Charles. “American Kompromat review: Trump, Russia, Epstein … and a lot we just don’t know.” The Guardian, February 7, 2021.

Kania, Elsa B. and Wilson Vorndick. “Weaponizing Biotech: How China’s Military is Preparing for a ‘New Domain of Warfare’.” Defense One, August 14, 2019.

Levinson-King, Robin. “How gangs used Vancouver’s real estate market to launder $5bn.” BBC News, May 11, 2019.

Mackinnon, Amy. “The U.S. Is a Haven for Money Laundering. That Might Be About to Change.” Foreign Policy, July 31, 2020.

Meyer, Josh. “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook.” Politico. 2017.

Michel, Case and Paul Massaro. “The U.S. Midwest is Foreign Oligarchs’ New Playground: Forget Manhattan or Monaco; it’s cities like Cleveland that are now attracting ill-gotten money from abroad.” Foreign Policy, June 3, 2021.

National Security Council. “Transnational Organized Crime: A Growing Threat to National and International Security.” Obama Administration, July 25, 2011.

Newall, Mike. “A near billion-dollar enterprise and endless bloodshed.” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 2021.

Sibley, Nate and Ben Judah. “Countering Global Kleptocracy: A New US Strategy for Fighting Authoritarian Corruption.” Hudson Institute, January 8, 2021.

Tiplady-Bishop, Lottie. “Jeffrey Epstein boasted about ‘flying to Moscow to visit Vladimir Putin’ as secrets behind his millions are revealed.” The Sun, July 19, 2020.

Wikipedia. “Financial intelligence”.

Wikipedia. “Money Laundering Control Act”.

Wikipedia. “Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication”.

Wikipedia. “Terrorist Finance Tracking Program”.

Williams, Robin. “Cocaine”. The Met, 1986.

Tiplady-Bishop, Lottie. “Jeffrey Epstein boasted about ‘flying to Moscow to visit Vladimir Putin’ as secrets behind his millions are revealed.” The Sun, July 19, 2020.

Transparency International. “Corruption Perceptions Index.” 2020.


Kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves,” has for too long been disregarded from mainstream foreign policy discussions. It is often overlooked as a peripheral economic development issue: A problem for tax justice advocates and foreign aid workers. Yet it has been shaping international politics and the global security environment for decades. The Biden-Harris administration will have an unprecedented opportunity—and a unique responsibility—to confront this pervasive threat with decisive action.

This chance comes not come a moment too soon. Since the end of the Cold War, corruption has metastasized beyond national borders into a problem of almost unimaginable scale. The United Nations has estimated that $1 trillion are paid in bribes and a further $2.3 trillion otherwise stolen annually.1 Global Financial Integrity, a Washington-based think tank, cites corruption as a key factor in $8.7 trillion that vanished from official records of trade between 135 developing countries and 36 advanced economies from 2008-2017.2

Sibley, Nate and Ben Judah. “Countering Global Kleptocracy: A New US Strategy for Fighting Authoritarian Corruption.” Hudson Institute, January 8, 2021.

–33–

QOLs: Qualities of Living

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Modern, International Development, Qualities of Living (QOL)

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

QOLs, qualities of living

If the nations wish to compete, may they do it in these dimensions.


QOL: Qualities of Living

Biological: Environmental and Human Health

Financial: Actualizing, Beyond Basic, Individual and Family Sufficiency

Psychological: High Degrees of Freedom, Positive Outlook, Potential for Fulfillment, Good Self-Concept, Reliable Community and Personal Security

Spatial: Bases and Boundaries x Person x Family x Clan x Tribe x Nation x Ethnic x Transnational Cultures / Defenses and Retreats

Spiritual: Broad Awareness, Consciousness, Conscience x Comprehension of Community and Personal Place in Time


I’ve approached this topic a few times, but here I wanted this simplest reduction, at least up top.

–33–

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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