Category Archives: Political Psychology

FTAC – Political Philosophy – Moscow, Etc.

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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It’s not Islam — It’s Moscow.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/moscow-the-terror-with-one-reservation/

“Moscow” has chosen a revanchist feudal path for Russia using militarism and patriotism to achieve its aims.

There’s a relevant old saying in the Jewish tradition: “Those who are kind to the cruel will themselves be made to be cruel to the kind.”

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

https://www.britannica.com/topic/absolutism-political-system

Putin’s Russia represents the medieval world revolving around Absolute Power. So does the Syrian Theater — no more true description than theater for that. And so do Hamas and Hezbollah and so many others bent on imposing their will on the free of the open democracies through the application of violence.

The Palestinian platform from within the unsettled territories has long been a Soviet project intended to block the west’s own liberation and security story and produce money for its figureheads and associates, but never the disenfranchised.

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

Stimulus for this post: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9065/europe-good-terrorists

The problem has been Moscow’s connection with 20th Century terrorism and its perhaps cynical leveraging of the same in this still young century.

This 2014 Guardian article about Moscow’s expulsion of journalist David Satter may merely hint at Putin’s considerable success at trying to move Russia forward while turning the clock backward:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/13/russia-expels-american-journalist-david-satter – 1/14/2014.

Related

http://www.hudson.org/research/12507-how-putin-became-president – 5/19/2016.

On this blog: search term “Cold War”.

On this blog: search term “Russia, medieval”.

On Wikipedia and relevant to the long view of Russian history

I would much prefer a book walk me through time (recommendations may be welcomed), but for a browse-and-peruse session, or several, these entries found on Wikipedia provide an arc from the brigands of the feudal world to Putin’s surreal narrative predicated, at least partly, on massive information and perceptual control of the Russians.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. Chief among these was Imperial Russia’s failure, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, to modernize its archaic social, economic and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. As historian Richard Pipes writes, “the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter”

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

 

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1927-1953)

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_(1991-Present)

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

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Also in Media – On the Soviet and IRA – 1925! – History Ireland

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Russia

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The IRA was in contact with Red Army intelligence officers in London and New York, and it was in the former that the monthly stipend was handed over. The IRA’s senior officer in London passed along military intelligence, including specifications of British submarine detection sonar and aeroplane engines for bombers, military journals and manuals, and gas masks. In addition he arranged false passports for Soviet agents and even for a communist operative to travel to Romania in the guise of an Irish woollens salesman! It was in New York, however, that the Soviets got the most valuable information, from an IRA agent code-named ‘Mr Jones’. Jones’s sources likely included serving members of the US military, as he was able to provide reports of the army’s chemical weapons service, state-of-the-art gas masks, machine-gun and aeroplane engine specifications, and reports from the navy, air service and army. In Jones’s estimation, Soviet intelligence in the US would have been ‘helpless’ without the information he supplied.

Source: History Ireland

Palestinian KGB

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia

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The document, which the University of Cambridge’s Churchill Archives Centre confirmed was authentic, was smuggled in to the UK by a defector called Vasily Mitrokhin.

It is entitled “KGB developments – Year 1983” and Mr Abbas identifies him by the codename “Krotov” or “mole”.

“‘Krotov’ – Abbas, Mahmoud, born 1935, origin Palestine, member of the executive committee of Fatah, PLO, Damascus, agent of the KGB,” says the brief entry.

BBC News.  “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘was KGB agent'”.  September 8, 2016.

The KGB, when I was still connected with it, went to great lengths to transform an Egyptian born Marxist, Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, nom de guerre Abu Ammar, into a Palestinian-born Yasser Arafat.  It took the KGB — and my DIE — many years to endow Arafat with a credible Palestinian birth certificate and other identity documents, to build him a new past, and to train him at the KGB Balashikha special-operations training school east of Moscow.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J.  Disinformation.  P. 289.  Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/ – 11/28/2016.

