08 Tuesday Feb 2022
Snyder, Timothy. “1989: Poland Was First!” The New York Review of Books, December 9, 2009.
Polish History Museum. “The Solidarity and the Fall of the Iron Curtain”.
Wikipedia. “Soviet invasion of Poland”.
Wikipedia. “Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939-1946)”.
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24 Monday Jan 2022
Tags
EU/NATO, New Nationalism, New Russian Imperialism, Putin the Pirate, Russia v NATO, Russia v Ukraine, Ukraine's Frozen Conflict, Vladimir Putin
Well, he stole Robert Kraft’s Sacred Superbowl Ring, so what wouldn’t he steal?
Kraft’s ring now appears on display in the Kremlin’s library, quite a trophy brought home to Moscow by Russia’s Boss of Bosses.
From CNN:
The 4.94-carat ring is in the Kremlin’s library, where all official state gifts are kept, he said. It is worth more than $25,000, according to multiple reports from 2005.
A Kraft spokesman said Sunday the story is a humorous anecdote that Kraft “retells for laughs.”
“He loves that the ring is at the Kremlin and, as he stated back in 2005, he continues to have great respect for Russia and the leadership of President Putin,” said Stacey James, a spokesman for The Kraft Group.
Eshchenko, Alla and Faith Karimi. “Russian president: I did not steal Super Bowl ring.” CNN, June 17, 2013.
No. Putin didn’t steal it. It was a gift!
🙄
***
Will Ukraine be a gift too?
***
Putin the Pirate has done a few things under the table upside-down and sideways over decades to weaken western political coherence, cohesion, and resolve. Start with the KGB’s handling of Zawahiri over the winter of 1996/7. In connect-the-dots fashion, I believe that stay led to the attack by jet hijacking Islamists on 9/11 that in turn goosed the pride of western states in their Christian and independent political cultures and led to what has been referred to as the “New Nationalism”.
When bees sting and flesh swells, the response has not been called “proud flesh” for nothing.
The popular western response in enmity and fear regarding Islam has not been misplaced in relation to Islamic Extremism and related Islamist Terror, but the same has given rise to blood-and-soil nationalism, authoritarianism, and actual autocracy in some EU/NATO states. Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey, and the United States (one nation under Trump for a while) have each seen their open democracies challenged by demagoguery or political perversion.
We may also take note of the “01s” in dates: 1991-dissolve of the Soviet Union in bankruptcy following American intercession opposite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (from which Russia was forced to retreat in 1989); 2001-the September 11 attacks took place on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birthday, quite a gift for a Moscow bent on revenge for its losses in Afghanistan-and, no, Putin didn’t do it–it was obviously radical Muslims assembled and deployed by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden; 2011-The Horror taking off in Syria that would send millions of refugees into NATO (Turkey, which today hosts about 3.68 million Syrian refugees), the European Union (0.7 million-Germany), and Scandinavia (0.3 million), another goad for the defense of the rightly ethnolinguistic state cultures settled and enjoying the benefits of, well, being themselves, the only problem being a concomitant drift toward the same feudal-medieval worldviews and fascination with authority held by Bashar al-Assad, Ali Khamenei, and Vladimir Putin; 2021-Russia’s repeated threats by military feint against Ukraine, a young democratic state seeking NATO accession, and, by extension, NATO itself, but not quite as Ukraine remains without accession.
So hey, Bob (Kraft), George and George, Jr. (Bush), where are you today with Putin (the thief)?
***
Where and when are dictatorships to be stopped?
Is it when one or another has engaged in political repression and breathtaking plunder at home?
Should it be when the security service agents and agent provocateur show up within the borders of one’s democratic state?
Should it be when the tanks roll into a neighboring state struggling for its own sovereignty against barbaric force and the possibility of a return to corrupt, kleptocratic, and tyrannical governance?
Christophersen, Erik. “These 10 countries receive the most refugees.” Norwegian Refugee Council.
Duffin, Erin. “Nationalism in the U.S. – Statistics & Facts.” Statista, March 11, 2021.
Oppenheim, James S. “Syria: The Horror: 2011.” BackChannels, December 29, 2017.
Oppenheim, James S. “Ukraine: A Reminder.” BackChannels, December 7, 2021.
