“Is he powerful, rich, happy?” Putin is powerful and wealthy, but it’s doubtful that he’s happy; divorced, alone, secretive, controlling, malignantly narcissistic, he has grandiose and self-aggrandizing ambition absent — one may take the cue from Syria’s tragedy — of sufficient empathy to produce either an appropriate humanitarian or military intervention to east the civilian suffering within the state.
The other hand: he’s cautious and shrewd.
Notably, quietly, he fairly evacuated Russian citizens from Syria, removed his navy, and reduced support to arms contract fulfillment and advisement. Doubtless he’s got Russia in for more, but he’s not reviving the Soviet. He appears to have reset his nation in the 19th Century and seems to be positioning for empire in the manner of an emperor. He has got more control of the oven in Syria than Obama or anyone else, but he’s also paying tribute to Kadyrov, more or less — and Kadyrov does as he wants (and it’s not good) in any case — so it’s a little iffy as to how long before he bugs out for Marbella or the Black Sea, but at the moment and for a while measured in years, he’s the man in control.
It’s an opinion, and we know that every whatever has one, including me, but it tells too that without producing a great humanitarian deed in association with the tragedy in Syria — in addition to disassembling those chemical weapons, thank you very much, Mr. Putin — the support given Bashar Assad the sabotage of the central liberation motif by the appearance and at least temporal success of the al-Qaeda affiliates in the state will be as ghosts through the course of the Olympic Games in Sochi.
Even if not mentioned close to the sports page or in Russian media, the Syrian Civil War will be as a phantom presence in the air.
How beautiful the games!
But keep the door closed on that other stuff associated with the producer’s will and vision.
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Kadyrov is the only leader in any of Russia’s 21 republics to have his own militia. So sure is he of his indispensability to the fragile Pax Putina in the North Caucasus that he once strode into the Kremlin wearing a tracksuit and jogging shoes. Few others would risk such a mark of disrespect to Putin.
Nineteenth-century radicals loathed Russia above all other states because it had a quasi-religious mission to preserve autocracy at home and promote reactionary regimes abroad. To true believers, the “Third Rome” of Christian tsarism defended the divinely ordained old order against the threats of liberalism, socialism, nationalism and modernity.
After reading Nick Cohen’s relay of Pat Buchanan’s words about Vladimir Putin, it turns out that I am a part of a movement characterized as the “militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”
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Ya ha!
I have found my place.
You know my lowest common denominator standards:
— Compassion | Humility | INCLUSION | Integrity —
Buchanan, if he’s now enamored of Putinism, and Putin, who would seem by the show of affection proffered in weapons deliveries and benevolent shadowing, remains committed to Bashar (The Butcher) Assad may be counted on for the grossest callousness, pride, exclusion, and — no secret where so many secret and nepotist arrangements would seem to be involved — corruption.
The same as (gasp!) Al Qaeda.
OUR problem, me hearties, me droogies, me Facebook best buddies from Riyadh to Islamabad, is that whether having to do with Assad vs. the Islamist Edge or Putin vs. Obama, it would seem similar mentalities wish to occupy the same space or shine in the same lights — not exactly atypical of “malignant narcissists” — while driving everyone else into misery or just plain out of their mirrored spheres!
THEIR problem, Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin, may have to do with escaping their own glorious selves. Of the two, Obama, being of the Christian compassionate honest humble and generously inclusive democratic and open society west, may lay claim to having done less harm in the short term than his superpower counterweight; Putin, however, would do well to look over the Assad combat doctrine and its effects on once disinterested Syrians who have by the effects of extensive bombing and indiscriminate fire been turned out of their homes or cheated of their lives while the Al Qaeda affiliates’ advance seems to have remained out of range and sight of the same.
Post-Soviet Syria was post-Soviet Putin’s to influence and transform.
Well, some, I suppose, both milk the cow and starve it until it keels over.
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In Putin, the past fights mightily with the future.
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In my own recurring themes, Putin and I might share the appreciation of what I call “19th Century Modern”, an aristocratic and noble notion reinforced by the appearance of affluence and wealth. Living in the 19th Century with 21st Century appointments and appliances seems to me pretty cool, although I’ve had to stuff my mansion into a cabin (or cottage) based in about 1,000-sq.ft. of garden apartment walk-up, and things are not looking so good for drives in the country and claret before one or another of the ever glowing electronic hearths.
Still, the situation here is 19th Century (Modern), and it’s pretty good but for the worry.
