With that speed, inspiration -> political punditry -> launch (something, anything, hope it works) has become a very short cycle. ***
Got to jump down turn around and send a missive flying Go to jump down turn around and compose again . . . . *** So it goes.
Sources for the first tweet date back to the Putin-Trump bromance of 2016 and the Republican chorus of denials over Russia’s onslaught of methods of perceptual channeling and control that were to be popularly known as “Active Measures”–>
It’s impossible to miss Russia’s criminal anger and resentment of the modern world in its aggression against the west as its secret police and other elements got to their feet in the shadows of the “End of the Cold War”. Out to the edges of the former Soviet spheres of conflict, control, and influence, an habitual penchant for Absolute Power and the endorsements of political theater and terrorism became fixtures of political behavior in Chechnya and Syria as well as Afghanistan (Russian arms and materiel were to support the Taliban all the way back to Kabul).
To this day, Russia’s leadership has shown the world nothing of modern compassion, conscience, constructive ambition, empathy, or humanity while demonstrating only the feudal-medieval barbarism and rapacious destructiveness and greed of the police state it has become and that it intends to impose on Ukraine and the west.
Start with what cannot be found outside of the mind of the malignant narcissist, i.e., the traumatic memory of “Narcissistic Mortification”. Diminishment. Humiliation. Shame. Whatever it was–a bullying theft on the street; an instance of sexual abuse by an authority or other overwhelming power; a “Jack and the Beanstalk” beat down by a parent–would have set off two related processes: covering over the moment and making of it either a terrible personal secret not to be shared or, perhaps, a complaint to shadow and ruin the life (for Putin, one might choose the former option, i.e., compartmenting the trauma); and splitting off the invention of a noble and undamaged self abetted by deceit in the creation of an heroic personal theater.
Most of us toughen up some with psychic injury, adjust our behavior to avoid a repeat experience or engage from a position of greater determination to prevail with dignity and strength. We’ll talk back to the nasty, speak truth to power, or dare introduce the bully to punishment as we produce greater force or response in relation to the presence of the same.
Chin up, in other words, and walk a little taller.
The malign might demand greater compensation in the way of power and emotional assurance. It may not be how they are or might be as ordinary persons that matters: it’s how they look–how others may perceive them–as extraordinary personages that matters most, for deep down they are still hiding their own humiliation and the dreaded fear of its return.
And how may one hide the truth?
Lie about it.
And how may one control the perception of others?
Create around or before them sufficient convincing theater to get them to do as one’s image may demand.
Punks have an easy list at their disposal: cheat, deceive, lie, and steal.
Get her a ring–who cares how you do it?–if it comes to that.
🙂
The personal and smaller matters lend themselves to convenient chicanery.
The corrupt and evil among politicians know more difficult strategies: big lies, deflections; false accusations, false flags, false presentations.
Where Putin lives, notch it up with military, paramilitary, and secret police forces tasked to manage state-devised compromise and reflexive control operations as well as total perceptual control buttressed by the methodical elimination of all of the sources of competition and criticism.
And should anyone in the darkness and shadows fuck up . . . cover it up–practice helps–and lie about it.
And should anyone possessed of integrity observe and report what has taken place, well, there are ways in which politically criminal and ruthless power may choose to defend its good image while in fact engaged in the most execrable evil.
A Few Reflections on Putin’s KGB Manual Updated to Support State Capitalists
I’m sure there are other similarly clever methods for developing bear hugging personal relationships and influencing nations, quietly, and from behind the curtains, and as sources, insights, and opportunities develop, I may add to the above useful instructions.
The West had perhaps thought the Cold War over on December 25, 1991 with the announcement at noon of the Soviet Union’s dissolving itself in bankruptcy, but here with are with a post-Soviet KGB/FSB President Putin in power who while demonstrating his idea of logical reasoning repeatedly proves himself barbaric, inhuman, and irrational and only best in his expression of unhelpful and wholly destructive madness. He appears to have no insight as regards his own malign and narcissistic disorder, but his army knows it, his generals see it, his inner circle suffer for it and none appear able to stop him.
For Ukrainians, who are but the latest to catch Tsar Putin’s cross-hairs, the question comes up as to why EU/NATO so far refuses Ukraine offensive weapons sufficient for controlling its air space. The Atlantic Council circulated a germane answer in the form of a survey of experts and simple chi-square chart, and this morning when both plea and question came up on Facebook, I felt bound to respond.
From the Awesome Conversation
In what follows, I’ve added URLs where they would be otherwise absent in plain text.
Out of laziness, perhaps, I’ve chosen to plant surprises, helpful ones, in the URLs and forego the creating of standard reference (a “Related Online” section has been otherwise a BackChannels desktop publishing tradition).
Here’s the thinking regarding NATO’s official avoidance of war with Russia beneath the black cloud of Mutually Assured Destructed attached to any exchange of nuclear weapons and related and possibly out of control (worse: computer-controlled, according to Putin) escalation.
Note: Russia boasts two related threat assets: 2000 “tactical nuclear weapons” and fast-and-crooked (rather like Russia’s leadership itself) “hypersonic missiles“. Both may be easily looked up online.
Where the United States has forsworn first use of a nuclear device, Russia’s mafia-style doctrine has gambled on a smaller is larger option–and it is because the world has this smaller-leverages-larger nutcase getting everything he wants predicated on his demonstrations of ability to launch wars by proxy, his show of barbarism, especially in Syria (now Ukraine, and who’s next?), his support for “frozen conflicts” and terrorist organizations, and his employment of methods of political blackmail and compromise (look up Jeffrey Epstein’s visit to Moscow) and intimidation, he presents before all the challenge of shutting down what he would regard as his life’s work, piece of ____t that he is.
The first steps have been to erode his financing, hit his backers, and get Mother Russia — i.e., someone more authentically representing her — to take care of him.
The medieval world hates the modern–and His Malignance hates what he cannot absolutely control and plunder.
Update: An Argument for Increased Ukrainian Surface-to-Air Defenses
Putin has cause to believe he has the edge in defense and energy assets as well as global positioning and latency or staging (as global defense assets existing in peace may be turned toward war with an order). As “gifts” to the developed world, Putin also has 2000 tactical nuclear weapons and a number of hypersonic (hard to hit) missiles, and at the very least, he will plant those assets on NATO’s border to sustain his program of intimidation.
By the west’s measured response to Putin’s aggression, it is merely enabling the same while giving up on its principles and values by keeping itself in the respondent mode when the more powerful option, which will come due, will be to seize the initiative and take Putin’s power from him–and, frankly, that for the sake of the Russian People too who have been deeply subjugated by Putin’s governance.
Posted to YouTube by The Guardian, February 24, 2022.
Guardian News, February 24, 2022.
11Alive, February 24, 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.
President Biden, February 24, 2022.
PBS NewsHour, February 24, 2022.
Ukrainians flee to Romania via border crossing in Chernivtsi Region in Western Ukraine
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’).
In Reference, A Glance Into Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its Black Soul
“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.
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.
Related Online
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.
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).
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”?
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).
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.
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