Even outlined, there’s a lot to know — but the Palestinians today should know it too: Moscow and its cronies have made good use of them, i.e., made a lot of money skimming off the money thrown into the middle east conflict.
If you get the chance to read about Moscow / Russia and anti-Semitism and the middle east, take the time. The conflict will look very different and the criminal motivations for it all the more clear.
For those benefiting financially and socially from programs associated with a sustained “middle east conflict”, the resolving of the same may spell “nakba” – a sudden loss in institutional and personal organization. Not only has the middle east conflict turned out its share of profiting millionaires and billionaires, it has provided Far Left (mostly) and some Far Right entities a good reason for getting up in the morning.
BackChannels wonders what readers think: should the Middle East Conflict be regarded as a necessary evil, a useful grinder between “eastern” and “western” — despotic and democratic — political interests?
Or should it be resolved before another generation of Palestinians — given 70 years of Arab-driven isolation and The Preoccupation With Israel, they may now be a People even though it remains unclear which jailer, Hamas or the PLO, may best exploit them — suffocates beneath the will of its Moscow trained or aided handlers?
Note that while Moscow turned briefly westward, President Putin has revived the state as an ultra-nationalist neo-imperial enterprise with its barbarism on display in both Syria and Ukraine. As such, it has sustained its relationships with other autocratic and kleptocratic entities, including at the highest level Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny and Ayatollah Khamenei’s brutal theocracy — and then at lower levels relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP, if not others.
Beyond talk, what have dictators ever done for their people?
Men of honor?
Well, they have made themselves powerful millionaires and billionaires, but they have taken from the mass of their own people their dignity and independence.
Medieval Political Absolutism v Modern Democratic and Checked Distribution of Power
♠
Medieval Dissimulation v Modern Integrity
♠
President Putin’s feudal Moscow has set the new low standard for the obliteration of human conscience, empathy, and reason. His state has defied the open democracies of the west by perverting their politics into a polarized circus with the help of “Allahu Akbar Terrorism”, and to the extent that the open democracies have turned reflexively toward Right / Far Right Nationalism, that may be the measure of Putin’s success with the installing of a new feudalism in the once free and secure states of the post-WWII political order.
President Trump’s Drift Toward Feudalism
Posted by YNN February 16, 2017.
To be asked of President Trump: Still campaigning? Still defensive? Still bending the questions to yourself? Still missing policy?
Glaringly clear in the above video clip (now making rounds the in the “fake” — major, established, institutional, high-integrity — media, e.g., CNN’s take as alluded to in the above video) is President Trump’s refusal to offer assurance to Americans regarding the Jewish Community and with it the general security of America’s minority communities (that’s how equality works) or to offer insight into related domestic security policy.
To be asked of you: how far back toward feudalism — the rule of the strong, not the rule of law; the law of the absolute, not the law of the compassionate and reasoning; the way of the criminal in the death of conscience and consideration for others, not the way of the righteous in the embrace of human consciousness and conscience and related promotion of care for the dignity, freedom, and security of others — do you now wish to travel on your journey into the future?
What part of the civilizational past — absolutism, barbarism, caprice in the possession and application of political power — should we wish today to have looming before us?
Islam
Those who believe they have been fighting Islam have been fighting the medieval signatures of the religion, e.g., the tirades against the infidel; the differentiation between believers and unbelievers; the subjugating of Christians and Jews to Muslim political will; and a reprehensible raft of barbaric punishments (like “contralateral amputation” for thievery) and repugnant misogynist and rigged legal precepts.
Should you happen to be Muslim bent on the destruction of Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian post-Enlightenment western civilization and its now representative democracies, for how long should you wish to wallow in the dismal blood-soaked pools of the feudal past?
And is feudalism the best you can do?
In BackChannels opinion, it is no accident that Moscow, Hezbollah, and Hamas (and Moscow and the New Nationalists — for a start: Erdogan, Le Pen, Orban, perhaps Trump — appear to have a relationship plus stakes in shared authoritarian narcissistic psychology.
To only the simple minded should it appear that the Ummah of Islam presents a unique destructive challenge to the modern world when in fact it is the entire feudal assembly of autocratic regimes — never forget what applies to dictatorships worldwide: “Different Talks — Same Walk!” — that serve to undermine the naturally progressive (and progressing) modern democracies of the world.
