24 Thursday Feb 2022
“War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Bliss” plus Putin’s own additions: “Chaos is Order / Life is Death”.
Early today, Vladimir Putin AKA “Vladolph” AKA “Putler”, Russia’s President by way of assassinations, defenestrations, detentions, and rigged elections, launched his invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy on its western flank, turning back the clock to the 1930s and and further to feudal-medieval barbarism.
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21 Monday Feb 2022
Blackmail/Kompromat, brutalization, espionage/infiltration, frozen conflicts, international kleptocracy, mass perceptual control, reflexive control, terrorism | x Russia or x KGB x FSB or x Vladimir Putin–you get the idea regarding the dimensions and evils faced by the world’s authentic democracies–and aspiring ones–and their constituencies in relation to Russia’s international character and operations.
The following and very few references may promote greater general curiosity (so one may hope) about Russia’s–and Putin’s Russia most of all–and its avaricious, barbaric, and generally ignoble role in international affairs.
The late historian Richard Pipes noted that Russia sustained a definition and test in sovereignty from which Europe chose to depart as it worked its way out of the medieval zeitgeist. While reading (most likely Russia Under the Old Regime), I did not take the note for citation, but it came down to this: the test of sovereignty in Russian absolute terms involved the ownership and treatment of property and persons as alike, and proof of that power could be found in the sovereign’s ability to destroy either at will and with impunity (my words, not Pipes’).
Galeotti, Mark. “Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia.” The Guardian, March 23, 2018. Related: a book review of Mark Galeotti’s The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (Yale University Press, 2018): Shelley, Louise. “A Tangled Web: Organized Crime and Oligarchy in Putin’s Russia.” War on the Rocks, November 15, 2018.
Nevzlin, Leonid. “The Result of 20 Years of Putin: Russia as a Mafia State.” Institute of Modern Russia (IMR), January 24, 2020.
Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.
Politkovskaya, Anna. “A Small Corner of Hell.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Wikipedia. “Russian espionage in the United States”.
Ramani, Samuel. “Russia and the Taliban: Prospective Partners?” RUSI, September 14, 2021.
Rowlatt, Justin. “Russia ‘arming the Afghan Taliban’, says US.” BBC News, March 23, 2018.
“Moscow will be happy, of course, to host dozens of international conferences, and will periodically suggest that a solution is within reach. But at the end of the day, its interests are best served when Iran, Hezbollah and Assad are in power to make mischief in the region, because that’s when Russia’s influence with the Europeans, with Israel, and the Gulf States is at its peak,” he said.
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20 Sunday Feb 2022
Tags
Damaged Psyche, malignant narcissism, psychology of dictatorship, Ukraine v Russia, Vladimir Putin
One more time . . . .
Narcissistic Mortification: diminishment or humiliation –>
Narcissistic Covering/Splitting: covering the diminished, humiliated, or shamed damaged self / splitting off a courageous and heroic persona to be presented and sustained before the world –>
Narcissistic Manipulation: manipulation of the behavior and perceptions of others with behaviors ranging from gaslighting and lying to framing others and leveraging their behavior through various strategies –>
Experience of Unlimited Narcissistic Supply: experience of the sustained adoration, adulation, admiration and love of others en masse and without limit.
Regarding the ideas represented by terms such as “Malignant Narcissism”, “Reparative Narcissism”, “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”, I’ve chosen to select reference both according to convenience and in response to my own experiences, ideas, and thinking (especially as regards the cited “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” that is my own). Whether bullies on the streets, dictators in families, and imperious personalities in politics, the idea that the display of power, whether obviously malign or disingenuously protective (as our Lt. Colonel President Emperor and Tyrant Vladimir Putin so well presents), the relationship between the display of awesome destructive capability coupled with unparalleled wealth belies the heavy armoring and compensation needed to cover a much challenged and derided personality at an earlier stage. “I’ll show you!” and “I’ll show them” and “I will make them pay” suit the outlook of a tyrant whose damaged psyche may never be sufficiently appeased, placated, or repaired. History may come to regard the present Russian president as a man who could master associates, investors, mafia, and military but not himself.
Oppenheim, James S. “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.” BackChannels, n.d.
Politkovskaya, Anna. “A Small Corner of Hell.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Wikipedia. “Malignant Narcissism”.
Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Mortification”.
Wikipedia. “Narcissistic supply”.
Wikipedia. “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”.
Wikipedia. “Psychological Abuse”.
