29 Tuesday Nov 2016
Predictably, the Kremlin maintains that moving state-of-the art missiles into Kaliningrad is a response to American ballistic missile defenses which have been deployed in Eastern Europe. As usual, Moscow depicts all its military moves, even ones which are destabilizing to regional security, as cosmically defensive, so great is the Western threat to Russia.
Source: Why Vladimir Putin Hates Us | Observer
Relevant on BackChannels: “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation”.
27 Sunday Nov 2016
I have no fear of death now whether it comes from cancer or from a paid Russian assassin. but I do feel I have an obligation to use my experience to warn America of the dirty tricks that can be played against her. And if I have one message for my adopted country, it is this: the Cold War is not over; the new cold war is between the Russian mafia and the United States; and in this new cold war, the Russian mafia has every tool, every weapon, every intelligence asset at its disposal that the old Soviet Union had. America is facing a nation led by gangsters — gangsters who have nuclear weapons . . . .
Lunev, Stanislav and Ira Winkler. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: Russia’s highest ranking military defector reveals why Russia is more dangerous than ever. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.
” . . . and some of those weapons are actually on American soil, as I will explain” finished the ellipses left in the quotation block.
One hesitates when typing such a sentence.
At minimum, the import calls for digression.
Was Lunev’s 1999 book disinforming as regards the “suitcase bomb” question?
Or has the matter been suppressed?
Or has the asserton been just too large and scary a possibility to hang on for long without donning the tinfoil hat?
That too is a possibility as searches for a related 60 Minutes report — “The Perfect Terrorist Weapon” — produces reference online, but to get at the episode appears to involve hitting one of dozens of iffy “torrent” type (illicit share site) web addresses.
BackChannels will plead with both the legal and faint of heart on that potentially disastrous next step — and not take it.
So one may toss Lunev’s page-turning statement into the “don’t know /won’t know” bin, at least, so BackChannels and its readers may hope, for a good long time.
Less questionable: the Russian state as a “mafia state” and international mafia enterprise:
Investigators in Spain have been at the vanguard of the fight against Russian organized crime, warning fellow NATO members for years of the dangers posed by what they call state-sanctioned syndicates, an issue that’s become more acute since the conflict in Ukraine rekindled Cold War distrust.
After a briefing by Grinda, one of the prosecutors, in Madrid in 2010, U.S. officials concluded that Putin runs a “virtual mafia” state where the activities of criminal networks are indistinguishable from those of the government, according to a classified cable from the U.S. embassy in the Spanish capital that was published by WikiLeaks.
Russian security services control criminal groups and use them to do things the government “cannot acceptably do,” Grinda was cited as telling U.S. officials at the time.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/putin-allies-aided-russian-mafia-in-spain-prosecutors-say – 6/29/2016.
At the base of this post is a 14-minute trailer for a 91-minute documentary (subtitled) about Russian mafia — “Thieves by Law (Ganavim Ba Hok).”
Meyer, Josh. “Ex-Soviet Spy Testifies on Hidden Weapons.” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2000.
National Terror Alert. “Suitcase Nukes”.
Yablokov, Alexei. “Comments on Russia’s Atomic Suitcase Bombs.” Frontline, PBS, n.d.
In time, Louie and Z left the shores of the Atlantic for Zurich, Switzerland – and a far more menacing situation: A meeting with a high-ranking Russian General offering his government’s arsenal for sale.
“We’re talking long-range missiles, tanks, submarines, everything,” Z said.
The danger was driven home last week with the New York indictment of notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Boot, captured in Thailand in March. He was charged with selling weapons to a terrorist group to be used to kill Americans.
