— In President Vladimir Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet way, that which best serves the dictator’s political ambitions and ends becomes “pravda” — “truth”. —
Tomorrow the Dutch government will be inviting all EU member states to The Hague to propose an EU wide Magnitsky Act. In advance of that, the Russian government today has accused me of murdering Sergei Magnitsky. Kafkaeske to say the least https://t.co/oHjfUJlFTR
If a Kremlin officer is allowed to run Interpol, it will have no credibility at all. Russia already abuses it to persecute political enemies. It's putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department. https://t.co/7OEBL308tq
It appears Moscow would dispute even the existence — even the possibility — of integrity in information.
In the world’s “Totalitarian Information Spaces (TIS)”, ๐ , all expression — all thought — is political, malleable, and manipulative.
All of a sudden, RT inverts Browder’s claims regarding his friend and motivation for the Magnitsky Act, and assigns the murder to Browder himself.
Russian accountant Sergey Magnitsky may have been poisoned and his former employer, financier Bill Browder, was possibly behind the murder, prosecutors have found. Now, Moscow will place Browder on the international wanted list.
UK businessman Browder had much interest in the death of Sergey Magnitsky after receiving what he wanted from the accountant, an adviser to the Russian prosecutor general told the briefing.
โBased on the documents that were shown, an obvious conclusion can be made that, having received a false statement from Magnitsky that was used for provocation, Browder was interested in Sergey Magnitsky’s death more than anyone else in order to avoid exposure,โ Nikolai Atmonyev said.
Given enough time and manpower, Moscow may turn night into day — and day and light into night and darkness.
Mission accomplished.
In President Vladimir Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet way, that which best serves the dictator’s political ambitions and ends becomes “pravda” — “truth”.
British officials expect Alexander Prokopchuk, a former major-general at the Russian Interior Ministry, to be elected as Interpol president as soon as Wednesday, The Times reported, without saying where it got the information.
Earlier this morning, BackChannels updated a compilation of references associated with Romanian KGB defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, which activity recalled in part how difficult the battle for empiricism, integrity (most of all), and reason may be before a veritable disinformation army devoted to the preservation of despotism and tyranny on behalf of the limitless needs (for “narcissistic supply”) of a single damaged, ruthless, sadistic, and vacant soul.
After his murder, the Russian authorities covered up the crime, exonerated and promoted the people involved, and put Magnitsky on trial three years after he died, in the first trial of a dead man in Russian history.
#SergeiMagnitsky died following his work exposing corruption in Russia. After his death, the U.S. enacted human rights laws bearing his name. To date 49 people sanctioned under #RussiaMagnitsky Act and 101 for corruption or human rights abuse under #GlobalMagnitsky Act.
Inspiration: invoking of the phrase”They are my people”.
Okay.
Every person on the planet has some ethnic, family, and religious identification.
I was thinking about the Druze — I think they are their own people, not yours, Mohammad Muneer Dandan. I know the ancient Samaritans are on the land too, but . . . they’re not your people either, are they? I don’t know the ethnography of the Palestinian Territories — in Israel for its citizens, it just doesn’t matter so much as the state maintains its Jewish ethnic majority (as North American and Europe maintain their Christian majority and atmosphere).
The idea that you would find the Jews at once mixed in Israel as well as reprehensible as a group sounds awfully, well, racist these days. You seem to be promoting some version of ethnic Palestinian purity as the standard for residence on land conquered and administered by many distinct parties over . . . centuries.
Were the Canaanites your people? The Phoenicians? Romans? The Crusaders from the west?
The history of Palestine is the study of the past in the region of Palestine, generally defined as a geographic region in the Southern Levant between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (where Israel and Palestine are today), and various adjoining lands. Situated at a strategic point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity,[1] the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The Palestine region or parts of it have been controlled by numerous different peoples and regional powers, including the Canaanites, Amorites,[2] Ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Tjeker, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, different dynasties of the Early Muslim period (Umayads, Abbasids, Seljuqs, Fatimids), Crusaders, Late Muslim dynasties (Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks), the British, Jordanians (1948โ1967, on the “West Bank”) and Egyptians (in Gaza), and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Other terms for approximate geographic area include Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Southern Syria, Outremer and the Holy Land.
Jews are Hebrews and the Hebrews are of the Land of Israel.
Any question about that should seem to the whole world — and the entire Muslim world that relates to the Moses mentioned by the Qur’an — surreal.
As regards Palestinian purity, go over the listings.ย Your people — which ones from which period?