Schuster, Simon. “How Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia’s Man in Ukraine.” Time, October 31, 2017.
Statista. “Ranking of the largest Syria refugee-hosting countries in 2020”.
The New York Times. “Gerald L. K. Smith Dead; Anti-Communist Crusader.” April 16, 1976.
UNHCR. “Syria Refugee Crisis–Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus.” March 18, 2021.
VOA. “Russia Threatens to Deploy Tactical Nuclear Weapons.” December 14, 2021.
Wikipedia. “America First Party (1943)”.
Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.
Wikipedia. “Felix Dzerzhinsky”.
Wikipedia. “Gerald L. K. Smith”.
Wikipedia. “Putin’s Kleptocracy”.
Wikipedia. “Russo-Ukrainian War”.
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15 Thursday Apr 2021
Has The West lost courage and heart before Russia’s continuous press to undermine EU/NATO political coherence, cohesion, and resolve?
Have Moscow / Moscow-Tehran-associated chaos and conflict and their fallout in mass migration tired the western public and made some parts benevolent and others mean?
Have Moscow-aided (Taliban) and Tehran-sponsored terrorism (Hamas, Hezbollah) made us — citizens of the west — defensive and smaller than we were 20 years ago?
Have western leaders been compromised?
This juxtaposition represents a conjecture:
There should be a song, “Kompromat” being so much a theme with Moscow’s mafia-style influence on the world’s foreign affairs. Whether or not some number of western leaders or their subalterns — or family members — have been compromised and leveraged — and some have already been made to bow to Russian energy projects — is something I wouldn’t even pretend to know, but I would consider it possible.
Would Russian tanks invading Ukraine then not be bombed by Ukrainian and NATO forces — or defending Russian jets not be driven from the skies by the same?
We are about 20-1/2 years out from September 11, 2001 and our Soviet/post-Soviet old Cold War foe appears on the warpath unstoppable, facing only western opprobrium and sanctions, neither of which appear to have affected any of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, martial and political designs, philosophies, or, perhaps, critical inner-circle relationships.
Shall we all wring our hands and say, “Oh dear”?
Should Putin not “take” Ukraine and plant nukes, for example, in Crimea — he is already defending that wholly invaded space (see, for example, Newdick, Thomas. “Russia Still Uses This Cold War Relic of an Underground Anti-Ship Missile System in Crimea.” The Warzone, The Drive, October 18, 2020)?
Where do American and related European posturing and prostration before Moscow (or Tehran) end?
Will Russia’s tanks be rolling into Ukraine before I publish this post?
Or after?
I have more questions than answers this morning.
The only man on earth who would seem to have answers would be the Russian president (whether Russians like him or not).
***
The Daily Mirror has had cause to report an assault force of 107,000 troops “amassed at Ukraine’s border” — a little more tease before you click to the piece:
EXCLUSIVE: Russia will soon have an assault force of 107,000 troops along Ukraine’s border, with an estimated 1,300 battle tanks, 3,700 drones, 1,300 artillery and mortar units and 380 multiple launch rocket systems —
RUSSIAN tanks painted with “invasion stripes” are gathering on Ukraine’s border as Putin is reportedly set to deploy 30,000 more troops.
A local in the Russian Astrakhan region, 350 miles from the border, filmed the BTR 80 armoured vehicles with white crosses painted on them.
Ibrahim, Magda, Mark Hodge. “Trouble and Stripe: Russia paints ‘invasion stripes’ on tanks as Putin ‘deploys ANOTHER 30,000 troops to Ukraine.” The Sun, April 15, 2021.
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13 Tuesday Apr 2021
Putin hasn’t to move one tank into Ukraine to control Ukraine, for he has already made himself central to Ukrainian (and NATO) awareness, fear, mobilization, and reflection.
Everything Ukraine may now do (and think) will have to do with whatever Putin chooses to do first.
Putin is in control.
Consider the Ukrainian defender’s now about seven-years-old experience and position with a belligerent and bullying Russia repeatedly and with impunity injuring or killing Ukrainian troops daily and weekly for all those years.
Where is that pain to be harbored and kept in check?
For how many more hours, days, weeks, months, years should Ukrainians tolerate the status quo of a “frozen conflict” sustained by the same criminals driven out in the 2014 Maidan?