Various of the world’s Muslim-majority states have suffered mightily themselves from Islamist attacks. Pakistan especially has had to weather mass murdering attacks against its Frontier Corp and other military targets, including an elementary school, also against numerous mosques, countless businesses, and tribal organizations. These days, one may find at least one article 🙂 like this one in Pakistan’s premier defense publication:
Call it a start or look for more article like it (for the sake of focus on this post, BackChannels will demur on the topic of Muslim states in or entering a transition toward a more globally cooperative peace and prosperity).
Medieval Signal: Anti-Semitism
On the left sidebar of this blog, BackChannels maintains a statement about anti-Semitism:
Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner’s own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
There are many tropes today but here favored among them and in relation to the tension between the feudal world and the modern one, this one applies well: “What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews”.
Here’s another example, which BackChannels may have to retract but will dare the reprinting because the message is so applicable to understanding the barbarism of the feudal mode and the role played by “authoritarian” leaders — dictators in fact or resemblance, essentially — in bringing that excess of egotism and idolatry to full and cruel realization.
In the feudal mode, one may like and defend the Jews — see BackChannels on Putin’s “anti- anti-Semitism” — or excoriate the Jews (revisit Moscow’s relationships with Hamas, Hezbollah, Tehran), but the main thing is that the Jews be separated from others and deemed useful (usually because they’re perceived as being good with money for the realm of interest, or because they’re easy — and considered lucrative — targets for plunder and murder).
Feudalism and Rebellion
What soul not directly profiting from feudal (and unconscionable) behavior in any given institution would fail to rebel — or, worse, fail in spirit — against the iron fist of a modern fascism?
For that, installing conflicts around the world for the benefit of one’s own Big Defense Economy might turn out a great business!
Russia is growing its military budget by roughly $10 billion next year, even as tumbling oil prices and sanctions from Europe and the United States will see Moscow slash its welfare spending by $6 billion in 2017, the Gazeta.ru news website reported Tuesday, citing a government source.
The Kremlin announced Monday it would decrease its welfare spending from $210 billion to $203 billion dollars. Alexandra Suslina, an economic analyst, said Russia has made defense and social spending its priorities, while all other spending would receive “whatever is leftover,” the Moscow Times reported.
Defense aside, feudalism dampens the spirit for creating, purchasing, living. The state, or the corrupt and powerful of the state, may take all of whatever one has created.
As much related to mafia, then state mafia, and related skimming or “take” has damped capital investment in Russia while for many years also adding to the encouragement of capital flight. The too centralized a state and its power plus the “kleptocrat” at the controls ruins the exuberance produced by freedom and the concomitant dreaming and effort that produces cool and desirable new everything.
For souls who may come to believe — or worse, know — the “fix is in”, how great may be their effort to swing into the marketplaces confident in their own powers and the promise of rewards?
For the nominally Communist Soviet Union, methods had to be produced to keep people watched and inside the state (talk about an “open air prison”!) and in today’s uncertain ultra-nationalist imperial Russian Federation, something similar may be noted in the immense poverty spreading through a region with ample natural resources for producing basic industries and an affluent middle class throughout.
All that has gone wrong?
Idolatry of another “Great Leader” bent on looking good — more: heroic! — in state-controlled / state-inhibited press.
Additional Reference
What follows: excerpts or remarks related to the “charms” of feudal authoritarian control (of “the masses”).
At present, the authoritarianism business is booming. According to the Human Rights Foundation’s research, the citizens of 94 countries suffer under non-democratic regimes, meaning that 3.97 billion people are currently controlled by tyrants, absolute monarchs, military juntas or competitive authoritarians. That’s 53 percent of the world’s population. Statistically, then, authoritarianism is one of the largest — if not the largest — challenges facing humanity.
POPULIST parties of both right and left, many pro-Russian, did well in last May’s European elections, taking between them a quarter of the seats. This has raised fears of a coherent pro-Russian block forming in Strasbourg.
In Greece, the now-ruling radical-left Syriza party leans towards Russia. On February 11th Nikos Kotzias, the new foreign minister, went to Moscow—his first visit to a foreign capital outside the European Union. Syriza is cool on sanctions against Russia, and opposed to expanding them. Another left-wing, broadly pro-Russian upstart is Podemos in Spain, which leads in the polls. Its leader has accused the West of double standards in dealing with Russia.