For the narcissist, reparative or malignant (guilty, I confess, of one or the other or a bit of both), there’s much to recommend it and one may bet on the intelligentsia’s buy-in, Georgian brick, ivy, tweed, and elbow patches and all.
So is the fighting about castle and keep?
It could be so, at least symbolically.
It takes a castle, a manor, a very many of them to create and sustain a great language and culture. If perhaps in his mind, his peacock charm, ambition, dreams at night, and hail fellow well met — and now and then stabbed! — President Putin has had to step back a century, the same may serve to remind of the magic of that era as well.
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It’s almost Christmas.
Winter returns tonight to my home in western Maryland — ice and snow, wool blankets and sweaters, steaming pots of tea (someone else in the family got the samovar) — so I may offer this bit of in-solidarity to my unknown Muscovy doppelganger, reasonably appointed and of good temper: let’s enjoy the show because, sooner or later, for Christianity or fashion designers, for the Jews who work harder for humanity than anyone else, and for humanity served, we’re going to have to do something about Syria and soon, and we don’t want it to be either of the two pariahs busying themselves this evening with the other’s destruction.
The two videos are not in perfect chronological order or spatial relationship, but the approximation nonetheless makes its point.
The preying on the believing by attaching monotheist faith to messianic and grandiose delusion, a part of the signal of “civilizational narcissism”, “malignant narcissism”, narcissistic political sociopathy (reference “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy”) leads to darkness.
The Jewish attitude toward others is very different, conservative and scaled down when hateful — so the Jewish people set themselves apart from what they believe isn’t so good, unless directly threatened, a defensive rather than crusading posture (reference: The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism: Robert Eisen: 9780199751471: Amazon.com: Books), and if wanting to elicit some change in others, Rabbi Kook’s advice might prevails:
“The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom.”
One may respect the “chosen” qualities of others.
One may also bring light to darkness.
The Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, believing themselves possessed of all the answers, swiftly inhibit the freedom of thought among the ranks of children.
Perhaps as a rule, autocrats and autocratic societies drain and suffocate their subjugated constituencies, which afford “narcissistic supply” to those who then enrich and aggrandize themselves without limits.
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Syria may have General Idris as one side, but the other two are on the same side even though opposed in battle.
The Assad Regime and the Al Qaeda affiliates are of the same mind — repeat: different content and rant but same psychopathology. This abstract observation may be hard to see at first but over time and with the death and displacement of millions of souls who don’t share their outlooks, the source of the conflict in the mind becomes apparent.
What to do about it?
Well, the world is failing Syria, imho, but the development and sustaining of the Syrian Civil War represents chiefly the failures of different but psychologically similar external governments, Russia and Saudi Arabia and their related political complexes, who will now be seen as backing competing autocratic-totalitarians in the Syrian theater.
Israel has confined itself to responding to some urgent humanitarian needs; the United States has fumbled on the issues — somebody in State should be tracking this blog — and has been trying to back away from the association of the anti-Assad revolution with the developing presence and power of the al Qaeda affiliates.
The deputy PM in charge of the weapons industry says Russia would remove all ‘sensitive’ production facilities from Ukraine if the association agreement with the EU is signed, and he doesn’t believe Ukraine can count on eventual EU entry anyway.
“We will not be able to place certain sensitive technology [in Ukraine], we will have to completely localize them on Russian Federation territory. This means problems connected with the future cooperation in the aircraft and space industry and many more spheres,” Dmitry Rogozin told reporters.
“One can experiment as long as one wishes by deploying non-nuclear warheads on strategic missile carriers. But one should keep in mind that if there is an attack against us, we will certainly resort to using nuclear weapons in certain situations to defend our territory and state interests,” Rogozin, the defense industry chief said on Wednesday speaking at the State Duma, the lower house.
He pointed out that this principle is enshrined in Russia’s military doctrine. Any aggressor or group of aggressors should be aware of that, he said.
German newspaper Bild wrote this weekend that Russia stationed several Iskander tactical ballistic missile systems – which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads – in its westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad, along the border with Baltic states. The paper said it obtained “secret satellite” images showing at least 10 Russian missiles close to the EU border, which were deployed over the past year.
STUTTGART, Germany — NATO’s largest war game in years, which kicked off in Poland on Saturday, will involve some 6,000 troops at locations spread out across the region over the course of nine days.
ANKARA — While the last of six Patriot anti-missile batteries are deployed in Turkey, ostensibly to protect Turkish airspace from a potential missile strike from neighboring Syria, some officials claim the primary purpose is to protect a radar that would track Iranian missile launches.