Putin is in control.
How should Ukrainians feel about reaching out to a NATO that hems and haws over its imperfect governance while aspiring to meet modern democratic standards in rule-of-law?
Oh, has anyone had a good look lately at the degrees of corruption and rancor in relation to domestic political behavior within the United States?
At least the voting will of the American People voted out their own corrupt autocratic infection, but should any of the Atlantic Alliance have fallen so far to now have to bend over fully to pick up the reins dropped from the horse?
Hungary, Italy, Poland, Turkey have each gone at least partially — two especially — back toward family control or, alternatively, ownership of states by nobility, i.e., either way, the feudal mode in political absolutism.
Who’s next?
Putin is in control.
How tense the atmosphere? How dark the clouds? How near the enemy?
Putin is in control.
However far Russia dares to go with its annexation of Ukraine — and its thieving from Ukrainian business and industry and all else Ukrainian and good — Ukraine will have to stand up and go further, and God help NATO embrace and defend Ukraine.
Ukraine: is Putin in control?
“I heard Zelensky’s words as he said that Ukraine is ready to repel aggression. The fact is that he didn’t just say it’s ready today, it’s been ready for seven years already. It’s only that it’s a different level of readiness, because it’s hard to say when Russia might put their aggressive rhetoric to life,” Kravchuk told Current Time, a Russian language project created by RFE/RL with the participation of VOA.
He noted that Russia’s top leadership are directly threatening Ukraine and its sovereignty, including warning of “collapse of the state.”
Wikipedia. “Locus of control”.
Wikiepedia. “Malignant narcissism”.
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12 Monday Apr 2021
Has His Malignance Rolled or not?
It’s a little early to tell here with the Open Source.
Note: early drafts of this post were launched in the small hours, Eastern Standard Time; the latest updates now catch up with mainstream coverage.
Putin’s genius as a “malignant narcissist”: the projection of threat that makes himself central in the narratives of others.
While Ukraine may “not back down to Russian pressure,” it cannot help but be transfixed by it — and EU/NATO cannot help either being drawn to post-Maidan revolutionary Ukraine and both its democratic potential as well as its immediate security interests.
My schematic for the personal journey and process known to malignant narcissists
Narcissistic Mortification –> Covering (humiliation and shame) / Splitting (the damaged child from the image of an heroic child) –> Gaslighting and other Willful Manipulation (to create and sustain an heroic image) –> Limitless Narcissistic Supply (the experiences of public glory, the roaring approval of crowds, the validations of humanity and God).
(BackChannels Page Reference: “Malignant Narcissism”).
The power to (with impunity) threaten one’s targets is, of course, power. What those targets then do in the position of being threatened — and with Putin, boundlessly and without end — may or may not set the limits of that odious behavior.
Axelrod, Tal. “Ukraine says it will not back down to Russian pressure.” The Hill, April 10, 2021.
BBC. “US-Russian spat over bombers landing in Venezuela.” December 11, 2018.
Correll, John T. “Intercepting the Bear.” Air Force Magazine, February 26, 2018.
Mackinnon, Amy. “Is Russia Preparing to Go to War in Ukraine?” Foreign Policy, April 9, 2021.
Pifer, Steven. “Ukraine: Six years after the Maidan.” Brookings, February 21, 2020.
UNIAN. “Huge Russian troop camp near Ukraine’s border shown from inside (Video).” April 12, 2021.
UNIAN. “Zelensky lodges request to talk with Putin about escalation in Donbas.” April 12, 2021.
VOA News. “Putin Praises Russian Military Arctic Exercises.” March 26, 2021.
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11 Sunday Apr 2021
Tags
Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists have been fighting in eastern Ukraine since shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict, and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.
The Kremlin, which has not denied the troop movements, said on Sunday it was not moving towards war with Ukraine – but also that it would “not remain indifferent” to the fate of Russian speakers in the conflict-torn region.
Agencies. “Ukrainian soldier reportedly killed in artillery fire from Russia-backed troops.” The Guardian, April 11, 2021.
Medieval leaders have ways of both boasting and lying their way into war.