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13 Sunday Feb 2022
If Vovo’s army invades Ukraine, it will royally piss Russian-speaking as well as Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.
Vovo knows that.
However, it appears that he’s convinces himself that he should be Lt. Colonel President Emperor Putin!
And he has practically formed and talked his way into an invasion.
And then what?
More kleptocratic mafia for Ukrainians, Russian-speaking included?
Vovo has no power — nor talent, actually — to build wealth himself although, to be fair, he has asked Big Capital to return to Mother Russia although much of it would rather stay in London–and with democracy and the rule of law–than reside in Moscow and the rule of mafia (and Putin the Pirate).
Vovo’s American pooch?
There’s a marvelous Latin-in-English (Roman-sounding, in other words) send-up on Facebook–I hope you may access it.
I would like to make something clear to Christians, Muslims, Palestinians, Europeans, and North Americas (not that I have forgotten Asians or Africans or anyone else): Welcome to the 22nd Century (I’m just a little bit ahead of my time), and we should all be fighting about and for improved Qualities of Living.
And add this ingredient: INTEGRITY!
Oh, Palestinian–may at least one soul recap the historical truth with you–and not against you: for you.
What is Herr Trump’s America’s Grand Old Party of Greed (GOPoG) doing about its very bad case of Greedosis? And what has every European to say about Putin’s “Medievalitis”?
Dismissible!
So one may hope.
And, Oh, Russian–EU/NATO and Y-O-U know that Russia is not Free: https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2021 .
***
Come 1992, the Cold War was over, according to the United States.
The Soviet Union had dissolved in bankruptcy on December 25, 1991 (I’m seeing a lot of opting for December 26, so, undoubtedly, as to move the west’s “Christmas Day”, a pagan holiday I myself refer to as “Solstice” — a few days late — off the political dates-in-history map).
Have a look at this apparent “leak”: https://www.businessinsider.com/exploring-al-qaedas-murky-connection-to-russian-intelligence-2014-6 .
So the KGB had a nice talk with Ayman al Zawahiri a few years before he and Osama Bin Laden had air crews learning how to fly (not land) big jets.
In diagram–>
KGB-Zawahiri->9/11->(x Reflexive Control) EU/NATO “New Nationalism” & BREXIT + “blood-and-soil” popularity in Hungary, Italy, and Poland + Full Feudal Retreat in Turkey + You-Know-Who (rhymes with “Dump”) in the New Populist United States.
Hmm.
It turns out that was a pretty good strike for the KGB/FSB sons of the Okhrana.
And today on the edges of Ukraine, Vovo wants to waste Russian and Ukrainian lives.
For what, Mr. Putin?
Your glory?
Leave forts; retrieve all other forces; expect the west to form defenses against barbaric threats from the world’s feudal-medieval epoch.
***
Who reads this blog?
Somebody in China.
I’ve been watching my stats.
Live Updates, “Russia-Ukraine Tensions”, The New York Times, February 13, 2022.
Oppenheim, James S. “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.” BackChannels, n.d.
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24 Monday Jan 2022
Tags
EU/NATO, New Nationalism, New Russian Imperialism, Putin the Pirate, Russia v NATO, Russia v Ukraine, Ukraine's Frozen Conflict, Vladimir Putin
Well, he stole Robert Kraft’s Sacred Superbowl Ring, so what wouldn’t he steal?
Kraft’s ring now appears on display in the Kremlin’s library, quite a trophy brought home to Moscow by Russia’s Boss of Bosses.
From CNN:
The 4.94-carat ring is in the Kremlin’s library, where all official state gifts are kept, he said. It is worth more than $25,000, according to multiple reports from 2005.
A Kraft spokesman said Sunday the story is a humorous anecdote that Kraft “retells for laughs.”
“He loves that the ring is at the Kremlin and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin,” said Stacey James, a spokesman for The Kraft Group.
Eshchenko, Alla and Faith Karimi. “Russian president: I did not steal Super Bowl ring.” CNN, June 17, 2013.
No. Putin didn’t steal it. It was a gift!
🙄
***
Will Ukraine be a gift too?
***
Putin the Pirate has done a few things under the table upside-down and sideways over decades to weaken western political coherence, cohesion, and resolve. Start with the KGB’s handling of Zawahiri over the winter of 1996/7. In connect-the-dots fashion, I believe that stay led to the attack by jet hijacking Islamists on 9/11 that in turn goosed the pride of western states in their Christian and independent political cultures and led to what has been referred to as the “New Nationalism”.