… As the Kremlin has spearheaded anti-gay and anti-abortion legislation, and as Putin has made moves to formalize the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, so, too, have myriad members of far-right social conservative movements in the United States praised Putinist policy. Thankfully, such linkages have seen further coverage than the relations between the “alt-right” and secessionists — see, for instance, research from the University of South Florida’s Christopher Stroop — but it remains worth noting a few highlights of this relationship. For instance, according to Bryan Fischer, one of the most well-known faces of American Christian fundamentalism, Putin is the “lion of Christianity.” Paleoconservative politician Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, has alluded that God may be on Putin’s side. And Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and perhaps America’s foremost remaining televangelist, recently visited Russia to praise Putin for remaining “steadfastly against the rising homosexual agenda” in Russia.
This tripartite blend, of white nationalists, of secessionists, of social conservatives, have all formed some of the primary bulwarks of the Trump campaign over the past few months, and there is little reason to believe they’ll refrain from supporting Trumpian policies moving forward. Moreover, all three have seen their leading proponents — those within the “alt-right,” most especially — construct rhetorical, organizational, and financial links with the Kremlin and Kremlin-financed groups over the past two years.
Widely referred to as Putin’s Rasputin, Dugin has also elaborated a Russian version of Manifest Destiny known as Eurasianism. Eurasianism is a totalitarian political ideology that “rejects the view that Russia is on the periphery of Europe, and on the contrary interprets the country’s geographic location as grounds for a kind of messianic ‘third way’,” according to a report released by the Wilson Center.
Aleksandr Dugin is a radical, Trump supporting, self-proclaimed philosopher from Russia. Traditionalism and cultural purity are two of his most valued philosophical tenets. And while his influence may be overstated in Russia, his ideology has infiltrated white nationalist circles in the United States and parts of Europe.
At a security conference in Munich on Friday, Mr. Poroshenko warned the West against “appeasement” of Russia, and some American experts say offering Russia any alternative to a two-year-old international agreement on Ukraine would be a mistake. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals about the conflict in Ukraine.
But given Mr. Trump’s praise for Mr. Putin, John Herbst, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, said he feared the new president might be too eager to mend relations with Russia at Ukraine’s expense — potentially with a plan like Mr. Artemenko’s.
On Tuesday the Anne Frank Center released a statement denouncing Trump’s response to the anti-Semitic string of attacks as inadequate.
“The President’s sudden acknowledgment of Anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” the statement said. “His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record. Make no mistake: The Anti-Semitism coming out of this Administration is the worst we have seen from any Administration. The White House repeatedly refused to mention Jews in its Holocaust remembrance, and had the audacity to take offense when the world pointed out the ramifications of Holocaust denial. And it was only yesterday, President’s Day, that Jewish Community Centers across the nation received bomb threats, and the President said absolutely nothing. When President Trump responds to Anti-Semitism proactively and in real time, and without pleas and pressure, that’s when we’ll be able to say this president has turned a corner. This is not that moment.”
Where feudalism appears as though it might prevail, those invested in their most parochial definitions of culture — x gender x race x religion — take license to express views congruent with their view of power.
Our world has come to naturally combine states founded on ethnolinguistic traditions (our inventory stands below 7,000 living languages with several lost to disuse annually), and most have come to recognize the legitimacy of that course, with the existence of accommodating but still assertive mixed states. Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, Pashtun, and Russians have coherence in legacies far predating the uptake of Christianity or Islam, and one may wish for each such some more peaceful survival and co-evolution in the world. The English — the British Empire and the surviving Crown System states — have taken a more heterogeneous course founded in “modern” or more recently established post-Enlightenment ideals and values.
Moscow begs to object, but in deeply hypocritical fashion, and often criminal, it cuts deals before the immense force of “realpolitik”. Kadyrov, Moscow’s tribal anchor for Chechnya, has validated honor killing and imposed (I think) the wearing of traditional “Islamic” dress in his state. The authoritarian minerets-are-our-helmets Erdogan needs little description as regards his sense of mission. And Mahmoud Abbas . . . alas, KGB — he doesn’t represent “The Palestinians”: he represents political absolutism.
In our lovely all-mixed-up democratic estate, the “absolutists” whom I conflate with “malignant narcissists” appear to have similar ideas about their exceptional character in the history of the world.