For the record, BackChannels believes the refugee generations of Gaza and the West Bank may well comprise a “Palestinian People” on the basis of more than 70 years of separation in the Arab Apartheid Palestinian camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.ย For administration, the camps — they’re built these days — need to be integrated into the states that host them, and the refugees accepted and free to learn, live, and work like any other Arab citizen.ย The more restive of Gaza and the West Bank are welcomed here to know their true history and their being a part of the world fought, traded, and traveled across the land from every other corner of the world.ย Now THAT would be something to be — multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-national.
Moscow has long had hold of two immensely manipulative levers in its often malign and narcissistic vying for the control of political circumstance and their image as perceived: anti-Semitism most of all: Okhrana | Protocols –> Germany via White Russian fleeing the Bolsheviks, especially contributing to the Holocaust: Max Erwin Von Scheubner-Richter. The other lever: socialist | nationalist totalitarianism. Revival of the Russian Orthodox Church as a sop for Russian disgruntlement, and, of course, revival of the military as a power need little explication. The effect intended, imho: weaken democracy in EU / NATO and revive what Russia has known best: a paternal and authoritarian feudalism that is itself also absolute in power.
“Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.”
Epistemological Khashoggi
Things we know.
Things we don’t know.
Things we don’t know we don’t know.
Things we don’t want to know.
Things we will never know.
Thing we know but don’t know that we know.
Things we don’t know but fervently believe.
Finally
Things we would like to find out.
One of the 15 suspects in the death of dissident Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was caught on surveillance cameras walking around Istanbul on the day Khashoggi went missing.
Footage being used as part of the Turkish governmentโs investigation into Khashoggiโs death was shared with CNN, and shows the man, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, leaving Saudi Arabia’s consulate through the back door wearing Khashoggiโs clothes, a fake beard, and glasses, a senior Turkish official told CNN.
Even so, what has happened to other potential evidence of murder?
Above all: where is the body?
A man in a foreign land leaves his fiancee (of another nationalist) parked by the curb, walks into his nation’s embassy to obtain a permit for marriage and fails to walk back out to drive off into the sunset with his presumed beloved.
Missing: the body.
Also missing: blood spatter; the odor of disinfectant; the appearance of discardedย . . . anything: clothing; a table or parts of one involved in a murder; not even a shoelace, much less a pair of shoes, has been shown to the public.
Also for public notice: embassies are considered a part of the sovereign territory of the state represented: what have the Turks been doing (directly) in the Saudi’s building?
Everyone knows the answer to that question — one good reason for the invention of the “Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)” within buildings intent on defending the most private and sensitive of conversations.
Bold added:
Erdogan called on the perpetrators to be brought to justice in Istanbul and questioned whether the Vienna Conventions, which give immunity to diplomatic staff, applied in this case.
It was the first time that any official in Turkey has publicly outlined the Turkish contention that Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad sent from Saudi Arabia. But while Erdogan had promised the “naked truth,” he offered few details beyond those revealed by Turkish officials speaking privately.
But officials are skeptical of Saudi’s explanation for the Khashoggi’s death. Turkish officials have repeatedly touted claims that Khashoggi was brutally tortured and dismembered by what appeared to be a 15-person kill squad flown in from Saudi Arabia.
Where are the bones? The clothes? The “body bag”? Was there a sink? A plastic or porcelain tub? Where are the clothes of the killers? Where was the fire and smoke needed to burn things that burn? Where are his shoelaces and their plastic tips (if of common construction)? No nails? No hair follicles?
After his transforming Turkey into a family enterprise, what motive has anyone from the post-Enlightenment west for believing the presentations of President Erdogan?
In Sum
Where is the body?
Where, in fact, is the story?
BackChannels may suggest that the Saudi confession to murder should have been accompanied immediately by its evidence.ย Today, the lag in time between the confession and the turning up of evidence — so late as to make fabrication possible — may make the confession suspect.
The time may be running out for even the telling of an untimely untruth.
Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.
Multiple sources suggested Khashoggi had been cut up and his face “disfigured,” Sky News reported.
Sources in the Istanbul Prosecutor’s office denied that Khashoggi’s remains were found at the consul general’s home, adding that a picture on social media purportedly showing the corpse is fake.
BackChannels will try to stop at this point: where is the body?ย Is a body found really the body?ย If a man wished to leave his body, loosely speaking, would he also not leave behind his old clothes?
There is no way to address such questions from an armchair or by watching television.
That may not be the problem — so the man is dead or, perhaps, on his way to early skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (never let it be said the editor of this blog has not been a foolish romantic); what is the problem is that “the public” — or respective national publics or statistical clumps of national or party identity — may lose its basis for believing anything from any source.
Gruesome, brazen and barbaric were some of the terms that were thrown around in response to learning his fingers were cut off first, then his head and finally his body was chopped into small pieces in order to โdisappearโ it from the crime scene.