When bees sting and flesh swells, the response has not been called “proud flesh” for nothing.
The popular western response in enmity and fear regarding Islam has not been misplaced in relation to Islamic Extremism and related Islamist Terror, but the same has given rise to blood-and-soil nationalism, authoritarianism, and actual autocracy in some EU/NATO states. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (one nation under Trump for a while) have each seen their open democracies challenged by demagoguery or political perversion.
We may also take note of the “01s” in dates: 1991-dissolve of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy following American intercession opposite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (from which Russia was forced to retreat in 1989); 2001-the September 11 attacks took place on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, quite a gift for a Moscow bent on revenge for its losses in Afghanistan-and, no, Putin didn’t do it–it was obviously radical Muslims assembled and deployed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden; 2011-The Horror taking off in Syria that would send millions of refugees into NATO (Turkey, which today hosts about 3.68 million Syrian refugees), the European Union (0.7 million-Germany), and Scandinavia (0.3 million), another goad for the defense of the rightly ethnolinguistic state cultures settled and enjoying the benefits of, well, being themselves, the only problem being a concomitant drift toward the same feudal-medieval worldviews and fascination with authority held by Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, and Vladimir Putin; 2021-Russia’s repeated threats by military feint against Ukraine, a young democratic state seeking NATO accession, and, by extension, NATO itself, but not quite as Ukraine remains without accession.
So hey, Bob (Kraft), George and George, Jr. (Bush), where are you today with Putin (the thief)?
***
Where and when are dictatorships to be stopped?
Is it when one or another has engaged in political repression and breathtaking plunder at home?
Should it be when the security service agents and agent provocateur show up within the borders of one’s democratic state?
Should it be when the tanks roll into a neighboring state struggling for its own sovereignty against barbaric force and the possibility of a return to corrupt, kleptocratic, and tyrannical governance?
Christophersen, Erik. “These 10 countries receive the most refugees.” Norwegian Refugee Council.
Duffin, Erin. “Nationalism in the U.S. – Statistics & Facts.” Statista, March 11, 2021.
Oppenheim, James S. “Syria: The Horror: 2011.” BackChannels, December 29, 2017.
Oppenheim, James S. “Ukraine: A Reminder.” BackChannels, December 7, 2021.
Schuster, Simon. “How Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia’s Man in Ukraine.” Time, October 31, 2017.
Statista. “Ranking of the largest Syria refugee-hosting countries in 2020”.
The New York Times. “Gerald L. K. Smith Dead; Anti-Communist Crusader.” April 16, 1976.
UNHCR. “Syria Refugee Crisis–Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus.” March 18, 2021.
VOA. “Russia Threatens to Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons.” December 14, 2021.
Wikipedia. “America First Party (1943)”.
Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.
Wikipedia. “Felix Dzerzhinsky”.
Wikipedia. “Gerald L. K. Smith”.
Wikipedia. “Putin’s Kleptocracy”.
Wikipedia. “Russo-Ukrainian War”.
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28 Thursday Oct 2021
Many people in the country generate their own electricity, pump their own water, arrange private education for their children and so on.
They would also gladly defend themselves against armed attackers.
But, under Nigeria’s laws, it is now impossible to purchase a firearm. No matter how determined an individual might be, they cannot defend themselves with just bare hands and bravery.
Nwaubani, Adaobi Tricia. “Viewpoint: Self-defence not the answer to Nigeria’s kidnap crisis.” BBC News, February 25, 2021.
When, therefore, government proves incapable or unwilling to protect everyone equally, communities must exercise a duty of collective self-defence. The alternative is to suffer voluntary liquidation. In the first six months of 2021, over 6,000 people were reported killed in atrocity violence across Nigeria.
Odinkalu, Chidi Anselm. “Nigerian law protects right to self-defence: Communities have duty to exercise it.” Vanguard, September 3, 2021.
Nigeria’s bandits and gangs, Fulani Land Raiders, and assorted whatnot bear arms (also explosive and petrol) for their barbaric and tawdry businesses. Nigeria’s Christian communities and others lay bare before them while President Buhari’s government works on rising to the challenge of defending Nigerian communities in their totality, and while it seems corruption must arm the evil — how does so much firepower get through to the worst of the worst? — one may wonder about the complicity — the “voluntary liquidation” — of the victims and their communities and relations.
Alarms and Barriers: advanced separate-system security communications; spotters; tripwires.