That’s hardly a scene from “The Sopranos.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/undercover-look-inside-the-russian-mob/ – 5/13/2008.
http://www.rferl.org/a/putins-mafia-statecraft/27329898.html – 10/27/2015.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/23/crimean-gangland-putin-s-seaside-mafia-state.html – 6/23/2015.
http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_security_concerns_russian_mafia_back_on_agenda7083 – 7/25/2016:
In the 1990s, the so-called “Russian Mafia” was Europe’s new nightmare, an overblown threat surging west into Europe instead of Soviet tanks. In the 2000s, it had become a cliché, the thriller-writer’s staple. Now it is back on the agenda, with serious concerns that organised crime has become a ‘fifth column’ of the Kremlin’s effort to undermine European security.
http://uatoday.tv/crime/mafia-friends-of-president-putin-wanted-in-spain-642267.html – 5/3/2016.
http://uatoday.tv/crime/seven-members-of-russian-mafia-arrested-in-spain-681260.html – 6/28/2016.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/putin-allies-aided-russian-mafia-in-spain-prosecutors-say – 6/29/2016.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/armine-sahakyan/the-export-other-countrie_b_11009200.html – 7/15/2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Lunev
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23 Wednesday Nov 2016
This thin post telegraphs in web links a few of the essentials about President Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet ultra-nationalist neo-imperial Russian project and revanche. For the viewer, it may work as a portal both into related posts on BackChannels as well as a channel out for greater web-bound curiosity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
http://www.statecraft.org.uk/research/russian-active-measures-modernised-tradition
Recently ‘Also in Media’:
Related:
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
The ROC has made billions from trading concessions granted to it by the government. It is increasingly asserting its position as the largest of the 14 self-governing Orthodox Churches and is using its political muscle in support of Putin’s aims. It’s no friend to evangelicals, especially in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, seeing them as puppets of the West.
But how has it become so powerful – and how is it using its power?
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the church received official privileges including the right to import duty-free alcohol and tobacco. In 1995, the Nikolo-Ugreshky Monastery, which is directly subordinated to the patriarchate, earned $350 million from the sale of alcohol. The patriarchate’s department of foreign church relations, which Kirill ran, earned $75 million from the sale of tobacco. But the patriarchate reported an annual budget in 1995-1996 of only $2 million. Kirill’s personal wealth was estimated by the Moscow News in 2006 to be $4 billion.
During this period, the church has been silent about genuine moral issues, such as Russia’s pervasive corruption and the indiscriminate killing of noncombatants in Chechnya. As Kirill begins his reign as patriarch, there is little reason to expect this to change.
Yakov Krotov, a liberal Russian Orthodox priest, recently compared Kirill to a “court Jew,” like Peter Shafirov, the foreign policy aide to Peter the Great. The role of the court Jew, according to Krotov, is to put a civilized face on a repressive system.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/20/putin-solzhenitsyn-kirill-russia-opinions-contributors_orthodox_church.html – 2/20/2009.
http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
https://conflict-backchannels.com/library/russian-section/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
http://www.interpretermag.com/russia-the-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/
http://www.rferl.org/a/soviet-islamist-terrorism-israel-america-disinformation-pacepa/25034290.html
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
In effect, Moscow, with its penchant for total control, bears responsibility for using the Palestinian refugees to block western democratic and open society (with free press) expansion while also milking the world under the guise of a good deed.
Moscow (Bogdanov) has met with PFLP in recent years (November 2014) and continues to refuse to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization.
In Syria, and keeping with its “total control” outlook, it appears that Assad himself incubated ISIL as an element that could be used to blackmail and goad the west.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/
Examine, query, test each URL. As a post on Facebook, the cited URLs taken together tell a story about Putin’s Soviet / post-Soviet transformation of Russia into an ultra-nationalist neo-imperial dictatorship.
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22 Tuesday Nov 2016
Tags
anti-Semtism, Information analysis, Keith Ellison, political psychology, Soviet Era Influence in Contemporary Politics
Ellison stories speak to his relationships with CAIR, ISNA, Farrakhan, and others who have either articulated anti-Semitic and racist positions, especially Farakhan, or have been associated with questionable organizations, as for example CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
However . . . let the man speak.