The U.S. deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey began Saturday to help the country defend against any possible threats from neighboring Syria in the throes of a civil war, AFP reported.
[Russia – Syria – Iran] | Ukraine and Eastern Europe | NATO
Syria’s pit fire would seem to have spilled over into Russia’s post-Soviet pseudo-democratic mafia-oligarch relationship with Europe: The Bear wants its buffers back (whether they like it or not).
Call it jockeying for position, political posturing, or whatnot, the world at the edge of history, i.e., the apparently still collapsing Soviet Union and the more just and friendly and expanding European melange of democratic open societies just got a lot more dangerous.
Perhaps from the start with Boris Berezovsky playing kingmaker, Putin had no intention of being the one to turn the lights out on imperialism Soviet-style. The talk has changed, perhaps: the walk? You tell me.
In this dangerous and hideous play, which may be entering a new phase, Syria’s civil war would seem to have signaled the fragility of Soviet-built post-Soviet relationships: what card had the Assad regime to play but its longstanding “thing” between Iran’s theocracy gone mad and Russia’s military-industrial trade complex?
That card has been played, indeed, and the old Syria ruined for hanging on to its yesterday.
Now Ukraine’s a kind of chip and both NATO and Russia would seem to have turned up new cards at the table, not too suddenly though but, still, one’s pushing a radar system behind missile batteries associated with the adverse Syria-Iran relationship and the other has sent out to its borderlands some trucks with missiles on their backs.
Who wants popcorn?
Stove top? Hot air? Or microwave?
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The latest professionally-agitated spectacle in Kyiv’s was spearheaded by the same Soros/Sharp/National Endowment for Democracy/CIA hydra that saw the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. This time, not only is Ukrainian President Yanukovych, but ultimately Russian President Vladimir Putin, are the targets…
Having heard the psychologist’s explanation that “This is Russia,” Stanton tried to move the conversation forward. He asked her whether she thought that Russians deserved better than a society in which people so often try to explain or excuse things by saying, “This is Russia.”
KIEV, Ukraine — The European Union on Sunday broke off talks with Ukraine on the far-reaching trade deal that protesters here have been demanding for weeks, and a top official issued a stinging, angry statement all but accusing Ukraine’s president of dissembling.
“Words & deeds of President [Viktor Yanukovych] & government regarding the Association Agreement are further & further apart. Their arguments have no grounds in reality,” he twitted on Sunday.
While the European Union insists that the door is still open for Ukraine to join the EU, President Viktor Yanukovych is walking the tightrope between appeasing the wishes of his people and keeping Russian President Vladimir Putin happy.
Mr Yanukovych had already sent his skullcrackers in once to Independence Square in Kiev, centre of the protests that erupted in November after he rejected an association agreement with the European Union, in favour of an opaque economic deal with Russia. That needless brutality brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets.
All of the conflicts BackChannels has been watching have to do with the despotic versus the democratic.
In some instances, the despotic force is sufficient to repress and silence the latent organizations and personalities arrayed against it; in others, there’s yet opportunity to assert a popular will on behalf of human dignity and human rights against mafia-style state-based machinations and privilege.
Ukrainians, of course, have just found The Bear once again climbing aboard their own back.
The “new nobility” not only have their hands in the gushing revenue stream associated with Russia’s energy industry, but they may have also their hands on the spigot, and with winter yet to begin — hard to believe this year that ice and snow have arrived so early everywhere in the northern latitudes — the same could give them the cold treatment.
A glance at the reading tells me Ukrainians owe Moscow some money too for energy already consumed. That will give Moscow some whining room in the coming negotiations.
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Joseph Stalin’s decision in 1928 to seize privately held agricultural land and transform it into collective farms caused massive hardship for all Soviet peasants. When authorities expropriated peasant grain stocks and farm animals, hunger broke out in much of the USSR. In Ukraine, where close to a million peasants actively rebelled against collectivization, such expropriations were especially severe, leading to widespread starvation that the state both refused to alleviate and purposely aggravated until millions had died and a massive crackdown on Ukrainian political, cultural, and religious elites had been completed. At the height of the Holodomor, 25,000 Ukrainians starved per day; cannibalism was rampant.
Ukrainians know well the Soviet part of the post-Soviet Russian story, and one would think it doubtful the same should now entertain a return to all of that, especially absent the cover of socialist concern that accompanied the theft.