Arms, Bombs, and Edges: warn; repulse; surprise.
Community and State Security Co-Location: On-site partnership between state security and community leaders with zero-time response to assault; secondary government-controlled ready-secret community volunteer units.
When it comes to arms and most everything else that has to be smuggled to get where it needs to be, someone knows who’s sellin’ — and someone also knows who’s buy’n.
How is that knowledge come by?
Find an analyst in Nigeria’s State Security Service and ask.
The escapades of bandits, kidnappers, and raiders have not been subtle in the least, nor has their provisioning gone unnoticed.
Although partisan presses emphasize religious aspects of Nigerian conflict, especially involving the Muslim Fulani and Christian villages, one might suggest a more modern world, deeply corrupt and not very religious at all, has come to Nigeria and for bad good reasons ferries (and launders) The Money out to and through “rule-of-law” locations amenable to, well, doing business with not too much of conscience (or law) getting in the way. Whatever the motives may be for moving money offshore and through “shells” developed to hide owner identity, Nigerians would seem shorted as regards both domestic re-capitalization and spending, not that receiving foreign banks, businesses, and states would object to their own good fortune.
One might ask why Nigerians, among others, insist on either fighting archaic medieval wars in 2021 or on experiencing and framing conflicts as such when, in fact, the common denominator from field raids to high office would seem that so-called “root of all evil”, ne, money.
Who is fighting over such an immense thing as the character or nature of God?
While medieval belief sustain absolute power, modern leaders have seen an abyss before them created by demystification and the promotion of reason and by disappointment and the raising of questions that power has never been able to answer or resolve. Before reason and science and now 21st Century technology breakthrough, history’s medieval and primitive inertia would seem to decay and leadership lose its luster especially where it preys on the populations looking to it for improved Qualities and Living, financial and personal security foremost and equally distributed and distributed by merit.
Absence of governance, impoverishment, the presence of interests gaming for the control and plundering of resources in the name of self, clan, family, and tribe may better account for violence welling up from the base between ambition and desperation.
My own nation, the United States of America, has been riven by agitprop, foreign (e.g., Russian “Active Measures”) and domestic (Partisan drum beaters Far Out Left and Far Strident Right), the unworkable politics of ethnic, gender, and racial identity as cause, and breathtaking disparities in national lifestyle–the gutter (say, Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) looks awfully low while the priciest of mansions and penthouses sail off in the clouds fully immune, so it seems, to more earthy surrounds. However, should one ask a moderately educated American adult, “What is an American?” most, so one might hope, would define an American as dedicated to upholding the principles and values laid out in the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the full body of compiled – and compiling – national law. Cognizance of and devotion, and respect for essential American ethics, law, principles, and values remain in the heart. Most often, America’s domestic fighting revolves around injustices perceived in light of the country’s essential humanist and secular legal and social ideals and practical political and social ends.
Americans will not fight en masse over religion (which and whose? For all are here) at this time.
Americans will fight — and prove so every day — for their interests, private and public, in light of founding principles and rights.
Nigerians?
Who is Nigerian?
What is a Nigerian?
Who aspiring to power or in power is building a just and modern Nigeria far above parochial business, clan, and tribal interests?
Is there an ideal Nigeria waiting for Nigerians to achieve and secure it?
Last year at about this time (October 20, 2020), Nigerian forces turned their guns on protesters at Lekki Toll Gate. For whom did they kill a dozen Nigerian youth? And for what? Feudal honor? Their jobs? Money?
I believe Nigerians decent but it appears some in business and in power at high levels abuse ideals, their own privileges, and, ultimately, trust of a nation.
AFP. “At least 40 killed in attacks in Nigeria’s Kaduna state.” Africa News, September 28, 2021.
Amnesty International. “#EndSars Movement: From Twitter to Nigerian Streets.” n.d.
Asadu, Chinedu. “Dozens killed and abducted in Nigeria’s north.” AP News, September 30, 2021 .
Campbell, John. “The U.S. Justice Department and Kleptocracy in Nigeria.” CFR, July 19, 2017.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. WIPO Lex.
Jones, Mayeni. “Nigeria’s #EndSars protests: What happened next.” BBC News, October 7, 2021.
Panchal, Krishna. “The Poverty Capital of the World: NIGERIA.” Borgen Magazine, August 28, 2020.
Tanko, Aliyu. “Nigeria’s security crises – five different threats.” BBC News, July 19, 2021.