In our online lives in the information ocean, all have been subject to surrounding currents and related choices in content selection. As I have had some time and understand that few have that luxury — and I don’t really have it (although I’m available for less public research tasking) — it may help at times to overview information about a subject and its tributaries. With that in mind, here also is an article about a 2016 Muslim Student Association (MSA, and in Minnesota) decision to REJECT BDS and anti-Semitic cant in its campus work.
http://www.mnrepublic.com/msa-avoids-divestment-and-anti-semitism-arguments/ – 3/8/2016.
Of course, there’s a slew of articles that analyze Keith Ellison’s leanings quite differently.
I may suggest that in the way of “reparative narcissists”, that their joining or including movements, organizations, or personalities with histories of discomfiting views — look up Farrakhan’s assistant Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and listen to his rant for a few minutes — intends drawing the same away from hate and violence because that is the character of a repairing personality.
Let the politician work — or even work his magic.
Here are a few “fast links” to opinions about politician and how he’s been seen in several ranks, especially the conservative and Jewish political communities.
BackChannels feels that if you listen to Keith Ellison in action and directly — and you have been informed of the role of the Soviet Union in forming up the PLO — then you understand something new about the generation of rhetoric in the politics of the middle east conflict and perhaps the promotion of internecine Jewish-Muslim conflict in the United States.
Simon Wiesenthal Center. “SWC: Congressman Ellison as DNC Chair is Wrong Signal at Wrong Time.” n.d.
http://www.meforum.org/2756/keith-ellison-stealth-jihad – September 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Ellison
Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad’s 1993 Kean College Speech – 1:45:05 – Posted to YouTube August 29, 2014. Khalid Abdul Muhammad had been an assistant to Louis Farrakhan, and, apparently, an angry one to the end.
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19 Saturday Nov 2016
Tags
21st Century Neo-Feudalism, middle east conflict, Moscow's revanche, Moscow-Tehran axis, Palestinian KGB
President Barack Obama is not the official who needs to be “outflanked” — nor is President Elect Donald J. Trump.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
Perhaps Putin’s Moscow has promoted “anti- anti-Semitism” and good relations with Israel to continue to sustain its plundering of the middle east conflict.
Note that in recent years, Moscow’s Mikhail Bogdanov has met with PFLP in Moscow (November 2014 — an easy look-up today); that the state refuses to condemn either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations; the state has not only cooperated fully with Tehran in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s hideous persecution of all who refuse to love him in Syria but has itself joined in the barbarism!
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/18/syria-russias-barbarism-the-hospitals/
Under President Putin’s hands, Moscow has been transformed from a once promising democracy into a revived “security state” along familiar old ultra-nationalist lines.
While Israeli conservatives and nationalists have been taking aim at Obama’s approach to managing conflict, the driver of the same — and for many years! — has practically escaped notice!
Soviet Moscow produce a long record of complicity and support for terrorism worldwide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
Considering how Putin has chosen to revive Russia to this date 25 years past the dissolve of the Soviet Union (December 1991), what makes Israelis think that Moscow today remains clear of the set of political elements continuing to bear down on its own destruction?
Moscow may yet leave Syria to Assad, but the string of bombings of hospitals, if not other war crimes, may have closed the door on rapprochement, either in fact or in somebody’s head or both.
Inspiration for the response:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19781 – 11/17/2016 — Dr. Martin Sherman’s weekly “Into the Fray” column, this one titled, “Obama unplugged: What to do?”
BackChannels may soon sum its observations in a list of related links involving the defunct Soviet Union and the present corrupt ultra-nationalist dictatorship that in earlier years appeared on the path toward democracy and political modernization. Instead, and with what has been put on display in Syria — i.e., a medieval and totalitarian theater of politics and war, complete with “The Terrorists” — Russia’s leadership appears to have chosen to in some way relive the 1930s and to perhaps approach the 1940s.
BackChannels means not to allay a change in course but, naturally, to in fact suggest a course correction be made.
Reuters. “In Crimea, Russia signals military resolve with new and revamped bases.” November 1, 2016.
Sputnik. “Combat Readiness of Utes Missile Systems in Crimea Confirmed by Launches.” November 19, 2016. Note: the article reports a P-35 missile launch (NATO name “SS-N-3a), but BackChannels sees no major or western general media confirmation at this posting).