Related: Oleh Tyahnybok – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “[You are the ones] that the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine fears most”[11] / and / “They were not afraid and we should not be afraid. They took their automatic guns on their necks and went into the woods, and fought against the Moskali, Germans, Kikes and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state.”[10]
Next Ukrainian headache: resurgent anti-Semitic eastern European nationalism.
How is it that the potentially despotic engaging the established despotic cannot recognize in themselves the same idiotic malignant ambitions?
Yanukovych backed off the agreement on the grounds that the EU was not providing adequate compensation to his economically struggling nation for potential trades losses with Russia. Russia, which for centuries controlled or exerted heavy influence on Ukraine, wants the country to join a customs union, analogous to the EU, which also includes Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The opposition says that union would effectively reconstitute the Soviet Union and remain suspicious that Yanukovych might agree to it when he meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz said it agreed with Russian gas giant Gazprom to defer payments for winter gas supplies until early 2014. With Ukraine embroiled in protests, and Europe making headway on energy diversification strategies, the move signals a tilt by Kiev back to its former Kremlin patrons.
European officials are in discussion with the IMF, the World Bank and other major financial bodies on ways of helping the ex-Soviet republic should it decide to sign the free-trade agreement with the EU after all.
Putin had threatened to respond to such a deal with economic sanctions against Ukraine, which has huge debts and unpaid gas bills outstanding with Moscow. Ukraine’s ultimate decision could be decisive to Putin’s Eurasian Union plan.
Putin’s comments made clear his continued designs on Ukraine and that “by hook or by crook” he will seek to try and drag it into the so-called Eurasian Union, his long-cherished idea “of reincarnating some semblance of the Soviet Union,” said Boris Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s ex-foreign minister.
The agreement could have clinched a tumultuous shift by the strategic former Soviet republic in the past decade toward embracing Western economic and political values. Mr. Yanukovych’s sudden decision to turn his back on the deal late last month infuriated the nation’s opposition parties and sent millions of pro-Western, pro-democracy demonstrators into the streets of Kiev.
Ukrainians today find themselves in a bind between alliance with the developing pseudo-democratic, post-Soviet, Putinist state developing in Russia, or radiating from Moscow as much of Russia has been left to suffer as well, and their humanist drift toward the compassionate and inclusive values of the open democracies of the European Union.
Stefan Meister, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr Putin had lost room for political maneourve as he entered his presidential third term since 2000. “He has isolated himself from the proactive part of society and the elite,” he said. “He has surrounded himself with hardliners from the security service who promote Russia’s “modernisation” through the country’s military-industrial complex.”
“The EU offers a token package, which is not of any interest to the Ukrainian government,” Alexei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s Parliament, told CNN’s Hala Gorani, who was sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
“That’s why Mister Yanukovych has initially rejected it,” he said. “Then all these demonstrations started with the participation of the European ministers…who were speaking on the Maidan [Kiev’s Independence Square], joining the protesters, and so on.”
No state in the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence needs reminding who has the energy supply plus a massive and vulgar army (presented in the video at the base of this post and represented by memories of its appearance in Georgia a few years ago).
In Russia, power hasn’t to do with the liberation of independent spirits and the productive energies of a people: as with its superficially mirror opposite in Islam’s mix of military and theocratic dictatorships, “political power” refers to absolute control.
In essence, the causes and the talk may be wildly different, but similar personalities construct their societies in response to their own internal needs.
Putin’s claim to moral superiority as regards the west would seem well demonstrated by Russia’s continuing and supportive relationships with both the Bashar Assad’s bomb-happy reign of terror in Syria and Ayatollah Khamenei’s iron grip (not to mention about $90 billion in personal accumulation) on Iran. Those three plus President Kadyrov would seem to be “in it” — the money, at least — together.
As much may be known to educated and web-enabled and still recently politically liberated Ukrainians who have taken to the streets braving bone-chilling cold and potentially bone-breaking state paramilitary to make their views count.
A day after a face-to-face meeting with President George W. Bush in Beijing who expressed ‘grave concern’, Mr Putin accused the U.S. of siding with Georgia by ferrying Georgian troops from Iraq to the battle zone.
‘It is a shame that some of our partners are not helping us but, essentially, are hindering us,’ said Mr Putin. ‘The very scale of this cynicism is astonishing.’
They have frequently shifted the boundary south of the previously accepted course – Mr Makhachashvili says Russian troops around Dvani were using maps dated 1921 – in effect grabbing hectares of extra land.
Moscow has said South Ossetian authorities were merely demarcating its true boundary, using Soviet-era maps.
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