Because our Twittering may involve ordinary souls surrounded by the extraordinary and off-the-hook circumstances of war, I’ve declined to cite the Tweet’s address for months and years to come. Nonetheless, the reader gets the point: the “#Tyrant” refers to Putin who has in General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo a partner in crime equally ruthless and without conscience–and right now, and for Putin’s benefit, he’s ripping off the #SudanesePeople’s gold by the hour.
I’ve no idea whether General Burhan has the internal flexibility and fortitude x muscle x political power to shut down Hemedti’s off-the-books and Wagner-defended mining business, a revenue stream grossly circumventing western sanctions, but the step would seem one helpful to Sudan’s future as well as one certain to heighten his stature as a potential popular and eventually legitimate (elected) head of state.
“During our history, the armed forces have supported dictatorial governments, and we want to put an end to that,” al-Burhan, a career soldier during former President Omar al-Bashir’s three-decade rule, said in a speech to soldiers on Sunday.
Sudan’s General Dagalo Hemeti has had both long-standing family interests in Sudan’s gold trade, and he has had for some time arrangements with Russian President Vladimir Putin involving Wagner Group oversight of smuggled shipments to Russia that bypass western sanctions and help fund Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The west’s hunkering down, bleating about democracy, and pleading for some cessation in violence seems old news as well.
So it goes here for the Sudanese People and others watching the struggles of ordinary good people against thieves taking advantage of their innocence to rob them of their birthright, their dignity, and their humanity. In fact, having displaced the dictator and war criminal Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese have helped into power, in the course of their powerlessness, two dictators in return, both of them former subordinates to al-Bashir. Of the two, Hemeti may have the more powerful relationship with Putin as he flies off-the-books gold to Russia’s dictator and serves as an envoy — for Putin, a diplomatic channel — to Saudi power as well.
Neither Russians nor Sudanese appear to have today a champion whose interests as well as psychology and temperament reside with them. The present three “strongmen”– al-Burhan, Hemeti, and Putin– appear to represent the evil that enriches and aggrandizes itself while lying without conscience to the nation each purports to represent.
Russia’s meddling in Sudan’s gold began in earnest in 2014 after its invasion of Crimea prompted a slew of Western sanctions. Gold shipments proved an effective way of accumulating and transferring wealth, bolstering Russia’s state coffers while sidestepping international financial monitoring systems.
“The downside of gold is that it’s physical and a lot more cumbersome to use than international wire transfers but the flip side is that it’s much harder if not impossible to freeze or seize,” said Daniel McDowell, sanctions specialist and associate professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.
Deputy Chairman of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council and commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Gen Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemeti’ Dagalo, called on the international community to support the dialogue between Russia and Ukraine. This is the official position of the Sovereignty Council, he said in a statement to the Russian news channel Sputnik yesterday.
Yesterday’s statement followed Hemeti’s statements last week during his Moscow visit, where he declared support for Russia’s invasion by saying that Russia had a right to defend itself and its people.
A July 2022 CNN investigation exposed deepening ties between Moscow and Sudan’s military leadership, who granted Russia access to the east African country’s gold riches in exchange for military and political support. The relationship began in earnest after Moscow’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, when Russia began to eye African gold riches as an avenue to circumvent a slew of Western sanctions.
The 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the wave of sanctions that followed accelerated Russia’s gold plunder in Sudan and further propped up military rule, increasing Wagner activity in the country.
On the day before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dagalo headed a Sudanese delegation in Moscow to “advance relations” between the two countries.
I’ve been collecting memes from Twitter, and because they’re built for mass distribution, I have found the developing catalog handy as accompaniment or main point to my own undeniably crafted tweets. My silly goal: getting to “0” characters with a sharp point.
Regarding the "rights of people in Donbas"-https://t.co/JpEtYGDtyR One admires your concern & hopes that you will stop taking nourishment from the radiator-distilled potato juice that might account for your delirium & surreal paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motive.
As regards the tweeting, the furious pace of communications buries all “works” and even short periods of time in history may dissolve their relevance. In the end, one has only assembled a snapshot of a political moment encapsulated in the briefest of exchanges.
#MedievalVModern At issue is only a proven #CriminalRevanchistRussia, probably an extension of injured- narcissistically mortified -little boys trying to repair themselves with wealthy aggrandizement by theft. That's the whole post-Soviet story, i.e., revenge #ForwardIntoThePast.
My tweets just ain’t whistlin’ up Dixie, but they could–the evil would be about the same, Mint Juleps, slaves, and all. Putin’s enemies, rather like Trump’s, come to think of it, are all the better souls opposed to the kind of excessive narcissism–messianic, grandiose, delusional–that obliterates boundaries and limits and excuses all crimes.
Related Online
Re. Russian Beheading Video
Note: the authenticating of media has become a major issue in OSINT. From Hollywood to Pallywood and all of the geopolitical and technology space between, it has become possible to tell the truth with integrity or produce a video with nearly seamless invention. At this time, Ukraine has not authenticated claims related to an alleged Russian beheading of a Ukrainian soldier.
Re. Vladimir Putin’s Personal and Political Character
Is Perception Reality?
In an older world, who could “fact check” the claims of an emperor or king? What word of battle could be found unreliable by a “commoner”, i.e., the most ordinary of citizens or, alas, subjects of the realm? I hope this day different from feudal-medieval times with political perceptions bound more directly to feudal power.
Here are three references I relay often and believe most telling about the true character of Moscow’s enfant terrible.
“Tsar Nobody” as Volodymer Zelensky may have called him (and I sometimes do) has proven before Russians a capable producer of his own political image, which is to him his most prized asset, but before the world beyond Russia, he has become “Putler”, a repeatedly and deeply destructive menace to world order and security universally, a man whose fear of his own unmasking has led to crimes on a scale as unfathomable as they have been unimaginable and unbearable.