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19 Saturday Nov 2016
Tags
Arab-Jewish relations, disinformation, Israel, kleptocracy, middle east conflict, Moscow-Tehran, Palestinian KGB, Soviet post-Soviet, terrorism
Well, the Jews are not “fighting the Arab World” — there’s a kind of defamation in that statement.
Israelis are defending themselves from those who wish to annihilate them — and considering who has been friendly toward and paying for Hamas and Hezbollah, well, gosh, it’s just not the Arab world after all.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
Moscow-Tehran as an axis appears to want to maintain a common interest in positively medieval political absolutism. Somebody has learned how to make a lot of money (for themselves, their cronies, their lackeys, and their tools) that way.
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1
http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/
Of course the Arab and Muslim worlds have within them strong anti-Semitic currents, but let’s go back to the 1920s and endemic 19th Century Russian anti-Semitism and the echoes of other medieval anti-Semitism, the same that compelled Herschel and others to entertain the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Israel, and come forward to three distinct aspects in the character of the 1920s: Stalin’s installment in power in Russia as the dominant state in the Soviet Union; the development in the universities of an intellectual path leading to Nazism; and the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928).
All mere coincidence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/140328/timmerman-disinformation – 8/7/2013.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/the_czars_and_the_jews/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/protocols.html
The mercurial, paranoid seventy-four-year-old tyrant was certainly capable of ordering the mass deportations. During the Second World War, he removed Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, ethnic Germans, and Crimean Tatars from their homelands—more than two million Soviet citizens in all. He was no novice, either, when it came to purges and show trials. In the Pravda report, most of the accused “murderers in white smocks” were identified as Jewish and agents of the U.S. and Israel. There were further arrests of Soviet Jews, exemplars of “national and racist chauvinism.” Jews were dismissed from their jobs. They were insulted on the streets, in shops, and on public transportation, according to Arno Lustiger, author of “Stalin and the Jews.”
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/imagining-stalins-plot-to-exile-the-jews – 2/1/2016.
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18 Friday Nov 2016
Tags
Damascus and ISIL, political gaslighting, political theater of the real, realpolitik, Russia, Russia bombing Syrian hospitals, Russian barbarism, Syria
The last children’s hospital in besieged Aleppo has suspended operations after a brutal “double-tap” bombing.
A wave of airstrikes targeted medics in the rebel-held eastern district as they treated dozens of children who had been hit with chemical attacks.
Doctors and patients fled to the basement as more than 20 barrel bombs pounded the centre on Wednesday morning.
But less than 48 hours later two missiles tore through the unit as staff carried-out a clean-up operation.
Video footage shows the terrifying moment nurses pulled new-born babies from their incubators and fought their way through the dust and debris in search of safety.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/last-childrens-hospital-aleppo-forced-9293119 – 11/19/2016.
The Independent Doctors Association, a medical group, said barrel bomb attacks had damaged two facilities it supports in eastern Aleppo — the children’s hospital and the only bloodbank in the area.
Medical facilities have regularly been hit, and sometimes completely destroyed, in the government’s fight against rebels, though Damascus and Moscow deny they target hospitals.
Doctors Without Borders said the children’s hospital and a specialized surgical hospital were hit by Wednesday’s strikes.
“Hospital staff managed to move children – including prematurely born babies – from cots and incubators to the basement of the building in order to shelter them from the bombing,” said the aid group, which sponsors both hospitals.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-without-borders-hospitals-airstrikes-syria-aleppo/ – 11/17/2016.
https://news.vice.com/article/bombs-fall-on-aleppos-largest-hospital-as-russia-sends-more-warplanes-to-syria – 10/1/2016.
“You cannot imagine what we see every day: children who are coming to us as body parts. We collect the body parts and wrap them in shrouds and bury them,” said Bara’a, a nurse at one of the affected hospitals, who was present during the bombings.
