On BackChannels — if this post works — it has a context an adventure in political psychology and the interplay between personality — “malignant narcissism” — and controlled information space (language, linguistics, propaganda, gaslighting, political theater, manipulation, etc.) and political power that drives despotism, fascism, sadism.
Our global Internet with English as lingua franca has become the largest “mirror, mirror on the wall” in political history, and it reflects through and back to a political elite, from pundits worldwide to leaders worldwide. Its reach is limited, of course, by language barriers and Internet filtering. That leaves the despotic putting on a show for still captive constituents, but they know the barriers remain nonetheless permeable. Bilingual national speakers, extended diaspora — including Palestinian diaspora — encounter these pages and videos as much and as well as anyone else.
There is always a “next new world”, and we’re heading for it even while some turn back and revel in a long ago darkness; for others, the dawn spreads out before them and everyone.
Quite slowly but with method, the library takes shape within the mansion within the cottage inside an apartment out in the countryside about one mountain beyond the Washington area.
Probably, the shelves should be alphabetized rather than categorized, but that would be a registry, not a library: a library has sections and themes, visual appeal and both mysterious and promising atmospheres — there are whole shelves here filled with Le Carre (all of his books) and Peter Mayle — but as regards this blog, certain aspects of the collection emerge in relation to “conflict, culture, language, and psychology”.
“Dicks and Spooks”?
Detectives and spies, intelligence organizations and operations, their marks: mafia and political criminals.
The section is small. Even so, two of the list have not been read, one for boredom (“MI6” risks becoming a doorstop), the other — it’s not its time yet.
Titles as readable as they may be intriguing: The Good Spy, The Zhivago Affair, and Mafioso.
There’s relevant library on the Kindle as well — e.g., Tim Shorrock’s Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing — but I don’t even want to light up that screen or find out what Amazon has to say about me: The Book remains the Friend in the Library, spine out, ever present, ever ready to be read and to be read again on bed or sofa, or, God forbid it (which uttered objection is certain to bring about the same), at the table with coffee, note cards, and pens at the ready.
Inventory in “Dicks and Spooks” just noted:
Bird, Kai. The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.
Finn, Peter and Petra Couvee. The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book. New York: Pantheon Books, 2014.
Jeffery, Keith. The Secret History of MI6. New York: The Penguin Press, 2010.
Servadio, Gaia. Mafioso. New York: Stein and Day, 1976.
Trento, Joseph J. The Secret History of the CIA. Roseville, California: Prima, 2001
All of the above solopsistic discussion for five books (of more than two thousand) . . . . Still, one of five of two thousand just might appeal to the reader.
I telegraph online impression via schematics like “mouth –> ear –> mind –> heart system” to get a much larger constellation in thought down to something almost memorable.
🙂
Nonetheless, reduction goes only so far: “overviewing” picks up some of the slack, which is often what happens here, and then, well, one must turn off the computer in favor of lengthier reading, which lately for me has been Pacepa & Rychlak’s Disinformation, an account of KGB’s accomplishments in the black arts accompanying libel, misdirection, misguidance, slander, and — I say this with “malignant narcissism” in mind — theatrical production.
Writing for The Guardian, Simon Tisdale recently commented on Putin and “The New Cold War” (11/19/2014) — “Last weekend’s G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, showed just how raw nerves have become – over Ukraine and, more broadly, over what the west has come to see as a pattern of expansionist, confrontational and often illegal behaviour by the Putin regime . . . ” — but perhaps not (yet) as aggression on two fronts.
In fact, my sources suggest that PFLP representatives met with Mikhail Bogdanov, the Russian President’s Special Representative for the Middle East and Deputy Foreign Minister, earlier in November (possibly Sunday, November 2, 2014) and discussed, among other things, S300 missile shipments placed on hold in 2013.