While it should have been understand in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that it would it would pick up the task of consolidating its “facts on the ground” — and it has certainly done that — it appears from this desktop that it has resolved to take the transformation of Crimea and Donbas further. It has, for example, installed an extraordinary new bridge into Crimea ne “Crimea Bridge” or “Kerch Strait Bridge” — all $3.7bn of it.
Vladimir Putin has opened a bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea, tightening Russia’s hold over the contested peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The 12-mile (19km), $3.7bn (£2.7bn) bridge is Moscow’s only direct road link to Crimea. Russia expects it will carry millions of cars and rail travellers and millions of tons of cargo each year. Previously, all car traffic passed over the Kerch strait by ferry or by passing through Ukraine.
Roth, Andrew. “Putin opens 12-mile bridge between Crimea and Russian mainland.” The Guardian, Mary 15, 2018.
Russia has never kept its promises as regards ceasefires in relation to Ukraine.
It has, in fact, had a history of brutalizing Ukraine. The methods brought to bear — from “Little Green Men” to slanders involving the image of Nazi Ukraine as pervasive — should to all westerners (who might care to check Russian claims against factual data and timely testimony from multiple sources) be especially repulsive as such disinformation expresses contempt for those receiving it.
Do you respect people who lie to you?
Why should Ukrainians — or NATO — or Ukrainian Russian speakers respect Russia today for its massive “Active Measures” campaigns?
No wonder Vladimir has inspired the epithet that is “Putler”.
*
Russia says Ukraine is trying to provoke a conflict, while Kyiv has accused the Russian-backed separatists of increasing their attacks against government forces and Moscow of massing troops on its border.
Mathews, Sean. “Ukraine turns to Turkey as Russia threatens full-scale war.” Al Jazeera, April 11, 2021.
*
Where oh where in the world has about the same thing?
Russia’s deflection of intent (“Accusation in a Mirror”) appears hackneyed today, but then one should not expect originality from a dictator whose desires would appear invested in a century (19th) far past its prime.
With the Open Source at my disposal, I could go on for a while longer, but what’s really on my mind is the “Moment of Decision”, i.e., that instant in time in which a choice must be made between freezing aggressive ambitions or going with them. As Russia last week left the West with a peaceful Easter Sunday, I expect that moment to arrive in two hours or seven, i.e., midnight in Kiev or earliest dawn. If those moments pass without incident out of the ordinary as regards Russian shelling and whatnot, Ukraine will remain tense but as is, which is not a happy prospect and rather mumbling at best. IF, on the other hand, Putin’s tanks power up, the world may be changed tomorrow, and Ukraine (and NATO) will have to face Russian barbarism and its implacable and unconscionable — well demonstrated in Syria — character and the reality-creating horror that seems always to accompany that character in its striving to create chaos wherever it goes and then be . . . taken seriously despite its moral bankruptcy and ugliness.
BBC News. “Russia fears Crimea water shortage as supply drops.” April 25, 2014.
Interfax-Ukraine. “Forced Russian passportization affects 2.9 million Ukrainians in Donbas, Crimea.” Kyiv Post, February 20, 2021.
UAWire. “Kremlin: war in Ukraine can resume any time.” April 11, 2021.
*
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10 Saturday Apr 2021
Given that Vladimir Putin continues to annoy the west with displays of feudal-medieval political methods, starting with disinformation and rumor mongering and putting a point on it with hybrid warfare and passportization, NATO would seem well advised to hasten Ukraine’s accession to its defense community.
Today’s Ukraine is not only a security recipient, but a security donor in its region. Ukraine has been successfully countering Russian aggression for almost seven years now, protecting not only itself but a wider region between the Baltic and Black Seas. Ukraine has gained invaluable experience deterring Russian aggression on the traditional military battlefield and in the realm of hybrid warfare, which extends from cyber to disinformation and beyond. These factors would appear to make Ukraine a strong candidate for NATO membership.
That is the rational side to answering President Zelenskyy’s question. However, there is also an emotional side to consider. Perhaps the best way to understand this dialectic is by adopting a neuroscientific approach and exploring both the rational and the emotional approaches to Ukraine’s future membership in NATO.
Kuleba, Dmytro. “Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?” Atlantic Council, February 16, 2021.