“Tell the world to wake up, to wake their consciences. Where are you? When Palestine was being destroyed everyone got involved. Why are Syria’s children being forgotten? Nobody is doing anything to reduce this suffering.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/aleppo-two-hospitals-bombed-out-of-service-syria-airstrikes – 9/28/2016.
Monday saw yet another targeted strike in Syria. Not against Isis or against anyone threatening. No, the latest attack was another deplorable airstrike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital that was providing vital medical care to the region surrounding Maarat al-Numan.
According to a monitoring group in the area, the attack resulted in more than nine people’s deaths – including one child’s – and was carried out by Russian forces. Only two days earlier they had agreed to limit hostilities in Syria.
This was no accident. Four rockets hit the hospital: it was a targeted attack, and a cold-blooded one too.
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/ – 9/8/2015.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/if-assad-is-not-forced-out-isis-never-will-be-a6759251.html – 12/3/2015.
Of the 470,000 Syrians who have been killed in this terrible war, the overwhelming majority have been killed by Assad and his allies, and that’s even truer of the civilian casualties. The United Nations in February concluded that the Assad regime had violated the laws of war in six distinct ways and committed systematized atrocities — crimes against humanity — in seven separate categories, including rape and extermination. There is no cruelty IS has committed, from sexual violence to immolation, that the regime has not at least matched and usually exceeded.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/we-should-not-celebrate-bashar-al-assads-victory-over-isis-palmyra-1552077 – 3/29/2016.
In relation to “Medieval Political Absolutism” and “Malignant Narcissism“, consider calling what Moscow-Damascus-Tehran have going in Syria the worst case of “Political Gaslighting” in history.
Readers who have made it this far with BackChannels KNOW that Assad incubated ISIL — to blackmail the west; to goad the west with refugees and a related terrorist threat; and to serve as a foil for demonstrating the latest and greatest out of Moscow’s updated military boom-boom: with Moscow central to the project, Syria has been made a win-win-win for each dictator’s ambitions and image.
BackChannels asks (along with Ukrainians) whether greater American cooperation (appeasement) with “Moscow-Tehran” will not herald the end of meaningful democracy and freedom worldwide.
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18 Friday Nov 2016
“Russia is hitting the groups that we are backing.”
This is absolutely right — and here’s why:
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/12/ftac-how-isil-developed/
Assad incubated the al-Qaeda types all the way to ISIL!
And he did exactly by preferring other strategies and targets — noncombatants, including the sniping of pregnant women, and, of course western-leaning Free Syrian Army (FSA) and others in the field. Providing leeway provided room for ISIL to develop and play the convenient foil in “Assad vs The Terrorists”.
Please don’t believe me, but rather check out the significance of “Russia is hitting the groups that we are backing” by using and questioning the same references and checking them as well.
I would beg conservatives not to ennoble Russian (Putin-Assad-Khamenei) barbarism in Syria.
Some reminders:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/05/19/how-putin-became-president/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
Have conservatives been duped (along with everyone else) by Putin’s changing postures over time?
It’s a question worth asking this day.
Posted by Gladbecker, November 12, 2016.
Above — and within the “awesome conversation” — the inspiration for this post.
Beneath — what Assad, as flanked by Putin and Khamenei, have done to Syria in the “cause” of medieval political absolutism.
Posted by Muhammed Al Mousa, September 4, 2016.
BackChannels believes American and Israeli and other conservatives have been duped by Putin and the arc of a narrative that began 25 years ago with the dissolving of the Soviet Union and the initial touting of capitalism and democracy that produced confidence in Putin as a leader who would bring order and stability to Russia while producing a civil and free society.
Instead, President Putin has been busy reproducing the Soviet-style “security state”, demonstrating a complete lack of conscience in the engineering of the Syrian Conflict, and, in general, establishing legitimacy for “political absolutism” and barbarism.
In essence, Putin represents the rule of the strong as more powerful than the rule of law, and, ironically, the conservative “new nationalists” of the open democracies — those who should be fully supporting the rule-of-law and other classically liberal and western values — appear to be helping him do it.
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BackChannels 