The mention of a white supremacist organization serves as a topic starter. The conversational partner wanted to know whether the same related to Russian ultra-nationalism.
Historically, Moscow has devoted itself to managing political perception domestically (thank George Orwell for the parables) and producing political influence in its target states. The depth of the totalitarianism is what strikes us, but other aspects of the state’s diplomacy seem within bounds until one starts looking into 20th Century intellectual and political history.
Today, “Moscow” represents the ultra-nationalist neo-imperial version of KGB-style political expression. It loves conservatives! And does so because it may helped create the same using the same methods with the addition of the possible manipulation of “Allahu Akbar Attacks”, for each one of those has induced a greater patriotic nationalist response!
I hedge but a little to leave it to others to connect a few more dots.
Why conservatives?
Feudalism.
The divisions formed by the urging to demonize one’s opponents and idolize one’s hero conforms exactly to the medieval mode (and for my conservative readers, our impression of Muhammad’s medieval Islam) encouraged by President Putin’s architecture of power in Moscow.
Where Trump may do no wrong and the “Libtard” Left and Far Left have nothing to offer beyond their cries of outrage (over every little thing!) — and Trump, his plutocratic business class, and the host of “Right Wing Nuts” and, now, “Alt-Right” (White Supremacists) may do nothing good for the country — we may have a “Brown” vs “Red-Green” national politics bent out of shape by foreign influence and manipulation or simple contagion.
The failing @nytimes writes total fiction concerning me. They have gotten it wrong for two years, and now are making up stories & sources!
Not only has President Trump today a critical issue continuing to develop over Credibility, Integrity, and Trust (CIT), but his followers do as well.
For the term “lamestream media” (Red State has done the etymology) to pervert to a general smear employed by Far Right media to throw doubt on traditionally highest integrity reporting is one thing: however, to have then convinced a large portion of the American population that it cannot generally trust reportage in The New York Times (or Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, etc.), that is quite another — and pretty much what Moscow would enjoy if it could have only centrally controlled the process of confusing and obliterating the critical reading and reasoning facility of so many American minds.
On that, BackChannels repeats but a little differently with the employment of the passive voice: it may have been known that every “Allahu Akbar Attack” would induce a patriotic nationalist response!
Add the reaction to the vaunted threat posed by refugees from Muslim-majority states, especially Syria, and what illness do Moscow’s target states develop?
Xenophobia!
(Regarding Assad’s indirect engineering and incubation of ISIL as an ideal political tool — a goad for blackmailing the west; a useful foil for demonstrating Moscow’s latest military technology — Moscow’s defense sales have risen on such demonstrations; and in the end the best of enemies prepared for vanquishing — how glorious!): https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/09/syria-assad-isil-background/)
Yo, bro’! Get the picture as President Putin’s Moscow might wish you to get it, albeit without knowing quite so much?
Marine Le Pen appears to represent the French national soul — but with a crooked grin or mouth; President Trump’s own surreal first week and the start of another needs no rehashing here; Viktor Orban has fashioned himself as another palace-building, well palace refurbishing, autocrat; and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political repression and Islamist expression have ditched EU accession and imperiled the NATO arrangement in Turkey.
BackChannels readers will find the piece in several forms around the web as it has caught the fancy of partisans of various stripe.
It might be fund to annotate each of the 45 remarks (anyone want to write the paycheck?), for each appears to resonate today with two egregious large movements in east-west politics: Putin’s politically absolute position as the leader of a now ulra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian state and, sigh, the American Far Right’s penchant for mirroring Moscow with a correspondingly stiff accusation.
On the reading of Skousen’s book — still in print and ever popular! — BackChannels feels overstocked, underfunded, and out of shelf space.
The bookends of Horseshoe Theory: strident communism and socialism on the Left | rabid libertarian fascism on the Right: may God visit the pox on both their houses.
BackChannels has reset the layout to suit the medium. Forgive any awkward typographica spacing for a while (the editor’s ageing).
Current Communist Goals EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America. At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen: [From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]
CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS
U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a
demonstration of moral strength.
Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless
of whether or not items could be used for war.
Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise
in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed
to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand
that it be set up ‘as a one-world government with its own Independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
Do away with all loyalty oaths.
Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current
Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Gain control of all student newspapers.
Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy making positions.
Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness,
repulsive, meaningless art.”
Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity
in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit
the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression n the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Discredit the America Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of
step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American
history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more
emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture-education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist
apparatus.
Eliminate the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.
Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all
behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of
gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents.
Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence
of parents.
Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of
the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self government.
Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World
Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and Individuals alike.
After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an “exemplar of the far-right ultras.”[17] Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council[4] snubbed him out of fear that his controversial views would hurt the credibility of the conservative movement. Skousen used Birch Society magazines as source and reference material,[7] and was pictured on the cover of its magazine, American Interest. Although he was never officially a member of the organization, he was a member of its speakers’ bureau and lectured at John Birch Society events throughout the United States for many years. A 1962 FBI memo described Skousen as affiliating with an “extreme right-wing” group which was promoting “anticommunism for obvious financial purposes”.[4] Skousen authored a pamphlet titled The Communist Attack on the John Birch Society, characterizing criticism of the Society as incipient communism.[12]
KGB –> Arafat + PLO –> MEC as a kleptocratic device for those in with Moscow : UNRWA, political repression of the Palestinian community, financial exploitation of the same + “noble” sacrifice of the same against Israel –> PLO/PA millionaires and billionaires, especially Khaled Mashaal. The conflict to come in 1948 was a racket from the start. When the focus shifts from Arabs and Arab Regimes — although they certainly do deserve attention! — to Moscow, things may start to shift. Moscow has goofed in its loose alliance with Tehran and the use of Hezbollah to fight for Assad’s despotism. Somehow that rift — or coming rift — will produce greater divisions, for all have been united mainly by dictatorship and the hatred of the west. Today: Moscow’s limping into the New Year, disinterested in peace in Syria, and unable to advance — or just holding off — in Ukraine.
In any case, there’s the whole story behind Sarsour and the bogus Palestinian Solidarity movement and all of its bought-off, disinformed, and manipulated cousins.
“These leaks are obviously fake,” said President Putin, but then he was to follow with this assertion: “He was just a businessman, one of America’s wealthy men. Does anybody really think that our intelligence services chase every American billionaire?”
Who said anything about “every American billionaire”?
In this next 10-minute or so video, Samantha Power offers some useful advice:
Posted to YouTube by PBS NewsHour, January 17, 2017.
Perhaps BackChannels is not to be trusted . . . well, there’s all of this (and much, much more) for obtaining background on today’s immediate “east-west” politics: “The Russian Section” (of the BC library). For a primer on the cynicism now attaching to Putin’s Moscow enterprise, readers may shuttle over to “Moscow’s Rules“, a primer.
Senior Justice Writer for The New York Daily News has had the following posted to his Facebook page since January 11, 2017:
I want you to view this video from 4 years ago in 2013 in light of recent events.
In it, Trump calmly, cooly, and confidently states that he has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. Then, it gets very weird. Trump then confidently states that Putin is following his every move, was likely even interested in the conversation they were having, and would likely be watching it later.
How did Trump know all of that?
See, this was off of the campaign trail, long before Trump announced his intentions to run. This was before he felt the pressure to say 6 different times “I don’t know Putin” and “I don’t know anything about Putin.”
This seems to be a clearer version of the truth. What’s going on here?
Posted by Shaun King on Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Russia manages to compete with even the most war-ravaged countries.In 2013, for instance, 39,800 Russian citizens applied to the governments of 44 developed countries (37,000 of them to EU countries). This put Russia in second place after Syria among countries with the greatest number of applicants for political asylum (the last time this happened was in 2007).
“I do not have any choice. I cannot go back to Russia right now. I need to stay till … well … as long as Putin is President of Russia, nothing will change in Chechnya” . . . Now he is taking part in a year-long integration programme that gives refugees time to learn Polish, find a place to live, a job, and to integrate themselves into Polish society.
A former employee of the Kadyrov government, Abdullah says he was beaten twice by the authorities in Grozny for refusing to join Chechen volunteers fighting alongside Moscow-backed rebels in Ukraine’s breakaway regions and for giving information to human rights groups. He is convinced that remaining in Brest presents an increasing danger to his life.
Before parliamentary elections in Russia this month, Human Rights Watch accused Kadyrov of attempting to build a “tyranny” within Chechnya. A 70-page report entitled Like Walking a Minefield says that the Chechen strongman has used his nearly decade-long tenure to eradicate all forms of criticism and political dissent.
BackChannels 