“I suggested to Foreign Minister Lavrov that we intensify intelligence cooperation with respect to ISIL and other counter-terrorism challenges of the region and we agreed to do so,” Kerry said just after the meeting, using an alternative name for IS jihadists.
As Sarajevo would ultimately like to join NATO and the European Union, they understand that every few years the Americans and the EU will put pressure on them to reduce their ties to Iran, particularly to its intelligence services. A sort of Balkan kabuki theater inevitably follows, with promises by the SDA to crack down hard, this time. A few Iranian “diplomats” are discreetly asked to leave the country, some of the more overt Iranian intelligence fronts in Bosnia shut their doors, usually only temporarily, and the Americans and Europeans are bought off for a couple years. And the Iranians remain.
It is believed that MOIS cooperates with other intelligence agencies. One of these agencies is the Russian SVR, the KGB’s replacement. Despite the two agencies’ dissimilar doctrines and the complicated relationship between Iran and Russia in the past, they managed to cooperate in the 1990s, based not only on their intention of limiting U.S. political clout in Central Asia but also on their mutual efforts to stifle prospective ethnic turbulence. The SVR trained not only hundreds of Iranian agents but also numerous Russian agents inside Iran to equip Iranian intelligence with signals equipment in their headquarters compound. It is unclear whether this relationship is ongoing and whether the two intelligence agencies continue to cooperate.
From page 41 of the above cited piece: “Bin Laden’s phone records, obtained by U.S. investigators working on the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, show that 10 percent of phone calls made by Bin Laden and his lieutenants were to Iran.”
Khamenei, South America
The Mexican law student was surprised by how easy it was to get into Iran two years ago. By merely asking questions about Islam at a party, he managed to pique the interest of Iran’s top diplomat in Mexico. Months later, he had a plane ticket and a scholarship to a mysterious school in Iran as a guest of the Islamic Republic.
Next came the start of classes and a second surprise: There were dozens of others just like him.
While Iranian South American “feed and seed” programs may be continuing, the gist of a 2014 Congressional Research Service summary (by Mark P. Sullivan and June S. Beittel) suggests Khamenei’s regime may not be making as much progress as it would like. Rather than excerpt, I’ll leave it to the reader to look-see on this document: Latin America: Terrorism Issues. August 2014.
Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Pacepa, Ion Mihai and Rychlak, Ronald J. Disinformation. Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2013.
Soldatov, Andrei and Irena Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
The delegation stressed that Syria has been exposed to a U.S.-western-Zionist conspiracy, which is backed by some regimes in the region with the aim of liquidating the Palestinian issue since Syria is the main supporter of the cause.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán openly admires the ‘illiberal’ models of Russia and China. Critics say his Fidesz party is using Putin-like tactics to cut the funding of newspapers and NGOs that conflict with the Orbán government.
Putin is clearly the dominant force in the relationship. Orban may be currently the master of all he surveys within his own borders but externally, he looks increasing like the leader of a client state that is gently but perceptively gravitating towards Moscow’s sphere of influence. Which in itself is a remarkable state of affairs considering the residual concerns over the 1956 invasion by the Soviet Union.
The radicals, of course, are most vocal. Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, the U.K.’s anti-immigrant, anti-EU party, has expressed his admiration for Putin “as an operator, not a human being.” Farage has demanded that the West stop opposing Russian actions in Ukraine and ally itself with Putin in the fight against Islamic extremism. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s ultranationalist Front National, is another Putin admirer. And Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, has praised the Russian leader as a “pure democrat.”
I want to confess that I did something foolish once when I was young. Back in 1993, I abandoned my university studies in California and returned to Moscow. European nations had signed the Maastricht Treaty and I dreamed that Russia would join the European Union.
While the U.S. and Russia have pledged to share intelligence on the group, Russia—one of the main international backers of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government—is not a member of the U.S.-led “broad coalition” against ISIS announced last month. As one Russian foreign ministry official recently put it, “We do not expect any invitations and we are not going to buy entry tickets.”