How “it” looks, whatever the event and our role in it, matters as we each make our way through life, and we would all much rather be liked and loved than reviled and met with heart-sinking contempt. Nonetheless, and in the way of the world’s more ironic and wicked experiences, some who most need the roar of the crowd will do things to obtain that “Narcissistic Supply” that if ever–and whenever–found out will irrevocably and irrecoverably sink their own ships. At the end of their days, some who projected themselves as heroic and righteous prove only cowardly and criminal.
So it goes.
A Modern Psychology for Modern and Social People
If we progress as a species integrated with ubiquitous advanced technologies, some that we use directly, some always humming somewhere in the background, we may have to survive through peace founded in our own reasonable containment and freedom. In essence, we may become creatures more universally responsible for and thoughtful about the future and the needs of future generations. Becoming and being Modern may come to mean having considerations always present and beyond ourselves.
I tire of conveying similar “talking points” on Twitter, so here have brought together one tweet and a few exemplary references hauled into TwitterSpace to set the point.
And what did you do to the Budapest Memorandum? Here's your narrative, 1992-2022-https://t.co/kyRk79vjQH Perhaps no democracy or western state should have cooperated with you-from the Moscow False flag to today, how many apartment buildings have your bombed or villages destroyed?
Very little post-Cold War literature speaks well of Russia, frankly.
I had years ago created in my library a small “Russian Section” but decided against become a librarian as well as a faithful, thorough, and persnickety creator of bibliography. 🙂 Nonetheless, the basic reading has turned out a lasting experience.
Does Moscow need the enmity of the world for grinding against?
Or does Russia merely represent what is barbaric, corrupt, evil, greedy, and ruthless between men?
And does Washington need the enmity of Moscow to set is own pace in defense spending and related forces and technology development?
They’re questions worth asking but far beyond my capacity to address.
The one thing well known worldwide is that Moscow has lost all credibility in aboveboard political agreements (like that Budapest Memorandum) and normal diplomatic declarations (e.g., assurances about NOT invading Ukraine even as it positioned for doing so–and now we have the same talk about not using tactical nuclear weapons even as it plans to move weapons of the type into Belarus).
As the United States and others have led the world on the basis of competitive good conduct and productivity in trade — and with the happiness of nations having to do with adjustment to long-term cultural attributes and geopolitical realities–Russia appears to have fallen into the darkest of abyss with its “Tsar Nobody” attempting to accomplish by corruption, force, and theft what he and it have no wish to do peacefully. On Putin’s course, Russia evidently means to destroy, enslave, plunder, and subjugate rival powers.
The search string, “Soviet Era Heroic Realism” yielded the second image–it helps to knowingly guess what one is after–which has the caption, “Post World War Two Russian Post–Young builders of Communism, go forth toward the new heights.”
We know how that worked out, and Stalin, at least in atrocious facsimile, appears to be with us yet.
Regarding Trump’s depiction, I have commented via Twitter (on Brigitte Gabriel’s feed) already this morning on Moscow’s Trojan Horse–he’s about that large too–in the Grand Old Party (of Greed), and here will relay the cannon fire in plain text and in a manner more easily accessed–>
“Trump is doing what he has always done. He walks to the line of openly calling for violence and stops just before making overt directives,” Kurt Braddock, an American University professor who studies far-right extremism and the ways in which communication and propaganda contribute to political violence, told Insider.
“In many ways, the implications are the same. His supporters who are looking for an excuse to turn to violence will see this as his implicit approval,” Braddock added.
Practically an Afterthought on Donal Trump’s Anti-Democratic Authoritarian Narcissistic Mentality
"“I get along well with Putin,” Trump said, adding that the Russian president discussed Ukraine regularly. “He wanted to get a piece,” Trump said. “Now it looks like he’ll probably end up getting the whole thing.” #DonaldTrump on #UkraineRussiaWarhttps://t.co/AHf5vVolJI#DTPutin
Reconsider the value of lying against the value of simple old fashioned #Honesty and #Integrity.
#ModernEuropeans and #ModernAmericans should wish to live in a #ModernWorld with all of the benefits of integrated complex sophisticated and sensitive systems and not in the world of chaos, fear of government, personal separation, political impotence, and #FeudalMedievalSlaughter.
Would that Russians had the courage to share so #Modern a desire and requisite for peace and prosperity–and what Russians choose to submit to and tolerate, including their own enslavement, would seem how Russians choose to live.
I don't want to be asking (with despair), "What is to be done?" here in the United States.#ModernAmericans need insight, a plan, and the courage of old friends. #Corruption
#Corruption should have been #CorruptionGreedKompromat.
#ModernAmericans may have a choice right this moment between a “hollowed-out democracy”–a democracy in superficial appearance only–or an authentic democracy, for the above-mentioned hash tag might get at the truth. Our #UnitedStatesOfAmerica just hasn’t been herself lately, and as one must know that Corruption is the Cancer of States, there might be an answer having to do with it.
Where are America’s sworn counterintelligence professionals on the possibility that we might have been compromised by our own tendencies with money and pleasure?
Probably, if not “shadow banning”, the numbers in other twitterati simply swamp individual expression or voice. Individually, we no longer matter, and collectively, we don’t seem to count.
There’s hardly point in chatyping since my most of my posts, including the above mentioned, convey reference that leads to more reference.
#ModernAmerican #RealAmericans and, for each of us, all our old friends who really believed in democracy in support of rational, responsible, and responsive governance, some way of coming together, of organizing, of being together, would be helpful.