For those who may read in Russian, the Wilson Center hosts the Mitrohkin Archive at this address:

http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrokhin-archive

How much of the intellectual poison delivered by Soviet-borne misinformation persists today in the Middle East Conflict?

Considering the looks of Syria, the miserable psychology shared between the dictatorships — on this blog, have a glance at the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” — and the horrific results, a side by side glance at Hamas behavior in Gaza (x human rights) suggests the same malign narcissistic values continues to course through the governance in both locations.

There may be no longer a need to wonder why.

Reference – Abbas, KGB Coverage

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/17/palestine-s-prez-was-once-a-kgb-mole.html – 9/17/2016.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/08/world/soviet-papers-palestinian-president-was-a-kgb-agent/ – 9/8/2016.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37305953 – 9/8/2016.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-israel-palestine-kgb.html – 9/7/2016.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-abbas-idUSKCN11E1U0 – 9/8/2016.

Bergman, Judith.  “The Soviet-Palestinian Lie.”  Gatestone Institute, October 16, 2016: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians 

Reference – Arafat, KGB

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world’s “kings, queens & despots,” with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

Pacepa, Ion Mihai.  “The KGB’s Man.”  The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.

A little more than four months before the news this week that tests on Arafat’s body in a Swiss investigation showed “unexpected high activity” of polonium, a book co-authored by former Romanian spy chief Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa was published documenting Arafat’s training by the communist Soviet Union and pointing out that the only other known case of polonium-210 poisoning was the death of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

WND.  “New Evidence Suggests Kremlin Poisoned Arafat.”  November 7, 2013.

Related

Their report concluded that Arafat’s remains showed levels of polonium 18 times higher than normal.

Arafat’s widow, Suha, has reaffirmed to the BBC her belief that their report proves he was assassinated.

But she said she could not directly accuse anyone, saying that he had many enemies around the world.

BBC. “Arafat polonium findings confirmed by Swiss scientists.”  November 7, 2013.

Al Jazeera Investigative Unit.  “Swiss forensic report on Arafat’s death.” Document, 108-pages.  November 6, 2013.

http://honestreporting.com/plo-still-lying-about-arafats-legacy/ – 8/5/2015.

Yasir Arafat claims that he was born in Jerusalem, but he was actually born in Cairo. He claims to belong to the prominent Jerusalem family of Husseini, but he is at best only distantly related to it. He claims that he turned down a chance to go to the University of Texas, but according to one biographer, the Palestinian-born writer Saïd K. Aburish, it is highly unlikely that he was ever accepted. He claims to have disabled ten Israeli armored personnel carriers in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but Israel didn’t even have ten APCs in the sector he was in. He claims to have made millions as a businessman in Kuwait, but this, too, is almost certainly untrue.

Obviously, Arafat is a congenital liar. But there’s more to it than that: his lies are all designed to create an aura of romance around himself and the Palestinian people.

Brooks, David.  “A Brief History of Yasir Arafat: The PLO leader is a terrible administrator but a brilliant image crafter.”  The Atlantic, July/August 2002.

Reference – Wikipedia

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

The history of Palestine–Russia (and between 1917–1991, Palestine–Soviet Union) relations has been long and complex. For a number of historical and political reasons, it has been deeply interwoven with Russian (and between 1917–1991, Soviet) relations with the Zionist-Israeli enterprise, Palestinian nationalism, and Third World national liberation movements in general. However, at the same time, particularly between 1956 and 1990, Soviet-Palestinian relations were also part and parcel of the then ongoing Soviet-American confrontation, and even after the Cold War ended, the international and ideological role and importance of the Russian-Palestinian relationship always far exceeded its local and regional limitations. This relationship has continued even today. Russia remains an important player in the Middle East peace process and is a member of the Middle East Quartet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine%E2%80%93Russia_relations

The leader of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, established close collaboration with the Romanian Securitate service and the Soviet KGB in the beginning of the 1970s.[9] The secret training of PLO guerrillas was provided by the KGB.