Wikipedia. “Constitution of Nigeria”.
Wikipedia. “Informal economy”.
Wikipedia. “Poverty in Nigeria”.
While it is not a crime for private individuals to set up offshore companies, Nigeria’s law forbids public officials from doing so. According to Transparency International, the failure of the President, Major General Buhari (retd.), to act over past disclosures like the Panama Papers has deepened the culture of impunity. Auwal Rafsanjani, Executive Director, Nigeria’s TI chapter, says the regime needs to investigate the Pandora Papers revelations irrespective of the political affiliation of the individuals. He adds that the government should equip the Code of Conduct Bureau with staff and resources to adequately scrutinise officials’ asset declarations.
TI’s observation of Buhari’s inaction is not surprising as his avowed anti-corruption war is gradually becoming a charade. \
Punch Editorial Board. “Pandora Papers and Nigeria’s hidden wealth.” Punch, October 12, 2021.
It is not against the law to secretly buy British properties using anonymous offshore companies. Finance Uncovered has seen no evidence in the Pandora Papers that money used to buy houses or apartments in the UK represents the proceeds of corruption or other criminality.
Indeed, many specialist advisers have routinely recommended clients invest in this manner to legally avoid tax.
Bowers, Simon, Lionel Faull, Purity Mukami. “Pandora Papers: The secret London properties of Nigeria’s elite.” Finance Uncovered, October 6, 2021.
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16 Saturday Oct 2021
I hate REVISIONISM!
It’s a good measure for what is despotic.
Whoever or whatever it was — or remains — if it was evil, we should collectively appreciate its import, ameliorate its damage, if comparatively recent, and pack it away not to be repeated if the semblance of the same may be prevented or damped.
Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters
As lies are told to hide something or to get something, those who counsel the excising of history — erasure of the past, in essence — would seem most of all ashamed of themselves and sensitive to their own hidden predilections for control and conquest. Only the pulling down of the despot’s statue at the time of the revolution proves liberating and signal of liberation. Yanking old generals off their pedestals? That’s something else.
Weiss, Bari. “We Got Here Because of Cowardice. We Get Out With Courage.” Commentary, November 2021.
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06 Monday Sep 2021
And what is the world watching?
Potentially barbaric medieval ethical, moral, and spiritual decision-making in near real time for which the modern of this 21st Century need have no respect.
Here are two old examples of that kind of decision-making — According to the lore, Muhammad had had Safiyah’s husband killed for his treasure, and the murder was done in the most gruesome and torturing way: a fire was made on his belly to force his confession of knowledge of where the whole of that treasure had been buried. In proximate time, the prophet had taken Saifyah as war booty and later elevated her status to wife and free woman. How nice.
In near history, the rape of a 13-year-old Aisha Abrahim Duhulow by three men was followed up by stoning her to death for adultery. The private act of her tormentors has never been punished while her punishment unto death took place in a stadium before a thousand or so spectators.
How would such “justice” serve had what was meted to Safiyah or Aish involved your wife, daughter, or mother?
In such primitive manner, Muslims become the victims of more malign, narcissistic, and strident Muslims who have chosen to cover their own piratical behavior with familiar dogma.
Sweet words?
Foul deeds.
Two reports related in ethical, moral, and “spiritual” dimensions have surfaced recently in Afghanistan.
BBC. “Afghanistan: Taliban accused of killing pregnant police officer.” September 6, 2021. To be fair, the BBC has reported, “Details of the incident are still sketchy as many in Firozkoh fear retribution if they speak out. But three sources have told the BBC that the Taliban beat and shot Negar dead in front of her husband and children on Saturday.”
We shall have to wait and see whether the “New Improved Taliban” step up to the challenge of undertaking an empirical investigation using modern forensic methods amidst popular challenge. What integrity will they put on display; with what broad acceptance and trust may their findings be met? So we shall see.
Here’s another telltale with fear in the wind —
Looking pale and shattered having already suffered a beating at the hands of Taliban thugs, Gulafroz spoke in English, saying: ‘I was one of the very senior policewomen in Afghanistan.
‘I did everything to encourage women into the police, against the wishes of the Taliban. Now my life is in danger. Real danger.
‘Please help me and my family.’
Stewart, Will. “Top female Afghan cop beaten and hunted by the Taliban pleads for help from the West after eight-month-pregnant policewoman is executed by the terror group for removing a flag.”. Daily Mail, September 6, 2021.
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