Images of such a sadistic act were the linchpin in inciting the political debacle. Yet, since the remains of Khashoggiโs body had not been found yet, it also served to precipitate a war over who controlled the narrative. With this โmemoryโ destroyed, who owned the truth?
Prompt: “How can we constantly ask to be accepted and understood without giving the same???”
The problem is the false Palestinian narrative, and the more sympathetic the attention given to it, the more the Palestinians suffer — and most of all at the hands of their own leaders (plus their “handlers” in Moscow and Tehran).
The Middle East Conflict is part of the hangover from WWII, and the only way it’s going to lose energy is to be honest with the Palestinians about what really happened, i.e., about what was done to them by the Soviets and the Arab dictators who had thought the refugees better off stuffed into camps and intellectually weaponized with the biggest lie of all: “The Jews stole YOUR land.” That idea was not true then; it is not true today; and it will never be true.
One thing that may be true today is that the Arab Apartheid demonstrated in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria (have a look at Yarmouk for how the Arab and Muslim worlds have actually regarded Palestinians), and Egypt has after 70+ years of consistent separation and abuse actually formed a new people — but they need to get out of the womb in hell — or be brought out of that suffocated space — and turned right-side up, and that starts with recognizing exactly the evil that set them up for misery.
We should never be kind to the cruel.
We should never be sympathetic with the misguided but rather firm with the western insistence on great integrity in support of bedrock truth.
Event: “Is a Sovereign Palestine Still Possible?” Sponsor: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Date: October 11, 2018 Note: Audio starts after 8:30, and the program runs about two hours.
What will the recent changes in U.S. policyโincluding recognizing Jerusalem as Israelโs capital, terminating assistance to Palestinians and UNRWA, and closing the Palestinian representative office in Washingtonโmean for the future of U.S.-Palestinian relations and the Palestinian national project? Will the accelerated pace of settlement construction and attempts to normalize Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territory create irreversible realities with long-term ramifications for Palestinian self-determination and regional security?
Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt: Arab Apartheid.ย
Arab denial of political crimes and violent provocations summoning Israeli and western response: Shameful.
Corruption and political suppression associated with the PLO/PA and Hamas: Heinous.
“Palestinian People”: after 70+ years of Arab / Arab-Russian abuse by crude manipulation: yes, but in situ.
Any other people would both deserve and have obtained better governance for themselves.
At a point early in the program, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, claims the Jewish Israeli and ? Palestinian narratives equal on the basis of belief and absolute truth.ย However, the Palestinians have never been of one national or religious background: Christian, Muslim, Jordanian, Egyptian, wandering.ย What has fixed them in place and time has been Arab animus toward the (Majority) Jewish State of Israel, and it may be suggested that after 70+ years of punitive separation, the same may well have established themselves as another “people apart” — and perhaps ready to grow into new and better fit and more survivable shoes.ย The time has come to step out of what has become a worn out narrative serving only the self-serving.
This ugly truth about us explains what has happened to Brett Kavanaugh. Initially he was hated for being a Republican nominee for the Supreme Court, but it is still not universally acceptable to abominate someone only for being an originalist judge.
“Originalist judge” may not well explain what the nation saw transpire last week.
Here is this blog’s editor’s take on that.
BackChannels believed Ford, and that he (Kavanaugh) lied because he had the power to deny everything negative about himself. As much may be part of an “ambitious” or malign narcissism, and as much fits with the personality and associates of the man who nominated him.
With Red or Blue Right / Left Flag navigation, political identity may force arguments rather than reason, and that emotion drives the demonizing of the other camp as well as the concept familiar to conflicts worldwide: “accusation in a mirror”. “Witch hunt!
The Left has no need to apologize for defending Blase Ford.
The Right has no need to wonder why professional advisement — all those lawyers! — against the confirmation were ignored and the process will be remembers as forced by the Republicans or blocked by the Democrats: for an answer, the power of identity and loyalty will do.
I would say about half the country — and the country’s political power — mistrust the President, 50:48.
Democracy is being treated as a religion — a belief we promote perhaps more than the way of life we live — and we are being “feudalized”, driven backward toward a way of life in which more may transpire out of party, personal, and political loyalties than out of the kind of admiration of virtue and reason with which our nation was born.
On the healthy side, President Trump’s presidential victory and subsequent political “wins” have been similarly controversial and marginal. He may be winning as an authoritarian president, but as much seems persistently by the equivalent of two Senate votes.
BackChannels may let the above live as rhetoric rather than get into the around-the-world and the through-the-nation report card.ย He has so far been the President that lies to his base — “Fake News!” should be enough for a start — and keeps over his head a cloud of dark associates (e.g., Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort) and near-but-not-quite relationships (as with Felix Sater), with much having to do with the laundering of dirty money through real estate investments.
BackChannels 