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

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

According to Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992, in early 1970 Haddad was recruited by the KGB as an agent, codenamed NATSIONALIST. Thereafter, in deep secrecy the Soviets helped to fund and arm the PFLP. The KGB had warning of its major operations and almost certainly sanctioned the most significant, such as the September 1970 hijackings. Haddad remained a highly valued agent till his death in 1978.

A letter by Yuri Andropov allegedly confirming Haddad’s role as an agent was independently discovered in Soviet archives by Vladimir Bukovsky and has since been published.

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

Reference – Gaza, Iran, Syria

http://armamentresearch.com/assessment-of-the-khaibar-1-rockets-captured-by-the-idf/ – 3/12/2014.

The Khaibar-1 (Arabic: خيبر-1‎‎) is a Syrian-made 302 mm [1] artillery rocket used by Hezbollah against targets in northern Israel. The name of the rocket was first revealed on July 28, 2006 by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a speech on Al-Manar television station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaibar-1

Related: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/world/meast/israel-intercepted-weapons/ – 3/6/2014.

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

Web search “Moscow, PFLP” also produces results.

Related

In July, Russia’s Federal Security Service, successor agency to the KGB, released a list of 17 organizations the Russian Supreme Court had identified as “terrorist.” The FSB’s counterterrorism chief described all 17 groups as a threat to the Russian state and noted that almost all were linked in some way to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the 17. Hamas, however, was not listed, though it openly describes itself as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and frequently features deceased Brotherhood dignitaries like Hassan al-Banna and Abdullah Azzam alongside Hamas leaders on its posters and pamphlets. The reason for not listing Hamas, the counterterrorism chief explained, was that Hamas was not engaged in violent activity in Russia, nor was it linked to illegal armed groups operating in the North Caucasus. But Hamas supporters do maintain a presence in Russia, and the group does express solidarity with Chechen fighters, including suicide bombers.

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/putins-new-friends-moscow-hosts-hamas – 3/19/2007.

http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html – 7/2/2013.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9090/soviet-union-palestinians – 10/16/2016.

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Also in Media – “Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities” « Telos Press – On Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi’s experience as the Palestinian professor who arranged appropriate field trips, one of them to Auschwitz, for both Israeli and Palestinian students

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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As Haaretz reported, “He says the choice of Dheisheh for the Israeli students was not meant to suggest there was an equivalence or even a direct link between the Holocaust and the Nakba. They were chosen as the symbolic events that have deeply affected the psyche on both sides of the conflict.” The aim was to build mutual empathy and understanding through an appreciation of events central to the other side’s narratives and self-understanding.

None of this played well on the Palestinian street. Holocaust deniers asserted that Dajani was trying to brainwash his students by disseminating the fabrication that the Holocaust was real. He was denounced as a traitor and collaborator by students and others and warned not to enter Ramallah. The faculty union cancelled his membership.

Read more about Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities « Telos Press, September 27, 2016.

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FTAC – “These Too Are Palestinians”

23 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Palestinia, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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“Should the UN join the super powers and be a bystander ignoring Israel’s continued occupation and violations of Palestinian human rights?”

This is your answer:

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2014/12/02/quote-manipulation-about-the-plo-leader-pacepa-and-rychlak-2013/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/world/middleeast/mahmoud-abbas-israel-palestine-kgb.html

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/05/07/ftac-on-the-soviet-contribution-to-contemporary-left-side-anti-semitism/

http://www.btselem.org/topic/inter_palestinian_violations

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/180400/hamas-killed-160-palestinian-children-to-build-terror-tunnels

The influence of the Soviet by way of agitation, disinformation, political manipulation (through the KGB) and sponsorship of terrorism in relation to the middle east conflict cannot be underestimated. The post-WWII leveraging of Arab anti-Semitic sentiment — involving some with power, not everyone — succeeding in developing despotic regimes benefiting the Soviet as client states.

Russ-AS-04

Soviet cartoons distributed in the Middle East to leverage “the masses” into the Soviet camp.