That emotional side accesses the same arguments the KGB has woven into the Palestinian narrative to see Fatah and Hamas elites — and all their cousins — at once loot the refugees of UN funds (and much else) while claiming their defense (see the rest of Dmytro Kuleba’s insightful essay as noted above and listed below). The arguments — essentially forms of “Accusation in a Mirror” — have been the same that have excused numerous vain and ruthless personalities on their way to establishing brutal dictatorships under cover of popular “revolutions” that bypass always those who believed they were going to get some attention at last.
In that Russian autocratic power from the Imperial Period through the Bolshevik Revolution with its imperious, omnipresent, and totalitarian Party, and right through to the rein of “Vertical of Power” Putin has long played this game against Russians, what makes Ukrainian Russians think the establishment of greater Russian military presence would actually defend either their economic or ethnic interests? Most would be dumb and duped to believe the malarkey passed along from Russia’s traumatized and trauma-producing and now perpetuated medieval political tradition.
Drawing from my impression of Euromaidan seven years ago, Ukrainians wish to be democratic, lawful, and modern — not fodder for barbaric medieval throwbacks inclined to threaten geopolitical space with massed forces or through incursion install corrupt elites inclined to be just as ruthless with Russian speakers as with Ukrainian ones.
I’m sure Alexei Navalny would have something to say about that were he in good health and free to speak.
Al Jazeera. “Russia warns NATO against deploying troops to Ukraine.” April 2, 2021.
Holodomor 1932-33: Famine Genocide in Ukraine.
Kuleba, Dmytro. “Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?” Atlantic Council, February 16, 2021.
NATO. “Relations with Ukraine.” November 11, 2020.
YanukovychLeaks National Project.
Wikipedia. “Ukraine-NATO relations”.
https://liveuamap.com/en/2021/9-april-military-echelon-filmed-in-rostovnadonu
“Military echolon filmed in Rostov-na-Donu”, April 9, 2021, 47°13′N 39°41′E.
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18 Thursday Feb 2021
I’m not inclined to leap far into conspiracy-think. However, wind turbine technology appears engineered and manufactured by transnational corporations and firms well aware of freezing weather, so this nonsense about renewable energy failing in Texas (why not on the North Sea? Why not in Germany?) just doesn’t hold ice water.
Super conservative angst, disinformation (received or sent), and viciousness get in the way of the public’s more cool-headed gathering and perception of variables contributing to disasters. That discomforting aspect of our collective national psyche notwithstanding, I would ask news (and weather) editors and readers to simply consider the full suite of possibilities in the unfolding of dramatic stories. In this one, finger pointing at wind-generated energy overlooked frozen instruments (!) in other energy systems. Well Whisky Tango & Foxtrot, where is Homeland Security on the Big Dallas Freeze? And may the investigative journalists be all over the possibility, just that (!), of external meddling involving massive critical — and technologically delicate or vulnerable — systems.
Of course, there are other possibilities, much including the architecture and engineering in a region better known for heat than cold and successive building generations in a political environment resistant “global warming” the potential for coming extremes in the known environment.
Still, has the drama been only about old engineering and new weather?
I may be tilting at windmills.
Maybe not.
While some wind turbines did freeze, failures in natural gas, coal and nuclear energy systems were responsible for nearly twice as many outages as renewables, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot), which operates the state’s power grid, said in a press conference on Tuesday.
Frozen instruments at gas, coal and even nuclear power stations were among the main problems, Ercot director Dan Woodfin said, according to Bloomberg.
Farrer, Martin and agencies. “US conservatives falsely blame renewables for Texas storm outages.” The Guardian, February 17, 2021.
Patel, Nilay. “Hard Lessons of the Solarwinds Hack.” The Verge, January 26, 2021.
Last March—if not before, as a report by the threat-intelligence firm ReversingLabs suggests—a hacking team, believed to be affiliated with Russian intelligence, planted malware in a routine software upgrade from a Texas-based I.T. company called SolarWinds, which provides network-management systems to more than three hundred thousand clients. An estimated eighteen thousand of them downloaded the malware-ridden updates, which were embedded in a SolarWinds product called Orion. Once they did, the hackers were able to roam about customers’ networks, undetected, for at least nine months.
Halpern, Sue. “After the Solarwinds Hack, We Have No Idea What Cyber Dangers We Face.” The New Yorker, January 25, 2021.
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