Like others of his generation, he is part of a cadre of men who came of age in a massive, multinational, nuclear-armed superstate in the early 1970s. The faceless cogs who made this system work were unremarkable people like Putin, trained in ideology and imbued with the false faith that the USSR’s greatest days were yet to come.
In their later years, these men have experienced the normal anxieties and embarrassments of middle age. (In Putin’s case, she’s a gymnast young enough to be his daughter.) But middle age for the sovoks also brought many to realize they spent their lives serving a state based on lies and held together almost entirely by force.
So spend a moment imagining the better time for which these men yearn.
“Obummuh” rhymes with “Jimmuh”, it’s true, but the Administration has been opaque as regards the distance between surface impression and authentic Administration policy. To get at the authentic takes some Washington-style research — down into the world of wonks, Jane’s and other specialized publications, and probably some grip-and-grin plus elbow bending and rubbing with the Georgetown set — only partially available online.
Regarding ISIS, the best rumor I’ve heard is Iran’s VEVAK may have been able to blackmail some Saudi and Qatari private wealth into seeding ISIS, expecting in the long run to give ISIS the Great Sunni-Shiite war it wants and thereby ennoble and enlarge the Ayatollah’s image of himself and Iran. 🙂
The hypotheses get a bit mad.
I don’t like the idea that “What ISIS scours, Qatar will devour”, but that too looks like a possibility, one buttressed by an $11 billion arms sale to Qatar.
Perhaps following the principle of “least war possible”, getting the “world left behind” on to the western program may be Washington’s chief headache best owned by Washington’s chief.
Having set out to learn what one might glean about things online, I’ve learned one can learn a lot from “yesterday’s news” combined with old fashioned library-style reading that helps structure and integrate the narratives formed by news clips.
The inside-the-beltway journos involved in political spychology, however, have great advantage in being able to at least park, briefly, at Langley, hoof it down to Foggy Bottom, stop by the National Press Club, and refresh with ears alert in the Georgetown bars. Such jealousy may be more literary than functional, but, alas, I’m somewhere else where it’s quiet and one may read quietly and without interruption, leaving outlooks right and left to climb up the branches they know before the “Wait a minute — let’s look again” sets in.
ISIS et al may represent piracy cloaked by a pretentious delusion anchored in the Islamic discourse.
Khamenei has built a $94 billion enterprise — Setad — beneath aegis of the “Islamic Devilution” and his station: does he regard himself as a thief? Whether he does or not, the Setad story is a pirate’s story and related political repression on one hand and patronage on the other only underscore it.
Putin, imho, reminds that there is the secular version of the same thing. The Colonel President Emperor (apparent) beneath the Russian Nationalist banner handily plunders the state’s wealth in production and its productive potential while the Russian economy contracts and Russians suffer along with capital flight — or the failure of new capital to arrive.
I’m not going to post a whole (my sided) conversation, but here one may feel that BackChannels has found its theme in political science. Clearly: the despotic and kleptocratic latched together in common “malignant narcissism” are enjoying a very good ride along the Russo-Iranian crest, and God only knows, truly, how similar psychology and political psychology on the side of immense Sunni wealth and privilege may be navigating similar but perhaps different autocratic interests.
I’ve joked about the dictator “Putin-Assad-Khamenei — together they are defending political absolutism”, but recently I’ve become curious about the roles played by Putin’s FSB and Khamenei’s VEVAK in the middle east and in relation to drawing down U.S.-NATO resources and resolve.
Khamenei coming out and pointing the finger the CIA for ISIS, a huge absurdity, makes me want to point the finger back at VEVAK by way of blackmailed private money in KSA and Qatar. I know I know I know and promise not to indulge further in conspiracy-think but given the consolidation of wealth in Iran’s Setad operation, the dictator “Khamenei-Putin-Assad” might make some sense.
The public — any public — knows one thing about secrets-keeping in times of war: if the authorities aren’t talking candidly, conditions might be larger and worse than imagined.