Russ-AS-03

The Soviet dissolved in financial and moral bankruptcy about 25 years ago; however, in its place has developed a feudal state in the Russian historic tradition, and it continues to entertain PFLP and to interface with both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Who has been made to suffer as a consequence of Soviet / post-Soviet Russian influence and KGB-designed manipulation?

There are differences between the medieval world and the modern one, and the modern is a much, much better world in which to live.

These too are Palestinians:

Additional Reference

“Eshkol knew and feared the Russians,” noted Michael Oren. “War with Syria [and Egypt] was risky enough; with the USSR, it would be suicidal.” But Eskhol calculated that without U.S. support, the Soviets would find themselves compelled to get involved directly. Moscow had, after all, “invested massively in the Middle East, about $2 billion in military aid alone—1,700 tanks, 2,400 artillery pieces, 500 jets, and 1,400 advisers—since 1956, some 43 percent of it to Egypt.”

Sure enough, as the Israelis demolished the forces of the Arab coalition over the next three days and captured the Sinai, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, reunified the holy city of Jerusalem, and began an offensive against Damascus itself, Moscow saw itself staring into the face of a geopolitical disaster. Those were, after all, Soviet-trained soldiers being defeated. Those were Soviet-made arms being seized or destroyed. Those were billions of dollars in Soviet funding to their Arab client states being poured down the drain. And—it would later be learned by U.S. and Israeli intelligence—the Egyptian war plan itself (code-named, “Operation Conqueror”) had actually been written in 1966 by the Soviets. As a result, the Soviets feared their prestige was quickly unraveling.

Rosenberg, Joel C.  “How the Six Day War Almost Led to Armageddon: Forty years later, Moscow’s role in engineering and exacerbating the crisis is revealed.”  LeftBehind.com, May 18, 2007.

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FTAC – Syria – Anachronistic, Barbaric, Surreal

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

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

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Before hostilities were established back in 2011, Syria may have been washed, as it were, in two streams of political poison that would render it untouchable and toxic to the west and its interests. Both streams would be located in the medieval worldview of political power as legitimate when exercised as dictatorship. Soviet Era duality combining anti-Semitic expression, socialism, and pan-Arab nationalism would become part of today’s “lostness”; and then on the political track linked to religious belief, “Islamist” exceptionalism and hubris would mirror the nationalist dictat.

As regards speaking . . . reporting, seeing, and speaking have not been of issue.

As regards extremism + post-Soviet history, ah, there’s the issue that now has former Iraqi Baath Party officers fighting for ISIL against (some) Iraqi Shiite militia embedded with Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers.

Which is the war being fought?

Medieval v Modern; Sunni v Shiite; “Political Absolutism” v Democracy — and then the lesser politics: Iran v Iraq; Turkey v Russia; Turkey v the Kurdish Liberation community; and so on

???

I tend to focus on post-Soviet Moscow for answers as regards motivation and policy for shaping the conflict as it appears. However, one might also focus on multiple elements in the field and ask about illusive motivations. There seem to me multiple aspects of the conflict that can only be seen _by everyone_ — all involved or on the sidelines — as absurdly anachronistic, barbaric (especially in the cultivation and expression of cruelty) and surreal.

The poem that set off the response was lovely and correct in its complaint about silence and its query about the lack of human intervention in deposing Bashar al-Assad.  However, great vision matters in Syria, and, in fact, it may now be all that matters in Syria, specifically the ability to observe from a distance in time and space that views the whole of it as contained in time.

Truly, the conflict began with a despot’s sadistic response to a peaceful challenge to his authority, and here five or six years later, thereabouts, those outside of Syria area overviewing a complete medieval theater of politics and war of which Putin, Assad, Khamenei, and Baghdadi — and similar others — are of a whole piece.

Different talks — same walk!

The leaders are not opponents: they have been cooperating perfectly in mutual destruction, disregard, and unspeakable sadism.

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FTAC – “Syria is the World Without Israel”

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

God proved greater than the tyrant.

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

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