So if ISIS has not been a Washington project, whose baby might it turn out to have been after all?
Who invested some seed money in it?
Given the criminal abuse of its own subjugated people – by theft or by hanging — and its long demonstrated indulgence in deception, deflection, and dishonesty with others, might it be . . . ?
Noam is a bright little boy who got a lot of attention in the campus-borne movements of the Vietnam Era, and he’s been loyal to causes and figures throughout at the expense of honesty and integrity.
This catches up with him as linguistics proves larger and more surprising than even himself (reference: Daniel Everett, linguistics) and as the absurdities in his position become glaring.
I had a friend suggest to me this morning that VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service, has leveraged private money in KSA and Qatar to seed ISIS and is using the same to drain US-NATO resources, overrun Sunni Islam, and then lend itself to the same behind-the-curtains methods used to get it started but in the end to take it apart, finish it off, and leave the Islamic Devilution in Iran in charge of a larger world and its wealth (look-up: “Setad, Iran”).
Well, why not?
It makes as much sense as Chomsky’s disingenuous New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left patter.
War by proxy, war planning behind the curtains, hijacked religions, hijacked states (including perhaps the United States of America by a Manchurian Obama) appear to be themes playing in the background of the Islamic Small Wars.
What are the world’s secret security services and intelligence operations doing . . . right now?
?
And is Obama addressing ISIS as an acute challenge deserving sorties while Iraqi Sunni and Shiite communities sort themselves out far enough to enlarge the scale and scope of the war or get around it (together) now?
Have the Ayatollah and the capitalist and piratical Setad umbrella become powerful enough to blackmail or otherwise manipulate pockets of private wealth in Saudi Arabia and Qatar?
BackChannels will refuse right here to pull an Alex Jones on you and fly whirlybird style into thin air, but there is the region of the hidden, private, and shameful (probably) in which politics takes place off stage and lives are destroyed in the maniacal gathering of power to an immense fragile malignancy.
Pair for entertainment: VEVAK : ISIS
There will be records, and when it’s all over some day, perhaps we will be able to read them together.
Posted to YouTube in 2011:
Dig the English accent, the cocktail lounge underscore, the glamour, and pour me a martini, stirred, never shaken.
Such a reprieve, however, may not respond to the depravity and depth of the injustice bound up in the rigging of the case in “investigation” and “law”.
10/1/2014
The only thing I want … from God, from people around the world … in any way, in any form, is I just want to bring Rayhaneh back home,” Pakravan said in Farsi, which was translated by FoxNews.com. “I wish they would come tie a rope around my neck and kill me instead, but to allow Rayhaneh to come back home.”
Is he going to wait until the news cools down over the next two weeks — and then murder Rayhaneh Jabbari?
Or will the Ayatollah count on other news overshadowing the carrying out of the kangaroo sentence?
Or might the regime issue a “Tut, tut, it was all done too much in a hurry” accompanied by exoneration?
Let the world keep a steady watch on whatever course this injustice takes and judge with heart and reason the cruelty of the trial meted to Rayhaneh Jabbari to possibly spare the reputation of a man acknowledged to have slipped her a “date rape” drug:
Jabbari, who worked as a decorator, was convicted of the 2007 fatal stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry. Jabbari, who was 19 at the time, has long maintained Sarbandi drugged her and tried to rape her after the two met at a café and she agreed to go to his office to discuss a business deal.
Sarbandi took Jabbari to a rundown building in a remote location, according to her supporters. Once there, he offered her a fruit drink which forensic tests conducted by the police determined contained a date-rape drug, according to human rights advocates.
Three of the government bodies designated by Reporters Without Borders as Enemies of the Internet are located in democracies that have traditionally claimed to respect fundamental freedoms: the Centre for Development of Telematics in India, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the United Kingdom, and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States.
The NSA and GCHQ have spied on the communications of millions of citizens including many journalists.
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